originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/162000...
I’m trying kingdom hearts, which I understand was basically the Homestuck of its day. Inspiration: this Polygon video.
PS2 graphics are actually pretty ok in a cartoony game like this, at least once you increase the resolution and turn on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in PCSX2 :) Sadly the control scheme, and especially the camera, is already kinda frustrating - i don’t really understand why they bound it to the triggers rather than the right analogue stick and I keep accidentally changing menu items when I’m trying to change the camera.
The story is: I am a spiky haired child who had a strange dream about stained glass videos with Disney characters and friends asking cryptic personality quizzes. By day, I appear to live on an island populated by children, where the main activity is fights on the beach. My friends Beach Sephiroth and Only Girl are building a raft with me.
The children are clear that they’re away from their parents, and that at least one friend is from somewhere else that she can’t remember. Sora mentions other worlds existing, so maybe that’s where their parents live, and this world is just like a cosmic daycare?
It’s not clear what everyone eats - perhaps they import food from one of the other worlds. The island is quite built up with wooden platforms, piers and the like, and a few small rowing boats. Did the children build this? The adults? Did it spring into existence fully formed as part of whatever magical process makes a tropical resort world?
The children all have very striking outfits. Jokes about zips are old hat now but I was kind of amazed by the child who wears a pair of shorts with different length legs (sadly no good screenshot). Looking closely at the texture it’s one of those trouser-short things where you can unzip the bottom of the leg to make it shorter? …where do the children get their clothes anyway?
Anyway I fight each of these children individually and then all three of them together. There’s a parry system, but no Dark Souls style dodge-roll.
everyone has giant feet. Sora and Beach Sephiroth (whose name I missed) want to go out and explore other worlds because Kairi arrived from one (so I guess the other kids don’t know why they’re on Tutorial Island?). Nobody knows why they’re on the island.
Beach Sephiroth gives Sora a special romantic fruit, which probably wasn’t intended for a gay reading but…, and Sora’s a total jerk and throws it in the sea.
at that point Donald Duck shows up as a wizard because the premise of this game is really weird
so… Mickie Mouse is now a king - and a king, it seems, with something of an obsession with enormous, monumental architecture (or perhaps it predates his reign). Is there an entire feudal system under Mickie? Goofy is a knight - is he landed aristocracy? Who was the castle built to defend against?
The walking brooms from Sorceror’s Apprentice appear to be staffing the castle. Is all the castle labour animated by Donald Duck, the court wizard?
We go back to the island. Beach Sephiroth turns out to be called Riku. I get to name a boat.
Riku suggests a competition as to who gets to share the Gay Fruit with Kaori, who is one of the only two women on the island. Sora responds ‘wait a minute’ presumably because he thought Riku wanted to share the fruit with him.
Sadly, I don’t get to name my raft Potemkin because I suck at platforming and lose to Riku. I try again and also lose another six times, beating him only once. I guess this is more of a Petropavlovsk situation.
Anyway I have to get food. It seems that these children mostly live off wild plants and mushrooms. Perhaps they’re particularly nutritious on this island…
While poking around I find a cave and trigger a cutscene.
A man in a brown robe is incredibly condescending to me. Any gravitas is rather undercut each time we see Sora’s enormous yellow shoes. But hey, magic plot door! I bet we’ll never find out what’s behind that.
Another cryptic sunset conversation, and then it’s back to the Mickey Mouse kingdom. The stars are going out. That sounds bad.
Comments