For those that miss text adventures or LucasArts style games, or like anything offbeat, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attoney for the DS is definitely a fun, strong plot and character-driven game that can fill the niche with some pretty good brain-teasing puzzles.
Phoenix Wright, simply, is one of those odd Japanese games, based weakly on their classic dating sims, that has been translated to English and brought onto the DS platform. In Phoenix Wright, you play as Phoenix, a just-off-the-bench defense attorney on his first 5 cases in court, defending the innocent of murder charges. The game is set in the near future, where the justice system has been radically revises as to have all criminal court cases take at most 3 days, thus requiring a significant burden of proof on the defendant. As the player, you have to work your lawyer-y skills in court to disprove witnesses’ testimony with evidence and information that you collect, and prevent the prosecution from overruling you. The game, while based on the idea of Japanese dating simulations, feels that it has strong comedic influences from the Adult Swim show, “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law” in that shouts of “Objection!” and “Hold it!” stand out like the cartoon onomatopoeia effects from Batman, key points are punctuated with fighting sound effects, and the bumbling attitude of Phoenix, though the game’s plot is still (mostly) firmly grounded in reality. I think it’s more that stateside, without the popularity of Harvey Birdman, this game would have had little chance to succeed without a major media push, but with it, the game can easily become popular by word-of-mouth.
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Stuntman is one of those few games that really should be able to sell themselves from the concept alone, however, the game fails rather spectacularly due to a number of gameplay and performance features that seem to be easily corrected.
God of War, to put it simply, is extremely gory and violent event for taking place in ancient Roman times, but is an excellent gaming challenge and a reasonably fresh approach to platformers.You play Kratos, a mortal on a vengeance against the god Ares, who is currently attacking Athena’s city of Athens. We quickly find out Kratos is much more than mortal–he wields lethal blades on chains, and cares little for fellow mortals. As Kratos rescues the Oracle of Athens, he finds that the only way to stop Ares is to obtain Pandora’s Box from a temple set to safeguard it for all time, and then to use it’s power against Ares.
Okami, developed by Clover Studios (who previously have done the Viewtiful Joe series) and distributed by Capcom, is best described as a game for the PS2 in the flavor of the Legend of Zelda series, with a lot of similarities but makes strides for its own unique gameplay styling. Nearly every part of this game is done perfectly, with extremely strong gameplay, an engaging story, and stunning audio and visuals. The few minor faults at the presentation level don’t affect how strong a title Okami is. 
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