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Kingdom Hearts 2 - Now With Tron
Much anticipated sequel to the original Square-Enix/Disney collaboration just became even more interesting. 1up.com has confirmed that Kingdom Hearts 2 will feature a Tron world, based on the 1982 Disney film. From the article: "As you can see in a scan posted in this thread, Goofy, Donald and that cutie Sora are fully decked out in the duds of the Master Control Program universe, as well as Mr. Kevin Flynn himself, Jeff Bridges. Having the crew of Kingdom Hearts tackle a world based on a live-action film is nothing new to this sequel as a world based on Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with a seriously detailed Johnny Depp has long since been revealed."
Have any of my fellow geeks who prattle on about how wonderful this movie is and how much they love it actually seen it in the last decade? It's easy to talk about something positively when you're basing it on nostalgic memories rather than reality.
The movie came out when I was four or five years old and I watched it when I was ten or twelve. It was good. Not great, but good. I watched it a decade ago, when I was about 18. You know what? It was terrible. As I said in that other StarWars post, Tron was I actually used to like Knight Rider?! awful. The same goes for The Last Starfighter.
And of course a disney game would have tron/CGI stuff in it. It's probably a reference to how Disney doesn't have animators anymore or do cell-animation since they're a CGI-only outfit these days.
I'd rather play a game with Donald in Mathemagic Land.... ;-)
See, that's what I used to think about Kingdom Hearts - it's aimed at kids. Sure, the game's worlds are based on Disney films, and they are (almost always) aimed at kids. But the game's difficulty and scope, and the themes it explores through the storyline are anything but childish. I used to also think "It's a shame that lots of people will think "pff this looks like a kids game" and not play it", but now I just pity them since KH is a really *really* good game. The sequel has been on the horizon for a long time, and every time I read a preview of it I remember how much I enjoyed the first one. Auron is in KH2....I don't see how that could possibly be bad :D
Should point out that the parent has obviously played the game and hopefully liked it, this post was more to inform people who hadn't given the original a shot for fear of playing a crappy and short game.
Kingdom Hearts one had, as its theme, Disney animation. Which is well and good, because animation has historically been the thing Disney does best. Although many of the worlds of the game were wildly different from each other as to invite cognative dissonance (Jack Skellington and Alladin, Beast and those Final Fantasy dweebs?), at least they could cop to "Disney magic" being the theme, which, although it may be a lousy piece of corporate propaganda to build a game around, at least it attempted to dodge the issue.
And, the animation on the main Disney guys WAS pretty good.
This time around, they're putting Tron and Pirates of the Carribean into a game. For the characters in the game, no problem, these are just another set of "worlds" to travel though, they're supposed to be different from each other.
For the player, however, or to ME at least, this just seems like a lousy exercise in enhancing brand recognition. What's Disney-magical about Tron? When it came out, most people didn't even HAVE a computer.
Yeah, I bitched and moaned about the original Kingdom Hearts too. (Warning: link contains extreme invective.) No one listened to me then either. What's it gonna take, Kingdom Hearts 3, containing all the Buena Vista and Miramax characters? Is Sora and company going to run into Mr. 3000 and Hot Chick next? Will they go on a Mission to Mars to avert Armageddon? Play B-Ball with Air Bud? Will they meet Dante and Randall? Will they stick it to the corporate man alongside Michael Moore in a Fahrenheit 9/11 world, doing 9999 damage to a hulking George W. Bush? Will...
Dammit, I'd better stop. This is getting too cool.