A drum I’ve been
beating loudly recently, to anyone who will listen, is the viability
of the Nintendo DS as a premier platform for new adventure games.

After the last Japanese
adventure I played on the DS, Time
Hollow, I was even more encouraged.

So I picked up Lux-Pain,
despite its title, with lots of good will.

I fired up the game and
was immediately pleased by the production values evident in the game’s
visuals. This may be an even prettier game than Time Hollow
was.

Alas. After that first
moment of eye-pleasing goodness, virtually everything else about the
game was off-putting.

First
of all, it’s one thing to have to endure yet another lead character
in a Japanese game who’s a young man with a strikingly beautiful
but feminine face, but it’s quite another when the very narration
of the game explicitly describes him that way.

This young man, Atsuki,
seems to be some sort of spirit-hunter, on the prowl for evidence
of a Typhoid-Mary-type spreader of a vicious psychic (and psychological)
virus that’s sweeping the city.

Okay . . I realize looking
at the sentence I just typed that I’ve just made the premise
of the game actually sound compelling.

It’s not. Or at least,
it wasn’t to me. Perhaps it would draw you in if, in addition
to being an avid gamer, you were also a suicidal Gothic Lolita girl
on the streets of Tokyo. Because that’s who this game seems
aimed at.

I’m sorry . . . I
said “game,” didn’t I?

Oops. Lux-Pain
isn’t actually a game, though it’s being sold as one.
What is it, then?

It’s a really pretty,
partially animated, slightly interactive manga.

Lots of Japanese games
have extensive cutscenes, but Lux-Pain is
a cutscene. With occasional bits of gameplay which consist of . .
. are you ready? . . . scratching the touch screen of the DS with
your stylus. Over and over. Like an eraser.

Oh, and sometimes you get
to tap the screen, too!

And, to be fair, every
now and then you get to make some boring choices in dialog trees.

Yup, them’s the gameplay
elements.

The longer I spent with
the game, the more incredulous I became. When does the actual
game start? I kept wondering. Text screen after
text screen after dialog after dialog . . . .

What’s
worse is that what’s going on in front of you is utterly incomprehensible.
You have a pile of different characters thrown at you, and they all
talk . . . a lot.

Really. A lot.
And in between there’s a lot of narration.

The sad fact is: this game
suffers from a toxic case of, forgive me, Crazy Japanese-ness.

Now, I love lots of Japanese
games. Hell, I love JAPAN. It’s a beautiful country and Tokyo
is an amazing city.

But it’s also full
of stuff that’s just batshit. Like the fact that the city is
such a labyrinth that frequently even taxi drivers can’t find
the restaurant you’re going to, even though they all are
equipped with GPS devices.

And here’s one: When
I was there, my favorite children’s magazine was called, I kid
you not, FUCK. (I have the photos to prove
this.)

I think you’d really
need to be a Japanese teenager to understand, or be interested in
understanding, this opaque and utterly grim storyline.

Also, the game suffers
from a very sloppy localization, so that frequently the voice over
work (yes, there’s lots of it) doesn’t match what the
subtitles are saying. And even when they do, you’re frequently
left thinking . . . “Huh?”

Not only is the atmosphere
of the game pitch-black, full of suicide, murder and insanity, but
like so many Japanese games it’s populated by people that look
like children. And that’s just creepy.

Baffled and disheartened,
I eventually cracked open the game’s manual.

It’s 41 pages long.

A 41-page long manual for
an adventure game.

The
manual goes into exhaustive detail about the backstory, the characters,
and what the main character’s goals are. Buried in there somewhere
is some information about the afore-mentioned gameplay element, but
you have to be pretty dedicated to find it.

Why is this a problem?
Well. For many years now, all games (and particularly console games)
have been moving toward the idea that the game teaches you how
to play it. The manual, particularly for an adventure game, should
merely be a reference. Something you might go back to now and again
when you forget a detail of how the interface works. You shouldn’t
have to study it for hours before you can make sense of anything that’s
happening. I’m not interested in doing a book report; I want
to play a game.

For my money, it’s
page 32 of the manual which most perfectly sums up everything that’s
wrong with Lux-Pain. On it is a grid that
shows a possible range of emotions you can choose from when conversing
with other characters. The emotions are Angry, Surprised, Stunned,
Cold, Sad, Smile and Happy. Each of these labels is above a picture
of the game’s main character demonstrating that emotion. But
here’s the hilarious thing: They all look almost exactly alike.
Particularly guffaw-inducing are Happy and Smile, for which the character
is not smiling at all.

I will say this. This game
does seem to be tapping into some sort of general spiritual angst
afflicting urban Japanese youth. This game is extremely reminiscent
of a 2007 game which I also hated, an RPG from Square-Enix called
The World Ends With You. So it’s
entirely possible that I’m all wet, and that the pitch-black
sensibility of Lux-Pain will appeal to you.
But I really cannot recommend it.

This game should have stayed
in Japan.

System Requirements:

Nintendo DS and
an extreme Emo/Goth sensibility

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.