Do you have or know any small children? Would you like to see them cry? If you answered, “Yes,” to both those questions, stop reading now and buy this game. For everyone else not of Chaotic Evil alignment, with the holidays fast approaching please consider this less of a review and more of a public service announcement. Should a Playstation 2 owner close to your heart unwrap a gift with “Falling Stars” on the cover (and with a $15 price tag it is bound to happen somewhere), be prepared to act quickly and avert this potential crisis.

Brought to you by Agetec, who are best known for the Armored Core series, Falling Stars is set in the mystical land of Dazzleon and tells the story of a possessed young girl named Luna and her “pet.” After being woken up one day by a mysterious rumbling, Luna sets out on a series of tedious fetch quests just to get her green-skinned uncle Matt to answer one simple damned question.

Even though there are a few different activities such as rowing a boat, catching a suicidal cat with a mound of pillows, or herding rabbits, the controls in these are either frustrating or just feel broken. Combat is overly simplistic: as you wander around town Luna encounters colored orbs which transition into a rock-paper-scissors style battle. Here your pet Komi is forced to square off against iterations of the same few animal models. (Although this is exactly what we sent Michael Vick to prison for, if Japanese culture has taught us anything it's that such behavior is tolerable if you are under the age of thirteen, or are a girl wearing a skirt and tie.)

Now that you know why little blue Komi’s eyes are wide with terror, hit the jump to feel more of his pain.

In Dazzleon, fashion is a moral imperative

When you first begin the game you decide what to wear, but rather than this being a simple cosmetic choice, each option has repercussions -- next to each character’s portrait there is a bar that shows how much that particular person likes what you are wearing. If you don’t please the right people, they won’t give you quests, impeding your progress through the story. Finally, something to teach our daughters to be self conscious about their appearance, concretely demonstrating that pleasing people with superficial looks is the only way to advance in life. (And to think I was so worried that nothing could replace the loss of mary-kateandashley magazine!)

At this point you leave your home, stepping outside for the first time, where you can literally hear this game begin to suck. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. For some strange reason, when your foot first hits the cobblestone pavement there is a perfectly normal clicking sound, again followed by a perfectly normal clomp of your second foot touching the ground. But the moment your foot comes off the ground, there is a weird sucking noise reminiscent of the sound made by a toilet just as that last bit of water breaks the air seal in the bowl -- not the gurgle, but the tiny noise just before that. This is a portent of terrible things to come.

Walking is the only way to get around the “world,” the world being one town interspersed with forced loading screens, designed as gates which block the roads. There is very little to see of interest and nothing to do as you run between point A and B, completing whatever inane task you’ve been given. There are light RPG elements found in the inventory system, as well as what amount to side quests that let you earn some currency to buy things with, but these side quests are really more random minigames, none of which work very well and all seem to be designed to be deliberately frustrating.

Luna considers joining Ophelia

One of the minigames you will encounter early on is one in which you row a boat around a pond to collect water lilies. Although you have to rotate both analog sticks counter clockwise simultaneously to move forward, it actually isn’t terribly difficult. (Then again, I can pat my head and rub my belly at the same time.) The frustrating part comes when you attempt to pick up what must be magical water lilies of repulsion, as nearly every time your boat gets close to one, water currents push you away. This is one of the points where your child would turn to you and ask for help, but you would be powerless to do anything as there is no rhyme or reason behind when you can row to a lily and when you can’t. What parent needs a game to demonstrate to their children that they aren’t superhuman and can’t protect them from all the frustrations life has in store? (Well okay, maybe Superman. But what non-fictional parent needs that grief?)

As mentioned above, the combat is a very simple game of rock-paper-scissors where you and your opponent take turns attacking and defending. Once your opponent secretly picks one of the three attacks, you choose which you want to defend against, and if you both picked the same one then the damage is nullified and it is your turn to go on the offensive. Theoretically, each enemy has a regular attack pattern which you can write down and follow in the next encounter, but it gets a little confusing when “different” enemies are the same model but just a slightly different color. While the fighting is taking place, Luna can cast healing spells and use potions on Komi to enhance his performance. While use of such supplements may be illegal in baseball, clearly the rulers of Dazzelon have no such qualms.

Apparently the mystical land of Dazzleon abuts the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant

There are some positive things to say about this title. It comes on when you press start. The art style is a kind of pseudo-anime which is pleasant enough in the opening cutscene, but the rest of the experience is just sub-par in so many ways. You do have to admire Agetec for their dogged attempts at publishing games without giant mechs, but just because a game is intended for children doesn’t excuse any lack of quality. Falling Stars is ultimately a title designed only to appeal to bargain bin shopping grandparents who see cute looking cover art for a cheap price (in which case they should be looking for “Dog’s Life” instead).

So if anyone unwrapping presents this year sees Falling Stars, be prepared to act quickly and spill a conveniently placed drink. Or you can be proactive and use a pair of needle-nose pliers to put mysterious “teeth marks” in the PS2’s power cable (just remember to unplug it first). Otherwise, if your reflexes aren’t quite what they used to be and/or your eleven-year-old’s Ritalin just isn’t doing its job, practice saying, “Sweetheart, just because Komi is happy when he wins doesn’t mean that he wants to fight.”