Poison Control is one the games of all time

You know how the Vita had a lot of low–budget, janky, japanese third-person shooters involving anime girls in oddly-designed maps? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, think Ultra Despair Girls. There were enough of them that I’ve taken to calling this niche subgenre of a subgenre “vitacore games.” Poison Control, despite not releasing on the Vita, is a Vitacore game.

It's an odd game to describe. It’s a janky third-person shooter set in what is referred to as “hell”, but not “hell” as in “fire and brimstone”. Rather, it is set in the version of hell you’d get if the Divine Comedy was written by someone who makes Traumacore Hello Kitty edits. When the soul of a woman is struggling with emotional turmoil, her soul gets pulled into hell and trapped in a poison swamp that needs to be cleaned up before she can move past whatever seems to be troubling her. Each new emotional problem is a new level, and they vary from “Wow, I really can’t handle pollen that well.” to “MY SISTER IS TRYING TO MURDER AND REPLACE ME!” In one level a little girl starts killing random things because she thinks that if heaven gets full then her dead dog will come back to life. Then, inside another level, a grown-ass woman has a breakdown because she realized mascot costumes have people inside them.

The first moment of combat I experienced in this game did not excite me. It felt clunky and lacked polish. By the end of the game, it still felt that way. However, I had begun to get a feeling for what it was trying to accomplish. You can deal some nice burst damage if you clean up the pool of liquid (called poison) that an enemy is standing on. The only things really holding this system back are the lack of a dash mechanic and the jank gunplay. As it stands, I had to rely heavily on backing up to avoid spam while I took enemies out. This became less effective as late-stage-weapons either require you to stand still while firing or deal pitiful damage. This was also complicated by the game’s insistence that you aim for the weak point to deal extra damage, but with the mobility options present in the game you can only engineer a situation where you reliably hit an enemy’s weak point in a fraction of encounters. I used the starting gun throughout the entire game as it felt the most versatile and effective, but it still lacked that special “punch” that all great video game firearms have.

The levels in Poison Control are built like mazes. You either run around on platforms surrounded by lightly decorated seas of purple, red, and pink liquid or on platforms suspended over lightly decorated ground. The more decorated missions stick in my mind more - I don’t recall much about the level with the girl who drowned in a sunken ship, but I do recall the pollen allergy one. Additionally, each level has 3 collectable items you can find to unlock this mission’s girl as equippable gear. You’re going to want to do this if you don’t want to be stuck with Poisonette, the resident of hell who tried to steal your body when you got pulled down here and now shares it with you. As I mentioned earlier, I used Poisonette as one of my main weapons for basically all but the very tail end of the game. You also get the option to flirt with Poisonette at the end of every level, and how you choose to do so will provide you with bonuses.

At this point, I’m not sure what else I can say about Poison Control without rambling. I could tell you more about the story, but explaining that two radio personalities in hell are hosting a contest where the winner can wish their way into heaven would require a few drinks and a lot more tangents. In fact, the longer it’s been since I’ve played it, the harder it is to convince myself this game is real. Poison Control is like the fictional game that someone would get killed over during an episode of a police procedural where a murder happens at an anime convention. In 20 years it’s going to go viral from a YouTube video about obscure anime games on 8th gen consoles or something and I’m going to awaken like a goddamn sleeper agent. This is the hot-pink vitacore fever dream released years after the Vita stopped being relevant. Like I said, Poison Control is one of the games of all time.