Phantom Dust

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on June 13, 2005

Review: Needs Swiffering.

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Dusting for one

The single player campaign follows the story of the nameless main character, who looks like a cross between the Joker and a psychotic emaciated clown from Cirque du Soleil. In a crumbling post-apocalyptic world so beloved in Japanese science fiction, the Earth is covered in a mysterious dust that causes people to lose their memories. This forces the remnants of the human race to live underground to escape the dust's effects. The dust isn't all bad, however; a few special people called Espers can use the dust to manipulate their will into energy, and use this unique ability to fight bizarre creatures on the surface while searching for clues about the past.

The story is told through highly detailed rendered cutscenes; in fact, the game starts with 10 minutes' worth of video explaining how you and a buddy were found in suspended animation freezers on the surface. You and your buddy have no memories and you spend the game trying to rebuild your past and find out who you are. The voice acting is corny as hell; in fact, I swear they use the same bad dubbing actors for every Japanese movie ever made. The story is actually quite interesting, though, filled with the typical head-scratching plot holes and twists that anime fans find so endearing.

After watching the impressive looking cutscenes, the in-game graphics are a bit disappointing Ц they look decent enough, but the graphics quality is average at best. The whole game has a stylized anime look with a punk rock flavor; the long-limbed characters wear funky leather outfits with huge collars accented with chrome jingling things, along with painfully tight pants. The environments are dirty, crumbling and darn depressing, from the dangerous dusty surface where you conduct your missions, to the dark rusting confines of the underground town where you live.

There are over 100 missions in all, which sounds impressive until you realize they each only take a few minutes to complete. Missions are limited to 15 minutes since staying on the surface too long can wipe out your memory, but you will never need that much time; the longest I've ever taken was 11 minutes, and that was for a particularly tough boss fight. Most missions will take five minutes or less.

In between missions, you spend your time wandering around the underground town УtalkingФ to the same dozen or so people to glean information about the story or to find missions. Apparently, people lose the ability to talk if they're not in pre-rendered video because your conversations take place as one-sided text balloons popping up above their heads. Your character never speaks (either verbally or in text) which is good, because that would only add to the ridiculous amount of time you waste running around gabbing with the same people over and over again. The worst part is that you have to endure a load screen each time you move from one section of the town to another Ц and it's a pretty small town. It gets really annoying when you are fiddling with your arsenal since you have to go to one room (and wait for a load screen) to buy skills, then leave (for another load screen) to walk a short distance to another room (and a third load screen) so you can edit your arsenal. The single player campaign takes about 20 hours, but more than half of that time is spent reading poorly worded text balloons and watching load screens. Granted, the load screens do contain helpful tips Ц well, they would be helpful if you actually had time to read more than the first 10 words.

When you go on missions, you will face a maximum of only two enemies at a time. It sounds like a breeze and for the first third of the game, it is. The game has a slow, progressive learning curve Ц in fact, it's too slow. The first 25-30% of the missions are essentially tutorials that will have you grumbling at the TV, УYeah, yeah, I've got it, okay? Can we move on to something a bit more challenging now?Ф Unfortunately, you have to grin and bear it because there is no way to skip these missions Ц and you can't even change the difficulty setting because no such option exists. That's right Ц no matter how easy or hard you find the game, there is no way to adjust the difficulty to suit your playing ability.

Eventually, though, things do get more challenging Ц and frustrating. Most of the time you will be accompanied by an AI teammate who is supposed to help you fight enemies but instead, your useless buddy either dies right away or runs around in aimless circles as enemies ignore him and focus their attacks on you alone.

To help compensate for this imbalanced AI, you can lock onto an enemy and toggle between targets simply by flicking the triggers. This helps locate enemies anywhere on the map and frees your right thumb to focus solely on using skills rather than fiddling with the right stick. It sounds like a good idea but it really doesn't work that well. The target lock is so rigid that the enemy is always centered on your screen no matter which direction you attempt to move, severely limiting your field of vision. This is fine if you're on flat ground, but the maps contain high ledges and narrow catwalks that you can easily fall off of if you're moving while locked onto a target. Sometimes you can fall right off the map, in which case you will respawn but take three points of damage (you only have 20 points of health). The destructible nature of the maps also means big gaping holes can appear in the ground that you need to watch out for. The only way around this poor camera system is to unlock yourself from the target so you can move freely, but then you lose sight of the enemies who can sneak up behind you or launch an attack while you're looking the other way.

Making things worse is the poor collision detection system. Although it may look like you're a good eight inches away from an object, you will still get caught on it. This gets really frustrating when you're trying to dodge an attack, even more so if you are locked onto a target and can't see what's immediately around you. As well, attacks that you seem to have dodged by a couple of feet will sometimes still register as a hit.

Your character is also slow to react to your actions. If you are standing still, he will react instantly to your button press but if he is moving and you use a skill, he has to stop first and then perform the particular skill animation. That brief pause can often mean the difference between life and death. Oh, and don't expect him to react to another action until well after his skill animation is complete, even if you have plenty of aura. Grr.

The skill capture system could also be improved. Since your skills only appear at your spawn point (you can't capture any other player's skills) and many skills are either single use or can be deleted from your arsenal, much of your time will be spent running around like a headless chicken back and forth to your spawn. If you get a bad shuffle, you have no choice but to run around in circles around your spawn Ц which is openly exposed to attacks Ц until the needed skill or aura capsule appears. In fact, it's common to run right past enemies as you both sprint back to refresh your skills. This really spoils the flow of the action as you engage in a quick flurry of battle, have to stop and run back for more skills, run around looking for an enemy, have another quick fight, run back, rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

Although you will eventually build a wide array of skills to choose from, the game has little other variety to offer. There are only seven small maps, and the enemies all look the same with minor color and detail differences. Enemies range from humanoids to giant floating eyeballs to things that look like larval cocoons Ц heck, there's even one that looks like a grandfather clock. Even the sound effects have a limited range. The small variation in maps and enemies means you will basically be fighting the same battles over and over again, which becomes quite tedious. True, the battles change as you and your enemies start using more powerful skills, but it's still the same map, same enemies, same objectives. I won't say it's boring, but it gets uncomfortably close. It's almost as if the developers spent most of their time creating skills rather than making an interesting single player campaign and more maps. Instead, they bloated it up with repetitive missions hoping the skill variety will sustain gamers' interest. Needless to say, it is a strategy that didn't work.


Multiplayer

To put it bluntly, the multiplayer component saves this game. You can have two-player split screen or up to four players on System Link or Xbox Live, and while most games are at their best when playing against other people, multiplayer turns Phantom Dust from a mediocre game into something fun and exciting. Once you play against a real opponent, you will really start to think about your arsenal and plan out various skill strategies, something that can't be said in single player.

There are three basic gametypes: Battle Royale, which is a free-for-all deathmatch; Tag Team, which is a team deathmatch; and One-on-One, which pits you against one other player. Each gametype can utilize one of 11 rule sets, which include doubling everyone's health, restricting skill or school types, and even one where you ante up a skill; the winner takes the skill permanently from your arsenal. You can also buy and trade skills online, and download new skills; in fact, there are already two downloadable skill updates available.

The same gameplay and camera problems exist in multiplayer as they do in single player, but somehow the whole experience of playing against other people ups the fun factor substantially. It is interesting to see what other players use in their arsenals, especially in team games. Sometimes you will see one person utilize skills that can erase an opponent's skills or even immobilize him for a few seconds, while her teammate takes a heavy offensive skill set and pummels the opponent when he's helpless.

If you die, don't worry; your teammate can run up to your body and УcaptureФ you, which will cause you to respawn Ц but be aware that each time you are revived, your health will be reduced by 50% until eventually you can't be revived anymore. The downside of being dead Ц other than the fact that you're dead, of course Ц is that you are stuck with a stationary camera that will occasionally change angles as the action moves around the map. More often than not, however, you will be staring at a wall instead of watching the rest of the battle.

Since everyone has to return to their spawn sooner or later, battles tend to turn into spawn camping fests. Fortunately, if you get knocked down, you are invulnerable for a few seconds afterwards, giving you a chance to launch a counterattack. However, if you are standing too close to your skill capsules, you may inadvertently capture a skill rather than use the one previously assigned to that face button. I've done that many times, which has caused many a situation to take a turn for the worse (not to mention causing some rather colorful language to spew from my mouth).

The big downside to multiplayer is that you are forced to play single player in order to gather any decent skills. Even worse is the fact that you have to play about a third of the game just to get an arsenal Ц and you can't play multiplayer without one. (Well, that's not entirely true; there is one rule set that gives you a random arsenal even if you don't have one, but it's the only multiplayer game you would be able to play.) Is it worth the hassle? Yes, but only because you will be at a severe disadvantage playing with weak skills. Alternatively, you can earn skills by winning online; in addition to the 300 skills available in single player, you can unlock a new skill after every 30 victories on Xbox Live, for a total of 40 additional skills.