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1. No. Kingdom Hearts is not great. In fact, it is the exact opposite.
For the second time in an Insert Credit editorial, I'm going to mention "The King's Camelopard," from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you don't know what that is, go back to high school, you lazy punk. Or listen to my brief description:
A couple of conmen are putting on a play. The play is to be three performances only. On the poster, the most prominently displayed words are "WOMEN AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED." One conman says to the other: "If that don't fetch 'em, I don't know Arkansaw!"
Or we can just believe what Shinji Mikami said, about this game being an "Aura Purchase."
More on this later.
2. No. Kingdom Hearts is not original. In fact, it is the exact opposite.
You tell me, "It has action-adventure battles, and a hardcore RPG story!" And I tell you . . . well, I don't know if I can print it here.
The game is a rip-off in every sense of the word. What's saddest is that Squaresoft is ripping off their own material (straight-out-of-Final Fantasy items and spells and lead characters) and combining them with damn-near-verbatim Disney stories. I cannot spoil the game by telling you that Jafar dies at the end of the Aladdin segment. I cannot spoil the game by telling you that Clayton dies at the end of the Tarzan segment.
Super Mario Bros. 3 sincerely tries -- and succeeds -- at bettering its predecessors.
Kingdom Hearts throws together genre clichés and systems from the outset, and then steps back, expecting us to applaud its brilliance.
I ain't putting my hands together for this.
Star Fox Adventures, another recent hodgepodge of universes and characters, pulls off this combination thing with much more grace, even if its Arwing missions made me cry tears of mourning. The secret in pulling off a successful combined-genre game lies not in pretty graphics or noble intentions -- it lies in programming tenacity. Star Fox Adventures has silk-smooth control that one can feel. It has mind-bending puzzles that are put together with careful attention to the Book of Miyamoto. It has consistent graphics and large, wide-open spaces that give the feeling of adventure. And it's far from perfect because of all of these things.
Kingdom Hearts is farther than far from perfect. Its platform elements are forced and frustratingly ill-executed. Its camera moves toward Sora's pants with the excitement of a dog sniffing a man's crotch; with the shoulder buttons, it rotates as slowly as an old woman in an electric shopping cart.
I play this, and I think: and I thought Super Mario Sunshine's camera sucked.
I'll say it now, and then I'll say it again a couple more times later, wording it differently each time:
Combining genres doesn't mean a thing if the elements of those genres aren't individually polished with loving care.
Star Fox Adventures is made by the biggest bunch of perfectionists in the business.
Kingdom Hearts is made by the biggest bunch of moneymakers.
Guess which one wins out in the polish department?
3. No. The battles are not fun. In fact, they're the exact opposite.
The battles are a mix of Zelda and trying to shoo away a swarm of wasps. You spend as much time running around gathering little green blobs that refill an average of 1/9 of an HP each as you do getting shot with fire magic by little hovering ghosts while trying to get behind a fat enemy's back, where his weak spot is. The best way to hit enemies is to target them. The best way to target them is to hit the R1 button, which will totally and violently shift your camera all the way around to the enemy farthest from your current location, exposing the fresh meat of Sora's back to everything with an axe. Pressing the shoulder buttons switches grindingly from one far-off enemy to another.
Didn't we learn the rule of switching back with John Madden Football 1993? That was on Genesis, yes, though the lesson is well-learned: press the B button, and you switch to the player closest to the ball.
As Sora's back bears the beating of a hundred RPG lifetimes, it occurs to you: screw the lock-on system. I'm just going to tap the X button rhythmically. And you know what? That works just fine, too.
[note: out of still-boiling anger, this editorial will not mention the Little Mermaid level anywhere beyond this note. Ursula fans, forgive.]
[Next: gummi death vs. the invisible dalmatians]
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