6th November, 2006
Gee I Sure Hope We Solve This Mystery
Monday, 8:40 am in Gaming
The other day I decided to ‘rent’ Kingdom Hearts II from EB Games. I’m not sure exactly how many people really realise this, but if you’re willing to throw down a hundred dollar deposit (or whatever) on a game at EB to ‘buy’ it you can effectivley rent it for a week due to their returns policy. As long as you’ve got the cash up front it’s technically cheaper than actual rentals, and if you really dig the game you can always keep it (like I did with KotORII).
I’ve always avoided the KH series because I just find the whole concept really, really fucking dumb. Not just regular dumb, either, but game-breaking-suspension-of-disbelief dumb. Sorry, fangirls, but Disney just doesn’t do it for me. Seriously.
Anyway, in lieu of any better candidate, I went out and ‘rented’ it over the weekend for myself. I’ve just finished the first two Disney-themed ‘worlds’ (Beast’s Castle and Mulanland) and I’m soundly grateful that my aversion to the series all these years has been entierley justified. The really annoying part is that KHII really wants to be a good game. I was really digging the into part, y’know where you’re hanging about as Roxas and doing your little jobs and solving your litter mysteries and then all these dudes in black capes show up and some weird guy who talks like Christopher Lee (is it? I keep forgetting to check) and looks like that other guy… and Axel, he was cool, and all the mad jumping about with Keyblades in the FFesque city, that’s all cool too… and I’m thinking, “Yeah, okay, maybe I was wrong about this game after all!”
And then suddenly all the fun stuff vanishes and Disney characters are popping up out of every orifice and, seriously okay I don’t fucking care about Winnie the fucking Pooh. Don’t drag me away from my Important Cheating to talk to me about a bear. And do you know what I ate last night for dinner? Duck. You know why? Because they don’t fucking serve dog in stores here and goddamn I wanted to eat those two idiots. Just as I’m almost slipping back into game immersion, one of my two irritating ‘sidekicks’ just has to open their mouths (and man I’m glad Donald has subtitles ‘cause I can’t understand him any better than I could at age five). Not cool.
Aspects of the game are obviously visually stunning (there’s one particular scene in Mulanland of the avalanch that made me just go wow), but the mix of artistic styles is just grating. So you’ve got this handful of highly-detailed FFesque anime characters in two styles (‘chibi’ and ‘hyperreal’), you’ve got pre-1990s style Disney characters (Merlin, the old anthropomorphic characters), you’ve got post 1990s style Disney characters (Belle, Mulan), live action characters (Captain Jack) and Tim Burton characters (the other Jack). Seriously no. What a vomited up abortion of a mess.
I’ve still got no fucking clue how the so-called ‘battle’ system works. I just mash X a lot occasionally indespersed with Triangle and things just seem to fall over and die. I’m sure there’s supposed to be some kind of finesse here but buggered if I can find it. Not to mention I’m glad I chose the sword because I think I’ve cast like two spells and one of them was Cure. The battles look cool, I guess (there very frenetic and all that), but I really feel like I have absolutley no control over their outcome, and I’d hate to actually encouter something hard that required strategy. I still can’t figure out how to make the Circle and Square commands work.
I’m not even going to get started on the ‘Gummi Ship’ minigames.
Though I think the thing that rritates me most is simply the fact that KHII wants to be a good game (I like the ‘Synthesis’ system, and the battle system is okay in an extremely-easy-whee-jumping-pew-pew kind of way), and has a good, ‘classic’ FF-style plot, but it just bogs itself down in innane Disney ‘realms’ (hint: I’m playing a KH game to play KH, not to rehash the plot Mulan) and pointless Final Fantasy insertion characters. I like all the original KH characters; even Sora, who’s kind of a bit wet (not to mention has a girl’s name) but has cool fighting stances and a cute shounen-ai relationship with the resident badass-but-not-evil silver-haired bishie. I like the whole Nobodies/Heartless plot thingaling.
You know what I don’t like? Trying to pretent Mickey Mouse is some kind of godlike badass. Seriously. I lul’d.
So, fangirls (and bois), I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you all that you were wrong and I was right and KH sucks rotting zombie balls.
It’s my birthday next weekend. It doesn’t feel like it; mostly because it’s been usurped by this stupid engagement party thing. So much for a quiet weekend with ~Mat [h]…
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