xyzzysqrl

Jet Set Radio Future, ladies and gentlemen:

I happen to notice that you can wall-ride on the sewer walls. Interesting, but you can only make contact and wall-ride once per "session", you can't land on a wall, ride, jump once and ride the same wall. So it's neat but limited.

Then I find the tower. A large square room made up entirely of those grindable walls, stretching straight up. I consider. Y'know, to pad my score, I bet I could railgrind into this room, ride a couple of these walls around in a square and railgrind back out. That'd be cool. So I try this. And notice something: I'm coming OUT of the room at a higher level than when I went in. By jumping and riding those walls around I am GAINING height on average. This is of course impossible because physics but fuck physics, I'm intrigued.

And I start to square-jump. Jump, ride wall one, two, three, four... and yes, I'm gaining height on the rotation. Even SAMUS wouldn't believe this shit. According to the in-game trick counter it takes me over 120 tricks (and many, many falls to the bottom, awkward flailing moments, discoveries that OH CRAP THERE'S A GRATE HERE JUMP NOW) to get to the top of the big square room, where I find... not a thing. Some spray cans and a floor to stand on. I am briefly confused... then I realize, what if this is where a Grafitti Soul appears? If you do the "challenges" on each level, you get Souls which unlock more tags. I'm probably going to have to come back up here.

And I'm delighted by the idea, because it's so damn much FUN to move around in this game. I'm not even mad. I learned a new thing, and it was AWESOME. It's the Sega feeling, where you are -mastering- something. Learning all about a new skillset and pushing it to the limit, through practice and challenge... and then, to do the optional stuff, you have to push PAST where you THOUGHT the limit was to discover all new depths. It feels GOOD.

If grinding a magnetic corkscrew or doing tight precise platforming over an open sewer seems more prosaic than climbing 100 feet of square tower from the inside using only well-jumped jumps and slides... well, it's only because once you get a taste for the impossible, the improbable feels less fantastic.

With both switches I couldn't find flipped, the path to the bottom of the sewers is open. Poison Jam's leader smugly steps out, the Queen of the Sewers. She declares that Poison Jam is going to eat me, and then throws her mask off.

It's Cube. The one character I was pissed about not being able to play as. Apparently the reason you can't play her until super-late-game is because she's busy leading a gang of masked fish-monsters from out of the furthest depths of the sewer system. ... Well, that's an acceptable excuse. Anyway, it devolves into a game of tag, and I win.

Time for more infodumps from Professor K. Cyborgs? Mummies? These are my rivals? ... Cool! Let's go rescue Yoyo!

...I am currently fighting a giant robot. With spraypaint. This game really IS amazing. Like I'm sorry if this writeup has turned into me just relentlessly linking the soundtrack and raving about great everything is, but that's the kind of game this IS.

It is kind of weird how often this game throws you into direct conflict, I say as I fight helicopters with spraypaint while a crazy and/or drunk lady sings about birthday cake. No link, I hate that song.

Uff. The Skyscraper District. A land of throwing yourself viciously off rooftops and hoping there's something below. Often, the answer is no. I am starting to feel skill fatigue, like I've topped out but it's still getting harder. Must keep pushing on! The Immortals, a group of MUMMY SKATERS, show up. I spraypaint the crap out of them and they head out for the highway. When they're defeated there... Oh no! Yoyo springs a trap that imprisons his former gang! And it's a dark-colored negative version of Yoyo! Did they turn him evil by dyeing his clothes a different color? THE FIENDS.

In any event, the G.G.s are stuck in the under-construction Rokkaku Expo Stadium. Which has plenty of rails, beams, etc to escape by sliding up. That's not the plan though. The plan is: DEATH BALL. Which is a game where you try to hold on to a ball for a lap of a stadium while your enemies try to strip it off you. They assign me a teammate off the street, give a little practice time, and then it's DEATH BALL TIME.

Death Ball is a little tricky, but mostly comes down to -not passing ever-, much like real sports. Before long, the police show up with giant robots to shut down this harmless game of Death Ball. Their mecha are still no match for COPIOUS PAINT. The Noise Tank cyborgs start rioting and it's up to me to shove them over.

Eventually the game gets me to go to Sky Dinosaurian Square to catch up with Yoyo. ... Can we just... talk for a second about how "Sky Dinosaurian Square" is the best name for anything? Ever? And yes, they're sending me to an AMUSEMENT PARK oh my god awesome. It's me versus Yoyo and his new Noise Tank friends --

-- And then Cube skates in and cuts Yoyo's face off. HE'S A ROBOT! Surprising -- well, nobody really, but HE'S A ROBOT OMG. Cube takes a moment to monologue about how CHAOS IS THE TRUE NATURE OF THE STREETS and then backflips off into the sky and vanishes.

Wow what the hell. But AWESOME. But what.

With the EVIL ROBOT YOYO exploded, it's time for another plot update. Oh god, the Golden Rhinos were a PAIN in JSR proper. Here I worry they'll be twice as bad. That doesn't matter, because a guy called "Clutch" shows up, asks to see my Souls, and runs away with them. I have to go get THOSE back. Flail. Eventually I catch up, and he shrugs and joins.

It's kind of fascinating to me how OFTEN gang members in this game will go "Huh. I was working towards my own agenda, but you beat me in a thing, so I guess I'm on your team now. What're we doin'?" The world would be enormously different if that was a thing that actually happened.

"Yo. Bob from Accounting. Check out THESE numbers."
"Holy crap, man! Okay, I guess I'm down with R&D now. I'll go clean out my desk."

At this point in the plot, the police detective dude has gone INSANE and decided to blow up the slums to denounce the evils of truth and love, or something. I don't understand how that logically follows, but then I'M not the one blowing up POOR PEOPLE, am I?

...several hours later, I have navigated through the "fortified slums" and taken out some HARRIER JETS and saved Yoyo. So it's time for another plot update and OH MY that cybernetic Beat is ... is... is SOMETHING, isn't he folks. Goodness. I... that is one attractive robot.

I have maybe been awake a long time BUT I STAND BY THOSE WORDS.

Oof. I am slowing down in typing, but not playing. Just fought a boss with ENORMOUS CYBERNETIC ARMS, like Bionic Commando, and of course you grind on them, and he has like a million HP. Later I go fight a lady with a flamethrower! I remember... something like this from JSR. And then the professor gets kidnapped, so we have a boss fight. With a TRAIN.

It's hard to explain what happens next, but Big Gouji from the Rokakku Group (corporate bad guys!) has built a massive tower which sucks in hopes and dreams and blocks out the sun. (Y'know, didn't the Simpsons do that once?) So you have a skating duel with some stupid sexy evil robots, but the tower engulfs the G.G.s in some kind of weird alternate hell music dimension of light and sound and spinning.

I can't fucking describe this. Watch someone else do it.

It takes THEM ten minutes. How long does it take ME? ... Let's just say I'm gonna be seeing green and violet spirals in my sleep. In the end -- the towers explode, Gouji falls, and DJ Professor K goes on about how neither money nor oppression can crush the human spirit. In the end, we're left with Gum's final thoughts: "All we wanted was to live freely, where everybody to get hyped for fun."

I am always, always hyped for fun.

There's more post-game... but for right now, that's enough. Concluding writeup later.