Rejection: Introduction

Rejection - Dennou Shoujo (Rejection - Computer Girl) is a game that I couldn't find much information on. It's something of an enigma, even in the realm of Japanese FPS. It's from Sur de Wave, a label of the company Takeru, and that's about all I know. So, without ado, let's see it.

This opening section is something that tripped me up, if you saw the end of I, Robot, you'll know that I actually asked people for help on this one, I got the information from zwanzig_wwoelf on RPG Codex, the only other person I actually knew played this. Turns out the problem is that it expects you to move with the joystick...though I could have solved my initial problem by pressing my mouse wheel. Sigh. I know he had trouble with it thanks to the game being too advanced in terms of language for him, which is another compounding problem for me. I'm going to use an imitation N64 controller for this one.

I think it's safe to say that even if I like this one, I'm not going to recommend this one.

We get a shot of something before it's destroyed by a meteor, and the opening turns into a crawl of text. The music playing during this section is some bizarre frantic stuff, fast techno or something, not at all appropriate here. Thankfully, someone already uploaded the intro, and even translated it for us. In the description, anyway.

A giant meteor hits Tokyo bay, in an instant ruining the city. The meteor claimed 7 million people. Entire instutes destroyed. Kansai places a provisional government, Tokyo dispatches research team who are astonished. People have become zombie-like creatures.

The meteor has a virus attached to it, which has special characteristics. Called 'Kosumoanfitamin'. (Crap Vitamin? Nah...) It causes death in living cells, transforming them. Then the infection takes place, their existence is harmless but, after death they start moving again, changing into zombies.

The truth is known to the provisional government, but the zombies don't become a wide phenomena outside of Tokyo, so it's decided to quarantine Tokyo.

With the quarantine, many people become refugees, within the Tokyo metropolitian region every place builds underground facilities, the government supplies them with weapons to fight the zombies with.

It's been one year since the meteor.

In the refugee camp, the young men balance zombie fighting and going on supply runs, while forming vigilante groups. In the middle of this one person, a teenage girl called K-Ko in a vigilante group from Shibuya. Her father is in the army, doing a mercenary training drill in Shibuya, teaching them how to fight.

On that day, K-Ko finds a message on her arm from someone called Alice Paku. The existing government is rescuing survivors, Colonel Kihara, is dispatched to find survivors that are immune. They do some kind of relief effort, before making an announcement that the refugees should appeal to them for guidance.

Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we see the flesh-eating kind of zombies in a FPS, maybe the first zombies in general. It depends on when in the year this came out, because Catacomb Abyss has necromancy zombies and Wolfenstein has the flesh golems. I'm also guessing that some of this is supposed to be more sinister than it comes off in writing. The first one I can remember of flesh-eating is Isle of the Dead.

I also note that I continually refer to the main character as K-Ko. It's written K子, which even before the audio I knew was pronounced Keiko. They're clearly going for something off-kilter about her name and '90s cyberpunk name feels like the best fit to me.

Ah. This feels like that artistic sweet spot between amateur and professional. Suddenly, I hear voices. Ah, crap, I'm not very good with hearing Japanese yet. And this part isn't subtitled. I'm going to assume they're just celebrating K-Ko's return, with some narrator explaining something I don't care about.

Look at that perspective, it's terrible, I love it.

Then we get a conversation between K-ko and Group leader. Still voice acted, but this time there are subtitles. Whatever the decree is, they're worried about how it would affect K-Ko. This guy talks about Shinakawa harbor, a lot of zombies there. They're weak now, but there's a danger they'll get bigger. So, take them out.

Controls for this are weird, despite being a system with a keyboard and a mouse this is more like a console game in practice, because you're using a joypad for everything. Shooting is done with the gamepad, the A button, changing weapons is done with select. All the menus are done through there, status, saving and loading. It also functions as pause. Right now I have a knife, a P08, a Colt Python and a M870 shotgun. Nice, though seemingly a random selection. (And while you can't see the menu, I noticed later there's a level system)

Aiming is simple, move the pad around. To move or turn, you move to the edges, the B button seems to do it quickly, but it doesn't always work and it just moves you, not turn. No combat waltz for me. It's a bit rough around the edges, to say the least. I hope if I need to run somewhere I'll have figured this game out by then.

You can actually talk to people outside of cutscenes. He doesn't tell me anything new, just what he already told me. Let's go exploring then. I have no context other than Shibuya. The HUD is not helpful. I'm not entirely clear on which direction is north. When the red bit is straight up? I guess the lower left is health, pretty cool, but it gives a constant chirp, like a smoke alarm, very annoying, and the music isn't playing anymore. Whether that's good or not is to be seen. I assume S is south.

I eventually find an arrow into a door which presumably means I should go here. Oh, it's just a medikit, can't pick it up, you just use it. I guess arrows are showing which doors you can enter and which are for show, which is annoying but does tell us the developers are going for realistic level design but don't want to put in everywhere they don't want to be important.

Yep, it's another game with that anime design of complex clothing and simple body parts.

After some more wandering, I find my first enemy. Zombie girl, looks like the vampire lady from Tsukihime. Let's line up a shot and...Holy crap, K-Ko's gone apecrap! Constantly shooting and turning in one place, what the actual heck. Why is this happening? I'm not that badly damaged, but my controls aren't responding. I genuinely don't know if this is a fear mechanic or if my control glitched up, because when I reloaded an early start, the problem was no longer happening. The second time around I just kill her with no trouble. Weird.

I reach a dead end, I have no map, and fight another on my way out. I realize three things. Firstly, S does not refer to south, it's just general information, you're in Shibuya. Two, the fire button sticks, dunno if that's controller, game or emulator, if it's the game it's my fault. Three, voice clips play as you attack and are attacked. It's nice on a theoretical level, but I'm not sure I appreciate hearing "GANBATTE!" when I'm killing some poor girl clutching her teddy bear.

There are no weak spots that I can tell. At least not the most obvious one.

Semushi? Hunchback? Huh. He's tougher than the girls, not surprising, there's also an oyaji or someone's dad. Wait, is this just Isle of the Dead, but not as a joke and competent? I'm saying competent, because the atmosphere is pretty creepy here, and despite indications that the game is maze-like, I'm liking it so far. Allegedly, it's a RPG too, but I've seen no indication of that so far, beyond the MC having statistics. Having statistics doesn't make it a RPG. (Obviously this was before I saw the level stat)

You can spot the hit icon here I describe later.

I figure out the issue, it's somewhere between the emulator and the joystick, sometimes it just locks up, doing whatever it was I was doing last. I need to quit the emulator and reload whenever it happens, which is great. I do note I get a burst of music whenever this happens. I'm not sure that the music is improving the game. Maybe this is a WINE issue, I'll try Tsugaru Towns instead of Unz.

The controller's a bit more jank since I can't select my controls, but otherwise it seems to be better. Also, music. That makes things more annoying when you're trying to listen to somebody, but it works well otherwise. All screenshots are retroactively from that, since it's easier than cropping screenshots taken by my OS.

I dig the short draw distance.

That music loop is kind of annoying with the beeping on too. It doesn't fully loop. I'll see if I keep it on, it's useful for enemy cues at least. I find myself in Shinjuku...which...uh...crud. Okay, I don't know if this is cheating or not, but I'm going to look up the wards of Tokyo real quick...and I've gone in the wrong direction. Actually, if this is any indication I shouldn't have gone in this direction to begin with. Well, I can find my way back. Probably. That does tell me that the red direction on the compass is the direction I'm going in.

On my return trip, I find that all the enemies I killed have returned. Wow, this really is Isle of the Dead from Japan, isn't it? I also notice the beeps get more frequent as I take damage, which means it's going to get very annoying when I'm in bad shape. Weapons also have a few interesting quirks, which I noticed by switching to the Colt. The area you shot turns inverted, so with the Colt you get a pretty big area. It also moves the cursor up when you shoot it. That's an undeniable first, recoil. Neat, but could get annoying.

And if you die, the game resets to the opening cutscene. That wasn't well thought out. Unfortunately, I died before I could test the shotgun and the knife, so I'm trying again. The Colt's basically a straight upgrade over the P08, but the other two are quite different. The knife still has recoil, and works like you'd expect a knife to, it's even a slash as far as hit area. The shotgun is actually quite clever, it spreads the area out, which does mean you could hit someone dead on and miss them.

As I'm exploring the area I got killed in, I get this. Basically, something's wrong here. Or I'm going the wrong way like I know I am. Then I spot a crate which gives me another gun! Okay, clearly I'm coming back this way when I'm serious. Beretta 92F, baby. Which I'm really only happy about because I've been using a "weaker" handgun for my primary.

And then I find another gun. A P38. This in of itself is not impressive, I'd place it between the P08 and the 92F myself, no, it's impressive because of what it represents. I have to drop one of my guns, which means that the number of guns is going to be exceedingly generous. This...this is the best news I could have possibly heard.

There's something off in the corner I can't see, because I'd need to turn and that's a bad idea right now.

And then I find these freaking guys. There's like three of these bones dudes, the guys in the suit, and the frost giant guy shoots at me. I make a valiant effort, but I get killed. There's two things to note about it, I killed some of them, so this is clearly possible, and this game is willing to let you waltz into hell and doesn't stop you from killing the demons. I like that in a RPG.

I could see this one going either way. This has the bad ideas from Isle of the Dead, an entirely unique aiming system with shooting mechanics I'm deeply interested in, and signs that it could go even further off the rails. I think, regardless of how this goes, this is going to be better than Elm Knight. This is going to be a great disappointment or the greatest FPS before Doom.

This Session: 1 hour