Here’s the short version of what Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law is all about: rapid-fire humor, much of it irrelevant to whatever else is happening at the time, tossed about as old school Hanna Barbara characters try to break each other down in a ridiculous court of law. For those who haven’t seen the show, the humor is presented in much the same way it is on Family Guy.

If this write up ends up sounding like a review of a TV show, that’s basically what the Harvey Birdman game is - a collection of 5 episodes for your watching pleasure. It’s too bad the price tag doesn’t begin to justify the content, because one could easily just watch the show for free elsewhere.

To its credit, the ‘episodes’ in the game are exclusive to the game, and are not write-offs of content already done on the TV show. They are full of original dialogue that is spoken mostly by the actual actors, barring Stephen Colbert’s voice for Reducto and Harvey Birdman’s boss, Phil. It’s easy to hear the difference from the sound-alikes and their real-life counterparts, but it’s a minor gripe when a game has so many other decent voice actors.

With the help of the voice actors the game nails the show’s humor, and the episodes all play out differently enough to continue to be entertaining.

Alas, the quality of the ‘episodes’ is just about all the Harvey Birdman game has going for it, because it is almost entirely devoid of gameplay. The player gets a limited number of chances to screw up a case - but in several instances, the player actually has more chances than he even has choices, meaning that the only real consequence is the minor inconvenience of seeing Harvey say ‘oh wait, that’s not right!’

For those that have played the Phoenix Wright games, be prepared to be disappointed, because there is little in the way of constructing the case, or examining the evidence here. In fact, because of the show’s quirky humor, the proper answer is often not even the apparently correct one.

Because there is barely any game here, you feel like you are just sitting in a chair, pressing the same button to continually advance to the next scene of the amusing TV show. Each of the five cases doesn’t even take a whole hour to sit through, making for an extremely short experience.

Unfortunately, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law is not worth the price of admission - since the real show is available for free elsewhere... just go watch that, instead.