Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Updated Hands-On

Not only does the famed prosecutor Miles Edgeworth star in Capcom's upcoming lawyer game, but he also plays every role possible, from defense attorney to the accused, and we haven't even made it into a courtroom yet. We had an opportunity to play a preview build of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and were able to use our logic and powers of deduction to uncover the truth. If you haven't had a chance yet, you can play through the flash demo of the first case right here. Some changes have been made since the demo was released, but the core mechanics are still there, so you'll get a good idea of how this game will unfold.

The second case jumps back in time a bit and takes place a couple of days before the opening case in Edgeworth's office. For our impressions of how the first case unfolded, you can read our preview here. What makes Ace Attorney Investigations stand out is that instead of wandering through the same locations over and over again like you did in previous games, you have the ability to explore new areas and interact with objects from a third person perspective. In the second case, we learn that Edgeworth has been out of the country for a while and is making his way back home, flying in a luxurious first-class cabin. After the plane hits a patch of bad turbulence, Edgeworth blacks out, and when he comes to, he stumbles upon a dead body in the elevator of the plane. Somehow, our ruffled-shirt prosecutor ends up being accused of the crime and has to prove his innocence by collecting evidence, using logic, and pointing out contradictions in other people's testimonies.

If you're familiar with the previous games in the series, most of the gameplay is relatively the same. Even though you're not in a traditional courtroom, you'll find that you need to defend yourself or someone else from accusations by pointing out the contradictions in other people's testimony with evidence in your inventory. Now that you have a bit more freedom to explore your surroundings, the investigation part of the game has you walking around the crime scene and examining points of interest. Questions are collected and can be linked together using the logic button, and if there's a clear line of logic between two (or more) thoughts, then Miles will come up with an answer to bring you closer to the truth. There's a penalty for randomly stringing thoughts together, so you need to keep that thinking cap on if you want to solve the case. Another new mechanic is that when there's a blatant contradiction in the crime scene, the deduce button appears on the touch screen where you can present evidence and highlight the area to prove your point.

The pacing has been improved as well. It feels like you're always doing something, whether it's examining the crime scene or pointing out contradictions. It doesn't feel like you're spending too much time walking around and interrogating people or reading through pages of text for long periods of time. However, now there are more ways to get penalized, and a green bar appears on screen to indicate how many more mistakes you can afford to make before the game is over. The bar will refill when you move to the next scene, so you are given quite a few chances to mess up.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth looks great so far. It's refreshing to look around and explore new environments, like different areas of the plane or even outside of Edgeworth's office instead of running back and forth between the detention center and the courtroom in the previous games. Even old redesigned environments are fun to walk around in because you're approaching them from a new perspective instead of static screens. We'll be sure to update you with more information as it becomes available, but in the meantime, be sure to check out our demo and look for our review when the game is released on February 16.