Faux Poor Poorbetch Special: Catherine Demo

So almost immediately after I spend lauding it, Atlus USA (the tease) goes and releases the demo for Catherine on the PSN. I'd glee at any opportunity to get more information on it, of course, but it's also gives me a great opportunity to explain a game that probably deserves a little more context and background than a three-or-four paragraph summary. When I first introduced this game on the blog, it never occurred to me that there may be some of you out there who see men seduced by women with hair shaped like a couple of chandeliers grafted to their heads, gets steer horns and runs around in big boy undies and a pillow, and climbs blocks that unapologeticly eviscerate the laws of physics while running away from a fifty-foot zombie chick with an afro, and respond with a gentle "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PORNO DRUGGIE BULLCRAP".

So for you people that have only relied on my gut instincts and some really strange trailers, fear not! I now have more solid material to give you a better overview/introduction to the proud first entry of the up-and-coming "erotic horror puzzle platformer" genre. Maybe it's because I've had little other experience in the EHPP niche, but this game is definitely not like anything I've played before (in a good way), and is already on its way to exceeding it's already high bar. Don't believe me? Let's take a closer look.

For those of you who missed the previous FPPS, here's the post-it note summary of Catherine: everloser geekboy senior with a pink shirt cheats on his girlfriend, a seasonal gypsy curse rolls through town, and freaky stuff happens. Sounds like a typical day at the movies right? Ah ha ha, WRONG, because our hero starts dreaming that he needs to climb a huge tower made of magic storage bins that he has to shove around to make a stairway, climbing to safety before the blocks below him give out and he falls to his doom. Typical overly symbolic puzzle game right? Oh ho ho, WRONG, because this was made in Japan, so there's something weird that's chasing him all the way up, one of them being a psychotic representation of his pissed off girlfriend wielding a white 'fro and a huge fork she uses to pop him like a balloon with little pink rubbery bits in the middle.

Yeah. It's a huge post-it note.

What originally got me hooked on the game was the reputable team behind (Atlus's Persona 4 team, FYI), the theme monogamy versus non-commitment, oft not explored in games, and the game's unspoken promise of not being quite like anything you've played before. And it meets those expectations really well (for the hour or so I've played anyway). But other things I was banking on, like a distinctly edgy presentation and a battle system meant to break the Atlus fanboy brain rather than delight and amuse, were actually revered entirely. Unsurprisingly, it's for the absolute better.

The biggest thing that surprised me is the gamemplay is a blast. It basically works like this: you're given a huge wall of blocks stacked in a peculiar way, and it's your job to move the blocks to create a stairway to climb up to the top. Sounds simple and kind of tedious, right? But for reasons I'm having a hard time putting my thumb on, it's seriously and surprisingly enjoyable. First off, the controls are extremely simple, and tightened to a needlepoint. 3-D and platforming have always been on uneasy terms, but this is definitely one of the better designs. The controls are done on the d-pad as opposed to the joystick, so it makes for much more accurate, almost 2-D movements on a 3-D plane. It's easy to pick up, and one wrong twitch isn't going to throw you into oblivion. (Unless your an idiot like me and somehow manage to get BEHIND the wall and think it's a good idea to press the x-button to let go. FOR SOME REASON).

But what I think what makes this game so fun, and makes it stand out from puzzle games. is that it feels like one of the few that actually wants you to win. The field is brightly lit, there isn't a lot of things that are just going to jump at you and kill you, there are check points mid-puzzle, and the premise is so simple that it's easy to pick yourself up and dive in again. Even the game's little interface details feel more like positive reinforcement than the game getting a boner every time you can't beat it. Your sheep buddies actually cheer when you manage to score some coins, the game-over screen isn't mocking or grim, just has Vincent chipperly declaring "now's not the time to be dead!" when you choose to restart, and even the frustrating-by-design ranking system at the end is surprisingly kind. No Bayonetta style, "oh, so you only died once and used one item? Then here's a bronze trophy of a CANDY-ASS LITTLE GIRL you dick". All the trophies are the exact same shape, and regardless of what score you get, the game non-sarcastically congratulates you for surviving.

And they give you Utena-style gong bells when you get close to the entrance. Like, CHURCH BELLS are ringing the closer you get to beating the stage. Freaking awesome.

Sadly, you don't have an infinite number of retries, making for some frustration in hearkening back to the long ago days of having "lives" you need to keep track of. But on a huge plus side, Atlus listened to the fandom's plea for an easy mode, and instead of offering it as a patch like they did for the JP version, Easy Mode is now included in an in-game difficulty setting. But take caution--I played the demo twice, and even though I moon-walked through the first puzzle no problem, the later ones get sticky no matter how many times you play them, even on easy mode. Even though she's worth your attention, if you'd rather have a fun time than sitting down and committing to the old girl, you'll have your chance.

The presentation of the game, as expected, is excellent. Atlus managed to sew the nightmare world and the real world surprisingly well, but not quite by the way I thought. The real unifying factor turned out not a transition between gritreal and surreal, but rather an interesting balance of both for each of the worlds. The scenery in the bar that Vincent hangs out, the cafe where you see Catherine, and the nightmare world are all beautifully rendered, but they all have something over-the-top and just a little strange. For instance, and there seems to be an aesthetic balance between a well-lit foreground and an almost shadowy background, without sacrificing any colors in either. It's an aesthetic choice I really liked in Bioshock, but since Bioshock was trying to be ALL OUT GRITREAL, it seems a lot more natural with the tone of the story here. More on that later.

In addition to the choice of lighting, there are a lot of small details that are exaggerated. Like the huge pillows in the cafe, the TV-screens that flash solid light and color instead of direct images (all of which seem a little reminiscent of P4), and the wide, sweeping angles the in-game animations like to take, even looking a little distorted, like they're being shot through a fish-eye. As I've said, it's noticeable, but not distracting, and combined with the previous, as well as the unique but appropriate choice of using pink as an omnipresent color motif, the whole game has a really, really nice aesthetic. I can't wait to see what they do with it as the game progresses.

Also, I'm happy to report that the localization is fantastic. Translation teams have really gotten good at, you know, actually translating Japanese to English instead of some sort of 19th Century Romanticism Fairy Language. I mean, in only about 45 minutes of gameplay, the main character drops two f-bombs while still managing to sound like an adult while still sounding like a fanboy loser, just by how the dialog's structured. That's good, man. And the English VA team takes the mannerisms need for the characters and runs with them. Vincent would be a completely unlikable ball of bland if it wasn't for Troy Baker's wonderful performance, reminding us all that, uh yeah actually, it is pretty intimidating when your girlfriend pops the question for the first time. The same dialogue and good voice acting save the rest of the cast from falling into similar spheres, while the obligatory three-drinking-buddy greek chorus of youth vs. commitment vs. having a good time all become legitimate characters instead of prop cliches to pat the audience's head and assure them they aren't stupid.

I mean hell, they even made the obligatory love interest a legitimate character, instead of just some hot but prudish nag. Her full name is Katherine McBride for cripes sake, and you can still like her for it. Michelle Ruff's vocal talent deserves no small thanks, but there's just something about the way she behaves that's already fascinating to me. She isn't some passive-aggressive waif. She's got the career, the ambitions, and the proactive attitude to actually see whether or not her boyfriend is going to be an unambitious fanboy loser for life. Also, there's this lovely exchange:

Vincent: Have you ever had a dream where you...died?

Katherine: Like, when you're in danger?

Vincent: No, no, where you actually die. You're being killed, or something.

Katherine: No. (smile) I usually do the killing in my dreams.

But what really makes the game to me is that it's fun. And I don't mean that it has enjoyable gameplay and a good story, I mean that the game's entire point is just to be seriously freaking fun. It's treating its audience with respect and like intelligent human beings, certainly, but there's also a general air of whackyness that really keeps everything together. It's everywhere from the makes-no-sense-but-it-looks-seriously-cool opening animation, to the really bouncy soundtrack, to Vincent's truly epic open-jawed face faults, to the almost darkly humorous options menu. Once you get over seeing a sheep man falling down and exploding on the game logo like a jelly-filled zit, it's actually kind of funny to see one after the other falling in the background of the title scream, bleating in horror all the way down. Despite the solemn subject matter and the inevitable nightmare fuel to come, the game goes out of its way to make sure you're smiling through every second of it. Thank goodness for trippy Japanese games. The world would be a bleaker place without them.

Catherine hits the stores on July 26th, and I still got no dough to take her out. But if you want her, dude, I will totally be your wingman.

Bioshock: To Hipster Snob or not to Hipster Snob?

One day I'm going to be so famous that Anonymous will try to undermine everything I do, so being a good sport, I'll give them a leg up: I'm actually at a loss on whether or not I'm reviewing Bioshock. As this is the first shooter I've ever completed (at 21, and so accepting my award this year as the 7 time winner of the "whitest kid on the block" competition) so I'm not sure of my ability to contextualize it within the genre as a whole. That, and I have far, far less knowledge of memes from other works to stick in to convince you I know what I'm doing. So I guess if you were generous, you can call this a "stylistic" review (re: "ponsy froo froo art sissy" review) of the game, since it's taken from more of a literary criticism angle than from a gameplay or even story-based angle. Because, get your groan ready, I'm tackling the biggest question that sits around about the game: is it art?

As you can probably guess, this review is going to have more than a few spoilers in it. I'll try my best to keep it vague, and since this is a five-year old game, the internet has long since done a better job than I ever could. But yeah. If you don't like, be wary.

I guess if you squeezed me for a general review of the game, I would say "eehhhhhhh, it's okay". Not my favorite game (as it took me about half a year to finish it with how many times I put it down), but not not terrible. On the pro side,If I were to choose the game's strongest point, I'd definitely go with the sense of place. The general color scheme and lighting choice is similtaneously bright, colorful, and eye-catching, to really dim and claustrophobic. The throwback early-20th century art deco design also gives the atmosphere a sense of both timelessness and familiarity. The whole thing becomes a sort of messed-up urban fairytale landscape, a good environment for the sort of "shock utopia" story that Bioshock tries to tell.

I thought the gameplay overall was "meh", but that's probably just my unrefined non-shooter brain talking. I hope to come back to it once I have a little more experience with the medium. But there are certain parts I liked. I liked the plasmids overall. Each had their own utility and worked well for certain situations, but all could do a lot of damage if you just needed to pull one out quick and shoot a guy (well some had crippling overspecialization-itis. Looking at you "Hypnotize Big Daddy"). Same goes for the weapons. There were some that were just stupid (why do I need a cross-bow when I have a frigging machine gun, and what used do I have for a bazooka when I'm trapped in an enclosed underwater vacuum, dumbass?), but most had their time and place. I was still using my pistol toward endgame, and I'm not ashamed of that. And the character building overall was pretty good, except that I had to hunt down an in game machine if I wanted to switch in and out my own abilities, for both annoyance and counterintuitivity. But hey, nobody's perfect.

On the downside, the thing that pulled me out the most is lack of characterization, both on the part of my characters and the others around me. I think they were going for "alone with a bunch of madmen above you pulling the strings", but I have to agree with ABDN's review. The fact that the splicers were still distinctly human and attacking the main character on a justified "for the lulz" really pulled me out by the time the actual story characters started to appear. And while the "blank slate with an implied story" character can be done really well, this is not an example of it. It feels like the protag was supposed to be someone who YOU CAN INSERT YOURSELF INTO AND FEEL LIKE YOU YES YOU ARE A PART OF THE GAME.

And most of the backstory is told by these stupid lay around hard to hear "audio diaries" instead of actual characters, which isn't so much as giving you a sense of the world so much as it feels like the game talking to itself through a telephone filter when it could be doing so with dialogue or character behavior, or hell, with more of the regular harassment you get from the characters over the PA. In fact, even when actual characters do start showing up, they're few and far between, and most of them fall into either "egocentric prick" or "atoning egocentric prick" (most of the former being male and the later being female, for a pinch of nice, wholesome double-standard). The only character I like on their own merits was Sander Cohen, who was awesome by the way, but he was just over-the-top and irrelevant for the most part. You don't even need to fight the bitch if you don't want to (which I, in good conscience, did and could not).

So all that's left to put under scrutiny is the oft-contested "ethical dilemma" aspect of the game's existence. And before you lift your hand in protest, no, I'm not talking about the Little Sisters. If you have a braincell that can rapidly vibrate against the oxygen in your skull, and you see a five year old girl who's been brainwashed to extract miracle juice from dead bodies, and whenever you take her drill-wielding body guard, are given the options to either "SAVE this sweet, innocent, cherub-faced little treasure from her eternal torment of mind slave labor" or "HARVEST this rosy-cheeked, blithe-spirited little angel for her dead person juice as she screams and dies in agony before your eyes", and then you turn to me and say "weyell garsh Stype, thisun' here be one of them thar 'ethical dilemmas', they been caterwalling about, ain't it?", then you have a vending machine drop box with your face's name written on it. And if you for a second think that Man Ayn Rand and his Objectivist utopia, uninhibited by petty things like taxes and the police or anyone who just says 'hey maybe this is sort of bad', may attract the attention of one or two greedy, self-centered, sociopathic assholes, then the space between the back of the vending machine and the wall extends the same invitation as the drop box.

What I'm talking about is probably the most interesting and the most often overlooked aspect of the game's core philosophical problems: the contextual problem of free choice.

When we're first introduced to the world of Bioshock, the first person we see is Andrew Ryan, who asks us the now infamous question, "Is a man not entitled to the sweat on his brow?" The world of Rapture is built on the basic philosophy that every choice you make should be yours alone, unhindered by government, religion, legal systems, conventional morality, or your neighbor screaming to turn down that rock and roll. And when you see Rapture proper, it's filled with gene-doped psychopaths who have managed to alter their very DNA to blow lightning out of their fingertips and be better at baseball. As you may expect, the other shoe is not far to drop.

Now, this may seem like little more than a heavy-handed sermon on "don't play God" and "everything you do has consequences" and so on and so forth. But then the game takes the whole concept one step further. For most of the game's second act, which is about two thirds or so of the game, you're running around and just doing favors for people, and once you've completed each task within the level, you can move onto the next one. Basic stuff, right? But then the whole thing gets turned on its head when it's revealed that you, the main character, have been genetically manipulated to do all the tasks.

Reading it on paper, it seems like a stupid twist, and one's knee-jerk reaction is to say "come on, that's stupid, it's not like I, the player, was forced to do anything I didn't want to". And then you sit back and realize that the same opinion is, by design, what would come naturally to you if you were programed to act like that. The tendency to do all these things is, in practice, the same choice of what you assume your "free will" is to be. Now go back and look at the gameplay. You can't progress any farther in the game until you complete each task assigned. In order to operate within this game, still thinking you are a totally independent entity within it, you cannot get any farther until you do what the game dictates. You are a slave of the game's command, to represent your character being a slave to his programing's dictate.

Now, I concede that this could be reading into things, but my doubts were shattered when you played a later mission. Still under the reveal that your existence in mind and body is under someone else's control, the game then proceeds to chop off your maximum health points. And you feel it. Maybe it's just because I'm new to shooters, but even though I was playing on medium and had previously never died once during the game, my tiny health bar depleted so fast I didn't have time to grab a healing kit more than once. And then when it did the same thing with my Plasmid abilities, when I really needed to shock a bot so I could hack it and my worthless "Hypnotize Big Daddy" ability popped up instead, I was flailing around like a loony through the whole mission, even just under the sheer stress of sudden loss of control.

Bioshock has, accidentally or not, tripped on one of the basic questions burdening ethical philosophers: can we be held accountable to make the right choice when our own choices are inherently and very heavily influenced by our experiences, our environment, and our physical makeup? Where is the "we" inside ourselves to make that choice to begin with, if so much of our experience are dictated by those influences? And while I have no doubt that the "gene splicing" thing was more of a basic narrative motif adding to the game's flavor rather than originally designed to be an element of the story telling, it's still a really clever choice. With the advent of DNA research discovering genes that give us tendencies toward everything from alcoholism to liking football, the question becomes more and more pressing as to how much of our decisions are completely our decisions, and indeed, how we should go about defining "our" in the first place.

What's more interesting is that the game never really gives an absolute yes or no to either side. Andrew Ryan's downfall had a lot to do with being a dick. But much of it can be attributed to his absolute belief that everything he and others do neither effect nor are affected by the same forces that compel them. Try as he might, he could not free himself of the physical and social consequences of society, despite how much he, and his participants, tried to do so. This lead him to seizing power, censoring alternate opinions, killing dissidents, and generally becoming an totalitarian dictator. And by the end of the story, because you've traveled through the world and come to understand how he did and did not do things (or you would if you could HEAR THE DAMN AUDIO DIARIES), the events leading to his demise have more than a little pinch of irony to them.

On the other side of the coin, the side that believes you can be controlled merely by the manipulation of the forces that guide you, especially when said force has done so, messing with your genes, your environment, and your very mental road map, is shown to not be in the right either. Sure, your health is cut to nothing, but that's not going to stop you from shoving another machine gun round in and taking an army of splicers. And that's not even taking into account the very real allies you make along the way. You get friends who help you eventually break free of your conditioning, but even then, you're still hindered on your quest by something that seems almost trivial in comparison: elaborately locked doors. So even taking all the genetic malfunctioning, there are still things that get in your way from making an absolutely "free" choice. Yet even within the physical confines of the game, you can still overcome and still kick ass.

That's why, while a lot of their execution is misguided, I don't think the Little Sisters and the Big Daddies are a bad choice to really play into this motif. While the choice itself is about as problematic as tying your shoes, the idea of them is that you can still make choices, even when bound by the rules genetic mind screwing or doors which for some reason even though you have a freaking bazooka you can't break through. And if you get the good end to the story (which I admit made me cry BECAUSE I AM THAT MUCH OF A BADASS), well, it's icing on the cake.

So now we're back to the question we asked ourselves at the beginning of the review: Is Bioshock art? Well, no. Not really. The whole "can games be art thing" is going to be addressed in another review, but may I say that I definitely subscribe to the Extra Credits philosophical school of games being a budding artistic medium. It's slow, but we're getting there. And I think that Bioshock is doing things that we need to do if we ever hope to get "there".

If you're going to make a game art, you have to use everything to get your story told, innovations and limitations both. That's probably one of the reasons why the great age of survival horrors has past us: a big part of survival horror is lack, not have, a something that, obviously, the earlier generation had more of, and new how to work it to their advantage. At least in one general thematic the game tries to present, I think they did a good job. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly could have been tightened, but there's a real glitter of beauty from this game showing what the industry can do.

"But S-Type, you goose of exceptional sillyness," you say. "There be implications that you think that this motif is more accidental than what the game is selling itself as. So why are you still praising it?" Well, accidental or not, it's still an interesting aspect of the game, and one I don't hear talked about as often as it should be. Even if it was more an implication or accidental brilliance, it's still brilliance. Some may counter you counter that we shouldn't have to pull these things out of implications. If we do, the game's not doing its job, right? Well, as players, if we don't, we're not doing ours either.

First Twenty-ish Hours Playing Command Board. I mean Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

God, I freaking love the Command Board. It may just be my favorite mini-game in videogame history. Like, imagine Kingdom Hearts happened to meet Monopoly on the street, and offered Monopoly what it's been smoking since the early 2000's. Monopoly agrees, they chat for fifteen minutes and really hit it off, and before you know it, the Command Board is born.

Mmm. I love Monopoly. I love that feeling of getting Park Place and Boardwalk again, and use it as a cornerstone to snipe all that try to pass Go to bolster my already overindulgent pool of resources and throw the less fortunate to financial ruin. Ah yes. It's the feeling, rolled together with my secret love of numbers manipulation and leveling up your attacks in not-cheating-but-still-sneakily-underhanded ways to power up your stats. Nothing like doing level one missions with godlike attack sets. And this is rolled up in a package that has neither the six and a half hours of a good Monopoly game nor the frustrated restarting of stat manipulation. It's perfect. I love you Command Board. I really do.

Oh. Yeah. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

My review: Twenty or so hours in and this game is so mind-blowingly amazing I'm surprised my PSP didn't explode when I put the cartridge in.

There. Now can I play more Command Board now?

...

Arch. Fine.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep for the PSP came out about a week ago, and long story short, I've been geekgasming over it ever since. I was honestly a little worried after 358/2 Days, which was by no means a bad game, but was more to satisfy canon whores and Organization 13 fanatics than a full entry of one of my favorite game series. So my expectations were mixed when I picked it (and the preorder stickers) up from Gamestop. I also had a mild panic attack when the opening cutscene of the game created the all-to-KH feeling of 'holy mother what in the heaven is going on here' (and this is coming form a champion mind screw fanatic, mind you). But before I could even think that all hope seemed lost, the game arrived, giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder. "I'm sorry for that brief emotional breakdown, Miss Type," it said. "Now allow me to present you with everything you with everything you adore about this series. Except more of it."

In fact, that's the impression that stands out with me the most about this game: a lot more than I thought. One of the selling points Kingdom Hearts is that it's a big, big, universe-spanning game. And after having a lot of noticeable limits on the handheld systems (looking at you Chain of Memories card system), I was surprised to find that I was playing a game that was large enough and strong enough to stand on the turf of it's big-boy console predecessors. Everything I've seen so far from BBS, from it's gameplay, to it's story, to the worlds themselves, to the MIGHTY COMMAND BOARD is large and rich. It feels not like your usual hand-held trinket, but a full chapter of the increasingly sprawling KH storyline. It's about time.

I'm impressed with how creative the dev team played with the cards they were dealt on the PSP. They went beyond just using the cartridge space to make a competent game, but they went so far as to streamline and fine-tune the game rather than cut out what the fans will miss the least. Granted, this is about twenty hours into the game, which would be probably only about 10 hours of the proper gameplay campaign total, so my views are still pretty much impressions so far. That being said, here's what I've gathered, and the reasons I haven't been on a regular eating schedule this week.

First of all comes the gameplay. I'd like to weigh in on a format that Square has been turning to lately that I approve of-scrapping MP. Magic Points were always something that bugged me when I was first getting into RPGs: the brawlers can hack and slash to their hearts' content without getting exhausted, but when the mages ran out of magic points, they're forced to do nil damage by smacking people with their magic wands? Lame. In Birth By Sleep, all spells, as well as special attack moves, are now "commands" that you can customize to an eight-slot deck (when it's maxed out, of course), and can be accessed at any time by pushing the triangle button. These commands will recharge after you use them, and until then, you can just bash away with the x-button. It's a surprisingly simple system, but very effective, and leaves a lot of room for fooling around and figuring out works best.

Additionally, new commands can be unlocked by mixing commands together, and in leau of not having a item synthesis system like the previous games, you can use gems to meld special skills to these commands to give your characters bonus effects, like stat enhancement, reduction of reload times, and bonus enemy drops. Even better, each command has a level, and once you max it out, you can keep the skill, even if you scrap the command for better ones. It's a system that integrates both character development and attack strategy, and a clever and fun one at that. And while it's confusing reading off paper, it's quick to master, and you'll soon be combo prepping like a pro (by the way, Terra with Blind-->Stopga-->Zero Gravity=PILE OF CORPSES). In fact, it wasn't until I started writing this review that I realized that item synthesis, summons, and even equipment outside of keyblades are nowhere to be seen. The system feels so well tailored that all of the previous seem like clunky remnants from an old-school era of gaming.

And yes sports fans, the fighting is still hilariously over the top. I admit, it's not quite as fantastic as the cinematic mastery of II, but that's like comparing fresh pie with ice cream on top to fresh pie with ice cream on top served by dinosaur Chuck Norris. On top of the commands, there's a standardized eye-candy bonus finish for every basic x-button combo, which can be leveled up and customized as time goes on, so you can take satisfaction in wasting your foes even when you're button mashing. Additionally, there's a bonus bar that fills up at the top of the screen, and based on the moves you preform, puts your character into a super-mode, giving them even more bonus damage into basic attacks and commands (while glowing, natch), with a super-special thematic finishing move that pretty much wipes the entire board.

And this is a standard battle mechanic. You don't need to run around beating a billion foes for drops to access it, like you did with the drive mode from II, and thus even grunt battles suddenly become nothing short of badassery for the sake of badassery overkill. Which as you know, is the best kind of kill. In a way, it almost makes the battles more interesting, because the excitement is pretty evenly spread across the board, instead of being confined only to boss battles like in the previous games.

Another thing I have to say to the dev team-thank you for not making the magic itself suck. As you can probably tell by the screens, there are actually three playable characters this time around. Terra (the angsty looking brunette with a man skirt and a shirt that's painted on), Ventus, AKA Ven (the jailbait), and Aqua (Princess Shoulder Blades). The story is more or less a three-way-split perspective between them (more on that later), and each has a very distinct battle strategy. While they all have access to base spells, each character specializes (i.e. can command synthesize) in only a few exclusive types of megaspells. Each character's spells match their moves, making for three very distinct battle styles. Terra is a typical brawler with everything but speed, so he's fit with darkness and earth spells. Ven is a character with fair attack and abysmal defense and HP, but with insane speed. So he's given light-but-powerful spells, like holy attacks and wind magic. And Aqua is pretty much midway with most stats and sub-par defense, and is pretty much your magical warrior.

A magic-based combatant honestly had me worried. Kingdom Hearts games of yore are very guilty of magic system abuse. You had three or for slots for easy access in the first two games, and one is already taken up by your healing magic. And if you wanted a more advanced spell, you had to access and scroll down a menu right in the middle of combat. In addition the damage was hardly worth the huge bites it took out of your annoying-to-refill MP bar. But thankfully, there's no more of this tomfoolery; if you've been doing your math, with the command system, you know have quick access to eight different kinds of spells that automatically reload after they're cast without wasting thirty seconds waiting for the MP bar to recharge or gathering enemy drops. So this translates to Aqua setting her foes on fire, followed by her max magnet spell, max thunder area spell, max bind spell to hold them together, and pummeling them with a standard attack, and then five seconds later getting to do it all over again.

Even better, one of the bonus character development included with command synthesis is "attack haste" and "magic haste", which makes the reload time near instantaneous. So once I got her rolling, what I thought was going to be the most frustrating character turned into a surprisingly unique and interesting fighting style, especially after years of KH beat 'em up button mashing. And for magic haters, imagine all of this, but with Terra's special mega attacks like Strike Raid and Sliding Dash, or Ven's hard and fast moves like Quick Blitz and Stun Strike. Between distinct character commands, the different base fighting styles, and the character development, there's a good balance of a sense of customization and uniqueness of each character you play.

And then there's the story. I have to admit, I'm still just getting into the meat of BBS's storyline. Though from what I can tell, the three-person system is an exceptionally clever way to approach the events of the game. As most of you know, the canon of Kingdom Hearts has been a little...ah, confusing as of late...

Okay, dude, so like, there's this kid. And he lives on an island with his friend and his girlfriend, but they're like, dude, this island sucks, we should go somewhere else. So they build a boat, and then like, these monsters attack, right? So this kid is like thrown into Disneyland, and he meets Leon and Aerith, who are like, dude, you gotta save the world from these monster things. And the kid's like what? And they're like, cuz you have this giant key that you can use as a sword, right? So then this kid goes to different Disney movies and kills all the monsters. They're called Heartless, and like, they eat people's hearts or something, because they represent the darkness or something like that. And when it eats your heart, you become a Heartless too. And there's this guy named Xemnas, who wants to turn everyone into a heartless, because then he can find this giant moon in the shape of a heart called Kingdom Hearts, because it'll fill the world with darkness or something.

But after they kill him, it turns out, um, no, the Heartless aren't things that don't have hearts, they actually are the hearts that got eaten, and the bodies that have no heart that get left behind are called Nobodies. And like, they can be monsters, but they can also be human and crap. And Xemnas wasn't Xemnas, he was actually a guy who wasn't Xemnas' Heartless. And his nobody is called Xeonhart. And like, he has twelve other nobodies that look like people, and they want the heartless to be destroyed so that they can go to Kingdom Hearts and get their hearts back, I guess. And they like, don't have emotions, but they can remember how to act, or something. And the kid's best friend also turns into Xemnas, except not, and then his girlfriend gets a keyblade, and they go and fight Pete and Sephiroth and stuff. And like, the kid and his girlfriend have nobodies too. But because she's a princess and he's the hero, they're good, while the others are bad. I think. And so they come together, and the kid is actually a Heartless.

Oh yeah, and the kid gets cloned like twice. And one time it was a girl. And his friend got cloned too. And his friend also wears a hula skirt. And Donal Duck casts magic.

And just by what little I've been non-spoilered so far, it looks like this installment is going to be no different in that regard. So no way are we going to be able to handle this installment without our brains exploding, right? Especially since it seems like it was designed to help us make sense of the chaotic mess which is the Kingdom Hearts canon.

As I mentioned, the story of BBS is basically the same story throughout, but it's told through the different viewpoints of the characters. It seems like a lame padding tactic when said out loud, but from what I've seen of the story so far, we need it. If you haven't guessed, I've decided to play a little bit of each character's story at the same time instead of finishing one before the next one, and I'm actually quite impressed how each character's role in the storyline is handled.

Terra's story (poor man) centers around discerning the KH cosmology, as he runs most frequently into such questions as what is light and darkness? What direct effect does one have on the other? If we need both, why do we struggle toward the light? What is our obligation to keep the balance? And so on and so forth. Ven's story follows the classic KH flair of making friends, exploring all the quirks of the world around him, and helping people who need help for the sake of being good. And he embraces his task with such raw enthusiasm and kindness that despite being set up to be the linchpin of the next batch of mind-screw insanity, one can't help but find him surprisingly charming rather than expectedly annoying. And finally, Aqua's story handles the actually canon events and heroics of the story, so much so that when one plays her story, one can't help but feel like she's the game's "true" protagonist. She's thus far been in charge of taking out not one, but all three main badguys of the three worlds I've thus played, and single-handedly took on one of the most dangerous recurring bosses. Awesome.

The cast itself is wonderful this time around, and once again, I'm really finding myself growing attached to a lot of the characters, no small thanks to the amazing vocal cast. Mark Hamill did a wonderful job with Master Eraqus, but Leonard Nimoy's portrayal of Master Xehanort absolutely blew me out of the water. Master Xehanort blends KH's traditional big, loud, in-your-face villain with it's traditional sharp, grizzled, wise-but-a-know-it-all mentor. It's a brilliant combination, and Nimoy nails it right on the head. Combined with a surprisingly classy design (dammit Square, stop designing jealousy-inducing impossibly cool coats) and his omnipresent evil slouch, he's quickly on the road to becoming my favorite villain of the series.

In fact, BBS has a lot of great villains this time around. I've seen preciously little of Vanitas (who's true identity got revealed surprisingly quickly in this installment), but from what I've seen, he's big, he's fun, and absolutely unapologetic. No complex motivations or sympathetic backstory or heartbreaking desire to regain memories or find his own identity or be good. Vanitas is just pain evil. And it's an evil that's so obnoxious and in your face that it crosses the line twice back into guiltily endearing. That and he's got a kickass battle theme.

Of course, our band of heroes is just as much of a treat. I was wondering how I was going to warm up to Ven, having the appearance of a this-can't-be-anything-but-plot-significant Roxas clone. However, he manages to stands out as his own character, and a very endearing one at that. He's perfected the aesthetic of cheer and optimism, even more so than Sora. And while Sora's burdened by the Shonen Hero dilemna of having motivations for his friends hindered by saving worlds, Ven's motivations are friendship alone, making him hit the theme harder and stronger than Sora did. Combined that with a still present reckless determination and a troubled but good-hearted attitude, he has a character execution that I find myself really enjoying.

Also, I'm happy to report that Aqua is easily the best written girl thus far in the series. Not only is she really strong and really competent, but she's been following an interestingly progressive writing style Square has been following lately-not making it an issue she's female. Really, the fact that she's a girl comes up very rarely in the game, and when it does, it's off-handed and generally irrelevant. And she's got an attitude that I really like-a knight in shining armor through and through. She's by no means spunky or rebellious, but if she sees something wrong, she fixes it by herself without question, and won't stop until the job's done. With recent mad love for anti-heroes, hot bloodedness, and deconstruction, seeing such a good-motivated maturity in it's purest form is oddly refreshing. She makes for a badass character in the non-traditional traditional way.

The only character I'm having a little trouble warming up to is Terra, who takes on a Riku-like role of needing to deal with the darkness within (especially compared to his goody-goody light filled friends), but lacking Riku's more sympathetic problems of personal ambitions hurting people you're close to, guilt, and dealing with the consequences of your actions. That and he thinks it's a good idea to seek the wise and honest counsel of Disney Villains. But the game is young, and his involvement with Master Xenohart and and Vanitas, he's still got time for interesting development.

Thus far, I only have a few small complaints in the game. The first, and biggest, is that while all the worlds are big and spacious, they tend to feel empty, with a lack of NPCs and activity. With woodlands and canyons, this isn't so bad, but when you go to the big damn Radiant Garden and don't see another soul around save for one lonely Moogle Shop, it creates a surprisingly eerie and disappointingly static environment. Also, while the graphics are generally top-notch, to the point where they can match the PS2's cutscenes, sometimes they do get a little rocky and slow down the system, most notably in Maleficent's Castle in the Enchanted Dominion. If I really wanted to be picky, I'd mention how sometimes the Unversed seem a little too nondescript for enemies, especially compared to the adorable Eldritch Abominations that were the Heartless and the creepy-cool Nobody designs. But at this point, I'm just being a bit of a fussbudget.

But all in all, Birth By Sleep is a wonderful game, and writing out this review only makes me want to go back and play it on my own. In fact, I just may go and do that. Once I'm done with class. And showering. And actually eating this week.

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_{Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is published and distributed by Disney Interactive and Square Enix. Image credit to IGN, Gamespot, and Kingdom Hearts Ultimania.}

"A Separate Peace" Review

"Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself."

_{-Aubrey Menen, on A Separate Peace}

I first read this book when I was a junior in high school, when I was the exact age as the story's protagonists. So I'm sure that you can understand that my initial impression of it was a generously sarcastic "meh". In my opinion, it was okay, and it was certainly gay enough to satisfy my bouts of snark and enjoyment in corrupting the high school required reading. But it was uneventful and filled with every war is bad/growing up is bad/corruption of innocence plot that any high school kid was forced to read a million times before. I was expecting to feel the samefeeling of being appeased but unmoved when I returned to it for my Adolescent Literature class. To my almost guilty surprise, I realized that I had overlooked perhaps the most heartbreakingly beautiful book I've ever read.

In my past's defense, John Knowles' A Separate Peace is written very deceptively like the cookie-cutter YA fiction we've hated since grade school. The story starts with a young man, Gene Forester, who meets a new friend, Phineas, whom everyone calls "Finny". Finny is an extraordinary person who everyone adores, but seems to adore the unremarkable, quiet bookworm Gene the most. The two have a spat, and then tragedy strikes. This is then followed by more understanding each other and their peers, followed by things looking up, followed by another tragedy, followed by things looking up again, followed by the final character death at the end that suddenly transforms our hero into a broken adult.

We've seen this before and then some, right? This is the kind of thing us English Majors beat up Newberry Authors for. Coupled with this, there's no real exciting changes of scenery, no shocking plot twists, and even the final death at the end is unceremonious to the point of being contrived. Naturally, the internet has flooded with complaints of all those who were forced to read it in high school, founded it aggressively unremarkable, and retain a sort of vindictive bitterness that it remains as popular and well spoken of to it's day. So how can I, the champion fanbetch, dare to write a positive review of it?

Because you need to be an adult to understand this book.

It's a tragic irony for a lot of adolescent literature. This is a book that's not written for teens, but rather an adult (quite strikingly) remembering what it was like to be a teenager. And he does it so well, and so eerily clearly, that any teacher would assume that any teenager who reads this will be able to understand as well. But that's not what Knowles wrote this story for.

This book is about war and peace, but not in the traditional sense provided to us by World War II, the obligatory history that looms in the story's background. This is the story of the war of adolescence, the war each one of us had to fight. Being a teenager is perhaps the most violent point of time and space I have ever been a part of. It's a savage battle between every single person that you ever run into. It is a war against your parents, your teachers, your classmates, those in positions of authority, the immediate and the never met, and even your dearest friends, yet it is a war that seems not to exist. And it is a war that ones only ally is oneself, an ally that one knows nothing about save that this ally absolutely abhors you.

Stranger still, this story is about peace, and how devastating it is for these adolescent soldiers to encounter. Gene's conflict arises not by his peaceful adolescence being shattered by war, but by his vague and perpetual war being shattered by peace. His ultimate crisis is coming to terms with the fact that with everyone (seemingly) against him, and he not being the strongest, fastest, bravest, or surest to survive, someone out there cherishes him anyway. Indeed, someone stronger, faster, braver, and surer to survive in the world cherishes him, a nonsense so mighty that it sends Gene's world spinning out of orbit.

It is an overwhelming battle, one no teenager is prepared for. What's more, we see it through the lens of Gene himself, both past and future. We don't hear it from the voice of a helpfully omniscient narrator who can explain it in simple terms for all to understand, but the poetry and warmth of an adult, as well as the fright and frustrating vagueness of the teen. Only when you can understand both can you love this book. If you've missed out on either, you won't get it, and you'll be tremendously bored for your efforts. But if you can read A Separate Peace with this mindset, expect a tale that's rich with subtle detail, wisdom, cruel and simple pain, and an ending that fills the reader with loss and fulfillment. What an average teenager would call an empty and uneventful story will become a story that you can't put down, not by virtue of the edge-of-your-seat adrenaline that any other view would expect, but in the way that only a short, beautiful story lurking in all our histories can provide.