I am of violently mixed opinion about this game.
For a MegaZeux game, it is uniformly excellent, and probably among the top in the medium. What problems I do have with it are largely problems endemic thereto — which is understandable considering that a) the culture surrounding MegaZeux is largely derived from the culture that surrounded ZZT, and b) the culture that surrounded ZZT was largely derived from America Online in its heyday. (I should know; I was there.)
But this review is supposed to be about Kikan, not MegaZeux.
Let me provide context. Kikan is set, at least for the most part, in a curious alternate-universe New York City. The boroughs are renamed with acronyms: BX, BK, QNS, MHT, SI, and the unseen but named LI (context: an alcoholic drink, "LI Iced Tea"). Only the term "Bronx" is ever actually used, and then only to refer to to the Bronx Zoo.
There is also gratuituous use of fanboy Japanese, except there is some implication that it's perfectly normal in-universe. The Twin Towers are called the Towers of Dub, rendered 「塔のダブ」. "Shoshinkai" (the historical name of a Nintendo trade show now called Nintendo Space World, even in Japanese) is shown as being held in NYC, and features banners for the XBox, Playstation, Square-Enix, Sega and Konami. The phrase 「デュキＴＶ」 appears on almost every television set, and most of those have Sega Dreamcasts.
(As the title, Kikan, is not an in-world entity, it has no such excuse. Unfortunately it's not a single Japanese word, but about twenty different homophonic ones. The kanji provided (造機) are actually read zouki; the probable intended meaning of kikan is "Engine," as the author has also released another MegaZeux work by that name. Likewise unexcused is the use of Ougi (rather than, say, Tech) to denote special techniques and/or magic, and the セーブ on save-points.)
There is running political commentary, which may or may not be in-universe — but probably isn't entirely so, even though the political situation appears to be somewhat different than in OTL. The Nintendo Revolution's controller has just been introduced at the aforementioned Shoshinkai, presumably placing the time at around late 2005, but the economy is currently in a recession. The FARC is a threat to US national security and operates partially on U.S. soil (albeit only as drug-runners). The name Al-Qaeda isn't mentioned. (Fundamentalist Islam is mentioned in one of two strange conspiracy-theory diatribes, offered by random NPCs, which are "left-wing" only in the sense that the people whom they vilify are right-wing, or at least right-of-center.)
... and that last paragraph implies most of why I don't like Kikan. So, on to the parts I did like!
(Actually, since this post is getting a bit long, that's been postponed until
Edit 2009-05-19: "Tomorrow". Ha.
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