All Live a Live chapter timelines, ranked

5) The Near Future

I genuinely didn’t expect this to be so far down the list but the more I thought about Akira’s journey through the near future, the more I realized it’s many faults.

The Near Future isn’t terrible, it’s actually somewhat fun. With its gang of skull-helmeted cronies, its giant mechs, mad scientists, and goofy anime tropes, it feels like this should be a sure thing. But The Near Future tries to do way too much with too little time.

Your character is a psychic kid who is growing up in an orphanage after your father was killed by a goofy biker gang. You mostly help out around the orphanage and look after the kids. Eventually you get the help of an old scientist who helps you bring a child’s dead turtle back to life by liquifying it and pouring it’s remains into a large robot turtle who then fights with you. All the while you find out that there’s an evil organization that’s also using this technology but by kidnapping thousands of people and liquifying them to create a giant flesh milkshake they’ll use to bring an evil deity named The Great Inko (A.K.A. Odeo) back to life. They mostly succeed and start bringing it back to life with the help of another old scientist and a mysterious shaman. You return to the old man who brought the turtle back to life where he takes you into his basement and let’s you borrow his massive mech named the Steel Titan which you can use to punch the god to death.

A lot, isn’t it?

None of the characters are explored because of how short the stories are, and a surprising amount of your time is going to be spent playing on toilets, washing your hand, selling food, and messing around with the other orphans. In fact, when you finally get into the mech the game has been teasing forever, you’re about five minutes away from beating the story.

If it was a full-fledged story with space to explain all the little things they try to hint at, this could have been a great weird game on par with No More Heroes, but crammed into a short game it just feels rushed and empty.