Tron in Kingdom Hearts 2 - Page 2

Watership Down, now that's a book for kids. I mean, it's nothing but talking rabbits. I can't understand how adults can enjoy something so infantile.

Am I correct in thinking that you're comparing a Disney meets Final Fantasy video game to Watership Down? Also, have you read Watership Down? Because it doesn't even pretend to being a kid's book.

Yes. And Yes. And Final Fantasy isn't kid's games anymore. And my point is... You wouldn't know what Watership Down pretends to be if you hadn't read it, or listened to someone who had, now would you? I mean... it's a book about talking rabbits. That's kid's stuff. What else do you need to know?

See, now I'm a huge Pixar fan, but I don't find myself interested in playing a game based on Woody or Jack-Jack or Sulley and Mike.

And Final Fantasy fans are the worst thing that ever happened to gaming... next to the Final Fantasy games themselves...

Well thanks a lot, Jacob.

I don't get your point. I have played the Final Fantasy games up until FFX. I found them to be boring, repetitive and filled with lame characters. I found the storylines to be contrived, melodramatic and convoluted for the sake of extending the game. There's nothing more adult about it than a Hardy Boys book.

I guess that in the game world being aimed squarely at 14 year olds is adult.

As for your Watership Down comparison - really just lame. First of all, the book is great - it's well written, it's compelling and it's filled with meaning. Next, it's written as an adult book. Finally you're making some lame straw man argument based on a spurious reasoning I refuse to accept.

Well I mean really... Final Fantasy has always been like the naked emperor to me. The shortcomings are patently obvious, but everyone pretends it's grand.

Too many of you kids grew up on Nintendo and didn't have access to a pc. Your judgements are warped.

Smiley face.

EDIT: And naturally, Devin's observations are keener than mine. Still. Neener.

Oh, you iconoclast, you. Next you'll be saying you don't like the Legend of Zelda games!

But seriously I do understand your position on Final Fantasy and respect it. And like any popular franchise, there will always be those who are fanatics.

I think my Watership Down analogy is pretty fucking clear. I'm not saying Kingdom Hearts = Watership Down in every way, in quality of story or execution. What I AM saying is you can't judge the nature of a book by knowing just one or two small details, like "the main characters are rabbits" or "your character in the game is accompanied by Donald and Goofy". If you do, you are speaking from a position of ignorance. And while it's sensible to ASSUME these works would only appeal to children it's senseless to refuse to change your opinion when people who have actually read the book or played the game tell you different.

And I don't even like Kingdom Hearts. I played about 10 hours of it, enough to figure out the combat system isn't for me and the storyline wasn't going to keep me engaged. But I also played enough to see how adults could be interested in it. The production value is pretty damn high, the game mechanics are fairly deep, and it's chock full of the kind of collection and completion quests some people enjoy.

I hate these arguments.

You can't compare someone having the wrong idea about a book with this. These Disney characters are licensed from one of the most notoriously controlling corporate entities on Earth. I can guarantee to you that when you see Goofy in a game, the people in charge of keeping him viable as a brand will be making sure nothing all that interesting is going on with that character.

The Disney characters are crap characters who have been relentlessly marketed to kids and housewives for decades. The Final Fantasy games are overblown nonsense that gamers seem to think is meaningful. You put the two together and I don't see why anyone would be wrong to assume it's kiddie stuff.

you're not wrong to assume, you're wrong to persist.

Kingdom Hearts play absolutely nothing like Final Fantasy so I can't really see why the latter was brought into the discussion.

Probably my fault. I brought up Squaresoft (SquareEnix, whatever people are calling it these days) as having a high pedigree that attracts a lot of gamers.

Ultimately, I think what it boils down to isn't whether the gameplay is simplistic or complex (Since, as Jacob pointed out, kids can whup up on Halo 2 sometimes), it's whether it's fun or not. A fun game is a fun game, and there's no shame in enjoying it. Is Kingdom Hearts 2 fun? I don't know. I probably won't play it. We <3 Katamari was loads of fun, and that game is both cutesy and simplistic. But it's just enjoyable.

Like the best "kid" movies, a good "kid" game can be enjoyed by kids and adults, because what matters is whether it plays well and is a good game. Mario Kart, Smash Bros... those are good games. They're a lot of fun to play. They're fun for me to play, they're fun for my younger relatives to play, they're fun for my friends to play. Yes, these are games designed to appeal to kids, but they're not designed ONLY for kids. Videogames, as a whole, are pretty silly diversions, ranging from realistic ultraviolence to hopping on turtles for coins. I don't see how enjoying a round of Mario Kart is somehow less respectable or creepier than spending hours playing any of the Grand Theft Auto games.

Devin, Jacob, you guys are both very smart, and I almost always respect your opinions, but I think you're just barking up the wrong tree a little bit here.

Ah, now I'm seeing the disconnect here. I'm a huge Pixar fan, and I've had no interest in, say, Toy Story games because they're generic cash-ins on a popular license, not because they're inherently "for kids". If a Toy Story game came out that was getting Game of The Year reviews (strictly hypothetically), fuck yes I would play it. I can only speak for myself, but my guess is that the property attached to a game is fairly incidental to all but the most casual gamers. Why do I still play Tie Fighter and not Masters of Teras Kasi? Because Tie Fighter was friggin' awesome and Teras Kasi served me better as a drink coaster.

Yeah that's right Jacob. I'm appealing to Tie Fighter.

Tying this back in to Kingdom Hearts: The game, by most accounts, is pretty good. So it has fans. And if you can imagine a Venn diagram here, I think the "creepy adult Disney fetish" subset enjoying the series is considerably smaller than the "Squaresoft fan" set, and their overlap is almost non-existent. They don't really care that it's Goofy and Donald, they just enjoy the way the game plays.

Final Fantasy extremists are some of the worst fans imaginable. But any extremists are.

I just find them entertaining, and have been playing them since I was a kid. I just never grew out of them, and am still a fan because I enjoy them.

It's the only games I get these days.

I don't see what the big deal is though, in regards to this debate.

See, here is an interesting idea relating to video games. What exactly is meant by "adult". I read an article about how the rating system is all messed up, as it doesn't actually deal with the thematic content in a game, but the superfluous ways that content is communicated.

All the GTA games are based upon things which would appeal to teenagers, such as sex and violence. Adults are able to see past that and see if there's anything meaningful in the game. Which, admittedly, there isn't in the GTA games. They're fun to play, but there's nothing meaningful in any one of them. Yet the games are rated M (and even AO in San Andreas' case). However, Planescape: Torment involved deep philosophical subjects such as death, afterlife, and one's role in them. Things an adult would appreciate, and a teen probably wouldn't understand. This game was rated T however, because there was no sex and the violence wasn't graphic or realistic. So you have a game for adults rated for teens, and a game with a teenage mindset ("Sex and explosions are cool!") rated for adults.

I guess it just comes down to the idea that because sex or drugs are in a video game, that doesn't automatically make it "adult".

Looks like Kingdom Hearts 2 is creeping closer to a release date for March 1st, 2006. Another reason to keep your PS2 alive in 2006.

Utada Hikaru has released the theme song to Kingdom Hearts 2 to the internet and Her Passions Single can be preordered from Yesasia.com scheduled to release Dec 24th, 2005. Utada sang Hikari translated to Simple and Clean in english for the original Kingdom Hearts video game.

I guess we wait and see if Utada's single will make the transition and translation over to the Kingdom Hearts 2 Video Game here in America.

What the fudge!?!?! Are they on crack? Oh well. Disney made them do it I suppose...

Wow.

You can support a game where Pegleg Pete is a boss, but Chicken Little is just pushing it?

The release date and main voice cast were released a few days ago or something.

Release Date: March 28th.


Cast:
Haley Joel Osment - Sora
David Gallagher - Riku
Hayden Panettiere - Kairi
Jesse McCartney - Roxas
Brittany Snow - Namine
Christopher Lee - Diz
Steve Burton - Cloud
Rachael Leigh Cook - Tifa
Mena Suvar - Aerith
Hedy Buress - Yuna
Tara Strong - Rikku
Gwendoline Yeo - Paine
Ming-Na - Mulan
James Woods - Hades
Zach Braff - Chicken Little

May acutally give this a play, can't get into the FF games but the first was enjoyable. Christopher Lee is a plus.

Have been playing this the last few days. It's a pretty crazy combination of typical Square absurdity, totally off the map Matrix/Disney slash fic absurdity and Sora as Dr. Sam Beckett.

The first three hours are almost interminable -- it's three and a half hours before the fucking TITLE SCREEN pops up, so I guess that's all the intro. After that it starts to get a little more interesting; the recreation of the Disney stuff is pretty top-notch.

Cameras and controls noticably better, as is the Gummi Ship, though the editor is still balls.

And may I ask...where did you obtain said copy, kind sir?

Also, for the Gummi ship, my wife could not figure out how to build whatever you're supposed to build on the original game. So is that any more intuitive?

I'm reviewing it and was sent an advance burn by my editor.

The Gummi editor is still next to useless, at least so far as I've found. I always seem to try it at 3am after four hours of playing, so maybe when I'm awake...nah. It's as unintuitive as last time, which sucks since there's a lot more reason to customize ships this time out.

So far it's a solid B --- there are too many disjointed aspects and the action is too linear to get into the 'A' range, though I'm only about 12 hours in.

That I keep wanting to play after that long does say something, since I'm really not a fan of the RPG overall, and Disney generally makes me want to hurt puppies.

So, how important was the GBA Kingdom Hearts game? Did anyone in here play it? I haven't finished KH on PS2 yet, but I plan to eventually, and my compulsive brain would probably require me to play the GBA title before this one.

Thoughts?

Chain of Memories is sort of important in understand the first fourth of Kingdom Hearts (where you play as Roxas, the blonde hair kid). Everything Roxas endures in Twilight Town all reflects on what happened to Sora in Castle Oblivion.

You can always read a fan summary of Chain of Memories if you'd rather not try it out yourself, though.

I bought Chain of Memories for GBA. Skip it. You're not missing anything.

So apparently KH2 is too easy. Like, "play for 40 hours without ever coming close to dying" easy. Which sucks, since some of the hard-as-nails boss fights were the best thing about the original KH.

I'll probably still pick this up after I get bored with Oblivion in a few years, but I'm pissed that they botched the execution.

The only battle I found difficult in the original Kingdom Hearts was Maleficent. But I also do a lot of level-building early in the game, so that probably helped.

Is it difficult? Nope. (THough hard is more so, which I'll explore later.)

But it's fun. I mean, I fucking can't stand Disney movies and I was enjoying the game all to hell. The point seems to be getting players to see the whole story rather than pulling some sort of Disney May Cry thing.

I thought you were adamantly againt Final Fantasy and all it stood for, Slater? Or is that Singer...Anyway, yeah, I was going to mention that there is a hard mode.

I have to admit, the endish bits of KH pissed me off, including lengthy cinemas before bosses that couldn't be skipped if you died. So, a fun, albeit easy, ride through a 30+ hour quest sounds good to me.

Cinemas can be skipped (and paused!) this time, too.

Not really. I think the series is massively overrated and the hardcore fans are some of the most pathetic creatures on Earth, but I don't despise the games the way Singer does. I am a huge, huge Disney nerd though, so it's not like I have a whole lot of room to be smug here.

Thanks for the updates, Russ. That's encouraging.

Gonna start playing this later today. Thanks for taking the time out to give us your thoughts, Russ.

Picked this up for my son on Wednesday. He almost didn't want to go on his ski vacation with his mom because he knew it was coming out while he was gone. Monday night -- my son boots up KH2. How can I make him go to bed at his scheduled time?

Areith(Aries, whatever the fuck. she's dead, what does it matter?)'s new voice over chick, Mena Suarvi, sucks big, largely humongous, donkey balls. I though Mandy Moore did just fine in the first one. On the flip side, Haley Joel is doing quite good. And Christopher Lee rocks.



But we knew that.

I'm finally getting around to playing this after buying it for $5 new. Its great to have 2 $25 best buy cards handy.

I totally understand why this game sells so many copies. Its freakin' great.

I'm already contorting my hand into impossible gestures just to make these moves work. I will have arthritis by the time I finish this game.

Just wait until you play Sephiroth. My wife has beaten the whole game (as you can do that w/out having to beat him), and now she's going back to finish everything so she gets the different ending, and she had to quit after trying for 30 minutes because her hand hurt so much.

Man, the first hour of this game is HORRIBLE. Just absolute shit. "Hey, remember all that exciting combat and the cool animated worlds from the first game? Yeah, that was great. Anyway, now you get to spend 45 minutes putting up posters and whacking piles of garbage with a stick. Have fun."

Honestly, if I had never played the first game, I'd give up right now. This is the most obnoxious tutorial I've ever played.

It's really more setting up a plot device than actually teaching anything. But I agree that it's certainly not the intro of the original.

My big problem with it is that it's not really all that great of a plot device, and it could have been explained in a cinema instead of this horrendously long preface.

Also, for those who have beaten it, swipe for spoilers, I have a question: What the fuck is up with Maleficent and Pete? They were pretty much the two main foils for the majority of the entire game, and then they just left? Like, they literally walk down some steps to fight Heartless and we never see them again?

Spoiler Response: Maleficent and Pete are old news. They want to be the villains but the Nobodies and Organization XIII are the big bads this time. Whether they're alive or dead really isn't important to this story (although one could speculate that they lived and that their what cause Mickey to send Sora the note at the end of the game).

That's what I'm assuming, that it was just some leftover baggage to make an excuse for Kingdom Hearts III. I just felt like Pete was too annoying and big a part of the storyline for that ending, though.

Also, anyone seen the bonus movie? It looked really cool, but I would have been happy to have this series end with Kingdom Hearts II. I can imagine Sora finding out about whatever that movie was and saying, "God dammit. No. I'm done."

Oh my God, this intro NEVER ENDS.

Just wait, Slater. It gets worse. Just...you...wait....

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/05/05

What day (story-wise) are you on? It ends on the 7th.