Kingdom Hearts 2, Part 2
Ok kids, today I want to talk to you about teh magickal musick of "The Little Mermaid"!!!! In "Kingdom Hearts," you get to make the characters sing and dance!! Isn't this fun?!
In all seriousness, the "Little Mermaid" part of Kingdom Hearts is particularly loathsome. Thus far, I've enjoyed the game enough that I was fooled into thinking that no part of it could be described as loathsome, but no, I hadn't gotten to the bad DDR/Karaoke Revolution imitation.
I'm sorry; I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, as I was playing today, two new worlds opened up. One was clearly "Pirates of the Caribbean," but I couldn't figure out what the other was supposed to be. As always, curiosity won out, and so I zoomed in my Gummi ship (aptly named "THE SWOOSH") through to the world, only to find a world named "Atlantica."
"Cool," I thought, "I loved 'Atlantis'!"
But no. No fun literary/archaeologist geeks for me. I was soon to become embroiled in the affairs of the Little Mermaid - who, incidentally, isn't that little. I dunno; maybe she stuffs her shells. Who knows?
Anyway, we immediately started a minigame. "Fine, great," I thought. "They've all been fun so far."
But all that was about to change.
The instructions told me to hit X when it told me to. The minigame started, and then a little X symbol popped up on the screen - and didn't go away.
"Do I hold it down?" I asked.
"BAD," the screen replied.
"Hit it repeatedly?"
"BAD."
"Shove the controller through the TV screen?"
"Fzzzt..."
After a brief interlude, Sebastian told me to keep in time with the beat. "That song has no beat," I told him. "It has no rhythm. It's a string of boring notes inexpertly strung together."
Sebastian replied that he was the court musician, not me, and told me I couldn't go anywhere else in the world until I danced for him. He seems to be rather dominating; I now picture him screaming, "Dance, monkeys, dance!" at people as he beats them over the head with his baton.
Little red bastard. I bet you're a bloody communist, aren't you?
Anyway, I finally got a vague idea of what the beat was supposed to be in the song, and I managed to pass the test. I thanked God - or whatever deity they worship over there - and hoped I'd never have to do that again.
"Now that you've practiced," the commie crab said, "why don't we try it while singing?"
I begged and pleaded with the cold-blooded hearted bastard not to make me do that again, but he ignored me. We started the "musical," as he called it, and the Little Mermaid started singing.
And oh, how the mighty have fallen. I'll admit it - I liked the first "Little Mermaid." I saw it when I was a little kid, so how could I not? Besides, it was just a good movie, and I don't remember as much of the "mustn't scare the little ones with unpleasant feelings" bullshit you get today, even though they definitely threw a bit of that in to change the original story.
But now...now she sings songs with the phrase "finny fun" in them. That ought to be outlawed. The phrase "finny fun" and any reference to it should be burned and the phrase should be banned in every country on the planet. It should not exist. It should not even have been created.
The song itself was such an indescribable horror (it had everyone - even Donald - sing. Common sense demands that Donald Duck never, ever sing) that I had to turn the song off. You'd think this would make it difficult to get through the minigame, but by now I'd figured out that all I had to do was hit X when the meter reached the yellow bit at the end and I'd pass the game. The minigame had nothing to do with "moving with the rhythm," as they kept telling me. It had to do solely with hitting X in the yellow bit and ignoring the animation spawned by Cthulhu.
That's the problem, isn't it? Cthulhu is down there, under the sea, with those sea creatures, and it's addling the poor bastards' brains. They're so crazy now that they think "finny fun" is not only perfectly acceptable, it's edgy. They think they're a totally hardcore band - but they're not, because Cthulhu is fucking with their minds while Sin goes around eating up continents and sending his toxin floating down to them. Cthulhu and Sin are conspirators in this; they're going to take over the world by brainwashing people through that horrendous song.
They would've succeeded, too, if it weren't for that meddling Ariel. After passing the performance, Ariel told everyone who had some sense of punctuality that they'd have to come back later, because she didn't feel like practicing. She swam off to her room to pine over her human not-boyfriend and write angsty poetry. She's gained a bit of a prima donna complex since we last saw her, I think.
All the same, I'm very thankful to her for that complex, annoying as it may be. Without it, the entire world would now be ruled by Sin and Cthulhu, and that damned song would be blasting out of every speaker on the planet. And that would be the truest form of hell I can comprehend.
In all seriousness, the "Little Mermaid" part of Kingdom Hearts is particularly loathsome. Thus far, I've enjoyed the game enough that I was fooled into thinking that no part of it could be described as loathsome, but no, I hadn't gotten to the bad DDR/Karaoke Revolution imitation.
I'm sorry; I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, as I was playing today, two new worlds opened up. One was clearly "Pirates of the Caribbean," but I couldn't figure out what the other was supposed to be. As always, curiosity won out, and so I zoomed in my Gummi ship (aptly named "THE SWOOSH") through to the world, only to find a world named "Atlantica."
"Cool," I thought, "I loved 'Atlantis'!"
But no. No fun literary/archaeologist geeks for me. I was soon to become embroiled in the affairs of the Little Mermaid - who, incidentally, isn't that little. I dunno; maybe she stuffs her shells. Who knows?
Anyway, we immediately started a minigame. "Fine, great," I thought. "They've all been fun so far."
But all that was about to change.
The instructions told me to hit X when it told me to. The minigame started, and then a little X symbol popped up on the screen - and didn't go away.
"Do I hold it down?" I asked.
"BAD," the screen replied.
"Hit it repeatedly?"
"BAD."
"Shove the controller through the TV screen?"
"Fzzzt..."
After a brief interlude, Sebastian told me to keep in time with the beat. "That song has no beat," I told him. "It has no rhythm. It's a string of boring notes inexpertly strung together."
Sebastian replied that he was the court musician, not me, and told me I couldn't go anywhere else in the world until I danced for him. He seems to be rather dominating; I now picture him screaming, "Dance, monkeys, dance!" at people as he beats them over the head with his baton.
Little red bastard. I bet you're a bloody communist, aren't you?
Anyway, I finally got a vague idea of what the beat was supposed to be in the song, and I managed to pass the test. I thanked God - or whatever deity they worship over there - and hoped I'd never have to do that again.
"Now that you've practiced," the commie crab said, "why don't we try it while singing?"
I begged and pleaded with the cold-blooded hearted bastard not to make me do that again, but he ignored me. We started the "musical," as he called it, and the Little Mermaid started singing.
And oh, how the mighty have fallen. I'll admit it - I liked the first "Little Mermaid." I saw it when I was a little kid, so how could I not? Besides, it was just a good movie, and I don't remember as much of the "mustn't scare the little ones with unpleasant feelings" bullshit you get today, even though they definitely threw a bit of that in to change the original story.
But now...now she sings songs with the phrase "finny fun" in them. That ought to be outlawed. The phrase "finny fun" and any reference to it should be burned and the phrase should be banned in every country on the planet. It should not exist. It should not even have been created.
The song itself was such an indescribable horror (it had everyone - even Donald - sing. Common sense demands that Donald Duck never, ever sing) that I had to turn the song off. You'd think this would make it difficult to get through the minigame, but by now I'd figured out that all I had to do was hit X when the meter reached the yellow bit at the end and I'd pass the game. The minigame had nothing to do with "moving with the rhythm," as they kept telling me. It had to do solely with hitting X in the yellow bit and ignoring the animation spawned by Cthulhu.
That's the problem, isn't it? Cthulhu is down there, under the sea, with those sea creatures, and it's addling the poor bastards' brains. They're so crazy now that they think "finny fun" is not only perfectly acceptable, it's edgy. They think they're a totally hardcore band - but they're not, because Cthulhu is fucking with their minds while Sin goes around eating up continents and sending his toxin floating down to them. Cthulhu and Sin are conspirators in this; they're going to take over the world by brainwashing people through that horrendous song.
They would've succeeded, too, if it weren't for that meddling Ariel. After passing the performance, Ariel told everyone who had some sense of punctuality that they'd have to come back later, because she didn't feel like practicing. She swam off to her room to pine over her human not-boyfriend and write angsty poetry. She's gained a bit of a prima donna complex since we last saw her, I think.
All the same, I'm very thankful to her for that complex, annoying as it may be. Without it, the entire world would now be ruled by Sin and Cthulhu, and that damned song would be blasting out of every speaker on the planet. And that would be the truest form of hell I can comprehend.