Customer Reviews

Miami Law

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Despite Miami Law's flaws (mostly due to excessive simplicity), I found the game engaging and enjoyable overall. The story and characters are all pretty cliche, but I found it fast-paced and compelling anyway. The majority of the game play is basically point-and-click adventure, though the game unfortunately doesn't really allow you to make any wrong decisions. (i.e. If you try to leave a place and you're supposed to do something else instead, your character will say something like "The meeting isn't over yet." If you try to use your cellphone and you're supposed to do something else, your character will say "This isn't the time for phone calls.") So, there's less real game play involved during the point-and-click adventure or narrative experiences, which make up the majority of the game. Thrown into the mix are lots of mini-games, which arise as part of the ongoing narrative story. For instance, Law will be walking into a trap, Sara will know it but have no way to contact him as he's turned off his PDA and cellphone, and so Sara will have to enter Law's ID number to track him with a special device inside his PDA. When given the choice, I played most of the mini-games as Sara, and they are more of the puzzle variety. Sometimes I wasn't given a choice and had to play as Law. When you play as Law, the mini-games are action oriented. These mini-games are a little more lengthy, but they mostly just involve alternating between tapping things with the stylus to shoot at them and using the L-button to take cover and avoid the bullets coming toward you. Two of the mini-games in Case 1 were on the DS Download Demo available on the Wii. Though insanely easy at first (like finish in 5 seconds easy in Case One), the mini-games got considerably better deeper into the game, and the dialogue even has some great self-deprecating humor at times ("Holy diabolical plot!").

Also on the positive side, this game seems to have more replay than some, as you have different gameplay (both point-and-click and mini-games) depending on which character you have chosen to be at various times. That's important in Miami Law because the game is very short. It took me roughly four hours to complete all five cases and beat the game. That's not much play time. However, I am actually going to replay it in a few months. I selected Sara at almost every opportunity when I played the game this time, so I followed Sara and her side of the story, made her decisions, and played the puzzle-oriented mini-games. Next time, I'll select Law, so that I can follow his side of the story and play the more action-oriented mini-games. The same basic events will happen (I believe), but the dialogue and gameplay should be different when I play the game again, so I think the game really does have some replay value. When you consider the replay value, it's closer to eight hours of playtime total, which is more acceptable.

Beating the game also unlocked a few extras, including Texas Hold 'Em and Sudoku (don't ask me why?!) as well as a mini-game from the main game that (I think) may change if I keep playing it and beat all of the levels. I'm not sure about this, as I haven't played with the extras much yet.

Overall, Miami Law is a short but enjoyable point-and-click police adventure and mini-game combo.

My 8 year-old son is enjoying this game as much as any other. Amazon has the best prices available.