Now Playing: Parasite Eve Part 1

Wow, it's been a long time since I touched this, huh? Luckily, I have no readers, so this works out.

Well, I play far too many games to properly review everything. And with time the way it is...

This is going to be a general blog from here on out. Today's post: My progress on Parasite Eve.

See, I've owned the game for several years now, but never actually played it... I even own the sequel. Both are in like-new condition, and I just never took the time to sit down with them. That all changes.

Parasite Eve is a somewhat forgotten title for the Playstation 1 brought to us by Square. SS had a very interesting catalog on the PSX, with fighting games like Bushido Blade, some unique roleplaying games like SaGa Frontier 1 and 2, an arcade-style shooter called Einhander [very fun]... The list goes on. This is actually my favorite era from Square, simply because they were trying so many things, and had a lot of great titles. These guys were on the forefront of amazing CG sequences, and their popularity skyrocketed in this era, after an already strong foundation on the SNES.

What makes Parasite Eve interesting from the rest of Square's catalog at the time is that it's notoriously short, and is something of a survival horror RPG set in a modern New York setting. Aside from the RPG part, this is all fairly new territory for Square, since they don't really deal with anything outside a fantasy or science fiction setting, and horror isn't exactly their schtick.

With an active time battle system, you're given free roam of an enclosed area, dodging enemy attacks and positioning yourself to strike as you wait for your AT bar to fill. You've got a fairly wide array of weaponry, from handguns to rifles, machine guns, shotguns, even rocket launchers. You'll always carry around a seemingly bottomless ammo crate that can supply all your weapons with bullets, and if by some act of God you actually run out? You've got some pretty decent billy clubs to take care of business. Just about everything the main character uses is customizable via Tools you find in the world or Bonus Points that you earn from battle. Tools can swap around abilities that weapons and armor have, and Bonus Points can alter pretty much all the numbers of the game, from how strong your armor is, to how many bullets your gun can hold, even how many items you can have on you at any time.

Aya Brea, the star of this little feature, was a bit of an odd character. For one, she was a strong female lead in a Square game. That was odd enough. It would be a good long while from this game before there'd be another like her, in Lightning from FFXIII [Note: FFVIII was still in development around this time; feel old yet?]. She's actually a pretty respectable character, too; going into battle, taking up charge when she needs to [apart from one moment at the end of Day 2], and generally being fairly strong-willed with a good sense of justice. Best of all? She's not moping about any lost love. Hell, after her date goes horribly awry at the beginning of the game [something about an opera being on fire and her date running and squealing away and everyone else burning alive except for Aya thus kickstarting the whole story of the game], she doesn't really put much mention in a love interest.

Stopping here for a moment to talk about something: Love interests are generally bad in games. With few exception, they're tacked on, feel forced, and are often written by guys who don't know how to write women. Sure, I've often heard complaints levied against Pixar regarding their poor writing skills for women [after all, it's men writing them], but at least they manage some decent characters in the end. In games, it can be just downright tacky, basically boiled down to: "I am a man. You are a woman. And because of that, we are in love." Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is an excellent example of poor handling of love interest. I'm just glad this game seems to do away with making it a large point. But I'll cut my rambling.

The game takes place over the course of six days. Aya Brea is tracking down Eve, a mitochondrial monster taking control of an opera singer's body in an attempt to basically stage the rebellion of mitochondria against humans.

Yeah. I don't get it either. But it's a fun, hokey story, and the set-up is perfect for how they deal with monsters and kinetics.

The writing is generally poor, or, at least, the localization is, as was the case with a lot of Square games of this time. At this point in gaming, we at least have writers that can generally string dialog along fairly well, even when we're localizing a Japanese script. But during the 90's, translations were spotty at best, with little exception. The game manages to avoid typos, at the very least, but the dialog is a bit forced, and tends to not mesh well in a flowing string. It's serviceable, and if you're willing to look past it, it's perfectly easy to get the feel of the story, and the emotion of the characters. But if you're picky, it's tricky to keep yourself from cringing at times.

The rest of this post is largely going to be reactionary, as I'm playing the game while I write. Perhaps, at a later date, I'll organize it all to look pretty, and to derive some point out of this, but until then, typographical diarrhea.

- You can collect junk from enemies every so often, which doesn't seem to have a purpose... Until you take it to the NYPD precinct Aya Brea works at, and hand it over to Wayne, one of the guys working in the weapons storage room. Let him dispose of the junk, and he'll eventually make a brand new weapon for you out of it. Here's the thing: You collect a LOT of junk. That in itself is really only an item management problem, but when you dispose of it via Wayne, there will be a sound effect for every. Single. Goddamn. Piece of junk. Seriously? No all-encompassing "sound of rummaged garbage" effect to cover every single piece? I know you're counting it all, but come on, have some decency, sir.

- This game can be a little intimidating at first. Mixing an RPG with a survival horror game can lead to some really cool results [see: Galerians and its pseudo-sequel Galerians: Ash], but an RPG with a limited item inventory? Keep in mind, this was when Resident Evil was REALLY big in its early days, so some of those gameplay elements are expected, but when you're getting tons of junk along with what little medicine comes your way? Yeouch.

- Aya Brea is definitely a respectable character. Sadly, she's also one of the slowest-moving protagonists I've ever seen. RUN, BITCH! RUN!

- Maeda, a scientist from Japan, has a VERY awkward introduction. He spends his time introducing himself to a police officer in front of two other officers, speaking in what seems to be bad English, trying to get past a barrier into a neighborhood area. One of the officers communicates fluently in Japanese, and Maeda continues speaking in English, albeit poorly. When one of the officers spontaneously combusts, Maeda suddenly sprouts an amazing mastery of the English language as he escapes and breaks past the barrier unseen. Why did he try to speak broken English? Was it some kind of hackneyed ploy to confuse the police? Was there ANY chance something like that could work?

- Just noticed, but this is one of the few RPGs where it RARELY pays off to talk to someone. You don't get items, you rarely get actual information... Luckily, most of the people in this game are either dead or evacuated from Manhattan, so you're pretty much good to go.

- A bit of humor: Maeda has an earlier speech about how he doesn't really believe in anything, that he needs proof to convince him of anything. Not five minutes later, Daniel, Aya Brea's partner at the PD, shoots a glass door open at a weapons shop as a means of getting into the place. Maeda: "Are... are you really a cop?" Aya: "We think so. But we don't have scientific proof, if that's what you're asking." It's not delivered in a knee-slapping sort of way, but it gives a pretty good smirk during a particulary tense time.

- Daniel is black. And yet, he isn't much of a stereotype. More a cop stereotype than anything else.

- One of the videos you see a lot affiliated with Parasite Eve is the transformation of the rat into a monster. Sadly, you don't get to see a lot of these sequences, though in usual Square fashion, the few that are there are really awesome to behold.

- Ben, Daniel's son, chases after a dog that goes crazy in the middle of a police precinct currently swarming with monsters. Daniel, I believe your son may be autistic.

- Speaking of that dog, another cool sequence: German Shepherd turning into a gigantic, grotesque Cerberus.

- Just realized that the game is actually a sequel to a book of the same name. The Japanese movie is an adaptation of said book, one I've actually seen to some extent at a convention a few years back. Pretty weird stuff, but I remember it being entertaining. Surprising amount of nudity, actually.

- "Could you help the nurse?" "Yeah, okay. [walks over, finds the other nurse at the other end of the room. Nurse gets up on her own. Not trapped, nothing wrong with her at all.]" "Oh, thank you!" "... ^$*&#"

- The hospital is one of the few areas in the game that really makes use of the survival horror aspect, utilizing more dynamic camera angles that hide just a bit of the scenery. Unfortunately, the gameplay does not support these camera angles, so it's really just for show. Le sigh.

- You run from an F-22 that is about to crash right into the rooftop you're standing on. Reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 1's rooftop battle against the Hind-D, actually. Except there's far less Cam Clarke, unfortunately.

- There is seriously way too much mention of sperm in this one chapter. I mean, sure, there's a knocked over cooler full of sperm [none of it spilled out, thank God], but do we really need to hear for the fiftieth time about the sperm?

Stopping for now. Recap on story:

Day 1: Aya Brea goes to the opera with her date, and watches as the star singer seems to trigger a spontaneous combustion on the cast and audience, with Aya the only survivor, unscathed. Cue first instance of spotting a little girl in a hospital gown with blonde hair that keeps running from Aya. Finds the woman, who calls herself Eve [though originally Melissa, it seems], and speaks of the mitochondria finally going free.

Day 2: Daniel, Aya's partner, is a very busy cop, and an even busier dad. Forgets the concert he was supposed to go to with his son. You meet Dr. Klamp at the Museum of Natural History, who is cryptic about the subject of mitochondria, despite being an expert in the field. Cue foreshadowy creepiness. A concert is going on in Central Park... Or at least, there WAS a concert that was seemingly canceled, since the star, Melissa [guess who?], was "killed" at the opera. However, that somehow didn't stop people from attending? Okay. Turns out, it's the same concert Daniel's son, Ben, is at, and his ex-wife Lorraine is there too watching after Ben. [Glad someone is.] Aya storms Central Park without Daniel, who has to stay behind because he's affected by Eve's range of influence. The ghostly little girl in a hospital gown is seen yet again, and identified as Maya, Aya's sister [very original names, you see]. Aya arrives at the theater, watches as nearly the entire audience is liquefied in mitochondrial ooze. Ben had run away out of fear earlier, which is why he's one of the only survivors. Aya fights Eve on a horse-drawn carriage [what?], and is knocked out in the end of the assault, with more cryptic words from Eve. She's found by a Japanese researcher named Maeda, who'd contacted the NYPD District #17 where Aya and Daniel are stationed to try and arrange a meeting. Maeda and Daniel keep Aya in an abandoned apartment in Soho. The city has been nearly fully evacuated at this point.

Day 3: Aya is still dealing with the possibility that she may be very similar to Eve, right down to a similar fate. After a night of fearing she could turn into a monster, she finally gets some rest, and gets over her fear. She heads out with Maeda and Daniel to the Museum of Natural History, and they storm into Dr. Klamp's lab uninvited. Luckily, he's not there. With a little experimentation and some samples somehow acquired by mysterious means, Maeda determines that Eve's mitochondria has become highly evolved and incredibly sentient, attacking the nuclei of human cells and destroying or mutating them. He also discovers that Aya is a special case, that her mitochondria is defending itself magnificently, having evolved to combat Eve's own. Dr. Klamp storms in, demands everyone to leave. Daniel, by plot convenience, notices a list on Klamp's computer, and notices Ben and Lorraine, his son and ex-wife, on the list. Angered, he threatens Klamp for the info, which he doesn't get. Evicted from the lab, the three return to the district, which has gone under attack. Ben, who had been playing with the police dog Sheeva [lovely foreshadowing name and slight reference to Final Fantasy's own Hindu-based summon], has gone missing, apparently chasing after Sheeva. Mitochondria-mutated monsters have infested the PD, leaving very few still alive. Torres, the maintainer of the weapons area, dies, leaving his protege, Wayne, in charge. Aya works her way up to Ben and Chief Brian, the latter of whom found Ben and had taken up defense against Sheeva. By the time Aya arrives and shuts down the horribly mutated Sheeva, Brian is near death, with Ben making it without a scratch. Daniel becomes the new Chief, landing a nice post-mortem promotion. Cue awkward speech that he barely even gives.

Day 4: As it turns out, the Manhattan incident wasn't the first time Eve got screwy. As it turns out, she has a purpose: The bodies she uses are worn out incredibly quickly, within just a few days, and the only way she can strive is if she births the Ultimate Being. This requires mitochondria mutating human sperm, it seems, the game never explicitly states HOW this works. Anyway, a lead has Aya heading to a nearby hospital, which happens to have a sperm bank inside. As she moves through the hospital, she finds Maya once again, as well as... A ghostly apparition of herself as a little girl? Throughout the game up to this point, Aya has had visions of the past, of Maya in a hospital bed, switching between the two beds on the screen while a doctor examines them. She realizes in the end that it wasn't just Maya; Aya was there as well. Further discovery shows that Melissa was brought in the same day as Maya, and what caused Melissa to have to take medication so much prior to her performance at the opera, the night she turned into Eve, all began there. Eve gets away with a sperm sample just before Aya can do anything about it. Meanwhile, an airstrike sets out toward Central Park to get rid of any last remnants of Eve, but unfortunately, things don't work out. Eve causes one of the pilots to go insane and turn into ooze, and the jet crashes into the roof of the hospital, with Aya escaping only in the nick of time.

So far, this is shaping up to be a far better game than I had imagined. Most of its initial flaws are glossed over quite easily as you get used to the system. Item management's enough of a bitch to cause me to grimace, though. Only two more days left in the story, with Day 5 looking to be pretty long. Probably going to tackle the Chrystler Building after I beat the game, JUST for the alternate ending. Should be fun. Perhaps SquareEnix will consider putting Parasite Eve on PSN once Third Birthday, the second sequel to PE, is released on the PSP? They need to hurry up and release more titles anyway.

Signing off for now, with hopefully the end of Parasite Eve 1. May do the Chrystler Building as a small update later.

-Anderjak