Law & Order Legacies: Episode 6: Side Effects (iPad)

GameCola Headquarters
7:41 PM

*dun dun*

“I can do this,” the lonely GameCola writer says, in an attempt to build up his confidence. “I can do this. No pain, no gain, right?”

Taking a deep breath, he picks up his cell phone and dials a certain number. She answers on the third ring.

“Hey, Michael,” she says. “What’s up? Spending another night alone?”

He looks around at the empty room, which is littered with broken game controllers and Boy Meets World DVDs. “No,” he lies. “I…I have a date tonight.”

Out of politeness, she tries to hold back the flood of laughter. A small snicker escapes her lips as she asks, “Oh, really? With who?”

“With you, baby!” he says in his most suave voice. “I thought we could–“

He stops, as the only thing he can hear is a dead dialtone. Sighing, he hangs up the phone.

“Guess I’ll write another Law & Order review…” he says.

Adam gets a spot in the opening credits, even though he’s not actually in the game. I guess his role as a character was…Schiffted a bit.

Law & Order Legacies: Episode 6: Side Effects is the second-to-last installment in this series of seven. That means it’s time for the series to start wrapping up all its various loose ends! Or, if you’re Harry Potter, it’s time to make up loose ends arbitrarily. As Dumbledore says in that book, “Sure, I knew all along that the only way to defeat Voldemort is to destroy all the Horcruxes. I just didn’t think it was important enough to even mention before now. My bad!”

The previous five episodes of Law & Order Legacies all contained references to an unsolved murder called “The Preppie Jogger case.” There haven’t been any specific details; they just mention the Preppie Jogger in passing. When Paul and I played Episode 1, we figured that the series is building up to the final case, in which our heroes finally catch whoever killed the Preppie Jogger.

And we were kind of right! Episode 6 introduces us to some of the major players in the Preppie Jogger case. The jogger’s brother is the murder suspect, and the jogger’s girlfriend is the main witness, despite the fact that she didn’t really witness anything. I suppose the two of them have bad luck, considering that this is the second time in a year that they’ve been knee-deep in a murder investigation.

This is the album cover for the Law & Order Legacies CD spin-off.

This time around, a high school student was killed in the school gym. All the evidence clearly leads to one suspect, who refuses to talk because he’s hiding a big secret. The investigation is mostly the exact same thing as the other games, but there was one new challenge this time: an interrogation where the detectives play good cop, bad cop.

True, that also happened in the first episode. But this time around, things are different. Instead of choosing what to talk about, you pick who should talk, the bad cop or the good cop. Successfully do this five times in a row, and you get the suspect to crack. It was actually a surprisingly fun change of pace.

Speaking of a change of pace, the trial portion of this episode is only ten minutes long. The defendant comes up with a solid alibi, so the rest of the trial is preempted by more investigation. The attorneys conduct the investigation themselves, because they don’t want the detectives to hog all the screen time, and it isn’t too long before they reach the worst part of the game.

Spoiler alert time! During the investigation, the lawyers find a videotape of Allison being raped while she is unconscious. She became pregnant around that time, so it’s entirely possible that the rapist is the father of her child. You, the player, are given the choice whether or not to tell her that she was raped.

Now, take a moment to think about this. How would you break the news to someone that they were raped? And that the father of her child may be someone else entirely? Obviously, this is a very delicate situation that requires careful handling.

Well, here’s how the attorneys break the news. They invite Allison to the precinct, and they ask her to watch the video of herself getting raped. No, they don’t tell her that she was raped; they have her watch it. This literally made me want to scream at the game. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE ATTORNEYS? Do they NOT understand that it’s a bad idea to show something like that to a girl who’s completely unprepared for it?

That is, hands down, the worst part of the case. I felt like the game was punishing me, for choosing to tell Allison the truth. Sure, I want to tell her the truth, but NOT LIKE THAT! There are other ways to let Allison know she was raped. You don’t have to resort to video evidence, right from the beginning.

Did I mention Allison is seventeen? I didn’t, did I? Well, the attorneys don’t take that into consideration, either.

No, wait, this is the album cover for the Law & Order Legacies CD. The “Right to Remain Silent Rap” is one of my favorites.

OK, the one horrible—and thankfully optional—moment aside, the rest of the case is good. As you might expect, the drama stays on until the very end, when the culprit manages to accidentally incriminate herself. After that, it’s an easy conviction, and all the people involved in the case live happily ever after.

Can you skip cases 1-5 and start with this one? Yes, and I don’t think that would make the case any less enjoyable. That’s because in this case, the storyline and the new characters completely dominate. You don’t need to know anything about the detectives and the attorneys, because they take a backseat to the action in this episode. In fact, I think they could have replaced Rey Curtis with Mike Logan, and the episode would still be exactly the same.

This episode is a flashback case, so the final episode will jump forward about 11 years. Perhaps there will finally be a resolution to the Preppie Jogger case in Law & Order Legacies: Episode 7: Resolution. Then again, maybe Episode 7’s name has nothing to do with the episode itself, just like this episode. Stay tuned to find out!