Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Ace Attorney

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

We have no objections to Ace Attorney, Capcom's brilliant series about lawyers attacking each other with dangerous weapons. To celebrate this week's release of the Apollo Justice collection (aka: Ace Attorney 4-6), the gang explains why this adventure game series is so appealing, from the zany courtroom antics to the truly absurd animations.One More Thing:Kirk: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)Maddy: Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie (2018)Jason: PalworldLINKS:Bloomberg article about Palworld: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-22/what-is-palworld-pokemon-like-game-with-guns-goes-viral-irks-nintendo-fans?srnd=undefinedSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Your Honor, I'm not here to argue that any old podcast should be allowed to talk about video games. I'm here to argue that this podcast should be allowed to talk about video games. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we're talking about our beloved Ace Attorney series, which has a new trilogy of games re-releasing on modern platforms this week. There's a lot to talk about, and the judge is going to shut us down any minute, so let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddiemire.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome, welcome. Welcome, welcome. Welcome one and all to another episode of Triple Click. We made it back every week. We somehow get here again. Despite the odds. Coming to record for all of you against the odds, despite any further weather complications or recovery complications that may be happening in Portland. Portland is fine. Everything's fine. Everything's great. And the reason it's great is because Triple Click is listeners supported. Or at least that's the reason Triple Click is great. great. And we appreciate all of your support. Of course, you can become a member and support our show at maximum fund.org slash join. There's a link for that in the show notes. And if you join, you get bonus episodes every month that we put out. And our next one is going to be out next week. It's going to be all of our ones more thing, all of our picks for our favorite non-game stuff from last year. So it'll be a lot of discussion of that sort of stuff. And I think just kind of a loose discussion of whatever we want to talk about. It's going to be great. So that's maximum fun.org. Slash join. Become a member, support our show. We love all of our members.

Thank you all so much. All right, Jason Schreier, what are we talking about this week? Today we are talking about Ace Attorney, okay, Phoenix, Wright, the wonderful series about being a lawyer. So this week marks the release of the Apollo Justice Collection, which is a trilogy of games in the Ace Attorney series. and to zoom out for a second. There are six main games in the Ace Attorney series.

The first three were released as a compilation, a remastered compilation for, like, Switch and PC and all the consoles in 2019. And this is the second half of that compilation, the next three games that are now coming to all of those same modern consoles. So now you can get all six main Ace Attorney games on your Switch. They're pretty cool. Yeah, you should.

They're pretty cool. Pretty good. Pretty good. All right. All right. Now for one more thing. Good at. Yeah, they're pretty good today.

We're going to talk about what makes the series work, why people love it so much, the kind of the ins and out of it. I've been playing a ton of this new compilation and I found that Apollo Justice is really good and that there's a notable change from Apollo Justice to the next two games, which are on 3DS, which we can get into a little bit. But first, let's all just kind of give a little bit about our background on this series, so everyone can know kind of where we stand. I've played every single one and almost all of the spinoff.

So I have the kind of definitely a breadth of knowledge on this stuff, at least from what I remember. Kirk, how many of these games have you played? I have played every single one of them. I think the only one that I maybe haven't finished is. Spirit of Justice, which is the 2016 one. I think that was the second of the 3DS games. And I just have this

sneaking suspicion. Is that the one where there's a whale that talks, that testifies? No, the whale is DLC for one of the movies. Oh, okay. I think I maybe didn't play that. So there's a couple things I haven't played, but I've played everything over the years. I first

played the very first Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney on my cousins wife's DS. This was probably in like 2000, I mean I guess in the mid-2000s. When did that come out? That came out in 2005? Yeah, on the DS.

It came out for the Game Boy in Japan only and then the DS kind of remaster came here. So it was on her DS and it must have been like yeah, 2006 or something then. Wow. And I remember I had no idea what it was and I didn't have a DS. I was like borrowing I don't even remember how I came to be borrowing someone's

DS and I started playing it and I remember that very first case, there's a shocking murder, which is really surprising. And I was, like, so caught up in it and wanted to finish it. And then I had to give the DS back at the end of our visit. And at the time, I just, I didn't know that Phoenix Wright was a phenomenon anywhere, like in Japan or at all, like, that it was a big deal. I didn't know what it was. And then it was only many years later that I found, I think, all three of them for DS and played through them all and was like, oh, yeah, I remember this. I remember playing this. And I've loved them ever since. Yeah, they're fun to kind of mainline through. Before Maddie, I want to get to you in a second, but I actually, let me just kind of set the scene for people who might not actually know much about these games. So they're essentially visual novels in that they are mostly reading, kind of combined with point-and-click adventures. And so the way they work is each game is split up into a series of cases, usually five or six of them, four or five or six of them, and each of them surrounds a murder. And you, as Phoenix Wright or a couple of other attorneys who pop in later,

your job is to defend someone who is accused of those murders and is almost always innocent of those murders. And you have to solve the murder while you're already on trial, which is a lot. You're basically a detective as well. So the game is split up into two kind of sections. One is the investigation section where you go around and talk to witnesses and look for clues in the crime scenes. That's a point and click adventure part.

And then the other part is the courtroom sections where you're unraveling the mystery on trial by interrogating witnesses. is pointing out when they're lying and using evidence to kind of show the contradictions in their cases. And what's really kind of makes this series so appealing to people is that it's just way off the wall with its humor. And it's kind of poking fun at the way that the justice system works in Japan and the way that just the amount of kind of offbeat zany humor in this series is just out of control. The puns are very funny too. Anyway, Maddie, what's your kind of level of expertise with the Ace Attorney series? So I always knew about Ace Attorney and just kept meaning to play it and never got to it until 2019.

So if people go back and they listen to Split Screen in that era, I think this was like Maddie had just joined the show era and all I was doing was playing Ace Attorney. So pretty much every week, I was just talking about how great all these early Ace Attorney game for. It was your Dark Souls before Dark Souls was, that to say. I just played all of Ace Attorney. I also remember that was when I was early on in my relationship with Dina and I was playing a lot of Ace Attorney and she was watching it and being like, oh, wow, there's like a lot of text-based games. This was before Dina became the hardcore gamer she is today.

And there's a lot of different kinds of games. And I feel like Ace Attorney isn't what the typical person might think of as being a kind of game that might exist and might be 20 years old and pretty well established because it's a mystery. solving game. There's no combat. There's no Twitch reflexes required in it. It's just looking at the clues that you have and

trying to figure out when to present them, which is not always intuitive, but we can get into why and how it works and what the pitfalls are. You know, it is that. It is a mystery solving game and yet it's presented with the aesthetics of a fighting game.

And that's part of what makes it so much fun. Especially the courtroom scenes. you are trading blows with the prosecutor. There will often be sound effects that sound like punches and hadukins. I mean, they're almost doing combo moves at one another. And, of course, this is a Capcom game, so it's almost got some street fighter crossover DNA. The music, of course, we should mention the music is an incredible part of these games. Kirk here, just with some excerpts from the original Phoenix Wright soundtrack composed by Masakazu

Sigimori and Akemi Kimura, just incredible music throughout this entire series. and a huge part of the series identity to me and I think to a lot of other people. So shout out to those composers. Okay, back to the show. Bing! The way that these court battles play out, and they really feel like battles between a defense attorney and a prosecutor, it is like each fact, each revelation, each turnabout in the game's parlance,

is like an uppercut or a spinning kick, and they're delivered in this very high-octane frenetic way, even though usually they aren't hitting one another. I guess some of the prosecutors can get kind of violent. Yeah, often they are. The prosecutors, each of the prosecutors in each game is a character in his own or her own right, and they all have weapons too. Francisco and her whip, of course, a very memorable prosecutor.

Yeah, which is a preposterous thing. There's kind of a fine line between the prosecutors attacking it with their weapons and the more serious murders that are conducted with weapons. But that's part of the charm. Maddie, you didn't say which games you played. Right, that's true. Well, they all have similar names. So I guess the first three that were on Switch

were just Ace Attorney, Justice for All, and Trials and Tribulations. Yeah, yeah. I never did finish the one that is set in an alternate time period that we did talk about on triple click a while back. In the past. It's not an alternate.

It's just a past, yeah. Yeah, I don't know how to describe it. Yeah, it's a distant relative of Phoenix, right? Is that how they justify it? Yeah, like an ancestor. Of course. And even though he's kind of functionally exactly like Phoenix, right? He just exists in the past. Sure. And then this is my first time

playing these new ones now that they're on the switch and I'm having a great time and laughing out loud at a lot of it and just being like, I love puns. I simply love stupid puns. And I'm loving it. Like it just has a really specific kind of wordplay that props to the people who translate these games because obviously I'm playing them in English. I don't know how the puns work in the original Japanese, I can only assume they're just as clever and that therefore the localization team has to try to come up with puns and wordplay that work just as well in English for, usually it's characters from around the globe as well, like in the first mystery and what's the name of the first game I would be playing, Jason? Is it the greatest? What's, what am I playing

just Ace Attorney? Just Ace Attorney. Yeah, but I'm playing as Apollo Justice now, the new one. You're talking about Apollo Justice, colon, ace attorney. Just call him four. Like, it's easier to just be like, Ace 31. East Attorney, four. Yeah, that's the best way to put it. Yeah, there's a Russian character, and she keeps referring, she keeps speaking in Russian. And I can only assume that she does that in Japanese as well, and they just integrate in Russian and her Russian accent, but written in Japanese.

And I find it very charming to think about that. And all the games are that way with characters from around the world. being prosecuted. Yeah, the localization is especially funny because, yes, it's very well done in a lot of ways and the puns and the writing. It's all quite well done. But there's also this kind of funny setting where they say they're in California, but there's so many clearly Japanese aspects of it. And this was always a meme about the series that it's like, it's set in, people call it Japanifornia. Because it's like, there was this comic that was always floating around where it's like Maya Faye, who's

Phoenix face, uh, uh, right hand woman and, um, they're talking about like eating hamburgers and they're clearly eating ramen noodles and it's like, eat your hamburger. It's like the classic anime overdub thing where like the character's reading dublings and the voice ever says it's donuts. It's yeah, yeah, yeah,

exactly. Exactly. It's so silly. Um, yeah, and it's really, uh, to your point, Kirk, the kind of the back and forth is just such a fun entertaining, dramatic, kind of, it's also, these courtroom battles are such a kind of heightened like soap opera-e, like kind of, you can imagine this all playing out on, I don't know, anime judge Judy or something like that because you just have these ridiculous scenes. And every single witness is just lying under oath about everything. And your job is to just kind of figure out, yeah, it's allowed within this world. I mean, there are a lot of things that just everybody gets

away with in the which I think is part of the point. But like, okay, now, that's enough. Stop lying and tell the truth now. Yeah, right. Exactly. It's just like, yeah. It's interesting.

It's kind of, it's very much, and I think Shu Takumi, who's the original series creator, I think he intended this as kind of a send-up of the Japanese justice system because it's all so heightened and it feels like such a parody in so many ways. And I think it's pretty clever in some of the things. that they do, some of the themes they play around with, the Apollo Justice game, the fourth game, and the first game in this new trilogy that just came out, which, by the way, I recommend full-throatedly, that game introduces this concept of a jurist system and what that might

look like, and that has some fun ideas. By the way, for people wondering, if you've never played these games, the first three games and the next three games are actually kind of, I won't say 100% self-contained, but like maybe 95% self-contained as trilogies in their own rights. So you could really, if you haven't played the first three games, I mean, you should, but if you don't want to, if you just want to play the new step, you can jump into Apollo Justice without missing too much context. Like, you'll have enough context to keep going. Because the way that the games work is that the first three games, all-star Phoenix Wright.

And then the creators after those three games, especially Shukumi, were like, We want to move on from Phoenix. Let's try to tell a new story. And so the fourth game largely stars Apollo Justice, who's this new character brought in just for this game. And then Apollo sticks around, and then they introduce a new attorney named Athena Sykes in Game 5. Dual destiny is, yeah.

Throughout Game 5 and Game 6, it's kind of the three of them alternating. And so their stories are kind of told throughout these three games in a way that is a lot more contained to those three. And then the trilogy, the first trilogy, is actually kind of self-contained as a trilogy and stories. It kind of leads in from one to two to three. And it's a lot of like stuff on Miles Edgeworth, who's this kind of famous prosecutor and stuff like that. So in other words, this is actually a pretty good place to jump in even if you haven't played the first three games. Yeah, it is, though.

I'm not sure I wouldn't just recommend people start at the beginning because there isn't like some significant, you know, visual or gameplay upgrade that happens in the new trilogy. they all play pretty similarly. There is a significant visual. It's interesting. So the first four games were on, well, the first three games, I believe, were on GBA and then ported to DS, and the fourth game was just on DS. But then the fifth and six game were on 3DS, and they actually add massive visual upgrades. You know, I'm not sure I agree that it's always an upgrade, though.

I think that, so Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice both have 3D character models, and they have a lot more going on, but I really like how the first three games look. I think they look great. They're just 2D characters. When I say upgrades, I guess I should say changes. I'm not necessarily, I'm not implying any sort of improvement. But 3D is better than 2D because it's a higher number. We all know that.

That is true. Because it's 2003 and we all are console warriors. Yeah, I think, so I think that given that it's kind of just a change and a bit of a neutral one, and in some ways I think I actually prefer the look of the original games, I would kind of just say, just start with the first Phoenix Wright game. It starts with the bang and it introduces you to the world and the rhythms. It's great. It's just as funny. Rewinding to something you were talking about earlier, Jason, with the sort of the weird cultural blurriness in this game where you're in California, but you're also not.

I think playing this game as an American is particularly fun, or at least it was for me when I was starting out, because I didn't understand that this was a sort of perverse, cartoonish version of the Japanese justice system. And it bears very little resemblance to the American justice system. Or really, I should say, though as the son of a lawyer who does understand some things about the criminal justice system. system, most Americans understand our criminal justice system by watching law and order. You know, we watch TV. And so we have like this TV justice system that we understand where things work a certain way. Witnesses are treated a certain way. You have to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. Jurors have to consider things. Like there's just this whole rhythm that we understand from all the TV shows that we've watched. And playing this game throws that all out the

window. Like nothing goes in the order that it's supposed to go and nothing makes sense. And because they set up every story and every conflict basically so that Phoenix, the defense attorney, is totally wrong footed from the start. He walks into a lot of times you walk into court with like no idea what's going on. There's all this like the prosecutor's

like, ha ha, I have a ton of evidence that's just going to destroy you and you're like... And you're like, I don't, I've never seen it. I don't know what it is. I think about my cousin Vinny when he's like the prosecutor says that he has all this evidence and then Marissa Tameh is like, you know you can just make make him show you that because of discovery. Like all of these things that we learn about just don't apply in the world of Phoenix, right? So it's very

disorienting and you kind of, it puts you in Phoenix's shoes or whoever the defense attorney is, who's always on the defensive and always recovering and improvising and kind of juggling their way toward eventually winning at the last minute by figuring something out and pulling it out in court. It's also very expedited. Like a murder will happen and by 9 a.m. the next morning, yeah. I be in trial defending. I guess why no one has any of the evidence properly sorted And sometimes even the prosecutor themselves would be like, oh, I just remembered. I actually have a really detailed photograph that depicts something completely different or like the other side of this key piece of evidence. Yeah, I forgot to mention.

It's a very improvisational justice system in general. How did that not come up until four acts into this case? Like, what is happening? I should say also, the way we've described it, it sounds ridiculously silly and zany. But there's also kind of like some, an emotional core to a lot of it. Definitely. does explore some interesting themes. The way it's structured is that each game,

even though it has kind of a few standalone cases, it winds up having this kind of big story thread that all ties together. And oftentimes it'll be like a bunch of kind of things that are hinting towards like one final case that is a culmination of everything. A lot of the more modern games, it'll be like an opening case where like something doesn't quite make sense and you don't understand something. and then you only find out the answer later on, like in the final case, and it all kind of ties together that way.

But it does really explore this stuff in interesting ways, and the characters are very entertaining and also have a lot of emotional depth to them. There's a lot of interesting, just kind of backstory behind Phoenix and his relationship with his friends or with Miles and with other people, and his high school or college girlfriend plays a major role in one of the games. and there's a lot of interesting stuff that it explores even kind of in addition to or maybe below the zaniness of it all. Yeah, they do a good job of stacking the narrative where a lot of times the clients that you'll have at the beginning of a game, you know, of the series of cases that you're solving over the course of one of these games, the clients that you'll have will eventually become recurring characters in future cases because you'll get them off. You know, they'll have been accused of murder in case two. And then in case three, you know, maybe it was like a restaurant owner in case two.

Then in case three, it'll be like, oh, they were at this restaurant, and who should own the restaurant, but, and then their theme music starts playing, and that same character turns up. And this time, they're not accused of the crime. They're just, you know, adding color and adding to the story, but because you know them so well from before, it has, like, a feeling of a feeling of a feeling of a feeling of a feeling of it's all pulling together. And sometimes there are revelations about characters that you didn't know, and, you know, there are twists and turns and things that become, like, really exciting. There's a feeling of a kind of symphonic storytelling going on by the end of each one that is really satisfying, without being overly. It doesn't feel like modern TV exactly. It's very episodic, but it does feel satisfying in the end.

Like, it all pulls together. Yeah. And it's good at verting expectations, which I think it's smart. Yeah, the mysteries are almost impossible to guess, almost because they're too silly to guess, but also because you don't have all the evidence. So it's a classic kind of opposite of a story where you have all the parts and you could conceivably get,

what is that called, like that style of narrative fiction where. They're structured as a how-catcham. not if you've done it, which we talked about, I think, with poker face where you do usually see the murder take place before the... Natasha Leon's character does and then you get to watch her figure it out. Case takes place. Yeah, you often know who did it. You just don't know how it all came together. And even when you know who did it or like you can easily guess who did it, you don't know why or how.

Well, you might still be surprised by another aspect. I just played a case last night where I think it was game five case two where like it's very clear who did it. but then you're surprised by some other cool twist. Yeah. And it'll turn out that some other person that you didn't even know existed was there or some other absurd, like, fourth person shows up. That's what I really like about it. Second shooter.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Phoenix Wright would have had that case on lock. That is... He probably would have figured it out. He would have, I think. He definitely would have. He definitely would. But that's part of what's fun is that it kind of mixes the sense of solving the mystery

yourself as the player. with still having that sense of surprise where new evidence is introduced by external factors that then complicates the narrative. But that's also what's hard about the game, which we haven't gotten to yet. And I immediately ran into this in the very first case of Ace Attorney Apollo Justice. That's what it's called. Where I could tell what piece of evidence was wrong or what the discrepancy was. but I couldn't figure out which line of dialogue I needed to press the L button on in order to present the piece of conflicting evidence, which is kind of how every game works, as far as I know. As characters are talking, you can press a button in order to be like, hold on a second, hold it is what you say. And there's even an animation on the screen of you saying that really loudly.

And then you can present a clue from your little evidence locker that contradicts what they're saying. but sometimes they'll say a few sentences in a row that pertain to that piece of evidence and you only have a certain number of chances to present evidence before you die. I mean, I don't know. I've never actually died in one of these games, so I don't know what happens. But you run out of energy, essentially, and I think there's a game over screen. Yeah, I mean, what happens is the judge is like, I've seen enough and he declares your client guilty and then you get a game over screen.

But you can just start again from wherever you are. so it doesn't really matter. Yeah, it is a kind of a tension in those games for me. You get a certain number of, I believe, it's exclamation points that then get knocked away each time you make a mistake. It was changed to like a bar. It's a progress bar in Apollo justice, but it's the same idea. And I would always just save the game right before doing that and then just try a bunch of stuff. So there is a fair amount of brute force trial and error, or at least there can be for me.

Because you can wind up in situations too where the stakes keep getting higher as you progress through. the game. And by the end, you might be in a trial where the judge is being so hard on you that you can't even press a witness for additional testimony because they just come up with some reason. They're like, no, you're not allowed to press this witness. So if you even press the witness, I'll penalize you. And you have to really choose your moments. And then you do wind up sometimes in those situations you describe, Maddie, where you're like, okay, I know that it's to do with the point of view out of the window and the visibility. And like, I have this diagram. And like, I know I'm supposed to present that. But maybe it's actually this other thing that's a photo of the window and you're just not totally sure which piece

of evidence to present and it can be a little bit frustrating because you're losing life basically. Yeah. And then just having to go back and reload. So to be clear about this. So what happens, so Kirk, what you're describing with the exclamation points in the original DS games, if you died, got the game over screen, ran out of your exclamation points, it would actually penalize you and you'd have to like go back to a previous checkpoint or a previous save or something like that.

in the new games and in the remastered versions of all of these games, it's a progress bar, and then also if you run out, you just can start from where you were. So there's no actual consequence for losing in the remastered games. Though there is the consequence of having to go forward with the health bar that isn't full, and that really bothers me, so I'm still kind of safe. Totally. Okay. Interesting.

Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, but the broader point here is interesting, which is kind of that, like, the games, developers are thinking a certain way of a certain kind of logic and you have to kind of follow that logic and most of the time I don't know tell me if you to disagree but I feel like most of the time it makes sense occasionally there will be some finicky thing where it'll be like I'll yes to your point matty where it's like oh it feels like it should be here but actually it's here or the worst one of the worst things is when you have a piece of evidence and you know exactly where it should go but you haven't gotten to that point yet because the game isn't ready for it yet and so like

Like, you figured it out, but Phoenix, right, or Apollo Justice hasn't figured it out yet, or the witness hasn't yet said something that pertains to that piece of evidence. But you're already looking at a photo and being like, this is it. This is the discrepancy. That said, I mean, I think those moments are pretty rare, at least in my experience, playing these games. I think most of the time it feels pretty, the flow is pretty good. It's pretty clear what you should be doing at any given point. Surprisingly so, considering how hard it would be to design for something like that. I mean, you're basically just guessing how quickly you think someone's going to figure it out based on the clues that you've given them. And then also trying to time out the dialogue such that each climactic reveal happens in order. And then you look back at the picture again and you're like, wait, that's right.

And it just the fact that it works, I would say 90% of the time and there's just that 10% where I'm like, I don't understand what I'm supposed to do here is pretty miraculous. Yeah, the storytelling cadence is really well. done in these games and the moments of Eureka followed by nailing it, followed by watching the delight of, you know, Phoenix finally triumphant in court. Definitely that happens more often than the times when I'm stuck. And they do such a good job. I mean, in those final showdown moments, there are in a lot of these games, you'll enter this, you know, the really kick-ass musical start playing and he'll enter this kind of, like kind of super sand. Like it's like the, you know, whatever you want to call it, like motion blurred white and blue lines.

lines behind him as he's like getting ready to like fully destroy this person and the animations that go along with that to bring it back to the fighting game thing. I mean, when you perform a fatality on someone on the sand and they get blasted out, you know, maybe they've been hiding another like person under their code or something and finally they get completely destroyed in front of you and they're revealed and, you know, their lies are revealed to the world. It's extremely satisfying and it always tends to line up with that moment in your head where you realize like, okay, I've got it. I know exactly what happened. I've got you, and then you get to finally execute on that. Yeah, you're reminding me that Phoenix Wright was in Marvel versus Capcom 3. I had forgotten

it until you were acting it out visibly for me that he does, he does, he's in a literal fighting game and just like throws pieces of paper at people and like shouts objection and it actually does damage, and it's really fun and great. Villains melting down is by far like one of the funniest things in the game and a highlight of everything because they come up with these incredible final balls. animations for each one. The other thing that this game is incredible at along the same lines is visual

gags. And so there are so many moments where what you described like someone's hiding something under their ship, but also where like someone will just totally blow your mind with a visual reveal. I almost don't want to spoil it. I'll give an example of kind of a minor one. There are two in

Apollo Justice that are truly incredible. One of them I won't mention, but the one I will mention is there's a musician in case three. And he's kind of like looking at the camera like this and his hair is kind of like spiky like this. And then at one point he turns to the side and it's revealed that his hair is actually a massive, like it looks like a horn going all the way out like 10 feet in front of his head. And you're just like, what is going on here? So the visual guys are just fantastic.

Yeah, a lot of times it's a character who's immaculately put together and just impenetrable. And then when Phoenix finally reveals the truth about them, they'll just be disheveled and their hair will be. messed up and, you know, they'll have completely fallen apart. You know, I think, am I remembering this correctly that in the DS versions of the game, you could shout objection into the DS microphone and that would perform the objection in the game? I have no idea. I believe that is the case that you were supposed to be shouting at your DSS. Yes.

Back in the day. Yeah, so the way it worked was you held down a button and you shouted objection or held it. They should have kept that in. Why isn't that still on the switch version? Yeah, I guess there's not a microphone on the switch. microphone on the switch, sadly. Well, I guess I have to shout it anyway, whether I'm heard or not. So there's actually something that's kind of annoying about these games.

They actually, with each game, with each kind of subsequent game, they started adding more and more mini games, in part to take advantage of the DS's touchscreen or the 3DS's touchscreen and in part to just kind of switch up the gameplay and court, like in Ace Attorney 5 or in Apollo Justice, they introduced this idea of like perceiving. A witness's kind of tells to see that they're lying. You just have to kind of like use Apollo's magnifying glass type thing to kind of like spot what is going on while a witness makes a statement. But in theory, it's kind of cool. But in practice, it's all just very tedious.

And makes you be like, all right, I don't know why I'm wasting my time with this. I wish I could just go to the next cross-examination. Which is the one with the chains where the chains appear across people and they're locked down. That isn't really a minigame because it's kind of just finding contradictions. No, it's just the same. is finding contradictions in the in the court it is satisfying like there's an audio visual it's satisfying to watch the chains break i suppose no that one i'm saying is fine that's not what i'm talking about because that one is just you're doing the same gameplay that you do in the game it's just like

those are for the investigation sequences rather than the courtroom yeah what i'm talking about is like you have to do blood testing and like spray the screen and you're just tapping at a screen and it's the idea is like these ds gimmicks that do not hold up well today i think is it the final case, there's one of these games, is it an Ace Attorney or is it in trials and tribulations, where the final case is way more involved than all the other ones? Yeah, so when you're describing is in the first game. So in the first game, it was originally released on the Game Boy Advance, and then they added an extra case for the DS version, so it's more involved because they added all those

DS gimmicks. Right, there's all this, like, dusting for fingerprints. And also the story is, like, really elaborate, and it kind of goes to the heart of the justice system. Like, it's a much bigger story than a lot of the earlier ones, and it does kind of stick out. I remember really liking it. And then, so that stuff is carried on for Apollo Justice, which is the first, like, game made for the DS.

And so what you're describing, the case you're describing at the end of Ace Attorney 1 isn't tied at all to the rest of the first trilogy. Right. Comes out of nowhere. But then it's tied into Apollo Justice because this lady, Emma Sky, who's the investigator, comes back for game four. And she's like, here's my luminal. Now you can tap the screen and do dusting and stuff. Emma Sky definitely the purveyor of all kinds of gimmicks. Like, here's my fingerprint.

And you can use the stylist to dust for fingerprint. And it's just never good. None of that stuff is ever enjoyable. I do like her as a character though. She's funny. Yeah. I mean, at one point you have to like make plaster footprints and it's all just very dumb. But yeah, no, but like those things, those moments are kind of few and far between.

And most of the time you're doing the good old fashion investigating and moving around and detecting things. There are a few kind of big changes that happen in the 3DS versions. So you were describing some of the kind of 3D models before and that's a part of. it. There's some other big changes, too. One is that the investigation scenes in the first four games are all just kind of 2D images and you just kind of poke around in the 3DS games. They're actually 3D scenes and you can zoom the camera around as well. You can look at them from multiple angles to look for evidence and stuff like that. Also, a few kind of minor things like in the first few games when you're moving between areas during the investigation scenes, you kind of,

you can't just go anywhere you want. You have to go like to one place and then that's connected to another place. And you have to just kind of shuffle through screens in the 3DS games. You can just kind of select from a big menu and go wherever you want. The 3DS also add some kind of like mission briefs. Like here's what you're supposed to be doing now and other kind of quality of life type stuff. Just worth noting in case people are like curious to check them all out or curious about what the big differences are between all these games. Yeah, I still see it as just my de facto in my head what I compare all other solving mystery games to at this point.

Maybe just because of when it came out, it's a relatively older game and a lot of other mystery solving games are clearly inspired by it. But also just because when it works, it feels so great. And as though you really are solving the mystery or putting clues together along with the main character, which is what you always want in a game like that. you don't experience it, it's so frustrating. Like the gap between feeling like you're playing a game versus actually being in it. Mentally is so much stronger with a mystery game, I feel like, because you're actually doing the activity almost outside of the game. I feel like we talked about this a bit with Case of the Golden Idol and how much you're just

staring at the screen and not moving the mouse or anything. You're just looking at it and being like, all right, what do I do here? And that's great. Like, that's the best because the game is just all taking place in your own mind. And that feeling is so wonderful when you actually figure out when you do need to grab your mouse again and move it and click on the correct thing to do next. But it just, I don't know, it all comes back to Ace Attorney. So if people are listening and they liked Case of the Golden Idol or any of those other games we mention, you'll probably like Ace Attorney. Even if it is kind of simple and silly, it's still fun.

It's still got some core aspect. Structurally a bit different. It's a lot more approachable. I think those games you kind of have to use your brain in a way that you don't really have to use that much in Ace Attorney. I mean, for all of like the deduction and investigation and like presenting evidence to show contradictions. I mean, it's so much easier. And in these games, there's an option to, they call it consult where you can get a hint from your assistant on the court stand. And they make it extremely approachable.

In fact, these remaster games come with a mode that gets rid of all the puzzles. It's called Reader Mode. I saw that. And so you can just play through the game without even having to do that. Just watch it. Yeah, exactly, which is a totally valid way to play too. It's structured like individual bite-sized mysteries. Like, it's just, you're very in the moment.

It is improvisational where a game like Golden Idol or Oberdin, that's like a meal. That's a big, huge, like, a mystery that you're having to put together on your own. You have to do a lot more work. In Phoenix, right, it really is just like moment to moment. You're like Phoenix. You're just, you're living in the moment. And everyone's throwing everything at you and you're like, okay, wait a minute. I just got, I've got two pieces of evidence and something that guy said isn't true.

And I just have to figure out what it is. You're just doing that over and over again. And it kind of scales up. But it never becomes as big in labor, like mental labor intensive as any of those proper mysteries. And yeah, I think we talked about this on our episode about mystery games. We had a pretty in-depth discussion about like these different types of mysteries and how they work differently. A quick note on the spinoffs in the. this series before we call it for the week. I think it's worth noting there's a few

spinoffs that have been released over the years. One is the great ace attorney, which many mentioned before. We talked about this on triple click a couple of years ago when it came out. It's a pair of games. It's a duology of games that are set in the past, said in the turn of the 19th century with Sherlock Holmes. And I believe it's called it. Yeah, it's actually not Sherlock. That's right. And yes, Phoenix Wright's distant ancestor.

And those games, I actually think might be the best of the entire series. They're really good. They're great. They're quite good, especially number two. And number two, it's one of those scenarios where, like, number one is setting up

a lot of things. And number two just, like, knocks them all down. So those games are really worth checking out. Also, now released for all the modern platforms. I played them all on Switch. There's Ace Attorney Investigations, Miles Edgeworth. which is kind of a weird spinoff where you're playing as a prosecutor and the gameplay is a little bit different.

There's more kind of walking a model around as Miles Edgeworth. The first game came out for, I believe, the DS or the 3DS, but the second game never came to the US. So that game, there was like a big fan translation. There's a theory or kind of a hope, I guess, that Calcom will now release an investigations compilation, the way they've been complying all these other games. So maybe that'll come in the future. And then the other one is called Professor Layton versus Phoenix Wright. And it's kind of a spinoff that combines these two beloved series.

Right. Prisona X Fire Emblem kind of thing. Yeah, I was actually really disappointed by this one because it's not actually like a crossover between the two. It's actually the way it's structured is that there are latent scene, latent kind of gameplay. And then there's Phoenix Wright gameplay. It doesn't try to combine them. So it'll be like, here's the part where you go around and do puzzles. Here's the part where you're in court and just kind of doing Phoenix Wright stuff.

It's not like finding some clever way to have like Layton doing like cross-examinations and like solving puzzles. Right. Like he's an expert witness or something. Yeah, it's not, it doesn't do that. It's very separated. And that I thought was an unfortunate way to do things. But like if you're into these games, of course, it's, it's always going to be fun. Really the great ace attorney are the ones to check out.

And those because they're set in such a different time period are totally. standalone and so also a good entry point for the series and they incorporate the Hurlachsholums the deduction thing

that is a very fun different wrinkle to the gameplay those are always my favorite parts of those games is when it's time for Holmes

to do his deductions and you get to recreate a sequence with him and the two of you do this dance like it's so freaking is

and yeah some of my favorite stuff in any Ace Attorney game yes incredibly good cool well so yeah

the Apolog Justice trilogy is out this week I can't wait to play it playing through it. It's a really good kind of relaxing kind of chill on the couch

and play a little bit in between things. It's a good kind of Pally Cleasher. The more action-focused games. Yeah. And it's really cool. And like none of these games, some of these games have their kind of weaker moments or weaker cases, but none of them are bad. They're all just baseline good.

So it's hard to not recommend playing this trilogy. And I was actually surprised by how great Apollo Justice Ace of Journey 4 is and how well it all ties together. And I'm sure I'll feel similarly about five and six as I play through through more of them. All right, why don't we take a break? And then we'll be back with one more thing. From the twisted minds that brought you in the adventure zone, balance and amnesty

and graduation and ethersea and steeplechase and uteruspace and all the other ones. The Macroy brothers and dad are. proud to reveal a bold vision for the future of actual play podcasting. It's, um, it's called the Adventure Zone versus Dracula. Yeah, we're going to kill Dracula's ass. Well, we're going to attempt, we haven't recorded all of it yet. We will attempt to kill Dracula's ass. The Avengers Zone versus Dracula.

Yes, a season I will be running using the D&D 5th edition rule set. And there's two episodes out for you to listen to right now. We hope you will join us. Same bat time, same bat chance. and vats. I see what you did there. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on Just the Zoo of Us, we judge them by so much more. We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics, taking into consideration each animal's true strengths, like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play basketball.

Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insights. into the animals world. Listen with friends and family of all ages on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. And we are back. Kirk, come on. It is time for one more thing. Kirk, start us off. So I watched a movie with my D&D group that I absolutely loved and I just wanted to recommend

it on the show. And that movie is Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves, which came out last year. And I knew was good. Everyone's talked about how great it is. We were really just waiting to get as many of us together to watch a movie as we could because I thought it would be a fun thing to watch with my D&D group. And it turns out it really is. But it's also just a great movie.

I think, I'm sure a lot of our listeners have already seen it, but anyone who played Baldur's Gate and liked it has to see this movie. Like, it's so funny how much it has in common with Baldur's Gate and how often you'll see things from the world of D&D and just how much fun it is if you've ever played D&D. This is a, so this movie is directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, who I guess I knew them as having written Spider-Man Homecoming, but they're kind of just pros in Hollywood. They've written a lot of movies together and worked together for a while. It stars Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez.

They're kind of the two leads. Chris Pine is a bard and Michelle Rodriguez is a barbarian. And it's a very, like, it's tongue-in-cheek in a way. It's a little bit self-aware, but it never breaks the first. wall. There's never a moment where, you know, I don't know, like, I don't know, like, I was wondering if it was going to be that kind of a movie and it's not. And it also like never makes fun of the fact that it's Dungeons and Dragons. It's a little like the Princess Bride, but even like, I guess more like the movie than the book, the Princess Bride, it's

never making fun of the fact that it's taking place within this rule set in this world that we all understand, even though there will be things like, you know, he'll say, well, we've got about six hours, so I'm going to take a rest. And if you play D&D, you're like, oh, a short rest, okay, cool. Like, you kind of know how that works. Or you can see there will be sequences where they'll mention some, you know, ancient God. And then two of the characters will be like, oh, I know that. I know that name because they just pass a history check.

And they'll like, you can tell kind of when the checks are happening if you've played D&D. But if you haven't, it's just a fun fantasy caper. And it winds up being very much like assemble a party and we have to go perform a heist. Hugh Grant is in this movie as the villain and he is really wonderful. It has a bunch of just really enjoyable side characters and bits from start to finish. So yeah, it's basically the story of a group of adventures who need to break into a certain vault. There are all kinds of lore ramifications and characters from around the world of D&D, sort of flitting in and out, and the more familiar you are with all of that.

But kind of more fun, the Easter eggs are. But really, it's just very funny. I mean, Chris Pine is extremely charming. Michelle Rodriguez is so great. She plays the heavy so well, and I just hadn't seen her in anything in a while, so she's really good. And I really, I can't recommend it enough. Like I said, I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen it. But if you play D&D or if you played Baldur's Gate, you have to watch it.

Like, it's made with that in mind. It's very aware, like, it takes place in never winter. They're constantly talking about, you know, the Sword Coast and Baldur's Gate and all the, you know, water deep, all the places that are referenced in the games and in the most kind of popular D&D media. I saw that this movie didn't do well, which is too bad. I'm kind of not surprised.

Speaking of names, I think the name is pretty weak. Like, I think putting Dungeons and Dragons in the title has the baggage of that earlier Dungeons and Dragons movie, which I never saw, but I think was apparently pretty mediocre. I think it was just called Dungeons and Dragons. And also, Honor Among Thieves is just a kind of blah.

Yeah, it's basically the title of Uncharted 2. It's going to say it sounds like an uncharted game. Yeah, it is. That's just among thieves. So it's better because it has an extra word. But it's just not a great title, especially given that it's so fun. I mean, anyone who likes movies like Stardust or The Princess Bride, those kind of really light, high fantasy, funny movies with like really charismatic, charming leads would love this movie. I mean, I would watch it again in a second.

So I really like wholeheartedly recommend it. And anyone out there who is like, oh, I don't know, that looks kind of mid. It's not. it's a very good movie. It's very, very funny. And I think anyone listening to this would enjoy it. So a wholehearted recommendation for that for me. And if you have a D&D group, watch it together. It's fun to watch with your group. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Mine is also a movie, but it's a documentary that Dina recommended we watch after we finished the Barbie movie. And I'm going to recommend it because I figure more people are probably seeing that movie because it's Oscar season and I don't know. Anyway, it's called Tiny Shoulders Rethinking Barbie. And it came out in 2018. And I think Dina watched it back then, but we rewatched it. And it's a great documentary. And I can't prove that Greta Gerwig watched it before she wrote the movie, but I am very strongly suspicious that she did. Not a bad thing at all.

So the plot of the documentary, and it does kind of have a plot, is that it's following all these people who work at Mattel while they were doing the kind of 2016 era redesign of Barbie's body type. And specifically, they came out with three different body types for Barbie in that time. And they did a huge Time magazine splash cover and they talked to a reporter and only that reporter got to hear about it. Although, of course, also these documentarians who were talking to people making the new dolls also got in on it at the time. So it's kind of a journalism story, but it's from the other side because the whole time the Vitell employees are like terrified of what this, they call her a feminist reporter too. They're like so scared of what she's going to write and they're like, what's her headline going to be? And people are going to drag us on Twitter. It's like very 2016 kind of vibes.

But it's also fascinating. They get a lot of talking heads of just, you know, like Gloria Stein and Roxanne Gay. Like people just talk about the history of Barbie and feminism. And that's all amazing. But the best part to me and the part that reminds me of the Barbie movie is just the corporate parts. Like they just have staff meetings where the people who work at Mattel are just sitting around a table arguing about what Barbie's body type should be. And that's like you always want to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. And there's this one woman who's a young woman, and she's like the conservative one.

Like, I don't know how else to describe her, so apologies to this woman. In the sense that she wants to retain the old Barbie's proportion. That's right. And she describes Barbie's body as aspirational at one point, and you can, like, see her carcress cringing and being like, other people don't feel that way about her. And, like, they're literally arguing with one another about the politics of this doll and, like, multiple people are like, if I could do anything with Barbie, it would be to change her body type. And it's fascinating. And they do eventually get there. Like, you know, we, we maybe people don't know if they aren't into children's toys,

but like they do have a curvy Barbie now. But it's such a like stressful road to get there. And it's also just kind of personally fascinating to me to see all these Mattel employees debating because that's also weirdly a part of the Barbie movie. And so many of the things they literally say in the movie just reminded me of the stuff that Greta Gerwig's movie is making fun of in a good. way. So if you watch the movie Barbie and you're like, eh, it's kind of fun and frothy and I want something that feels a little more real,

tiny shoulders rethinking Barbie is that because it's about actual people who make the doll. And it's really cool. It's a really good movie. We watched it on Hulu, and I recommend it. Nice. Yeah, I'll watch it. That does. That sounds great. Do they talk to the journalist for her perspective? They do. She's in the movie just a little tiny bit. And her story's great. I actually read it before I went to the Barbie. movie as part of my research. It's super long and it's got a ton of great details in it. And I recommend that too. Does the Kairon under her name introduce her as feminist journalist?

Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. That would be like a satire documentary. Yeah, so my one more thing was a video game called PAL World. Interesting. That has kind of exploded over the last week. I also played it for a couple hours for what it's worth. Last I checked it, it sold something like 40 billion copies in 24 hours.

So this game, people have kind of described it as Pokemon with guns because it's got a bunch of different fun critters that can shoot each other and be enslaved and eat each other and stuff. But really, it's best described as arc survival evolved or kind of like any kind of survival game with Pokemon. Like so you can go around. So when you start, you're kind of dropped into this world. and that is kind of seems to be procedurally generated, I believe, and it's kind of generic,

and you are told to go and create a crafting table and then build a base and so on and so forth, and then it kind of falls into a lot of the trappings that you've seen in a lot of survival games where you're going around and harvesting stone and wood and using them to construct things. And then the big gimmick is that you go around and you can craft your kind of pokey balls and throw them at the pals that you see in the wilderness to, recruit them and bring them to your base where you put them to work and give them food and shelter and stuff like that. So, yeah, this game is blown up for all sorts of reasons. It's become a lightning rod for controversy for other reasons.

People have accused it of all sorts of things. I've seen people say that kind of unfoundedly that it was made by AI because the creators said they were interested in AI and have made a game involving AI in the past. I've seen a lot of people claiming that it rips off Pokemon, whether because the designs are similar or because the modeling is similar. People have posted videos of like the mesh models that appear to be similar. I'm not going to get into any of that stuff without doing more reporting on my own, but I can describe what it's like, which is it's surprisingly unjanky.

Like it's actually, it feels good to play, and I can see why it's so popular. It's not like my type of game. I'm not really into survival games, but the few hours that I played of it, I could feel that kind of addictive loop and see why so many people are so into it, because it's got just really solid fundamentals. You have this massive technology tree that you are gradually upgrading as you go and you do quests and stuff. And that technology tree contains all sorts of cool weapons and gear and buildings you can construct and things that will make it so you can upgrade your base and get more pals

into your base and then go and use them in cool ways to go beat bosses and do other things out in the world. The game is an early access, so it's not even close to complete. And from what I gather, they have a whole big roadmap plan. These developers have features that they want to add in the future, like raids and stuff like that. But even now, there's a lot of stuff in it. You can do everything from like getting bows and arrows to gatling guns. And like there's one Pokemon thing, pal that is like a flame fox that you can build a backpack and then use them as a flame thrower. So it's got that kind of meme ability that is perfect for like Twitch and TikTok.

And so you can see why once you start playing, it's very obvious why this game exploded and has become as popular. as it is. It's like very much like designed for virality. And I think if I were into this type of game, like if I were more of like a survival like a Minecrafty, Valhamey person, I would be like, wow, this is awesome. I want to keep playing this because it's very well made from what I've seen so far and like runs well and feels good in general. There is a paraglider that you can get and there's a bow and arrow and there's all sorts of kind of mechanics that they've thrown into this thing. then but the discourse surrounding it has become so crazy and almost poisonous that it's like you can't you can't it's it's difficult to know what to make of it um i'm sure there will be stories coming

on in the future um the developers are based in japan which makes it a little difficult for um western journalists to get a hold of them and and try to figure out what they're here their side of the story and variety of things they have of course denied any sort of wrongdoing or copying from Pokemon or anything like that. And my colleague, Cecilia at Bloomberg, our former colleague, who's now my current colleague, spoke to a bunch of lawyers for a Bloomberg article that will link in the show notes, and they essentially said, yeah, there's no legal case here or anything like that. So as far as legal wrongdoing, I don't know, it seems like it would be a tough battle to fight.

But yeah, but the game is interesting. I don't know if I would recommend it necessarily, because, again, it's not my cup of tea, but I think I can certainly see why it got so popular. Yeah, I can see why too. I have some early complaints, especially having played Lego Fortnite so recently, and it's funny to make that comparison because Lego Fortnite is so against violence,

and even though both games have cute little sheep that you collect wool from in them, Pal World has you beating the sheep to near death almost immediately, because that's just kind of part of the edgy world of Pal world, is that you beat these animals, and they make adorable noises of pain before you kidnap them and make them build gatling guns for you. And like a Fortnite, you just collect the wall

and you never kill anybody. But it does have a really similar gameplay loop early on where you're just feeling like, man, I just can't get enough pieces of wood. What the heck? I need 20 pieces of wood. And you just do that for like six hours of your life. And then eventually you have more wood than you know what to do with.

And I think the real boon is if you have friends who are playing and any survival game, no matter how boring or janky or non those things can be fun if you have five people playing it with you. Yeah, 100%. That's enough. It seems like a very different experience when you're playing with other people. And I was playing alone, so very different type of thing. The other thing I'll say is that even though it's got the guns and the violence and what you described as edgy, it is not like gory or lurid at all.

There's no blood. There's no like, even when you kill one of these pals, they just kind of like roll around and like a, kind of cartoony like they've exes on their eyes and stuff like that so you're not really get it's not really a game where like um maybe if i play further i'll like feel differently but from what i've seen so far it's not something that i'd be like oh my god keep this out of the hands of children or something like that it's just kind of like a a game with guns and Pokemon that is kind of cartoonishly violent in that sense but again i haven't seen everything the game has to offer so there might be worse stuff ahead all right why don't we uh say goodbye for this week Maddie, see you both next week.

Yeah, see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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