Dust

Hello all! And happy thanksgiving! During this festive season I would like to give thanks to independent gaming. With constant remakes and sequels, plaguing video game shelves it's hard not to think that gaming industry bigwigs are worthless parasites less scrupulous than Fehrengi, who only survive off of profit but have no clue as to how to earn more.

So thank you XBox Live Arcade for games like Dust made by companies run out of someone's basement. Thus keeping the industry a little more original and me a little more snobby!

Well not quite, I cannot, as my critical senses would allow me, to call this game better than most of the mainstream titles I've played, or even particularly that GOOD.

We have gotten to the question back in my Metroid: Other M review. Is it story or gameplay that makes a game good. I always stick with gameplay and while the story is very well written, the characters are likable, and the dialogue is solid, I would rather watch someone ELSE play it than do it myself.

Taking place in a world of anthropomorphic animals, you are a cat named Dust with a case of amnesia, and a rocking samurai sunhat. You are given a magic talking sword and a fox-pixie (or "Nimbat") decides to help you on your quest to fill in the missing links in your memory.

Now when you heard "Fairly like assist character that helps a main hero with a magic sword and funny hat" you all thought of Navi, from Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and there is now a you-shaped hole in the wall as you sprint for the hills to live out your life as a turnip farmer.

However I have apparently entered the Star Trek Mirror-verse because she is by far the best character in the game. Her light and happy attitude serves well to keep Dust's angst under control, god knows the gloomy bastard needs it. She looks adorable, has an adorable voice.....

And she helps in the repetitive and boring as spit combat.

This game claims to be an RPG and I reject that. It requires absolutely no strategy at all. It is merely a sidescroller hack and slash with no direction and an upgrade system that's completely useless.

I have played on ALL THREE DIFFICULTIES. The ONLY difference between them is the size of the enemy hoards. To hurt them, smack them in the face, to stunlock them, smack them in the face, to fight bigger monsters, parry their attack, THEN smack them in the face.

Over and over and over and over and over and over AGAIN. I spent 45 MINUTES doing NOTHING but face smacking. There is a special move where you whip the sword around while the pixie shoots magic sparkles that get made into a tornado, but it is usually useless, and it leaves you vulnerable from behind.

Oh I'm sorry, you will have to use it to solve puzzles while you are going on the SEVERAL BILLION FETCH AND RESCUE QUESTS YOU WILL HAVE TO GO ON!!

It's really amazing, there is ALWAYS some idiot villager who lost his fathers pocketwatch at SpikyDeathMonster Junction or (and this is a real one) TOLD A CHILD TO DO HIS LAUNDRY IN MONSTER INFESTED WOODS AND LEFT HIS ASS THERE, and it is (of course) up to YOU to pull their ass out of the fire, because with the lost memory, swarming monsters, AND an oppressive and racially prejudiced empire on the prowl, it's not like there is anything more IMPORTANT you could be handling.

So yeah, as a video game Dust is a really good.... TV show. Watch it with a friend who's willing to press buttons to make f*ck all happen.

Next time, I enter into the wonderful world of Top Hats, Intellect, and insane puzzle obsessed British people.