Parasite Eve, Holiday Tradition

“Merry Christmas 1997”

During Christmas, sometimes you just want to kill things.

We all have our Christmas traditions: giving gifts, watching holiday films, listening to Christmas music, arguing about Die Hard. One of our sorely missing holiday traditions is the inclusion of Christmas video games, mostly because these are a rare commodity. Maybe you boot up your Kingdom Hearts II save file to play through the Christmas Halloween Town, or play enough of Bayonetta 2 to experience the holiday moments.

One of my yearly traditions is to play through the cult classic Square Enix title, Parasite Eve. Just like Die Hard is inarguably a Christmas movie, Parasite Eve is inarguably a Christmas game.

During Christmas of 1997, a strange virus breaks out in New York City. Unlike a flu pandemic or other viral breakout, this virus makes its hosts spontaneously combust before absorbing their essence and mutating them into ungodly monstrosities. Aya Brea of the NYPD is attending a holiday play with a date when the entire audience bursts into flame, killing by a mutant being that calls herself “Eve” who has taken host in the body of the actress, Melissa. Determined to stop this viral breakout and expose the mystery behind it all, Aya becomes a one-woman army in the six-day rush to stop Mitochondria Eve from destroying…