The Dord of Darien

Musings from the Mayor of the Internet

Masochism!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’m kind of a moron. Sometimes I’ll read reviews of a game and I just know I’ll hate it. That’s good, yes, but then that game will be held up in front of my worldwide readership as an object of mockery and scorn for years and years afterward. And you know what happens? That makes me want to play the goddamn thing. It’s kind of like, hey, I need to find out for myself if this thing really is as terrible as I tell me it is.

What I’m getting at is that I threw four bucks at half.com a while ago and picked myself up a copy of Xenosaga: Episode One. You know, the stupid talky cutscene game I’ve been complaining about for as long as anybody can remember. Yeah, I’ve done the unthinkable: I’ve decided that I hate that game so much I’m actually going to play it.

Because I’m a moron. Like I said before.

But I’m not just going to regular-play it. I’m going to keep a diary of my experiences while I’m playing this game, so everybody else can suffer through it with me. I started playing the thing tonight, and I have to say, my first impression was a little bit negative. I mean, my disc was all scratched and shit. What kind of terrible game is this that it comes on a scratched disc? Fortunately — perhaps! — it ran anyhow, and my next impression was that it takes a long damn time to load. But maybe I’m just out of practice with waiting for PS2 games, so I’m not sure I can hold that one against it. Further comments timestamped:

3:00 AM — I’m starting the game. There’s a cutscene, shockingly. I’m apparently in Kenya, which is something of a surprise, and it’s the year 20XX? Hey, maybe I’ll run into Mega Man. There’s this archaeologist dude straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. He’s digging up a big… thing. No pulsating magic crystals yet, but I have my eye out for them. They won’t sneak past me.

3:04 AM — Hey, the game’s first song with vocals. I dunno, though; I’ve heard worse. Apparently the big thing the dude was digging up had a slot for this little thing he carried around with him. Then it made a bridge appear and killed a lot of his disposable native workers. So much for that.

3:05 AM — Title card: "4000 years later." That one almost made me spit wine out my nose. Ever spit red wine out your goddamn nose? It isn’t fun. They need to stop ambushing me with randomness like that.

3:07 AM — Now we’re on a spaceship, I think. There’s this thing out there that looks like the thing the dude dug up, and… somebody just stepped into it somehow. It’s not really making very much sense. Ooh! Red digital readout!

3:11 AM — The chief somebody-or-other is logging into the R&D mainframe. Her password is "ye shall be as gods." Never mind that it displays her password in readable plaintext as she’s typing it; that’s a really weak password anyhow. I’d expect that in 4000 years people would have learned something about password security and how to make sure evil villains don’t sneak into your important universe-destroying cyborg… thing. Or whatever that is.

3:12 AM — So now we’re talking to a robot in virtual reality. I think. The robot has just given its model number of "00-00-00-00-1," and you better believe it pronounced every single one of those zeroes. The subtitles tipped me off, so I was prepared this time and didn’t snork any wine. So now the android is the second voice actress I’ve met, and so far they’re both terrible, as appears to be the way of these things. Anybody have any insight as to why that is?

3:15 AM — Hey, the intro cinematic’s over already. That wasn’t so bad. Now it’s time to play the battle tutorial. Hey, I recognise this — turns out combat’s a lot like it was back in Xenogears, though without the main character actually being Goku like he was in Xenogears. The tutorial’s pretty good at explaining the weird system.

3:27 AM — Tutorial’s over, so I reckon it’s about time we got back to some cutscenes! The game doesn’t disappoint. This one’s pretty short, but it introduces the third terrible voice actress, and this one’s much worse than the first two.

3:30 AM — Hey, the game’s starting. I better pay attention. Let’s see… I’m wandering around, I can blow up boxes, I can go fight that mob! It’s… oh goddamn it all, it’s a spider. My two choices are a) go blow up crates or 2) go fight spiders. Maybe that’s just so I remember it’s a video game.

3:45 AM — I just went through the menus. Holy shit. This whole game’s a bunch of buttons. Every menu has menus underneath it, and there are like all kinds of different points I can spend to improve all sorts of shit in weird ways I don’t really get. It doesn’t help that the designers have some queer acronym fetish and half the buttons are labeled "A.W.G.V." or some damn thing.

3:49 AM — I just got back from the bathroom. Apparently in those three minutes I was able to forget everything about how to play this game, since I immediately charged into combat and pressed all the wrong buttons. This is a good sign, I think.

3:58 AM — Another cutscene, leading into another tutorial, and, hey! Giant robots! I was wondering when I’d get to play with the giant robots.

4:01 AM — Okay, back to the game. I save, and then I have to walk really slowly so the mobs don’t hear me, since now this is Tremors. Graboids! Get up on the roof!

4:13 AM — I tiptoed to the key, and then I found this red door with a star on it that just told me it was "#10" of something when I tried to open it, and then didn’t do anything. I hope I haven’t missed nine of these damn things already — game’s only had four screens! So I go in the big door to my mission objective which is, of course, a cutscene. So I watch that.

4:15 AM — Cutscene’s over, and now I fight a boss! Looks pretty scary to me. WTF? He’s just defending over and over again. And after he stops defending he… dies in one turn. What a shitty boss. At least I retrieved the sacred cutscene for the space police!

4:17 AM — I don’t get why they wanted this cutscene so badly. It’s not very good. There’s some Matrix-y shit, and then I almost get TRAPPED IN THE MATRIX because I overrode the security features. Fortunately, this other dude I guess can just reach his damn arm right into the Matrix and pull me out. I’m tempted to bulge out the vein in my head and shout "computers do not work that way!," but, actually, nothing works the way everything just worked in that scene, so I can’t really pick one thing. I guess reality is just different "4000 years later." In the year… 60XX.

4:20 AM — Oh, good. Some giant, phallic spaceships flying out of a wormhole. I was just thinking this game was a bit lacking in penis imagery.

4:22 AM — Hey, terrible voice actress #4! Join the fun!

4:23 AM — … And number five, also. They’re packing the TVAs in mighty thick in this game. I would like to call attention to the fact that we haven’t had a single non-terrible voice actress yet.

4:24 AM — I… wait, is that dude reading the breaks in the subtitles? Like you know when there’s no more room and so the subtitle has to get cleared away and they start drawing the next part? Yeah, he’s pausing in those spots and waiting for the subtitle to continue before he continues his lines. That’s… not so good.

4:25 AM —Finally! Captain Subtitle Breaks was close, but no cigar; we now officially have our first terrible voice actor of the game. It’s about time; the women were leaving you dudes in the dust.

4:29 AM — Aaaaand that long-ass cutscene wraps its ass up at last. I still don’t have any idea what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure I’ve met the villain; he has tall eyebrows and a deep voice, and he’s always saying ominous things.

Well, that’s all I can do for one night. So I spent almost exactly ninety minutes playing tonight, and I sat through thirty-five minutes of cutscenes. That’s less than a 2:1 game:cutscene ratio even if you count the time I spent ratting around in the menus. And my bathroom break. Without that time, it’s pretty close to 0:1. Which way will the numbers travel? Only time will tell!


February 1st, 2009 Posted by | Masochism | one comment

1 Comment »

  1. Heh, sounds like what I did with The Bible Game (GBA). The, uh, buying it just to see what on earth they did, not the whole game diary thing. Which looks like it will continue to be interesting, even for someone such as myself who hasn’t played Xenogears and doesn’t foresee doing so.

    Comment by Nyperold | 4 February 2009

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.