A complete playthrough of Psygnosis's 1997 PlayStation adventure game, The City of Lost Children. Way back, I remember being so excited for this game when I saw the preview blurb in some magazine (probably GamePro? I'm not sure), especially since the movie was fairly badass. The hotly awaited (by me at least) game came out, and... well, it wasn't quite what I had hoped for. Imagine a combination between Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, and one of those Japanese cartoon poo things that look like soft-serve ice cream, and you're aiming highly enough to be disappointed. The general concept is pretty sound, but the sheer wonkiness of the game's mechanics instantly deflate the sails. Miette screams Ugh and wobbles for a solid few seconds everytime you touch a wall whilst pressing the run button. She drives like a grade-A Jill Valentine dump truck. She has ONE canned phrase that repeats every single time you aren't psychic enough to know exactly which of the vaguely labeled buttons trigger the next event. And she, the 8 year old girl, almost dies after being punched off of a bridge. So, it's not incredible, but it obviously has its redeeming qualities ;) Either way, I hate this game, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It makes me swear constantly at it whenever I play, but somehow I always end up drawn in "one last time!", inevitably leading me to finish it yet again for the upteenth go. It's artsy. flimsy, and utterly bewildering. Thank God, women of parallel quality seem to be unable to transfix me in the ways that this game somehow manages. Like I said, utterly bewildering. As a parting note, please do excuse the corrupted item graphics on the inventory screen. This was played through on an emulator, and it seems that either I didn't configure something properly, or the emulator was screwing up under its own volition. Whichever way, it's pretty minor issue, so I hope that you all don't mind my not wanting to go back through the whole thing again on a real system just to fix what amounts to about 1% of the video's run-time - especially given the complete lack of impact on the game-play. I didn't even notice the issue until about halfway through the game. ____ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (
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