Oh, Japan... What's up with you combining cute girls and gross ass monsters that often have tentacles? ... Wait, I don't wanna know...

Parasite Eve is an INTERESTING horror game developed by the same company that made Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and a bunch of other RPG games. Back in the day I saw previews and such and I dunno, just didn't seem to be my kinda game... I was wrong. That's right, I'm a guy who plays games with cute girl heroes and feels no shame of admitting he's wrong! So... Ha...

But Parasite Eve is... Well, it isn't Resident Evil or Alone In The Dark, I'll tell you that much. Nor is it Doom or Duke Nukem (thank God)! Parasite Eve actually is more a Role Playing Game than action (It's made by Squaresoft so go figure) but the gameplay isn't bad. The game does seem to give you WAY too many guns though and I always have to go in my inventory to toss stuff away to get a mystery item which most of the time IS A GUN!!! Kinda hard to be scared when people keep giving you weapons and ammo! Seriously, played through almost 4 chapters, never ran out of ammo. Medicine yes but am still good on guns and ammo.

I thought the story of Parasite Eve is pretty intriguing though. It begins with you, being a rookie NYPD officer being taken on a date by this guy who kept hounding you and to get him to shut the Hell up, you go to the opera... Where the main actress starts singing and people start bursting in flames... EXCEPT FOR YOU!!! So now the heroine of the game is determined to find out why she's the only one who can oppose bad girl's pyromania.

"Go ahead, make my day... I dare you, set me on fire! ... Wait... I'm TELLING you to set me on fire?!"
- Aya Brea, NYPD Rookie

Turns out there's these cells in all living creatures called mitochondria and essentially they are responsible for giving our bodies energy. The story of Parasite Eve explores the possibility what if mitochondria is actually a sentient life form capable of taking control of us by communicating with other mitochondria is other peoples' bodies? What if these cells which are microscopic in size yet completely necessary as they grant us the energy to live our daily lives, what if they evolved with a consciousness to become the dominant life form and use humans merely as vessels? The story gets into how this is possible as a man "cultured liver cells" to save his wife. As a result the cells multiplied and multiplied. The woman passed but her daughters lived, one that's mitochondria attacks other cells and the other who's cells keep mitochondria in check.

Faults in this game? I'm not a fan of the combat system. The fight starts and you have full control of the character (Unlike Final Fantasy) but when you go to shoot your gun there's this green wire frame orb that  appears and the enemy gets a red target somewhere on it's body. Ultimately, no aiming and no itchy trigger finger! You get a limit of shots you can fire, if the enemy is outside the green wire frame orb you'll miss your shots, and once you use an item/special ability/fire your shots you'll have to run around dodging attacks until your "AT" gauge at the top right corner replenishes. Gotta make it challenging somehow I suppose but c'mon Squaresoft! You give me lots of guns, let me go psycho one man soldier on these monsters! Get rid of this RPG rules of fighting BS...

Another turnoff is the monsters. I mean, I've played Resident Evil which has some gross scenes but some of these monsters are just sick looking...

That's the FIRST enemy you face and it looks just as bad in the game. Worse actually because you see CG cutscene of a regular rat mutating into THAT. There's some other creatures that gave me some bad vibes just seeing them... Kinda reminds me of The Thing in some ways...

All in all, I think the story's pretty good and plays out very movie like, but this should come as no surprise as Squaresoft is damn good at story telling, CG direction, and keeping gamers wanting to play more and more to see what happens. Parasite Eve gets 4 out of 5 ugly ass deformed monsters.