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by creativepig 03/05/2003, 9:30pm PST |
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Ever since my name was put forward as one of the possible coders of this site and promptly forgotten, I haven't had a lot to contribute. But let this be my implicit (well, explicit, thanks to this preamble) volunteering for role of untereditor. You know, as long as my hack job of punctuation-fixing and tense-making-better-of and general "this is awkward" rephrasing gets a passing grade below. Obviously, were I working one-on-one with you untalented bunch of fagswriters, all of the alterations I've made here would be suggestions, but since this is dirty commie editing/critiquing, I've just gone ahead and done it.
There is a cutscene a few hours into Xenosaga in which the main character, Shion Uzuki, and her pals are on some salvage ship. She has apparently made dinner, and the crew of wacky cliches rave about how good the food is and how they usually have such bad food because there are no women on board to cook for them.
The captain demands she refill his glass of water. Twice. Shion's friend (who likes her) politely asks her to refill his water glass, as well. She replies with, "I'm sorry, I haven't noticed!" He mumbles to himself, "haven't noticed?"
What is this scene about? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?!!!!!!!!!!! But, more importantly, why do I mention this? Because this is the dead giveaway that this game's story and dialogue were written by someone who simply cannot write. I'm not sure if that exchange, which ends the scene, is supposed to be some sort of comic relief, part of a character arc or some kind of love interest. The fact that it doesn't make sense shows that the writer is in over his head, dealing with characters and situations that he obviously just can not fucking control. My mention of this scene has more significance to the overall game than the scene itself does. And that should be a clue that it's time to give up your day job as a self-important video game plot-writer and go sell pencils and string on the street corner or wash people's windsheilds at red lights.
Judging by my senses and perception skills, which are advanced light years beyond any fan of Xenogears or Xenosaga, the developers spent more time working on the detail of the 12-year-old character MOMO's panties than working that the story to make sense and not be preachy all the time--if people aren't having meaningless conversations with each other in this game, they're preaching to each other about how important it is to respect human rights. This from the country that murdered civilians and cut out our prisoners' internal organs and ate them raw at banquets a few decades ago. You get the feeling, even from the "war is so mean and not nice" sentiments in the game, that its people still blame us for attacking them.
The game hinges entirely upon the writing. The only part of this game that actually resembles a game is when it occasionally stops spewing platitudes at you and lets you wander around a bland corridor area for a while or fight a few bland battles. Then you turn a corner and there's a very extended cutscene of an obviously evil character spouting off about how "these realians are merely toys, I will blow them up to help me save myself!" And then the very sympathetic main characters scream, "NO, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, HOW DARE YOU?! YOU ARE JUST LIKE AMERICA WHEN PEARL HARBOR ATTACKED OUR FLEET!"
Apparently, several people are convinced that, if the story is long, it must be good, no matter what. Note the extremely blowjobby review from Gamespot, which gives the game an 8.1, and then proceeds to fire off a gigantic and crippling laundry list of negative comments that, if they were directed at any other game, would have docked the score to about 1.5.
Here's something that Gamespot said, and not me. Tell me if you think this seriously makes sense. They mention that the game, as has been admitted by everyone who has played it, has extremely long cutscenes. Gamespot's 8.1 OMG GAME SO COOL ANIME RULEZ review says that the cutscenes do, occasionally, get boring. So, if the entire game is mostly cutscenes, and they get boring, wouldn't that just make the game plain old boring?
However, I have no problem with the cutscenes being long. I have watched movies before. There are no random encounters or interactivity in them, except for rewinding and such. I like movies. Especially if they have a good story. So if I'm playing a game, and it has long cutscenes, the same rule applies. As long as it's any good, I'll like it. The cutscenes in Xenosaga weren't really boring, I thought. They're just really really bad. And again, since the game is made up of them, that doesn't exactly give you a lot else to work with.
And now, I'll throw out a few point scores for the people with short attention spans.
Graphics: 8
They aren't bad; obviously someone with no life beyond creating 3D models of women poured a lot of work into this game. They also had a field day with everything below the waist, but, unfortunately for American gamers, they've disabled the ability to look up the skirts of all the female characters. Just another example of America RUINING the sacred art of Japan with their puritanical witch hunts.
Some of the effects of attacks during battle are absurd, though. Some characters throw flower petals or important-looking ancient text at their enemies... or binary code. Seeing this fly around when you hit an enemy really degrades the effect of fucking up some bad guys. The battle effects in this game, while looking good, are absolutely overkill. Just like almost every single thing in this game, no one was around to tell the programmers and designers just where the fuck to get off.
Panties: 10
Almost every female character in this game wears a skirt, and the designers have indeed created something up that skirt other than some stretched out polygons to block the view. Either they wear that skirt and like it, or have no skirt and basically wear some kind of skin tight one-piece thong suit.
MOMO panties: 10
This will probably be the biggest selling point of the entire game. Everyone knows that the story sucks, but whenever MOMO, the android girl with the appearance of a 12-year-old girl (to sort of disguise her, the game alleges) shows up in a cutscene, you can usually see her kneel down and show a flash of bright white and obvious panties under her extremely short skirt. If you play this game at all, you literally cannot get away from seeing her panties several times. Even in the battle scenes, when she dies, she does it ass in the air, with a clear behind-the-feet view of bright white, Elvis-adored cotton panties. The reason for this is that the anime creators know there are a lot of pedophiles out there who want to see a 12-year-old with big, cute eyes and a cute, pert nose sexualized as much as possible, but still have a perfectly good excuse for it. In this case, the very transparent "she is an android, not human" excuse. Save it for the Devil, motherfucker, because the court of Crimes Against Humanity is sentencing you to a quick and painful execution. Shot to death on the lawn of the White House.
Hype: 0 (zero)
They released a lot of weird news about this game in order to build interest for it. I remember reading that Xenosaga was planned as the PS2's first double-sided DVD disc, it was so expansive! This was an incredibly weak lie. News reports eventually leaked out that the American version cut out a scene because of objectionable content, leaving Xenogears fans anxiously frothing at the mouth with rage at the evil Americans destroying the perfect and sacred art of Japan. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the scene really was objectionable, featuring a 12 year old girl getting her uterus fisted (see screenshot) by the main villian, in a scene that goes on way way longer than it should and also includes enough moaning and sexual gratification from the villian ("It feels so good!") to make any idiot wonder why they would include this at all. The only thing they have left to hype is the soundtrack, which would include about one single 10-second piece of tense music which is repeated literally millions of times in the game during the (apparently) tense parts.
Story: 0 (zero)
People who think they're buying this for the story obviously have no clue what a good story even is. Most of the plot twists are obvious hours before they are revealed, unless from characters that haven't even shown up until a minute before. Every single character they try to make you think could be dead and show a minute later alive, if you have any of your faculties in order, you'd know that they'd try to pass off as dead and reveal that he's alive before anything even happens to that character. When you see that one character has a special skill that gives him better defense only when a specific character in the game is behind him in battle, you'll know that those two characters will become fast friends before they even know it.
Sound: 0 (zero)
The voice acting is horrible. They couldn't find anyone who could speak at least one single four-word line without fucking it up? I guess not. Music in this game barely exists; most of it is a few songs repeated over the several endless, mind-numbing hours you sit on your ass playing this peace-time atrocity.
Fanbase: 0 (zero)
Some of the creepiest motherfuckers you could ever regret meeting, even if it's on a message board on the internet. There isn't a single brain cell to rub between them, except for the brain cells that control how importantly they consider themselves.
Overall: 10... out of 100,000,000! RLROLFOL
Everything right about this game was stolen from FFX. Everything the creators brought themselves is fucked up beyond belief, repair, and forgiveness. Everything that they thought would be cool in the game is overdone, so even if it's cool at all, it isn't cool after the first time. It was a good idea to have a game with an epic story that reaches over several games--when they were finished, they were left with a failure on every conceivable level of artistic humiliation. When I go to bed at night, I realize how I could accidentally make a better game in my sleep. In fact, I already have, several times.
The only bit I wasn't sure about was the "Elvis-adored" panties. Elvis-adorned?
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My Xenosaga review. by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 6:57pm PST 
A+ by Zseni 03/05/2003, 7:07pm PST 
Re: A+ [adjusted grade inside] by Ray, of Light 03/05/2003, 8:27pm PST 
I always like it better my way. :( by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 8:58pm PST 
Re: I always like it better my way. :( by Ray, of Light 03/05/2003, 10:45pm PST 
Indeed, see below post. by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 11:24pm PST 
Re: My Xenosaga review. by Panties Stew 03/05/2003, 7:21pm PST 
Re: My Xenosaga review. by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 7:25pm PST 
genre spcialist??? by FABIO 03/05/2003, 10:11pm PST 
^__^ Wetting my panties with glee! (nt) NT by Cyannies 03/05/2003, 7:26pm PST 
I sure am good at doing that! (nt) NT by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 7:27pm PST 
This should go online very soon so it's all current and shit. by Fussbett 03/05/2003, 7:30pm PST 
Yes I do by Ice Cream Jonsey 03/05/2003, 8:34pm PST 
Playing editor by creativepig 03/05/2003, 9:30pm PST 
Damn you, Ray(!). (nt) by creativepig 03/05/2003, 9:33pm PST 
Re: Playing editor by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 9:40pm PST 
Re: Playing editor by creativepig 03/05/2003, 9:55pm PST 
Re: Playing editor by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 10:20pm PST 
Re: Playing editor by Barbara Leigh 03/05/2003, 10:23pm PST 
Re: Playing editor by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 10:27pm PST 
(I thought it was adorned too) (nt) by Ray, of Light 03/05/2003, 10:37pm PST 
Bitew Ray and pig. by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 10:46pm PST 
Okay, here are the changes I want (so far). by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 11:21pm PST 
Candifist says I misspelled villian or villain or whatever the fuck. by Jhoh Creexul 03/05/2003, 11:30pm PST 
Aren't You mything something? by Mr. Palomar 03/06/2003, 12:07am PST 
Re: Aren't You mything something? by FABIO 03/06/2003, 12:22am PST 
I'm The Shinji In FABIO's Mind by Mr. Palomar 03/06/2003, 12:54am PST 
That's right, I totally forgot about that. by Jhoh Creexul 03/06/2003, 2:06am PST 
Re: My Xenosaga review. by resha999 04/23/2008, 8:07am PDT 
http://www.caltrops.com/review0012.php NT by review0012.php 04/23/2008, 8:53am PDT 
Re: http://www.caltrops.com/review0012.php by Jhoh Creebul, Witch Toucher O_O 04/23/2008, 11:56am PDT 
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