Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth 2

Miles Edgeworth can apparently hold his own, now that Phoenix Wright has stepped out of the spotlight. Gyakuten Kenji 2 once again stars the pompous prosecutor as he stumbles upon what we believe to be another murder case. At the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, Capcom set aside an entire area dedicated to Edgey, where we were able to sit down and try to decipher what was going on through still images, motions, and facial expressions. Because it's an adventure game that is text-heavy and story-driven, not being able to read Japanese made it a bit difficult to figure out what was going on. However, the sequel looks to follow the same formula, so we were still able to get far enough to see some of the new gameplay features.

Like in the previous game, you can control Miles and move around in a third-person view when examining a crime scene. It'll switch to a first-person view when you stumble across something of significance and have to examine more closely. All we know about the first case is that someone important gets shot after arriving on a plane. The snooty Miles and the lovable and bumbling detective sidekick, Gumshoe, arrive on the scene to try to piece together the truth. Like with any point-and-click adventure, you click around to find information and evidence, which gets tucked away in your inventory. The logic function returns, where you must link the pertinent information together in order to proceed with the investigation.

In our first case, we took a closer look at an area where a large flag and a bright white statue with a red gem on it had been knocked over. Here we were asked to point out a contradiction in the scene, and any mistake will take a notch off the penalty bar. Up until now, everything felt familiar, and through some careful observations, we were able to get by. The tricky part came when we approached this feisty girl with a backpack, and suddenly the background changed and two chess pieces appeared onscreen for each character.

From what we could tell, this seemed to be some form of interrogation, and depending on how you answer, you use one of your chess pieces to destroy your opponents. A bar at the bottom screen indicates a clicking timer, so not only did we have to make the right choice, but we had to make it quickly. Through much trial and error, we were able to figure out what to say and then use our pawn and horse pieces wisely to take out the girl's rook. Your pieces also change as you go through the dialogue tree, and we can only guess what was actually taking place. One wrong answer, and you'll get dinged, and this time your penalty bar is also ticking down. However, it's not game over if you run out; you'll just have to go through the entire process again.

We had to stop once we got to where we had to point out contradictions in the girl's testimony. But the game is set up just like the last one, where you must press for more information and find the contradiction in her statements using evidence. It's good to see that the ruffle-wearing lawyer is back, but it looks like we're going to have to wait awhile to see what he has to say in English. There is currently no release date set for Japan.