The World Ends With You for Nintendo DS

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The World Ends with You is currently a very popular game on the Nintendo DS console. It is an action RPG, and its plot centers around the Japanese youth culture typified by the Shibuya District in Tokyo. The main character, Neku, is a headphones-wearing kid who inadvertantly finds himself playing "The Reapers Game." In this game, the player must stay alive for 7 days while performing different tasks. During each task, a countdown timer appears on Neku's hand. The tasks involve using powers that are tapped by wearing different types of pins. Neku also has a trusty sidekick in the form of Shiki. Shiki is a young girl who has also been sucked into the game.

This game is fascinating for me in its presentation of Japanese culture. I'm sure there are a lot of insider references that I didn't get, but despite that, it's always fun to try on a different culture especially in the context of a game. This is one of the reasons why I was so obsessed with Shenmui when it came out in the late 90's.

The game play was fairly easy. Since it's on the DS, there's no need to remember which button to press. The different powers are unleashed by using different types of strokes with the stylus. This is similar to drawing the different shapes in Okami. It also appeared that players could possibly control Shiki and Neku at the sametime on the different screens, but I didn't really explore this capability.

There was one problem with the gameplay that deserves mention. The game introduces how to use the different pins by having the player use them to fight some monsters. Unfortunately, The screen explaining how to use the pin appears simultaneously with the screen where you fight the monsters. This means you have take some hits while you are reading about how you are supposed to fight them. There should be some delay between the explanation of how to use the pin and the actual fighting. Maybe there's a pause button that I missed. This would easily fix the problem.

There was a lot of dialog in the game, but I was able to click through it at a fairly rapid pace. Dialog always seems to be a challenge in these games, and I don't see why. It's not like this is a movie. I'm not expecting "scenes." It all goes back to high school writing classes. (Notice that I didn't say "English" because good writing is the same no matter what the language.) Is the dialog moving the plot forward? If it's a game, the gameplay should move the plot forward. Otherwise, dialog is used to develop a character or a relationship between characters. There was a lot of bickering between Shiki and Neku that seemed redundant to me. As I said, I was able to click through fairly rapidly which I did because the dialog had very little substance to it.

On the whole, The World Ends With You is a very interesting and fun game with a great combination of Japanese culture and easy Nintendo DS gameplay. I can see myself playing this on Marta for the next couple of weeks. The promise of games like this is why I bought the DS when it first came out. The fact that you have to draw to win a game is so refreshing. This game and Okami are quite similar to me because of the way you play the game and that the game itself is so based in Japanese culture. The difference is in the parts of Japanese culture which are examined. These games, to me, are somewhat anthropological in the way they bring the world home to the player. The next game that I will review, Ayiti: The Cost of Life, also falls under this umbrella, but in a very different way.