Little King's Story- First Impressions.

Even in the days of hype and over exposure where every screenshot, press release and 'leak' is vivisected and analysed there are still few moments in gaming that match the trepidation of loading up a game for the first time. Our personal ritual is to make sure there are no other distractions for the first spool up. The tea is brewed, the cat is fed, the phone is silenced, the meat is beat so that until we are prompted to press start our full attention is on the first impression of yet another new virtual world. Sometimes, the impression is a bad one, a misstep in the opening FMV, poor design or a hard to navigate menu dramatically drops the expectations. Sometimes games whisk you through the back door the first time you play dumping you straight into the game, a practice which we are always a bit suspicious about, for some people the mantle really does matter as much as the fireplace. Little King's Story had us completely charmed by the time we got to starting the game, the opening FMV and brilliant menu screen leaving us anticipating that from here on in it would, could, only get worse.
As we mentioned yesterday we are aware that we are painfully late to this party but what we weren't prepared for was this bare-faced, lovably cutesy ode to colonialism with you playing the central role as the unwitting oppressor. We're certainly not the first to pick up on this but compare the attention given to the toe-deep racism in Resident Evil 5 with the level of attention given to the intentional lessons of this game and its important message.
The game opens with King Cunzy1 1 stating that the rich are more noble than the poor and that the lazy are less noble than those who work hard. Land of Hope and Glory plays on the sodding menu screen. We've only just built a church but already we can't wait to start the raping and pillaging.It is still early days for us and the game and we're eager not to stretch the colonialism hypothesis too far until we've played it out to the conclusion but even at this early stage the fact that this element is barely mentioned in many of these reviews (one of which less-than-tactfully suggest we should be doing 'more' invasions like the olden days) once again highlights questions over the credibility of games journalism. With many people in games looking for ways of credibly justifying the medium to solicit emotion, educate or to tell stories we are left scratching our heads as to why this game isn't held up a shining example.