We meet again on Identity Crisis to dive into the game .hack//infection. Continuing from the anime series .hack//sign, this single-player offline RPG is like no other. You are online-offline, if you understand what I mean. You play on your console but its as if you are online. So on to the elements that make this game fit into its genre.

    One factor of .hack//infection is the characters. They have close similarities to the anime show. In .hack//sign you meet Mimiru, a 15-year-old girl who is a heavy blade (translation: she carries a big sword with her) who looks like BlackRose, a companion you have in the game. You play a character named Kite, who was introduced to the game called "The World" by your friend, named Orca and who looks a lot like Bear from .hack//sign. Well, this obviously fits the RPG genre since you play characters that are on an epic adventure.

    There is also the mystery of a character that appears in both the game and anime. She has a relation with the mystery of why the game puts people in comas and hurts them in the real world. This leaves you trying to find out what the connection is, but only leads to more confusion and complication. In the game, she sends you e-mails that are undecipherable and you end up seeing her frequently being chased by a monster. This leads into the most important element of the game and why it is identified as an RPG.

    The most important and entertaining factor that makes up the .hack series has to be the game known as "The World." It’s a complex world with its own vocabulary such as root town, warp gate, and many more titles. "The World" is an RPG in itself. If the game existed in reality today, you would choose a character with different abilities and powers to possess different equipment. The name of the online game is accurate enough; it is like a whole other world.

    Now, if .hack//infection had these factors stripped, here's how it would be. If there was no similarity between the characters of .hack//sign and .hack//infection, there wouldn't be much of a conflict and nothing bad would be the come of it to move the story along. You'd just have characters that would need to be introduced and explained many times. The mystery of the girl would interfere with the story without making any connections. The game would have to be re-written and planned completely different. This would also loose ties between the anime series and might not be a long chain of games and anime series that plan to be released in the future. The most important loss would be "The World." If the game took place in real life then there, plain and simple wouldn't be the game. It would loose all meaning and the plot would be obliterated. There would be no way to avoid this problem and it would extinguish everything, like pulling a loose object at the bottom of a giant structure.

    Luckily, .hack//infection has these factors and they haven’t been removed. The game and anime are both current hits in America. You will feel like you are in a futuristic online game in real life (until you die or happen to look at the controller in your hand). The game has a completely original set up and story line, not seen by many other games before it and therefore making it a must buy. This concludes the second issue of Identity Crisis. Until next time, keep playing those games and appreciate their originality (and hopefully purchase .hack//infection)!