If you’ve spent any amount of time on the Internet, you have no doubt seen the debate over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. But I don’t see similar discussions happening about Parasite Eve in the video game sphere, so I’m here to change that.
Parasite Eve is a shooter-style RPG from Square that first came out on the original PlayStation in 1998, way before they became Square Enix. It very clearly takes some gameplay inspiration from Resident Evil, but since it’s Square, it uses an Active Time Battle (ATB) combat system. It was successful enough to spawn two sequels: a second game on the PlayStation and a third game on the PSP.
In the series, you play as Aya Brea, a rookie police officer in New York City. The opening scene of the first game occurs on Christmas Eve when Aya is on a date at Carnegie Hall. Nearly everyone in the theatre spontaneously combusts except for Aya and an actress named Melissa. The rest of the game takes place over the following days as Aya investigates what happened that night. She follows Melissa, who is now calling herself Eve, around NYC and deals with all the horrible monsters that seem to appear wherever Eve goes. It is an interesting story involving many scientific and philosophical concepts. I was hooked on it as a young teen and played the first game all the way through, even though my smooth brain very likely didn’t understand most of it at the time.
The third game, called 3rd Birthday, also takes place around Christmas. Yet again, Aya deals with strange creatures appearing throughout New York City. I never played entirely through this one, so I have less experience with it and its story. Because of the time of year these stories unfold, we should consider Parasite Eve a Christmas game and replay it every winter. Similarly to how some people repeatedly rewatch the same Christmas movies over and over again. At the very least, I will start this tradition for myself this year and I urge you to join me.
Lastly, let me take this opportunity to reiterate what I said way back in a post about Final Fantasy Remakes. Square should remaster, remake, or at least make the Parasite Eve series available on modern hardware. It’s been far too long since they were last playable. I’m pretty sure they were available back on PS3, PSP, and Vita, but that was many years ago. These games are excellent and must continue to be experienced by new and old gamers alike.