Grimbeard - Parasite Eve (PS1) - Review
what's up god gamer nation it's a parasite eve it's a jrpg no i'm kidding it's a video about the game parasite eve uh if you would like to continue watching it stay right where you are and i will begin the video parasite eve is a japanese sci-fi horror action rpg sperm bank sabotage simulator developed and published by square or squaresoft in 1998 for the sony playstation in the mid-90s to early 2000s japan saw a renewed interest in horror stories both in film and in print contributing to this new wave was the 1995 novel parasite eve the original story which this game acts as a pseudo-sequel too like the video game adaptation ring would receive this game acknowledges the events of the novel but concerns new characters and circumstances if you have read the book however it does seem to read like a retread a here we go again scenario not that i read it perhaps you'll have better luck than i did in that regard yes i could have bought some kind of e-book but then what am i going to dog-ear and get my sticky filthy gamer fingerprints all over i'm [ __ ] disgusting before i discuss this game further it's important that you ready some information in your brains i'm probably gonna mention mitochondria a lot i can tell already so you should know that mitochondria the meme of the cell are little blue jelly beans that are found inside all of our cells and there are positively dozens of these little bastards in every bit of your stupid body yes inside you are a bunch of vibrating jelly beans and they all produce energy called anderson trip hop hate that allows us to do all sorts of things like drive a car point at a dog also age and die maybe you've died because you are pointing at a dog while driving a car see back millions and billions of years ago when humans were not put soup there were these pinkish jelly beans that didn't like oxygen and then later some purple ones that did like oxygen showed up and were like hey let's hang out or whatever and then it became a symbiotic jelly bean called mitochondria which is kind of its own thing still like they're there but they weren't always there and they only really get passed down from somebody's mother the parasite eve novel was written by pharmacologist turned author hideyaki senna someone whose work consisted of testing drugs on mitochondria its title a reference to the theory of a mitochondrial eve an unbroken genetic line that traces back to the most recent common maternal ancestor of humanity believed to be a woman in africa hundreds of thousands of years ago the dna of human mitochondria has remained more or less unchanged since this supposed eve this idea was popularized in a study conducted in the 1980s and for some might instill some sense of unity illuminate the senselessness of our racial divisions or as several unsettling men dressed as vin diesel once said family obviously at least one person had the insight to instead think what if mitochondria is more like a sentient bacteria a single hive mind parasite infecting the cells of every human on the planet and they've just been waiting centuries millennia even to make their move turn us all into protoplasmic slime and reign supreme over whatever cosmically horrific pulsating biomass of twisted flesh and alien tendrils the earth will become you know optimism the original parasite eve was published by a company known for anime and manga named karakawa they were approached by square producer hironobu sakaguchi to acquire the rights to adapt sena's novel into a game and from what i was able to dig up a big contributing factor to why katakawa was willing to hand off its now golden ip to square with complete creative freedom as well as filmmakers and comic writers was the fact that around this time their ceo was caught up in a drug scandal after ordering an aide to make several trips to la to buy cocaine with embezzled company coin so when sakaguchi expressed interest they were sort of hurting financially so they're like oh [ __ ] yeah you can give us money you can take whatever you want you want guyver i'll throw that [ __ ] in for free actually do you have any blow development for the game was led by creative director takashi tokita who had played a significant role in the production of games like chrono trigger and final fantasy 4 or 2 depending on your spawn point strangely enough when chrono trigger was in development at square it required plans for what would become final fantasy vii to be temporarily shelved abandoning a potential timeline where we would have got a 2d final fantasy vii for the super nintendo that followed a new york city detective in the not so distant future of 1999 who's hot on the trail of cloud and the other main characters as they fight in evil sorceress obviously the ff7 we got differs a great deal after they decided to make the jump to 3d and new york city was changed to a different dystopian metropolis but many details from this original incarnation were carried over to parasite eve's development this is likely why the two games are often compared and many have pointed out similarities references or just the general feeling that they are on something of the same wavelength in 1998 squaresoft had entered into a joint venture with american company and black-hearted villain of gaming ea creating square electronic arts where ea would publish square games in the us and square would publish ea games in japan and in the case of parasite eve games would be developed using both studios many of the final fantasy vii staff were made to work in tandem with a studio in california which resulted in a game that was unique and certainly cinematic for the time but it also created a lot of difficulties in communication on release parasite eve sold very well and was reviewed pretty well amidst its praise however were complaints about its relatively short length compared to other rpgs at the time and the drastic changes to the familiar gameplay loop of square's output egm after hyping the game's release for months and even including aya on the cover of one issue ultimately had pretty mixed feelings on it writing like most overblown summer movies parasite eve has its faults several confusing plot twists had me asking what the heck just happened scarce background music makes for mostly silent gameplay and as far as rpgs go parasite eve is fairly simple cvg magazine wrote in the end parasite eve falls somewhere between resident evil 2 and final fantasy vii but never touches the genius behind either of those games aya is pretty though guys for a second just for a sec while the novel was a big hit in japan it was not translated or made available elsewhere until around 2005 so in the time between parasite eve's video game release and translation it had independently become a franchise and garnered this secondary following around a video game sequel to a book with no creative input from said book's author leaving many fans mostly unaware or cut off from its true origin there was even a film adaptation in 1997 that did make it overseas but like in the u.s people only really knew about parasite eve as a video game about a new york city cop shooting mutant rats so i can only imagine this led to a lot of head scratching for gamers saying wait a minute there ain't a single [ __ ] rat in this mess the game was such a hit in the u.s that rumors began floating around that madonna like the madonna had won a bidding war for the american film rights and planned to play one of the lead characters there was enough traction behind this rumor that square had to come out and deny that this had happened causing games journalists to rationally respond with a unanimous yeah got it safe to say the iron is far from hot for that big hollywood blockbuster adaptation as the franchise has been left mostly abandoned for a decade following two sequels that were met with a lukewarm reception it still has its ardent followers and defenders however those still willing to leap to attention when square enix renews the ip rights once again but the more cynical of us pay no mind to such ghost stories tall tales of good games parasite eve takes place in new york city over the course of six days beginning on christmas eve 1997 which may well have been chosen as a cheeky allusion to the title but it's also one of many decisions that intentionally or not grant this game a decent amount of character speaking of characters that sucked that sucked dude that [ __ ] suck we are immediately introduced to our protagonist aya brea a cop but hey don't leave just yet she's got redeeming qualities she's got a stoic bad ass attitude and she's a bit of a wise guy every now and then in the game's opening she's being escorted to the opera by her pushy date that can't seem to take the hint from her cold demeanor that she's probably just trying to be nice in the middle of the show's big solo the lead seems to stare right into aya's soul for a moment before several attendees begin to spontaneously burst into flames causing a panic as people either trample over each other headed for the exit or ignite their surroundings seeing this cutscene for the first time was a very memorable gaming experience for me though i could say the same about most of its cutscenes which are still pretty impressive in scale there's one similarly gory scene later on that's like a formative life experience for me one of like four in gaming that [ __ ] me up good changed my life through scarification uh when harry gets a call from cheryl on the spooky phone the first zombie turning around in resident evil and finally when some [ __ ] in grade school claimed that if you made lara croft jump in her pool at a specific angle she would come out of the pool naked and i jumped over and over and over and over and that that very moment is when i lost my trust and faith in humanity and frankly lost respect in myself but thanks to the miracle of technology i can look up giza on google maps anytime i want but that's a little secret just for me just for daddy yeah i i replaced a different bit with this one and i don't think it's any better this was the most cinematic and intense thing i had witnessed in a video game up until that point and honestly it's still pretty [ __ ] up watching a crowd of innocence burns set to uncanny synthesized opera vocals being sung by a woman seemingly indifferent to the carnage playing out still carries a lot of weight for a game with arguably no blood square's first m rated game does a good job finding creative ways to deserve its rating aya seems to be the only person in the theater not affected or deterred by the ensuing disaster and confronts the actress she speaks vaguely about their power being in her cells and suddenly aya begins to feel hot quickly developing her own set of powers confused by this she tries to shoot the woman but that doesn't seem to accomplish much she instead leads aya on further introducing herself as eve and imparting a fleeting memory of a little girl on a hospital bed before giggling and floating off while trying to catch up with her aya begins to see further visions of this tiny blonde girl perhaps even recognizing her backstage you are confronted by the first of many creatures that eve sticks on you twisting common city animal life like rats roaches and pigeons into hideous cronenbergian monsters that attack ayo the rest of the opera's cast has been reduced to charred husks one of which is able to live long enough to tell aya that the woman that called herself eve was known to them as melissa in melissa's dressing room you find her diary in it she documents her excitement for the christmas eve performance but laments the fact that the role is double cast she ominously mentions taking all the medication she could to get there and that she may have overdone it feeling increasingly sick even collapsing at one point as her symptoms got worse she seems to combat them by taking more and more of this mysterious medication caring only about getting the role and not about her declining health her wish is granted however when the other actress is found burned in her apartment aya catches up to melissa at a piano apparently trying to maintain some sense of identity reassuring herself that she is melissa but she soon transforms in much the same way as the creatures and again asserts herself as eve before attacking once again she announces the end of nucleic domination and declares today the day that mitochondria is free she continues to be cryptic with aya implying there is a special reason she's the only one immune to her destructive powers and that while she doesn't yet understand her mitochondria will then she kind of [ __ ] off and leaves you to fight a thunder crocodile i guess she can just create pokemon now back out on the street aya stumbles out to a news crew attempting to score an interview with the sole survivor but another cop named daniel shows up and defuses the situation the only way he's been trained to by punching the reporter in the back of the head so hard he's launched airborne his shoes in the [ __ ] stratosphere the two attempt to make small talk as they drive back to the police station but aya's thoughts are consumed by eve's words and the hospital vision she keeps remembering glimpses of i do like that for the moment the introduction of these characters and their personalities are subtly expressed jrpgs can have the tendency to include awkward expository dialogue where people say hey i'm divorced and struggling to balance my work life with finding time to look after my son who i was granted custody of you remember and it's like well yeah we're supposed to be friends and partners i think i would know that so it's weird that you're saying it like i'm a complete stranger like i don't know you at all like i don't listen like i'm afraid to be emotionally vulnerable with another oh wait that's that's spot on in any case we pick up on the fact that this is the [ __ ] that daniel's dealing with without them having to bizarrely state it plainly to aya at the station the other cops attempt to understand aeo's account of what happened but aren't willing to buy that there was some kind of supernatural explanation for it melissa didn't have much in the way of friends or family so there is nobody to question further and her apartment burned down last night as well daniel of course sticks up for her and posits that if she's going to face a supernatural threat she's going to need a better gun which may as well be some kind of meta reference to the gameplay if you're gonna make it to the second disc you're gonna need to consistently upgrade and replace your weapon even the chiefs like i read your report wild [ __ ] i can't even begin to comprehend what you're going up against but i'm positive it can be resolved with a gun take this gun coupon it's not like the game is a stranger to sort of commenting on the game within the game the brief snippet of the opera in the opening depicts a pseudo-shakespearean story about a woman condemned and demonized by a kingdom for having magical powers daniel's son ben shows up to bring him tickets to a concert in central park that he completely forgot about because he's been so consumed by work and ben storms off upset the chief makes aya appear at the press conference for the opera incident but tells her not to speak unless he prompts her which she immediately does not do and awkwardly attempts to intimate what she experienced to a baffled group of reporters afterwards she gets chewed out for stirring up panic you remember way back when i was like hey the writing is actually pretty subtle it's not always like that it is sometimes which is impressive considering when the game was released but there are scenes like this where right after aya has made a scene trying to explain that mitochondria are going to finally be freed the chief gets a call from a japanese scientist who asks about mito something you mean mitochondria and some random cop is like i just read that some researcher at the museum wrote a new theory on them why do you know that i don't buy that you'd know that what we need was a shot of this guy at his desk prior to this looking up from a pile of paperwork beneath a poster that says science rocks you know something subtle oh he knows that cause you like science god aya and daniel head over to the interview dr klamp the mitochondria researcher as soon as he turns around aya rattles loose another hazy memory of the hospital room and what looks like clamp looming over the little girl he takes the news of the opera incident rather well and immediately goes into the particulars of his research claiming that mitochondria are independently thinking organisms that graciously allow humanity to carry on as though we're in charge beyond fueling our bodies they are capable of great destructive acts expelling electricity and heat he theorizes that if all the mitochondria in a body decided to activate simultaneously they likely could exert enough heat to initiate a full body melt practically cackling like a mega brained lunatic in the presence of idiot babies he claims that since mitochondria are able to produce faster than our other cells that they've also been able to evolve much faster than us he then explains to our blank-faced leads the concept of mitochondrial eve after aya brings up the fact that the suspect referred to herself as eve dr clamp seems unnerved and asks to be left alone while daniel screams at him to tell them what he knows he just types away like hey you better explain what the hell's going on i can't hear you is someone there it sounds like a stupid bug is nearby but i don't see anything aya and daniel are called back to the station where chief baker explains their next lead melissa was scheduled to perform tonight at a show in central park and given how important the performance was in her diary he assumes that she'll show up daniel is then sent into a panic when he realizes that ben and his ex-wife lorraine are meant to attend that show and he runs off to go find them unable to get a word in aya is sent to chase after him and watches back you'd think they'd send more in the way of backup like for a police force with a budget larger than some standing militaries you'd think they'd get just like one more guy at least a guy to like stand outside and be like hey don't go in there careful now it's really interesting seeing a real world setting and hollywood tropes but rendered with the hyper real and often whimsical lens of a final fantasy swords replaced by police issued pistols and dungeons replaced by once mundane locations like a hospital or a water treatment plant and while the path to the antagonist is beset by fantastical creatures they are rationalized with a hard sci-fi explanation one that while ludicrous has some footing in existing research you could literally google several talking points and studies that come up in this game it's it's a wild at one point they name drop richard dawkins and i was just like holy [ __ ] that's a real transphobe if you would not like to hear any more spoilers concerning this game's story and would like to play it on your own feel free to skip to this time i'm sure it's available on some modern consoles digital storefront it's funny while i was making this there was a square enix sale on steam that would probably be over by the time i finished this but it's odd that they have a three game franchise that doesn't seem to be a priority to preserve you can buy final fantasy legend for the game boy and play it in 4k but you can't buy a simple port of parasite eve don't ask me how but guys i'm positive it's very easy to get this running on pc something like an hour into this game you begin to notice how relentless the pacing of it is when i think about playing some of the older final fantasy entries or just square's previous output i remember a not insignificant time being devoted to wandering around in overworld and getting in random encounters but parasite eve pretty much always maintains this brisk sprint that is until you miss some kind of quest item because despite mashing x over an obvious point of interest aya just refuses to investigate further so you just shrug and say huh guess it was nothing when ayah and daniel arrive at central park daniel runs off in search of his son but immediately catches fire upon crossing some kind of invisible barrier aya convinces him to stay behind while she looks for him which is another interesting way this game differs from its contemporaries in some other game daniel and other characters you meet along the way would join your party and you'd embark on this adventure together but all throughout the game aya is made to go alone as she's the only character that can even get close to eve this frequently imparts a loneliness and severity to the plot that i appreciate you kinda like these people and it's worrying that they're made out of paper mache and you're not she arrives at the stage just in time to see all its attendees melted into mitochondrial goo then coalesce into some kind of single slimy organism i have to get backstage and stop her buddy i think that ship may have sailed pretty sure ben and lorraine just turned into [ __ ] ramen i love aya but she's really got to work on her situational awareness after fighting through a horde of eve's monsters aya confronts her again though she appears to have been waiting for her she compliments her jeans and invites her to go on a carriage ride i like this scene because it's in a weird way eve offering an olive branch in her ancient primordial collective brain she's impressed by aya and wants her to join the side of mitochondria and is quite frankly frustrated that she sided with humanity instead the mitochondria in the two of them draws them together but aeo's humanity is fighting this potential union she's just filling eve with bullet holes while she's like just think about it okay don't say no yet when the carriage spins out aya is knocked unconscious giving her another cryptic glimpse at the hospital room this time seeing clamp watching over two little girls ben is revealed to be alive and he runs to daniel trying in his childish way to describe what happened providing one of a few just silent tragic moments in the game as the two realize they can no longer mend their family back to what it was later the chief announces that the army has ordered manhattan to be evacuated ben is left in the care of the police station while daniel goes to look for aya in barely any time at all the city has become a post-apocalyptic ghost town a christmas frozen in time in lower manhattan maida the japanese scientist who called the chief earlier talking about mido something argues with a police barricade to let him in it being the u.s one cop mocks his grasp of english before suddenly and gloriously bursting into flames maida takes the opportunity to slip past the barrier while they're distracted ayo wakes up in a run down apartment with him and daniel this scene is probably the most crossover you'll see with the book i don't think maida is a specific character from the book but he is motivated by the events of it and gives a brief synopsis of what happened in japan the wife of a scientist was in a car accident the scientist tried to keep her alive using her liver cells these cultured cells multiplied and eventually her mitochondria assumed control of her body taking on the name eve they leap over some of the more unpleasant details of the book by saying eve acquired the scientist sperm to birth the ultimate being he also adds an addendum that the scientist's wife was an organ donor so when she died her liver wound up in a young girl and that girl was the vessel through which this being was born this is probably the only part of the story that i don't think works and i don't think should be here like it could have easily been an adaptation of the book that takes artistic liberties with the material but instead they wanted to acknowledge the events of the book as canon which makes it weirder that they're just doing the same thing again anyway it's like if in the matrix reloaded they just made it about a different hacker guy that realizes he lives in a simulation and is brought back to a horrifying reality where humans are kept in tubes and used as batteries by squid robots but at the same time some character that wasn't in the first matrix movie was like hey this sounds an awful lot like what happened to that other hacker guy then everyone shrugs and acts out the rest of the matrix 1 script instead of the objective masterpiece that was the script they went with ayah becomes terrified that whatever power lies within her will get daniel and mida killed so she tries to white fang them but the next morning they show up and continue to help her mido wants to run some tests on aya's blood so they head to clamp's lab at the museum assuming he'd be evacuated anyway using some eve goop that was stuck to aeo's clothes that at some point might have collected without her knowledge which i'm not going to fixate on in a dump of scientific jargon that i may have blacked out during he explains that eve's mitochondria have taken control of the nucleus of her cells meaning through some kind of mutation she's reversed the symbiotic relationship between her cell's nucleus and mitochondria aya asks to have her cells tested as well in order to understand why she has survived this long her mitochondria seemed to behave differently powering and protecting the nucleus from eve's more hostile and invasive organelles mida can only theorize why aya is the only one with this power and it's not present in everyone clamp interrupts them and begins to berate them for breaking into his lab but daniel notices that his son and ex-wife's name appear on some kind of list clamp was compiling he becomes aggressive with him demanding an answer but clamp refuses to say anything further and kicks them out on the drive out of there maida mentions that the list appeared to be an hla typing list the kind used to match patients with organ or bone marrow transplants the three of them returned to the police station only to find it in complete disarray eve has been there and has wiped out many of the cops so like four of the eight there's also no sign of ben but who gives a [ __ ] about that because wayne and torres are in trouble i thought it was really sweet that they gave the two dudes that handled the weapons lockup just enough scenes to have a tiny emotional story arc that comes out of nowhere too because they serve a gameplay function so you don't really think too deeply about them you pick up on the fact that wayne's probably a rookie and doesn't have a sense for the severity of carrying a weapon and torres is much more serious and by the book about it doesn't particularly appreciate his co-workers willingness to pull their weapon so he was probably going to get fired anyway but in this moment where torres lies mortally wounded we learned that he hasn't fired a gun since his daughter was shot and he couldn't even bring himself to do it to save his own life like why did they give so much depth to this guy that was in two scenes i barely got to know you and now you're oh no time for that the game is introducing a new mechanic ben has been following around a police dog named shiva and just narrowly avoiding a growing mob of eve's monsters until shiva also begins to transform as ayer races to catch up to him the chief attempts to step in and protect him but he doesn't carry around an ammo crate in mallet space like aya she's able to defeat the dog creature and ben is reunited with daniel even though it's easy to poke fun at the primitiveness of it it is really rare and considerate for a game like this to devote time to smaller emotional moments that don't entirely move plot forward or dole out exposition but just a simple believable little bit like ben asking aya to stop the person that hurt shiva i mean it's using a dog to do this which is cheap of them devious insidious even but some modern games don't even offer that midas spends some time in the police station's lab and determines that like the events of the parasite eve book eve's body is likely deteriorating as the parasite-like mitochondria feed off her so he presumes just as she did in japan she will need to acquire sperm thankfully this time around she does so by hunting down a sperm bank she's coming for the comment for the comment for the comment for the coming for the coming for the count shows up to the nearby hospital and is taunted by eve while also hallucinating the girl she's seen in her memories revealing her name to be maya i do like how much they show this clearly affecting aya emotionally she doesn't seem to recognize it as a hallucination even showing concern that she must be cold dressed that way and becoming sad that she keeps getting left alone it's like these visions have tapped into some deeper hurt from her mysterious past it's a shame these solemn quiet moments are then followed by aya yelling at a completely bewildered doctor oh my god how do i turn it on which is an amazing line paired with the fact that this doctor has no [ __ ] clue what's going on but it's just like well all right here's a key card there's a valve in the storage area why though there's no time damage so aya attempts to prevent eve from creating another ultimate being by cutting off this sperm bank's supply of liquid nitrogen which i am almost positive is the only video game in video game history that allows you to take part in that activity where you quite literally destroy a whole lab's worth of to save the world unfortunately aya may have once again arrived too late judging by the dozens of empty vials littered everywhere i guess eve's plan was more of a spray and pray type situation you know what i'm going to delete that nothing stopping me from deleting that in this area aya finds patient records for her mother she was admitted to the hospital along with her sister maya after a car accident her mother was pronounced dead on arrival and another file indicates that on the same day as the accident a girl named melissa the body that even habits was admitted for an emergency operation and that's not all what's this oh my my inventory is full i can gotta get rid of something hang on what's this oh it's just a key okay well anyway while aya heads to the roof to confront eve once more the military are sending out fighter jets to just blow her up and call it a day but she pretty easily dispatches them by igniting the jets pilots eve seems to finally relent that aya cannot be persuaded to join her and flies off to complete her master plan one of the other cops at the station is able to dig up that a doctor was fired from the same hospital for giving out patient information and also that melissa was seen visiting dr klamp on more than one occasion so they decide to all split up and search the city for any sign of either eve or clamp curiously avoiding the museum where his lab is but maybe that would have been too easy aya and maida pick up the trail of the goopy slime monster made from daniel's ex-wife and follow it into the sewers of chinatown speaking of maida a few times now when aya has been just about to leap into some kind of danger without backup he's given her some kind of good luck charm a different one each time and while i don't particularly like him as a character i thought this was a sweet detail that has an amusing payoff eventually but for a while he's just sort of the bumbling horny nosebleeder if this were adapted into an anime he'd likely fall over into ayea's chest and his face would turn into a ghost and then she'd punch him and he'd fly into the moon we come face to goop with the mass of slime that once was an audience of concert goers and aya watches as it goops its way through the sewers and heads towards the museum arriving at the museum we learned that the goop is somehow animating the bones of dinosaurs and you know what i'm not even gonna stop to question that because we got dinos oh wait a second that's actually super uh dumb uh excuse me who we got [ __ ] fossils are just bits and pieces of dead things i mean they're dead they're just they're just dead things they're just they're dead things this is one of the longer set pieces and it's almost entirely in service to the idea that it would be fun if there were dinosaurs because it's a good while before the story picks up again ayo runs into mida in clamp's lab he came back to research a special weapon he's been devising which he gives you in hopes of finding time to explain how it works later he also adds that he's been snooping around the lab and found evidence that clamp had been culturing the liver cells of eyes sister maya making it likely that eve was in some sense created from her sister's donated organs once again clamp shows up only this time he's a little more openly villainous cackling like a madman and mocking our heroes for their filthy humanity and wielding a scalpel this is before daniel shows up and punches him they get him to spill his guts about his plan he's been working to perfect the birth of the supreme being that didn't go so smoothly in japan in that scenario the father's mitochondria created a rebellion in the cells that ultimately defeated the eve mitochondria so this time around he's developed artificial sperm with no male mitochondria making eve pregnant within melissa's body with a being that will be purely unfiltered eve clamp then seems to call upon eve to smite his enemies but only he is set aflame and he just kind of dies cackling to himself as if to say worth it deeper in the museum aya finds an already pregnant as [ __ ] eve when pressed on what her ultimate goal is she ponders why any human gives birth before summoning her goop homunculus to ferry her off to safety outside maida continues their talk from earlier they learned that the medication melissa had been taking was an immunosuppressant when she was younger she experienced kidney failure and was given maya's kidney by dr clamp a kidney that had already had the potential for eve within it as the doctor's present acknowledged it being a very spicy liver upon touching it one was quoted as saying the immunosuppressants she was prescribed accelerated the takeover by the eve mitochondria but it does look like maya was the catalyst for all of this this portion of the plot i'll admit is kind of convoluted and may or may not have fallen victim to some kind of wonky translation but this is the events as i understand them it doesn't help that everyone has very similar sounding names and some even share names like maya and a abrea and maida and melissa and eve and eva and also some characters share names with characters from the book despite being different characters altogether so it's really easy to just kind of realize you didn't read a sentence or two and suddenly everything is different and you're scared not deterred by the utter failure of the fighter jets they sent in the navy makes a move against the goop homunculus which mighta ever the exposition dumper explains is likely being used as a protective bubble for eve to give birth in this plays out predictably just as bad as the jets the three watch the destruction from the street for a while until a helicopter lands nearby with orders to bring aya to an aircraft carrier aware that aya is the only one that cannot be ignited by eve the navy captain asks her to fly a helicopter to where she is by the statue of liberty and shoot her with a rocket a process that would be automated so presumably all she really has to do is sit in it and press a big red button wait a minute you're telling me that you can program this chopper to fly a twisty turny path through manhattan weaving in and out of buildings but you can't program it to blow up one lady jesus i thought this is what you guys do i bet you'd do it if it was a wedding the missile blows up the goop homunculus but asc's eve emerge from its remains unharmed and [ __ ] dives out of the helicopter to finish the fight they fight for a good while until eve is defeated she feebly tries to escape but collapses and melts into a puddle ayah asserts herself and her uniquely evolved mitochondria as eve's natural enemy can i share a gripe with you the cards on the table i like this game but i was convinced that when they showed this shot of the statue of liberty covered in goop that it was going to come to life and we would fight it a presumption that i think is only partially my fault because look when we're in the museum the goop was bringing to life dinosaur skeletons and even i understand that skeletons of dinosaurs in a museum aren't real bones like dinosaur bones aren't real right because they're a test from satan no because they're replicas like there wouldn't be any biomatter in them that would let the mitochondria bring it to life so i just thought oh it can sorta wrap itself around anything and then that becomes a monster but i think maybe they just possibly didn't know that and were like yeah the goop brings these real bones to life but then i thought well none of this is actually possible so why am i deciding the rules back aboard the carrier everyone's doing their end of the game speeches and congratulating when suddenly out of the goopy remains of eve emerges some kind of fetal nightmare creature that immediately begins blowing people up instead of igniting them daniel and maida hurried to escape on a helicopter but as stays behind to finish the fight again maida tries one last time to give aes something to help her out but daniel drags him away assuming it to be more voodoo stuff aya and this [ __ ] up baby square up and fight for a while and a few times this supposed ultimate being evolves into a different stage of life until it reaches i guess you could say adulthood kind of just looks like mewtwo back in the helicopter daniel and maya watch a fight iteration after iteration of this creature until mida laments that he wishes he could have given aya these bullets with her cells in them these special eve killing bullets supreme being stopper bullets that he was about to handle in one of the most baffling yet badass scenes in the game daniel grabs them and with no parachute or plan b just hurls himself out of the helicopter where he of course immediately catches flame as he's plummeting closer and closer to the carrier he throws the bullets at aya before landing safely in the ocean you're kind of so distracted by the act of bravery that you don't really examine like would aya know the significance of this magazine it just it looks like regular ammo but she immediately knows oh special ammo thanks dude this does debilitate the supreme being but even in its lowest form it's still relentlessly pursuing her she leads it all the way to the ship's engine room where she does something to overload the engine i don't know she puts a banana in it or something and it explodes along with the being some time later the three protagonists reunite on the shore and ayah ponders why exactly she has the power she does maida posits that it's because part of maya is inside her in a very convenient twist that nobody thought to mention until now ayo was born with a defect in her right eye so when she was seven her cornea was replaced with mayas this explains her visions of maya in the hospital room they were an imprint of sorts of her sister's final memory the last thing she saw before her death i liked that the whole time this was just some other supernatural phenomena occurring completely independently from the whole mitochondria business for whatever reason the eve mitochondria is present enough in aya to grant her its powers but not enough to completely revolt against the nucleus her cells are still working together symbiotically maida makes the grim observation that it's almost like earth itself is sending us a message making humanity out to be the parasite and earth its host a year later on the following christmas eve aya daniel maida and ben attend the opera the same show even in an attempt to make up for the nightmare that was the previous year the game ends with a relatively vague visual aya stands up and appears to be using some of her power and everyone in attendance at the opera develops glowing purple eyes i'm unsure if this ending is meant to be read as menacing or uplifting my initial impression was the latter though as aya's less malignant and more symbiotic mitochondria is represented as purple and this microscopic shot is showing that strain of organelle evolving further reaching some kind of apex that would prevent another eve incident from occurring maybe aya is imparting this to others as a protective measure instead of a destructive one as seen in the game's opening melissa's replacement is even wearing a purple outfit instead of the red orange colors that represent eve further implying that purple gang has risen up or maybe it's simply highlighting midas words showing humanity as parasites where any one of these [ __ ] could be the next eve this is however not the only ending but it does feel like a more solid place to leave the franchise were it to end with this game vague as it is it's a powerful bow to wrap around the story of parasite eve but there is an alternate ending that can be unlocked by starting a new game plus in the first playthrough during the hospital level you can look out a window and see the chrysler building with some kind of glowing energy around it this seems largely irrelevant as you aren't able to visit the chrysler building that is until you're given access to the map in your second run and look as a small idiot any post-game content was a blessing certainly after a game like this which as jam-packed as its story may be is ultimately pretty short if you could skip cut scenes and dialogue there's probably like four or five hours of game here and i'm sure there are some that see the extended dungeon maze that leads to the second ending as a worthwhile endeavor especially the more sado-masochistic of you the gluttons for punishment the self-flagellators the sick [ __ ] have added if you want to navigate 77 floors of maces with frequent random encounters boss fights and no save points by all means see i too was like you bride-eyed had heart and ambition was good at lying about having both for the first 10 i thought ish this is kind of dull but it'll make for a good segment in the video at 20 i thought yeah maybe it won't at 30 i thought i could literally just look it up at 40 i thought i think i'm gonna look it up at 50 i got a call it sounded like my father only he didn't sound right nothing he said made any sense borderlands is funny what you're not making there was a noise outside i didn't like it closed the curtains closed the blinds the phone rang it was chad i climbed it that must be why we're not shipping windows 98 absolutely absolutely when you reach the top of the chrysler building you discover what appears to be the body of a.s sister maya only she claims to be the original eve she tucked her true form away up here in case melissa's pregnancy didn't pan out as she planned perhaps as a courtesy or perhaps out of cruelty eve allows maya's consciousness to take control for a moment and for just that moment aya is reunited with her sister before that's ripped from her once again so because this scene technically takes place before you ever fight melissa and the ultimate being defeating this supposed true eve should prevent any of that business from happening so once she's dead eyes latent eve mitochondria begin to rebel but as i understand it the parts of aeo's biology that are mayas successfully repressed this attempted rebellion and not only is aya able to survive but her eve powers are seemingly gone allowing her to put not only this nightmare behind her but the unresolved grief for her sister's death another perfectly fine ending though it is in direct contradiction to the other games so true ending or not it is no longer canon while the first arguably still could be plus you can enjoy that ending as a nice treat to top off a brisk and enjoyable little game whereas to get this ending you have to get to a place where the game loses meaning lost in the hypnotic near meditative network of corridors and birds and corridors and birds and corridors and birds there is some feeling that parasite eve retains that i can only describe as cozy not only because of its nostalgic place in my memory or its ps1 charm but it being set amidst a snowy christmas in an abandoned new york focusing on three disparate characters driving around through empty streets and pondering how you stop an enemy that could turn a whole city into jelly by wiggling your fingers it's in the little quiet moments moments of levity even between the characters that don't always have some greater significance beyond flavor its complete lack of voice acting also lends to this which was something that many criticized on release but i think it perhaps unintentionally makes the experience all the more atmospheric it does strike me as a genuine attempt to elevate or heighten the idea of an rpg dubbing itself a cinematic rpg which i assume is in reference to its focus on storytelling and action with relatively simplistic rpg elements it's more concerned with what would be cool or exciting what would make for a more striking visual rather than how consistent a game loop will this create or will putting an insta-death chase sequence after a boss fight with four forms frustrate players i'd say there are some horrific scenes in this game and plenty things that are conceptually grotesque but it very rarely behaves like a horror game and most of the time plays like an adventure rpg with a sci-fi horror theme something they must have realized and then tried to course correct with the game's sequel every once in a while though it will toss you a horror bone like when you tell this clown guy to [ __ ] off and then you just hear something kill him in the other room which is the same gag silent hill winds up using though they do choose a more unsettling sound effect also could just be my imagination my moldy and scolder brain but the logo is remarkably similar to the x-files sorta it could be maybe it's not nevermind it's most likely thanks to this game having a book as source material that it feels so well thought out and still manages to chug along at such a brisk pace even when it stops to unload science jargon on you there's a dum-dum character in the room so we can get the dum-dum explanation as well when i was younger i likely found these moments boring and stilted and while they still kind of are i can better appreciate the science behind them clever and deeply absurd all at once fun i think is the word for it like the idea that manhattan could be evacuated in a matter of hours fun to think about optimistic even but does not reflect reality i think we all know what would really happen is almost nobody would leave assuming it to be some kind of globalist conspiracy then eve would show up and a bunch of drunken wise guys would whip bottles at her head before she melted them you mess with one of us you mess with i think aya is a likable and interesting protagonist given just enough pathos on top of badass [ __ ] to do to make her memorable plus she's got at least two iconic fits throughout ayo works so much as a character that i think when square was considering rebooting parasite eve motomo toriyama was like what if we just reboot ayu i mean that's why we're all here right maybe we can advance her character further by having her learn how to button her genes but then they keep getting [ __ ] shredded as if to suggest that there is no easy fix to life's adversity eve is also a really entertaining villain ancient omnipotent seeming a timeless ageless being that existed beside humanity all along hiding seething waiting for their moment to turn the tables acting out some rage field survival instinct putting up with the indignant formalities of the human body and its functions until they can reach their true potential yet at the same time she has this youthful arrogance that comes with new power knowing she has the upper hand and likely won't be challenged so the presence of aya creates an interesting wrench in her plan the one insect she can't seem to snap her fingers and make disappear she doesn't really know how to deal with her does she befriend her do they join forces does she get rid of her can she get rid of her there's like an almost mutual admiration that might come from the bizarre way the two are linked together but they represent two sides of a biological fight that cannot work together it's also sort of a novel take on their own format that the enemies you fight are essentially pests that you'd find in a city anyway but twisted by eve's power to be disgusting body horror monsters although i don't know maybe he's still like a little pet he's a little scratchy the parasite eve name may not have the prestige that final fantasy maintained or that resident evil regained or that silent hill could easily still have in a just world but revisiting this game it once carried itself as though it did have that prestige i think it holds up its ip is viable as [ __ ] it still feels big convoluted weird gross still unique taking a very adult cerebral story and twisting it into a bite-sized disaster movie and cop drama mashed together in its brief length it finds time to be a little spooky a little sad and a little silly and a little dumb and that's why it's fitting for my channel i think while this game does a lot of experimenting the foundation of parasite eve can be found in many other games outside of neutral story areas aya gets into battles some scripted some random after which she receives experience and thus levels up which results in your stats increasing new eve powers being unlocked and bonus points that can be spent expanding your inventory or improving your weapons or your at bar sometimes you get a lot of xp too much xp enough to let your mind wander for a while and remember things like that time in high school when i went up to a guy i thought i knew and i was like hey man how's it been i interrupted a conversation to initiate this exchange but then i very quickly realized it wasn't the person i knew but maybe out of pity he kept up the charade like we did know each other and we had this awkward back and forth uh where we we couldn't specifically refer to how we knew each other or any kind of examples of our interactions uh because we were complete strangers and then i uh i said all right catch you later and i walked away and he said see you later and then as i walked away i heard them all laugh unlike your standard turn-based rpg once in a battle aya can run around freely dodging enemy attacks until her at bar is full this is where combat will freeze for a moment in order for you to initiate an attack or use an ability or item you get a single action and then you gotta wait for the bar to refill again enemies often have some kind of projectile attack or some move that flings them across the screen so it's important to keep moving in between attacks i like that entering a fight isn't as jarring as some other games the screen doesn't smear or blur and spin around aya just sort of sees a monster appear and then runs up to it like hey what's up boys and then you can't leave this visible area until you win or escape in place of magic aya uses parasite energy which mostly amounts to healing and buffs like haste which allows you to zip around and avoid some of the more dickish attacks from bosses an ability i wish you could activate outside of combat as well uh because you move kind of slow but you know what i ain't in no rush to get where i'm going later down the line you do get some pe attacks which are sort of a point of contention in the forum posts and discussions i've immersed myself in the argument being that these abilities simply make the game too easy which i suppose isn't wrong and i don't have the most nuanced take on the importance of difficulty but if it's a function in the game i don't think you've lost credit or missed out on some vitally important experience by doing a thing the game encourages you to do it's a weird little form of gatekeeping you see a lot of these days suggesting that in a game that allows for multiple play styles if you don't play it the way i played it then your experience is lesser you've stolen gamer valor you haven't been where i've been and you know what maybe i haven't been where you've been but i've been in the shower have you you [ __ ] did it you can wield a variety of different gun types pistols rifles shotguns and so forth and in a system nobody would question given the game setting you frequently just stumble on better guns hidden in boxes and under rocks air's luck at finding high-powered weaponry and drawers and [ __ ] is nuts so you're gonna do a lot of picking up a gun looking at your old one and tossing the old one out but wait don't do that yet you idiot i'm sorry you're not an idiot you just don't know um before you throw out the old weapon you can use items called appropriately enough tools to transfer over the additional stats you've added to a gun onto the base stats of the new one you picked up or depending on how many slots it has you could also use a tool to transfer over some kind of weapon modifier like making your bullets incendiary or giving you the opening attack at the start of a fight moving anything over to a new weapon destroys the old one though so you gotta be somewhat strategic about it much later on or maybe not at all you may come across a super tool which doesn't destroy the weapon but get used to the cycle of gun cannibalization this same process is used on your armor which doesn't have as many noticeable differences aside from numbers being bigger but also has slots which can be fitted with neat effects ammo works kind of strange you probably won't ever need for it as it drops pretty frequently you'll also find that in boxes or characters will just dump bullets into your hands but you also can't buy it if you do manage to empty your supplies so you could be left in this awkward place where you have to club enemies with a night stick that has item stealing capabilities i don't know modern problems i guess there isn't any kind of shop or currency mechanic like you'd think there would be which does in a way play into the game's survival horror sensibilities there is more cause for tension when you have to be careful with how you divvy up death but if you're even somewhat competently playing the game it's pretty unlikely that you'll reach that point now i just did in this video so you could so you could see it happening but otherwise i wouldn't have [ __ ] you aside from the new game plus there is very little side content to busy yourself with and pretty much only one optional location to visit which is a shame but perhaps just the result of how tight and compact this game is as cool as its overworld map is the game usually tells you where to go and you select it more as a formality to feel like you have some control over where the story goes and you don't the most power you have is changing the main character's name which honestly they shouldn't have even allowed that at several points in this playthrough i was like this this might have had more emotional weight if i hadn't given myself a stupid [ __ ] name well it's not like a abrea is any better come on i'm i'm not a fan of how laborious and exhausting the chrysler building dungeon is and how it sort of puts the game's formula under a microscope dissects it removing its mystery once you've seen its glistening innards but it does shine a light on some of the mechanics that you could pretty easily ignore like trading cards which can be traded for new weapon slots or junk which can be combined to make new weapons neither are at all needed but it would have been cool to see them have more importance in the base game i do like the idea of there being a ritual to returning to a hub with all the spoils i've squirreled away while meticulously trying to maximize space in my inventory weighing the importance of every little thing i picked up no matter how many spaces i unlocked i was always stuffed to the gills it doesn't help that some quest items even after being used for their sole purpose sometimes just stay in your inventory and you can't just immediately discard them i think the developers knew that this was
2022-04-17 10:28
