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Review: Jet Set Radio Future
xbox
02.16.03 / 11:48PM / Boris
Are gamers really this stupid?
I honestly have no idea why people would want to play this. I thought PaRappa the Rapper, while not my style of game, had an honestly novel concept, and was amusing as far as that concept could go. Ultimately, however, it was hitting buttons to a beat. I could just go and buy a drum pad for that. In Jet Set Radio Future, you're supposed to be rollerblading around spraypainting stuff. Well, gee, I think I can afford some cans of spray paint…
The Plot: I think it's the plot that turned me off of this game the most. Imagine the hellish offspring of Final Fantasy (any of them, really) and Skate or Die, and you pretty much have the plot. The Rokkaku corporation has corrupted the local police militia, and are driving the soul out of the streets. Your job, as a member of the Rrs or Jjs or whatever the hell group you're supposed to be a part of (Gg, now that I think of it), is to go rekindle the "soul of the street" and fight the Man. You do this by tagging places with graffiti.
Now I can tolerate the whole soul of the planet crap that Squaresoft RPGs seem to love to invoke, and how EvilCorp Inc. with their hateful technological ways are somehow stabbing at the heart of a noble, dying, magical world. Sure, every Final Fantasy more or less winds around this idea, but at least you have fun getting through the story, and the action is fun enough. But this? You get this washed out plot sprayed at you in the first few seconds of the game while talking to somebody named Corn (oh, there's a street tough nickname for ya) in a cutscene with one of the more shameful inclusions of a black man in a video game I think I've ever scene. I'm glad he said "Yo" and "the Man" a lot, that really helps establish his DJ character. Hell, give him a watermelon slice to eat while you're at it, and he can wash it all down with a fourty of Colt 45.
So there's this megacorporation that's ruining everything. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I got horribly bored by the game within the first half hour and never bothered to get past the first few missions, but I never saw any evidence that the Rokkaku group was doing anything untoward. At worst, they chase you away from areas you shouldn't be rollerblading around, spray painting things. Additionally, they don't really explain how you spraypainting helps fight the Man and releases the Soul. Particularly how only spray painting in preset locations helps fight the system from within. Ooh, that's real rebellious there, Corn, let's skate politely up to defined points and keep our tag within those boundaries. I wouldn't want to deface any property that wasn't sanctioned for graffiti, now.
If you ever have a face off with Mr. Sinister or Dr. Malevolent or Professor Evil von Kittenmangler, whoever the hell the CEO of Rokkaku is, I sure hope at one point they ask, "Um, yeah, what the hell good did you think you were really doing spray painting some crazy ass ornate design on the brickwork in this unused access staircase?" Then, while you're stammering, they call mall security and have you scrubbing stain remover late into the evening before they yell at you one last time and let you go.
The Gameplay: Two year olds could figure out this game. Quite frankly, the only advantage being on rollerblades gives you is that you can go much quicker through areas than you would have otherwise. You skate, you jump, and you spray, and that's all you can do. If you jump on a rail, you automatically slide until you jump off. There's no skill to it whatsoever. Hell, in the opening training course, you slide around 90 degree turns what appears to be 15 feet in the air, and when you reach a curve, you seamlessly transition to the next lump of track. I would at least expect you to have like a balance meter, and you need to carefully tap the control pad against the way you're leaning without overcorrecting, or you topple off. Nope. Tony Hawk's the biggest poseur in the world next to you and Corn; you all make it look easy while he actually seems to exert himself.
The biggest disappointment about this whole exercise is the graffiti. Very literally, the only thing you have to do is skate leisurely up to weird triangular icons on the wall and press the spray button. You immediately produce a section of a tag. Some graffiti spots are small, some are large and made up of multiple tag icons. If you don’t start spraying until the middle of the area allowed for it, that's ok; you'll flawlessly and instantly produce the appropriate section of graffiti. You can come back and finish the rest of it (in fact, I guarantee you'll have to; invariably you'll miss a spot and trawl all over the damned level to find that last bit of icon you missed) and what you've done will seamlessly blend in with your later addition. Apparently, if you're a trained master in the art of Graffiti-fu, you need only tap a button for one second, and you can produce a small but meaningful section of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. You don't have to move your hands, there's no skill to it whatsoever, and the fact that you can produce these ornate designs while just driving by the icons at whatever speed you happen to be going at is completely insane. At least let there be some sort of creative aspect here!
This more or less goes in aesthetics, but I'll mention it here – you can customize your designs, using a tool more crude then Microsoft Paint. I have no idea why you would do this.
Mostly the game is about skating around, looking for graffiti spots or other NPCs you can interact with. There are NPCs littering up the map, usually civvies, and the only thing you can do to them is skate real close to them; they panic and scream and dive out of your way, which is funny once or twice. The NPCs you do get to talk to are invariably rival gang members, and each of them have some insulting task they want you to do, usually to get them to join the Ggs and be playable characters. Frankly, I couldn't understand why I would give a crap about playing another lifeless spray painter, but these aren't optional characters. You havta get 'em. The first one you meet challenges you to a race; if you win, you get him, if you lose, I guess you're supposed to clear off or wash his underwear or be his sex slave or something. I purposely threw the race just to see what the penalty for losing would be, and it wasn't anything at all! I could race him again. Well, hell, if that's all it took to make my own slave empire, I'd be challenging people left and right. Sure, I'm not the fastest guy in the world, but I bet I can win against some of you. Then I'll do nothing but rechallenge the zippier among you until I win the majority. The plot halts until you've cleared an area, meaning rousted all the useful NPCs and sprayed all the useful spots. Yeah, take that, Rokkaku. I'm assembling an army of character models and skins to play against you. And you know that outdoor patio restaurant you like so much? I totally kicked over one of their tables.
The Aesthetics: I don't think I've heard worse video game music ever. Even Tetris has music that doesn't grate this badly. I presume it's supposed to be rave/techno; it makes me want to hurl things at the speakers. You can put your own music tracks on the Xbox, but given the somnambulant pace of the game, I don't think me putting any music on there would help. I've already mentioned DJ Stereotype Q. Blackman, but if it's his fault that the music is so wretched, I hope the Soul of the street is ground up into decorative snow globes and sold at the Rokkaku corporation's foyer gift shop.
The graffiti editor is a steaming pile. The further you get into the game, the more pre done graffitis you get to chose from, but they're all hieroglyphs to me. Actually, real life graffiti is hieroglyphs to me, I have no idea what they're supposed to mean, but there is an artistic style to them that I can at least grok. I recognize it to be graffiti, even if I don't know what it's supposed to say or mean. So, given the option of making my own graffiti, I could try, but I don't know what I'd create that would be meaningful. It's sort of like trying to write your own French play when you don't speak French. And, given the crude tool you use to make your graffiti, imagine trying to write that play when you have no ability to write letters.
Jet Set Radio Future uses cel shaded characters, and facially, at least, they look ok. Characters have sprites for eyes and mouths, the same way that characters did in Nintendo's Ocarina of Time, and it works well enough. However, when you see the rest of their bodies, the effect is laughable. Now, in the future, if skateboard and rollerblade punks look like mincing drum majors spliced with homeboy, I'll bow humbly before the character design artists and beg for forgiveness. However, I can't understand how wearing an angular, starched felt jacket and the Pope's hat will either earn you any street cred or help you grind down stairs spraypainting. My main regret is not being able to stand the game long enough to unlock the other playable characters just so I could play the game as the most preposterously garbed one. Maybe one of the gang members I can have is a unicycling, tutu-wearing panda with a rainbow wig glued onto his head. That I would actually enjoy playing.
As far as game engine graphics go, they work just fine, but I stopped paying attention to draw distances as my jaw finally pulled itself off the floor. When you're faced with a game concept this insipid, it's hard to notice the good details. Load times are a little long, but I guess that's an Xbox thing.
Final Thoughts: Turn off the video game console. Turn off the TV. Lock the door as you leave. Go outside. Move around, maybe take up rollerblading. I like it, it's good exercise and it's fun to feel the wind on your face as you tuck up and roll down a hill. Take some chalk with you, and from time to time, stop and draw arrows on the side walk in the direction you're going in. Maybe stop for a while and make a design you like, whatever you fancy. Then, having enjoyed your afternoon in the sun, go home, and relax.
Or, you could play Jet Set Radio Future. For a real life simulation, go to Kinkos and get a copy card for like 10 bucks or something. Pour ink on a piece of paper and let it dry. Make $10 worth of copies of it. Now run around throwing copies of your ink blot at random sections of walls. If you see anybody else out enjoying their day, make sure to go up to them with a copy of your masterpiece and say, "Hi! I made this! Do you want to help me spread these around?" If they refuse, challenge them to race over and over until they hit you.
I appreciate video games simulating real life activities, particularly if the real life thing is too dangerous or expensive to take up on your own. However, when the real life thing is either insipid or trivial, I don't really see a niche for simulating it. Perhaps we'll get to see another sequel where you build playing card houses while riding the bus. Take that, Rokkaku! Word up, DJ Stereotype! Hollah! 02.16.03 / 11:48PM / Boris |
