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This thread has been linked to the game 'Pursuit of Justice'.
Before there was Phoenix Wright there was... the Pursuit of Justice series. The Rat Tattoo Murder is the third game in the FMV heavy series, and casts you as a budding lawyer given the task of proving the guilt of a murderer. But what if he's innocent? He isn't, as the box blurb tells you - and as we all know, innocent people never ever get convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Though for some reason you can't register the game-box as evidence in the trial - it'd clear up things pretty quickly. 'Look m'lud! He's guilty - it says so on the box!' 'Blimey - you're right! Case proven!'. Instead, you have to prove his guilt by more conventional methods, such as gathering evidence and cross-examining witnesses. The defendant in this case is Michael Fong, a member of a Chinese gang called the Chu Sing, who are trying to extend their influence into a place called Hal's Bar. When Michael Fong and his mates stick their head into the bar, and start causing trouble a bloke named Tommy Wu whips out his gun and tells them to clear off. Unsurprisingly, they aren't to happy about this and return later with more gang members, and put a bullet in Tommy's head. There are witnesses and Michael Fong even admits to a police officer that he did it - a straightforward case, surely? Don't you believe it..
You'll have to work hard to prove that Michael Fong is indeed guilty of foist degree moider - otherwise he'll walk free to terrorize the neighbourhood once more. The game is split into two distinct parts, pre-trial and trial. The pre-trial section requires you to build a convincing case against Michael Fong, which you can then pursue when you go to court, and there are several avenues of investigation that you can take. You can view the taped interviews with the witnesses, have a nose around the evidence retrieved from the crime scene and order crime lab tests on them or perhaps head down to the pathologist's office to check out the autopsy report. You check to see if you've got any phone calls waiting on your answering machine, and visit the legal library to get information about legal precedents and previous cases that might prove useful to you later. To assist you in building your case and keeping track of evidence is your trusty Legal Notebook, a kind of super-powerful laptop computer. This device lets you consult your boss to ask if you've got enough of a case to secure a conviction, hop straight to different locations (there are about six in all), and actually build your case using the Case Constructor.
If you have a piece of evidence that might prove useful, then a scan button will pop up on the bottom left of the screen - clicking on this will take a picture of the evidence. Then, if you go to the Case Constructor, you'll find that the scanned evidence is represented by an icon that can be dragged and dropped into the Case Constructor's main window. Evidence placed in the Case Constructor will be made available in court, and witnesses placed in the Case Constructor will be called up when the case comes to trial. Sounds simple enough - but there's a big problem here. The thing is, there are only twenty slots in the Case Constructor, so you can only store a maximum of twenty pieces of evidence or witnesses. If you run out of space, you simply can't scan in any more evidence until you clear out some of your existing evidence. I don't know if there's a legal limit on the amount of witnesses and the amount of evidence you can use in a trial, but it's stupid that you can't hold as much evidence as you want. There buckets of evidence that could prove useful, yet you're constantly limited by this frustrating 'twenty items only' thing.
Another major problem is the way the pre-trial timer works. You have a total of four days to gather the evidence you need together - supposedly a total of thirty two hours game-time. There's a clock in your Legal Notebook that tells you how much time you've got left, yet it's wildly inaccurate most of the time. Rather than ticking down slowly, the pre-trial timer goes down when you perform certain actions, such as ordering a crime lab test or scanning in evidence. But the amount of time that certain actions eat up is ridiculous. If, as soon as the game starts, you head down to the police station and scan in seven pieces of evidence, it'll take you a day and a quarter. Similarly, analysing the crime tests, something that takes only seconds of real-time takes up nearly a day of game-time. There is no way to tell how long an action will take - even when you have three hours of game time left, you can find that performing one simple action propels you into the next day.
But if you can survive the object limit and the naff timer, you'll make it through to the second part of the game, the Trial. The Trial takes place whether or not you've got all the evidence you wanted and takes place over three days, during which you must finally convince the jury of Fong's guilt. On the first day, you get to call your witnesses and question them about their role in the events at Hal's Bar. Upon calling a witness, you are given various topics to ask them about depending upon how much research you did before the trial. Picking one of these topics will bring up a set of three questions, one of which is legally acceptable and two of which are not, and will be objected to by the defence lawyer. A question like 'At what point did the attackers approach Tommy Wu' would be acceptable, but a question like ' 'When did the defendant attack Tommy Wu' wouldn't be, because it makes an assumption. Or something like that anyway - the entire game takes place in the United States, so UK gamers will have to get used to the 'quirks' of the US legal system.
The defence lawyer may also decide to cross-examine the witness, at which point you have to listen and object whenever you decide that the line of questioning is out of order - but don't object unnecessarily, or it will count against you. The second day is similar to the first except that the defence lawyer gets to examine his witnesses and you then have the chance to cross-examine them. At the end of the second day, you can ask your secretary to investigate any three of six possible leads, and then get back to you with any information she finds and you can then can use this on the final day. And after that, the jury retire to consider their verdicts. Guilty, or not guilty. Er, 'not guilty' - since the jury ruled that Michael Fong was acting in self defence. Excuse me? That judgement seems a little bit suspect to me. I saw the jury deliberating, and all bar one said positive things about the case. I'd proved that one of the witnesses brought by the prosecution was a liar, that Michael Fong had kicked his victim, that the whole self defence thing was crap, due to the path of the bullet's trajectory and I presented a load of other evidence that seemed undeniable. But he got off - talk about a miscarriage of justice. Sour grapes - me?
So what's the verdict? Well, your honour, while The Rat Tattoo Murder is promising, it's let down by a few annoying flaws. The court section is entertaining enough, especially when you watch the defence laywer squirm, but it the problems I've mentioned do the game no favours. If you're willing to persevere, this'll keep you busy for a while, but be prepared for a lot of frustration. But unless the timer and Case Constructor problems are fixed, this isn't really worth buying. Phoenix Wright may be a bit sillier, but it's still a better game.
Score: 6 out of 10.
(review by me, originally posted on GamesDomain)
You'll have to work hard to prove that Michael Fong is indeed guilty of foist degree moider - otherwise he'll walk free to terrorize the neighbourhood once more. The game is split into two distinct parts, pre-trial and trial. The pre-trial section requires you to build a convincing case against Michael Fong, which you can then pursue when you go to court, and there are several avenues of investigation that you can take. You can view the taped interviews with the witnesses, have a nose around the evidence retrieved from the crime scene and order crime lab tests on them or perhaps head down to the pathologist's office to check out the autopsy report. You check to see if you've got any phone calls waiting on your answering machine, and visit the legal library to get information about legal precedents and previous cases that might prove useful to you later. To assist you in building your case and keeping track of evidence is your trusty Legal Notebook, a kind of super-powerful laptop computer. This device lets you consult your boss to ask if you've got enough of a case to secure a conviction, hop straight to different locations (there are about six in all), and actually build your case using the Case Constructor.
If you have a piece of evidence that might prove useful, then a scan button will pop up on the bottom left of the screen - clicking on this will take a picture of the evidence. Then, if you go to the Case Constructor, you'll find that the scanned evidence is represented by an icon that can be dragged and dropped into the Case Constructor's main window. Evidence placed in the Case Constructor will be made available in court, and witnesses placed in the Case Constructor will be called up when the case comes to trial. Sounds simple enough - but there's a big problem here. The thing is, there are only twenty slots in the Case Constructor, so you can only store a maximum of twenty pieces of evidence or witnesses. If you run out of space, you simply can't scan in any more evidence until you clear out some of your existing evidence. I don't know if there's a legal limit on the amount of witnesses and the amount of evidence you can use in a trial, but it's stupid that you can't hold as much evidence as you want. There buckets of evidence that could prove useful, yet you're constantly limited by this frustrating 'twenty items only' thing.
Another major problem is the way the pre-trial timer works. You have a total of four days to gather the evidence you need together - supposedly a total of thirty two hours game-time. There's a clock in your Legal Notebook that tells you how much time you've got left, yet it's wildly inaccurate most of the time. Rather than ticking down slowly, the pre-trial timer goes down when you perform certain actions, such as ordering a crime lab test or scanning in evidence. But the amount of time that certain actions eat up is ridiculous. If, as soon as the game starts, you head down to the police station and scan in seven pieces of evidence, it'll take you a day and a quarter. Similarly, analysing the crime tests, something that takes only seconds of real-time takes up nearly a day of game-time. There is no way to tell how long an action will take - even when you have three hours of game time left, you can find that performing one simple action propels you into the next day.
But if you can survive the object limit and the naff timer, you'll make it through to the second part of the game, the Trial. The Trial takes place whether or not you've got all the evidence you wanted and takes place over three days, during which you must finally convince the jury of Fong's guilt. On the first day, you get to call your witnesses and question them about their role in the events at Hal's Bar. Upon calling a witness, you are given various topics to ask them about depending upon how much research you did before the trial. Picking one of these topics will bring up a set of three questions, one of which is legally acceptable and two of which are not, and will be objected to by the defence lawyer. A question like 'At what point did the attackers approach Tommy Wu' would be acceptable, but a question like ' 'When did the defendant attack Tommy Wu' wouldn't be, because it makes an assumption. Or something like that anyway - the entire game takes place in the United States, so UK gamers will have to get used to the 'quirks' of the US legal system.
The defence lawyer may also decide to cross-examine the witness, at which point you have to listen and object whenever you decide that the line of questioning is out of order - but don't object unnecessarily, or it will count against you. The second day is similar to the first except that the defence lawyer gets to examine his witnesses and you then have the chance to cross-examine them. At the end of the second day, you can ask your secretary to investigate any three of six possible leads, and then get back to you with any information she finds and you can then can use this on the final day. And after that, the jury retire to consider their verdicts. Guilty, or not guilty. Er, 'not guilty' - since the jury ruled that Michael Fong was acting in self defence. Excuse me? That judgement seems a little bit suspect to me. I saw the jury deliberating, and all bar one said positive things about the case. I'd proved that one of the witnesses brought by the prosecution was a liar, that Michael Fong had kicked his victim, that the whole self defence thing was crap, due to the path of the bullet's trajectory and I presented a load of other evidence that seemed undeniable. But he got off - talk about a miscarriage of justice. Sour grapes - me?
So what's the verdict? Well, your honour, while The Rat Tattoo Murder is promising, it's let down by a few annoying flaws. The court section is entertaining enough, especially when you watch the defence laywer squirm, but it the problems I've mentioned do the game no favours. If you're willing to persevere, this'll keep you busy for a while, but be prepared for a lot of frustration. But unless the timer and Case Constructor problems are fixed, this isn't really worth buying. Phoenix Wright may be a bit sillier, but it's still a better game.
Score: 6 out of 10.
(review by me, originally posted on GamesDomain)
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Before there was Phoenix Wright there was... the Pursuit of Justice series. The Rat Tattoo Murder is the third game in the FMV heavy series, and casts you as a budding lawyer given the task of proving the guilt of a murderer. But what if he's innocent? He isn't, as the box blurb tells you - and as we all know, innocent people never ever get convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Though for some reason you can't register the game-box as evidence in the trial - it'd clear up things pretty quickly. 'Look m'lud! He's guilty - it says so on the box!' 'Blimey - you're right! Case proven!'. Instead, you have to prove his guilt by more conventional methods, such as gathering evidence and cross-examining witnesses. The defendant in this case is Michael Fong, a member of a Chinese gang called the Chu Sing, who are trying to extend their influence into a place called Hal's Bar. When Michael Fong and his mates stick their head into the bar, and start causing trouble a bloke named Tommy Wu whips out his gun and tells them to clear off. Unsurprisingly, they aren't to happy about this and return later with more gang members, and put a bullet in Tommy's head. There are witnesses and Michael Fong even admits to a police officer that he did it - a straightforward case, surely? Don't you believe it..
You'll have to work hard to prove that Michael Fong is indeed guilty of foist degree moider - otherwise he'll walk free to terrorize the neighbourhood once more. The game is split into two distinct parts, pre-trial and trial. The pre-trial section requires you to build a convincing case against Michael Fong, which you can then pursue when you go to court, and there are several avenues of investigation that you can take. You can view the taped interviews with the witnesses, have a nose around the evidence retrieved from the crime scene and order crime lab tests on them or perhaps head down to the pathologist's office to check out the autopsy report. You check to see if you've got any phone calls waiting on your answering machine, and visit the legal library to get information about legal precedents and previous cases that might prove useful to you later. To assist you in building your case and keeping track of evidence is your trusty Legal Notebook, a kind of super-powerful laptop computer. This device lets you consult your boss to ask if you've got enough of a case to secure a conviction, hop straight to different locations (there are about six in all), and actually build your case using the Case Constructor.
If you have a piece of evidence that might prove useful, then a scan button will pop up on the bottom left of the screen - clicking on this will take a picture of the evidence. Then, if you go to the Case Constructor, you'll find that the scanned evidence is represented by an icon that can be dragged and dropped into the Case Constructor's main window. Evidence placed in the Case Constructor will be made available in court, and witnesses placed in the Case Constructor will be called up when the case comes to trial. Sounds simple enough - but there's a big problem here. The thing is, there are only twenty slots in the Case Constructor, so you can only store a maximum of twenty pieces of evidence or witnesses. If you run out of space, you simply can't scan in any more evidence until you clear out some of your existing evidence. I don't know if there's a legal limit on the amount of witnesses and the amount of evidence you can use in a trial, but it's stupid that you can't hold as much evidence as you want. There buckets of evidence that could prove useful, yet you're constantly limited by this frustrating 'twenty items only' thing.
Another major problem is the way the pre-trial timer works. You have a total of four days to gather the evidence you need together - supposedly a total of thirty two hours game-time. There's a clock in your Legal Notebook that tells you how much time you've got left, yet it's wildly inaccurate most of the time. Rather than ticking down slowly, the pre-trial timer goes down when you perform certain actions, such as ordering a crime lab test or scanning in evidence. But the amount of time that certain actions eat up is ridiculous. If, as soon as the game starts, you head down to the police station and scan in seven pieces of evidence, it'll take you a day and a quarter. Similarly, analysing the crime tests, something that takes only seconds of real-time takes up nearly a day of game-time. There is no way to tell how long an action will take - even when you have three hours of game time left, you can find that performing one simple action propels you into the next day.
But if you can survive the object limit and the naff timer, you'll make it through to the second part of the game, the Trial. The Trial takes place whether or not you've got all the evidence you wanted and takes place over three days, during which you must finally convince the jury of Fong's guilt. On the first day, you get to call your witnesses and question them about their role in the events at Hal's Bar. Upon calling a witness, you are given various topics to ask them about depending upon how much research you did before the trial. Picking one of these topics will bring up a set of three questions, one of which is legally acceptable and two of which are not, and will be objected to by the defence lawyer. A question like 'At what point did the attackers approach Tommy Wu' would be acceptable, but a question like ' 'When did the defendant attack Tommy Wu' wouldn't be, because it makes an assumption. Or something like that anyway - the entire game takes place in the United States, so UK gamers will have to get used to the 'quirks' of the US legal system.
The defence lawyer may also decide to cross-examine the witness, at which point you have to listen and object whenever you decide that the line of questioning is out of order - but don't object unnecessarily, or it will count against you. The second day is similar to the first except that the defence lawyer gets to examine his witnesses and you then have the chance to cross-examine them. At the end of the second day, you can ask your secretary to investigate any three of six possible leads, and then get back to you with any information she finds and you can then can use this on the final day. And after that, the jury retire to consider their verdicts. Guilty, or not guilty. Er, 'not guilty' - since the jury ruled that Michael Fong was acting in self defence. Excuse me? That judgement seems a little bit suspect to me. I saw the jury deliberating, and all bar one said positive things about the case. I'd proved that one of the witnesses brought by the prosecution was a liar, that Michael Fong had kicked his victim, that the whole self defence thing was crap, due to the path of the bullet's trajectory and I presented a load of other evidence that seemed undeniable. But he got off - talk about a miscarriage of justice. Sour grapes - me?
So what's the verdict? Well, your honour, while The Rat Tattoo Murder is promising, it's let down by a few annoying flaws. The court section is entertaining enough, especially when you watch the defence laywer squirm, but it the problems I've mentioned do the game no favours. If you're willing to persevere, this'll keep you busy for a while, but be prepared for a lot of frustration. But unless the timer and Case Constructor problems are fixed, this isn't really worth buying. Phoenix Wright may be a bit sillier, but it's still a better game.
Score: 6 out of 10.
(review by me, originally posted on GamesDomain)
You'll have to work hard to prove that Michael Fong is indeed guilty of foist degree moider - otherwise he'll walk free to terrorize the neighbourhood once more. The game is split into two distinct parts, pre-trial and trial. The pre-trial section requires you to build a convincing case against Michael Fong, which you can then pursue when you go to court, and there are several avenues of investigation that you can take. You can view the taped interviews with the witnesses, have a nose around the evidence retrieved from the crime scene and order crime lab tests on them or perhaps head down to the pathologist's office to check out the autopsy report. You check to see if you've got any phone calls waiting on your answering machine, and visit the legal library to get information about legal precedents and previous cases that might prove useful to you later. To assist you in building your case and keeping track of evidence is your trusty Legal Notebook, a kind of super-powerful laptop computer. This device lets you consult your boss to ask if you've got enough of a case to secure a conviction, hop straight to different locations (there are about six in all), and actually build your case using the Case Constructor.
If you have a piece of evidence that might prove useful, then a scan button will pop up on the bottom left of the screen - clicking on this will take a picture of the evidence. Then, if you go to the Case Constructor, you'll find that the scanned evidence is represented by an icon that can be dragged and dropped into the Case Constructor's main window. Evidence placed in the Case Constructor will be made available in court, and witnesses placed in the Case Constructor will be called up when the case comes to trial. Sounds simple enough - but there's a big problem here. The thing is, there are only twenty slots in the Case Constructor, so you can only store a maximum of twenty pieces of evidence or witnesses. If you run out of space, you simply can't scan in any more evidence until you clear out some of your existing evidence. I don't know if there's a legal limit on the amount of witnesses and the amount of evidence you can use in a trial, but it's stupid that you can't hold as much evidence as you want. There buckets of evidence that could prove useful, yet you're constantly limited by this frustrating 'twenty items only' thing.
Another major problem is the way the pre-trial timer works. You have a total of four days to gather the evidence you need together - supposedly a total of thirty two hours game-time. There's a clock in your Legal Notebook that tells you how much time you've got left, yet it's wildly inaccurate most of the time. Rather than ticking down slowly, the pre-trial timer goes down when you perform certain actions, such as ordering a crime lab test or scanning in evidence. But the amount of time that certain actions eat up is ridiculous. If, as soon as the game starts, you head down to the police station and scan in seven pieces of evidence, it'll take you a day and a quarter. Similarly, analysing the crime tests, something that takes only seconds of real-time takes up nearly a day of game-time. There is no way to tell how long an action will take - even when you have three hours of game time left, you can find that performing one simple action propels you into the next day.
But if you can survive the object limit and the naff timer, you'll make it through to the second part of the game, the Trial. The Trial takes place whether or not you've got all the evidence you wanted and takes place over three days, during which you must finally convince the jury of Fong's guilt. On the first day, you get to call your witnesses and question them about their role in the events at Hal's Bar. Upon calling a witness, you are given various topics to ask them about depending upon how much research you did before the trial. Picking one of these topics will bring up a set of three questions, one of which is legally acceptable and two of which are not, and will be objected to by the defence lawyer. A question like 'At what point did the attackers approach Tommy Wu' would be acceptable, but a question like ' 'When did the defendant attack Tommy Wu' wouldn't be, because it makes an assumption. Or something like that anyway - the entire game takes place in the United States, so UK gamers will have to get used to the 'quirks' of the US legal system.
The defence lawyer may also decide to cross-examine the witness, at which point you have to listen and object whenever you decide that the line of questioning is out of order - but don't object unnecessarily, or it will count against you. The second day is similar to the first except that the defence lawyer gets to examine his witnesses and you then have the chance to cross-examine them. At the end of the second day, you can ask your secretary to investigate any three of six possible leads, and then get back to you with any information she finds and you can then can use this on the final day. And after that, the jury retire to consider their verdicts. Guilty, or not guilty. Er, 'not guilty' - since the jury ruled that Michael Fong was acting in self defence. Excuse me? That judgement seems a little bit suspect to me. I saw the jury deliberating, and all bar one said positive things about the case. I'd proved that one of the witnesses brought by the prosecution was a liar, that Michael Fong had kicked his victim, that the whole self defence thing was crap, due to the path of the bullet's trajectory and I presented a load of other evidence that seemed undeniable. But he got off - talk about a miscarriage of justice. Sour grapes - me?
So what's the verdict? Well, your honour, while The Rat Tattoo Murder is promising, it's let down by a few annoying flaws. The court section is entertaining enough, especially when you watch the defence laywer squirm, but it the problems I've mentioned do the game no favours. If you're willing to persevere, this'll keep you busy for a while, but be prepared for a lot of frustration. But unless the timer and Case Constructor problems are fixed, this isn't really worth buying. Phoenix Wright may be a bit sillier, but it's still a better game.
Score: 6 out of 10.
(review by me, originally posted on GamesDomain)