[First Impressions] Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth demo

There's something about Capcom, and that's they have the tendency to drive a successful series to the ground by releasing sequel upon sequel, look no further than Street Fighter during the late 90's and Resident Evil during the 00's.

The critically acclaimed Ace Attorney series hasn't quite reached that point yet, but after four installments over the same amount of years in the Western world, fans and critics alike voiced their concern after Apollo Justice; the series was starting to feel a little stale and it wasn't the cast or story's fault, it was the gameplay mechanics.

To that end, the latest installment in the series, called Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, sports familiar faces for its main players but at the same time moves away from the first person perspective court room drama of its predecessors. Instead, AAI: ME is a third person traditional point and click adventure with no court room action, if you've played an Ace Attorney game before this one is made up essentially only of the "Investigation" parts of previous games.

As you may have already guessed, AAI:ME stars Miles Edgeworth, the antagonist from the first Ace Attorney game and all-around badass prosecutor. Gameplay will consist of point and click traditions: investigation of your surroundings and conversations with NPC's. A new gameplay mechanic will be introduced in the form of "Logic" which allows you to combine two leads in your case as if they were inventory items, not unlike the system found in Discworld Noir and the first two Blackwell games.

If the demo of the game that's currently available at Gamespot is any indication, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth will be a quality product, much like its predecessors. The new 2D sprites are sharp and inoffensively cute, with the new and redrawn character close-ups really standing out, the gameplay feels fresh, controls are smooth and the writing (arguably the most important part of an adventure game) is as good as ever.

Great jokes, mind-bending puzzles and predicaments that seem to be impossible to solve, not to mention hilarious references to previous games, it's all there.

Things are looking up for this February 2010 release, and the DS seems set to add another quality adventure game in its collection.

TL;DR version:

As much as I love the writing in this games, sometimes it gets a bit silly. Figuring out that prosecutors' offices are locked with keys doesn't fall under the "Logic" category, it falls under "No shit, Sherlock".