For Famitsu, 428 equals 40
by Chris Greenhough 
{ Nov 26th 2008 at 7:10PM }
The Famitsu 40/40 has lost some of its lustre in recent times. Since 1998, the magazine has awarded nine perfect scores, but three have come in 2008, including one for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
However, even we found the latest game to receive the honor surprising. 428: The World Doesn't Change Even So is a "visual novel," a graphical text adventure from roguelike kings Chunsoft that keeps player interaction to a minimum. In other words, it's very unlike any other game to receive a flawless Famitsu grade. In fact, it's unlike most other games, period.
We haven't posted a great deal about 428. That's not because we don't find it interesting -- we definitely do. It's because, as Alisha has noted, a game of its ilk is almost entirely impenetrable to our western eyes. Suffice to say, it has now been instantly promoted from "intriguing curio" to "must-own import." Not that a release outside Japan will ever happen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jasin Howe @ Nov 26th 2008 7:21PM
It would be nice if someone would try a text adventure title on wiiware. I think think a graphic novel game might work in North America.
gamer4250 @ Nov 26th 2008 7:22PM
Wait, they gave Brawl a 40/40?
Well that's another review source I can cross off my relevant list...
Roto13 @ Nov 26th 2008 7:48PM
Considering how many sources gave Brawl perfect scores, you should probably just forget about reviews altogether if that's a dealbreaker for you.
Roto13 @ Nov 26th 2008 7:45PM
I don't trust Famitsu as a review source. I mean, Nintendogs got a perfect score. What the hell? It's a virtual pet. Like Tamagotchi.
gamer4250 @ Nov 26th 2008 7:50PM
Yet Brawl is far from a perfect game. Try Zero Punctuation.
MowDownJoe @ Nov 26th 2008 8:32PM
Dude, did you watch that review? His gripes were mostly general fighting game and party game gripes. Nothing specific to Brawl itself. Admittedly, the whole bit about the Great Maze was a legitimate gripe.
Roto13 @ Nov 26th 2008 9:22PM
"Zero Punctuation"
You don't really understand the premise of Zero Punctuation, do you?
ChibiKawase @ Dec 1st 2008 3:11AM
Scoring it strictly as a pet simulator, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to find it nigh-perfect-- how can you not after spending an entire walk trying to snap your puppy's neck(and watching it writhe on the ground before reviving)? :D
Mr Khan @ Nov 26th 2008 7:50PM
Strange. It seems like one of those FMV-games that plagued the Sega CD and the 3DO, but of slightly better make.
Could they be making a comeback?
Matias @ Nov 26th 2008 7:51PM
Never cared about reviews anyways, but I had some respect for Famitsu until the 40/40 for brawl.
I've played my fair share of text based games, they're most for PC though. I'm pretty sure 428 isn't going to come to America because the genre doesn't appeal too much to western players.
But there is always hope they take a risk.
eddy @ Nov 27th 2008 9:36AM
Personally, I think a game like this would work out fantastically on DS. I'd play it on there without hesitation.
Needle @ Nov 27th 2008 6:15PM
428 is the spiritual successor to the 1998 game Machi, and are/were text adventures that only could have been realized as video games, only using live actors and filmed on location.
In Machi ("The City"), the player follows the stories of 8 different protagonists, each pursuing their own unrelated agenda, all in parallel but all taking place in the same city of Shibuya, Tokyo. The player can read the stories, switch between characters to read, and backtrack to any point in the story at will.
Since everything is running in parallel, what one character did would often unknowingly lead another character to a dead end; For instance, one character casually locking a warehouse door would lead to another character who happened to be hiding in the warehouse to starve to death.
The player's role, as the sole overseer of all 8 protagonists, is to make each character behave so that none of them would block the progress of the others, and let the story continue on to the end of that "day". The game was essentially an intricately woven ball of narrative yarn that the player had to untangle.
Machi was massive, with the story spanning five days with over 300 major and supporting roles. Even the minor characters which you didn't control lived their own lives; Many of them would exit the story path of one character, only to walk into the story of another, often showing different sides of their personality.
Machi was regarded one of the best games ever by those who played it, but suffered profit-wise. The planned sequel was canned. In the 10 years that ensued, Chunsoft released numerous adventure games that took the parallel narrative gameplay mechanic and tweaked it in various ways.
With 428, they've come full circle and are releasing what comes closest to being a true sequel to Machi - the game even unfolds in the same city as where Machi took place.
Hell, I waited 10 years for this!