There's
such a thing as too much cute. The occasional amorphous cute critter
is fine, even welcome in some games. But when everything from background
to foreground is dripping with saccharine and starry eyed pastels.
Above
is the title screen. When I came across it the first time, I began
to shake and asked, "Can we just turn back now?" Incidentally,
what defines a 'story mode?' In fighting games it means you get to
see a text field between fights.
You
won't run into the startlingly uninteresting title screen right away,
though. First, you must endure a painful opening movie in which you're
treated to the same two pictures over and over with Japanese text
at the bottom. I've offered an interpretation, keeping in mind I can't
read Japanese and didn't care what the girls had to say.
For
all I know, the two girls (Tomomi and Mikage) were going to school,
saw their teachers and boyfriends explode, and then they themselves
were blasted into a fantasy world. Once again, we see the Mario syndrome-
in that everything in this delightful and cheery world wants to eat
your head. Enemies include what I can only assume are moles in hardhats
on pogo-jackhammersticks, rabbits with no front legs, and the floating
disembodied head of your friend. I guess. If you make it past the
Randomly-Dropping-Flowers section, you encounter dandelion fluff and
potted ducks. I wouldn't make this kind of stuff up, trust me.
This
whole game makes me think 'Super Nemo's Dream Land.' In fact, your
only weapon is throwing candy at enemies to pacify them. Of course,
they only stay frozen for ten seconds because what they're really
hungry for is the head of a cute schoolgirl. And guess what? YOU'RE
A CUTE SCHOOLGIRL.
The
major problem I had with the game besides everything, is there's no
Final Solution to the enemy problem. Your gum just distracts them
a sec. You can't even hop on their heads or kick their boxers in.
I can't play a nonviolent side scroller like this for more than a
couple levels. Samurai Pizza Cats, for all of its multitudinous flaws,
did feature hacking and slashing of chibi's. Powerups don't seem to
help OR hinder you, and the thing that looks like a heart doesn't
affect your heart meter thing. I can't for the life of me recall what
the little "B" icon does, and one of the items makes a hologram
of the other girl appear and float in front of you. Nothing helps
you quite like seeing her smile down on me as the armless rabbits
chew on my jugular vein, I tell ya. The actual purpose of the head
is to offer some sort of guidance via telepathy (see addendum at bottom,
screenshot at right) as she chirps hints at you at certain parts of
the stage. These usually consist of yelling when you need to jump.
While
trapped in Candyland, the girls decide to make the most of things
and help the defenseless UFO catcher-esque folk, while restoring their
friends back to human form. The first boss encounter is with a rather
pimpish bumblebee in shades with a tennis sun visor. If they didn't
seem to be tripping alreayd, I'd swear he was offering them some rave
drugs.
The
cinemas between levels add to the suspense of the plot. The burning
question is: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?! After beating
the bee in the tennis visor at a squirt gun match, he turns back into
the male teacher and says some things in Japanese.
Welcome
to the bizzarrely named 'Clouds Island.' Where there are indeed clouds,
and if you want to, you can leap off a cloud and splatter onto the
island. Of course, by doing this you won't be able to finish the game,
but if you played this long you might just be deranged enough to want
to succeed. Once
again, they happily conformed to the Platform Game cliche handbook
and made a sky-themed level where you jump around on clouds. Your
enemies continue to look like duck heads pasted to various things.
Your little stun candies only work for around 5 seconds now and constipated
Kirby clones and animate water vapor are added to your enemy list.
The
major change in this stage was the addition of numerous hot-air vents.
These blow up your skirt and drop you into bottomless ravines, but
unlike other obstacles in the game you can't just go around them.