Memory Mayhem

Okay here’s the deal. I finished GTA IV last weekend and a friend wanted to borrow it. So reluctantly I handed it over and moved on to my next cellophane wrapped game Lost Odyssey. I know I’m a little behind on this one but I’m a busy man goddammit and Niko needed me.

So I start playing and I absolutely love it. It’s an RPG much in the same vein as Final Fantasy and while I am not an uber otaku fuck fanboy of the series I do enjoy the games. The presentation reminds me a lot of FFX and the story is passable. The graphics are pretty good but slowdown is evident at some points. The dialogue is at times laughable; although, Jansen is the greatest comedic relief character to come out of an RPG since Morte in Planescape Torment.

And then I got my first memory and promptly started jabbing needles into my leg to make sure I wasn’t delusional. Let me explain.

You get a memory at certain points in the story when the amnesia ridden main character (because that’s fucking original) sees something that triggers his memory. Okay fair enough. Then you get the option to skip the memory or to look at it. I made the mistake of looking at the memory.

And I do mean look. I shit you not, music plays and pictures occasionally change in the background, but you “experience” the memory by reading the goddamn thing on the TV. READING!!! What the fuck? And to top it off the writing is melodramatic shit that was written by a 12 year old emo woe is me suicidal kid. ARGGH. And the fucking things thus far have absolutely nothing to do with the game’s story.

And then on top of that my screen is smallish in size and not high def so I find myself sitting two feet away from the damn thing squinting to make out letters and getting cancer of the eye. Bullshit.

This is the 21^st century and you couldn’t do voice? My goddamn computer speaks fluent Japanese and you can’t take the time to put this shitty writing to sound? (If anyone knows the setting in my control panel to make my computer stop talking to me in Japanese let me know.) This game is on the X-Box 360 and they couldn’t pull some guy out of the fucking mail room to V.O. these things? Your game is on 4 DVD’s for fucks sake. So it couldn’t be a space issue.

The only good fact about this shit is that they do let you skip the memories. And I use that feature frequently. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the game. But this memory shit has got to improve or go.