{"id":15846,"date":"2014-08-13T13:48:07","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T03:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15846"},"modified":"2014-08-16T10:24:59","modified_gmt":"2014-08-16T00:24:59","slug":"professor-layton-vs-phoenix-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15846","title":{"rendered":"Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"phoenixwrightxprofessorlayt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Platform:\u00a0 <\/strong>Nintendo 3DS
\n<\/em>Developer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Level-5
\n<\/em>Publisher:\u00a0 <\/strong>Capcom<\/p>\n

Warning:\u00a0 This review contains spoilers<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/span>lthough cross over projects, no matter what the medium, are almost always terrible, I can’t help but get excited about them when they first get announced.\u00a0 Do you remember The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones<\/em>?\u00a0 Cartoon Allstars To The Rescue<\/em><\/a><\/strong>?\u00a0 I don’t even watch The Simpsons<\/em> or Family Guy<\/em> any more but I will watch their upcoming cross over episode out of morbid curiousity.\u00a0 I’m a sucker for the novelty I guess.<\/p>\n

And so it was when the video game Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright<\/em> was announced for the Nintendo 3DS.\u00a0 Just look at this post<\/strong><\/a> from four years and you can see how excited I was (and how I naively thought I would be playing it in 2011).\u00a0 When it comes to popular and entertaining characters in video games, it doesn’t get much better than the Ace Attorney and the Professor, both veterans of game franchises that have sold in the millions and are popular around the globe.\u00a0 The Professor is a cool, calm and collected Englishman who prides himself on his grey cells and his gentlemanly behavior.\u00a0 Phoenix Wright is an earnest, funny and determined defence attorney, who often appears to be in over his head but always finds a way to save the day thanks to the support of his friends and his determination to help the down trodden.\u00a0 To me, this seemed like a pretty potent pairing.\u00a0 Layton could play a pretty good straight man to Phoenix who tends to be more melodramatic and comical.\u00a0 They seemed to compliment one another pretty well and both come from game franchises that are spoiled for choice when it comes to entertaining and colourful secondary characters.<\/p>\n

The story begins in England as a young woman Espella Cantabella flees what appear to be supernatural demons who are attempting to abduct her.\u00a0 She crosses paths with Professor Layton and his faithful assistant Luke who, upon learning she is in danger, swear to protect her and keep her safe.\u00a0 This lasts all of 30 seconds before ‘witches’ appear and snatch Espella.\u00a0 Layton and Luke find a clue in the form of a mysterious spell book which suddenly bursts open with a bright light and transports them to a strange faraway land named Labyrinthia.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Phoenix and his ever-present companion Maya Fey arrive in London on a business trip.\u00a0 When they arrive, they too come across this spell book and are unceremoniously dumped into Labyrinthia.\u00a0 Both are stricken with amnesia and begin new lives as bakers.\u00a0 This brief period of the game where Phoenix becomes a passionate advocate of fine artisan loaves was one of the funniest parts of the game for me.<\/p>\n

\"acebaker\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"toogood\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright<\/em> draws its narrative from two key sources.\u00a0 One of them is the Salem Witch Trials, the other I shall reveal later.\u00a0 Labyrinthia is a strange and supersticious town which is surrounded by high walls isolating it from the rest of the world.\u00a0 Everyone is dressed in medieval garb and believes that their lives are pre-ordained by the power of The Storyteller, a power masked leader who writes prophecies that always come to pass.\u00a0 His most ominous proclamation is that the village is cursed with the presence of witches and they must continue to put them on trial and immolate them until they capture and execute The Great Witch Bezella.\u00a0 Only with her death will the curse be lifted.<\/p>\n

It’s an unexpectedly dark tale that seems slightly at odds with the cheery art style and chipper dialogue exchanged between the four main characters.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the scope of the witch trial narrative ends up being rather limiting and repetitive.\u00a0 Literally every court case in this game is a witch trial.\u00a0 This not only becomes rather tedious when you roll around to your fourth or fifth trial but I found it also diminished my sense of engagement when so many of the key plot twists and developments in the case are predicated on how magic spells work and what powers the witches supposedly have.\u00a0 It feels more like you’re at the whim of the game writers and what they decide to come up with as opposed to any personal sense of accomplishment in sorting through evidence and finding logic fallacies in the testimonies of the witnesses.<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, the game mechanics work reasonably well in meshing the puzzle mechanics of Professor Layton<\/em> games and the court case game play of Ace Attorney<\/em> games.\u00a0 In fact, there is virtually no difference in the Layton components of the game, which even includes the same coin collecting and 3-pronged hint system to help out anyone who gets stuck.\u00a0 The Phoenix Wright segments however are given an overhaul from the normal games.\u00a0 Each case now has multiple witnesses on the stand sharing the same testimony which introduces a new ‘reaction’ mechanic where you watch out for the body language of each witness in the event they react to a lie being told.\u00a0 The court cases also have the hint system which I found to be a welcome addition to the game.\u00a0 In the odd instance where I’d get stuck, it was much quicker to simply use a hint coin to get me back on track as opposed to fishing out a walk through online.<\/p>\n

Considering my high hopes for this game, Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright<\/em> is without a doubt a disappointing final product.\u00a0 The game is clearly made with good intentions by Level-5 who have faithfully captured the game mechanics of the two popular franchises and have done an excellent job with the production values of the game which include voice acting and high quality animated cut scenes.\u00a0 Where the game falls down is in its dreary overarching narrative.\u00a0 The witch trial story ends up becoming incredibly convoluted, is too dark for this type of project and ends with a final twist that is directly inspired by M Night Shyamalan’s risible mystery film The Village<\/em>.\u00a0 Overall, the game feels like it is less<\/em> than the sum of its parts.\u00a0 I like Layton.\u00a0 I love Phoenix.\u00a0 Yet I had less fun playing this game than any of the individual Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton games.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>It has fleeting moments of fun and inventiveness but there’s no shaking the fact that the overall product is a bit of a stinker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worlds of Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton collide when both are sent back in time to a mysterious Medieval village cursed by witches<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[558,669,670],"class_list":["post-15846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-nintendo-3ds","tag-phoenix-wright","tag-professor-layton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15846"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16119,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15846\/revisions\/16119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}