Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Lunch with Tom - Avoid Contact with this crap
Maybe Japanese RPGs are just boring. I did finish Contact a couple weeks ago. Though it was the only NDS game in my collection I had not finished, I was still quite pleased when the ending credits rolled. This was just a bland, uninspired entry in a genre that really should be dead. Is there a point to Japanese RPGs anymore? These are games that rely on strong characters and a compelling story but rarely deliver the goods. I would venture that no story, including the entirety of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, require more than 40 hours to tell. No characters are so deep that you can't reveal all of their thoughts and desires in just a few hours. And yet, the genre is still thriving as people flock to slowly read a tale that has been told a thousand times before. I used to dig the genre, and I'm sure Chrono Trigger would still make me titter with delight, but companies are killing RPGs by reusing the same ideas over and over again until I just want to kill every spiky-haired kid on a mission to save the world.
Contact is about a scientist's quest for some stolen elements. For some reason, he cannot recover them himself. So he comes in "Contact" with the player and uses the unfortunate person to manipulate the actions of some ignorant little child. It sounds like a pretty cool idea, but in practice it plays just like every other game. The boy you control is not resistant to your input methods nor does he appear to have a mind of his own. You control him like you would control the main character in any other bland RPG. Though the scientist talks to you from time to time, and there is a dramatic scene late in the game when the child realizes he is being manipulated, the premise is ignored for the most part.
The biggest hook of the game is this ability to wear different clothes that grant you special abilities. Guess what, this isn't particularly fun either. First of all, you can only change clothes when you are in your home base. When out in the world, trying to find a fragment of the stolen gem, you are stuck with the same clothes and the same abilities for the whole time. What is the point of having these different abilities if you can't even use them? Worse, in order to actually use the suits well, you have to reach a very high level. For instance, in order to cook interesting dishes as the chef, you have to be higher than level 50. That would take hours and hours to achieve. To catch higher-level fish you have to be level 70. Who is going to take the time to level up their fishing abilities? A decent concept is wasted because of ridiculous requirements and a dressing room that is usually an hour behind where you currently reside.
It's been about two weeks since I beat the game and I hardly remember anything from my journey. If you want a JRPG for your NDS, you're much better off picking up Mario and Luigi 2. If you're really intense you could get that Final Fantasy 3 game everyone is talking about. You won't catch me playing one of these tired games for quite awhile, though. It's hard to commit time and energy playing a stagnant genre when there are developers out there offering new gameplay ideas or at least an interesting twist to an old classic. I cannot believe the developer of Killer 7 made a game so utterly devoid of life as Contact.
Contact is about a scientist's quest for some stolen elements. For some reason, he cannot recover them himself. So he comes in "Contact" with the player and uses the unfortunate person to manipulate the actions of some ignorant little child. It sounds like a pretty cool idea, but in practice it plays just like every other game. The boy you control is not resistant to your input methods nor does he appear to have a mind of his own. You control him like you would control the main character in any other bland RPG. Though the scientist talks to you from time to time, and there is a dramatic scene late in the game when the child realizes he is being manipulated, the premise is ignored for the most part.
The biggest hook of the game is this ability to wear different clothes that grant you special abilities. Guess what, this isn't particularly fun either. First of all, you can only change clothes when you are in your home base. When out in the world, trying to find a fragment of the stolen gem, you are stuck with the same clothes and the same abilities for the whole time. What is the point of having these different abilities if you can't even use them? Worse, in order to actually use the suits well, you have to reach a very high level. For instance, in order to cook interesting dishes as the chef, you have to be higher than level 50. That would take hours and hours to achieve. To catch higher-level fish you have to be level 70. Who is going to take the time to level up their fishing abilities? A decent concept is wasted because of ridiculous requirements and a dressing room that is usually an hour behind where you currently reside.
It's been about two weeks since I beat the game and I hardly remember anything from my journey. If you want a JRPG for your NDS, you're much better off picking up Mario and Luigi 2. If you're really intense you could get that Final Fantasy 3 game everyone is talking about. You won't catch me playing one of these tired games for quite awhile, though. It's hard to commit time and energy playing a stagnant genre when there are developers out there offering new gameplay ideas or at least an interesting twist to an old classic. I cannot believe the developer of Killer 7 made a game so utterly devoid of life as Contact.
// posted by Tom @ 11:50 AM 
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