Review: The World Ends With You

While good games can get away with doing gameplay right and having passable storylines, great games are expected to do everything - sound, visuals, gameplay, and story - with a certain level of competence.

But great games also have to do something else - they need to progress gaming in some way or another.   They need to present elements so fresh they'll change  the way other developers approach their products. In this sense, there seems to exist an unwritten statute for, one prerequisite for the "important" video games - they need to be revolutionary.

The World Ends With You is characterized by its refusal to play by this rule. While it’s definitely a revolutionary RPG, it seems destined to cult status for its quirky storyline and strange, frenetic combat mechanics. Without big sales, it won’t see many imitators. Without imitators, it will always be the first and last of its kind - a game that didn’t quite please mainstream audiences, but which  managed to feel simultaneously  fresh and familiar.

TWEWY gets off to an awkward start, opening with a cutscene that evokes the feel of an anime Dashboard Confessional video. Neku, the game's main character, is introduced as an anti-social jerk who, strangely enough, has recently been murdered. He regains consciousness as a ghost in an abandoned version of Tokyo known only as “the Underground,” and is given the chance to win his life back. It’s all very convoluted, and only gets more complex from there. But the overload, while initially overwhelming, intertwines itself with the game’s overarching themes of death,  friendship, and the prevalence of technology in society. While the storyline of TWEWY might be a mental overload for lots of players, there are other instances in the game where such extravagances feel familiar, and sometimes even comforting.

There are some people who have grown tired of that classic "Square Enix look." You know what I'm talking about - lead characters in extravagant, gender-ambiguous clothing. Hairstyles only achievable through the liberal use of gallons of gel and hairspray cans. Buckles everywhere. Shoes that would make even a clown do a double-take. They're all present in TWEWY, but for the first time that I can remember, they actually work. This is mostly due to the fact that the game revolves around a more flamboyant, alternate Japanese style. It doesn't have to replicate the idea of a stylized spirit-Tokyo; it is the idea of a stylized spirit-Tokyo. If the Final Fantasy series bent Japanese stylistic standards to create their world cultures, the entire universe of The World Ends With You is built on that style.

Moving forward with the theme of maximalism, we now reach TWEWY’s gameplay.  Many have criticized the combat's steep learning curve, and while this is definitely not a pick-up-and-play affair, there's enough flexibility within the system to allow for even newcomers to learn the ropes of dual-screen combat. I remember playing through the my first battle and thinking, "No way I can control two characters at a time. I can barely control one!" Eventually, I learned that the top screen is less of a priority, and more of something you have to just keep an eye out for and use strategically to set up fusion combos. There's no doubt that fighting in this game is complicated, but it's actually fun, and once you get the hang of it, you feel that there's an amount of real skill and finesse that goes into the gameplay. Being able to keep track of two things at a time becomes a second nature, and there's a sense of pride that comes with the ending of every battle.  You feel cool.

With its maze-like story, thumping soundtrack, dizzying combat, and neon-bright art direction, The World Ends With You always has something to tell you. Look here, press this, swipe that, equip this, listen to her. But unlike Final Fantasy and other franchises that might seem similar, The World Ends With You doesn’t act as a transport to another universe. Instead, it’s an amplified signal of our own reality, a near-perfect conjuration of the chaos of teenage life in a dense urban environment.

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Video Game Reviewing: My Rundown

If I ever want to review games, what better place to start than now?

Before I review my first game, though, I'm going to go over my little review philosophy, and how I'm going to be critiquing my games.

To set one thing straight, I want to answer one question that most reviewers fail to bring up:

Why am I reviewing games? While I suspect many review to recommend or discourage prospective customers from wasting hard-spent cash, I believe game reviews can surpass that standard. So, while my main focus will be to recommend and/or discourage, I also want my reviews to serve as a discussion of a given game's contribution to the gaming medium. I want the person reading my review to be able to come back and connect with it in a way they couldn't before playing the reviewed game.

No numbers, no letters, no crap. We live in a world where games like Madden and Katamari Damacy are graded along the same scale. I'm not gonna deal with number or letter grading stuff. I'm just talking about games realistically, so you're going to have to read if you want idea of what a game I'm reviewing is all about.

Transparency. Since a game I love may be one you end up hating, I'll make up the difference in-between and let you in on my biases and whatnot. I really am trying to help you out here. : )

Honesty. I'll tell the truth. I have no reason to lie.

Ultimately, I'm going to include in my review what I think'll help you make a decision you won't regret when buying a game. That's my main goal, and I'll do anything I can to stick to that.

Let's start the reviews!

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Super Smash Bros. Duel! - Final Destination, No Items.

Last night, I was at a friend's house with some old acquaintances from high school. And they started playing Brawl for fun. Now, my character is Solid Snake, and I'm proud of the fact that I know how to use him pretty damn well. So I put my little gold coin down on Snake, and wait for the match to start. As the load screen comes up, I realize that I'm fighting against only one of my friends, on Final Destination, with no items.

Unfamiliar with the item-less play style, I do a little complaining: "I'm not used to playing like this..."
To which a douchebag spectator replies: "What, with other people?"

Mid-way through our match, said douchebag spectator leaves, wishing my opponent good luck on his way from his seat. In my rage, I lost the match by a stock life.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. I have a big problem with crap like this. Do you really have to give me flak for playing Brawl for fun, and not competition? Honestly, people! I personally think that Brawl wasn't meant to be played the way they were playing it that night. It takes out all the fun!

One of my friends made a good argument: "If you play with items, the game becomes about who gets the better stuff, and not about who's the better player".

But to me, that's just not true. The fun of the game is making use of the items and improvising with them. It adds a factor of randomness to the Smash mix, and it adds excitement and some truly crazy moments to the gameplay. It also requires some level of skill to play with items, as one must know what each one does, and how to use them, to do the most damage. Conversely, if you know how to dodge or avoid an item, then you are the more skilled player and that works out too.

If Mario Kart gave you the option to turn off items, would you do it? Sure, they add a rubber-band instability to races, but they make it fun and interesting. Or else it's just may the best man win, and Mario Kart isn't a sport. To some, Brawl is, but at this point, I'm not into gaming for pure competition. It sort of ruins the experience for me, mostly because I'm not a competitive person. When I am a competitive person, I make sure that what I'm doing is fun, and not just for the purpose of showing off that I'm better than someone else at something.

If that's the way you like playing games like SSBB, that's fine. It's a personal choice, and I respect it. I don't personally enjoy it, but it's okay if you don't like playing that way. Just don't be a douchebag about it. Please.

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Previously on Non-Virtual Reality...

It's getting pretty late, but there's something I wanna talk about.

Let's talk about Alone in the Dark. This game, developed by Eden Games and published by Atari, is doing something really different. When I heard they were using episodic content, it wasn't a big deal. I kind of just glossed over it, and figured it was another survival horror game, just another Resident Evil ripoff.

And even if I wasn't wrong and this game ends up sucking major donkey butt (which doesn't seem to be the case), AITD might change the way people play games. We like talk about games becoming more cinematic experiences, but did we ever think that eventually we would be able to fast forward and rewind our gaming experiences? That's exactly what Atari is allowing us to do. When you pick up the game, pretty much the whole thing minus the ending is unlocked. Of course, playing through the whole thing is no fun if you start at the end then work your way to the beginning. But it does do some very interesting things for gamers who don't want to commit hours of gaming at a time. Each couple-hour-long "episode" ends in a cliffhanger. This allows gamers to commit just a couple of hours to the game at a time if they choose to, and just go into the next episode if they feel like playing longer.

According to Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's CEO,

...Video gaming has become an exclusive experience. The complexities of some of the newest games have alienated those who used to play games with their entire families.

And he might be right, but this new gameplay mechanism really shows that Nintendo isn't the only company that can change and broaden the appeal of gaming experiences. I honestly think that this game will cause some sort of a shifdt in the gaming market that will eventually lead to broader audience appeal. It's opening up the boundaries of video games. The concept in and of itself, after all, is focused on making gaming something manageable, something you don't have to devote a monstrous amount of time to. This new style of video gaming is more welcoming than that more "hardcore" games, like RPGs, where collecting one item can take the same amount of time as beating one level in a game of any other genre.

I don't think that Alone in the Dark will be the game that revolutionizes the way people play games, nor do I think that it will be the game to make more people play games. I do commend the people over at Eden, though, for doing something differently and taking a risk. If more developers made decisions like these, we could break out of the constraining norms that make the audience of modern gaming such an exclusive one. And besides, I can totally see myself playing by episode. Totally.

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Ode to a Personal Favorite

I've grown up a gamer. From my younger days at an NES to the time spent at my first console, the Playstation, to times of family bonding at an N64, I can't remember a time when I wasn't sitting in front of a screen, wide-eyed and mashing on buttons. One thing that's always stuck with me though, is the first time a game ever made me feel something.
Kingdom Hearts, a Disney/Squaresoft game, combined Final Fantasy characters with the Disney characters I grew up watching. I fought alongside Goofy, Donald, Aladdin, The Beast, and other characters that I was only ever able to imagine as a kid. Right off the bat, I connected with the young Sora, whose life on Destiny Island was about as simple as I thought mine to be at the time. But then, when the Heartless came and engulfed the Island in darkness, I was taken out of the simplicity and thrown into Sora's shoes to face a great evil.

From there, the game took off, and I loved every minute of it. The hours spent adventuring around with my new Disney friends flew by like minutes, and in some strange respect, I became Sora when I played the game. I think it's because in Kingdom Hearts, Sora is the real outsider. All of the Final Fantasy characters and Disney characters all have their established backgrounds and roots, but Sora, he's pretty much alone save his two besties, Kairi and Riku. But even Riku turns to the dark side, and Kairi's missing from the very beginning of the game.

Anyway, during my time with Kingdom Hearts, Sora's disbelief and sense of adventure and fun were always on par with mine, and each new territory to explore was like an incarnation of the flicks I'd grown up watching. Making friends with Donald and Goofy, and traveling to places like Wonderland and Mt. Olympus was always as new for me as it was for Sora. I felt the urgency Sora faced when put into a new and strange world all alone. I felt the happiness in reuniting with Kairi, and I felt betrayed and confused when Riku turned Heartless.

I invested lots of emotion into KH, and its climax still nearly drives me to tears – I don’t know why, but it makes me feel like a kid again. The innocence of childhood friendship, set against Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean”, gives me the same wonderful feeling I got whenever I used to go to Disneyland, when places like Agrabah and Neverland were mystifying, moving and above all, real. In a sense, Kingdom Hearts let me open up my imagination as a young gamer, not only because I could see everything as it unfolded on-screen, but because I was closer to the characters, which I actually controlled and battled alongside.
Kingdom Hearts was the game that made me see that games could make me feel real emotion, not just the satisfaction of doing something fun and rewarding. I'd like to know from any gamers reading this: What game did that for you, and why?

Race-ident Evil 5

So RE5's producer is claiming that RE5 isn't racist, and isn't backing down. If you're not familiar with this story, here's the piece from Kotaku:

When Capcom first showed Resident Evil 5 at E3 2007, there was a collective sense that what we'd just seen was going to stir the pot, as a big brawny white guy had just done his share of laying waste to an angry mob of Africans. Sure enough, Capcom of Japan received more than its share of criticism from those inside and outside of the gaming press. The first to lobby a notable complaint was blog Black Looks, writing that RE5 was "problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages."
Newsweek's general editor of tech N'Gai Croal later levied a similar but more measured assessment, saying that much of what was shown in the initial trailer "dovetailed with classic racist imagery," leaving him with the impression that "Clearly no one black worked on this game."
We were curious, in light of new media that seems to show a more racially diverse set of enemies and a noticeably less WASP-y new partner for Chris Redfield, if the team had taken that criticism to heart and altered some of their design decisions
Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi told us "No, not really." He said via his translator that cries of racism "didn't have any effect on the game design."
On the subject of Chris Redfield's new sidekick, one who appears to lean toward ethnically ambiguous, Takeuchi said "We wanted Chris to have a partner who was familiar with the environment. She's been in there since pretty much the beginning."
"In terms of the reaction, we're in the business of entertainment," Takeuchi said. "We didn't set out to make a racist game or a political statement. We did feel there was a misunderstanding about the initial trailer."
The Resident Evil 5 producer said they'd sent a team of Capcom staffers to Africa to do research in the area, stressing that they had decided to include Arab and Caucasian peoples based on what they'd seen while on location. We found it odd that there was virtually no non-Black representation in RE5's debut trailer, but Takeuchi was adamant that the current product is in line with their experiences.

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to think of the issue. It's great that the industry's at a point where gaming's a serious enough medium that the racism within them is actually an issue. And sure, they've garnered their share of controversy. Remember the Native-American-shootin' frenzy Gun? How about the Vice City controversy over "Kill all the Haitians"? Certain games have never been about taking themselves seriously, and Resident Evil has always been a franchise all about killing zombies with sweet guns. Sure, this doesn't make RE exempt from offending people, and I agree that changing a game's geographic setting requires diligent research and special sensitivities towards the people who live in those settings. The people who made this trailer didn't seem to catch on.
However, once again, this isn't the first time a Resident Evil game has been inaccurate or offensively stereotypical about its inhabitants. Remember Luis from RE4? I don't know what kind of Spanish-suave look they were going for with him, but they used pretty much every stereotype in creating his character - from the vest, to the long hair, to the boots, to the overdone jewelry, to that awesomely-bad Antonio Banderas accent.

And what about the little villages in that game? Their inhabitants were called Los Ganados, which means "The cattle", or "The mob". The church was the village's center, and its residents were, what, farmers with pitchforks and chickens that just roamed the dirt roads? I doubt Capcom went to Europe to research this before making the game. Do you think any of the people on Capcom's team were Hispanic or from a similar area? Did this offend anybody?
Nobody thought about these things when playing RE4 because they were too busy shooting up zombies, which is pretty much the only purpose the villagers served. I'd be willing to bet that Capcom isn't asking to be taken seriously with RE5. It's a chance to shoot up zombies in a different place from RE4 with better weapons, new characters, and the next-gen treatment.
This is what Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has to say about the issue:

There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ‘Resident Evil 4,’ and now ‘black zombies and that’s why people are getting upset.” The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that.
I think the audience isn’t demanding much change. They like the games they’re playing. They’re by and large comfortable with the amounts of stereotypes in their games. You know because another thing that you sort of have gamers run into in situations like this is that, “Oh it’s just a game.” [laughs] You know, if it’s just a game, then why do we care about how culturally relevant they are? I care about how culturally relevant they are. I take games as seriously as other art forms.

Ultimately, I think Croal makes a valid argument. In this day and age, there are boundaries and people need to be careful when they put things out that might perpetuate ignorance and/or racism. And sure, the original RE5 teaser wasn't sensitive to that. However, if that's the stance we're going to take on the games industry, then this issue should have shown its ugly face a long time ago, before Resident Evil 5, before Resident Evil 4, even before Mai Ling's cartoonishly-Asian accent in Metal Gear Solid.
If this racism in games issue hasn't exploded until now, then we've been playing games in blissful ignorance toward them for years. It's not just unfair to lay the consequences of this on RE5, but it's also hypocritical. The fact that Resident Evil had to move to Africa in order for gamers to realize that  Capcom doesn't make the most politically correct games just seems contradictory to me.
But hey, I guess it had to happen sometime, and I'm glad that we're holding games to standards of social justice. I just hope that we're consistent, and that when other franchises hit similar nerves, we stick to our guns and hold them to the standards we're holding RE5 to - not for Capcom, not for sales, but for the sake of the industry and its evolution into a medium where every developer and publisher is sensitive and aware of social issues.

And yes, Croal, I'm especially holding you to this.
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Check out the old trailer and the new trailer, and make your own decisions.

The fruit of a weekend's worth of reporting...

Video game violence argument ignites in the wake of Grand Theft Auto 4

Grand Theft Auto 4, a video game released on April 29, 2008, hit store shelves surrounded in a cloud of controversy regarding its violent content. Mainstream critics of the game spoke against the liberties the game places in players’ hands, including the freedom to steal cars, run down pedestrians, hire prostitutes, and murder innocent civilians.

Some of the main critics of the game, like CNN’s Glenn Beck, say that the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto eventually becomes manifest in our children. On his show, Beck made the argument that violence in games desensitizes people who play them.

“Killing each other is actually not a natural human instinct. Senior officers found if they trained the soldiers by putting a human silhouette on the bulls-eye during target practice, they could condition the men to shoot more easily… It took 75 years and countless billions of dollars to train our soldiers to kill. Today, 60 bucks buys your kid the same thing.”

Although the game’s release triggered Beck’s argument, Grand Theft Auto 4 was making waves even before it was sold in stores. In the days leading up to its release, Grand Theft Auto made the news when the Chicago Transit Authority pulled its advertisements from bus stops. Take Two interactive, the game’s publishers, filed a lawsuit against the CTA on May 5, 2008, claiming that they had violated a $300,000 campaign agreement without any explanation.

Of course, Grand Theft Auto was not the first video game to stir up controversy. Death Race, an arcade game first released in 1976, gave players points for running down pedestrian “gremlins”. Although the game was based on a film starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, its violent content provoked a major public outcry and inspired the very first organized protests over a video game.

The more recent Mortal Kombat, released in arcades in 1992, caused an uproar that eventually provoked the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which is still the standard for rating games today.

Violent games also came under fire in 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School killed 13 people before shooting themselves. According to their parents, both Harris and Klebold were fans of the game Doom, a first-person shooter in which players must use guns to kill evil creatures.

As many people continue to speak out against violence in video games, others maintain that games pose no more of a social threat than movies or music.

“The older generation is still under the impression that games are toys, that all video games are for kids, or that video games are dangerous,” said Leigh Alexander, associate news editor for video game news site Kotaku, “there’s a lot of misinformation…. The responsibility is definitely on the parents to understand the kind of media that their kids are consuming.”

Others who believe that violence does not have directly adverse effects on players say that ultimately, games are only meant for entertainment purposes, and that parents should be able to tell whether or not their children are mature enough to play them.

Christopher Zamora, a 16-year-old gamer from Chicago, said that many teens are mature enough to understand the difference between real life and a video game.

“You’ve got to realize that it’s just a game. It’s not that serious. You’re not going to go out and shoot people or do what you see happening in the game. You just know it’s a game and do it to have fun, not for the violence.”

While there are opinions on both sides of the table, the question still stands as to whether or not violence in games actually correlates with violence in real life.

Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D, and Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D, are co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. In 2004, they started a study on the effects of video games on teenagers. The $1.5 million study was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and included more than 1200 middle school students.

Olson said that the results of the study were surprising and unexpected.

“About 44 percent of 7^th and 8^th grade boys were playing Grand Theft Auto video games a lot. For kids who play at least one M-rated game a lot versus kids who play other games, there was an increased risk of common aggression or school problems. The higher the proportion of mature games, the more at risk they were for common teenage problems.”

Olson also noted that the study only illustrates a correlation, and that it does not cover whether or not video games actually cause violent behavior in teens.

“Odds are, if your child is otherwise healthy, an occasional violent game isn’t going to hurt them at all. One thing we found is that a lot of kids said they got their anger and stress out by playing violent games. It’s probably a healthy thing in moderation, but we just don’t know.”

Until definitive research is conducted, the true effects of violent games on teenage minds are still yet to be determined. Until that time comes, Olson says that only parents can take action to monitor and protect young minds from potential harm.

“Sometimes content that parents object to in a game isn’t apparent right away. If there’s something you object to, you can spot it and talk to your child about it.”

To Alexander, the only thing more important than completely controlling your kids’ experiences is to understand that doing so is impossible.

“As much as parents want to, they can never completely control what their kids see and do... your hope is that you just have a good enough relationship with your child that he or she is doing those things safely, and if he is doing something inappropriate for his age, that he feels comfortable discussing it with parents.”

SIDEBAR

In order to best regulate what kids are playing, it’s important for adults to be aware of how the ratings system works. The following are some tips for knowing what’s okay for kids to play.

- Check the rating. Each game is labeled with a comprehensive rating that identifies any objectionable material in a given title. Check out this graphic for more information.

- Know your kid. One of the reasons why it’s so difficult to pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship between violent behavior and video games is that each child is different. When buying a game for a child, keep in mind whether or not he or she is mature enough to play the game.

- Put the games in an open area of the house. This method, according to Olson, lets parents see exactly what it is their kids are playing, and it minimizes their time spent playing it. Placing games in a more open area also reduces the chances of kids playing inappropriate games.

- Take advantage of parental controls. Game systems like the Xbox 360 contain parental control features that automatically regulate which games kids play and how long they play them.

- Think ahead, and think realistically. Adolescents are crafty. They’re capable of doing inappropriate things without a parent’s consent, and to a point, there is no way one could possibly take control of a teenager’s explorative mischief. That is by no means reason to give up on the task of parenting, but understanding a son or daughter and preparing for the unexpected goes a long way.