Shown for the first time to the public, IGNPSX got a good handle on how to get its butt kicked by one of the early bosses. With two fully playable levels available to choose from, The TGS demo is a solid, near complete set of stages, out of a total of six. In one stage, Aya, armed with a machine gun and several powerful gallons of Parasite energy (OK, they're not really gallons), watches as a three-story ogre monster squishes an armed civilian and then faces off with her on a second-story walkway.
The enemy design, as demonstrated in this boss, gets weirder and weirder as the story progresses, but this guy's is plenty weird for us. With a cannon built into the top of his mouth, this boss surely not only has bad hygiene, but a Tongue stud that just won't quit. Piss him off and he'll blow fire from that pipe and torch you good. Or, if you're standing still too long, he'll swipe you into the nearest wall. It's great to see the cracks appear in the wall right after Aya smashes into them. Aya can hide in a short crevice from the swipe, or continue to run from the sweeping breath of fire that comes her way.
Needless to say, we had fun, fire breath, pierced tongue and all.
Among the areas Square has addressed are 1) a brand new development team (currently working out of Osaka) that's taken over where the other left off, and 2) creating a better transition from adventuring/exploring to actual battles. Complaints were aplenty in this latter area, according to Square, which implemented two adjustments to create better transitions between the two. First, the game controls won't switch when you turn around, or walk into a new area that's perpendicular to your original direction. Unlike Spyro or even Resident Evil 2, players will only continue to push up for forward no matter which direction the new room faces.
Another retooling comes at the beginning of battles. Just like entering a new room, when you switch into battle, the sequence won't dramatically alter, and the controls will function exactly as they when the camera was behind you. When a battle is about to begin, the screen flashes black and white and black and white again, notifying you of the oncoming event.
In mostly traditional Square fashion (with the exception of Aya), not one character returns from the original Parasite Eve, thus enabling both creator and player the chance to explore a new story and new personalities. Aya now works on what's called the MIST team of special investigators, and lives in LA. (MIST stands for Mitochondria Investigation and Supression Team.) There's more to the story, but we'll delve in that in a future update.
Two last notes of interest: weapons are upgraded as you progress through the story, and public telephones are still Save Points. Also, when you finally get to see the game, or when we put up movies of it, watch the backgrounds and see how they vary. One is the pre-rendered background most of us are used to, but the other is a high frame rate movie on which Aya walks, like an actor walking across lava, instead of the blue screen area he's really walking on.
Parasite Eve II is due in Japan by the end of 1999 and is due "sometime in 2000," according to a Square representative, in the US. It will use both analog and digital controls. Look forward to a full QuickTime movie of Parasite Eve next week.
Douglass Perry