Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Yakuza: Dead Souls (PS3): One Zombie Shamble back

"It could be Dead Rising Japan if it had zombies in it..."

That's what I said in my quickie review of Yakuza 3.  Little did I know that they had planned to make their fifth installment to be a zombie apocalypse theme. Its been less than a year since the inception of this blog and here I am, about to review my 3rd Yakuza title. This blog was basically a project for a class and I needed a game I really liked and played recently so I reviewed Yakuza 4. Ended up falling head over heels for the game, quickly becoming one of my favorite games on the PS3. With this new ripple in the franchise, lets see how it stands up to its predecessors.

YAKUZA: DEAD SOULS:(PS3)


This installment of Yakuza takes place not long after the events of Yakuza 4, and opens up with previous games protagonist Kazama Kiryu enjoying simple but happy lifestyle running the Sunshine Orphanage until he receives a call notifying him that his de facto daughter, Haruka, has been taken hostage in Kamurocho. He asks to speak to her to this ominous voice, where the game cuts to Haruka captured in the penthouse of the Millennium tower in Kamurocho crying into the phone to Kazama for help, and that everything in town is dying. It pans out to show a zombie infested Kamurocho and buildings falling apart. After this intro the game then cuts to into 4 acts where you play as our four protagonists during stages of the outbreak. It opens with Shun Akiyama returning from Yakuza 4 at the beginning of the outbreak, Goro Majima in his first playable appearance during the midst of the outbreak, and returning Ryuji Goda from Yakuza 2 in the later stages of the outbreak before bringing in Kazama for the finale.



The main thing to remember about this game is that its not Yakuza 5. The game is more or less a alternate reality kind of spin off so its more of a Yakuza 4.5 kinda thing. There is a degree of a disconnect in the story here because they know they are dealing with fictitious monsters so they take some pretty interesting leaps of faith, such as a character with a chain-gun for an arm. They do a pretty good job of managing to tie in the current Yakuza franchise lore that has come before it to give the game some degree of relativity to the characters. But really, bringing back some older villains from the first two games really doesn't do much to make this a Yakuza game, it really needs to be seen for what it is, just a quirky off shoot that should not really be seen as Yakuza canon. As soon as a story introduces zombies into it most people already know enough zombie lore to know how the story line is going to progress anyways.



The Yakuza games bread and butter has always been the fun and visceral martial arts 3rd person combat. Getting a tight collection of baddies around you so tight that you can stomp their teeth in so deep that they have to pass them like kidney stones. But when you throw in the concept of zombies, you really take away the ability to use any real melee combat with the exception of some hand weapons. So basically they had to change the core of the franchises combat to something that was more accommodating to the new enemies. Basically, the game changes form a 3rd person spectacle fighter to a 3rd person shooter. And the transition is not smooth. When wandering around the map in 3rd person mode the controls seem familiar. But when you go to shoot your have three options. You have a blind fire where you can just shoot on the run, for large thickets of enemies a chain gun or shotgun works great with this, but it does have a lack of accuracy. Your second option is with L1 button, which puts you in a strafe mode. its still somewhat inaccurate but it allows you to mow down a crowd in front of you. Finally you can use L2 to go into reticule mode, basically its the same thing as the previous but instead you can focus your aim to a specific spot. The problem with this it that it locks you into the spot you are standing. But that's not too bad right? Resident Evil 4 did the same thing and that game was great right? Not quite, because in addition to that there are some camera issues as well.  When you are moving around the right analog stick will spin the camera in the tried and true method we all know, but when you go into aim mode, the control then flips to the left analog stick, so if you go into aim mode on the run you will more than likely be aiming at the floor or the ceiling. To make matters worse, when you go into aim mode, the camera immediately whips around to the direction the character is facing and not the direction the camera was facing. So there are going to be situations where you are in a tight space and you are going to make a quick turn and fire only to find yourself staring at the wall as a horde of zombies bite you on the ass. This is a problem that plagued Metal Gear Solid 4 as well. There have a been a billion shooters that have already addressed this problem so that fact that this game has it is really fucking annoying. It takes a few hours to get used to, or if you are like me you just say fuck it and switch to a shotgun so you don't need to deal with it.


Instead of the bizarre sandbox RPG hybrid of combat that the previous Yakuza had you aren't randomly attacked on the street. Instead there is a quarantined area of the map that progressively grows as you play the game. And you have to jump in and out of there to complete missions, rescue survivors, or level grind. When you leave the hot zone you are able to explore around the city much like in the previous games and visit the shops, arcades, restaurants and clubs. You receive instructions for main quests as you play through but running around town will also allow you to meet people for side quests. Sometimes you will meet up with other survivors who want to help. You can train a handful of these people to come into the quarantined areas so you have an extra gun with you. Some of them are pretty effective, some of them are next to useless. There is a location on the map where you can train them to be more useful but it always seemed like I was going back to save them more than I was tearing through a crowd faster. Yakuza was never overly known as for having a fast paced story, but it all linked together as you played. Yakuza: Dead Souls breaks up into missions where after you complete them you are given a grade and experience boost. Its not really annoying per say but it is a bit of a change from what I have become used to.

I love the characters in this series. Probably to unhealthy levels. I think Shun Akiyama might have beaten out John Marston for my fictional gay crush. They cast of Yakuza franchise may get a little long winded in the cut scenes but they are generally sympathetic characters all with their own interesting quirks that make them all lovable and entertaining. I've already discussed how Akiyama is a mauve coat wearing chivalrously suave mother fucker, and that Kazama Kiryu despite being a ruthlessly violent martial arts master, hes a sucker for kids and really has a heart of gold. But special mention goes Goro Majima in this games installment. Majima has always been a bit of a lunatic in the Yakuza series but as you learn more about his back story you find that he isn't exactly all that bad. I mean, he's no good guy but he certainly does the right thing when it counts. But in Yakuza: Dead Souls his chapter literally opens up with him watching a zombie movie, laughing hysterically at it about how dumb people are in the movie, to see some of his men bust in the room in a panic and die from zombies pretty much on the same way as on screen. He immediately gets a childlike grin on his face and cocks his shotgun. Its a refreshing change because hes probably one of the first characters in the history of zombie lore who actually realizes the ridiculousness of it and has fun with it. Even a large majority of the missions in it he basically responds with plans that he's concocted from watching zombie movies. Even more so, the guy is a total prick too, so its funny to watch him interact with people. People who plead to him for help he basically tells them to fuck off, people who are impressed with what he does he basically blows them off because he's having too much fun killing to care, and there is a scene where some little girl excitedly asks if he's going to save them and he's taken aback and confused, and complains that being a hero completely killed his buzz. I wish his chapter was longer because I was having so much fun playing as him.

Akiyama, Kiryu, Goda, Majima. 
Between Zombie slaying, Majima enjoys telling people off on the street and Karaoke

The enemies in this game.. sigh.. Look, I want to be more lenient here, but the games originality needs to be called into question. Alright, the ground is littered with Japanese zombie stereotypes, that didn't bother me.  Then there was the "Crybaby" which is a woman zombie that walks around a cries and screams loudly summoning more zombie, that seemed a bit like Left 4 Dead's Witch and unused Screamer but ok, still sort of original. I started to get suspicious when the "Monkey boy" came out , a fast moving hopping zombie that dressed like a skater and acts suspiciously like the L4D's jockey. But then the game threw the "Meat head" and "Fattie" came out to play and I literally dropped the controller in a stunned awe but not the good kind. The Meat head is seriously an exact replica of a "Tank" in L4D only slower and far less intimidating and the Fattie when shot explodes and releases a gas/fluid that makes the zombies enraged and chase after you. Those blatant copies would be bad enough but one of the first bosses in the game is a large monster that moves on all fours with giant claws, can climb on walls, has no eyes, sharp teeth, and can attack you with a long tongue that can stab you. Did that sound like Resident Evil 2's Licker? Yeah, it did to me too. I was about to be really upset by the lack of originality but I am willing to forgive it because the game has a nice plethora of bosses and mini bosses to fight (and as we all know I am constantly bitching about the lack of bosses in games these days) and they do come up with a handful of original concepts and monsters to get me off their back.  Yeah some of the bosses borrow from the zombie games that came before it including a particularly Wesker like boss but the later stages of the game I'm so engrossed in the universe and so excited to go to the next boss it doesn't phase me.

Go ahead, Try to convince yourself otherwise. This thing is a Licker. 
I found this installment of Yakuza to be significantly shorter than the rest of the series. I skipped an awful lot of the mini games this time around because I didn't find very many new ones while I played the game and finishing the story offered me a 32% completion which is more than I've ever had in a Yakuza before, but that basically tells me that the game was significantly cut down. Strangely, despite having a brand new concept from the series and almost a completely new control scheme to it, the game has this surprising feeling of being shorter. Which means the game still has a mind numbing level of things to do and you could probably get hours of play to try to complete it all, but if you already own Yakuza 3 or 4 like I do you wont find the need because you won't want to shill out your hard earned money to get blue balled by a new set of bitches at the hostess clubs.

So would I recommend the game? Well that's hard to say. The controls alone are bad enough that anyone who has played any competent shooter would quit playing after the first gun sequence and really I wouldn't blame them. And I can't say I would recommend the game to anyone who was looking to get into the Yakuza franchise, because as far as the Yakuza lore and story is concerned its a bit lacking, I'd tell them to play 4 for that. This is game is really just expansion for that niche of people like me who have completely fallen in love with this universe. It is just a new ripple in a well established story line to give the player a few more hours to spend time with some characters they've grown attached to. They game has some rocky spots and definitely is buggered by some bad control issues, but I was able to have fun with it, play it through the finish and had the desire to keep playing it when I did. I was a fun little stroll back through Kamurocho but really, this game is really here to just wet the pallet before Yakuza 5. Pick it up if you are a fan of the series. 

Friday, April 13, 2012

PAX East: Gaming for the Masses


As we all know, Penny’s Arcade’s PAX and PAX East have respectively become some of the mechas for all things gaming, be them video, table top, board, card or other. Rooms and rooms of panels, discussions, performances, and of course people playing games. I have personally attended a local anime convention for the past twelve years now but going to that convention doesn’t seem to be scratching my con going itch anymore, and has an avid gamer it would be wrong of me to not going to not attend this convention at least once. So I saddled up from my hole in the ground in Cleveland and embarked on a magical journey to Boston MA to attend my first Penny Arcade Expo. Walking into the expo’s exhibition hall was nothing short of a mad house, just thousands of booths and big screen TVs and exhibits showing off what will be on its way soon. Here’s a small glimpse of what I could get my hands on or at the very least got to watch for a bit, so forgive me if I am lacking information.


SLEEPING DOGS: (XB360/PS3) -  Square Enix

As a unabashed fan of the Yakuza franchise, I naturally hit the breaks when I walked past a screen of Asian men beating the snot out of each other. From what I gathered from the demo I got to try, You play a detective in China who is very deep undercover. Not exactly the most original starting point but what do you want? The first thing I noticed about this game is there was no subtitles, and everything was spoken in English. Probably had the game set up that way for the expo but I think the game would look more natural if it was spoken in Mandarin with subtitles, but I digress. My character is at a table talking with his boss, finding out that some guy who has been paying them as gone to another gang for protection and I take to the streets of China to teach him a lesson. After a brief walk out of the restaurant I was in I was in the bright lights and busy streets of downtown china. Walking through what appeared to be a marketplace a chase began as I found my target.  Weaving in and out of pedestrians, hopping off vending machines and chasing him to the rooftops lead me into a trap. This is where combat started. The best way I can describe the controls is it plays a lot like the Batman: Arkham games. One attack button that you tap for light strikes and charge for a big finish, A counter button, a grab move to smash people into stuff. There are various weapon controls too but the demo never gets that far.  Game is fuckin violent as shit. Not like the Yakuza stomp you in the teeth kinda visceral. As I was punching and the crap out of baddies, I grabbed one of them and saw various parts of the environment glowing, since I appeared to be a near a vent I tried that, and watched the hero(?) smash his victims head right into an air condition van as chunks of his skull sprayed everywhere.  I followed this up by spiking another guys face off a lit grill and watch his light up a leaking gas pipe.  The combat was pretty fast and fluid and it was a lot of fun to play. The only problem is if you don’t hit the counter when the little counter icon shows up like in Batman, you stand there with your arms wide open for a few seconds and will probably take a hit. Perhaps its to discourage just mashing counter but I found it annoying. The game was pretty fun though and I Intend to seek this one out in the future.




THE SECRET WORLD (PC) – Funcom

This was one of the first things I tried simply because it was one of the first things to actually become available to play as we walked by. Now, me and PC games don’t often get along because I tend to be a console tard and they design to the controls to be as complicated as fuck so not to sully the game for the glorious PC gaming master race. That being said, the initial appearance seemed to be an MMO. I was playing some young woman brandishing a shotgun standing in what appeared to be a junkyard. As I learned the movement controls somewhat I wandered into a more open area of the junkyard and was approached by two Giant mecha’s that promptly set my dopey ass on fire. The remaining minutes was me scrambling around trying to figure out what to do and trying to pop off a shot with my shotgun. I was effectively wrecked in a matter of seconds. After looking popping to look at the 800 billion page Oxford English instructions for PC controls I decided to step back and just record someone else playing it.  The Strange World is and MMO set in current times, and it pertains to deal with kind of fantasy and myth lore. There are three factions of the Dragons, the Illuminati, and the Templars. Sadly I wasn’t around for one of the public demonstrations so I don’t know too much about the story other than its about regular people fighting all the urban myths we've come to learn. But the game seems to take place in a myriad of different locations so it was really hard to pick a theme. I am not a big MMO guy so I don’t know if I would end up getting it but it certainly caught my interest. I definitely leads into a concept that i have often through about for a game where people in a modern, current day lifestyle are forced into a fantasy situation. The Star Ocean series kind of touches on this but this appears to be one of the first games that actually depicts my vision. Should be interesting when its released.





PENNY ARCADE’S: ON THE RAIN-SLICKED PRECIPCE OF DARKNESS 3:
(PC, Mac, Xbox, iDevices, Android) – Zeboyd Games


I have never really been a fan of Penny Arcade’s comic. I never found it funny. I can totally respect what they do for the gaming community and support their causes such as their Child’s Play auctions, but I just don’t read the comic. So naturally, I didn’t play or even hear of the previous two chapters of this game. However, When we were walking by it almost looked like they had set up a booth for Final Fantasy 4 or 6.  The graphical style and play of the game seemed very familiar, and I don’t give a shit about what people think, I love JRPGS. I’ve grown up on them and some of the best games I have played are JRPGS. So I naturally gravitated to this game and lucky for our group one of them opened up. Its has some interesting mechanics that you recover your MP as the fight goes on rather than starting off with a lot of it. It looks like it plays just like the old Final Fantasy games did, I don’t know if I am going to have to go back and play the others, but this one has my interest.



WAKFU (PC) – Square Enix
I wish I had time to sit down with this one. I appears to be a Tactical JRPG that mixes the character design from Disgaea and the environment design of Bastion. From what I hear it seems to be a turn based MMO, which as far as I know might be the first of its kind on a major level, as I've never heard of another like that. Its also supposed to be free to play, so that is certainly a point in its favor. It overall looked very cool and interesting and seemed like something I would play. Sadly me and PC games don’t really get along as seen in the previous video, but I am seriously considering looking into this one further.  




ROCK BAND: BLITZ (PS3, XB360) – Harmonix
Honestly, rhythm gaming with large plastic instruments is dead as far as I concerned. Looking at the game play, it seriously looked like the only new addition was to add the PSP style of play to the current console versions. I really had no interest in checking this booth out, but then This happened.

These guys were seriously fucking everywhere, harassing everyone. It was hilarious.


CHARLIE MURDER (XB360, PS3?) - Ska Studios
I don’t really know my artists so comparing the art style is not something I feel I can do. The game has a dark grimy appearance that reminded me of some of the flash games on newgrounds like Alien Hominid . I don’t have any idea what the story is about other that it seems to be 4 fallen punk rock idols trying to get their band back off the ground. The two videos I managed a shoot seemed to be a mix of rhythm game and a side scrolling brawler a la Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim. My group really wanted to get our hands onto this one but we caught it early in the show and didn’t really want to wait around, (rookie mistake for PAX. The lines will NEVER be short. If you want to try something jump in line when you want to and don’t leave it.) The concept looked pretty cool and if I played more games online or had more friends it would be something I would look into. Although the company is Ska studios, and Ska music is terrible, so that does take away some my faith in it.







STEEL BATTALION: HEAVY ARMOR (XB360 Kinect) – Capcom
Yeah, This will save motion gaming. If you were dopey enough to buy the original Steel Battalion on Xbox you were treated to a massive control panel and a game so hard you would be gunned down in the first few seconds of play. They felt the best way to fix this was to completely remove what gave the game any sense of originality. I honestly couldn’t even pretend to care. Fuck Kinect, Fuck the Wii, Fuck Move. Quit trying to pander to a market of disloyal casual gamers and go back to making quality content for the people who fucking brought you to the mainstream to begin with, you assholes.
QUANTUM CONUNDRUM (XB360, PS3, PC) – Square Enix
This may have been one of the more difficult games to get to. When the founding members of Penny Arcade and Pax publicly take notice to a crowd of several thousand? There are going to be lines. This game appears to be a very cartoony looking first person puzzle game. This really strikes me as a game that is going to capitalize on the Portal  fan base because it definitely feels like it plays along that game. I remember a lot of the subtitles that popped up on the screen were very funny and the whole game had a very Saturday morning cartoon kind of charm about it. This game ended up winning one of the Indie Developer Best in Show award’s from the Convention Committed which seemed a bit odd to me because a game hardly seems indie in my book when you have a juggernaut like Square Enix backing you up. Still, the game looked very entertaining and is going to be one to keep your eyes on.





LOLLIEPOP CHAINSAW
(XB360, PS3) – Grasshopper Manufacture, WB Games, Kadowawa Games

I really wanted to get my hands on this one. I really did. Every trailer I see for the game looks hilarious and awesome. It’s a Suda 51 game so I know its going to do everything in its power to try to top the ridiculousness of his last game Shadows of the Damned. But I could not get anywhere near this fucking booth. It has a school bus set up and line formed behind it with like 5 or 6 consoles to try the game. But I jumped in that line and it didn’t move for like 30 minutes, and it was easily one of the longer lines at the convention. So sadly, I gave up on this one.
Interesting thing to note about this booth is they had a girl dressed like the game’s protagonist Juliette. She ended up being kicked out of the conventional hall on the first day. As it turns out, PAX has a pretty strict “No Booth Babe” policy. Basically for those who don’t know, companies hire models to come stand by their booths either in next to nothing or in the outfits of the characters in the game. But if you ask these women anything about the product, they can’t tell you a thing because they do not work for the company.  They did let her back in when she changed into a less provocative outfit (but not much less) but it was clear she was just picking up a check to look pretty. This to me is an interesting rule that I actually can respect because ultimately this is a convention like E3 or the CES that is for the fans. The fans want to play the games, and they want to learn about them.  Yeah, I’m not one to shy away from a hot cosplay (my facebook friends will probably hold a specific Chun-Li comment over my head for months) but I definitely can respect and agree with idea if they are going to be the to promote the product, then they should actually fucking know something it. I did a little more research and it turns out that the model in question is apparently known on the convention and cosplay circuit as Jessica Nigri, and to her credit she knew enough about the games premise and who is involved to hold up in some interviews so I am willing to cut her slack.  That being said, I didn’t to play the game so this might be one I have to take a leap of faith on and hope it pays off.  Guess you’ll find out in the review.
Ms Nigri posting her outfits to Twitter. It was the 2nd that got her in trouble


FINAL FANTASY: THEATERHYTHM (3DS) – Square Enix
As you can tell, I spent some time in the Square booth. This was another game the PAX heads (Mike, Specifically) really seemed to enjoy an made mention of. If there is anything that I enjoy about Final Fantasy games, it is the spectacular soundtrack that goes with them. The game seems fairly simple and I am curious to know if there is a story. The play is really easy. You just follow the dots as they approach and either tap, swipe or hold as they hit the main point. The game is broken up into a travel stage, fight stage, and a world map stage. So when It was my turn I formed my Final Fantasy dream team of Terra, Kain , Yuna, and Tidus and quickly moved right to the Final Fantasy 6 music, because 6 as we all know is the greatest one in the franchise. I was treated to Terra walking through a 2d countryside of notable FF6 locations and I found myself very easily tapping and following along. I easily A ranked the song  but probably could have got and S if I understood the controls from the go. I then went to the Fight sequence where I did the same thing only in much faster repetition. The chain breaks amongst the 4 characters so you have to follow it along but you have the whole bottom screen to tap so its not too bad This seems like something I would enjoy to play because its Final Fantasy characters, music, and a rhythm game. If I owned a 3DS I would strongly consider it. But the controls also seem like it would be a good fit for smart phones so maybe it will end up there. Fingers crossed.
I guess I will wrap it up here for now, I took videos of some other things but I didn’t want to go into some of the arcade stuff that has already been released. I would rather save that for reviews. PAX East was an incredible experience and I definitely look forward to trying to go again. Make me famous people and I’ll hold a Rage Quitter panel where I will just get angry at the first question and throw chairs. Or perhaps just famous enough to get a free press badge or something.  In any case, I will probably be going again next year. See ya next PAX East!


What a coincidence, I also have I wwebsite as on the internet