Someone help me.
I’m trying to understand what motivated someone at Sega to approve a game that imagines World War II as fought by the cast of High School Musical. Truly, there are cultural and stylistic differences between Japanese and Americans. Nonetheless this game was released in America and to an American audience, so I judge it by American standards.
Big eyes, impossible hair (and often impossible breasts, too) and pointy white faces are the hallmark of nearly every Japanese title. But Americans — at least this one — have an appetite and appreciation for realism in our art. American sci-fi goes to remarkable lengths to convince the reader or viewer that the technology employed is at least theoretically possible. Story-driven American video games — Half-Life 2, Mass Effect and Drake’s Fortune are a few of examples — often employ art styles which are capable of expressing the complex human emotions expressed by their stories. In American literature and movies it is considered a failure if characters are flat and their experience is unrelatable.
Japanese titles, on the other hand, are often fantastically absurd and make no attempt at plausibility or realism. Sometimes that makes for unmatched craziness and hilarity; witness Katamari Damacy. At other times we get confusing, opaque characters à la Metal Gear Solid (Yes, I’m sorry to tell you that the MGS series is actually about robots struggling to mimic emotions while lecturing each other about conspiracy theories and dime-store philosophy.)
Unfortunately, this game falls into the latter category.
I was BLITZed by the gameplay.
First, I want to acknowledge the aspects of this game that were executed well. The game uses Sega’s CANVAS engine to create visuals which look hand-drawn at certain times, and painted with watercolors at others. It’s obviously the distinguishing feature of the game and the near seamless implementation of the art style testifies to the effort put into this game.
The gameplay is in the style of a turn-based, tactical RPG, using a system called Battle of Live Tactical Zones (BLITZ.) This system divides the battle into two phases:
- An overhead map-view where you can see the positions of all units.
- A third-person action mode where you take direct control of them in order to position them, aim and fire. This allows for shots targeted at different points on an enemy. Headshots against a human and engine or tread shots against armor are the main possibilities.
The main difference between this and other tactical RPGs I’ve played is that a single unit can execute multiple actions in a single turn. To mitigate the possibility that one unit can simply run into a field of enemies and kill them all in one turn, units will be shot at automatically when moving near fire-at-will units. These are infantry units and machine gun turrets, and it’s considered crossfire. The crossfire ends as soon as you switch from ambulation to target mode. This prevents you from simply parking your unit in the middle of a squad of bad guys and then using your remaining turns to shoot each of them in the head.
It’s a very good solution but at times it can be frustrating: when you choose a unit which is in crossfire range to carry out an attack, enemy units will often get a few shots in even if you slam the targeting mode button as fast as possible to try and preempt it. However, the computer seems to be able to jump into targeting mode right away and can avoid the crossfire of your units. The computer’s infinitely quick input often robs you of your opportunity to kill an enemy before he can fire.
Overall, I found the gameplay fun and addictive. It’s very attractive to strategic thinkers and control freaks: people such as myself, who take delight in the flawless execution of well-laid plans.
Hit please!
A blitz is a lightning-fast, short-lived assault. Similarly, this game’s charming style and gameply enraptured me at first, but that love affair was quickly eroded by some grindingly inane make-busy missions and a story that challenges my will to keep playing.
One mission literally offers you no challenge whatsoever, having you lead an enemy unit down the road. Other missions challenge only your patience — the final battle falls into this category — by forcing you to hit targets when you have a significant chance of missing. Unfortunately, after placing the reticle on top of the target, you have no control over whether or not the target is hit. So when I am required to hit a target while having only a 20% chance of landing, I feel annoyed, not challenged. Gambling does not require skill.
This game also has no multiplayer mode, so your only challenge comes from the computer. Given this, you would expect that an extra special effort would have gone into giving the AI a sophisticated decision making process. Unfortunately, you would be disappointed: the computer opponent is very easy to outwit. The computer will frequently get its units killed by exposing itself to crossfire from multiple sources. The computer’s units will often attempt impossible shots in the face of more sensible opportunities, betraying an absence of any sort of cost-benefit analysis. Lastly the computer often leaves itself exposed to devastating attack, most frequently by leaving the radiators on its tanks undefended. Considering that a unit which can survive 5+ frontal shots can be destroyed by a single rear shot, this is a supreme tactical failure.
But the final nail in this game’s coffin is the story: hands-down terrible.
As mentioned before, the story’s setting is modeled after Europe in the late 1930s. In this fictional land, called Europa, war is fought by teenagers: even the most experienced commander is just 23 years old! Only one character in the whole militia appears to have any sort of discipline whatsoever and he is your drill sergeant, who is probably an elderly 40 years old. The rest of your crew is comprised of two types of characters: either a neurotic, insecure wimp, or an overly-confident, self-absorbed prima donna (or prima uomo?)
"It's my turn, okay!" is one of the myriad annoying phrases you will hear uttered so often that you will think they are part of the soundtrack.
How confident would you be in your subordinate or teammate, on whom your life depends, who yells “hit please” before firing on a target? What about if they pout and whine when they walk by characters they dislike? It is truly a ridiculous sight to see these Mickey Mouse antics unfolding on the battlefield. The effect is an unwillingness on my part to suspend disbelief. I mean, if Sega’s not going to meet me halfway by making a believable story, why should I pick up the slack?
One of the most memorably atrocious characters in this game is a bear-loving homosexual stereotype named Jann, voiced by John DiMaggio, the voice actor behind Bender from Futurama. Jann wears makeup, speaks with what I can only call a “gay accent” and when he is near other men he breaks out into a song expressing his love of muscles. When he is awarded with an extra shot power up, he lets you know that he “could go another round.” I am not sure but I think Japanese culture find stereotypes acceptable, if not hilarious.
The biographies of the different characters in the game explain their motivations for joining the war effort. One character had her store destroyed by the Empire — the perennial, amorphous enemy of this game — and rather than cashing in on her insurance and starting a new store, she decides to put her life on the line and pick up a rifle. The other motivations are equally implausible and give me the sense that the story was an afterthought. The effect is that I simply don’t care about the characters: I don’t know why they are fighting so I don’t know why I would cheer them on and I don’t care when they die.
If the story were not bad enough, the producer seemed to do his or her best to make sure that the voice actors delivered their flattest performances. Lines are frequently emphasized in a way that makes no sense given the context. The dialogue is unnatural and does its best to avoid any demonstration of actual emotions. Frankly, it seems that each line was delivered in a vacuum, not in response to an actual human as part of a conversation. The sound engineer would have then taken each recorded line and stitched them together in a manner analogous to the making of Frankenstein’s monster.
Add to this the fact that each character has about 2 facial expressions and 3 poses, and you have cut scenes which are about as compelling as the animatronic dioramas at Disneyland. It took all my powers of restraint and concentration to not only keep myself from skipping them, but to actually pay attention to the story.
Almost counts with video games, too
I really wanted to love this game: the gameplay was amazingly addictive and very satisfying.
But some of the mind-numbing missions leave me wondering how they escaped the notice of the play testers. Worse yet, the story gives me no reason to care about anything going on in the game. Without that, this game just reduces to a series of battles — some are engaging, others are dull or frustrating — fought against a simpleton opponent.
Creator.