Resistance 3 (PS3): Solid Shooting

I don't play very many first person shooters. After Wolfenstein 3D and Doom they all started to just feel like copies of each other. They never hold my interest for very long. But there have been a few exceptions to the rule such as Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Resistance: Fall of Man. I had only bought Resistance because it was one of the few launch games the PS3 had out, but never the less it had good enough story telling and a long enough game play to hold my interest and make it seem like a worth while purchase. But I was never a die hard fan of the series, so Resistance 2 and 3 both kind of slipped me by, but with a "buy 2 used get 1 free" coupon about to expire and needing a 3rd game, I took a jump on a game I probably wouldn't have ever gotten without a bit of prodding from some reviews I have heard. Will it hold up to my rigid fps standards?

RESISTANCE 3: (PS3)

Resistance 3 picks up four years after the events of the 2nd game where protagonist Joseph Capelli, takes out previous games protagonist Nathan Hale after he started to succumb the Chimeran infection. An act that was probably welcomed by Hale but frowned upon by the remaining U.S. military. All was not completely lost as Dr. Malikov was able to isolate the gene that gave Hale his resistance to the infection, and from that was able to develop a cure. After becoming vaccinated Capelli is dishonorably discharged and returns to Oklahoma where he tries to return to a life of semi-normalcy where he gets married to a girl named Susan and has a son, Jack. For two years they hide out from the Chimera until they start to note an increase of Chimeran patrol. After fending off  a minor attack Capelli finds a Terraformer, a massive floating laser that lays waste to anything below it, hovering near where they are and is closing quickly. He heads back to help evacuate everyone where he is found by Dr. Malikov who informs him that there is a large tower in New York with a wormhole open above it, causing the entire world to freeze over. After being persuaded by his wife to go, he leaves his family with Maliakov to get to NY and try to close this hole and hopefully find a stop to the Chimera. 

"Go cross the country on foot against the monsters we've hidden from for years
while we hide in this hole, honey." Yeah, I'll get right on that. Bitch.

Now I have heard that this game bears a striking resemblance to the story of Half-Life 2, but as I have mentioned prior, I am not a big first person shooter guy so all I know about the Half-Life mythos I know from what I learned form the Portal series. That being said, They have a bit of a interesting disconnect between game play and cut scene story telling in the course of this game. In between stages where you get a CG animation cut scenes, its pretty thick with drama and Capelli is very well characterized. He shows a pretty broad range of emotions. But when game play actually starts he virtually says nothing despite what happens around him or what others might be saying to him. Its kind of odd actually how he can be greatly characterized and silent protagonist at the exact same time. Its not really a detriment to the game but it something that seemed a bit odd that I noticed. 

The controls are a bit awkward, but not too much. Generally the controls seem kinda standard for first person shooters but this is one of those games where every single button has a function so it can be easy to mistake a button for one thing when it does another. Prime example of this is when I would want to change a weapon, I would always instinctively go for one of the shoulder buttons. But in Resistance 3 each shoulders have a use: Fire, Secondary Fire, Grenade, Aim. I would need to go to triangle button to pull up my weapons menu. The melee is on the R3 trigger which to me is a button that just shouldn't exist. I've never really found a way to press those buttons in way that is fluid and natural. I kept making similar mistakes during the entire course of the game but they were never in a critical point where it because too frustrating to play.

I am wondering if it is just because my LCD TV is getting out of date but the graphics in the animated cut scenes all seem very grainy to me and the further I played the game the more noticeable it seemed to become. The reason I question this is because when I play games like Final Fantasy XIII where some of the scenes can be very CG animation heavy, I don't seem to experience this. Perhaps its just shitty compression, but I only really noticed it in cut scenes and one specific sewer level of the game. Outside of that, the games world war II post apocalypse looks good, and the Chimera are all very cool in their design. There is a specific level were you are trying to navigate a small mountain town at night and several weak Chimera spawn out of pods around town. They appear out of nowhere and if you don't see them approach they can nail you for big damage fast. Its a genuinely scary and exciting to play in.

One of these guys sneaking up on you is a hell of a lot scarier than some armored human.

The game feels more traditional PC generation FPS than many of the ones that you play these days. There is no regenerating health bars or shields as you have to grab med-packs through play, you get about 10 different weapons to use that you have on you at all times instead of just the more commonly used 2 weapon slots that you just grab and drop weapons as you use them, There are no chest high walls or cover mechanics to duck behind them so you actually have to use terrain to dodge and cover from enemy fire. Its a refreshing change of pace that offers this tense moment of excitement when you are down to about a 4th or less of your health, desperately spraying fire around at a swarm of Chimera while scrambling from cover to cover to try to find a med-pack somewhere. There is a particularly difficult point near the end of the game where you have to take an outpost and defend it against wave after wave of enemies. It was difficult yet fun to play all the same time.

But if I had to summarize why I actually enjoyed this game when I traditionally hate FPS titles is functionally for two reasons. First off is the weaponry. As stated before you get 10 different guns to use but in most shooters, despite having different kinds of weapons they all work the same way: point at something, shoot. Resistance 3 boasts a mix of WWII weaponry and sci-fi Chimera weapons each of them with two different methods of fire. The Bullseye can be compared to the gun in the film "Fifth Element" where you can hit a enemy with a tag and then unload your clip, all the bullets homing in on the spot you tagged, which is great for enemies with an exposed weakness. There is the Atomizer which is basically a lightning laser that torches nearby enemies and will occasionally jump to a new target, but if you are getting swarmed you can drop a device that causes a lightning vortex that thrashes and zaps anything that steps into its field. There is the Mutator, which can blobs of plague that causes enemies to explode into a pile of toxic blobs on the map, or you can fire off a can of gas that causes enemies to vomit themselves to death before turning into toxic blobs that can explode and infect other enemies. Or you can use the auger, which allows you to see through walls and fire blasts that go through any hard surface and increases strength as it does to hit enemies through 3 or 4 levels of cover. They are different and throw in interesting new dynamics that make them much more fun to use than just 30 gun options that fire bullets straight in front of you. God when I got the Mutator I couldn't wait to unload the gas bombs on a group of enemies to see them simultaneous spill their insides until they turned, only to see their buddies run in to help and start vomiting themselves. Hilarious.

You're supposed to shoot through cover with that thing, dumbass.

The other thing that I like is the aside from the various forms of regular Chimera there are, and there are a good mix of different types all notable from each other, is that the game remembers that boss fights and mini-bosses are fucking awesome. Circling around cover as a massive Widowmaker is trying to stomp me into paste while I try land the one exposed red spot on its body to dump a full clip of my Bullseye into. Wandering the mines of a mountain village, there is a massive worm-like Chimera bursting through the walls as I'm trying to blast it in the eyes when it gets stuck to stun it long enough to throw a gas tank in its mouth for big damage. This to me will always be more fun than just waves and waves of cannon fodder enemies because this forces you to use all the skills you've learned in specific situations, or at the very least gives some variety. 

There is multiplayer too, but again, I bought this used and I refuse to pay for an online pass. Besides, if you've played one FPS with slayer, CTF, and king of the hill, you've played them all. I don't care. Actually, After writing this and looking back at my receipt I see that I was still provided and online pass for the purchase of a used copy of the game, so maybe I will give the online a try. Good on you Insomniac Games, nice to see someone still taking care of the consumer.  

There is one massive flaw in the game though. Well really, its not even the games fault. But when I took this game home, I popped in in and was met with a PSN update. Ugh.. fine, let that go. Takes almost 20 friggen minutes to upload and install. Fine, Moves on to the next screen: What? Oh for fucks sake! Losing my patience, let that go and came back around 98%. Soon as that finished I got ready to start and... Installing trophies. Ok, fuck you game. I'm going to make a sammich. This is the worst problem with PS3 games. You really need to find a means of installing the game within the first level of the game. Nobody likes having to wait the moment you put a game in. You want to play it when you get home! So start finding a way to put the game in, press start, and while I'm playing the first level of the game on the disc, in the background it is installing the rest of the game so when I finally pass that point it can install the rest. I can't be shooting for the stars at this point, that has to be something that can be done in current gen technology. I might not have all the times down, but if you look at Rooster Teeth's "Rage Quit" you can see that I really am not exaggerating about the length of the install. 

All in all for a guy who doesn't really like or play first person shooters, I found myself really enjoying this game and ripped through it inside a couple of days. It did feel significantly shorter than the first Resistance title but I don't really count that against it since the standard game these days lasts about 5 to 9 hours of play length. Compared to other shooters this game may not break the mold but it was fun enough for someone who doesn't touch these games. Now I felt I needed to get the 2nd one just on premise, so I did. 

Atelier Rorona (PS3): A Rage Quitter Quickie

ATELIER RORONA: (PS3)

Something I forgot to make a point of is the game had a lot of the same music I heard in Atelier Totori. They do this thing where basically the same song plays in a lot of areas, but they'll remix the sound or genre of music as you transition from area to area. its a kind of cool effect that keeps the song from getting stale so fast, but it does start to wear on you after a while. I was kind of shocked when I went back to this one and realized a lot of the Totori soundtrack was just yanked verbatim from this game.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations (PS3): Too much of a good thing

So yeah. I'm really behind one this one. I purchased this game around Xmas time but for whatever reason as much as I enjoy playing this franchise it never seems incredibly high on my to do list. I ended up waiting until a big thicket of March releases before I actually got around to it. So to some folks this review won't be anything new but then again, I'm not out to compete with major game review sites and mags, I'm just talking about things as I play them. So, without further adieu.

ASSASSIN'S CREED: REVELATIONS (PS3/XB360)

Our next installment of Assassin's Creed picks up with future protagonist Desmond Miles waking up realizing he is in the Animus. Finding the consciousnesses of agent 16, the assassin in the animus before him, Desmond learns after retrieving the Apple of Eden his mind basically overloaded and he has slipped into a coma. In a last ditch effort to save him, his team basically boosts the Animus in safe mode in basically a world of free physics. He unfortunately cannot wake up however because the Animus doesn't know where to put him and in order to find his way back, he needs to complete the memories of the ancestors before him before he can go back to reality.

In diving into the Animus portal, he finds himself back in shoes of a much older Ezio Auditore returning to the home of the Assassin's and the home base of the first Assassin's Creed. Upon reaching the library he finds a score of Templar's trying to open it and learns they have one the 5 keys needed to enter. After a bit of spat he then takes off for Constantinople to try to assist the Assassin's guild there and locate the remaining keys in the hopes of learning the true purpose of the Assassin's and hopefully finding a means to end this conflict between the Templars.

"So Desmond, You ever gonna get to be the star of this game?"
"Probably not."

It is really interesting to me how goddamn much they are able to flesh this Assassin's Creed II story out. II ended on a pretty haywire note and it left me with a lot of questions but I definitely left that game much more satisfied than the first one. Then Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood fleshed that game out further, with a bit more focus on the Desmond character. Everything about it gave this feeling that Revelations was going to be the big climatic finish. But what bothers me about this, and its been noted by others before, is that there doesn't seem to be any weight to the stakes. Yes, the Templars and Assassins are still trying to kill each other but really that doesn't even appear to be a major focus of the story. There is a bit of a side plot between the succession of the new sultan of the land, but if Ezio doesn't meet one of the heir's in the first scenes of the game, it could have been cut out completely with nearly zero impact to the overall plot line.  He's in a race to get these keys to Altair's library but he doesn't really have any idea or what he'll find. It just sounds like every serious point or event seems to take place outside the Animus, which you occasionally hear whats going on in between stages, or when you collect one of the keys you get to play a little further in the life of Altair and find out what became of him which never seem to last long enough. Occasionally they try to characterize Desmond in these obscure 1st person "puzzle" sequences, but they are slow, boring, and optional. Its basically all the fun of Portal, without the portal gun, GLA-DOS, Wheatly, puzzles, cake, humor, or entertainment. It falls completely flat. I hate to say this but from a story perspective, there is virtually no reason this game needs to exist other than the wrap up the tales of the previous characters, which should have been done like 2 games ago.

Essentially building bridges is all you do, and even that isn't much fun.

Still Lookin' like a dapper bad ass in his old age. 

Story aside, that isn't to say that game play isn't as good as it always has been. It's still loads of fun to parkour your ass from rooftop to rooftop and with edition of the hookblade and zip lines now everything moves even faster. There is not a lot of new innovation from this title from its previous one. Generally all the weapons are the same, you build up new assassins from the downtrodden of the streets just like you do in the prior games, but in this one you have to accompany them on a specialty mission before they can maximize their potential to be true assassins. You can send them out to renovate the city but it seems even less important to do this time around. Yes it opens up new shops and such and takes away Templar influence but this time around, and I had this issue with Yakuza: Dead Souls, I had that feeling of "god dammit. I've already done this shit, I don't want to do it again." So I found myself just doing things as I happened by them. there were only a few scant missions I used my Assassin's insta-kill on a particularly stubborn guard and many of the actual assassinations felt much easier to do than in the previous titles. They did add a bit of a tower defense mini game but really you are only forced to play it one time in a tutorial kind of thing, and if you keep your notoriety down from the Templars you'll never need to do it again. The only real new kill in your bag of tricks is you can construct grenades now as if your cavalcade of weaponry wasn't enough, but I doubt you will ever find need to use anything but your hidden blade. Its fast, efficient, and kills quickly.  I still think the combat sucks in this series. You are given all these different weapons and means to kill, yet every single weapon you get handles the same way, you are give a handful of different attack options but they are all useless because unless you hit your sneak kill, you are just going wait for an enemy to telegraph their attack and hit counter, then chain to the rest of the enemies. Just like the last 2 fucking games. For the majority of the game you can get by just throwing some coin, walking buy distracted guards, and then hidden blading your kills before they even know whats happening. Its all still pretty fun to play over all but really, its just more of the previous 2 games.

Graphically and musically, there isn't a very significant change from the other games. With the exception of some polish to some of the graphics, an entirely new location to run around it and Ezio Auditore becoming Oldzio Auditore, there pretty much isn't much change in the look of the game. Some of the tunes sound similar in comparison to the previous titles, but for a series of games as long and as epic as these are, you would figure there would be a more notable or interesting soundtrack to the titles. Go ahead, try to hum a part of your favorite Assassin's Creed song. Couldn't think of one? Neither can I. 

I'm sure the multiplayer is still fun, its a pretty original concept and it beats the hell off the slayer or team deathmatch concepts. Pretending to be a computer controlled character long enough to fool a target, that's loads of fun. But I bought he game used and didn't have an online pass and I'll be damned to pay an additional 15 bucks for something I'll play like 2 or 3 times.

Ultimately, I feel that Assassin's Creed is getting away from the concepts that would have made this series incredible in an attempt to try to keep up with other big name action titles. The core concept as I understood it is your are an elite assassin who can enter a room, pickpocket one target, stab another, and be out of the room before anyone even notices. But the longer this series begins to run on, the more it seems like the stealth aspect of the game is optional. And to me that is a serious problem and has to potential to kill off this franchise. Take a look at games like Thief or Hitman: Blood Money, these are titles where you actually get penalized for making your presence known and it makes sneaking up on a kill that much more exciting and shows a greater level of skill to be able to be in and out without alerting a guard. This seemed like something that Assassin's Creed should have naturally adopted but it falls even flatter with each release. The other HUGE fucking complaint that I have is Ubisoft knows they are wringing out 60 bucks a pop for each of these fucking games, and because of it, they refuse to put an ending in sight. They may have delievered on ending the tales of Ezio and Altair, but I am no closer to figureing out what the fuck in going on with Desmond in the real world, where they intend to go, or what the fucking point even is.

And now here I am, waiting for a 5th fucking installment of this fucking game to get even the basic fucking plot points answered. It's become complete infuriating to continue to play this game just to have them piss in my face just before the credits roll. I've never been so disappointed in an ending to game since the first Assassin's Creed game. Maybe that's why I keep putting this series off when they come out. No matter how much fun it is to play, how good of a story is told in it, no matter how great it looks or as memorable as it is, every fucking single one of them leaves me with this feeling of bitter disappointment. I am constantly being baited with the thought, the IDEA that all this is leading up to a massive finale that we might never see. There are talks that Assassin's Creed 3 is going to be completely retooled to have a completely different feel and have new characters and settings, but I already hear the apathy of its fan base getting tired of waiting around.  They better answer a FUCKTON of questions in this new installment because I guarantee that people will get tired of this game before it comes to a close. And then the remaining fans will never get their true ending or some slapdash rushed finish.

If you feel you need one more romp with our age Italian friend then I guess I could recommend Assassin's Creed: Revelations. But you'd probably leave more satisfied if you never finish it.

I wish I hadn't.

Tales of Graces F (PS3): JRPG 101.

I don't really understand the stigma that JRPGs seem to have attained over the years for being bad games. I grew up with JRPGs. Some of the best games in the NES, SNES, and Playstation era were JRPGs. Games like Final Fantasy 6, Dragon Warrior, Lufia I and II, Legend of Legaia, Parasite Eve, Star Ocean, Persona just to name a few of them. Many of these are still being heralded as the pinnacles of video game history. So it baffles me when someone rolls their eyes at a game when they find out its a JRPG. On the Gamecube I discovered a game called Tales of Symphonia and it basically became the only reason I owned the system and made me a fan of the franchise from this point forwards. After several releases over multiple systems, PS3 now gets a re-release of a overseas Wii game with additional content.

TALES OF GRACES:F (PS3)

The game opens up with two young brothers, Asbel and Hubert Lahnt, exploring outside of their town to find a flower field rumored to let flowers of all types bloom year round. Upon finding the field they find a girl with pink pigtails sleeping in the flowers. Asbel awakens her to find out that she doesn't know who she is, where she's from, how she got there or why she's there. The boys decide to take her to the town to see if anyone knows any better, where they receive a tongue lashing from their sickly friend Cheria. After a brief walk around town and not learning much more about the mystery girl, the boys speak with their father and learn that a very important guest from the kingdom will be visiting and not to bother him. Naturally, they ignore their father and find out that this boy is actually the prince of their country, Richard. After showing him around the village and the Lahnt hill flower garden, one of his guards tries to kill the young prince and Asbel befriends him by managing to fight off his would be dispatcher. After being grounded for disobeying his father, he breaks out of his room and takes off with Sophie (the name for the mystery girl) for the capital city to meet his new friend. Meeting up with Cheria and Hubert who were already at the city, they meet up with Richard and make plans to go into the castle through a secret passageway. But when the kids follow the path, they find Richard unconscious. Sophie senses danger and a large monster attacks, basically laying waste to the kids. Sophie emits a bright light and manages to fight the monster off but not before it takes one last fatal shot at her. The last thing Asbel sees is Sophie making one final assault on the beast before it goes black. Asbel reawakens at home, his father telling him that Hubert has been adopted, Richard was not involved in the accident, and that Sophie is dead and it was basically his fault for not being able to take care of her. Infuriated, Asbel swears off that he will not be the next Lord of Lahnt and storms off. Running into Cheria he tells her that he's is leaving to become a knight and become stronger, she begs him not to go but to no avail. He leaves at night and enrolls into the knight Academy before we regain control 7 years later.

With the Tales franchise the stories always seem to start off some what sluggish and unoriginal. But they always have a habit of taking several turns and twists that really have a tendency to keep you playing. Generally the game is filled with some pretty common anime archetypes and cliches. These can be a nothing issue for people like me as I've watched my share of anime, but to some people this can be downright nauseating. It does fall into some pitfalls though. Example, as most anime fans will be able to tell you, the person with the narrowest eyes will be the villain at some point. It is never a twist and it is never shocking, you can usually tell right from the onset. I wouldn't say that it was 100% clear in this one but it certainly wasn't shocking when it happened. Tales games have always have had some pretty complex stories that never seem to come to an end, but that being said it does a fairly good job of keeping your interested and playing along.  I  wouldn't say its the strongest story ever, but it was still pretty good. It has a bit of a sluggish and unoriginal starting point to it but they do a good job of weaving the characters side stories into the main plot to add a bit of complexity and depth to it. They also suckered me into thinking they pulled one of the game fuax-pa of switching the last boss of the game to somebody different. As it turned out I still had a whole other dungeon to do. Damn you Tales.

This seems weird enough as is, but she has a grabby hand gesture that is a little over the top.
That being said, the Sophie and Pascal post fight gestures are pretty damn funny.

One of the Tales series strongest points are the interesting and lovable characters that keep you playing though. Games like Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss have some fantastic ensemble casts that are easy to love. Even some of the less popular titles like Tales of Legendia give a few characters with a good back story to just make you want to keep playing through just to learn more about them. Tales of Graces cast sadly is not one of the strongest. Asbel in his adult life is somewhat of an angsty whiner, Hubert is a dislikeable bed wetter the whole time. Cheria while sweet in the childhood days, becomes a bit of a nagging bitch and never lets up for like the whole adventure. The only characters that I like are Pascal, who's so ridiculously cheerful and over the top in all her reactions its nearly impossible to not laugh when she speaks. The other character I like is Malik, who plays the kind of mentor figure but he has some pretty entertaining lines in his own right.

Ummm, I'd prefer you didn't give anything the "ol' chunk chunk", Pascal...

The most notable change to the combat system is the complete elimination of magic points, in its place you get a CC gauge that as long as you are not attacking, is continually rising. Usually set at a minimum value you can raise it during the course of the fight to go through longer attack and combo chains. This is kind of nice because it allows the flow of the combat to keep up, and even more so in long stretches of dungeons you don't need to worry about your healer running out of magic. Sadly you can't use your healing magic in the menu but they have brought back the cooking system for health and stat boosts during and after combat, you can also make stuff to use in the stores that affect the whole team as well. It will not be very often you find yourself needing for items.

Sound is hit or miss. The there are two complaints about the music: First is that the really good songs and notable tracks really come in until later in the game. The villages and towns music is pretty standard RPG fanfare, but they have don't have that "catch yourself humming it around the house" aspect to it like Radiata Stories has. And the other is for every good track the game has, it has one that is utterly horrible. Chief offender of this is in the Barona Catacombs which thankfully is a short dungeon, but its literally a 3 note loop of three organ notes. Maybe the devs knew you wouldn't be in there too long so they didn't need to write a masterpiece but for fucks sake its bad enough for people to notice its annoying. The voice acting is pretty anime stereotype as well. Many of the voices are well done enough to get you through the game, definitely better than some of the voices in the later Star Ocean games. But there will be some very anime cliche scenes that are bit hard to stomach. The game really does have a bit of an excessive obsession with the whole power of friendship nonsense which can be really rough at times. Granted, you can always skip the cut scenes if they become a bit too much.

Most of the Tales of games try to give an aspect of replayability to them, usually giving you grade during your first play through so you can play it again on a new game plus with additional experience or stat points, faster play speed, increased damage, keeping items and all that such. But Tales of Graces F also contains a "Legends and Legacies" chapter which allows you to pick up the game months after the completion of story, giving a bit a new side story. Most of the area's will be retreads with harder monsters but it does flesh out the ending a bit and gives you a little more to play. Usually I play Tales games only one time, but this one I managed to play both chapters which took almost 80 hours, but now am finding myself midway through a play through with new game plus, tearing through the game at 5x experience and damage making all the fights faster and shorter, so I am flying through the game now trying to complete the mind numbing amount of side quests the game has hidden along the way.

The last thing I want to bang on about again, is the DLC issues. the game offeres from free DLC right out the gate which seems to be a nice gesture, but as you play through the game you can unlock costumes that are different for each character or throwbacks to other Tales games. But then I started to find screen shots that showed various other Tales and novelty costumes that would be fun to use as well. But when I started looking in the playstation store, I started to find that most of the costumes were almost 4 bucks a pop. To make matters worse, all of the free DLC was only 100kb to download, which says to me that's a fucking unlock code and I am not downloading anything. This really bothers me that so many games are starting to gut content from a finished game to charge a few extra bucks for it. I know some companies plan DLC and I know some of them work independently on them from the main game. My big qualm is I think I would rather actually download the costume instead of unlocking it from the disc. It will at least give me some small comfort that the stuff isn't in my possession already and I'm just paying extra to get to use it.

The real shame is I like a lot of these costumes. but if i want just the ones
pictured here, that's like 52 more dollars. Eff, That.

Again, I don't know why so many people seem to have problems with JRPGs these days. I've always found them fun to play and ultimately you play these games for the story. Yeah they may not be as deep as some of the more modern western RPGs but take this review for what it is. It may not hold up against some of the classics in the franchise like Symphonia or Abyss, but if you want to get a good time sink with a decent story and fun combat system, Tales of Graces f  is a solid play.  I would recommend it.

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. 

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