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In this installment of my journal, I'm going to be posting a review of a video game that I've talked about before, just to get it out of my system. Be prepared, it's gonna be a big-un.

"The World Ends With You" for the Nintendo DS. Created by Square-Enix and Jupiter, art by the team that brought you the Kingdom Hearts series.

You play the emotionally stunted, closed off and angry, young tween named Neku Sakuraba. And the story itself begins with said kid waking up in the middle of the most crowded intersection of Japan which is appropriately named "Scramble Crossing", in the shopping district known as Shibuya. He receives a text message on his cell phone saying that he's in something called the "Reaper's Game" and that he's got to survive 7 days of it, or face erasure.

With that being said, Neku embarks on his journey of self-realization, being forced to meet, interact, and work with, various other "Players" in this twisted game. Over time, Neku learns that to be truly happy with his life, he's got to find a way to include others in it, and that his world could expand further than his ownself.

The art style, which looked out of place in the fantasy setting of Kingdom Hearts, fits almost seamlessly with the teenage culture of Shibuya. Gravity defying hair styles, zippers everywhere, bright colors (when available) and more help define the unique clothing that all the characters wear. And while it's unrealistic to assume that every person in Shibuya is one of these anorexic looking models, with barely more than sticks for their arms and legs, you can easily suspend your disbelief and just roll with it, admiring the eye candy that's splashed across your twin screens at almost every second of gameplay, to include the almost photo realistic backgrounds of Shibuya, to even the stores your characters can go to to buy clothes, food, and other items.

The story, while bearing some distinctly Japanese RPG cliches, such as your emotions or willpower somehow being the entire purpose/source for your strength in a fight, it has some HUGE surprises and twists that will honestly come to bowl you over, over the course of it all. It really centers around individuality and the need to define oneself, while juxtaposing it against one's innate desire to conform to a greater aesthetic and "belong." It just brings back to bear the statement that "no one is an island" (which I've paraphrased so as not to appear sexist. Lol.) There's the usual bad guys you love to hate, some bad guys you love to love (Minamimoto for teh win!), and the good guys that you end up cheering for despite how messed up they were, even if they were responsible for all the conflict in their lives to begin with.

And speaking of conflict (nice segue there, huh?), it brings us to the battle system in the game. Most RPGs are made or broken by how unusual/new/ground-breaking/confusing these systems are. TWEWY is no exception for that category I call the "Holy-crap-how-do-you-do-this-and-NOT-have-a-seizure!?" style of play. Granted, it starts you off slowly at first, controlling one character at a time and slowly introducing elements of the dual screen combat over time; but once you've got both characters under your control, hammering away at the "Noise" or monsters in this adventure, you can easily be overcome with confusion and frustration at controlling the bottom touch screen with the stylus, and the top screen with the directionals or (ABYX) buttons AT THE SAME TIME. Luckily, for players who aren't so hot at the multi-tasking, there's an option where you can get the CPU to immediately take over your partner on the top, leaving you to tap, slash, draw, and press your way to victory through the bottom screen.

Personally, after only a half hour of practice (which feels like 5 minutes if you focus on it) you can get a good solid feel for how their unique system plays out. It's more or less a game of Ping Pong between the characters you control. Do an attack with one, finish a combo on a monster with the other. Wash, rinse and repeat. The fun part to this is the "Light Puck", which your characters juggle back and forth whenever they successfully complete a combo on a Noise. The more often and faster you juggle the puck, the more damage you can deal and the more of a bonus you get after the fight, when you reap the spoils of war. There's an immense amount of tips and tricks to the combat system, but that can get covered in further works. Basically, it's a mind-bender to get used to, but once you do, you'll be erasing the Noise with both characters in as little as 5 seconds flat, and having an absolute BLAST doing it.

Lastly, the soundtrack to the game is polished to a fine, reflective platinum finish. For the first time, to this gamer's recollection, vocals have been added to the music! Every song that plays during combat, and even the ones that you hear when moving around the map of Shibuya, has a multitude of instruments and a varying range of vocal styles. You can hear rock music, bubblegum pop, instrumentals (sans vocals, of course), rap, and even remixes of previous music. Throughout the story, you find yourself connecting much more than what you would have, simply because the timing and execution of the music just FITS so well. And as an added bonus, during gameplay, you can find and buy CDs at NPC controlled stores and set any song you want to play while you poke around the various menus. Personally, this soundtrack is one of those that you'd have a blast listening to as you drive around town doing your errands. The hard rock of "Transformation", the feel good tempo of "Deja Vu", and a whole slew of others will have you humming and tapping your feet along with as you play, I guarantee it.

All in all, "The World Ends With You" is one of those games that you hate to set down, simply because you want to do more, hear more, see more, and live that life to its fullest. While the price is sketchy (especially if you grab it brand new), it's a solid title that's worth every penny you spend on it. Easily a title that you can pick up years from now, and still lose yourself in it.

Cheesy rating: 9 out of 10 stars, because despite all the awesome that's packed into that DS card, ain't nothing truly perfect.

-KM
out