Adult Swim’s Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law follows the legal adventures of the titular Mr. Birdman, once a 60s-era superhero on Hanna-Barbera’s Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. Years after Harvey stopped fighting crime hand-to-hand, he and his sidekicks become a legal team at the law firm of Sebben and Sebben, using their (nebulous) legal skills to help various other 60s-era Hanna-Barbera cartoon icons, including the Flintstones, Scooby Doo and the gang, and many more. If this sounds like the setup for a courtroom point-and-click adventure game, then you’re thinking just like the folks at Capcom, who have brought us Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law for the Wii.

The game is composed of five cases. After a short cut scene introduces the situation (usually a crime of some sort has been committed, and Harvey either volunteers or is forced to take the case), you get into the gameplay, split into two parts: investigations, and trials. During the investigation segments, Harvey moves from location to location, finding evidence and talking to witnesses/suspects/random characters who may or may not have anything to do with the case at hand. After investigations are complete, the trial portion of the gameplay begins. Here, you listen to witness testimony, picking it apart to find any faults, lies, or omissions they may be making. By finding the right time to press the witness’s statements and/or present relevant pieces of evidence, you can expose the true guilty party, winning the case. If this sounds a whole lot like the Phoenix Wright games, it should, because the game basically apes every element of gameplay directly from that legal adventure series. Which isn’t a bad thing — the Phoenix Wright games are incredibly fun. Still, those of you familiar with Capcom’s DS series won’t be surprised by a whole lot of what’s here.

Really, though, the merit of any point-and-click adventure game is going to pretty much come down to two things: the quality of its writing and its puzzles. On the first count, Harvey Birdman succeeds, provided you’re a fan of the absurdist humor the show is known for. The dialogue is spot-on, the situations are appropriately wacky, and tons of characters from the show, minor and major (not to mention an abundance of Street Fighter references/cameos), make appearances here. Along with the writing, the fact that almost all the voice actors from the series are present and accounted for (with the sad exception of Stephen Colbert as Harvey’s boss, Phil Ken Sebben), so each case really feels like a lost episode of the show, complete with closing credits (although these are filled with hilarious non-sequiturs instead of cast and crew names). Also impressive are the game’s graphics, though certainly not from a technical standpoint. Each episode looks exactly like the show, which is to say that this game resembles nothing so much as a poorly animated, 50-year-old cartoon — but I mean that in the best way possible. Suffice it to say that the developers have nailed the technical aspects; of all the licensed games out there, this is as close as we’re ever going to get to a playable version of the source material.

Unfortunately, the game’s puzzles leave a lot to be desired. Not that they’re poorly constructed, mind you; each fits perfectly within whatever crazy circumstance you happen to be in at the time, whether it’s trying to find a combination potato/electronic device hidden somewhere in a prison, or proving that Magilla Gorilla couldn’t have broken into Harvey’s offices. No, the main problem with the game’s puzzles is that they’re too easy. Each case only has a handful of environments to explore, with a few items in each that can be investigated. There’s no way to miss a crucial clue, because the game won’t let you advance until you’ve got all the relevant pieces of evidence in your inventory, so each case’s investigation segment boils down to checking every item in every environment until the game advances. On the occasions that there are characters to talk to, it’s the same thing, as the game won’t continue until you’ve found out all the important facts necessary to winning the case. In fact, the only way to lose the game is to present the wrong piece of evidence at the wrong time repeatedly, which is made almost impossible by the fact that the game pretty much comes out and tells you when to use each item.

The other main issue here is game length. I’d be the first to argue that game length isn’t nearly as important as most people make it out to be, and I’d prefer a short awesome game over some drawn-out, repetitive game any day of the week. Still, with only five episodes here, each beatable in under an hour, and no replay value to speak of, I have a hard time justifying Harvey Birdman’s $40 price tag, especially since the other versions of the same title are 10 dollars cheaper. Sure, the Wii’s motion controls are nicely implemented here, but they certainly aren’t worth spending ten extra dollars for.

Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law is consistently clever and hilarious, and really shows why the show has a cult following. At the same time, the gameplay elements are overly simple, and the whole thing’s over before you know it. Fans of the show will love it, if only because it’s a collection of playable episodes, for all the random hilarity that entails. Anyone looking for an introduction to the world of Harvey Birdman would probably be better off catching reruns on Cartoon Network first. If the game had come out at a budget price, it would have been a no brainer recommendation, but as it stands, there’s simply not enough content to justify the price. While series fans will love stepping into the shoes of their favorite superhero turned lawyer, anyone else would be better off renting first.

Gameplay: 5.2
That’s not to say the gameplay is bad, just that there’s so little of it. Aside from advancing the cinematics, the player’s involvement doesn’t extend much beyond choosing replies and presenting the correct piece of evidence at the right time.

Graphics: 8.4
They’ve managed to perfectly capture the look of the show, from the stiffly animated characters to the static backgrounds. Seriously, though, this is the closest any licensed game has come to preserving the look of its source material. During some of the longer cut scenes, you might just forget you’re not watching the show.

Sound: 8.8
Utilizing almost all the voice talent from the show (including Lewis Black, Peter MacNicol, and the brilliant Gary Cole as the titular lawyer) makes for a game that sounds almost as good as the show it’s based on. If they’d only been able to get Stephen Colbert, it’d be perfect.

Difficulty: Easy
With so few environments and objects to investigate, it’s almost impossible to get stuck. You’ve even got plentiful chances in the courtroom to find the right piece of evidence to present, so there’s a very slim chance you’ll find a case you won’t be able to solve.

Concept: 8.9
The Phoenix Wright-style of gameplay seems almost custom-made to Harvey Birdman and his legal adventures. I literally can’t imagine any other way a Birdman video-game could work. The point-and-click gameplay allows for plenty of the show’s strongest suit (clever, absurd dialogue), without any unnecessary combat sequences added in.

Overall: 7.5
If this game cost $20, it would be an absolute must-buy. As it stands, only true series fans are going to get their money’s worth. Still, anyone who has a few hours to spare and a functioning sense of humor could find worse ways to spend an afternoon than with Harvey and the legal team at Sebben and Sebben.