Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

Here’s the preface to this week’s final Electron Hut column in the Bentley Vanguard (a review of The World Ends With You, see the previous post):

I’ve been writing Electron Hut (‘Radio Shack’ in Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strip) since Spring 2005, when I switched over from being a photographer for The Vanguard to a copy editor/columnist. I stopped copy editing in December 2007, but I wanted to see this column through to the end of my undergraduate career, to continue to bring game reviews and gadget news to the Bentley campus.

As they say, all good things must come to an end. With the ‘real world’ looming ahead and graduate work to do, I no longer have time to pen articles on a weekly basis. That being said, it’s been a fantastic run. EH has covered some major system launches (Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) and reviewed blockbuster titles (Jade Empire, Halo 3, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and many more). We’ve looked at all sorts of gadgets, printed guides on holiday shopping and computer assembly, and even covered some social issues with technology in our modern times. I’ve had a ton of fun writing this column and I hope you, dear readers, have had just as much fun reading it!

Known in Japan as It’s A Wonderful World, The World Ends With You is a role-playing title from Square-Enix’s Kingdom Hearts development team and Jupiter (known for portable titles like Pokemon Pinball, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and Picross DS).

Anti-social protagonist Neku wakes up in the middle of the busy Shibuya district with no memory and a cryptic warning on his cell phone from “The Reapers”, telling him he has to reach “104” in a specific time limit or “face erasure.” Attacked by strange creatures (called Noise) and baffled that nobody can see or hear him, Neku quickly teams up bubbly Shiki Misaki to combat his attackers and piece together the reasons for his involvement in “The Reaper’s Game.”

Much of The World Ends With You revolves around the game’s unique combat system. Neku can equip various pins that he finds in the game world, each of which grants a specific power or ability. As one fights battles, these pins grow stronger, and can even change into entirely different pins. Neku’s partners, while unable to equip pins, can pull off various combination attacks by navigating through strings of arrows (think Dance, Dance Revolution). This can be fairly overwhelming (not even considering the clothing and food systems, which I’ll cover in a minute), so the game will automatically control your partner for you if you’re not feeling up to the challenge.

The combat itself is as difficult or easy as you make it. You can switch between difficulty settings at any time (Easy mode reduces pin drops and the amount of experience you gain per battle, while Hard and Ultimate modes increase both). There’s also a level/drop rate slider; you can set your level (which determines how many hit points you have) anywhere between one and your current maximum. For each level under the maximum that you set the slider to, your drop rate for pins increases by one. Make the game tougher for yourself and you’ll reap the rewards of additional pins!

Each area of Shibuya has its own brand charts and shops. Clothing purchased from these shops can grant you additional powers, defense, attack, or hit points, and each purchase from a shopkeeper makes them like you a little more. Shopkeepers that like you will offer additional items and be more willing to explain the abilities of the clothes that they sell. The brand charts influence your attacks; wear a popular brand and you’ll find yourself twice as strong as you usually are. Wear a weak brand and watch as your attacks function at 50% effectiveness. You can influence the charts by fighting multiple battles in a single area; fight five or six groups of enemies wearing the worst brand on the chart and you may find that it has moved to the top!

The catch with all of this is your bravery score; each item requires a specific level of bravery to wear it, so even though you may be able to purchase that awesome jacket, you may not be able to wear it until you’ve become brave enough to put it on.

Finally, there’s a food system in place to help you increase your statistics. Every 24 hour period, your characters can eat 24 ‘bytes’ of food. Food has immediate effects when ingested, and after fighting a few battles can be digested for a permanent increase in statistics. Everything from noodles to coffee cakes are available, and you can experiment with different combinations of food to build your character exactly the way you want.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a cool multiplayer minigame called Tim Pin Slammer available. It’s strange cross between paper football and Battling Tops™ that has to be played to be understood, but the basic gist is that you need to use your pins to knock your opponent’s off of a board. By battling with other The World Ends With You players, you’ll improve your pins (just like if you were fighting battles).

For those who like to socialize, there’s a Mingle option built into The World Ends With You. This mode places your DS in a ‘sleep mode’ with the wireless turned on. Every time you encounter another The World Ends With You player in Mingle Mode, you’ll swap ‘character cards’ that allow you to purchase items that player was carrying at any time. You’ll also earn more pin points to help improve your pins. What makes this mode great is that it also works with DS systems that are just using their wireless connections; you can earn pin points from any DS owner you encounter, not just The World Ends With You owners. Additionally, you may randomly gain extra pin points just by being in an area with WiFi signals (from routers, computers, or what have you).

The audio in The World Ends With You is some of the best on the system, being comprised of decent (wow!) J-Pop tunes of all different styles. The 2D visuals are, hands down, the best the Nintendo DS has to offer. It’s obvious that the Kingdom Hearts team was responsible for the title’s art assets; the game oozes color and vibrancy from every pore.

If you’re an RPG lover with a Nintendo DS, The World Ends With You is a must-buy. Rarely do we get a DS title so deep and polished here in the States, and its multitude of features, amazing combat system, compelling story, and fantastic audio and visuals will have you floored the moment you turn the system on. This one’s a keeper for certain.

As most of the folks who read this blog know, I write a weekly Arts and Entertainment column for the Bentley Vanguard where I review games and gadgets or just comment on the state of technology. Graduation is rapidly approaching, and although I’ll be here at Bentley for another year doing my graduate work, I’m not sure if I should continue my writing. On one hand, I love writing articles for the paper. Most of them get posted here first in one form or another anyway, and it’s not difficult to adapt those posts for publication in the newspaper. I get to see my name in print, inform a bunch of people about some nifty new software or what have you, and it gives me a sense of fulfillment. On the other hand, it’s going to be a really busy fall semester with work (hopefully) and school at the same time. Maybe it’s time to give someone else a chance to do what I do? Tom Hoeler, the current editor-in-chief, said that he’d love to have me back for another semester in the fall.

What do you guys think?

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for the sixth(?) time or so, and it got me thinking about stories. I asked myself why I love fiction so much, why I get so much happiness out of tales of fantasy, but I don’t think I can put it into words. I think that, perhaps, stories acts as a sort of counterbalance to the ‘real world’, where I can’t justify the existence of things like personifications of aspects of the universe. Stories can represent anything: hope, despair, dreams, reality, creation, destruction, delight, delirium…they’re almost, in a way, like people.

A toast, to stories and their wondrous natures.