Kingdom Hearts: Mission Accomplished

Well, it’s taken a little longer that planned, but Caleb and David have finally achieved the big mission of the holidays; to beat Kingdom Hearts on the new Playstation 2. It’s the first story-based video game we’ve really ‘finished’, so it was the cause for some minor celebration tonight. The game clock tells me it took a good 50-odd hours of gameplay which was spread over the past 2 and a half weeks, on-and-off.
Absolutely brilliant game. If you hadn’t heard of it, it’s a collaboration between some of the best game designers in the world (that is, Japan) and Disney, to make a story-game which brings in characters from most of the Disney cartoons and some of the really cool charaters from the Final Fantasy games (some of the most amazing games of the last few years). We were already into the Final Fantasy games in a big way before this one came along, so we *had* to get our teeth into this one: the prospect of fighting with Goofy and Donald on the team was too good to pass up.
The story was quite clever; it linked all the Disney characters and worlds together nicely, and was quite complex – and even dark – in some places. You’d expect the disney characters to be just pasted-in to broaden the audience, but the whole thing looked, sounded and felt like a traditional cartoon. They voice acting is brilliant, and even uses the original character voices in a lot of cases. In some cases, you just want to wander around and admire the scenery (especially in the 100 Acre Wood).
From what I’ve read, this is the best game going at the moment – and it’s definitely highly recommended by this household. (The males, anyway. The girls just like what the female characters and princesses were wearing.)
Best of all; it’s a project that Dad and Caleb saw to the end together. Sure; it’s not like we built a cubby house or dug a hole or anything, but it’s what we’re both good at. Send us an email if you need help getting through your version.
Now, we have to do it all again on the ‘expert’ setting :-)