A little cheese is what it takes to power all the magic in the world….

Thanks to the recent release on PSN, I can finally do this on my PSP.

Here are my impressions:

First, games used to be different. Not all games… But some games, particularly in the RPG genre, were completely different 10 years ago.

Now I’m currently playing Mass Effect 2 and Xenogears at the same time, and I think that even though they come from completely different hemispheres, comparing the two does a good job to describe the differences I’m referring to.

Games these days hold your hand – and I don’t necessarily mean when it comes to difficulty. I tout Demon’s Souls as a great game because it DOESN’T hold your hand, but DS is also still basically the RPG Mega Man game – you still move from point A to point B and there is little ambiguity on how to get there.

Somewhere around Final Fantasy X though, hand-holding linearity happened in RPGs too, and even in Mass Effect 2 there is little confusion about what you need to do to move on with the game – particularly when you actually hit a quest.

In Xenogears, even though my memory of it screams that the story was the biggest draw, it seems like the plot is that Naked 2-year-old that’s escapes from the house; a pain in the neck to catch and it tries to escape every chance it gets. The linearity is still there, but the hand just keeps running from you.

Get back here you stupid Plot!

I’ll recount my recent experience to elaborate;
After destroying my hometown, I wander off into the woods. Thanks to Dues Ex (Citan) I get my gear back and save the girl. The girl turns out to be the enemy and runs away.

We wander off into this desert town and Dues Ex keeps telling me that we need to fix the Gear although he doesn’t sufficiently explain why – this seems kind of important because in the background everyone keeps whispering that I’m some kind of God-Killer, but it’s like they don’t really want to tell you.

Left: Citan Right: Fei – who doesn’t know he’s wearing a hocky mask and wielding a Chainsaw.

Finally after wandering around town and talking to people who are in Awe over this Giant Mecha I stole, Citan decides to drive a car out into the desert without me and tells me to go wait in the Bar.

I’m like “Okay” so I go to the bar even though everyone tells me that it’s dangerous to go alone into the desert and Citan forgot his sword (Which incidentally, he forgets this sword until like 3/4 through the game.)

I talk to everyone in the bar, including this Elvis guy with green hair named “Big Joe” and I realise they’re not going to help me at all, so I wander the entire town for half an hour trying to figure out where the next cutscene initiates.

I get the idea that I should go into the desert, which I vaguely remember from the first time I played, but when I leave the town, it just puts me on the world map with  no real direction at that point.

Finally I’m like “Screw it!” and I wander off into the desert to level up a bit when SUDDENLY the screen goes black and cuts to Fei wandering around like an idiot through the desert on foot with no supplies going “Oy Citan!”

“Oy Citan! Big Joe is a freaky guy and I want to get away from him!”

After a good minute of this Fei sees some Gears flying around, and then some more gears flying around and then some guys on bicycles…

So he runs up to one of the guys on the bicycle, knocks him off, says “Hey I’m borrowing this” and then leaves him for dead.

Yea Haw! Stealing from homes aint nothing compared to this!

The plot does a pretty good job being linear after this point, up until I get control of the Yggdrasil where I accidently parked myself in Nisan when I was supposed to go to Aveh, but it’s when I actually found Aveh when the clothes came off and the plot got away again…

The saddest thing is, I really think my inability to be a good plot-parent comes from the fact that newer games have pampered me. Even Mass Effect 2, when you land on various planets, has about 3-5 rooms to explore – this includes the Massive Citadel, which adds about two more rooms.

It might look complex here, but most of this is hallways.

I get to Aveh (in Xenogears), and there are no less than 14 buildings that I can enter, not including the couple that I’m not allowed to enter yet because Citan says it’s not time to have fun….

It actually FEELS like a city!

The thing about these 14 buildings is that most of them contain frivolous things like a girl that collects cats and her complaining mother, or a Senile Old Man who thinks you’re his son coming home from draft dodging after 10 years… EVERY TIME YOU ENTER HIS HOUSE!

The best part is that after barging into a Nun’s open window, I find out that I have to go “Gather Info”on how to get into the castle to save Margie (Not going to cover why that’s the plot, but I think you get the idea.)

So what does “gathering info”entail? Well, it actually kind of sort of makes sense in a mind boggling sort of way, I just kept walking past what I needed to do for a good hour or so.

First, I went to the town square and was headed to the castle when one of my party members (who’s actually the lost prince) says “Hey I shouldn’t go there, because, you know, they might recognize me.” (And by the way, every townsperson and their DOG seems to know who this guy is even though he’s supposed to have been kept secret this whole time.)

So my thought is “Okay, well I don’t need to go there” so when Citan asks me if we should just go up alone I’m like “nope!” and procede to wander around for another half-hour (Good thing the music in this game is pretty good.)

Finally I break down and go up to the top of the mountain castle (without the prince) and discover that that’s where I can sign up for a martial arts tournament, which Citan decides would be a great idea to distract the guards so Bart can sneak into the castle and save Margie!

GENIUS!

So excited that I actually found what I’m supposed to do, I run to the Nun mashing the Triangle button over and over as if jumping signified my glee when suddenly…

Hey guys! Have you seen a naked kid around here??

Bart says that we haven’t gathered enough info because we haven’t found a way into the castle yet. BUT I’VE TALKED TO EVERY FREAKING PERSON (AND THEIR CATS) IN THE WHOLE TOWN!

But then, it IS a huge town.

So now I’m looking for a way into the castle, and the first thing I think is the “Sewers” because anyone that watched Lady Hawk knows that’s the best way in, and out, of anything medieval style.

I find one sewer drain that tells me it’s locked…

Wuheerre’s the Key?? Where is it??

So I wander to the other side of town and find another Old Man who tells me that the reason that the grate is locked is because some kid got stuck down there once – and that kid was the Armor Smith’s kid. So I go to the Armor Smith, who seems interested in nothing but selling stuff and buying my monster parts – but his daughter says she has a brother who likes to play hide and seek…

THAT KID?? THE HIDE AND SEEK KID!? BUT WHERE DID HE GO?? HE’S PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK RIGHT NOW!!

So yeah, what I thought was a stupid side-quest was actually kind-of sort-of part of the game. It actually IS still a stupid sidequest (which gives you a stupid sidequest “I did it” medal if you find him all five times) but since I talked to the Hide-and-Seek kid BEFORE I talked to the Old man, the kid was now HIDING instead of being in plain sight where I could ask him who has the key to the grate. So after finally finding the kid he rattles off into this long story about how the waterway leads to the castle and then he tells me that the Old man who told me about him actually has the key.

Thanks Old Man, I hope the Kislev shoot your civilian face when they invade later.

So yeah, finally I get into the castle, fight in the tournament, steal a wedding dress from a whiner, and finish the quest to save Margie who brings home a stuffed animal who is not actually a stuffed animal but actually a rodent that grows into collosal heights so she can be the token cutsey party member without actually having to pilot a giant mecha….

And yet, somehow, I still love this game. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the oldschool translation, but as frustrating as it can be to figure out where I’m supposed to go, I realise that the game gives me plenty of hints, I’m just blind to them becuase I’ve had someone read for me for so long I haven’t had to figure things out myself.

I just don’t remember having this much trouble the first time around, and honestly, I wonder if I’d have trouble figuring out where to go in Chrono Trigger if it’d been 10 years since I played it – I’m pretty sure it has some similar parts (the first time you go to Medina comes to mind.)

Games just aren’t the same as they used to be, for better or for worse. Mass Effect 2, like many WRPGs, is lauded for its non-linearity, but it’s really just choosing what plot you want to drill through next as the galaxy is neatly labeled with “Want Jack to become Loyal? Go here!” or “Want to continue the plot? Go here!”

But I’m finding a certain charm to walking into pointless houses with pointless people in them, because it feels like I’m in an actual world even if they ultimately serve to distract me from what I was actually doing.

If nothing else, it’s been fun to laugh at myself.

The games here are:

Kirby’s Dreamland, Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Megaman.

Broca’s area is a region of the hominid brain with functions linked to speach.