A new year, a new spiky-haired lawyer.

Having completed Capcom's newest legal adventure, I offer a few impressions for you to nibble on with your evening brandy.

It has been seven years since the events in Trials and Tribulations transpired.  Phoenix Wright has been disgraced and disbarred (for reasons that you know I can't reveal here), and he now makes a living as a fifth-rate John Tesh in a Russian dive.   Enter the titular Apollo Justice, an oh-so-pure defense attorney who's about to be touched for the very first time.  So how is it?

Well, the gameplay is practically unchanged.  There are some investigation elements that take advantage of the console's touch screen and 3D capabilities, and some nifty FMV sequences have been thrown in.  Otherwise, it's standard Ace Attorney fare:  tap through menus, follow dialogue tree, progress to next section, repeat as desired.

(more…)

The best baseball man in the biz takes a giant risk in 2008.

I loved MLB 2K7, from its gorgeous visuals to the near-simulation-perfect gameplay (after a couple of slider adjustments) and solid pitching controls. Naturally, I expected a few tweaks here and there to 2K's followup this spring…perhaps a modified (and easier) hitting mechanic, some more nuance in the franchise mode, and even more online options.

Boy, were my expectations way off.

(more…)

Enter and win. That is, if you're randomly selected!

It's been awhile since we've hosted a humble little giveaway, but lo and behold - we've emerged with a special treat for DS owners. By now, many of you have heard about THQ's Drawn to Life (and if you haven't, might we suggest you read up on the reviews? Ours will be coming up this week). We'll just get right down to it. Send in your full name and along with a valid email address to be entered in our random drawing which should be addressed to contests@got-next.com with the subject header entitled: Drawn to Life Contest. Two weeks from now, we'll select (3) names from the pool of entries. That's right… 3 lucky winners will receive a personal copy of this slick DS game. The rules are really simple:

Family members of the GotNext site are ineligible to enter.

You must be live in the United States or Canada.

Only one entry per person.

Entries received after Dec. 7 11:59 EST will no longer be accepted. Winners will be announced on the GotNext blog (that's here by the way) on Dec. 10 and directly contacted via email. At that point, the selected winners have 48 hours to respond or their selected entry will be considered forfeit and new winners from the remaining pool will be chosen.

GotNext reserves the right to alter or suspend the contest at any time. (Right now, we can't really think of any reasons to, but this is just written here to cover our butts y'know?)

That said, good luck everyone! 

Heading to PSP, DS, and Cell Phones next year.

SquareEnix's biggest announcement at TGS so far is the further expansion of the Kingdom Hearts series in the form of three new portable titles: Birth By Sleep for PSP, 358/2 Days for DS, and Coded for mobile phones. 

Birth By Sleep seems to be the most straightforward of the three, playing much like it's PS2 predecessors, while telling a prequel story.

358/2 Days (is that supposed to be pronounced "179 Days"?) will apparently focus on 4 player simultaneous play involving members of Organization XIII and will be fully 3D, not sprite based like the GBA's Chain of Memories. Word is the title will make sense when you play the game. Hey, any title that doubles as a math problem has piqued my interest.

Coded is the obligatory cell phone game that, like Before Crisis, Parasite Eve 3, and FF Agito XIII, no one outside of Japan will ever get to play. Do you really need to know any more than that?

(more…)

Chibi Robo: Park Patrol for the Nintendo DS is a WalMart exclusive.

Why, God, why!?

According to a Gamespot article about why all Gamestop reserves for Chibi Robo: Park Patrol were cancelled, the official word from Nintendo was that the game is now only sold at the urban blight redneck paradise of WalMart.  While losing Gamestop's support for Chibi Robo isn't all that big a deal, seeing as there are many places in the world that sell video games, limiting its sales to… um…

Yeah, trying to figure out the WalMart demographic for Chibi Robo isn't working here.

Anyway, Chibi Robo: Park Patrol ships for the DS on October 2, and probably arrives on the shelves at a location near you a minimum of a week afterwards.  Now I'm just going to cross my fingers that smaller local suppliers aren't counted in the exclusivity deal.

[Via Gamespot]