The World Ends With You (NDS)
2008 Square/Enix/(Possible Hot Topic Kickbacks)

THE SHORT VERSION:

One of the more innovative NDS games of the year, populated almost entirely by people that I could smack the crap out of if I met in person until they spoke normal. Perfect for the ambidextrous Kingdom Hearts fanfic-writing raver in your life.

THE LONG VERSION:

It’s sorely tempting to make the entirety of this review a two word fragment- “LOL NOMURA,” but while brevity is the soul of wit, there’s something still to be said about drawing and quartering a subject then using a laser pointer to point out and identify the various pieces that scattered out on the medieval cobblestones. Also his direct involvement only extends to Neku and Shiki.

Tetsuya Nomura, for the uninitiated, which considering I run an obscure game humor site would probably mean, “Hi, Mom!”, is the designer whose success with Final Fantasy VII’s character designs caused Square to offer him gold and virgins and make sure that Final Fantasy heroes for years to come would be wearing Day-Glo outfits with irregular pant-leg lengths and zippers fucking everywhere. In a sense, he is to the Japanese gaming industry what Rob Liefeld was to comic books. Actually, scratch that, even as exaggerated as some of his looks get, Nomura can still draw feet and has a knowledge of muscles that human beings actually have.

Getting on to the actual game, TWEWY, as the hip kids call it, is the story of Neku, an antisocial punk who zonks out in the middle of a crowded intersection, and ends up in the midst of the Reapers’ Game, a seven-day ordeal where he can’t be seen by anyone who isn’t also playing the game and has to fight a race of living graffiti while running to whatever Shibuya landmarks his cell phone tells him to go do. His amnesia is helpful to us Americano sorts, since it means that everyone he meets sees fit to fill in the blanks with all sorts of touristy info.

Neku’s power comes from his ability to wear lots of buttons and poke shit with the stylus. By aggravating the touch screen in various ways, he can read minds, shoot lightning, or move small objects like cars and trucks. You also move him with the stylus, which is similar to the thing I hated most in the game Lunar Knights, as he’s usually being torn apart by graffito-style dogs and bats as you try to compensate for the fact you can’t move AND attack simultaneously. With practice you can learn to anticipate each enemy type’s patterns and position yourself accordingly, but there’s a further distraction in the form of your top-screen partner who you’ll be controlling with a DDR-like series of d-pad presses. So if you can split your focus between a fast paced stylus battle with your right hand while inputting Blitz commands with your left, the engine shouldn’t be too much of a hassle at all, but for those of us who aren’t ambidextrous mutants with rotating chameleon eyeballs, it takes some getting used to. The pins that control your powers can also earn experience (PP for Pin Points) from battle, or not playing the game. Rather than constant outright grinding, which you’ll still need to do for money’s sake and actual character levels, saving and powering off the DS will earn you a set amount of pin points depending on how long it sits isle, for up to seven days. On the one hand it’s a nice way of sidestepping one micromanagement task, but on the other, the fact is the game seems to actively encourage one not to play it. Not to mention there are still plenty of side things to micromanage your brains out with from playing dress-up, eating food to boost your stats (this game is the first I can think of to offer the status message “Neku has digested the Insta-Noodles.” Hackmaster would be proud.

As per usual I’ve probably been more negative about the experience than I actually feel about the game, but with the rave reviews this thing has been getting I think it’s important someone be the cranky killjoy who points out the nuisances. It’s like test driving a new car that makes a funny noise, then driving it for a few months as you start to notice the noise as it slowly aggravates something in the back of your head. After a while it goes from “Check out this sweet new car!” to “C’mon, into the klankmobile to drive to the klank-e-mart.” In short, it’s just the voice of caveat emptor and not sheer hate, because as shifty used cars, er, games go, TWEWY is definitely something nice and original, with an interesting if somewhat predictable story (if you’ve seen say, SoulTaker and have an inkling as to what the ‘Reaper” portion of the “Reaper’s Game” might mean) and lots to do. Most importantly as portables go you can take your time fighting a few Noises in five-ten minute chunks on the go rather than needing to have drawn-out marathon sessions.