9-11: Asian Pacific America Recounts a Year of Struggle and Healing (Feature) Who’s Getting the Message? (in National News) Putting Our Health Center Stage (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: Kingdom Hearts (in Business) Chinese American Volleyball Tournament Comes to San Francisco (in Sports) Collateral Damage: ‘Asian Americans On War & Peace’ (in A&E) Emil Amok: Chicken-hearted Patriotism in Fremont (in Opinion)

Kingdom Hearts

On a Mission with Disney

By Jessica Yazbek
Special to AsianWeek

On Friday, Aug. 23, the only Playstation store in the world (located in San Francisco’s Metreon) prepared itself to be overrun with hundreds of eager preteen video gamers who had gathered to witness firsthand the unveiling of Disney and Squaresoft’s newest RPG for Playstation 2, Kingdom Hearts. Complete with free Kingdom Hearts posters and Squaresoft keychains, photo ops with David Gallagher (Seventh Heaven) and Hayden Panettiere (Ally McBeal, Remember the Titans) — two of the celebrity voices featured in the game — and 10 minutes of free gameplay time, the demo was heaven for Disney-character lovers and RPG video game players alike. Or anyone who just loves playing a video game with brilliant graphics and an innovative storyline, like me. Having the privilege of being invited to cover this special event for AsianWeek, I showed up, set myself up at a VIP spot at the “Videogame Bar” and got down to action.

The Legend of Zelda-meets-Final Fantasy quality graphics were beautifully compiled for the opening movie, and consistently amazed me from start to finish. All of the 12 worlds are breathtaking, with respect to both detail and artwork. Nine are based on Disney movies — including Peter Pan, Hercules and Alice in Wonderland — and each one resembles the movie version so well that it feels like you’re actually running around inside a Disney movie, which was awesome for me, since that was always one of my childhood fantasies.

As you lead the search party through the different worlds, meeting other favorite Disney characters and solving puzzles, hoardes of enemies constantly attack you from all sides. Like any RPG, the characters in your party gain experience points for each creature they kill, which add up to increased skill levels, hit points and magic points. Unlike traditional RPG games, however, the fighting is live-action rather than turn-based. I found the live-action fighting to be the weakest aspect of the game. While fighting (and even maneuvering around worlds), Donald and Goofy often get in the way of Sora’s movement. Also, there is usually a large number of Heartless attacking at once, which makes it difficult to see exactly which creature you are fighting. Then on top of that, each time your sword strikes a creature, a flash of colored sparkles flies out, adding to the chaos on the screen. Fortunately, there is an optional auto-target feature that automatically targets Sora’s sword on the nearest creature, but that takes a lot of skill and fun out of fighting. On the whole, the fighting was a bit repetitive and visually confusing, but the creatures were varied and the controls are well laid out, making the gameplay relatively easy to manage.

In short, if you are looking for graphic fighting scenes or adult themes, look elsewhere for your fun because this game definitely caters to a G-rated audience. If you like to be wowed by gorgeous graphics, a great soundtrack and a challenging storyline while playing with Disney characters inside Disney movies, get your ass to the Squaresoft website and pre-order yourself a copy of Kingdom Hearts, ’cause this one’s a keeper.