A double whammy this week! There was a tie in the voting last week and so I thought I might do both. Lucky youse! That said, there's no guarantee that they'll both be today: or any promise you will get two.



Lovingly dubbed TWEWY by myself, I refuse to write out it's full name; The World Ends With You more than a handful of times, but make no mistake, is is one of only a few qualms I have with this game.

Let's look first at the story, trying to avoid spoilers:
You are Neku Sakurabi, your clichéd Amnesiac hero drawn into unparalleled weirdness caused by forces beyond your comprehension. Very quickly it becomes apparent that monsters are everywhere and horribly vicious, with no way to defend yourself, you flee the scene and a strange girl calling herself Shiki Misaki suddenly forces you into a "pact" and a few seconds or glowing light later, you find your self knocking ten shitloads out of the enemies who you just took a licking off of.
The aim of the game, it becomes apparent, is to survive seven days of the "reaper's game" with your partner, completing the arbitrary challenges texted to you daily. Sounds easy enough, except you are constantly hounded by harriers, groups of reapers charged with the task of killing off as many as possible.

The game's story is very well done, and uses flashback very heavily, but very effectively. you'll probably be a tad confused at times, and see some of the twists coming, but overall, it's a well done experience. The characters are all likable enough, even if you start off hating Neku, the twat that he is, you'll love him by the end of the week.


look confusing? you're probably right...

The fights in this game, other than a few select battles/bosses, are completely optional. That's right, you have to choose to fight most of the time. It's kind of refreshing to play a sqeenix game where I walk three steps and not have to fight another random battle.
Battles take place over both screens and can be incredibly confusing if you don't know what you're doing. On the touch screen you fight as Neku, using the powers you equip on yourself in the form of badges. Depending on what you equip, you have to use the touch screen in different ways. some badges you have to drag along the floor to make it burst into flame, some badges make you slash the enemies and hit them in swordlike motions and some you have to pick up and throw battle detritus like cars, cones etc to hit the enemy with.
The other screen uses the buttons/d-pad (depending on your handedness) and controls your partner, Shiki. on this screen you play a little card matching minigame to generate points that charge your special fusion move; a deadly and often battle ending special that delivers damage to all enemies unfortunate enough to be on screen.
The challenge here is trying to keep track of what is going on in each area, a skill that I am only a novice with. To help you focus on who you are controlling, there is a mechanic called the "puck" which at the end of a combo, shoots over to the other player. the thing to watch for, however, is as you control one person, the other is still vulnerable. to help people who are poor in this regard (like myself) you can get the game to give AI to your partner which is surprisingly skilled at the game, thank god.

You get stat bonuses by eating food and then battling the calories off, each "bite" means one fight and when you use all of your food slots, you're done for that day. the next real day, you can load your characters up with as much fatty burger and soda as you want. food is you way of controlling another stat that I have no idea what it affects, Sync. eating food makes this go up. This is all I know about it.
Your armour will be whatever hip threads you buy from shops with a twist, if you're not brave enough to be seen in public wearing those new couture pants you can't equip them. brave can be increased by stuffing your face silly however, so that +23 attack bonus can't be too far off, can it?

The soundtrack? AWESOME. I can't begin to express how much I love the music in this game. Long after I completed it, I would boot up my cart just to put "twister" or "calling" on, my two favourite songs, and now have them permanently affixed in my ipod in my "most played" playlist. The field and battle screens all have multiple themes. if you chain your battles, each new round has another feel, another tune to deal damage to. Seriously, even if you never intend to even look further at this game, go and sample the music and feel it's joys.

This game, thankfully was brought out in a time I had no tests, as I bought it on release day and I played this game in any spare moment I had and thoroughly enjoyed it. The battles felt epic, the story was compelling and kpet me going for about two weeks non-stop. It petered out eventually, but my friend deleted my save so I guess I have to go back and enjoy it a second time. oh snap.

I'm left a lot out, because I could ramble on about this game for days and days. I sort of want to, but I'll leave it here with an EXTREMELY strong recommendation that you go out and buy this game. or sit there and buy it.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Ends-You-Nintendo-DS/dp/B00136MBHA/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1233167032&sr=8-1
I wouldn't put that link there if i wasn't serious.

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On a side note, If anyone knows how to embed youtube vids into blog posts, I'd be very thankful if someone could ether email me or message me.
travellors.tale@gmail.com

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That last side-note was resolved by hot sex in the form of a Garison.
May hot ladies aid his cause.