Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon

"Pure and Simple . . . and Lifeless"

The thing with the PSP is that it never really fulfilled its potential and despite being re-released with new names with brand new features, it ultimately always falls short to the Nintendo DS. I'm not sure why since both consoles offer totally different games, I assume it's because the DS is a little more accessible with more user friendly games. Despite this there are in fact some pretty decent games for the Playstation Portable. ArtePiazza's Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon, takes a great game and adds in a touch of their own magic.

The Harvest Moon games have been around for a while now and have always been a silent winner amongst gamers. Innocent Life takes the idea of farming one step further and sets a storyline way ahead in the future in a land known as Heartflame Island. In a time where technology is used to do even the most mundane of tasks, Dr Grains develops a robot in the disguise of a human boy. Setting the boy up on a farm in an abandoned ruin is the talk of the town and it's the player's responsibility to get the farm up and running, make a profit and win over the towns folk by using a now out of date method of farming. By doing this it also helps to establish the robot's place in the community as well as learn what it means to be a human being with individual lessons to be learnt.

Despite the added futuristic elements in the game, the storyline stays pretty much along the lines of Back to Nature, which mostly isn't a bad thing. You know exactly what to expect and simply play, enjoying a game that flows effortlessly along. You meet and greet, grow some crops and move the story along at a pace that's slow but excessively ‘innocent'. One of the main storylines within the game is to uncover the secret rumours of the Volcano. The only problem is that the game doesn't really feel very far out there and with the added focus on the future there really aren't many future things in the game to make it set in a world that differently from our own. Yes the main character is a robot, but that is easily forgotten when all the stereotypes of what we call a robot are simply thrown out of the window.

Anyone who has actually played a Harvest Moon game will know that to play the storyline you purely just live life experiencing each day as it comes. Seasonal festivals play a role in Innocent Life much to the joys of the fans. These involve the Spring Crop Festival, Mushroom Cooking Festival and other similar events. These are one of the main devices in the game for the player to befriend the residents of Heartflame Island. It isn't original but it is always a nice addition simply to participate in something very different from your normal day to day regime. What this also does is give the player knowledge at trying to unlock the seals that plague the ruins in which you live. By breaking these seals, you unlock gems, new plots of land and gain new useable items to help you on your farm. This is very different from previous Harvest Moon games and is something that ArtePiazza does to add their own stamp on a game that already has expectations from the get go. Again not original but something new that gamers may relish in discovering more about.

What is so wonderfully charming about the graphics in Innocent Life is that it strays so far from the original Harvest Moon games giving us something we don't expect. It is much more art inspired with a vast array of colours giving the game a fantastic look of 2D and 3D intertwined. It almost resembles the latest Dragon Quest games but without a little of the cartoon feel. What is also done well is the use of shade that really defines objects which ultimately means the games lacks any ambience of blandness and insipid scenery. Because the main focus on the game is that of Heartflame Island, a lot of care has gone into creating a land that is so rich in calm settings. It almost has a Hawaiian feel to it with a volcano, great use of tropical flora and no concept of city style combustion. It is effective because it fits in exactly with the gentle nature of the game; again it doesn't really satisfy its futuristic name but looks and feels absolutely gorgeous.

Characters look and act great too with a complete 3D modelling system used to create residents that all look different with something that makes them who they are. It sticks to the user friendly look and so can lack a little bit of emotion however. Faces don't really move and so lack facial behaviour such as smiling, crying, anger etc and sometimes when dialogue is in process, characters simply just stand there delivering their lines and mannerisms are lost giving the animation feel a little underdeveloped and unrealistic tinge. Besides that, general movement tends to be smooth as the main protagonist delivers all the farming techniques like a pro. The weather system is again a nice touch of animation detail with rain and snow adding an element of unpredictability into the game but looks and feels just at home, though the precipitation does tend to sprinkle itself on to the landscape rather than fall.

I suppose sound is where the game is really let down by a mundane feel of lacklustre scores that don't quite fit in. During the first part of the game, the sound is limited to just clonks and other random sound effects as you move around rooms and talk to Dr Grains. As you begin to move around the town however, an implosion of banquet style music implodes onto the screen like a fish sunbathing on a beach. It just doesn't seem right. It does a kind of jolly upbeat resonance to the game, a feel of happy go lucky that tries to add a little pace but actually fails. It's a little sad really because other than that the game really does play along quite relaxingly.

The lack of spoken dialogue can be quite frustrating too with text skipping away at the bottom of the screen and it is obvious that one person has in fact written the entire script. Every character talks the same, uses the same little words and so you kind of merge character speech in to one by accident and it's not pretty because it can get a little confusing at times. Characters are meant to be different with diverse personalities and somewhere along the line they just fall flat. To be quite honest the only dialogue you really get are the sound effect for the livestock on the farm and when you've just spent hours watering and planting crops on your farm, a moo and a cluck doesn't really suffice as an entertaining conversation.

You may ask the question, and it would be a fair one, but why in the hell would a game about farming not only sell well but even get made in the first place. The answer isn't an easy one, but anyone who has ever played a Harvest Moon game will tell you that the addictive nature won over their hearts. Innocent Life has a whole selection of crops to grow all having a whole selection of pluses and cons. Is it the right season? How much money will I make? What, the wind will ruin my crops? To earn money is the main objective, to run a successful business whilst becoming a part of the community is also as important.

From the moment you wake up, the entire day is progressed by a sort of fast forwarded 24 hour clock mostly taken up by farming in the early part of the game. So after weeding, hoeing, tilling, planting and watering are complete, the time to run errands is ample opportunity to make new friends. The problem is that making money is far too easy, the running of the running of the farm can be left to robots to attend to and the people of Heartflame Island are pretty full in the first place, never mind repeating the same lines of speech over and over and over again. This isn't addictive; it is boring with no entertainment value whatsoever. Life is meant to be simple and innocent here, but maybe this is just too simple. By the end of the year you would have earnt enough money to give up farming all together.

There aren't many upgrades for your farm either to spend all your ‘hard earnt' money on and grazing animals is a little lame as well with no real challenge and real connection. And what happened to the courtship so popular in other games. There is no choice of girls to win over, no marriage, no family; it's like bachelorhood only without the beer, without the sport, without the wandering around in just a pair of boxers and most definitely without the eye candy. It is merely just a game of running around back and forth to the shop and to the farm and every Sunday to the good old Doctor's as well for ‘maintenance'.

It does try to add a little RPG element to add a minute variety into the mix, but nothing too complicated. By cooking recipes it increases your cooking stat, by mastering a recipe it increases your intelligence stat and so on. Its pretty pointless though in the long term as it doesn't have any benefits or rewards and really that's exactly what sums up the entire title. No extras, no bonus features mean the game is just too basic relying on the fact that it has the words ‘harvest moon' in the header.

It is great when developers try to add their own version of a well known series, re-inventing if you will. Attention to detail such as gorgeous artistic graphics also goes a long way, but the problem is there isn't really a game here. It's slow to get into, easy to put down and most certainly forgettable amongst a whole catalogue of more entertaining titles. For a handheld game it isn't really a game you'd play on the bus or any chance you get a minute. At best it is a game you'd play in bed just before slipping off into dreamland. It's a walking contradiction. It is innocent yes, but in a pleasant sort of humble way, it's not very lifelike with dead speech and repetitive gameplay and if it's meant to be futuristic, well then I'm a pig.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/09

Game Release: Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon (EU, 05/18/07)