Kingdom Hearts Re:coded (Nintendo DS) (From Daily Echo)
When news happens, text SDE and your photos or videos to 80360. Or contact us by email and phone.
Kingdom Hearts Re:coded (Nintendo DS)
By Ian Crump
Genre: Role-Playing Game
Platform:Nintendo DS
Publisher: Square Enix
Classification: 12 (BBFC)
Being a broad-minded gamer and a fan of Disney films, I've always loved the Kingdom Hearts games. There's the unmistakable stamp of Square Enix's Final Fantasy series melded together with the brightly coloured worlds of the Disney fables. What I don't like however are poor camera angles that frustrate to the extent of muscle tightening and obscenity blurting – this latest adventure caused plenty of that.
Taking place after the events of Kingdom Hearts II, Re:coded begins with Jiminy Cricket in a clear sense of confusion and panic after finding text in the journal that he didn't write. The mysteriously appearing riddle prompts him to inform King Mickey who thinks it best to digitise the data and create a computer coded version of Sora, one of the series’ main protagonists, to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Combat is an instant familiarity to fans of the series with Sora slashing, rolling, dashing and casting the occasional spell to help fend off the darkness.
No role-playing game would be complete without some form of character upgrade, and Re:coded has that down to a fine art. The skill tree keeps to the games computerised theme and sees players inserting hard-earned chips into circuit boards to power up new abilities and skills. It's a refreshing take on the often-overbearing screens chock full of figures Peppered throughout the entire journey are a bunch of gameplay changes ranging from 2D side scrolling platformers to turn based role-playing games. Although these help to break up the feel of drudgery or monotony, none of the sections are up to the high standards of the platforming and role-playing action that the Kingdom Hearts series is so famous for.
With a storyline that’s bound to entice fans of the series and some great looking graphics, Kingdom Hearts Re:coded should have been something special. Instead this package is marred by poor camera controls and plagued by unnecessary gameplay changes.
SCORE: 5 / 10
