Developed by Idea Factory
Published by O3 Entertainment
Made for the Playstation2
Featuring copyrights from Idea Factory, Aruze, Atlus and RED Entertainment
Available only at Gamestop
Played by the hopeless
Chaos Wars is a videogame. It was originally released in Japan in 2006. That should have been enough.
However, O3 Entertainment took it upon themselves to translate and release this game in the West. I won't go into why this is important. Other people have said it better, such as internet robopresario Tollmaster on internet video game forum selectbutton.net:
1. It's a strategy RPG by Idea Factory, which is in and of itself an already fucktarded, hardheaded decision on the part of anyone. Strategy RPGs are already a niche genre--RPGs themselves have only recently started to gain respect in the mainstream, and strategy RPGs are a genre that caters to a specific hardcore subset of that genre...Idea Factory games are one step further: they work unlike any other company's games, and then proceed to hide their workings behind obtuse and obscure menus and commands. .. Idea Factory is almost synonymous with "bad, lazy games."...Chaos Wars is a strategy RPG, an incredibly insular genre. These are games focused on numbers-based everythings: numbers that determine how much each character is capable of moving in order to engage in numbers-based combat in order to decrease the numbers of the enemy. To manage your characters, you open menus which display spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of statistics and tweak them infinitesimally. Even the best strategy RPGs often resemble accounting textbooks.
3. The cast selection is batshit insane, in the best, worst way possible...this compilation of characters features far, far, far more obscure characters, from relatively niche and small companies, featuring characters that almost no one is familiar with and whom only an infinitesimal section of the population are actually familiar with. In many cases, even the niche companys' most popular characters are unrepresented, leaving even more obscure characters in their place.
Chaos Wars is a crossover game - meaning that the game's appeal comes in characters and ideas from other games. This concept is not uncommon in entertainment. It means that significance within the game comes from the symbolic value of characters outside the game. Chaos Wars features characters from video game companies such as Idea Factory, Aruze, Atlus and RED Entertainment.
This blog is about playing Chaos Wars.
Here's why that is not good.
I care about video games.
I care about art.
People, especially people on the internet, argue about when and how and if games will become art. When Roger Ebert suggested that games are not art, internet game forums created list upon list that could be shot out of cannons at the Ebert home.
There can be no debate - Chaos Wars is not art.
Chaos Wars is not even artistic.
Chaos Wars is not even entertainment.
Chaos Wars is base, hateful stuff. Chaos Wars is the best example of industrial malfeasance in the name of video games. It is the most direct and stark example of what is wrong with underdog media. It makes me want to take my copies of Mario Bros. 3 and Shadow of the Colossus and Deception 2 and Sound Voyager and throw them into Lake Michigan, drive away and join the army.
This blog is about playing Chaos Wars.
This game features characters from Shadow Hearts, Growlanser, Blazing Souls, Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir, Spectral Force, Spectral Souls, Hametsu No Mars, Gungrave and Shinsengumi Gunraw Den. I haven't played any of these games, other than Gungrave. You probably haven't played any of these games, other than Gungrave. Half of these games are not available in the West. The games that have been released in the West are niche JRPGs released by companies like Xseed and Nippon Ichi.
This game was localized by O3 Entertainment, an incredibly small American publisher. Their prior successes include localizing Chaos Field and almost localizing Radirgy GeneriC, two not very good shooters for the Gamecube. If you have heard anything about Chaos Wars, you have heard about the low quality of the English translation. It was splashed about Kotaku and other such websites with youtube videos galore, such as this one:
Again, to quote internet guy Tollmaster from his posts on selectbutton.net:
This game, already insular and hateful by its nature and very existence, is only available through Gamestop. And considering the fact that the inventory of any Gamestop is determined through the amount of preorder sales, this is a game that may not be available in your local store unless somebody preordered Chaos Wars.
There's not much more I can say, other than I don't believe that this was an honest attempt. No. No fucking way. More likely, O~3 Entertainment is a company about having balls, pure and simple. The job interview involves pulling down your pants and getting your scrotum weighed to see if you've got what it takes. How did Chaos Wars happen? We'll never know. Maybe it was a bet. Maybe someone LOST a bet. Maybe the director got drunk. Maybe they're really big Gungrave and Shadow Hearts fans over there. Whatever the reason, they went balls-out with something anyone else, anyone sane, would quickly have deemed unreasonable to do, and they fucking did it with the worst voice acting ever. It's the biggest "fuck you" to the games industry since Metal Gear Solid 2. O~3 don't care about your logic or rules, it does what it wants, whenever the fuck it wants to.
Quite simply, if Metal Gear Solid 2 was the first post-modern game, then the English translation of Chaos Wars has ushered in the era of post-post-modernism, a brave new world where machismo is the only standard men may be measured by. O~3 wanted Chaos Wars over here, and it stuffed that game about cute anime girls right down the industry's throat until it choked
WHO IS THIS GAME FOR?
Who will enjoy this?
Who will take the effort to play this game?
Who could have possibly preordered it?
This is the most insular game ever released on Western shores. Hardcore sims like PTO II and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, despite their hardcore stat-based obtuseness, have been enjoyed by somebody's dad who has a real job as a banker. I've borne witness!
This blog is about playing Chaos Wars.
I am going to play this game in full, taking it as seriously as it wants me to take it. I will play as often as I can and post the results. My writing will vary wildly and possibly be a weak imitation of Tim Rogers-esque writing, at times.
Somebody has to play this game to see what happened.
If you care about video games, you know why.
We are responsible.
Charles Johnson, the author of Middle Passage, once said:
"whatever the work is, whatever the book is, whatever the product is, it's something that we interject into the public space. it's a public act. it's our human expression, and we are responsible for all our forms of human expression, all our deeds and actions, of which art is one. the artist has a tremendous degree of responsibility"
the observers of art have a responsibility as well, especially when the artists have been so irresponsible.
we must explore it
we must figure it out
we are responsible
this blog is about playing chaos wars
