999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

[Sombre]

Greetings.

Has anyone else been playing/played this through recently?

To put it into context, it's a new game that's recently launched on the Nintendo DS, and it's a point and click...visual novel...mystery...thriller...thing. It's very reminiscent to Hotel Dusk, if anyone played that.

What I can say however, is how highly I recommend the game. It's a very brooding, dark tale which draws parallels to the "Saw" franchise, except it's not terrible. It tells the story of 9 people who were captured and put on a ship, and have to find their way out by solving puzzles (Isn't that always how it is?). While the gameplay may be somewhat transparent, mainly consisting of Phoenix Wright style "Evidence hunt" sections, where you're doing the classic point and click "Find items to combine with other items", and Layton-esque number puzzles/perception shifting puzzles, the games strength is on its relatively dynamic story telling.

Essentially, there purpose is to find the door with the number "9" on it (The numbers 1-9 play a central role in the game, it's to do with numericals and digital roots of numbers, pretty intuitive). The game plays a lot like a choose your own adventure book, asking you to pick which door you want to go in, who you want to go with (Down to some pretty defined selections, but still...) and other things like that.

I'd definitely recommend that if you're a fan of point and clicks, visual novels, good story, atmosphere/character development, you should really give this a look into!

Oh also, there's several endings in the game, and I've played through it...4 times in as many days now. There's a really lovely option when you beat the game which lets you clearsave, and when you start the game again through that, you "Continue with your memories", making it very clear which options you previously picked, so you can explore all of the dialogue /endings/ character developments, and expediates this by allowing you to race through previously seen dialogue. A nice little touch.

So far, I've ended the game with (Very heavy story spoilers):

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1st time) I was very close to the ending, and I got stabbed in the back and died. Bad ending

2nd time) Again, very very close to the end, but I got an axe lodged in my torso. Bad ending.

3rd time) I got knifed again! Christ!

4th time) Okay, a little more closure this time. I got the "Safe ending" where I found a little note from Zero, discovered "Ace" was a big player in the story, even murdering several people, yet still coming to an inconclusive conclusion. Planning to get the "True ending" tomorrow.

[Sno]

So the sequel to this game was just confirmed for North America on both the Vita and the 3DS.

Zero Escape, is what they're going to be calling it.

Cool news, i say.

[Roderick]

WOAAHHHH, this has been confirmed for outside of Japan? Damn that's great news!

999 was by far the best thing I played on the DS last year and I anticipate the sequel highly. Can't wait!

Sombre, I'm sorry for not reacting to this thread earlier, I didn't even know it was here

[Sno]

Apparently the first one actually sold better in NA than it did in Japan.

It was a really cool game, a nice mix of heavily-branching visual novel stuff and some Myst-style point and click adventuring. (Though i think the "true ending" was complete nonsense. It was dumb, really just so dumb.)

[dibs]

Can't seem to get it in Europe:( it's on my list of games i want, but i don't want it bad enouhg to import. booo, hiss for region releases.

Also, monster tale.

[Sno]

  dibs said:

Can't seem to get it in Europe:( it's on my list of games i want, but i don't want it bad enouhg to import. booo, hiss for region releases.

Also, monster tale.

Well i want Last Window, but not bad enough to import it, so i think we're even.

[toblix]

I imported mine from the US and played it on my Nintendø 3DS. I loved it except for the part where most of your time is spent re-solving puzzles and skipping old dialogue. It has some really weird, conflicting design decisions with regard to how you're supposed to reach all the endings. Choices you've made earlier are grayed out, but that doesn't really mean anything, since you'll need to select a lot of choices multiple times to reach the true ending. You're more or less forced to consult a FAQ to get the true ending, if you're not prepared to spend literally tens of hours doing the same stuff over and over again, trying various combinations of choices, some of which are crucial and some irrelevant. Of course, it ties nicely in with the story, which makes it more okay sort of.

 

Also, I fucking love how looking up skirts is the most important thing in the world. There is no situation too serious or grave to try to catch a lil' peek. I started on VLR last night, and am happy to see it too has a big-canned lady that is ALMOST COMPLETELY NAKED FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

[Roderick]

That's just what she is most comfortable in.

I think we covered this earlier, but there is a jarring modicum of weird sexual flippancy in these games that is both inappropriate and unnecessary.

[pabosher]

This is tangentially related but:

 

Next week PS+ members will get Virtue's Last Reward as a downloadable game. Do I have to play this first to understand that, or are they related in theme only?

[Sno]

  On 4/2/2013 at 12:07 PM, pabosher said:

Do I have to play this first to understand that, or are they related in theme only?

Simply put, it has very deep narrative connections to 999, such that you will want to play 999 first.

It covers its bases pretty well, conveys most of the necessary information, but we're still ultimately talking about a game that has returning characters from the first, a story that discusses things that happened in the first, and features revelations that will be meaningless without knowledge of the first.

[Tanukitsune]

I just got my copy in the mail, it's kinda strange to see how Sony's PSN+ is probably making a Nintendo game sales go up. 

[Tanukitsune]

OK, I gotta say the pseudoscience is getting annoying and some of the puzzles are dumb...

 

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So... the door is frozen solid and there is hot water dripping and a bottle... HEY! Instead of using the warm water to melt the ice, let's talk about this fictional ice that explodes and make a BOMB!

 

And Lotus dress bothers me... belly dancers only dress like this for works, I know because I have friends who practice it, so it makes no sense for here to be dress like unless it's to show off her boobs... But at the same time... I'm go glad to play a Japanese game perving over somebody of legal age, I guess that's kinda sad?

[Sno]

It's kind of a matter of warped expectations, but relatively speaking, the Zero Escape games are quite tame.

You know what actually makes me uncomfortable? Recent example: The character portraits in Etrian Odyssey IV.

Largely innocuous, harmless game that just happens to have a bunch of little girls in thongs.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY.

[Roderick]

Here's something so blithely repulsive it makes you want to quit gaming forever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iYS4EXz6f1Q

[Tanukitsune]

Like I said before, it's almost comforting in a sad way to see adults or at least not children sexualized, unless that sorceress is 10 years old, I'm almost happy? It is a sequel to Princess Crown I presume and a Vanillaware game, so it will be a good game despite the breasts.

 

What I'm trying to say is, no more "Loli" stuff, please, I know Japan can't even do a children's show without at least pantyshots. Seriously, Doreamon is like Japan's Sesame Street and you can see the female character's panties every few episodes or even worse, they do the old "OOPS! I stumble into the bathroom and saw you naked!" thing... she's 10. UUUUGGHHHH!

 

I would rather have 1000 "maybe 16 or maybe adults" with giant breasts than another show or game perving over a 10 year old. STOP IT! 

[Tanukitsune]

Whoa, the story went from seeming ridiculously forced to ridiculously interesting!

 

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ICE MUMMY PRINCESS!