Rule of Rose
Moody, atmospheric and -- sadly -- all too frustrating.
Published: September 18, 2006
It's said that people hardly ever react to what you say, just how you say it. Comedian Eddie Izzard broke it down as 70% how you look while saying something, 20% of how you sound when you say it, and only about 10% of it being the actual content. I can't think of a more perfect way to describe Rule of Rose as it's absolutely stunning in terms of the presentation -- gorgeous from top to bottom in pre-rendered cinemas and haunting cello-driven aural backdrops -- and yet the actual game is painfully plain.
Things start off loaded with potential: young Jennifer, after losing her parents, is being carted off to an orphanage. She meets a young boy on the bus to her new home, who asks her to read from his storybook... which is blank. The kid suddenly bolts, Jen follows, and the bus leaves them both. Queue vaguely haunting music and lots and lots of running around and retracing steps until a cutscene plays.
I should pause for a moment to mention a couple of things. First off, I'm a huge wuss when it comes to horror games. I get creeped out for no goddamn reason. Secondly, I rather enjoy survival horror games as a genre because, for the most part, they've progressed nicely away from the days of tank controls and endless fetch quests -- or at least the better of them have. Those that insist on key-a-in-door-z sequences at least fill the space between with enough scares to make it work.
That said, I don't think I was ever creeped out by Rule of Rose. That's not entirely true, I suppose; doors slamming shut on me and goat-headed nasties patrolling rooms with doors that conveniently lock behind you were enough to provoke the occasional "ohcrapohcrapohcrap" but again I'm a wuss. Though the game is thick with atmosphere (spending nearly 10 hours on a floating airship and still finding new areas was only possible because I wanted to see those new spots), but once you realize that it's either too open-ended or too linear thanks to a pet that literally leads you to the next part of the game, things start to fall apart.
Don't get me wrong, I never really tired of the CG sequences when they popped up -- that the children in the game tread the unsettling line between impish and pure evil is due in no small part to the fact that the game captures expression and emotion wonderfully. My beef was just in that if you didn't use the leash the game provided, you could end up wandering for hours -- and sometimes I did, finally breaking down and using the FAQ Atlus supplied us with.
So it's moody and grimy and the game actually makes you feel a bit of that sense of confused loss and pangs of loneliness as Jennifer is repeatedly shunned and ridiculed by the Aristocracy of the Red Crayon, the group of children that seemingly have free run of the ship -- and who have resorted to a sort of Lord of the Flies-type pecking order. The problem isn't necessarily in the storyline, nor the puzzles, nor the world that was created: it's the controls.
Back when the Resident Evil games were first created, the whole tank-style controls were devised to essentially add tension by making the player think a little more about how they would run from a zombie. It's why for a few sequels, the controls never improved, despite the fact that other games happily moved toward a camera-related movement system. Rule of Rose may pattern itself off this, but there are no tank-style movements, just a camera that can make things near impossible to play around, and situations that seem to rely on this to make the game difficult.
Things start off loaded with potential: young Jennifer, after losing her parents, is being carted off to an orphanage. She meets a young boy on the bus to her new home, who asks her to read from his storybook... which is blank. The kid suddenly bolts, Jen follows, and the bus leaves them both. Queue vaguely haunting music and lots and lots of running around and retracing steps until a cutscene plays.
I should pause for a moment to mention a couple of things. First off, I'm a huge wuss when it comes to horror games. I get creeped out for no goddamn reason. Secondly, I rather enjoy survival horror games as a genre because, for the most part, they've progressed nicely away from the days of tank controls and endless fetch quests -- or at least the better of them have. Those that insist on key-a-in-door-z sequences at least fill the space between with enough scares to make it work.
That said, I don't think I was ever creeped out by Rule of Rose. That's not entirely true, I suppose; doors slamming shut on me and goat-headed nasties patrolling rooms with doors that conveniently lock behind you were enough to provoke the occasional "ohcrapohcrapohcrap" but again I'm a wuss. Though the game is thick with atmosphere (spending nearly 10 hours on a floating airship and still finding new areas was only possible because I wanted to see those new spots), but once you realize that it's either too open-ended or too linear thanks to a pet that literally leads you to the next part of the game, things start to fall apart.
Don't get me wrong, I never really tired of the CG sequences when they popped up -- that the children in the game tread the unsettling line between impish and pure evil is due in no small part to the fact that the game captures expression and emotion wonderfully. My beef was just in that if you didn't use the leash the game provided, you could end up wandering for hours -- and sometimes I did, finally breaking down and using the FAQ Atlus supplied us with.
So it's moody and grimy and the game actually makes you feel a bit of that sense of confused loss and pangs of loneliness as Jennifer is repeatedly shunned and ridiculed by the Aristocracy of the Red Crayon, the group of children that seemingly have free run of the ship -- and who have resorted to a sort of Lord of the Flies-type pecking order. The problem isn't necessarily in the storyline, nor the puzzles, nor the world that was created: it's the controls.
Back when the Resident Evil games were first created, the whole tank-style controls were devised to essentially add tension by making the player think a little more about how they would run from a zombie. It's why for a few sequels, the controls never improved, despite the fact that other games happily moved toward a camera-related movement system. Rule of Rose may pattern itself off this, but there are no tank-style movements, just a camera that can make things near impossible to play around, and situations that seem to rely on this to make the game difficult.
