Spring Break
Game review:"The World Ends with You"
Shelby Reiches
Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment
Tetsuya Nomura is a name with which Playstation 2 gamers have become intimately acquainted by virtue of his original character designs for the Kingdom Hearts series. The team behind the famed Disney/Square mash-up has now released its first wholly original property, for Nintendo's dual-screen handheld of all things.
"The World Ends With You" or, if you're a Japanese local, "It's A Wonderful World," has a distinct charm. The most noticeable thing about the game is its art style, characterized by incredibly skinny, lanky, anime-esque characters with bright, unnatural hair colors. Neku, the lead character, is a down-in-the-dumps, anti-social teenager who appears in the busy Shibuya shopping district without any idea of how he arrived. Furthermore, no one else seems to be able to see him, his memory's gone and, before he can get his bearings, he's under attack by a bunch of weird monsters called "Noise," which seem to feed off the negativity of everyone else in Shibuya.
Neku is part of a seven-day game held by a group called the "Reapers" who, if he fails to complete each day's objective, will erase him from existence.
The plot isn't the only unique aspect of this colorful Japanese Role Playing Game. The combat system is its shining star. Neku equips pins that allow him to perform a wide variety of attacks with simple strokes of the stylus. There are a limited set of motions; horizontal slashes, vertical slashes, taps, press and drag, etc.; and sometimes where you press in relation to Neku or the enemy affects which pin you'll activate. It's never staggeringly difficult, but it can lead to mistaken inputs when the action gets really fast and frantic, as it will.
Also, moving Neku involves tapping him and then dragging, which the DS seems to have trouble recognizing in the heat of the moment. Why not just use the D-Pad to control Neku, you ask? Because that device, or the face buttons, if you're a lefty, is reserved for controlling Neku's partner. While you're busy controlling the action on the bottom screen with Neku, your partner is busy fighting the same enemies on the top screen. Just as each enemy has a single health bar for both its top screen and bottom screen incarnation, so too do you and your partner share a bar, making sure you'll never ignore the action on either screen. This is the most difficult aspect of the game to grasp because, while your partner will move and attack on their own if you don't do anything directly (something you are able to adjust or turn off if you so desire), the computer is limited in what it can accomplish and you'll definitely benefit from taking the reins every so often.
"The World Ends With You" or, if you're a Japanese local, "It's A Wonderful World," has a distinct charm. The most noticeable thing about the game is its art style, characterized by incredibly skinny, lanky, anime-esque characters with bright, unnatural hair colors. Neku, the lead character, is a down-in-the-dumps, anti-social teenager who appears in the busy Shibuya shopping district without any idea of how he arrived. Furthermore, no one else seems to be able to see him, his memory's gone and, before he can get his bearings, he's under attack by a bunch of weird monsters called "Noise," which seem to feed off the negativity of everyone else in Shibuya.
Neku is part of a seven-day game held by a group called the "Reapers" who, if he fails to complete each day's objective, will erase him from existence.
The plot isn't the only unique aspect of this colorful Japanese Role Playing Game. The combat system is its shining star. Neku equips pins that allow him to perform a wide variety of attacks with simple strokes of the stylus. There are a limited set of motions; horizontal slashes, vertical slashes, taps, press and drag, etc.; and sometimes where you press in relation to Neku or the enemy affects which pin you'll activate. It's never staggeringly difficult, but it can lead to mistaken inputs when the action gets really fast and frantic, as it will.
Also, moving Neku involves tapping him and then dragging, which the DS seems to have trouble recognizing in the heat of the moment. Why not just use the D-Pad to control Neku, you ask? Because that device, or the face buttons, if you're a lefty, is reserved for controlling Neku's partner. While you're busy controlling the action on the bottom screen with Neku, your partner is busy fighting the same enemies on the top screen. Just as each enemy has a single health bar for both its top screen and bottom screen incarnation, so too do you and your partner share a bar, making sure you'll never ignore the action on either screen. This is the most difficult aspect of the game to grasp because, while your partner will move and attack on their own if you don't do anything directly (something you are able to adjust or turn off if you so desire), the computer is limited in what it can accomplish and you'll definitely benefit from taking the reins every so often.
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