Parasite Eve

Release Date - March 29, 1998 (JP)
Developer - Square
Publisher - Square
Platform - PlayStation

The mid to late 90s saw something of a boom for Japanese horror themed books, films and eventually, games. While some of this media would make its way to western pop culture such as Ringu (Ring) (1998) or Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), they were preceded by many other unique takes on the horror genre. Parasite Eve (1995) is a science fiction horror novel by Hideaki Sena. While it would not be published in English until 2005, the book proved quite popular in Japan and would eventually see a sequel in the form of the video game. The game, released in 1998, was also titled Parasite Eve.

Parasite Eve is a curious but effective mix of action, turn-based RPG, with elements of survival horror. The experience is all topped with the sci-fi horror setting of the novel to make a truly unique experience. The game follows New York City police officer Aya Brea over six days in 1997 as she attempts to stop Eve, a woman (or something more powerful, perhaps?) who plans to destroy the human race with mysterious abilities, leaving charred corpses in her wake. With Square having released the colossal hit Final Fantasy VII in 1997, the gaming public was eager to see what the lauded developers would have in store with Parasite Eve.

*Aya’s investigation takes her across the island of Manhattan, unfortunately encountering some grisly scenes.*

The game starts with an impressive CGI cutscene that sets the scene and the sense of impending disaster. Christmas Eve, 1997: Aya is attending an opera at Carnegie Hall. During the performance every person in the theatre suddenly bursts into flames, dying an awful untimely death. All except for Aya herself and a performer on stage. In pursuing the performer, Aya discovers that the woman on stage refers to herself as ‘Eve’, but she escapes before she can be questioned. It’s not long before Manhattan is evacuated and on Christmas Day, Aya and a small skeleton staff of police must try to solve the mystery in the abandoned, snow covered metropolis.

*Parasite Eve has a very strong sense of reality in the locations you visit, a nice contrast from the madness going on in the story.*

In typical JRPG fashion, players can roam around the island of Manhattan with more areas of the city opening up as the story progresses. Players choose locations via a 3D world map that impressively details the major locations from a bird’s eye view. The map rotates and zooms in, taking full advantage of the beautifully detailed buildings. Once you have an area selected, Aya will drive there and you’ll be free to explore on foot. Also familiar to JRPG players will be the chance to encounter enemies on the map in the form of random battles.

*The beautiful city as seen from the sky.*

The enemies will spawn into the area and then the battle begins. The combat is a mix of real-time and turnbased; while you can move Aya around to avoid attacks and get into a favourable position, you can’t attack or perform other actions until your ‘Action Point’ bar has been filled. This pause between attacks makes it somewhat reminiscent of turn-based JRPGs. The combat system definitely helped the game stand out amongst the contemporaries, being relatively unique for the time. It’s important to learn your enemy’s attack patterns to better dodge them, and with careful timing you can even interrupt their attacks with your own! It takes some getting used to, but there’s benefits to mastering the combat. By winning battles, players will earn XP to level up Aya’s battle abilities, increase inventory space or improve your weapons and armour.

*The dome around Aya represents the range of her current weapon, improve your weapons to make them more accurate over longer ranges.*

Beyond just the battles, there are various locked doors and other obstacles to overcome. Aya has to find keys, restore power to elevators and other similar tasks to navigate the dangerous locations being investigated. They don’t make up a huge part of the gameplay, but are used sparingly enough that each time you come across a road block it feels natural and satisfying to overcome.

*Every enemy has their own unique attacks. Some of them can cause negative status effects that require items to counter-act.*

Aya can use quite a variety of weapons through the game too, which all add nuance to the battle system. Different guns will have different range, firing rate (allowing you to target multiple enemies or shoot multiple rounds) and damage output. The guns can even be customised! Sacrificing one gun to use its parts as modifications allows for you to create some really powerful guns, transferring features like firing rate or power from one gun to another. This can be a valuable tool, allowing you to focus on fewer, stronger guns to level up. Guns also can be imbued with certain attributes, giving them additional effects like poison damage, limiting opponent’s movements and more. There’s a huge variety of combinations to improve and customise weapons, giving lots of room for creativity and fine-tuning to get the best out of your arsenal. A special note should also be made of using the police night-stick; while it lacks range and power, it allows you to steal items from your enemies! An absolute godsend when you’re out of ammo.

*Raiding a gun-store is a good way to increase Aya’s arsenal.*

The game looks very pretty as well, with graphics using a technique similar to the Resident Evil series, with 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds. By using static backgrounds, a great amount of detail is on display, along with some eerie and cinematic camera angles. The CGI cut-scenes also deserve a mention, as they are extremely well polished for the era. Indeed, the game was promoted by showing off a lot of the CGI movie stills. In particular the opening cut-scene and monster transformations are a sight to behold. The body-horror of humans being affected by Eve’s powers can be very confronting, and adds to the overall sense of dread.

Beyond the CGI scenes, the story is also told through the use of in-game graphics, and these scenes are particularly well directed. Parasite Eve gets a lot of value out of the low poly character models, with great text dialogue (no bad voice acting for this game, sorry) and some clever direction. Characters may have low res textures, but convey lots of emotion through their gestures, looks and cinematic blocking during their scenes. These sometimes take place inside the squad car, with the claustrophobic, close-in zoom of the camera adding to the intimate moments between Aya and her partner Daniel.

*Squad car conversations capture the feeling of a cop movie perfectly.*

The atmosphere of the game is suitably tense from start to finish. The setting of an evacuated Manhattan island is a brilliant backdrop for a horror game that evokes loneliness and isolation. Walking around deathly quiet streets blanketed with snow truly makes you feel uneasy, not helped by the crunchy sound of your own footsteps as you push through sludge on the way to your next clue. Don’t forget, it’s also Christmas so the sight of empty buildings filled with Christmas trees and various decorations adds to the chilling (both literally and figuratively) setting.

There’s a feeling that monsters can attack at any moment and are lurking behind every corner of the empty cityscape. The monster designs add to the tension with some terrifying mutated animals and some moments of shocking violence. As mentioned earlier, they all have their own unique attack patterns, with a large variety of enemies to combat, including some spectacular and tough boss battles.

*Empty hospitals in horror games, what could go wrong?*

The music for Parasite Eve has been widely acclaimed, and was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who intended to create an “inorganic” and “emotionless” soundtrack. It fits the setting perfectly, and the soundtrack would see two album releases. The battle theme does a great job of getting your heart racing, while wandering areas like the police station are accompanied by catchy yet contemplative tunes, perfect for detective work. The soundtrack goes hand in hand with some great sound design too, with the aforementioned footsteps providing a constant feeling of loneliness in the big city, and the sound of a phone ringing every time you save your game manages to create a feeling that is equal parts relief and dread.

Parasite Eve would go on to be a great success for Square, selling 994,000 copies in Japan alone in 1998. The franchise would spawn two more video games, with Parasite Eve II releasing in 1999 and Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday releasing in 2010. Parasite Eve carved out its own piece of history as a video game, perhaps even eclipsing the popularity of the original book on which it was based.

MediEvil

F-1 World Grand Prix