Have you ever played a JRPG and thought to yourself, this lame spiky-haired punk needs to die? Do you find the idea of taking out the brave whiny-mouthed hero and his overly frisky healer girlfriend, intriguing? Does the idea of a group of self-righteous do-gooders meeting their fate in the cold grip of impending doom just make you want explode in absolute glee? Then I shall present to you, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!: What Did I do to Deserve This? (Note: since this is perhaps the longest game title in the history of overly-long Japanese game titles ever, I’m just going to refer to the game as Badman, thank you! )
Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! (Crap I did it again) for the Sony PSP was developed by Japan Studio/Acquire and is distributed by the masters of crazy Japanese games NIS America. Badman (much better) has you playing the role of, wait for it: The God of Destruction, so in other words leave your morality at the door. As matter of fact just rip every ounce of goodness away, because you are the baddest villain in the land of JRPG and manga fantasy lore. I am telling you, you are like Sephiroth, Kefka, and Mother Brain combined. Yet the only physical form that you have in the game is that of a pickaxe, and no I am not kidding.
Alright, you are the most evil pickaxe the world has ever seen, but you have a task ahead of you. You see, this Count Dracula looking dude, who I’m assuming is the Badman that the game is talking about, is seeking you out in order to protect his sorry butt. In order for you as The God of Destruction to protect the Count dude, you must have an army, and as the lord of all that is evil you must use one of the most evil subjects ever to grace mankind-evolution.
You see, the landscape of Badman is mostly seen underground, however you do see a town, church, and the Badman’s evil castle of doom located at the very top of the screen. The rest of the screen is filled up with blocks of soil as far as the eye can see (in other words, five and a half PSP screens worth). You use the disembodied pickaxe to brake soil blocks, thus in the long scheme of things is used to create your underground dungeon of terror. Most of the soil blocks are just good old fashion dirt, but many blocks are filled with nutrients; the building blocks of life (well, at least in this game). When you break a nutrient-filled block you will have created your first low-level form of life, a green slime (it’s Jell-o time, baby).
As you create more and more slimes as well as extending the size of your dungeon something begins to happen, your slimy friends will eventually die and turn into a flower (what?) this will leave a nutrient residue on some of the soil-blocks (which is just plain rude and a pain in the butt to clean up after parties). Thus you will eventually get soil-blocks that become overly saturated with nutrients. A high nutrient count soil-block will lead to more powerful forms of life such as bugs, larva, and lizard-men. Oh yeah, another way that the monsters reproduce is by eating other lower forums of monsters, this leads into the concept of the food chain.
You as the God of Destruction must be mindful of the monster food chain; this is the heart and soil of Badman. You see, the slimes are eating by the omnom flies, the omnom flies get eating by the lizard-men, and the freaking dragons (yes, you can make dragons) can eat who ever the hell they want to eat.
The training mode in this game is a must play option due to the fact that Badman is a very deep and involving game. For example, you must break blocks in an O, T, or an H formation in order to create the lizard-men. Many situations will require a lot of forward thinking and planning out. Do not (I repeat do not) just jump into this game without doing the training mode. Badman may look simple, but then again Pokemon looked simple even though you must do calculus and be more intelligent then Steven Hawking just to get that damn Pikachu out of that ridiculous ball.
One thing that I did not like about this game is the fact that the monsters will go to places in the dungeon that you did not want them to go to, they have a mind of their own and I wish that I could be a better God of Destruction. I guess that this is the whole evil never pays deal; if something that the Shin Megami Tensei games have taught us, it is that when you think you have evil under control it just never works out. (Wow, sounds like a past girlfriend of mine)
Overall, if you enjoy JRPGs (which this is not), fantasy, manga, and digging up things then this just might be up your alley. The game has a 16-bit era look to it and is just busting with nostalgia for gamers such as myself. I must also congratulate the translator (Ryuta Sato) and the script writer (Steve Carlton) for delivering a great narrative and charm to this fantastic PSP title. So if you’re compelled to be the Badman, hop on over to the PSN store and download Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! Why did I do to Deserve This? (hopefully they will make a Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! 2 : Why does this always happen to me again, why God of Destruction why?)
