Said told me he would be here, chained by Dante
Nov. 10th, 2025 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proustbotThe World Ends with You (2007, Nintendo DS) -- In a Shibuya both liminal and purgatorial, troubled teens trade pins and collect stickers.
I played an early chunk of this game back when it was originally released, and my hazy memory is that I enjoyed the aesthetics and concept but was turned off by the gameplay. On this time around, I'm less intimidated by the fighting mechanics -- tap tap, swipe swipe, easy peasy for a True Gamer like me -- and I'm very charmed by how relentlessly the game utilizes every inch of the Nintendo DS's weird hardware. My ancient little original system is still lumbering along, and playing The World Ends with You on that scuffed and battered object is a delightfully nostalgic experience.
The game offers the player a sense of overwhelming, overloading detail: the crowds of people constantly moving past you, the disorienting strain of having two separate battles happening simultaneously on both screens of the DS, the constant blaring hip-hop soundtrack, the superfluous excess of shops to visit and clothes to buy and food to eat and CDs to collect and pins to level up and and and. Every item has multiple pages of supplementary menu text; every NPC has an elaborately detailed outfit. The baroque abundance of everything in the game is clearly by design, and while it's obviously a loving homage to the zeitgeist of 2000s Tokyo teen culture, it's also a very effective gameplay vibe. There's always slightly too much information to process, and you're always feeling slightly out of your depth, and that mix of pleasure and finely tuned irritation is a good game hook.
I just finished Shiki's chapter and have now advanced to Joshua. Initially, I was bemused by the game's on-the-nose characterization of Neku -- he's a loner, Dottie, a rebel, and his oversized earphones symbolize his alienation and ennui -- but the game doesn't linger too long in those clichéd doldrums. He becomes more specific and interesting as the game goes along.
I played an early chunk of this game back when it was originally released, and my hazy memory is that I enjoyed the aesthetics and concept but was turned off by the gameplay. On this time around, I'm less intimidated by the fighting mechanics -- tap tap, swipe swipe, easy peasy for a True Gamer like me -- and I'm very charmed by how relentlessly the game utilizes every inch of the Nintendo DS's weird hardware. My ancient little original system is still lumbering along, and playing The World Ends with You on that scuffed and battered object is a delightfully nostalgic experience.
The game offers the player a sense of overwhelming, overloading detail: the crowds of people constantly moving past you, the disorienting strain of having two separate battles happening simultaneously on both screens of the DS, the constant blaring hip-hop soundtrack, the superfluous excess of shops to visit and clothes to buy and food to eat and CDs to collect and pins to level up and and and. Every item has multiple pages of supplementary menu text; every NPC has an elaborately detailed outfit. The baroque abundance of everything in the game is clearly by design, and while it's obviously a loving homage to the zeitgeist of 2000s Tokyo teen culture, it's also a very effective gameplay vibe. There's always slightly too much information to process, and you're always feeling slightly out of your depth, and that mix of pleasure and finely tuned irritation is a good game hook.
I just finished Shiki's chapter and have now advanced to Joshua. Initially, I was bemused by the game's on-the-nose characterization of Neku -- he's a loner, Dottie, a rebel, and his oversized earphones symbolize his alienation and ennui -- but the game doesn't linger too long in those clichéd doldrums. He becomes more specific and interesting as the game goes along.
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