POSTED 26/7/12


KINGDOM HEARTS 3D: DREAM DROP DISTANCE

Square Enix
3DS

Mickey Mouse. Just a rodent mammal kiddie cartoon character with a penchant for white gloves, yeah?

Well, no, as anybody who’s witnessed Disney’s remarkable Fantasia will attest. He’s always worked on two levels – the giggling ninny that kids fall for (if they haven’t the savvy to prefer Donald Duck), and the art connoisseur who gets down and wizardly to the likes of classical composer Dukas’ L'apprenti sorcier. It’s the latter mouse that fronts for this seventh Kingdom Hearts outing.

If you’re not familiar then you’ll likely find jumping in here will induce at least a wee bit of abject confuddlement. The seemingly disparate worlds of Disney and classic RPG Final Fantasy collide – yes, really - and, just to confuse matters, there’s a substantial chunk of The World Ends with You, the most annoying portion thereof being Beat, who seems to have taken speech lessons from Jesse Pinkman, yo.

Anyway, we’ll try simplifying. You bounce between playing two heroes, Sora (who dresses a lottle bit Mickeyesquely) and Riku, who trundle through various Disney landscapes slaying Disney baddies and ‘dream-eaters’. Need we mention what their favourite fare is?

Atop fairly typical action RPG elements like spell-casting, levelling up and, erm, grinding along rails all Tony Hawk-like... uh... herm... oh yeah, there’s also a peculiar Tamagotchi kind of thing bolted on, involving concocting ‘spirits’, which are basically dream-eaters that you convert into cuddly playthings – Nintenblobs, if you will.

It’s all wrapped in a wrappingish wrapper of cutscenes that worship melodrama. But hey, everything looks quite spectacular.

Ultimately it’s all a tad mishy-mashy, but if you dig previous series outings then you’ll likely dig this, traditional camera quirks and all – bolting on the Circle Pad Pro helping a bit. If you’re new to it though then hey there, hi there, ho there you’re as welcome as can be – but gosh, good luck!

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!