Internet Court is the Sharknado of FMV adventures. It has zero budget and amateur actors but a lot of heart, charm, wit and a wink at the camera whenever it does something. Whilst it lacks production values, its self-awareness and tight script make it a genuinely funny game to play – so long as you enjoy a meme or two.
The idea that Internet Court was actually recorded and made pre-covid makes everything a bit more fun as this is now our reality for real courts. You will play as three different characters across four cases of internet drama. You’ll have a friend who unfriended someone without reason. A bad fanfic author who writes too many cliffhangers in one story. A dodgy online ad and a troll problem. These are all debated with testimonies and evidence and it is all here as a live-action send-up of Ace Attorney.
Each case presents you with evidence for you to spot errors in. The puzzles themselves are easy and often you are given multiple choice answers. Getting important questions wrong earns you a strike and after three strikes you are booted from the case. The only issue with this is that you can just hit retry and pick up where you left off which nulls any jeopardy involved. Instead, I used picking wrong answers as a great way to see all the different dialogue branches. You can only go about two or three lines of dialogue before something silly pops up so it is worth exploring.
Internet Court’s four cases takes you around three hours to complete, with some bonus outtakes and behind the scenes footage to enjoy afterwards. Exploring other branches will add another hour on. You have access to tons of save files so you can spam them to explore options whilst keeping a clean slate of perfect answers if you want to.
The game is very entertaining in that the acting is amateur but in a knowingly school play kind of way. Everyone is reading the script off the screen but injecting over the top emotions into things. It evokes that crazy early 90’s FMV z-movie feel but on purpose. It knows its source material very well too and works perfectly as a comedy. For some, the so-bad-its-good vibes aren’t their cup of tea and peaking audio from laptop video clips won’t help them connect with it. I’d argue that Internet Court isn’t really for them though.
Internet Court is for indie creators that see a beacon of creativity and gung-ho attitude and embrace it. For everything that shows this is a bedroom project, the script and idea are top tier and that carries everything else through. Whilst being an excellent game to play and enjoy, it also gave me a warm hearty glow within too. It showed me that with a bucket of enthusiasm, creators can have a go at anything if they want to. No objections required.
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