An infrared transceiver at the back of the device uses science and magic to silently detect the connection, which the 3DS makes no mention of until Resident Evil: Revelations loads and acknowledges the situation by offering to enable control style-D. As expected, this control option allows players to tackle Revelations as if they were using the dual analog controls offered by the PS3 and/or Xbox 360.

Guiding Jill through the derelict cruise ship with the Circle Pad Pro offered two observations.

The first is that the Circle Pad Pro makes the first-person option of moving with the gun drawn within Revelations more noticeable. While that mode can be used in the standard controls with style-C, it would be easy to miss it entirely if you just started the game without digging into the matter more. With the Circle Pad Pro, pressing the left trigger throws you into FPS mode, making the option much more pronounced. Style-D also places the weapons at the ready, with the right trigger firing guns, and the right shoulder button activating the secondary weapon.

This really can’t be called a better way to play, simply a different way. But while bouncing around more in FPS mode as a result, my second observation was that the added heft of the circle pad offers my hands a better means of grasping the 3DS for long periods without feeling my hands cramp. However, I’m not going to tell you that using the 3DS has been morphing my hands into claws, which I might often say about the PSP. The Circle Pad simply offers a more comfortable means for me to hold the device during lengthier gaming sessions.

Whether or not you need the Circle Pad Pro is one of those personal questions I can’t answer for you – it’s a bit like recommending a pair of pants, one size isn’t going to fit all here. I can only say that handling one made it unlikely that I’d go without one, which I’d also have said about the Classic Controller Pro for the Wii. So if you don’t want to buy one, make sure your hands never come into contact with it.

If you’ve been longing for dual-analog controls, and are aware that only games made to support the device will work with it, the Circle Pad Pro will be exclusively sold through EB Games / GameStop beginning on February 7th for $19.99.

Nintendo’s booklet says the battery you insert into the Circle Pad Pro is good for 480 hours – I’m going to have to take their word on that at the moment.

Today the game hit Xbox LIVE Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points, and will appear on the PlayStation Network next week for $9.99 – or free to PlayStation Plus subscribers on that platform. Like last year’s release of X-Men Arcade, The Simpsons Arcade game was what I often longed for on home consoles, rather than the infuriating adventure games we got instead.

The Simpsons allows up to four players to join the game locally or online, as well as offering both the North American and Japanese versions of the ROM. This port of the arcade classic also lightly stirs the play-mode options, offering a setting that challenges players to complete the game with a single life – and I salute anyone who can accomplish such a feat.

The Simpsons is as mercilessly brutal at devouring your lunch money as any of Konami’s old arcade creations, perhaps the most hungry of them all. However, since the game provides a free-play mode that ensures anyone can see the ending, we don’t really need to get hung up on the difficulty here.

What deserves a few more words is how visually interesting the game is, proving equally important historically, along with providing a delightful nostalgia trip that has me thinking back to the first time I saw the four-player cabinet back in an era when arcades still existed in abundance.

Much like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, unique attacks, subtle character animations, and background action brings a richer sense of life to the title. But the level of detail within The Simpsons represents a real peak in creating a game as animated as the source material.

Supporting characters continually appear with health regenerating food and temporary weapons, and the game exploits any chance to squeeze out references to the show while traveling from the streets of Springfield to the Nuclear Plant, including an appearance by Matt Groening’s signature rabbit. But the game also takes interesting liberties, creating a dream sequence where players fight curious donut enemies or a graveyard full of zombies, neither of which feel out of place within the eight stage trip.

There’s also an immense spirit of curiosity, providing players with a myriad of objects that can be picked-up and hurled at enemies – from soda cans to the family dog. The end of two different stages even feature a mini-game where players compete for points by mashing the buttons repeatedly to either fill a balloon with air or slap their own character’s face to wake them up.

It’s an expectedly short trip that asks you to bash on bosses like all Konami beat ‘em-ups of course, but as much as I prefer the X-Men and TMNT licenses, this just might be the more interesting dose of nostalgia from that era for all the extra trouble the game goes to in creating curious bits of interaction in both the background and foreground – whether you’re shaking a tree for apples or getting hit by a swinging door from a storefront.

If you have no memories of the arcades and/or have never found other means to sample the title, it would be easy to imagine that the game simply pasted The Simpsons franchise over an existing framework, and that isn’t entirely a false assumption. But that framework provides the foundation for a game that devours the source material and emerges with an experience still worth revisiting, even after all these years. And despite what the screenshots suggest, you can play the game without tacky borders.

Since I always enjoy listening to the people who make games discuss their work, you can catch the full audio recording of the discussion below, which runs about fifty minutes.

It all begins with naming yourself, and being assigned a random cat color while materializing at the doorstep of a house that has no entrance, but does provide a doormat where you can place the trophy mice found throughout the single map.

I’d only just started exploring the different areas when another cat ran up and asked me to follow, leading me through one of the game’s secret passages that hid a series of piano keys – the other cat began walking over them to produce notes while I purred approvingly, having already learned that typing /purr would produce the imagined action. You can also try /meow, /nap, and /screech.

Today’s cat adventure revolved entirely around the matter of dogs – being bit by one had the curious effect of turning me into one. Biting another cat or leaving a mouse offering on the doorstep returned me to cat form, and wanting to get to the bottom of this dog business led me to a hidden dog statue where players were making mice offerings in order to become dogs – strange religious animal activities are afoot.

The game’s only instruction is “be a cat”, and as you might have guessed, it’s a very strange bit of business being a cat in this space. Naturally, that’s all the excuse I need to recommend you check it out via this handy link.

It’s great comfort TV – often extremely clever, but at the same time, extremely structured. You know what to expect from the show; there’ll be a few witty cast members, a bit of mystery, and an interesting case that will be wrapped up within the hour (organized in such a manner that the first half will consist of the police investigation, while the second half will focus on the prosecution as they make their case in the courtroom). In fact, it’s a formula that seems to slot quite well into Telltale’s episodic game structure.

Even with a format perfect for a game adaptation, I would not in a million years have expected the Law & Order license to produce a good game. While flawed in several ways, by dropping many of the adventure game tropes that you expect from the studio and borrowing bits and pieces from the similarly themed LA Noire and Phoenix Wright, Telltale Games has produced an intriguing title that perfectly captures the spirit and conventions of its licensed material.

Like the television show, each episode of Law & Order: Legacies is broken up into “law” (police) and “order” (courtroom) sections, and each of those can be divided up into a series of corresponding minigames interspersed between cutscenes.

The meat of the police section is the interrogation of witnesses and suspects. During these segments, you’ll ask questions and listen to your subject’s responses. If they tell a lie, or if you spot any sort of inaccuracy, you will be presented with a chance to press for more detail and present evidence that contradicts their statement. Instead of presenting physical pieces of evidence, like you might in Phoenix Wright, you instead tend to point out logical fallacies or direct lies by relating to previous statements. This is largely a test of your memory, but if you’re like me and have roughly the memory of a goldfish, you can bring up a log of all previous conversations at any time. These interrogations tend to be incredibly simple, and you can usually spot the lies (and point out the truth) with ease. The answer options usually include one obvious response, one that is close but just slightly off, and two that are obvious jokes (though, I will give them credit – they tend to be pretty clever jokes). However, despite their relative ease, these segments often get pretty tense, and some of the back and forth between the cops and the suspect is really fun.

The other minigame that you’ll encounter during the police investigations is a crime scene examination. This comes in the form of a hidden-object game, where you have to circle each of the items that you’ve been sent to find. These objects are hidden amongst a number of similar objects (or under conspicuously placed towels or boxes), and you’ll have to be careful to select the right one. Again, this game is pretty easy – you are provided with outlines of most of the items that you’re searching for (though, they do mark a few as question marks to add a little bit of a challenge).

The controls for these segments can be a bit frustrating, however. Moving the mouse toward the edge of the screen simply moves a fixed camera along a track, and there were a number of times where I really just wanted full control over my viewpoint and level of zoom. Additionally, you have to physically draw a circle around an object instead of just clicking on it. When an object is small, this gets a bit tricky – you may have to draw your circle a few times just to get it to recognize what you’re looking for. This was a case where it was clear that this game was designed for the iPad, and controls that work well on a touchscreen don’t always translate to a mouse.

Courtroom cross-examinations play out quite similarly to the interrogations conducted during the police scenes. You’ll press holes in witness testimony and look out for lies from the accused, then present evidence that contradicts their claims. The key gameplay difference comes into play when the defense attorney takes over. You are given the option to raise an objection after every question posed to a subject, and if you do object, you have to specify what exact rule was violated. These tend to be things like asking the subject leading questions to get specific answers out of them, or pointing out that the defense is deliberately trying to get a reaction from the jury. You’ll also point out when subjects are asked to give expert testimony on a topic that they are not well-versed in, as well as other similar infractions.

Like the interrogations, the cross-examinations are a lot of fun and can occasionally be incredibly tense, especially given that somewhat more is on the line this time. As the case progresses, a meter will fill or shrink in response to the actions taken by the prosecution and defense, representing which side the jury favors. If you take the lead and fill this meter, you’ll be able to press for not just the guilty verdict, but also a stronger prison sentence. If the meter is too low, the criminal might get off with a minor slap on the wrist.

It is blatantly obvious that Law & Order: Legacies was designed first and foremost as an iPad game. This comes through most clearly in the gameplay design choices. You never directly control a character – game interaction instead comes in the form of clicking menu options and drawing circles around objects. However, the iPadness of the design (if you’ll forgive my lack of a better phrase) can be felt at every level, from the Apple-style toggles and button styling to the low-polygon graphics engine. In general, the fact that this is an iPad game ported to the PC isn’t a bad thing – it just feels a bit limiting. I couldn’t help but lust after a few of the improvements that could have come from small changes to the PC port, things like better control options during the crime scene investigations.

My reaction to the graphics in Law & Order Legacies is a bit mixed. Telltale’s internal engine was designed to work well on lower-end machines, so the company tends to stick to cartoon-like renderings. That style works well for humorous games like Sam & Max or Monkey Island, but when combined with the more serious themes of Law & Order, it often just doesn’t mesh well at all. When I was wrapped up in the storyline, the art generally didn’t bother me, but it can be pretty jarring when the camera cuts to a crudely rendered cell-shaded corpse. On the other hand – I’d almost rather they stick to the cartoony designs over attempting to realistically depict people on a game designed for the iPad. So, mixed feelings overall, but the art style works most of the time, and I’d rather they stick to cell-shading if the game is ultimately designed for a portable device.

Telltale is known for their great writing, and Law & Order is no exception. The cases featured in each episode are fairly gripping, and have some great twists and turns. The characters (both the interrogators and interrogatees) have great dialogue, and some of the responses that you can choose during conversations are downright hilarious. The subject matter of the cases fit the general atmosphere of the show well, and are actually fairly topical. For instance, the first case is a thinly-veiled retelling of the recent News Corp phone hacking scandal (with an added sex abuse tie-in and a hacker who demands that you call him “Anonymous”). The voice acting is fitting, and while you can tell that they used sound-alikes rather than the actual cast members, the voices are close enough that it isn’t distracting.

Playing Law & Order: Legacies doesn’t really feel like you’re playing a game. It feels like you’re interacting with an episode of a television show. While playing a game is – almost by definition – interacting with a video feed, there is absolutely a difference between playing something like LA Noire and completing an episode of Law & Order. In some ways, Law & Order is more of a “choose your own adventure” story, where your mistakes can cause the story to branch in slightly different directions.

Mind you, this isn’t entirely a bad thing. The individual episodes of Law & Order: Legacies are gripping, fast-paced stories that pull you along for a ride that lasts about exactly as long as an episode of the show that the series is licensed from. While annoyingly easy at times, the individual minigames are very fun, and winning over the jury in the courtroom can be a pretty stressful affair. By trimming the fat from the game, Law & Order is left with nothing but the core of each case, and in many ways, the choice to drop some of the more “gamey” bits of a typical adventure game was the best decision that Telltale could have made. I ended up having more fun with Law & Order than I did with many of the individual cases in LA Noire simply because I didn’t have to spend half an hour driving around a massive world. I could dive straight into the investigation.

Law & Order: Legacies will be primarily of interest to fans of the long-running television franchise, and those fans will absolutely be thrilled with the final product. It’s a well-written set of interactive episodes of the show, and is ripe with familiar characters and other treats for that audience. However, this isn’t entirely a fans-only affair. Anybody looking for a pesudo Phoenix Wright experience should consider giving Law & Order a try. It’s not without its warts, but I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying the ride.

Law & Order: Legacies

Developer
Telltale Games

Publisher
Telltale Games

System
PC, Mac, iOS (Mac Reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
January 26, 2012

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Remember kids, don’t shoot the messenger.

Pinup Juliet belongs to pre-orders placed with Amazon, while Best Buy has the Goth Girl and Foxy Funk attire. Evil Dead fans will have to hit up GameStop for a chance to carry Ash’s infamous boomstick on their back – GameStop PoweUp Rewards members will also sport fashion from Mindless Self Indulgence’s Jimmy Urine, who also happens to be contributing music along with playing one of the boss characters.

Not sure what to wear? Catch a look inside Juliet’s extended closet below.

The demo offers a quick bit of driver training that walks players through the speed boosts, turbo boosts, reverse driving options and primary and secondary fire abilities that give a fighting chance to survive the mean streets of Twisted Metal – as well as a chance to feel how agile and responsive different rides can handle.

The nature of car combat has always been like jousting knights – you can charge at one another with guns blazing, and should you both survive, there’s an awkward moment of turning and adjustment to take another run at burying each other – or the often easier option of continuing forward to fire on the next available target. Twisted Metal’s option of pressing X and jamming the analog stick to spin around on a dime goes a long way in allowing the joust to evolve into one-on-one grudge encounters worth a sonnet every now and then.

Being able to keep track of special weapons while spinning through the anarchy requires greater skill, which I’m still working on. But in the meantime, dropping mines to trip someone up before flipping around to jam the car into reverse and fire off a missile barrage is delightful, and as you may have guessed by now, I definitely recommend sampling the chaos for yourself before the full game hits on Valentine’s Day.

Hybrid may be hard-pressed to surprise players in the visual department, but this latest glimpse offers something potentially interesting, with the apparent ability to shift your footing along with your perspective, which at the moment is reminding me quite a bit of Capcom’s Dark Void – specifically, the most interesting bit of Dark Void.

That cursed reference aside, catch a peek at Hybrid for yourself below.

The four-player mission gives the opportunity to raid a corporate compound, choosing between an offensive or support role. Going with support started me off with a sniper rifle and a chance to score plenty of headshots, which my character was quite fond of shouting about. I’m not sure there’s anything here that will rock the foundations of the shooter world at present, but weapons “feel” good whilst filling less-than intelligent enemies with bullets, and bailing out comrades by healing their wounds might serve as your good deed of the week.

At no extra charge, each playthrough will treat you to the trailer, with music that supports EA’s agenda of having lots of soundtracks this year that go “WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB”.

As always, check the demo out and let me know what you think.

The redeemable token will allow those that purchase Dragon’s Dogma for Xbox 360 to sample RE6 on July 3rd, which Capcom notes as 60 days earlier than any other platform – PlayStation 3 owners will have to wait until September 4th. Keep in mind that there’s no sense of just how much meat is on that demo bone at present.

This naturally raises many questions, including whether we should be interested in Dragon’s Dogma, which hits shelves in North America on May 22nd.