Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (Wii)
Adult Swim's most legal cartoon comes to the Wii.
1/30/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2
What's Hot: It's as surrealistically funny as the show.
What's Not: Phil Ken Sebben has been replaced by an obvious imposter.
Paul Semel
Status: I'm the King of the Cheese, and you're the Lemon Merchant.
Either way,
Harvey Birdman plays like five really long episodes of the show, except for the first case, which should only take you about 10 or 15 minutes, most of the cases can last as long as an hour or more, depending on how many wrong answers you choose for the sake of comedy. There are also midgame save points so you can take a break to watch "Robot Chicken."
But while this game is strictly for hardcore Harvey-heads, it ironically has one problem by which only those serious fans would be bothered: the absence of Stephen Colbert, who normally does the voice of Harvey's boss Phil Ken Sebben. In his place there's a sound-a-like, and while he's probably a nice guy and all, he's no Colbert. He's not even close. He sounds more like a friend of my dad than the host of "The Colbert Report." Thankfully, the rest of the cast -- including Gary Cole (Harvey), Thomas Allen (Peanut) and Chris Edgerly (Peter Potomus) -- are all present and accounted for, sir, as are the voices behind such recurring characters as Mentok the Mindtaker (John Michael Higgins) and X the Eliminator (Peter MacNicol).
Hardcore fans might also wish the cases had been about other Hanna-Barbera characters -- or maybe some familiar Capcom characters -- instead of just Harvey and his coworkers, though they'll probably take some solace in the fact that by setting the game after Season Three, the developers were able to include Birdgirl, one of the show's better characters.
Still, really only hardcore fans should consider buying this game, as it's ultimately so easy that even casual fans will finish it in a solid afternoon, and won't want to play it over and over (as opposed to people who've never seen or liked the show, who won't enjoy this at all). But if you're the kind of person who watches Harvey when it's on Adult Swim, even though you own all the DVDs...and a Phil Ken Sebben bobblehead...then you'll want to pick this up.
This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
