Incredible Crisis

""Alienate your friends! Confuse your parents!" this is a good game."

I love Titus. I couldn't possibly tell you another game they published, but I doubt any other licensees were clubbing each other over the head to get this one, so I love them. Well maybe Sega. But whatever, this is a good game not just because it's fun, but you just don't get to play games like this at all. The reason being is no one publishes such strange Japanese games here for fear they ''won't sell''. Well they're probably right, but only because no one ever gets to play these type games in the first place, because no one ever brings them here. Well I think there were some pretty strange games here for the old nes but I'm getting away from the point. Here is one of your rare chances to play such a game so go do it.

Well for all its strangeness this is a pretty simple game. An eclectic story wrapped around 24 mini games. But oh will you not ever see such a story. Middle aged salaryman Taneo just wants to get home from the old office on just another day. He will, but only after undergoing things such as riding a free falling elevator under an if not more than equally free falling stone earth sculpture, electric shock from deranged paramedics, traversing down the local freeway on a hospital stretcher, and repeated attempts at saving a large alien craft from the Japan Self Defense Forces for reasons he most likely doesn't fully understand. As you go on in the game you change characters to his wife Etsuko, who is out for a daily errand or two which will most likely be interrupted by animal mask-wearing terrorists. Then on to his 2 children, Tsuyoshi and Ririka who you'll just have to see what they go through yourself. As you slap the buttons through each of the characters' respective insane mini games, you'll have to watch the crisis meter, which gauges the stress from each crisis that they are in. It's kind of like an energy meter, only when it fills up, you literally go nuts and have to start the mini game over again. Do well and you'll be awarded extra lives based on a grading scale. Most mini games involve button tapping, but there are also some quite original and imaginative ways of controlling your character on the path away from complete loss of neural function. There's lots of humor in the game, but that of course is completely subjective, so you'll either think it's funny, kind of funny, or not at all. The graphics are pretty decent-you can tell they avoided polygon clipping and texture warping, something a lot of developers either fail to or don't even try to do (hello syphon filter). But nothing totally spectacular for ps1 standards. Don't expect metal gear stuff or anything. The music is performed by the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, so if you know what ska is you'll more or less know how the music is. If you don't know what it is, I'm sure you can find a poor facsimile on mtv or ''alternative'' radio. Listen for the horns, kids. The sound effects are mostly the characters making strained sounds from the various kinds of stress they encounter, with Japanese inflection. Most of the voices are from the original version, with a little bit of (bad)dubbing into English for a mini game or two. As for difficulty I don't know, I hear a lot of people say how hard it is, but me and my girlfriend beat it in about 2 days, with her being only moderately accomplished in her game playing experience, and we both played the game pretty equally. However the games can be frustrating, taking some practice to beat. Which brings me to whether you should buy or rent-normally I'd say since I beat it so quickly this is a perfect rental, however, as I write this I'm pretty sure the game is going to be, or already is, out of print. But, I found it easily on the internet for only 15 bucks, so I'd say the only way you can play it is to buy it, unless of course you can find a place that rents the thing. One more thing though-being that it is most likely out of print and such a strange game, it's rather rare, and worth getting a copy of, if only to auction off on some ebay type thing when your done with it someday. Which makes me think of its replayablility. I think it really depends on you. Once you beat it there isn't really anything unlockable except all the minigames to be played at your beck and call. If you like to do that sort of thing well that's the extent of that, but its also very possible that once you beat it you'll never want to see any of those wretched things again for all the distress they caused you. So like i said it's kind of up in the air.

Alright people go get some culture in your lives and play the thing. This is a game that is like no other so it really doesn't matter what I tell you about it. You'll like it or you won't. Most games that aren't fighters don't have a ''Japanese feel'' so if you like that sort of thing you'll probably like this. If you don't maybe you'll like it anyway, I don't know. But the game is funny, imaginative, strange, culturally enlightening(?), and the most important, fun. Which is why we play anything, right? Well that's it.

final score -1 for graphics -1 for length and replay equals.......8 yay!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/23/01, Updated 05/23/01