© the otherpress ¢ Culture

ra Fi

February 25, 2004

 

ZastrozzZi,
The Master
of Discipline

Amanda Aikman
Culture Editor

While the bloated carcass that is the third
installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy
attempts to clean up at this year’s Academy
Awards, a darker “Demon of the Rings” is
coming to a stage near you. Very near you,
actually—right here at Douglas College.
The Douglas College Theatre and
Stagecraft departments will be presenting the
Denise Kenney directed Zastrozzi, The
Master of Discipline at the New West
Campus’s Studio Theatre from March 5-13.
According to organizers, this play, by
acclaimed Canadian playwright George F.
Walker, is a “futuristic circus environment
combined with the raw, violent theatricality
of the World Wrestling Federation and the
crazy, post-apocalyptic visions of a Mad Max,
Beyond Thunderdome.” That beats watching a
Hobbit chase after some wayward jewelry
any day.

The characters in Zastrozzi are mythologi-
cal icons of good and evil, plagued by their
individual preoccupations with revenge,
romanticism, honour, reason, cruelty, and
sex. “Zastrozzi is a morality circus,” says
Kenney, “The philosophy of the play is that
life is a series of meaningless events. In order
to avoid despair, you have to keep occupied.
And that’s what the characters do—some-
times with violence.”

To help foster this chaotic atmosphere,
Canadian pro wrestler Vance Nevada was
brought on board to assist the actors with
their wrestling moves, and swashbuckler/for-
mer Douglas student Brad Tones returned to
help sharpen their swordplay skills. The
fight-club ambiance of the performance is
also aided by setting the stage in a
circus/wrestling ring with the actors sur-
rounded by the audience—except of course
when events transcend the boundaries of the
enclosed stage.

The title role of Zastrozzi, played by stu-
dent Baljinder Grewal, is that of a master
criminal who is fixated on _ revenge.
“Zastrozzi is a wonderful psychopath,” says
Kenney. “He’s the negative, natural conse-
quence you can't avoid in life, like getting hit
by a bus. There’s no rhyme or reason—it just
happens.”

But Zastrozzi doesn’t get to have all the
fun; the entire cast is peppered with larger-
than-life animalistic characters that are driv-
en by sexual and lustful impulses. According
to Kenney, that's typical of characters crafted
by the provocative playwright Walker, who
has been repeatedly honoured for his theatri-
cal efforts. With eight Chalmers Awards, five
Dora Awards, two Governor General’s
Awards for Drama, and successful produc-
tions in. New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San
Francisco, and Chicago, it looks like Mr.
Walker's work is finally ready to tread the
boards in good old New Westminster.

Catch Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline
from March 5-13, at 7:30pm with two-for-
one performances on Monday and Thursday
at Ipm, Tuesday at 7:30pm, and Saturday at
2pm. Douglas College Studio Theatre, Room
4140, 700 Royal Avenue, New Westminster.
Tickets are $5 for students and seniors, $10
for general admission. To order tickets con-
tact the box office at 604.527.5488. For
group bookings call 604.527.5281.

 

   

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

This was a tough review to write.
For some reason I just couldn't
seem to finish it unless I had a
couple of other people with me,
and some GBA connectivity. So
the first thing that probably
comes to mind is to check the ski
conditions down south if
SquareEnix is making a game for
a Nintendo Console, considering
the Mario RPG incident. This is
more of a brand extension of
Final Fantasy than your regular,
turned-based, 80-hour adventure.
It’s a four-play action RPG, with
simple yet intuitive controls, fun
game play, a great excuse to get
four people together, and some-
thing that’s going to require each
play to have a GBA and a Game
Cube link cable.

So since this game is to pro-
mote hanging out with your gam-
ing friends, and the buying of
more Nintendo products, I had
to call in my gaming friends to
assist on this review (mostly
because I dont have a Game
Cube and therefore didn’t buy the
game). A time and place was set
and on a sunny Wednesday after-
noon at Douglas. We rounded up
one Game Cube, four GBA SPs,
four packages of fresh link cables,
a brand new copy of Final
Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a
memory card, and an empty
room with a TV, and we were
ready to make history. Now the
first thing I suggest to all of you
at home before hooking up your
GBAs to the Game Cube is that
you might want to make sure you
take the game out first, since
three out of four people in our
party seemed to want to play
Tactics Advance.

I will tell you one thing
though, half the experience on
this game and a great deal of the
fun you'll derive out of it is based
on whom you play the game
with. I don’t think I could stress
the point more. If the people you
play with aren't being fair or tak-
ing it seriously it’s going to be a
chore to play. As for my group, I
think we did rather well,
although when I asked them for a
few words on it, only two of them
wrote something that could be
printed. The other assistant, who
shall remain nameless, wrote a
review in “1337 speak” version,
which was a compilation of
incomprehensible insults and
expletives he used during the
gaming session. Here, however,
are a few words from gamer
Kevin Chow with his take on the
experience.

“Crystal Chronicles is one of
the most unique multi-player
games available that utilizes the
GBA connectivity with the cube.
The game, which mostly focuses

Rea Page 16 ¢ http://www.otherpress.ca

on multi-player, also includes a
single-player mode that does not
require a GBA to play. I guess this
would be Nintendo's strategy of
allowing anyone to pick up the
game despite the fact they don’t
have a GBA. However, in single-

 

amusing enough. Each dun-
geon/area you got to fight in you

had the ability to collect
powerups and spells, and to earn
money and collect items and
plans for making new weapons
and armor, along with the materi-

 

player mode, the GBA connectiv-
ity almost seems pointless, as the
only advantage is that it will dis-
play a radar to tell you where the
heck to go. What’s even more
obscure is the fact that in single-
player mode you must have the
original Nintendo controller
plugged into slot one, meaning
you cannot use your GBA as a
controller like you can in multi-
player mode.

Multi-player mode is where
this game really shines. Similar to
Four Swords, the ideology of
compete and cooperate carries
on, in which you have to work
with your teammates to defeat
enemies as well as to collect the
items both you and your team-
mates want. Some of the features
in multi-player mode define
cooperating as ‘each player is
assigned a random radar screen,
that when shared with the other
players, benefit all.”

We've also got a one Mr.
Edward Keech to throw in his
two cents on the matter, “This
game I found was, well, very slow
at first. It took a long time to do
just about anything. Selecting
your Character Class and Type
was unintuitive and I’ve played a
lot of games. There were no Pop
up boxes to tell you the differ-
ences between the classes or what
their favorite types of skills or
preferred types of attacks were. It
was poorly done.”

The Game play itself was

als to collect these pieces of
armor. But what was most inter-
esting was at the end of each area
you were graded in_ points
depending on what you were told
to do or not to do in that area.
And the highest scorer of the
areas gets to choose their special
power-up item first.

All in all, it was a decent
enough game; moderate game
play with a different feel.
Definitely nothing else like it on
the market. The only large draw-
backs are that you need at least
one GBA to play this, and for
each other person they need one
as well.”

Now I guess I should talk
about the other half of the experi-
ence, which is the game itself.
The controls are fairly simple;
with everything being routed
through the game boy it realisti-
cally limits you to four button
controls. But what makes up for
this is the great fact that the
action never stops if anyone has
to go into their menus. If you
have ever played any multiplayer
console RPG you know the pain
of your adventuring party pissing
you off by constantly re-arrang-
ing their equipment while you
want to hit things. In addition to
being your link to your inventory,
the GBA also provide these nifty
little maps devices that have a
random effect for each play such
as dungeon map, enemy radar,
and scan. All the adventuring is

broken up into separate dungeon
segments, each with an end boss.

While in this dungeon, one
member of your party must be
charged with carrying a bucket
with a crystal and some magic
stuff in it—I really wasn’t paying
attention to what it was. But
what it does is stop you from
dying from harmful energies and
if you venture outside the range
of the bucket you start to loose
life rapidly. Now this may sound
very much like a burden but it
actually makes sense in why you
have to stay together on screen,
and once battle breaks loose
youre able to leave the bucket on
the ground.

Also, there is no experience
point system in this game, so you
don’t get stronger by just hitting
enemies. But what they do imple-
ment is a system of artifacts, and
in each dungeon, you find vari-
ous different artifacts that tem-
porarily increase your stat points.
At the end of the dungeon, each
player gets to pick an award they
can permanently keep. Who
picks first is based on who best
fills the requirements of a random
task they are assigned at the
beginning of the dungeon. Now,
since youre playing as a team,
even if people keep getting fourth
place, you want to leave good
power ups for them to use, and as
long as you play with good people
this will stay fairly even. If all
your friends are jerks, then level-
ing up is going to suck for you.

The game itself is based on a
number of years where you fill up
your crystal bucket with magical
energy each year. But during this
year you may replay any complet-
ed dungeon as many times as you
would like to power up your
characters. There are a few other
features, but when you're playing
with a group of people and the
only time you get to review the
game is at school, well, it gets
rather hard to test the effects of
the other included features.

So is this worth purchasing?
Well no, not really. Not unless
you have a GBA and three of
your friends have one. I don't
think I can stress the fact that this
is a multi-player game enough.
It’s meant to be played with other
people, preferably people who are
not assholes. If you expected an
80-hour single-player experience
because it says Final Fantasy on
the cover you couldn't be more
wrong. Some might think this is
pricey since it would be an over
$800 endeavor ‘to get everything
needed to play the game, but that
just means you're going to have to
get a couple of buddies with
GBAs.