Games for Lunch: The World Ends With You

(Page 3 of 4)

0:40 Now our heroes are at a station underpass somehow. Neku wonders how they got there. Our new mission: "Set the cursed sculpture free." The painful-looking timers appear on their hands again.

0:41 Neku's cell phone shows that it's a day later. They "fell asleep" after the mission. On the street? And no one bothered them? Whatever.

0:43 Neku shares my concern over the implausible sleeping. "It's anything but OK! We were in the middle of the street, in broad daylight! Why would we fall asleep?" It's nice having my character mimic my confusion for once. Shiki, meanwhile, is focusing on the next battle.

0:45 Another wall on the way to Hachiko. Red hoodie guy is there, but I can't read his mind. He commands us to erase the Noise in the area, but Shiki says we can't see any Noise around. "The world is more than just what you see." Oooh, deep!

0:48 Neku finds he has a bunch of pins in his pocket! He also finds that scanning can find hidden enemies. How conveeeenient.

0:50 Trying out new pins. One shoots fireballs from my hands like bullets. The other brings down a bolt of lightning from the sky. Both are cool looking but a little hard to control.

0:51 The "shockwave" badge requires a slashing motion on the touch-screen that I'm having a hard time pulling off. The stylus controls are getting in the way a bit, so far.

0:52 Using the slash, I can knock about various objects on the battlefield. Fun! All the Noise has been defeated. "Objective met," says red hoodie guy in his best impersonation of a videogame character. Shiki tells Neku he's a genius with "psych," but seems a little freaked out that I have two player pins, not just one. Neku doesn't take either of these reactions very well.

0:55 Some thug in a sleeveless t-shirt comes up and threatens Neku and Shiki on the street. "I can't scan you. You gotta be widdem. You can't outsmart me, yo." A little girl stops him, telling him we're players too, not Reavers. Saved by a little girl -- how humiliatiing "Yo, sorry I jumped to conclusions." Her name's Rhyme and his name's Beat. Leave it to the Japanese to name two character Beat and Rhyme. Shiki makes small talk, but Neku couldn't care less about the conversation.

0:58 Rhyme and Beat tell us how to use our cell phones to pick out the pins we'll use in battle. Doesn't anyone read the manual anymore?

0:59 Interesting: Beat and Rhyme failed the mission on day one, but they weren't erased. Perhaps Shiki and Neku's success saved everyone else, they conjecture.

1:00 Beat and Rhyme want to help Shiki and Neku out, but Neku doesn't want "a bunch of strangers bringing us down." Beat is mad at being rejected and slinks off in a huff. "I'm not opening up to anyone. Ever," Neku says in the worst bit of foreshadowing I've seen in a while.

Would I play this game for more than an hour? Yes.

Why? Despite some control issues, I'm loving the game's strong sense of style. The writing and cryptic story have drawn me in, too.

This column was based on a retail copy of the game rented from GameFly.