“Consider this a privilege. You have been chosen. You are going to participate in a game. The [Nonary Game]. It is a game... where you will put your life on the line.” - Zero (999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors)
Zero Escape Trilogy
Junpei arrived home from work to notice one of his apartment’s windows open, but everything inside seemed alright, nothing like a theft had taken place. Soon after reaching the window, a person with a gas mask (whom will later call themselves Zero) can be seen through the relfection on the glass right behind him, spraying sleeping gas on him while inviting– no, not inviting, but forcing him to join something called a [Nonary Game]; a survival game where Junpei is required to put his life on the line.
Junpei wakes up later in a cabin. On his left wrist he has a watch-looking bracelet, with the number [5] on it, that he can’t take off, and the door of the cabin, which also has the number [5] painted on it, is locked by an ominous mechanism. Not long after waking up, yet to even remember what happened or understand where he is, the round window of the ship's room cracks and breaks, and the cabin starts to become flooded with water. Inside the cabin there are keys and other convenient items, from papers to key cards, for Junpei to utilize that work in unison together in order to open the door's locking system – it's almost as if he’s meant to escape out of the room by using his wits, or die drowning.
As soon as Junpei gets out of the room to a retro-designed hall, the waves of water come after him. As he runs up the stairs, to B deck, then even further up to A deck, he meets up with eight other people that all say that they had the same type of mind games to go through – a bracelet, different single-digit numbers on doors to open, and they also note that the doors on the hallways also contain these same numbers.The kidnapper, the Masked Person known as "Zero," had given rules of survival of the [Nonary Game] to each of the nine ‘participants.’ The rules can be summared like this: There are doors with numbers on them that can only be opened and passed through by 3-5 people at the same time with the [Numbered Bracelets] that each of them have on their wrists.
Only those who have opened the door may pass through, and all those who enter must contribute and have to pass through.
The method to go past doors is limited to rules. To pass, you’re required to have the group’s bracelet number ‘square’ (not the normal square root, a game one) count to be the same as the door’s intended number count, and that is achieved by placing your hands with the bracelets that have their numbers on a machine called RED. After checking up on RED with the correct square count that's been drawn on the door with red paint and with 3-5 people, and then pulling a lever, you can enter a door. The door shuts in 9 seconds and the ones that entered cannot go back through the door they'd entered and after entering they then have 81 seconds to find another machine like the one required to enter, called DEAD; DEAD deactivates a bomb that’s in the participants’ intestines from exploding after entering a door.
So yes, if the group of 3-5 people that enter through a RED do not deactivate the countdown on their wristwatches at the same time on DEAD, or don't follow the rules of the game, will explode into pieces, but there are two ways to deactivate the bombs and get rid of the bracelets permanently; escape the ship or have your heartbeat reach zero (in other words, die). The purpose of this game is simple: the 9 persons are to leave the ship alive by finding and going through a the final door, the hidden exit with the number [9] on it, and they have exactly 9 hours to escape or their fate is to sink with the ship.Thoughts
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) by Spike Chunsoft is the first installation of the Zero Escape Games trilogy [and it seems to be called the Nonary Games trilogy as well]. It was originally a Nintendo DS survival-puzzle solving game / visual novel that's kind of like a caseless version of Danganronpa and kind of like an operatable game version of the popular visual novels Higurashi and Umineko in a way that you have to find out what the real truth behind the [Nonary Game], Zero's identity as well as try to figure out what is up with certain past kidnappings. Unlike those mentioned visual novels where you have only episodes that you must follow, 999 reaches a “bad ending” usually after you choose a certain path, and then after completing that path you can load to the point of the decision, and continue the story through another path. after you’ve tried your best to escape the murderer’s plans. You gradually collect information and rewind to past spots. The 'dead ends' lead to the true ending in a pretty clever way utilizing pseudo-science and supernatural elements that have been springled throughout the story.
The story manages to keep itself more interesting by introducing worldbuilding, in other words events that take place outside of the ship, that’s heavily relevant to the story into the plot; the sinking of the great Titanic on april 15th, 1912 that claimed the lives of over 1500 people, also a frozen ‘mummy’ that couldn’t be melted that was apparently on Titanic creating curses is a thing, as well as what is the truth behind an event where an organization most likely connected to a hospital kidnapped children nine years prior to the story where they did unknown experiments that no one knows of? as well as why are there connections to experiments about telepathy during the game that the Zero (name of the current culprit) had created, and even the told flashback connections between Junpei’s - the main character - and his childhood friend’s (that’s also part of the [Nonary Game]) middle school days are all things that make the visual novel’s story more than just a bland killing game.
Now that is not to say that all of these are positive aspects of the game. They have both negative and positive traits to them. First off, despite the story being about a "survival game" I honestly don't think they did enough to make it stand out, especially in the end where it feels ruined, leaving a bad aftertaste in my mouth; I didn't feel that the characters were really threatened and most of them felt lifeless for majority of the game. The reasons for some of the participants being on the boat is kind of lackluster, and Zero himself seems like major bullshit, honestly, along with certain amnesia case and the way how the story is written to kind of just be... fake. What really pulls the game down is that despite a lot of proper character writing, you have to replay the game too much to get the real ending. It can be quite a chore that a 20 hour game barely progresses at all (I know it takes place only during the 9 hours in-game) because you reach bad endings one after another, only to go back and replay that one path where you have to keep choosing again - there's a situation with going through one of three different doors to progress through different 'paths.' There are also far too many numerical puzzles for a puzzle game, the kinds where you have to go through hints and then type in numbers on locks.Characters
However there is a problem with the rest of the cast (that have hidden connections to each other) and with how incredibly lifeless they are considering the deadly situation that's at hand. The reason why none of them acted as you'd expect them to is kind of hinted at near the ending, but it's not explained and the assumed possibility does not change the fact that maybe the story just should have been written differently considering the real potential danger there is to all of the characters. The problem with the potential 'truth' behind all of the cast is that the 'bad endings' don't really all logically flow with it, or the true ending for that matter. It feels as if there are some pretty glaring plot holes in the story that far too unnaturally force it to go the way the writers wanted it to, honestly.
Conclusion
All in all, both the story and puzzles mostly felt competent enough and it is definitely one of the
better survival games I've played, but it's surrounded with far too much... crap. Amnesia for one of the characters was just a terrible plot device in the end (when is it not in a story, though...), mostly a lifeless cast, pacing that does not feel as if the story progresses, somewhat repetitive ideas for puzzles, obvious 'big' twists did exist in the game (coffin), the plot holes, and the handling of Zero themselves being super crappy just pulled the game down.
Ship cases are some of my absolute favourite in the mystery genre not because of them having any better writing but because of the atmosphere, reardless, the bar is really high for a survival story that supposedly takes place on a ship. Sadly, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors did not manage to give me what I wanted. I still dig it for the overall writing feeling competent, but it's definitely not going to be on my list of anything special. Even though I think that the supernatural ideas it presented were really neat, it all just felt too much of an infodump that keeps forcing a point, unnaturally giving information and stopping the tension and the plot from the supposed emergency situation that the cast has been placed into.
No comments:
Post a Comment