Alisha’s post this week on the disappearance of demos and the effect that it has had on the games industry gave me a chance to think about why i haven’t really missed the availability of the demo in most cases.
I’ve said many times how I tend to go media dark on games that I am looking forward to so as to not have the game spoiled for me and recently I made the mistake of breaking my own rule by downloading the demo for the Nintendo 3DS title, Yo-Kai Watch. I have known for some time that Yo-Kai Watch as an anime has experience meteoric success in Japan and that the game itself has sold phenomenally in that same market where they have two games already released in that series.
I tried to restrain myself when the demo for Yo-Kai Watch hit the Nintendo eShop, but that didn’t seem to work out too well for me in the end. I found that the demo focused on decontextualized and disconnected Yo-Kai Watch battles with no focus on the actual narrative within the game itself. This was a huge disappointment as the game also has an anime series that runs alongside it. But I think that this is a problem that is pervasive when we start thinking and talking about game demos and how they are created.
Demos are, by design, slices of a game that is meant to give us a snapshot into what the game will be like, but at the same time it is impossible to give an accurate picture of the game itself. Over the years, it has been my experience that demos are usually either really good or really bad and that it’s possible for both kinds of demos to inaccurately represent the quality of the release version of the game itself. For these reasons I rarely play these representative slice demos and only play the timed trial type demos that give us full access to the game’s content for a certain amount of time.
Let me say now, do not play the Yo-Kai Watch game demo. The demo was so terribly limited that it made me swear before all of the gaming gods that I would never play or buy the game even though I had been waiting for it with bated breath since the first glimpse of the announcement trailer. Luckily, last week when I went to the local game store to pick up Mario and Luigi Paper Jam one of the women who works there and knows Pea’s and my gaming habits (at least our purchasing habits) pretty well asked me if I had played Yo-Kai Watch yet and I was forced to tell her the long and sorted tale. She then convinced me that the game was not anywhere near as terrible as the demo suggested and persuaded me to give it a chance. And I am so glad that she did.
I am loving this game, not since the first Animal Crossing game for the DS have I fallen asleep playing a game every night (though I have learned how to better position myself in the bed so that I don’t drop the damned thing on the floor when I fall asleep and more importantly I have learned to save frequently so as not to lose all of the progress that I have made and the Yo-Kai that I have collected. The best description that I have for this game is that it is a combination of Pokemon X/Y (Nintendo 2013) and Ni No Kuni (2013) (probably reminiscent of the latter because it also comes from Level 5 games). You spend time making friends with Pokemon like familiars that then join you in battle against their evil counterparts who are hell bent on taking over the world. While the act of catching and keeping Pokemon in little Pokeballs has always been a little problematic to me, Yo_Kai befriend you and give you their medals so that you can pop them into your (man) watch whenever you would like for them to come back and do battle with you.
Now on the subject of the (man) watch. I have to admit that I was a little put off by the manifestation of the watch according to sex in the game. While I have to admit that I usually play through these kinds of games as a boy because then I am not forced to wear a skirt, heels, or any such madness, I was pleasantly surprised that the female character choice in Yo-Kai Watch wears shorts and makes a comment to her male friends early on about girls being able to do the same things that boys do. I was, however, kind of taken aback when I was bestowed with my Yo-Kai Watch….scratch that….my Yo-Kai pendant. Because despite the name of the game itself, apparently in this universe girls can not wear actual watches, but you can wear your Yo-Kai pendant on a chain around your neck, because…jewelry?!? There are several other gendered tidbits that I have run into thus far in the game. All of the mother’s in the game stand in the kitchen during their waking hours (even in the evenings when the fathers sit on the couch and read the newspaper) and only move to another room when they go to the bedroom to sleep (Kitchen and bedroom? Really?) And the Yo-Kai, Dismarelda, that brings marital discord is female and finds herself in your house because she has seemingly been put out of her home by her husband, Happierre, (who is the Yo-Kai who brings joy and removes tension from the air). I can’t side-eye that characterization hard enough.
Overall, Yo-Kai Watch is a fun game that will likely offer numerous hours of questing and grinding in order to complete. And if you are interested in exploring more of the Yo-Kai universe before you dive into the game or you want more while you are playing the game, the anime is airing daily on Disney XD and then uploaded on Thursdays to their official channel on YouTube for fans to watch for free. While I think that the game is fun, I do recognize that it would be nice to have a bit more of a choice when it comes to choosing characters and nice even to have some variation in the characterization of the female characters. So far I am only about 7 hours in so we shall see if or when these things might begin to feel like less of an issue for me.
