feltmonkey

Two in one day, it's been a while since that happened.

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

This is such an oddity. A crossover between two series that were huge at the time but which haven't seen new entries in years now, and the only Wright game still stuck on the 3DS, in itself now a dead platform.

It's kind of great. It's a Phoenix Wright game but with the investigation sections replaced by Layton-style wandering and puzzling; the crossover works perfectly. Both characters and their respective sidekicks get their chance to shine, and there are some truly great moments that I won't spoil here. It's got a bizarre fantasy-style setting that's unique to both series, and a bravura ending that I understand has been quite divisive but which I personally thought was very clever and tied everything together surprisingly well. And it's got amazing production values for the 3DS, with loads of voice acting and some really high-quality anime cutscenes. The pacing is a bit wonky (it goes a bit visual-novelly in the middle section, with little in the way of courtroom drama or puzzling) but it pulls it all together in the end.

Will it ever get a rerelease? Who knows. If you've got the means to play it, though, and you like either of these two series, there's a lot to enjoy here.

This is a brilliant little game, and it's a shame it hasn't escaped from the 3DS at all yet. The Phoenix Wright games are gradually being released on PC (after I panic-bought the 3DS titles in the final days of the e-shop) so perhaps it will turn up on Steam. It's extremely expensive to get hold of a PAL copy now.

The game has got some incredible Phoenix Wright character names. The names in PW are always a highlight, such as the character called Wendy Oldbag who is a windy old bag. The guy who crashes his car in the opening cutscene turning out to be called Carmine Accidenti really takes the cake, though.

If you weren't enjoying it I wouldn't buy it, to be honest. It's not the money - it's a further 80 hours of the thing you weren't getting along with. As you say, time is the most precious thing.

There's too much stuff for game of the year this year for anyone to play all the contenders. I think we'll look back on 2025 as one of the all-time greatest years for gaming. It's been ridiculous.

The save system is broken, to be honest. You can just save and exit. 😂

Have you got to a point when you're in the middle of a town dressed in just your pants, with no idea where to go or what to do?

It's not that sort of game. It's an engine for getting you into crazy scrapes and living with the consequences. It's more enjoyable if you try to react to situations like a normal human being rather than playing it like a videogame. If you try to min-max or look for optimal conversation options, it will fight you every step of the way. Having said that, I don't actually recognise the part you're talking about. Walking back and forth to spawn guards? Are you definitely playing the right game? 😜

I haven’t played Andromeda but it seems to be the rule that every Mass Effect game has to have Generic Man as a key companion. ME3’s version was particularly forgettable.

They're all variations on Carth from KOTOR. They're worse if you play as a female Shepard, though. That gives you a much greater appreciation of poor, dull Jacob (the guy with the Bad Dad who just hangs about sulking in the room with all the guns in.) At least he doesn't make you want to blast him out an airlock. Vega is an absolute arsehole to Jane Shepard, insisting on giving her a weird overly-familiar and vaguely sexual nickname, and then spending the rest of the game making comments that border on sexual harrasment. It's a fault with the game that it didn't give you the option of completely shutting that meathead down and threatening him with a court-martial. Kaiden comes across as some kind of incel stalker. I was bemused when he sat my Shepard down in a cafe in the third game for a long monologue about our "relationship" and how he had worked through his feelings and accepted this and that. He'd clearly overthought the whole situation to a ridiculous degree and invented a tangled web of feelings between us. Buddy, you are just some guy who looks like Mikel Arteta and lives on my ship. All I remember about you is that you suffer from migranes.

I didn't play the first game, although naturally for some reason I own it. Possibly as a giveaway through the Epic Games Store. KCD2 does a really nice job of recapping some of the salient points from the story and letting you know the main character Henry's motivation. I don't want to spoil it, but it's quite seamless.