Kingdom Hearts is still going for that movie, huh.

 

The very worst part about this movie adaptation culture bubble we're constantly wrapped up within is that everyone thinks they're due a profitably adaptation as long as they've got the money to force it through a production studio. There's no longer that eye from a production studio going 'eh, this is probably a bad idea', probably for the dual reasons that money talks louder, and that production studios have proven in recent years how very little they know about the products they produce. Turns out it's more of a numbers/luck game for how they've been running things up till no. Go figure. And in this rush to try and squeeze a fresh audience from everything on this planet of ours, from beloved childhood books to offhand remarks made at coffee shops, there are a few ideas that should have died on the lips of the lunatics that coined them, making it all the way to active development. Which is scary.

Let me be upfront with you- I love the first Kingdom Hearts game. Having played it only a few years ago myself, I am speaking from personal experience when I declare it an absolute modern day hood classic with the staying power to delight even now amidst it's peers. (Although maybe that is no great statement to make consider the absolute drop-off of kid friendly action adventure games all around Kingdom Hearts leading to an sharp decline in competition to push that genre's needle forward. It's pretty much just Kingdom Hearts and the rare Mario game at this point.) And it's with that familiarity with the franchise, as well as my love for storytelling, that I convey how absolutely hairbrained it is to think anyone can sit down and make a comprehensive, cohesive and creative movie around the Kingdom Hearts brand. Even if it's not a straight adaptation, it would be a chore. And I think this is actually supposed to be an adaption!

But given that Nintendo are very eager to push their own cinematic empire out the gate following the success of the Mario movie, apparently with a Zelda movie in the works, a Donkey Kong spin-off and, at some point down the road, a Smash Bros crossover event- the gauntlet has been thrown. The challenge has been issued. Disney have been put on notice and now they need an animated movie empire of their own. Similarly, Square Enix haven't been doing so hot recently. Oh, they're making money- but not in an angling graph of profitability like they hoped for. As it happens they pushed for very expensive gamble games in a couple years of slow growth for the industry and now they are looking for something of a vertical growth angle that will lay seeds to profit in the near to distant future. God knows why they thought a Kingdom Hearts movie being finally pushed into production would be that lifeline- but at least we know well enough why they're this desperate.

Now of course, nothing official has been announced- but when we're talking about Disney that's hardly the only vector through which information is portrayed. Leakers give us such a three-sixty scope of every product that company has ever put into production that I genuinely think Marvel under Disney hasn't been able to pull off a surprise since the name reveal for 'Endgame'- and even then that title was unwittingly spoiled by an actor's gaffe a few weeks beforehand. As of now the leaker is saying that Disney are balancing the proposition in their minds, weighing the possibilities available to them, all whilst I imagine Square Enix is pounding on their door demanding their cut because as desperate as they are, you just know their other partner is going to push this down the greenlight road as haphazardly as possible.

The very first hurdle that a Kingdom Hearts movie, or even a TV series, would have to contend with is how in the hell one would condense the narrative into a cohesive presentation. The story of Kingdom Hearts is tucked within hours of games and side games all building atop on another into oblivion, and even if the first game kept everything relatively comprehensive- it still packed itself with mysteries that verge on the curious to the downright bizarre. On one hand, the strange appearance of a single member from Organisation XIII is a fun little prelude to what will happen down the road, on the otherhand the absolute verbal diarrhoea spouted on that beach in the post credits scene is a storytelling travesty. (I say this currently in full knowledge of what the entire conversation meant, recognising how vapid it ultimately was.) And this franchise is full of stuff like that! Look no further than the scrambling way the franchise spent it's first few titles refuting itself in a desperation to define what the heck 'Kingdom Hearts' even is. I still couldn't tell you.

Secondly, Kingdom Hearts juggles quite a large number of properties owned by a bevy of different copyright holders who are portrayed in very specific ways. It's a wonder how Nomura was able to get away with some of his depictions in the game, but I wonder how someone totally unrelated to the gaming space could finagle the rights to portray Leon as a washed up failure operating under a pseudonym in order to hide from his screw up past. Or Cloud as a totally edgy 2000's-coded too-cool-to-care badass who slides into scenes just long enough to reaffirm how disinterested he is with everyone else's plight on his way to battle Sephiroth for the umpteenth time. Or Goofy as a neglectful partner who abandons his significant other at the drop of a hat to go planet hopping with the boys. (Actually that last one does line up with the man's characterisation in Goof Troop, I guess.)

And thirdly, does anyone actually realise what the Kingdom Hearts games actually are, I mean from a conceptual level? They're gamifications of popular Disney movies. How do you turn Alice in Wonderland into a game? You tie it into the convoluted narrative of Heartless monsters seeking to sabotage Alice for some unknown reason. (A reason which, at the end of the day, contradicts the overall plans of the badguy because if Alice had been executed like they were trying to make happen, he wouldn't have had the Princess souls necessary to open the way to Kingdom Hearts or whatever.) What I'm trying to say is, the meat of any Kingdom Hearts game is retelling, practically note for note, popular Disney stories in game format. A totally non-additive adaption. Readapting those stories back into visual-only form is an exorcise in redundancy that I don't think the producers are ready to fully comprehend. 

Remember the audience you are contributing to, and know that these are the kinds of people who considered the Mario movie confusing. If you really think Kingdom Hearts is the kind of property that is just going to suck up a casual viewerbase, then all I can is prepared to be shocked when your viewing metrics drop off a cliff as people drop this show/movie halfway through the first arc. The thing is, Kingdom Hearts is a classic, but it is so of it's time. Spiky haired anime boys who strive their hardest and end up succeeding because they simply believed in themselves until the end is a played out commodity that died over a decade ago. There's no place to bring it back for a franchise as convoluted, obtuse and frankly batty as this. Still want KH 4 though.

The burgeoning Kingdom Hearts dilemma

It goes something like this...

Kingdom Hearts is a franchise in trouble, and I don't think it's realised it yet. How could they when it's visionary director is off making 15 games out of Final Fantasy 7, and I know originally said that as a joke but now that I think about it; Tetsuya Nomura has already announced or released five games based around Final Fantasy 7 so it is very possible he makes it to fifteen before he's done. He just needs to add a party-game stumble spin-off set on a Mako Reactor and then a farm sim within the Wutai clans and he's golden! But whilst all this is going on, Kingdom hearts is circling the drain it doesn't even realise because the second half of that franchise collaboration isn't living up to their weight of the deal. Disney is failing to provide what Kingdom Hearts needs in order to grow.

It is movies? No, Disney is still popping out the odd new animated films with Encanto, Turning Red and... um... 'Strange World'? But what is it that all of these movies don't have that Kingdom Hearts sort of needs... hmm... oh, that's right; Villains! Kingdom Hearts, love it or hate it, is a traditional action adventure lightly RPG adventure built around very basic plotpoints underneath a supremely complex overall narrative. You visit the world of a Disney movie, meet the heroes and then beat up the bad guy, usually in a scene vaguely reminiscent of  how the villain dies in the respective movie. How exactly would Sora and crew slide that formula into those three properties, the last 3 animated Disney movies released? Encanto has good songs but there's no real villain, Turning Red doesn't even have good music and the only antagonist of Strange World is generational friction. How is Kingdom Hearts supposed to feed off that to base a grand Japanese RPG story off?

Recently Disney has shifted away from the traditional big bad villain in order to present other types of conflicts in stories they try to pitch as being more emotionally intelligent; which is a quite warm prospective until you look at their slate and realise that 9 times out of 10 that just means a story of "You don't understand what it's like to be me, mom!" In their desire to shift from a style of narrative they believe to be pastiche and overdone, Disney has slipped into another trope, inherently more boring, that they're trying to squeeze the life out of one movie at a time. An attempt that is leaving us with a generation of Disney movies all desperately falling over each other to bark the exact same message about connection between family members; and none of it makes for good gameplay fodder. Unless we actually got a chance to beat the heck out of the dad character in Strange World; because he is a deadbeat ass who deserves it. Just saying.

So then we have to ask ourselves the question; just how many more Disney movies does Kingdom Hearts have left to squeeze for inspiration before the animated movie well runs dry? At a guess I'd perhaps say Zootopia, but then I'm immediately realising the problem there is Sora would have to be turned into an animal furry and that opens a whole can of worms that the Kingdom Hearts community is absolutely not mature enough to navigate. Raya And The Last Dragon was pretty but literally no one watched that. The Ice Age movie was- there was an Ice Age movie in 2022? What the what? Oh, and I guess that is a Disney franchise now because they bought out Fox... Still, does anyone really want to see Sora interact with the likes of Sid and Manny. Urg- or the baby? Frankly, I think Kingdom Hearts should have a little more self respect than that. So then what does that leave?

Franchise hopping, I say. Pull in all takers and make Kingdom Hearts a franchise that grabs other properties for content! Dreamworks, Bluesky... um...Studio Ghibli? Whatever, whoever; just find someone who still has villains to buff up the Kingdom Hearts slate, because whenever you leave Kingdom Hearts alone to come up with badguys they consistently fall back on overly anime-looking characters stuffed in baggy black robes. It's like a fetish for them, it makes me uncomfortable. We need some more creativity in this franchise, and I fear that Star Wars is only going to do so much considering the vast creativity issues that franchise is having on it's own recently. Sure, we can have a Darth Vader and Emperor boss fight, but what then? The fish face people from The Book of Boba Fett? Nah, give me some fresh stuff!

With that in mind, why don't I just throw caution to the wind and tell Square to seek out a collaborative relationship with the Yugioh owners post haste! Yeah, that's right. I'm talking Yugioh, the franchise of ancient Pharaoh's inhabiting the bodies of young boys, 'Heart of the cards' and "It's not fair. It should have been me, not him!" But seriously, think about it- an entire Kingdom Hearts world where the fighting becomes a turn-based RPG card game with legendary card summonables like Blue-eyes White Dragon! The villains can be Kaiba or the Tyler sisters! (just so long as they're voiced by the 4Kids actresses who gave them both inexplicable valley girl drawls) I'm telling you the overblown complexity of Yu Gui Oh makes a perfect fit for the similarly overblown Kingdom Hearts narrative! It's such a perfect collaboration it isn't even funny!

And heck, whilst we're at is, why not give a World over to the Hallownest? Yeah, let Sora pick himself a bug persona and join the Hollow Knight on his journey to free his kingdom from The Radiance! (And 'The Knight' is 'The Hollow Knight'; no matter what pseudo-intellectuals across the Internet might try and say.) Switching up the action to a side-scrolling platformer would really stretch the limits of Kingdom Heart's creativity and really freshen up what we come to expect from the games. Or maybe they'll just translate Hollow Knight itself into 3D in a bizarre clashing of styles. I won't say I'd love to see how that would turn out, but I'd be curious to see it anyway. Either way, Hollow Knight is dripping with great villains to spice up a Kingdom Hearts game; with Radiance presenting great sub main antagonist potential!

Kingdom Hearts has to do something before it gets desperate for new crossover characters! And you might consider the possibilities I've already presented as 'getting desperate', but at least I'm offering some ideas and solutions! I fear Tetsuya was only riding the Kingdom Hearts train to give him enough pull and credibility to take control of the rights to Final Fantasy 7; now he has that Kingdom Hearts is just a slowly disappearing dot on his windshield. By my guess, Kingdom Hearts 4 is going to need to generate at least five years worth of spin-off content in order to delay long enough for a new slate of strong animated Disney movies to come out and give the franchise some inspiration. Which, knowing how much the KH story loves to procrastinate, is totally possible; but I prefer a cleaner, more insanely ambitious, solution. Does that make my ambitious dreams synchronous to the dreams of a madman? Yes. Yes it does.

Kingdom Hearts 4

Is this the way to the door to Darkness?

I'm always one to give into nostalgia, but never did I think I'd be struck with a wave powerful enough to wet the ol' eyelids from a series I've barely known for 2 years. That just doesn't feel like a decent enough chunk of time for the memories to burrow deep enough into my core processors that they can then tap into the 'pleasant emotions' cortex. But I suppose that just goes to show how deeply and how much I truly loved the Kingdom Hearts games. (Except for 'Chain of Memories'.) These games have entered by subconsciousness so fully that a bastardised rendition of 'Dearly Beloved' gave me deep chills all up my spinal column and had me holding by breath taut. Perhaps that is why I felt so warm when Sora received that, all important, final invitation to Smash; and why Kingdom Hearts IV gets me so very excited even when I haven't had to time to even get around to III yet. (Or the fifteen games you have to endure beforehand. Man, this series is sprawling.)

First I have to offer my sincere most congratulation to Sora for hailing from a franchise with the balls to stick to it's number system when things get dicey. Time and time again we've seen roman numerals adorn subtitles for series' because the creators think it makes them look all cool and sophisticated, only for those same creative to subsequently drop the concept once they hit the Vs and the Xs; probably for fear of confusing that most easily bedazzled people: toddlers. (Seriously, it's not that hard; games like Assassin's Creed!) Of course, given the Final Fantasy connection I suppose that's not entirely a shocker, because that series has been rocking the Roman numericals for so long that they're seriously toying with putting 'Final Fantasy XVI' on a box and selling it to people not expecting them to have brain haemorrhages in the store. (They have way more trust in the average consumer than I do.)

Second, my goodness they have done an absolute one-eighty on the art direction of this series, and I'm pretty on the fence about how I feel about it. Okay, that's not entirely true: I'm decently sure that I don't like it. Previously, Kingdom Hearts boasted this very cartoonish look, with overly exaggerated body parts, big oversized eyes, even more oversized hairspikes, and a leg-to-body ratio that makes one question the gravitational forces at work on The Destiny Islands. Any character that wasn't from a Disney movie sported these wacky visuals, presumably in an effort to match the animated stylings of our favourite Disney movies which also featured, lovingly recreated, in this series. As the games have moved on they're stepped away from that and made Sora and his fellow human stars, 'Roxas, Namine, Riku etc.' look less absurd and more realistic. Kingdom Hearts 2 saw the removal of the clown shoes, 3 saw the reduction of the hair spikes, and 4 seems to have completed the transition from fun kid's character to boyband wannabe teenager who just happens to wield a Keyblade.

Now to be fair there's actually a pretty decent reason for this. Sora, coming from a world and art style somewhat adjacent to Final Fantasy, has always sort of progressed his visual style to keep in step with the latest Final Fantasy game of the time. Kingdom Hearts 1 came around a year after Final Fantasy X, which introduced the big hands and feet of their art design, so those were features that Sora would borrow. In fact, it's actually somewhat out-of-step that Sora held onto his big cartoon eyes and still decently unrealistic hair in Kingdom Hearts 3, given that Final Fantasy XV had come out three years earlier and that game had pursued a totally sanitised art style. Now in line with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy XVI, Sora has to be as fidelity-driven as possible in design; and though I may think it robs some of the fantastical charm of the boy-who-rarely-ages, I can't pretend this isn't without precedent.

Those who were waiting around excited to see which Disney property Kingdom Hearts had managed to snatch up this time need not waste their time with this reveal; Square Enix knows the development of their games well enough to avoid any topical Disney universe collaboration promises today so that they can keep themselves free for the Disney movie line-up of 2035: which is when this game is most likely to launch. Still, I think it's fair to say we'll probably see Moana up there, because god-knows we need to not have Ariel be the custodian for our water levels again. Maybe Encanto will make an appearance, but Turning Red will probably be skipped as it's just not vibrant and distinct enough. I dream of bright and colourful worlds, because anything would be more interesting than the boring city-scape that this trailer dropped us into! (Give is a cool name all you want: this place looks dull) Although I understand- this is a tech demo and thus the scene probably won't even show up in the final release; I just miss having proper eye-popping colours and appropriately head-scratch-worthy architecture, ya know?

What his tech demo did manage to show off, however, was a one-on-one battle with a Titan-sized heartless in the middle of a metropolitan city which may have been overly scripted to hell and back, but if this flow of cinematics into and out of gameplay carries over to the finished product then we could be looking at some seriously badass setpeices coming from KH4. Final Fantasy XV had a couple moments of god-sized boss fights where player control took over the action for brief moments, but they felt sort of clunky and required a full transition before they got into and out of the actual fighting gameplay. What this demo proposed here today was something more dynamic feeling than that, particularly with the moment when Sora has a building thrown at him and has to slide through it and out the otherside in order to make his shot. Pack a boss fight with moments like that; and make them meaningful, and this game could be one of the most fun Kingdom Hearts battlers to date.

Of course, some people have raised eyebrows over some of the awkward, antiquated, animations that we're seeing on display projected atop to this otherwise 'Unreal Engine 5'-level showcase. Seeing that weird run cycle where Sora holds his Keyblade upright as though waiting for a pitcher to slug a fast one at him any second now, really jars against the rest of the presentation here, as does the stiff transitions through the grappling hook pulls and jumping. Although I think we can tentatively chalk this up to reused assets from Kingdom Hearts 3. Remember this isn't a release trailer, this is basically just a proof-of-concept for where the team are going with the direction of the gameplay. I know we take the label 'gameplay is not indicative of the final product' with a bit of an eyebrow; but just take a look at the tech demo for Final Fantasy XV, or Kingdom Hearts 3, and compare them with their final products, and you'll see yourself the world of difference in the fabric of everything the game has to offer from visual themes to character design to basic movement.

The question that still lingers over the heads of every Kingdom Hearts fan yet persists; is this too soon for a Kingdom Hearts mainline sequel? Of course not! Don't let the embarrassingly prolonged wait period between 2 and 3 fool you into thinking that's the norm of game development. If every sequel took 14 years to come out, Final Fantasy would still be in the single digits! Time off doesn't make a great game, great ideas and talented developers make great games, and they can pull it off in 5 or so years just as well as they can with a decade behind them. Although, I do wonder if Tetsuya Nomura will manage to find time off from his self-inflicted FF7R purgatory in order to direct this game, or if we're going to have to suffer the whims of an all-new director. I don't know if any-mind is as warped enough to helm this adventure for another baffling outing; so my hopes really on on Tetsuya to get pumping on his overtime. All and around; this is a great treat to look forward to on our gaming horizon: I can't wait.

Sora in Smash

 Finally, indeed

And so it has finally come to pass, the clock has turned and the final Super Smash Bros. Character to be added in the largest crossover game of all time has come. I was actually late to the reveal (take a shot for me being late to a gaming event for the fiftyist time) so when I logged in all I saw was a couple of characters duking it out on a by-the-numbers stage and I remember thinking "Okay, so when does the cool stuff happen, who's the new character. All we've got here is Samus and Sora. Wait, wait a second... one of these guys isn't supposed to be here!" And that's how I learnt that our finale hero is going to be the bearer of the Keyblade himself; Sora of the Disney Square Enix divide. Aspirant of Kingdom Hearts, slayer of Heartless, friend to every single major Disney character ever, and remover of puberty during that one chase at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1 but the beginning of 'Chain of Memories'. And may I just say it's about time.

I mean the only reason I didn't recognise him straight away was because I assumed he was already part of the cast, that's how much of a no-brainer Sora was, but I guess the fact that we have him now is going to be an achievement to rest laurels on, huh. Does this make for that explosive finale we all were waiting for? I mean perhaps, for a few, but this isn't so much the mind-blowing "Oh my god, they got ____?" As it is the head scratching, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Doesn't it?" Then again, looking at Fortnite and the lackadaisical way they've handled crossovers throughout the years, I guess we really shouldn't just be down for anyone showing up anyway. Without Sakurai and his team of professionals leading the way, we'd be getting a procession of low effort skin jobs and not the all encompassing character creation which makes Smash Bros. creation so very special.

Whatsmore, when you really stop and think about it, putting Sora in any other video game is quite the huge deal when you consider that he is a creation of a property owned by Square Enix as well as the notoriously difficulty-to-work-with Disney. In fact, I think the only reason this deal was able to go through is because Disney relinquished it's reign of video games quite a while ago, and so Square have majority control over the direction of the series. The request for this crossover was likely just a document shoved on the desk of Chapek that he signed off on without reading a single word of it. Nintendo and Disney getting into negotiations together sounds like a recipe for abject litigational disaster as far as I'm concerned, and all the courts in the world have been spared a horrible death by paper cut.

That last livestream was a pretty emotionally charged moment for a lot of people out there, not least of all for Waluigi holdouts who don't seem to grasp the concept that the guy is already an assist trophy, thus he actually cannot become a fighter now. (I know most are just memeing, but some people get actually upset and it confuses me.) Seeing Sakurai build up to the moment was a big deal, seeing as how this game has been the ultimate culmination of all his work on Smash up until now. (And the fact that the final DLC character was supposed to drop at the end of the last DLC pack.) Though given the part of the industry he hails from it was obvious we weren't going to see any outward emotion,  I think the gravity of the finality surrounding the reveal touched us all. (Of course, for me that was in retrospect, because I turned up late.)

As for the reveal video itself, that was pretty much as sweet and emotional as it could have been; watching the fire of the Smash logo snuff itself out for one final invitation and then seeing that Invitation be the Keyblade unlocking Kingdom Hearts to release Sora. Or rather, I think that's what they were going for. The whole 'Door to Kingdom Hearts' thing has shifted over the years to the point where I legitimately have no idea what they were fighting over at the end of the first game anymore, so speculation abounds. But seeing Sora drift into the void and float above the dozens of his now contemporaries, was heart-warming to see. And I was even more excited to see that this was Kingdom Hearts 1 Sora. Or rather, Kingdom Hearts 2 Sora in 1 Sora's clothes, for whatever reason. A real call to the past from the team there, nicely done.

Sora's moveset was also touched upon with great detail, but anyone who has played the original games to their completion probably knows a great deal of these moves anyway. A lot of it just naturally flows from the combos in the old games just fine, because these franchises have been destined for each other for so long now. The only move I would personally call to question would be that Final Smash, which has Sora trapping his enemy inside of Kingdom Hearts (as it's identified in KH1, not the KH2 Moon) and then exploding it? Is that- is that a good thing? Isn't Kingdom Hearts integral to the fabric of the universe or something? And since when can the Keyblade blow up doors? I thought that keys opened things in much more traditional ways.

Yoko Shimomura's wonderful suites make for a much welcome edition to the Smash Bros. line up of tracks, and the fact that there won't be any original compositions is just fine when we're talking about tunes this iconic and great. (Except, of course, for the victory fanfare which was composed especially by Shimomura herself.) Swashbuckling adventure pieces really do highlight the similarities I find, and I mean this in the best of ways, between Sakurai and Tetsuya Nomura. Both are visionaries who dance to their own tune, for better or for worse. Both created fabulous and memorable series' that touched the hearts of millions. And now both have their DNA within Smash Bros. given that Nomura's baby, Sora, is fighting inside of Sakurai's baby colosseum game.

If you've been around here for any length of time you'll know that I'm a huge Kingdom Hearts fan (except for Chain of Memories) and thus I couldn't think of a more fitting end for the Smash Bros. lineup than what we've seen today. Except for, I dunno, a crossover with 'Heritage from the Future', but let's not go talking any more craziness up in here. Heck, I already got Pyra, I shouldn't start getting greedy with demands and such. Putting Smash Bros. to rest is a surreal thing to be doing, especially as I, for one, was sure that a third character pack was due to be announced anyday now, and who knows how many years it'll be until a follow-up. (if, indeed, there ever is one.) But all good things must have an ending, and I think we can all agree to some extent that Smash Bros has had this one a long time coming. Till the next one, Sakurai.

What make the most memorable videogame Weapons?

What is the one gun to out-shoot them all?

Yeah, I know that's a pretty open-ended question to lead off with but bear with me for a little while whilst I justify it. Gaming contains a vast array of different experiences, genre's and existential headspins that it's almost impossible to be a fan of almost anything or judge one universal aspect. What I can look at, however, is overwhelming commonalities across a great number of Venn circles. One such commonality is that a great many games feature some sort of strife and thus usually features weapons of some sort that vary depending on the thematic back drop and/or genre in question. Good enough justification? (It'll have to do.) So yes, talking about weapons across all the video game landscape is daunting because there are just so many potential picks to pluck at, but I specifically want to point out the weapons that stand far out to the point of almost overshadowing the game. The sort of weapons that some may be able to name, or at least recognise, before naming the point of origin. And I want to discuss what it is that makes them that way, because I don't feel it's one universal rule, and perhaps in doing so I'll unravel some sort of pessimistic formula to creating the ultimate unforgettable video game weapon. (Or not, who knows.)

BFG: DOOM

And the first weapon I wanted to start off with was an gun so iconic that you probably already knew it was going to be on the list before I even knew, it's just second nature. (But can I at least say that I considered the Super Shotgun first because that's a weapon I see much more often, before realising that gun is actually intentionally generic looking and the BFG was a much better candidate.) So the BFG (standing for 'Big F***ing gun' and not 'Bio Force Gun' like the awful movie tried to say) is a very peculiar first pick because what makes it popular isn't immediately obvious. The immediate first guess would obviously be it's destructive capability, but that has altered so drastically from game to game to the point where that can't be it. All that's consistent is that it can one-shot enemies, but the actual killing beam itself is unrecognisable in modern games in all but colour. Then there would be the design, but again it's been subject to complete reworking, from something that looks like it's harnessed onto the arm to a spiky sci-fi reworking and settling with the more box-y functional look of today. Honestly, I think it's the name. People just love the idea of a name as ridiculous and cool as the BFG, and if you have to swear in order to properly pronunce it then that's just more points to the cool factor. To this day, when swearing in games in no longer a novelty, BFG's name alone is a reminder of the old-school chaotic mayhem and carnage that DOOM represents, thus the gun becomes iconic.

Gravity Gun: Half Life 2

Here's another absolute shoe in. One can hardly discuss iconic anything in the world of gaming before Half Life drops into the conversation, but I like to think that the Gravity Gun covets popularity that persists beyond the game itself, and this time the memorable nature is immediately identifiable for all; it's for the very unique Gravity Gun functionality. Half Life 2 marks gaming history as the first game to execute truly robust physics-based systems, and the Gravity Gun was the way in which they tied it into the gameplay. Allowing players to literally pick up pieces of the environment and manipulate it, the Gravity Gun acted in way that no other gun had really done before in gaming and encouraged imaginative open-ended problem solving that inspired countless games to come. In fact, at a stretch you could even call the success of the Gravity Gun a genesis point for the eventual birth of the Immersive Sim sub-genre of RPGs! (Or at least you could do that if the original Deus Ex didn't predate Half Life 2 by 4 years. We'll say it led to 'the rise' of immersive sims, then.) So this one is iconic for being groundbreaking, simple enough. 

Keyblade: Kingdom Hearts

Okay, getting a little bit off the beaten path with this one, but here we have the ever important Keyblade in the ever esoteric Kingdom Hearts franchise. This here's a bit of personal pick because I haven't had the chance to progress in Kindgom Hearts for a while, but I think it stands due to the sheer popularity of the game and the fact that even if you have no idea what Kingdom Hearts is, you know the Keyblade. What makes it so curious to me, despite the fact that's its essentially just an oversized key, is the way in which it's designed to serve as a sword despite being completely blunt and used to lock doors despite literally representing a symbol for opening things. (Yes, I'm only talking about how it's used in Kindgom Hearts 1, because overwise my brain will explode) This is another clear cut when it comes to pinpointing the fame, because despite one of the coolest aspects of the Keyblade being the fact that it's appearance completely changes depending on the themed keychain attached to it, it's Sora's standard old blade which remains an Iconic symbol of the Disney-Final Fantasy crossover fanfic of a game. Just like with a lot of Square's properties, all the money's in the image and design. (and is that so wrong?)  

Mandibular Rearranger: The Outer Worlds

A bit more of a modern pick for you, yet one that I think still holds up to snuff against the rest of them. Who remembers the Mandibular Rearranger, or used it and cannot remember the name? As a refresher, this is the unique science weapon in The Outer Worlds that was born out of a bug and essentially had the effect of shrinking or enlarging a random part of the victims's body to frankly comical results. (And I don't just mean their horrible, and likely very painful, deaths) Use this on the unsuspecting passerby and you can expect their heads to shink, hands to grow, ear's to pop, all until they look like something out of a SIMS character creator; and all that from essentially just a little glowstick. Coming away from The Outer Worlds I think that this Rearranger was certainly the most memorable weapon in the game to the point where it sort of outshone the game itself when it was first announced. It was just such a silly celebration of the fun people can have from messing around in games and that developers can have when making them, easily cementing this as a weapon iconic for it's wacky effects.

Steel Sword: Skyrim

Ah, now we get to the games of my age; The Elder Scrolls Skyrim and it's iconic... Steel Sword? Of course there are many examples of memorable iconography from The Elder Scrolls series including some from Skyrim itself. You have the Daedric artefacts, the Nordic Aedric symbols, the banner of the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, etc. But when you think of bog standard weapons it always comes back to this Steel Sword, such to the point where more than one asset-store flip job has been rustled for stealing it. (Which is so short sighted, this is one of the most recognisable swords in gaming.) Here the recognition is quite interesting, as the sword itself isn't special in any way and it's design, whilst thematically impeccable, rather pointedly avoids the grandeur that one would call back to in reverance. No, I'd say the popularity of the Steel Sword actually goes back to the marketing, in the same why that the Dragonborn is synonymous with the 'iron armour with Studded Cuirass' combo look. These are the images that adorned all the marketing, the live action trailers, the gameplay trailers and the promotional material, thus just as with cover characters,  these stick out as the first impression everyone thinks of when it comes to Skyrim. Just goes to show how important those first impression are, no?

Greatsword of Artorias: Dark Souls

Oh, there it is. (Bet you knew I couldn't go a listicle without dropping the Dark Souls) So there is a truly ludicrous number of great weapons and armour from the Souls games that stand out as symbols, yet when pressed, most remember the Greatsword of Artorias the best, and I'm still not completely confident as to why. As opposed to the cover adorning, Elite Knight Armour, or the ever present, Moonlight Greatsword, here's a weapon that doesn't really get any overt coverage in material or really in the game either. I mean sure, it's technically on the back of the character for the cover of the 'Artorias of the Abyss' DLC, but that's not the image of Dark Souls, so I'd hardly say the popularity starts there. Even in the game it's only ever seen wielded by Artorias himself, (as well as giant version held in the mouth of his greatwolf Sif) unless you go far out your way to craft it. I actually think these weapon's popularity might actually come down to the pure design of the thing, because even in game of fantastic designs there is something about this sword in particular that is truly exceptional. It's a huge, shapely, medieval Greatsword with enough ornate decorations to stand out but not appear too gaudy. It glints with that dark, cruel gleam that invokes the gothic shades of the theme as well as the tinge of tragedy that taints it's master's backstory. Put simply, in many ways this Greatsword's design is the purist reflection of the game that spawned it, thus her aesthetic propagates the fandom.  

GLOO Cannon: Prey 

The Gelifoam Lattice Organism Obstructor (or GLOO) Cannon from Prey's 2017 revival is not what I would call the prettiest weapon in the world. Nor is it the most revolutionary thing to hit the world of gaming, changing the way that software itself it formed. It also doesn't have a name that really rolls off the tongue or has a fun swear word to blurt out at inappropriate moments. But what it does have is function and versatility, and in an immersive sim like Prey, that's pretty much the player's bread and butter. The GLOO gun shoots out a substance that glues (I get it) itself to the surface it touches in a gelatinous, foam-like substance which is strong enough to stand on, or trap something in. When faced against the mimics that litter the gameworld (beings capable of shifting their shape in order to imitate other objects) you can probably figure out the appeal. What makes the GLOO cannon so special and memorable is the way that it's the first ranged weapon you get access to in the game, thus forcing you to become familiar with all the ways in which you can manipulate it's GLOO for any situation. Combat, boosting yourself to a new floor, blocking entry points, covering electrical bursts, making snow angels, just about anything you can think of. And when you pull something crazy off, you feel like a winner for thinking outside the box. Hindsight has been kind on 2017's Prey, and the GLOO cannon is a big reason for why that is; it set the tone for the creative adventure Prey would be, thus it's memory is tied to hers.

Master Sword: Zelda

And last, but by means least, we have the humble Master Sword, as wielded numerous times by Link in the franchise that doesn't even feature his name. (Has Zelda ever even held the Master Sword?) The mere silhouette of this weapon is enough to set fanboys off hyperventilating, and you would be remiss to see a gaming-themed decor job that had neither this or a triforce somewhere. (It's like a rule) And honestly I think that this particular Sword owes it's memory as much to nostalgia as to design itself. You see, Zelda has spanned decades and innumerable art styles, but the Master Sword has remained more or less exactly the same in look throughout the games. At times it's been the strongest weapons in the player's arsenal, whilst at others it's keep earned in other ways; but the narrative import and the cyclical nature of the legend keep this Sword as a permanent part of Link's arsenal. At this point, as much as Link is a piece of gaming history, so is this sword, and that's the sort of iconic status that is sure to stick for more decades to come.

So that was just a cherry picking of some weapons that permeate the legends of gaming culture, and from collating them all together we get a pretty definitive idea of what the perfect video game weapon would resemble. It would have to be beautifully designed to an impeccable degree so that it dazzles the user, yet still be simple enough to be recognisably silhouetted. It would need heavy marketing alongside the game it features in, as well as image consistency throughout the years so that everyone remembers it. It would need to be groundbreaking from a technical aspect as well as highly versatile as more than just a tool of destruction, perhaps some progression could tie in too? And it would need to be thematically synonymous with the story of the game, and have a name with one profanity or obscene recommendation in it... So I guess what I'm saying is: the perfect video game weapon of all time is the Dildo bat from Saints Row 3. Mystery solved, riddle cracked.

Enemy spam in game design

There coming out the wall!

Enemies are a staple of a good many video games out there today, and for very good reason; they represent an active trial for the players to overcome through strife that can feel exciting and dynamic in a way that's hard to replicate with static puzzles and gradual progression. That is, of course, just a general overview of their potential role in gaming; enemies can serve many different roles for their respective games and that's what makes them such a universal aspect. That does not mean, however, that there is no etiquette or widely excepted methodology to the creation and implementation of said enemies; but I'm only interested in one specific set of rules and that's those that go into deciding the sheer quantity of enemies. What counts as just enough and what crosses into the borders of 'Enemy Spam'.

'Enemy Spam' refers to a situation in video games wherein the player meets an enemy force that vastly eclipses their ability to handle it. As such, what actually constitutes 'enemy spam' can vary wildly from game to game; it comes under the banner of balancing for the title in question. In some games, enemy spam could be considered having a group of five enemies thrown at a player in a very one-on-one style game, or having a constant barrage of enemies thrown at them again and again in a very resource heavy style game. What's important to note and make distinction of is that 'Enemy Spam' isn't used to denote a moment at which a player's ability is heavily challenged, even when it's to a degree outside of their supposed limits; but rather a time when the amount of enemies, or the type in question, are so consciously geared to be disadvantageous to the player that it starts becoming frustrating, and loses that hard-but-rewarding edge. (It's a fine line to walk.)

Personally, the first time I really came up against 'Enemy Spam' was in the party-based RPG 'Dragon Age: Origins', which I'm sure you all know so well. That was an entire game built around the core concept of intelligent use of character skills and positing in order to overcome the threats of the game. (Although, all too often that did slip into micromanaging the every move of your teammates. The AI wasn't the best on the market.) This meant that throughout the majority of the game you'd come up against smartly constructed groups of enemies that would test your versatility and strength as you devise counters against the many different enemy types, with the finale of the areas typically testing all of the strategies you had made in your journey. By the climax of the game, however, the team had run out of new enemy types to throw your way and thus just resorted to placing armies of Darkspawn in your path. This was still completely fine and dandy right up until the final hallway of enemies before the final boss; because there we all saw the quintessential example of enemy spam.

There, in front of the player, were a layout of battlements manned by Darkspawn; surely a challenge for any player to get through and requiring of some tactical planning. Bioware, however, saw to it that people wouldn't have a chance to get to planning as the second you get there you'll be hit by a wave of invisible Shrieks to throw you off your game. Good play, Bioware, but now it's time to get back to- oh, there's another wave. And another. And another. Now this isn't any where near the worst example of enemy spam, but in a game that, up until this point, had relied on strong enemy composition rather than overwhelming numbers, it was supremely jarring. And all that was compounded by the final fight itself, which swarms unending waves of enemies at you requiring anyone on higher difficulties to literally bring an entire apothecaries worth of potions just to withstand the impending hoards. (Not really the sign of a well-crafted boss fight.)

Now this is by no means the only example of this sort of issue popping up in the game balancing, and in fact; Bioware themselves are responsible for an inordinate amount of it. There's the corridor of endless Sith at the end of KOTR, the Geth Juggernaut hallway up the Citadel tower in Mass Effect and probably something at the end of Jade Empire that I haven't got to yet. But there are other examples from different game franchises. Some might say that the later Dark Souls games resorted to increased amount of enemy spam to fill their areas (although the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2 is easily the worst offender in that regard.) The final level of 2016's DOOM is split in three nauseatingly prolonged combat arenas, all enough to make you never want to see another Demon for as long as you live. The newer XCOM games have spammy final levels, as does The Outer Worlds and certainly some of the Kingdom Hearts games.

But where is that line in the sand? At what point is more enemies too much and how does a developer know how to effectively walk that line? You may have noticed a trend out of the games that I mentioned, in that most of the egregious offenders pull their spam by the final levels, and that makes sense when you think about it. The finale of the game is supposed to represent the climax in spectacle, story and gameplay; so it makes sense for the developers to throw everything they can at you. But when they just inundate you with so many enemies that the game devolves into a substandard version of itself, suddenly that's too much and considered 'Enemy Spam'. It's a very tight line to walk and I envy no one who has to do so for a living.

Perhaps the hardest task of game balancing is figuring out the utmost extremes that your game and, most importantly, what your players are comfortable with; because realistically there is no right answer. There's no cure-all, one-fits-all, choice for how to attain perfect equilibrium and  therefore Devs just have to work off what little they can judge from their play testers and a little bit of instinct. Some games can totally get away with chucking the kitchen sink at you without ruining anyone's day; just look at the finale of 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' for instance. Just before the final encounter the player is asked to walk through a room brimming with clapping thugs on either side. Now this is entirely optional fight, and the key may lie in that, but I feel it's just the makeup of the game's legendarily tight combat controls that the action of knocking out everyone in that room still feels satisfying by the final punch. So as I say; different strokes for different folks.

Of course, personally I wouldn't say that Enemy Spam essentially ruins a game, but it does leave a sour taste in the mouth for the player which is rarely relived by the eventual completion of the task in question. For my two cents, I feel it's just a little unfair to be thrust into an overwhelmingly packed situation without being made aware of it prior. Perhaps it's the surprise of "Are we done ye- another wave?!" which really stings the worst, or perhaps I'm being reductionist with even that and there's an even wider net that could be cast here. Either way, I would be interested to hear a perspective for how enemy spam is handled from both a developer and player level, but as this was just an introduction to the topic, those are a couple blogs for another day.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was not what I expected.

Got it memorised?

Okay, so let me get one thing straight; when I purchased the entire remastered Kingdom Hearts story it was so that I could get abreast of the story in the most engrossing and true-to-the-intent manner. This meant playing through the best versions of almost all the games ('KH3 Remix' obviously isn't out yet) in canonical order even if that doesn't happen to be the same order in which the titles originally released. In that way, the collections that I acquired were just about perfect, however there is one issue I was alerted to once I started 'playing' 358/2 Days, and here's how it panned out. First I sat down to play the game with my brother present as we were both curious, and we watched the beginning cutscenes whilst trying to reconcile all the new names, faces and lore. (Seriously, for the first couple of minutes, these are packed!) After about five minutes I jokingly put down the controller and remarked "Okay, I guess this is a movie then." Only to then be greeted with text over a screenshot followed by another 5 minutes of cutscenes. Slightly taken aback by this development I took to google: "Is Kingdom Hearts 358/2..." and there was autocomplete there to finish my thoughts. "... A movie?" Uh oh...

So yeah, even though Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was a Nintendo DS title released 4 years after Kingdom Hearts 2 (And yet set just before KH2 for some reason), the HD remaster is very much not a game, but an almost 3 hour long collection of that game's cutscenes into a mildly coherent movie. (Don't people do that crap on Youtube for free?) Now I have no idea what prompted this choice, perhaps the team couldn't figure out how to import the stylus-based controls to traditional controllers, or lacked the time and resources, (probably the latter) but the result is a whole game without any actual gameplay. And you wanna know the worst part? After 'Chain of Memories' I actually sort of welcome this sort of storytelling, at least this way I won't be crying in pain once the story scenes start. So well done Square, you've turned me into a movie review blog. Bully for you.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is the culmination of the 3 arc story established by Kingdom Hearts 1 (Albeit, mostly in the final few seconds) and set-up by 'Chain of Memories'. It serves as a bridge between the characters and how they appeared in the first game to the vastly different case of the second game whilst also serving as an explicit introduction to the franchise's previously obscure badguys, Organisation XIII. Honestly, I was a little surprised to see how much of that vague set-up from the true ending of KH1 was actually paid off in this story, to the point where even that 'Final Fantasy Versus 13'-looking taster reel turned out to be an actual scene from the climax of this title. They really went to put in the effort, didn't they? I mean, I can genuinely look at some of the more obscure scenes in this franchise and actually know what they were referring to now, and I honestly thought I'd never get to this point! There are still some mysteries, like why folk keep referring to Riku as "The Superiors'...(dying breath)" or where the hell Kairi actually comes from, but those are just hooks for the later chapters, the basic what why and how is laid out plain as day, and I appreciated that greatly.

The story starts off at... well, it's not actually made abundantly clear. But I think it's just after that moment in the first game where Sora sacrifices his heart in order to release Kairi's heart. (You know, just before Sora magically restores his own heart again through the power of love or something, I don't know I just work here.) We're put into the shoes of a new kid who's just been 'created' and the movie sort of blows it's load a little early by literally showing us the process by which Xemnas comes up with his name. ("Uh, shall I just call him 'Sora'? Nah, too obvious,  I should probably mix it up a bit. Roas? Still kinda dumb... I know! I'll just throw an 'X' in there. Roxas. Perfect!")

Roxas is the 13th member of Organisation XIII, the group of black hood donning creeps who have taken an unhealthy liking to Sora for the past two games, however he is special amongst them as the only one who can wield a Keyblade. Most folk would be a little shocked by this due to the fact that as of so far only Sora and supreme-leader Mickey have been shown to be Keyblade chosen (and Riku, maybe) but the movie just plays it off like no big deal. This highlights one of the problems of experiencing these products in canonical order (something which my collection of the games encouraged, by-the-by) because as I said previously this title was made after KH2, and thus expects you to know of the events of that game. For me it wasn't a huge problem until I played KH2 after this and realised that I already knew all of the plotpoints they were being all coy about. (Whoops.) But I digress.

As a member of the Organisation that marks Roxas as a Nobody, which we learn to be a special type of individual who is born without a heart. Thus the organisation want to use the power of the Keyblade in order to 'complete Kingdom Hearts' under the vague impression that doing so will grant them their own hearts. (Wait, 'Complete Kingdom Hearts'? What does that mean? Why do they want Hearts? What the heck is going on?) Soon we start to meet the other members of the organisation, as well as Axel who seems to take a liking to the blank-slate which is Roxas. They even start to form a tradition of eating sea-salt ice cream at the top of Twilight Town's clocktower before a new member of the organisation is introduced in Xion.

Now, immediately upon seeing Xion you'll likely think one thing; is that a fan OC reskin of Kairi? And yes, yes she is. But she is still treated as her own person by the lore so I suppose we're all supposed to just ignore the glaring similarities in a sort of Eva from MGS3 situation. Xion is presented as sort of a mirror of Roxas, going through a similar journey of filling in her blank slate personality whilst becoming close friends with Axel and Roxas. (She's also another Keyblade wielder, but that's beside the point right now.) We see the two of them evolve from literally nobodies, with no hopes and dreams, to passionate friends who look out for each other. Likewise, Axel goes from an aloof chap intent on playing all sides within the contentious Organisation to one of the team and an absolute push over to Xion when she starts challenging his orders.

'358/2 Days' follows these three's friendship through their year working as unwitting accomplices to whatever the heck it is that Xemnas is planning. (It also goes through 359 days, but I'm not going to start splitting hairs...) As the story progresses you'll become aware of events happening in the background, like 'Chain of Memories' in which half of XIII's number is cut down and Sora is sent into a coma, or Riku growing several feet and deciding to don a blindfold 'Nier: Automata' style. (I know the movie tries to play him off as someone new, but again, no one else has hair that spiky.) The real rub of the plot comes once Xion starts to question who she is and goes looking for answers at Castle Oblivion, which highlights one of my biggest problems with this story.

Throughout the tale all three of the protagonists, Xion, Roxas and Axel, go through journeys, but Roxas is probably the person who evolves the least, yet he is our focal point throughout it all. And yes, having completed the prologue of KH2 I know this is because his big moment had to be preserved for that game, but it does mean there's several points in the story where you're just standing around whilst other people do interesting stuff. Heck, the story even has to shift perspective to the other two every now and then because Roxas' daily going-ons is just so dry by comparison. Personally I think Xion would have made a much better main character, as her journey was one of the most heart-wrenching in the entire franchise. She starts off as a emotionless husk who develops feelings, friends and an unquenchable love for life. Then she learns the truth about what she is and realises something horrible, everything she's taken for granted is at the cost of someone's else life and love; so should she continue to be in the knowledge that she's hurting someone else or give up her happiness for someone that she'll never meet? It's truly grippingly emotional stuff.

Okay, so I'm about to spoil the rest of it in these next few paragraphs, so skip to the verdict if you wanna watch this 3 hour movie instead. Through a whole lot of sleuth work, sideways cutscenes, and a endgame surprise appearance from Naminé, we learn the truth that Roxas is the Nobody that belonged to Sora, created when he gave up his heart for Kairi. (Which explains why Roxas can wield the Keyblade) whilst for Xion things are a bit more complicated. Xion is, and forgive me if I'm off base here, a physical manifestation of Sora's feelings for Kairi that was channelled through Roxas and given sentience by... The Organisation? (And I used to think Metal Gear was peak convoluted storytelling...) This presents a problem as Naminé promised to put Sora's memories back together at the end of 'Chain of Memories', but she can't do that whilst those memories are running around with in goth get-up calling themselves Xion, so a sacrifice has to be made. In order to successfully wake up Sora, Xion needs to be destroyed so that Naminé can weave those memories back into Sora's mind. (You still with me? Good.)

Honestly, this all builds upon 'Chain of Memories' relevance a lot more than I ever considered at the time. I thought CoM was just a silly little story that completely invalidated itself at the end with a 'We're just going to erase all your memories about this adventure' ending, but now I'm learning that it contained a super pivotal plot point that pushed the entire franchise forward by a whole year. (Now I could almost look at Chain of Memories with a whole new respect, if the gameplay wasn't complete and total trash.) It set's up CoM as the middle act to a three act tale about the ascension of the Keyblade master, in a manner that vaguely mirrors the 10 year sleep of Noctis in Final Fantasy 15. Did Tetsuya Nomura literally make FF15 to be a remake of Kingdom Hearts? (Big if true...)

Ultimately Xion has to make a terrible choice for the good of a person she doesn't even, and will never, know. In order to wake up Sora she has to give up her existence. That's more than just dying, that's erasing every single trace that she ever existed along with the memories of her inside of her friend's heads. What a terrible way to go for someone who had just learned how to love! Xion ends up making that choice and the rest of the game is just dedicated to the movie quickly speeding through events so that everything lines up to the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2. ("Uhh- Riku has to give into his Ansem form for vague reasons... Roxas has to get captured by Riku/Ansem despite winning the fight. Axel has to decide to bring his friends back to the organisation against their wishes in a vague desire to put things back to the way they were so that it makes sense for him to be slightly homicidal towards Roxas in KH2.") And at the end of the day Xion is eliminated and everything is ready for Sora to finally wake and continue his magical journey through the cosmos. Except for Roxas still being alive and kicking, but they can worry about that in KH2. No need to even bring that up now.

Verdict

So, in terms of story I have to say that I really did love 'Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days' a lot more than I though I would. It bought a lot of ancillary characters to the forefront and made them relatable and interesting in a way I wasn't expecting, putting a lot of weight behind their former and later actions. It also nailed consequence and pathos, at least for every character who wasn't named Roxas. My only nagging desire by the end of it was that I wish I could have played through this story, as that seemed like it would have been the ideal vector. The whole 'string all the cutscenes' together approach seems to work fine enough in order to convey the relationships, but some of the impact of the big battles are lost when all we see are the starts and finishes of these fights. In normal Kingdom Hearts battles that wouldn't have been too much of a loss, but KH2 has shown me that the team learnt how to tell a story within those fights, so I feel like I'm missing out on a layer of the storytelling. Plus, this presentation does mean that some smaller plotpoints go completely unexplained. (What the hell is a Dusk and why is Xion at danger of being turned into one? Is that giant heart shaped moon in the sky Kingdom Hearts? Why does Roxas not have the same hair as Sora? Explain, movie! EXPLAIN!)

But in terms of satisfaction I will say that I came away from '358/2 Days' feeling like a great deal of the first game's mysteries had been solved, prepping for a whole smattering of new ones. (There are a total of 5 games between Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3, I'm expecting a freakin' opera's worth of tales) Whilst I still love Kingdom Hearts 1 the most (You know, because it was an actual game) I'm willing to concede that this story has shown me that the franchise has more legs than that title, and I want to see where those legs will take it. (Already having jumped into KH2 I'm beyond impressed, so things are looking good so far.) In summary, I think that I would recommend watching through '358/2 Days' and I now understand why the team felt the need to present it even if they couldn't translate the gameplay through. Although, that isn't to say that one couldn't just play the main entry Kingdom Hearts games and get a decent sense of what's going on, the games are written like that fortunately. But if you're unfortunate enough to have thrown yourself through 'Chain of Memories' then trust me, you need '358/2 Days' as a palette cleanser, if nothing else...

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Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories is an aneurysm

Shackle your heart to a chain of memories, born of lies

I just completed 'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories' and how was it? Let's just say that I spent the credits individually cursing out every single name that popped up for having something to do with this product. I tried to give this title the benefit of the doubt, I really did, but everytime I peeled away at something vaguely interesting I was struck square in the face by some baffling design choice which several people knowingly approved. This entire game is the perfect embodiment of the overpowering desire to make something unique over making something that is fun, and the result is an experience so headache inducing that I personally accuse 'Chain of Memories' for my persisting nausea. (Either that or I've caught Covid, which I also blame on Chain of Memories.) But there's no point to me bitching without you having any idea what it is that I'm rambling on about, so let's take a walk.

As it just so happens, the original 'Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories' was an incredibly pretty looking Gameboy Advance game that, as far as I can tell, was invented as much to be a port of the original Kingdom Hearts as it was to be a continuation of the story. The GBA obviously wasn't capable of replicating the full-on action adventure gameplay of the original Playstation title and thus a new method of gameplay had to be developed. What the team came up with was actually kind of clever, combat wouldn't be fully real-time but rather adopt a semi-turn based approach wherein players would manage a deck of cards that each represented an individual move. In this way, combat amounted to beating your opponent's card values and putting together powerful combos to whittle down their health, an elegant solution to the problem, one might say. When it came for the Remix, however, something clearly didn't translate over so well.

'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories' was a remake made 3 years later (I.e. after Kingdom Hearts 2) and was made exclusively for the Playstation 2, and thus had a whole new range of processing power to take advantage of. This time the team could take the story that they had built with Chain of Memories and bring it to the 3D world that 'Kingdom Hearts' was born from. As such 'Re: Chain of Memories' readopted the 3D movement, freeform battles and general visuals as the first game, with one horrifying addition; they kept the card system. Now at the time the folk of the day were quite taken with such a gimmick, noting how it stood out from all the other card-based games of the day, and putting myself in their shoes I suppose I can kind of relate to that view of morbid curiosity, but this is the present day; road rules.

The Highs...

But before I get ahead of myself let me try to be nice for a second; I actually quite like the direction of the story in 'Chain of Memories'. Taking place directly after the end of the first game, this story starts with Sora, Goofy and Donald chasing Pluto in order to grab the letter from King Mickey that it appears to have jammed between it's gums. This chase ends of leading them into the surreal looking Castle Oblivion, after which Pluto completely disappears from the narrative and is never even thought of again. (Probably for the best, otherwise it wouldn't be long before existential questions start getting asked like why Pluto acts like an animal whilst Goofy walks on two legs.) This marks the first point at which the Kingdom Hearts plot gets really confusing as Organisation XIII shows up and starts being annoyingly obtuse. (The amount of times that folk have said "Oh, I won't tell you that. Don't want to spoil the fun" Makes me want to strangle myself.)

From that point forth the narrative consists of travelling through worlds constructed from Sora's memories, so basically we're just seeing everything that we saw in the last game again. Only this time there's this new 'randomly generated room' mechanic where we see these pretty lifeless prefabs full of enemies for the player to travel through. Rather than exploring the worlds like we did in the first Kingdom Hearts, instead each individual world merely acts like a skin for those prefabs. (So there's goes one of the best draws for the Hearts franchise.) Now this does sort of make sense, but at the same time it also kind of looks like a huge asset recycle. (Until you start seeing new enemies and then you're left wondering "Wait, why try here but not there?")

Between these worlds the real story bubbles in the background as Sora and friends steadily start losing their memories. (Maybe that also explains why Sora's voice magically dropped several octaves over the course of, in the canon of the games, a few hours) This means they start forgetting about the adventures that they went on, as supposedly happens to all who travel to this place. (Because it's called 'Castle Oblivion'. Get it?) Soon Sora even begins forgetting his close friends and life on Destiny Islands, but in that lies a new uncovered memory of someone he'd seemingly overlooked. There's a girl that he used to know but had somehow completely forgotten about, how is this possible? And how is it that she is apparently somewhere here in the castle? Is this going to turn into an incredibly stupid twist like Sherlock Season 4? No, actually there is a rather sensible twist that is decently executed. We also meet several members of The Organisation that are rather well characterised and enjoyable people to interact with. Even Larxene, which is strange seeing as how I'm fairly sure the devs went out of their way to make her annoying. (Maybe I just appreciated the excessive sarcasm in an almost unrelentingly sincere franchise.)

...Before the lows

So we have a decently interesting and well executed storyline, where does it all start to fall apart? In the gimmicky dumpster fire that we call the gameplay, unfortunately. Re: Chain of Memories inherits the GBA's card system and tries desperately to combine it with the active combat of the Playstation game to create an ungodly abomination of man, and here's how it works. (I need to explain this in the vain hope that you understand even one sentence without subjecting yourself to it.) You start off by building a deck of cards that come with attached values. Each card relates to an action and yes, this is the only way that you can attack as a player. There are strike cards, which just indicate you swinging your Keyblade, the magic cards, which relate to a spell or summon, the friend cards, which summon an ally, and item cards, which are potions that you can use. Now in order to strike an opponent you need to use a card and hit them with that animation, seems simple enough so far, right? Here's the issue, should the opponent play a card with a higher value then your card will be 'broken' and the animation will immediately stop. (And that's just the beginning.)

There is no 'cost' for playing cards except that when they've all been used up the player will need to 'reload' them, an action which requires you to stand still for a few seconds and thus render yourself vulnerable. (Also, the more times you reload in a fight, the longer it takes the next time.) Now as you start to level you'll learn that there are certain combos of three cards that can be used in order to perform a powerful move known as a 'sleight'. Now, Sleights have a little bit of a caveat to them as after you activate them the first card that you selected is discarded to a pile that cannot be reloaded, therefore making it possible for the player to slowly whittle away at their own deck if they use too many sleights. (These cards can actually be reloaded through certain item cards, but that's getting into high-level plays and I want ya'll to understand the basics first.)

So let me try and spell out the problem here. There's this whole system that is built around juggling card values, matching up combos and timing breaker cards; (0 cards automatically break any enemy cards but can be broken by any card in turn) and all of this is on top of the main game. So imagine all of the things you have to do in a standard 'Kingdom Hearts' fight, such as navigating around the arena and dodging their various attacks, on top of juggling a deck of cards; that is what you have to deal with. Now initially this seems like an incredibly weird, yet promising, system that you've been thrust upon. But you'll start to realise how problematic this makes the basic gameplay loop as you go on. Basically every fight you'll need to be paying attention to your enemies attacks in the middle of the screen whilst simultaneously sorting through your cards in the bottom left. The HUD layout makes it so that it's basically impossible to deal with both at once, so soon you'll have to pick and choose between spamming cards or taking damage.

This really starts to become a problem when you hit against the mid game bosses as these folks use decks and sleights just like you do, meaning that now you have to pay attention to the cards that they are playing along with avoiding their moves. Cards become useless unless you're playing a Sleight with a total value higher than their deck's total value, and that's something you must calculate on the go whilst sweeping about an active boss fight. Now quite frankly, this is sensory overload as you have to basically out-math a computer in order to perform a move which then has to land on their hitbox. All of that is an issue, whilst bearing into mind that the longer your animation the more danger it puts you in, because it allows the enemy to sort through their cards until they find a breaker. (Which, seeing as how your opponent is controlled by a computer, doesn't take too long at all a lot of the time.) These animations and attack patterns were clearly constructed to fit into an action based game, and when thrown into this hybrid it's just too much to take in and will quickly overwhelm the casual player.

So by about floor 5 every single person looking for a good time has peaced out; but I'm no casual. I finished the last Kingdom Hearts to 100% completion and on Proud difficulty. Hell, I finished 'Splinter Cell: Double Agent' on PC! (So I know something about smashing my head against a brick wall.) So you end up doing what you do in other RPGs in order to scale a wall, levelling. But that doesn't really amount to much as in Re:Chain of Memories, levelling only permits two stat upgrades. (and, yes, you only get to pick one upgrade every level.) You either improve your health, or your 'card points' (The value which allows the player to put more cards in their deck) or you can opt to improve no stats and instead learn a new combo. So levelling is important, but it doesn't make you feel nearly as powerful as it should, sullying the RPG side of the game.

Sooner or later you'll come face to face with one of the core design flaws; the fact that all of the game's artwork is wasted because you spend the majority of the gameplay not looking at it. The reason why games seek to minimise their HUDs in the modern day is because it's a waste to draw the player's eye away from the action on the screen. Chain of Memories forces you to spend all your time looking at your card hand in the bottom left, meaning that little of the grand visuals will be there for you to see. Even the text at the top of screen, placed in order to draw your eye back to the middle, that explains the enemies next move is completely wasted, it's far more beneficial to break their next move than it is to avoid it with skill and dodging.

But still it won't be enough. Even by devoting the full breadth of your attention to juggling cards it will not be enough to meet the inhuman speed that the computer operates at, and you're going to have to start building your deck to autoplay each fight. By this I mean literally arranging your deck so that every single card is laid out in a sleight, so all you have to do is press the Y/Triangle button repeatedly in order to play the game, with some potions thrown in there so that you can reload the deck. Once this is done, you go from the herculean task of playing the game as the developers intended, to the boring task of pressing Y and winning practically every encounter in under a minute. Sure, there are about 5 encounters in the game that are Sleight proof, but everything else (including the final fight) can be won by spamming Sonic Blade constantly until nothing is left breathing. (Sonic Blade works because it stunlocks the enemy.) When your game is either too hard to enjoy or too easy to love, you've failed at the most basic tenements of balancing and/or game design.

In summary

Now I could go on, regale you with stories and reiterations about just how much of a headache this game was, ramble on about how connection should equal a reaction (something that we should have learnt from Morrowind) but here's the rub; this game is a slog to get through. It's frustrating beyond all get out, and that's because anytime you are felled it's because of system overload rather than due to losing a fair match-up. Every boss feels like a marathon to get through and by the time you reach the otherside you'll find yourself desperate to lose all memories of experiencing this nightmare. And that sucks because, as I stated, I like the story and feel it's a very interesting way of opening up the narrative.

I bitterly hated my time with this game and even when I was flying through it I was doing so with a frown and a grimace. I honestly hope beyond hope that this is the unchallenged lowest point of this franchise, because I'm not sure if I can take another experience that was this unpleasant. I will persist with the series, however, because I loved my time with the first Kingdom Hearts and and have faith that the franchise can latch onto me again. But I must tell anyone who is even the slightest bit curious in Re:Chain of Memories to turn away or at least make sure you're absolutely sure what you're getting into. And if you're worried about missing out on a pivotal part of the story that introduces so many future key players, don't be, at the end Sora and pals have all their memories wiped. (Pretty much making this entire narrative, and thus the 23 hours I spent on it, irrelevant. I could just explode from happiness...)

Right now I'm not done with the game yet, much to my dismay, as my reward for completing this game I've been granted a whole new campaign through this fresh hell once more as Riku. (Yay, me.) This extra game is called 'Reverse/Rebirth', making the full title: 'Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories Reverse/Rebirth HD' (Might as well throw 'Mania Plus' on the end there, make it all complete-like.) But do you want to know the insane thing? I'm almost done (I think) and I'm actually enjoying myself, no joke. I'll talk about all the things that 'Reverse/Rebirth' gets right where the main game got it wrong, but that will have to wait because tomorrow comes something that I've put off for quite a while now...