I gave up on an official translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 some time ago. The game, released in Japan for the Nintendo DS all the way back 2011, seemed like the one title in the series that would simply never get an English release, even after the miraculous Great Ace Attorney Chronicles release for modern systems in 2021. The continued adventures of Miles Edgeworth, the dapper, goofy-serious prosecutor who I'm pretty sure has a huge following on Tumblr, were denied to us. It's unlikely, I reasoned, that it would happen 13 years after the fact.

I'm very excited to have been wrong. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection finally brings the sequel to modern consoles with an official English translation, distinct and different from the (reportedly quite good) fan translations. The game has been jazzed up with new HD art, and tweaked to work on a single screen. Having received a preview code I'm finally able to play the spin-off, which, many fans contend, stands tall as one of the great games of the series.

After all these years, I can finally play Ace Attorney Investigations 2. I could stop writing this preview, step away from the computer, and finally see what all the fuss is about.  But I'm not playing it yet. Instead, I've been replaying Ace Attorney Investigations, a game I already finished in 2010.

The embargo stipulation for the preview session allows me to discuss the first three cases of the original game, as well as the first two of the sequel - and for a moment, I considered getting through those first three chapters and jumping right into the game I haven't played yet. Ace Attorney Investigations is, after all, often talked about as a lesser game in the Ace Attorney canon - a cute adventure for Edgeworth that, in my memory, was a pleasant but slightly meandering distraction. The thought of playing it again first felt like (and please forgive this extremely Australian simile) eating the lumps of raw capsicum and rubbery tomato in a pub side salad before digging into the schnitzel I'd ordered. I like the side salad just fine! But it's not what I'm at the pub for. 

But having revisited the first three cases of the game - which, as it turns out, I remember very little of - I can say that I was wrong again. Ace Attorney Investigations isn't an inessential spin-off. It's another properly wonderful Ace Attorney game.

Ace Attorney Investigations is a slightly different style of game than what fans are used to - there are no courtrooms, and you control Miles directly as he wanders through environments. The new chibi art style is a huge improvement over the DS pixel art original, even if a few of the animations have translated to it a little awkwardly. The narrative thrust of the whole thing is the same as the other Ace Attorney games - there's a series of murders to solve, and you need to investigate areas, talk to witnesses, present evidence, and eventually untangle testimonies to get to the truth.

But having revisited the first three cases of the game - which, as it turns out, I remember very little of - I can say that I was wrong again. Ace Attorney Investigations isn't an inessential spin-off. It's another properly wonderful Ace Attorney game.

A new mechanic, unique to the Investigations series, is the ability to deduce. Edgeworth collects facts as he investigates, and two facts can be snapped together in the deduction menu at any time to form a new piece of information. Miles is a prosecutor, but this is really a game about detective work, even more so than the other games in the series. Instead of surprise witnesses in the court, interviews are carried out in the field. Finding important clues  often yields immediate results, and the cases aren't protracted over several court days. This game still has that incredible user experience touch that all the games in the series have, where a successful objection during a testimony leads to the music immediately cutting out. Even without a courtroom or a judge, it still feels like Ace Attorney. It's never quite as exciting as that feeling of stepping into the courtroom, but those court battle elements - the back-and-forth of dissecting a testimony - can pop up at any time in a case.

The first three cases of Ace Attorney Investigations, which ease you into the new gameplay concepts and characters, are great fun. Each one is more isolated than the sprawling investigations of the mainline series - you travel from room to room rather than location to location. They're also jam-packed with easter eggs and fan-favorite characters, all of whom show up to play on their pre-existing relationships with Miles. It's fun to see some of these characters again, even if I know, on some level, I'm being pandered to. Ol' Edgy is a delight, too: the character has always projected a sense of seriousness and competency that might collapse at any moment, and seeing him get flustered by the other characters is always so much fun. Playing as Edgeworth humanizes him a little bit.

The third case also introduces Kay Faraday, the fan-favourite new addition to the cast, and her ability to recreate holographic simulations of crime scenes with her super-fancy phone - the exact kind of silly science this series excels at. The third case uses Kay, and a handful of other new characters, to facilitate a great series of twists and turns. It's one of those cases where the broad shape of what happened becomes clear early, but piecing together all the specifics is quite thrilling.

This game still has that incredible user experience touch that all the games in the series have, where a successful objection during a testimony leads to the music immediately cutting out.

After digging into these cases, I can't help but wonder why I didn't remember it more fondly. Ace Attorney Investigations is the first game in the series directed by Takeshi Yamazaki, who would go on to direct its sequel and the 3DS games in the mainline series, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice (Shy Takumi, the director behind the first four games, helmed the incredible Great Ace Attorney titles, as well as Ghost Trick). It's possible that my memories of Ace Attorney Investigations have maybe been tainted by my opinions on Dual Destinies, the only Ace Attorney game that I flat-out do not like.

Beyond that, I think time has been good to the Ace Attorney series, and the slowed release schedule lets a game like this one breathe. When Ace Attorney Investigations originally released in 2009, it was, for those of us in the West, essentially an annual series. There had been a new Ace Attorney game on the DS every year since 2005 - and Investigations, as good as it is, wasn't as exciting as the bold (and slightly divisive) Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, not to mention the series highpoint Trials and Tribulations.

Now, releases have slowed - there have been five new games in English since 2009, one of them a crossover with Professor Layton. Revisiting a game like this means revisiting old friends, characters that the series has moved away from in more recent entries. If we ever see an Ace Attorney 7, Edgeworth could, theoretically, put in an appearance - but Dick Gumshoe has not shown up in one of these games for a long time, and neither have many of the side characters from the original trilogy who pop up in here. If there was a time where I felt like there were too many Ace Attorney games featuring these characters, it has long since passed.

Revisiting a game like this means revisiting old friends, characters that the series has moved away from in more recent entries.

Even with my renewed vigor, this isn't as good as peak Ace Attorney. The logic in the solutions isn't always as strong as they are in the best main series games - a few times in the third case I felt like my reasoning for presenting items on certain lines of testimony was just as solid as the actual answer. And for my money, the localization of this game - which is carried over exactly from the DS version - is not as strong as the other games in the series. There are more grammatical issues, more comma splices and run-on sentences, than you'd expect from an Ace Attorney game.

But these are minor quibbles, and I love this game. These characters, these cases, the feeling as the pieces start to fall into place: it's all vintage Ace Attorney. This just makes me all the more excited to move onto the sequel - the one I've been hearing good things about for over a decade now -  for my upcoming review. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is the headliner of this release, but - judging by the first three cases, at least - the first game is well worth your time, too.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection releases for Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox, and PC on September 6, 2024. SUPERJUMP will be publishing a full review, focused on the sequel, at that time. 

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia page

Next year, I’ll be blogging for 15 years. I have taken a look at quite a lot of games. Now, if you go back to the start of this blog, you might notice that I only started in May 2013. The three years before that, I wrote a personal life blog in my native language. I have since deleted that for personal reasons and started blogging in English in 2013. On my Dutch blog, I wrote an article about Another Code – Two Memories, but I haven’t written one for my English blog. Yet, I have mentioned it in 2014 in a top 25 list of my favorite DS games of all time. I have written an article on the Wii sequel called Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories in 2013. While my old articles aren’t up to my personal standards anymore, I still leave them up to see the growth I have gone through over the years. Now, these two titles became classics in my eyes. When Cing went under, I didn’t hold up hope of these games ever seeing a sequel or a remake. But, we got a big surprise this year. Suddenly, both games were coming to the Nintendo Switch and not only that, they were remade from the ground up. Did these two games grow like I did in my writing, or is it something that should be better left to the past? Well, that’s what I’m going to discover with you in this article. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, but now, let’s dive right in.

Editorial note: shameless self-promotion: if you want to see me and my buddy Klamath playing through this title… We started streaming it. So, more opinions can be found in the streams. Here is a link to the playlist.

The Remembering Of A Remake

In this game, we follow the adventures of Ashley Mizuki Robins. In the first part of the game, Ashley got a letter from her presumed dead father to come to Blood Edward island to meet him on the day right before her 14th birthday. On that journey, she meets a ghost named D, who has lost his memories.

In the second part of the game, we fast-forward two years. Ashley takes a camping trip to a lake. When she arrives at lake Juliet, she gets flashbacks from when she was very little. Not only that, she meets a young boy whose father wanted to build a holiday resort at that lake but was blamed for the pollution of the lake.

Since this game is a point-and-click game and is quite story depended, I’m not going to talk more about the story than the two small blurbs above. In terms of the story, this game tells a very heartfelt story with very nice life lessons. The writing in this game is extremely well done. The build up towards the ending of the story is very natural and stays true to the themes of the game. The biggest theme in this game is memories and history. Overall, this game is quite relaxing, and the story is never really in a rush to move forward.

New in this version is that there is voice acting. While not the whole game is voice acted, most of it is and the non voice acted scenes have little grunts and vocalizations to indicate the emotions of what’s being told. I have to say that the voice acting in this game is fantastic. I wish the voice actors of this game had more of an online presence, since I had a hard time finding other works by these voice actors. The fact that these voice actors didn’t really promote that they worked on this game on their socials is a shame.

The voice acting in this game brings so much charm to the game. For this article, I replayed parts of the original DS and Wii game and I kept hearing those characters talk in the voice of the remakes. They fit the characters like a glove, which is a hard thing to do since when you have voiceless characters… Everybody has their voice in their head, and that doesn’t always match up with the official voice acting.

Now, in terms of differences between the original games and this remake… There are quite a lot of things. On the Cing wiki, there is a long list of changes. But I would highly advise you don’t read that before you finished the game. Since, it contains a lot of spoilers. I can say this without spoiling anything. The list of changes on the game article page has no real spoilers. If you haven’t played the originals, you won’t really notice a lot of the changes. Especially because most of the changes are done to improve the flow of the game and the story. Other changes have been done because some puzzles used the special features of the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo Wii in unique ways.

Arc System Works worked together with several members of the original development team, and I have to say that it really feels like this is the definitive way to experience these stories. Both stories now flow into each other, and it feels more like one big story. If you didn’t know better, you could think it’s just one huge game with those major chapters. They have done an amazing job of translating the story into a modern area without destroying the original messages and atmosphere of the story.

Fuzzy memories make imperfections

In terms of visuals, this game goes for a cel shaded look. This makes the remake of the original DS game look more in line with the Wii title. In the original DS game, the game was played as a top-down puzzle game, with some moments you could see a 2D scene that you could explore.

Visually, this game is quite detailed and looks amazing. Yet, I have noticed some rough models here and there. A book here, a window there. Some of them really stick out like a sore thumb. Now, I might be very critical on these things since I review games as a hobby. But let me tell you this as well. Overall, this game looks amazing. Timeless even. There are only a handful of objects that could use some touching up.

I have the same opinion on the animations. Overall, the animations are fantastic. Seeing the first game in 3D was breathtaking. It brought the game to life in such a different way, and I’m all for it. There were a few stiff animations, but if you aren’t looking for them, I can guarantee you that you won’t notice most of them. I especially love the comic book style cutscenes where the characters speaking go inside their own square next to each other. The animations in these cutscenes add some charm to this game, it makes the more relaxing nature of this game shine even brighter.

The controls of this game are excellent. Sometimes the motion control puzzles are a little bit wonky, but overall they work perfectly. The only thing I really don’t like is how, by the press of a button, you can see the orientation of Ashley. Now, what do I dislike about this? Well, it has a sort of build in walkthrough attached to it. This is something that’s too easily accessible, and I have pressed the button too many times.

Something I’m mixed about is how the additional lore spots are now somewhat easier to find. In the original DS game, you could find special cartridges with additional story lore on them. In this game, the hiding spot is located on your map. So, if you have missed one, you can quickly see on your map in which room you need to look. Now, some of them are hidden in very tricky places. During the stream, I have seen Klamath walk past two of them several times. If you want all the additional lore, you will have to keep your eyes peeled.

If you have played any point-and-click adventure game, you’ll know what to expect here. Personally, I compare this game quite a lot to Broken Sword 3, but without the platforming. You can explore the environment, and you have to solve various puzzles. Something unique is that you can also take pictures. And let me tell you, keep every mechanic the game teaches you in mind. The fact you can take pictures is something that is going to be quite helpful during the solving of the puzzles.

The only complaint I have is that solving some puzzles have a bit too much menu work involved. I especially remember one puzzle in the first part of the game where you have to weigh coins. Instead of them being all five on the table, you have to take them from your inventory each and every time. And the annoying part is that the last two you used, move to the last spot in your inventory. There are a handful of puzzles where some quality of life improvements would be very welcome.

Relaxing with puzzles

There are some amazing new features in this game as well. One of my favorite things is that you can access a big board where all the relationships between the characters are mapped out. Not only that, when you open the profile, you can read a small note about them. If you click on Ashley’s profile, you will read a small hint on what to do next. So, if you put this game down for a while, you can catch yourself up quite quickly.

Also, something I adore is the attention to detail in this game. For example, in one of the puzzles, Ashley digs into a building blocks box. After she found what she was looking for, you will notice a small building she built next to the box with the blocks she took out. There are various other moments like this, and it adds to the charm and realism of this game quite a lot.

The more relaxing nature of this game not only comes through the visuals and gameplay, but also through the music. The music in this game is a rather calming and relaxing soundtrack. The main motive is piano through the whole soundtrack. Other major instruments are violin and acoustic guitar. The soundtracks fit this game like a glove. Now, it is tense when it needs to be, but it never steps out of its lane. It keeps being that relaxing soundtracks that brings this game more to life, and I have no complaints about it.

The biggest strength of this game is the charm of it all. The writing, the music, the sound effects, the puzzles… It all flows together so well. While the game is only roughly 15 hours long, if you know what you are doing, it’s a very enjoyable time to play through. In this remake, the game also auto saves now but outside of cutscenes, you can save at any time in 15 different save slots.

Currently, I’m over midway in the second part of the game and I have been enjoying it quite a lot. While the game has it’s minor shortcomings like some rough object models and some annoying menu’ing during puzzles… I’m falling in love with these titles all over again. If you would ask me if the remakes or the originals are better, I’d have to say both. Both versions still have their charm but if you want to experience both these titles, I’d really advice to go for the Switch version. Since, it brings both titles together in a lot better way.

I mostly have minor complaints about these remakes. Like how silly it is that you can only have ten pictures saved and deleting them is a bit too fincky. But overall, the issues I have with this game are mostly minor. Maybe a bit more time in the oven or a polishing patch will bring this game to perfection.

A lot of other reviewers are giving this game lower marks since it’s slower paced or it’s a remake of a rather obscure duology. I personally disagree with these lower scores. These two games deserve another chance in the lime light since they are quite amazing games. I personally don’t mind the slower paced gameplay, since it’s refreshing to be able to wind down with a slower game. On top of that, if you look at the care the developers put into remaking this game and bringing it to modern audiences while not chaging too much to alienate fans of the original is such a fine line to walk on… And they never fell off that line in my opinion.

I can totally understand that this game isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But, the complaints that this game is linear and doesn’t have a lot of replay value, I find ridiculous. I mean, does every game need to have a lot of replay value and let you explore a wide open world? No, it’s okay to play a game where you need to go from point A to B. It’s okay that the story looses some of it’s charm because you know how it’s going to end. It’s how that experience impacts you, that’s what matters.

The reason why I’m so happy to see remakes of these DS and Wii titles is because we now have remakes of amazing titles like this one and Ghost Trick for example. Now, because these two games have been remade, I’m holding out hope that Cing’s other titles like the amazing Hotel Dusk and it’s sequels are being remade as well. And if they are, I hope the same team is working on them since the love and care they placed into remaking these two titles is amazing.

I remember Klamath’s reaction when I suggested this game for streaming. He was worried that it was going to have low numbers and not a lot of interest. But, after our first stream, he started calling this game a hidden gem. I mean, if this game can have that kind of an impact on somebody who loves point-and-click games and the fact that we had a very high number of viewers watching our streams, it must mean something.

This game has a lot of impact and I hope that others who enjoy puzzle, adventure and/or point-and-click games give this game a chance. It’s something different especially since it’s slower paced but if you let it take you by the hand and if you walk along the journey, you won’t regret the powerful journey you are going on. It’s a journey that will stick with you and sometimes a memory will pop back into your head. You’ll remember the fun and relaxing times you had with this game. While the game isn’t perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s one of those games where going along with the ride is the most important. Since, the ride of this game is one of the best point-and-click games I have ever played.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m curious to hear what you thought about this game and/or the content of this article. So, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I also hope to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

After what feels like forever, the team behind the anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki have finally dropped a new trailer and an official release date for the project.

The New Trailer Shows Off How Hard the Team Worked To Adapt Ito’s Unique Style

In the official post from Adult Swim, it’s officially been confirmed that Uzumaki will begin airing on September 28, 2024, with episodes landing on the streaming service Max the day after.

the new trailer shows a number of updated visuals in the latest trailer, and it’s obvious the studio behind the upcoming adaptation, Studio Drive, have put a lot of love, care, and passion into the adaptation.

Kai Cenat is at it again. After taking on and overcoming Elden Ring and its expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, the massively popular Twitch streamer Cenat is once again marathoning a game from FromSoftware’s legendary catalog, and he’s tackling the best one. That’s right, he’s playing Bloodborne, the best game to ever…

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As it turns out, Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is in fact brutally difficult. However, for the countless players that have gotten stumped by the DLC’s immense difficulty spike, there’s actually a pretty simple solution to your troubles: stop whatever it is you’re doing and go collect Scadutree fragments.

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It’s Elden Ring day, again. Shadow of the Erdtree, its long-awaited and massive expansion, is finally live and, surprise, it’s really, really hard. Even veteran players are getting their asses kicked. Whether it’s new bosses or random scrubs out in the field, everything seems to be hitting harder and Elden Ring sickos…

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Shadow of the Erdtree, a mega-sized expansion for Elden Ring that’s basically a whole other game, sounds equal parts magnificent and brutal. That’s by design, according to FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki. He recently said the new enemies and bosses in the DLC are meant to push players to the breaking point.

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Street Fighter 6 is done with its first wave of DLC fighters after Akuma. Now, it’s starting its second wave, and there are some major players about to join the roster. Capcom revealed the next four fighters coming to the game during their Summer Game Fest presentation, and M. Bison, the long-time antagonist of the…

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Source

Zatímco většina her od FromSoftware dostala dvě DLC, Elden Ring dostane pouze Shadow of the Erdtree, potvrdil prezident a herní ředitel FromSoftware Hidetaka Miyazaki čínskému webu Campfire Camp, čímž fakticky popřel předchozí zvěsti o druhém rozšíření plánovaném na rok 2025.

Jedná se o první a poslední DLC. Nemáme v plánu přidávat další obsah do hry Elden Ring. […] Společnost FromSoftware dělá věci tím stylem, že obecně nedovolí, aby se budoucnost IP snadno uzavřela, takže je lepší ponechat si nějaké možnosti. Co se však týče „Shadow of the Erdtree“, jedná se o jediné DLC.

Mijazaki také vysvětlil, proč tomu tak je:

Elden Ring klade důraz na objevování a dobrodružství velkého světa. Aby bylo možné takový zážitek poskytnout, je nevyhnutelně zapotřebí rozsáhlé a obrovské scény. Proto je lepší místo jejího rozdělení na několik částí udělat jednoduše jednu velkou. Pokud by se prodávaly odděleně, svoboda průzkumu a pocit dobrodružství by se zmenšily.

Vytvoření Shadow of the Erdtree trvalo společnosti FromSoftware více než dva roky, takže DLC musí být vskutku masité. Miyazaki v rozhovoru také uvedl, že některé záhady, které zůstaly v základní hře nevyřešeny, budou v rozšíření zodpovězeny, ačkoli nemůže zaručit, že fanoušci získají větší porozumění celkovému příběhu.

Hráči se však setkají s mnoha novými postavami. Některé nepřímo známé postavy, jako je například Mikaela, budou v příběhu jistě stále přítomny. Kromě toho se v DLC objeví také Torina a vztah mezi oběma postavami bude lépe ukázán.

Vydání Shadow of the Erdtree je naplánováno na PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One a Xbox Series S|X na 21. června, kdy se hráči budou moci ponořit do Země stínů a postavit se jejím deseti novým bossům a zároveň ovládat osm nových typů zbraní.

Článek Elden Ring dostane jako DLC pouze Shadow of the Erdtree se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.

For those who were hoping to get more Elden Ring content after the release of Shadow of the Erdtree this summer, I’ve got some bad news. The game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, has confirmed that the meaty expansion will be the game’s “first and last,” meaning the team will be moving on to whatever’s next after its…

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Late last night, the world discovered that it lost one of its giants. Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragon Ball series and renowned character designer on games such as Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest, passed away at 68 from a subdural hematoma on March 1. In the time since his passing was announced, people the…

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Think you know everything there is to know about Elden Ring? Think again, Tarnished – according to director Hidetaka Miyazaki, there's still "a small element" yet to be discovered.

Whilst the director wouldn't be drawn on what, exactly, that "small element" entailed or where players should be looking, Miyazaki said the team was "always surprised and delighted by how much the players do discover, and how much these communities work to uncover these secrets".

Talking to IGN, Miyazaki said that whether it was up to interpretation or "just further investigation", fans needed to look a little harder to find it.

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After years of rumors and questions over what it would contain, we finally got to see what the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC will entail. The three-minute-long trailer showed off a mix of gameplay and cutscene content, but of course, most of it spawned even more questions. Elden Ring’s lore is notoriously…

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Bloodborne sickos, rejoice! While discussing the upcoming Elden Ring expansion, Shadows of the Erdtree, with Eurogamer, FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki spoke about how much the team values the beloved title and outlined what he believes makes a remaster or remake valuable. Despite the tenor of the…

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FromSoftware showed us what’s been cooking in the Elden Ring oven, and the results have undoubtedly made Soulslike fans salivate. (I’m Soulslike fans.) The studio unveiled the first trailer for its hotly anticipated DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, and now that we know it arrives on June 21, it’s a good time to round up…

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Donald Trump has long praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, flattering the tyrant as far back as in 2007 when he told CNN's Larry King, "Look at Putin … he's doing a great job." But even more astounding, the thin-skinned Trump continues to make nice with the Russian leader even after Putin recently said he prefers "predictable" Joe Biden as U.S. — Read the rest

The post Nancy Pelosi guesses out loud why Donald Trump keeps licking Putin's boots (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.