Posted by: Jane Douglas

Nothing gets me through a long train journey like an immersive handheld console game and a set of headphones.

The game currently nestled inside my DS Lite is The World Ends With You, Square Enix's newest portable action RPG.

Dramatic though it is, the title doesn't give much away. This is possibly because no title could give much away. Unless you called it, I don't know, 'Urban Tokyo role-playing rhythm-based fashion-themed action game wherein sulky amnesiac protagonist is threatened with deletion should he fail to complete random tasks set by shadowy supernatural strangers.'

Which is the gist of it.

Oh, and it's played across two screens.

I don't mean there's a map on one screen and your character on another, or a helpful inventory of all your stuff on the upper screen while you run around on the lower.

I mean that you are controlling two Japanese kids at the same time, one top screen and one bottom, with your left hand/d-pad and right hand/stylus respectively.

I originally had my suspicions that The World Ends With You was designed for a putative next generation of super-powered mutant gamers. Their enormous brains, I presumed, would have evolved  to the point where each eye can independently focus on a different screen and each hand undertake completely different tasks with freakish dexterity.

Because - to me at least- gameplay at first seemed like 'rub your belly and pat your head' taken to a brain-melting new level.

And then I realised that it's more like a game of air hockey, with a glowing green power-up as the puck: you pass said puck back and forth between screens and the character to concentrate on is the one who needs to whack it back.

That'll teach me to pay more attention to in-game tutorials.