Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
Score: 65% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Capcom Developer: High Voltage Software Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Strategy
Graphics & Sound: Have you ever wanted to be a lawyer? Is your greatest goal in life to represent or prosecute clients in front of a judge and jury? Well then, the Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law game was created with you in mind. For those of you who don't watch Adult Swim and have no clue who Harvey Birdman is, let me tell you just a little bit. Harvey was a superhero in the 1960's. Now, though, he is a lawyer who works with quite a few other superheroes at a law firm called Sebben & Sebben. His co-workers, friends, clients, etc. are mostly also characters (or based on characters) from the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The Harvey Birdman game is essentially just more episodes of the Harvey Birdman show. Graphically, you won't be able to tell the difference between the game and the show. You honestly feel as if you're just watching a few new episodes. The characters and the set are all exactly like they were in the show. There's really not anything in the way of background music, but then you wouldn't expect there to be when you're watching a cartoon. All of the characters sound like they're voiced by the same people (I'm pretty sure that all of them are). You also get amusing sound effects for almost all of the evidence that you gather up. Some of it is quite amusing. The dialogue is exactly as irreverent (and sometimes disturbing) as you would expect it to be, just like the show.
Gameplay: Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law consists of five trials for you to defend or prosecute (or both defend and prosecute in one case). Each case is divided into 2 main parts, witness interviews/evidence gathering and trial. So obviously, the first part of any case is going to be the crime. If there's no crime, there's no case. At the start of each case, you'll get to watch a scene that gives you some clue as to who or what is going on. After the scene, which you have the option of replaying if you would like, you get to start making your case. You'll usually start your search in a location related to the crime. If there's no one there, you'll examine the room. Make sure to examine every location in the room at least twice, because sometimes you turn up bonus crests, which are really important to working your way through the trial. Sometimes the thing you examine is evidence. If it is, you will automatically pick it up and add it to your inventory. You'll also be able to see more details about it and possibly hear audio related to it. Not all of this evidence is actually useful in court, though. Some of it is completely extraneous. Anyway, after you've examined certain things, other locations will open up for you to visit. Some of these have people you can talk to. If they are related to the case, you'll get a profile for them added to your evidence area. These profiles can be presented as evidence during the trial. After you've examined everything you can and questioned everyone important, the game will automatically take you to the trial portion. It will not let you go there before you have enough evidence to win your case. Now that you're at the trial, you'll need to use all the evidence that you gathered. You'll listen to witness testimony, and then cross examine them. Their testimony is going to be divided into statements. Make sure to press each statement multiple times, even if the judge threatens you to move on. You never know when they'll change their story. You'll also need to present the evidence that you think contradicts the statements. Sometimes you'll be prompted to present evidence to prove or refute specific statements, but for the most part, you'll have to guess which evidence goes with which statement. Once you've won the case, the game will unlock the next case for you to play. You can go back and replay any of the previous ones if you want, but any bonus crests you collect won't carry over to the next case, so there's no reason to unless you just want to see them again.
Difficulty: You know those games where some parts are so easy that you get bored, yet other parts are so frustrating that you want to throw the controller across the room? Well Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law was like that for me. Even though there is a lack of in-game instructions on how to play, for the most part, figuring that out is very easy. Collecting evidence and questioning witnesses is probably the easiest thing I've done in any game. You're essentially just watching an episode of Harvey Birdman and pressing (X) a lot. The spots that you can examine are the only place that the magnifying glass hovers over, so it's not like it is difficult to find the evidence. The game pretty much tells you who you should go see next. Since you can't move to the trial without all the relevant evidence, you can't lose here. I consider the trials to be one of the most frustrating things I've ever worked through. After you've pressed the witnesses on every statement, you'll notice that the game is still waiting to move to the next scene. You have to start presenting evidence to each individual statement until you find the "right" piece to move on. Sometimes, this isn't too hard to do. Others though, I had to just use a brute force algorithm and attempt to present each piece of evidence on each statement. This might be ok, if there wasn't a limit to the times you can screw up. See you get these crests at the beginning of each trial, five of them if you didn't find any bonus ones in your investigation. Each time you present the wrong evidence, you lose one. That means you've only got five screw-ups for the entire trial. If you're having to go through each piece of evidence, which was somewhere between 6 and 15 pieces of evidence, depending on the case, and match them against anywhere from one to six statements, well I'm not going to do the math, but believe me, it took hours. If there had been any logic to the evidence, I wouldn't complain. But for example, would you ever think to present the squirrel's boxers, that he already admitted were his, that were found at the crime scene to prove that he was not there?
Game Mechanics: There really isn't much to the controls in Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law. It is a very simple game to play. When you are gathering evidence, you use the analog stick to move around the scene. You use the (X) button to select the evidence to examine. The (O) button will replay a scene. To go through your evidence, press the (Square) button. Once in there, use (X) button to see the details of any piece of evidence. The (L1) and (R1) buttons cycle between evidence and profiles. Oh, and don't bother trying to get the controls from the manual, because they're not completely correct in there. When you are in trial, the analog stick scrolls through the witness testimony statements. It also moves you between Press and Present. To press a witness, hit the (X) button on the Press option. To present evidence, hit (X) on Present. It will bring up your evidence list. Select the evidence you want to present and select Present. The Start button will pause your game. You can skip cut scenes from the Pause screen or by hitting the (Triangle) button. Skipping cut scenes is very handy when you're having to brute force your way through and you've seen the same scene 10 times already. If you're a huge fan of Harvey Birdman and are just dying for new episodes of the show, then you might enjoy this game. When you do get frustrated with it and you just want to get through, you can always find a walkthrough online and just follow the steps. If you're not addicted to Harvey Birdman or dying to be a lawyer, I really don't recommend this game. Go rent it if you're on the fence. You'll find out quickly whether or not you like it.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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