Chulip Impression and New Shirt Design!

Chulip Impressions

Chulip is a game that most likely will fly by the retail shelves under most game buyers’ radar. It’s a quirky Japanese game, the graphics are nothing to boast about and advertising for the game is pretty much nonexistent. In fact, it’s now become a Gamestop/EB exclusive, so those used to buying their games elsewhere won’t even have a shot of obtaining it. But when I hear a quirky little-known Japanese game is coming stateside, I tend to take notice (even more so when the price is only $29.99!).

So what’s the game about? Well, you play a very poor, very new resident to Long Life Town trying to up your reputation by kissing as many people as you can in order to have the girl of your dreams take notice of you. The game strongly reminds me of a cross between Animal Crossing, for its graphical representation, and Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. In Majora’s Mask you went around to pretty much every towns person and tried to learn their problems and how you could help them. You were aided by a checklist you acquired early on in the game that listed each person you met, then where they would be and when.

That side-questing element is the entirety of the game in Chulip, where you try to find out how you can help each person, then where they will be at specific times of day. After helping them, they should be open to you giving them a kiss. You can kiss at any time in the game by pressing the triangle button, but kiss someone who doesn’t want it and they’ll give you what for, knocking a few hearts off of your life bar. Successfully kiss enough people and you level up, which gives you more hearts, enabling you to take on trickier missions in which you may lose a lot of hearts in a failure. This gameplay mechanic has given Chulip its identity as a “kissing RPG”, which is a pretty accurate way to describe it.

So what do I like about the game so far? Well, a lot actually. The music is fantastic, usually consisting of a catchy jazz-like tune. The graphics, while not exactly pushing the power of the PS2 to its limit (the game was released in Japan over three years ago and even then it probably wouldn’t have been impressive) do their job to convey the town and its crazy cast of characters to you in a cute fashion. Some are cute, some are downright creepy, such as the guy that always seems to be in bondage gear and chained to the ceiling (I’m not really sure how he moves from place to place!) The dialogue, characters and situations are often very funny, and the translation team should be applauded for keeping the spirit of the game intact with English speaking audiences.

There’s two big marks that keep this game from being completely enjoyable and unfortunately, they’re big ones. For starters, there’s no in-game list of goals. If you remember in Majora’s Mask, you were given a little checklist that would fill in each character as you met them, then fill in where they were at what times if you happened to see them there. This made keeping track of such a huge cast less of a chore, and Chulip needs this mechanic desperately. Most often you’ll find a tip about one character, but have no idea where they are or when to find them, and while looking for *them*, you’ll come across someone else entirely. It becomes easy to either lose track of the first character, or more likely both, as you’ll still have no idea what to do for the new character you’ve just met and soon lose track of them.

The other problem is losing your health, and often your life, to events beyond the player’s control. This really surprised me, as any game designer will tell you that’s something you’d want to avoid at all costs, yet you’ll find it happening constantly throughout this title. For example, you’ll need a lot of money to get by in the game. Since your house it poor, you can usually dumpster dive and sell what you find at the local shop to raise funds. While you’ll sometimes find a frying pan to sell, other times you may find “poopie” which will take two or three hearts off of your life meter. That’s a lot of hearts, especially early on. So here you have something you have to do because you need money, yet they punish you randomly for it. Another instance is when you come to a section of the town that may not be open to you yet for some reason. A man inside a telephone pole will stop you from going any further. But for no reason, one time while stopping me he also kicked me, knocking out two hearts and killing me. It’s far too easy to die for something you had no control over, thus losing an hour of your progress and starting the day over again, which can be really frustrating.

Despite these gameplay complaints, I keep playing the game, and keep really wanting to play it. It’s such a different and compelling title, one that you’ll want to explore every inch of, and meet every character, that the rewards for playing feel justified. I’m not too far in the game yet, so I’ll chime in later with a more complete overview, but so far, for only thirty bucks, you may want to search this sleeper title out for a nice change of pace.

New Shirt Design!

Announcing my latest shirt design on sale at my store, Painted Pixel Studios! For all those of use who love Half-Life, here’s the “I survived Black Mesa and all I got was this lousy headcrab” shirt! Hey, it’s not like you’ll be spending your money on Episode Two anytime soon anyways, right?