Platforms: Playstation 2, PSP (reviewed), and Wii
It’s a little strange for me to think of Harvey Birdman as retro, but this game came out in 2008. 2008! The Wii and PSP were still current platforms back then. While it might seem an odd choice to kick off this endeavor, I felt like playing an Ace Attorney game, but those titles end up taking around 20 hours to complete. Looking over games that came out in January over the last 5, 10, etc. years, Harvey Birdman caught my eye. Really only catching bits and pieces of the show, I skipped over the game when it originally released. Looking at it now, it seemed like exactly what I was looking for.
For the uninitiated, Harvey Birdman is a visual novel. Think point-and-click adventure game, take out some of the more obtuse puzzle elements, and add in a lot of dialogue, and you’re on the right path. If you’re familiar with Capcom’s Ace Attorney series, you’ll feel right at home here. The game is broken up into five cases to work. They start with some sort of crime committed, Harvey gets involved and has to gather evidence and speak with witnesses, and, ultimately, has to emerge victorious in the rather ridiculous courtroom.
The simple structure of a game like this relies entirely on the game’s ability to deliver characters you enjoy interacting with and how logical the puzzle solutions are. As someone who’s not familiar with the source material, I really found the dialogue in this to be funny enough to give the show a chance one of these days. The interaction between the characters would probably benefit with some familiarity, but even without, I found myself laughing out loud more than a couple of times. The dialogue is voiced and most of the actors from the show reprise their roles, something that caught me completely off guard when I heard Lewis Black start speaking. The actual puzzle parts of the game are rather straightforward, requiring some thought, but nothing too obtuse pops up that might have turned off fans of the show that came to this lamenting the end of the show.
There are some oddball Street Fighter cameos hidden throughout as well. They’re a strange fit, even though Capcom published the title. Maybe having some Ace Attorney characters would have fit a bit better thematically, but how recognizable they would have been to the intended audience is beyond me. Then again, Harvey Birdman was one of the early Cartoon Network absurdist shows, so maybe having them show up wasn’t a bad idea after all.
Really, the only complaints I have with this game is the rather slow start. The first episode is probably the weakest one and wasn’t really a good showing for someone coming at this as a fan of Ace Attorney who’s ignorant of Harvey Birdman. Roles reversed, it might work a bit better, but it really didn’t sell me on continuing it right away. The cases are rather short, keeping the pace snappy and helping the weaker first episode disappear in your memory as you move forward. By the middle of the third episode, I was completely invested and found myself finishing it the next day. HLTB lists the game at around four and a half hours to complete and that’s something I can agree with. It’s a quick playthrough that left me wanting more when it was over.
This game is a bit of an odd duck. It’s not really complex enough for people who have played a fair amount of visual novels, but it might be just enough to get fans of the show interested in the genre. Sounding like a broken record, I could see someone going from this to Ace Attorney, probably the next logical step in keeping in the genre and humor, and really enjoying themselves. It did get Harvey Birdman into my mind as something to possibly watch, something I can say wasn’t really ever much of a consideration. It straddles the line of both sides pretty well, but it doesn’t really have the extra something it would need to whole-heartedly recommend it. If you’re looking for a breezy Ace Attorney though, Harvey Birdman will take the case.
