Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

It's Miles Edgeworth's time to shine. Yes, the brilliant prosecutor gets the lead role, though he does not, well, prosecute. The courtroom drama brought by the first games are now moved in the sidelines as we focus on the crime scenes.

Gameplay:

At the crime scenes, you gather Evidence, and you get some ideas. You can use these ideas to formulate new ones by using the new function "Logic." There's also a new gadget called the "Little Thief" that can recreate the crime from silhouettes based on the data that you already have.

Although we are on the crime scenes, we still have the courtroom gameplay that we learned to love in the first games. We have the Testimonies and Arguments by the witnesses and your rivals, and your Rebuttals. Of course, there's still a lot of the finger-pointing "Objection!"s and "Take That!"s.

Graphics and Music:

More detailed sprites than the first games, along with the new small field sprites. The only music that really wowed me were the remix of Gumshoe's theme, the new "Objection!" theme, of course, which is a remix of Edgeworth's theme, and the one used here:

This is pretty much the general idea of the game

Characters:

In every crime scene, Edgeworth gets some assistance investigating from one of the following: the ever loyal Gumshoe, the whip cracking Franziska, and a new character named Kay. We also have cameos of both major and minor characters from Phoenix's adventures. We also have a new rival, the international investigator, Agent Shi-Long Lang, (and his sidekick Shih-na) who has hatred towards prosecutors, and who I think is one of the coolest characters in the series along with Godot.

Story:

There are five turnabouts. Four of which happens in three consecutive days, the other one is a flashback. Though the cases seem unrelated, all five are connected to the great thief "Yatagarasu" and the smuggling ring that he/she/it tries to stop.

There are a number of twists but if you have played the series before, you'd figure them out early on, or at least, you won't be as surprised as you'd be if you haven't; save for the true identity of the Yatagarasu, which I think is as brilliant as the mystery of Elise Deauxnim.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

I saw the movie last February and it convinced me and my sister to read Rick Riordan's books. The only other novels that I enjoyed reading was the Harry Potter series. I thought that Percy Jackson should be another series of fantasy novels that should be fun to read.

It was.

Synopsis:

Percy is what you call a demigod: child of a god and a mortal. His father is the sea god himself, Poseidon, so some of his powers are rubbed off on Percy. It's about his adventures with his friends: fellow demigods, a satyr, a cyclops for a half-brother, and a mortal.

Each of the books (except for Titan's Curse which happened on winter) starts every summer at Camp Half-Blood, the summer camp for demigods, then they go to a quest given by the Oracle of Delphi itself. Along their quest, they encounter Greek mythology monsters, and the gods themselves. All these as the titan Kronos plans and executes his revenge for the gods; and Percy is the one destined to decide if the era of the gods continues or if the titans regain all that was once theirs.

Top:

Annabeth Chase (Daughter of Athena), Percy Jackson (Son of Poseidon), Grover Underwood (Satyr)

Bottom:

Noco di Angelo (Son of *Spoiler*), Tyson (Cyclops), Rachel Elizabeth Dare (Mortal)

Review:

It's written in first person, on Percy's point of view. Each of Percy's adventures are all based on individual prophecies so we get the idea of what would happen as the story goes.

His adventures include trips and battles on epic locations such as the Underworld and the Labyrinth; and smartly placed locations of Ancient Greek places on American soil. From Mount Tamalpais (Mt. Othrys), to Mount St. Helen's (Mt. Etna), to the Bermuda Triangle (The Sea of Monsters), to the Empire State building (Mount Olympus).

It's like the present-day America clashing with Greek mythology.

It has a lot action between demigods, monsters, gods and titans themselves. We have demigods using swords, bow and arrows, spears, and shields; with the main characters having a special unique weapon that has magical properties. They can also use powers and abilities that they inherit from their god parent. We get a glimpse of both the gods' and the titans' powers and their classic and famous weapons like Zeus's lightning bolt, and Kronos's scythe.

Overall: Classic battles of epic proportions. The books may look intense, but they were still very easy to read, in a sense that the words were phrased in a very simple way. If you have the time, you can finish each book in a day or two. Every plot of each of the five books finish in a way that keeps the readers satisfied. It's a really great series.

So great that it had a sequel series.