Sometimes we all get COMPLACENT – and think you’ve reached the dark and damp bottom to this mineshaft of nerddom we are all tumbling inexplicably down, but then the ground gives way and we find there is many more miles to fall…
–The Wookie

Katamari Damacy = Rolling a Ball

Oh how true. So I beat Katamari Damacy a few days ago and it’s the Yin to the Yang of Xenosaga which I’m trying to burn through as fast as humanly possible and sell it for $USD. Katamari is fun and light whereas Xenosaga is obviously marketed to people more down the Complacent Shaft. So complacent that I suppose they don’t contact real girls without dish-pan saucer eyes and loin-hankerchiefs as costume.

Xenosaga means Nerd Opera in Japanese I guess. It’s not the massive quantity of cut-scenes. I don’t mind replacing TV broadcast waves with a spinning disc. It’s the same basic mechanism while I eat a sandwich and nod along with the plot. I think my biggest issue is the assumption of audience. I’m supposed to be interested in how the main character goes to sleep. How she is flustered and cute when she’s answering email on her futuristic blackberry. I’m supposed to get into the story but it misses me completely and hits the guy behind me who is really rolling a 1d4 while I just casually appreciate the entropy. Let’s skip the pretentiousness and get back to it.

Katamari is a great game. It’s weird as hell. You roll a ball around and collect items to make a ball of a certain size and then the level is over. It’s super simple and it’s super different. The soundtrack was weird as crap. Cows, rainbows, giant cosmos kings and trippy cutscenes are a major thread in the game. There’s no escaping the constant thought of “only in Japan”.

It was perfectly paced and in my massive TODO list of having fun I’m glad that I got through it quickly.

Xenosaga = Leveling in Space

On the flip side is my current game crap. Xenosaga I. It’s a space rpg with a massive story and minimal appeal in combat. I unfortunately bought all three somehow relating consumption to appreciation. That girl above is named MOMO. She’s a robot. Momo means “peach” in Japanese and she’s got peach colored hair of course. She is supposed to be an adult robot but she has the voice of a 12 year old by a voice actress named Sherry Lynn. Don’t judge me yet. This girl at work and I were talking about her annoying voice and she pointed me to her acting resume. I’ve heard her in other films etc and was equally annoyed in those too. All in all, this coworker and I agreed that her voice is like helium on helium.

When you attack with a special move, you announce the name of the attack. So if you press three buttons to perform “Floral Tempest” (scary I know) then your character shouts out Floooral! Tempest! in a very Super-Sayen kinda way. Also of note is the third repetition of the move’s name at the top of the screen which will say simply: Floral Tempest. I usually turn the audio down to avoid hearing the same sample for the 300th time.

The cutscenes are sometimes 20 minutes long and include the ability to pause them. Good feature but am I watching a show here? But after the show is over you are left with a strange bit of gameplay and an amazingly complex leveling and stat system. I’m just not worrying about it until I die, it’s way too complicated and I don’t know if you even need to tweak your peeps to beat the damn game. I haven’t tweaked, learned, spent points in, worried about or otherwise used this complex stat system to beat the 6 or so bosses so far. Very odd.

It’s not all bad, some parts are somewhat fun. The style and design is very Robotech / Transformers. The acting isn’t bad and the story is relevant in itself. But there are glaring things that go against my grain. I should have listened to metacritic which gave Xenosaga I an 80-something. 80-anything is somewhat generous. I wonder if non “anime people already involved in countless dish-play eye drama stories” actually played it all the way to the end …