You wake up in a room from a drug-induced spell. Water is gushing in through a window. You must escape! Now you meet eight other strangers. You're all trapped on a ship together. Someone codenamed Jigsaw Zero has put you there. The ship is going to sink in nine hours. You must work together to progress through various rooms in the ship, solving puzzles along the way, and ultimately escaping. Each of you is wearing a bracelet with a different digit, from one through nine. There are nine doors on the ship numbered one through nine. For any group of three to five people to advance through these doors, the digital root of the sums of their bracelet numbers must match the number on the door. So, for example, the people with the numbers 4, 5, and 6 can pass through the door labeled with a 6, because 4+5+6=15, and 1+5=6. Similarly, if People 1 and 2 want to pass through Door 6, they'll need one to three more people to join them whose digital root is 3. (This can be accomplished by joining up with Person 3, with People 5 and 7, with People 5, 7, and 9, and with a number of other potential combinations.) Different doors lead to different paths, but most doors come in pairs or trios so that separate sets of people can advance through at once. After all, the final door - Door 9 - can only accommodate three to five people. So, should all nine people make it there, at least three will need to stay behind... Can you play the game a few steps in advance? Can you figure out who you'll need to take with you, and how (or if) you can ensure your place among the people who will be leaving the ship? It may not be as easy as it sounds - after all, wearing each numbered bracelet is a human being with some very human emotions. Maybe the person you trust the most isn't wearing the right number to join you through a door. Maybe a certain number you require in your party is being worn by someone you just don't trust at all. Anyway, all of this sounds intriguing (or at least it did to me, and the concept was enough for me to buy the game) but can it really hold up for an entire game? It turns out it doesn't need to. The game quickly becomes so much deeper and more complicated than just being a series of math problems and door-passing. But, all the same, the answer to the "does it hold up?" question is a resounding yes. Absolutely, yes. Consider the following two facts. One: I've got sixty or more video games in my backlog, and rarely these days do I do more than the bare minimum required to "beat" a game before checking it off of my list and moving on. Two: the last four days have been Christmas-filled for me, as I've enjoyed three different family gatherings (and one night alone with my girlfriend) with festivities and gift exchanging and general holiday revelry. Now then, with those two facts in mind, get ready for this one: I've cobbled together some twelve or fifteen hours of game time in the past five days, beating 999 three times and finishing every puzzle the game has to offer me. I've read dozens of discussion board posts regarding the story and I've stayed awake until ungodly hours in the morning playing the game with my DS alternating between plugged in and unplugged, easily draining multiple battery cycles per session. I have dreamt about this game when I've been able to catch a few winks and I have rarely stopped thinking about it since completing it late last night. In short, it was an amazingly addictive and compelling game. And it was actually hardly a game at all. 999 has been described as a "visual novel," which is to say that it's essentially a story told with tons of dialogue and narrative and a few character sprites superimposed against a few different backgrounds throughout the story. The actual gameplay is limited to several "escape the room" type games - you know, the kind in which you explore your surroundings, combine items into more useful items, and find clues regarding how to proceed to the next room - that take anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour to do. There are 18 of these in total, but you can only do seven or eight or so per playthrough. At certain points in the story, you'll be given choices about which path to take next. It's sort of like a "choose your own adventure" book in that regard, but there are only six possible ultimate endings: four "bad" ones, one "normal" one, and one very extensive "true" ending that can only be achieved after playing through and getting the "normal" one. But while the "true" ending provides the greatest sense of closure, the other endings (or more specifically, the paths that take you to the other endings) provide exclusive bits of backstory and character development, and are just as "worth" getting - or interesting, at least - as the true one. 999 is best enjoyed as the sum of all of its potential narrative arcs, for certain, and hits the right balance of stability and uniqueness without growing redundant on multiple playthroughs. And the game is entirely story-based and story-dependent. If you crunch the numbers (three playthroughs, seven or eight puzzles per playthrough, fifteen minutes or so per puzzle on average, fifteen total hours) it becomes clear that I spent the majority of my time (probably more than two thirds of it, even) just scrolling through text and character interactions. This experience really was more like that of a novel than of a video game, and I can see why that just wouldn't fly with some people. But damn, did I love it. It was a murder mystery, a love story, a psychological experiment, an ensemble character piece, and a sci-fi conspiracy theory all at once. And it managed to do a great job at being each of these things; there was no romantic superficial coating thrown on to spice things up, nor were any of the characters ultimately left without a deep and rich history that intertwined with the histories of others. Some major plot devices included the sinking of the Titanic, telepathy, numeral systems with non-decimal bases, and - in a wink to Kurt Vonnegut that I thoroughly appreciated - "ice-9" (ice that won't melt until it hits 96 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, I'll admit, the story wasn't absolutely flawless. The "true" ending involved a time-travelling paradox that I really wish it hadn't, and one or two revelations from the falling action seemed to violate occurrences I'd seen in different playthroughs. But no story is above the realm of criticism, and I should reiterate that these were two very minor beefs that I came up with after an otherwise totally impressive and enthralling piece of work. A spiritual sequel to 999 is due out in Japan on the 3DS in a few months, and if it ever comes to America (and if I ever get a 3DS) you can bet your ass I'll be dumping another fifteen hours into that one. In the meantime, I'll suffice it to just badger certain friends of mine into checking out this game. After all, 999 was capable of sandwiching my Christmas celebration with my captivated attention like no other game (or book) ever has. It's something very special, and immediately finds itself among my nonexistent "top ten" list of most satisfying loggings of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment