curb stomping gangster goes edo in yakuza 3 demo

Two demos for Yakuza 3 (Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan!) are available in Japan on PSN so if you have an account for that region, you can get a taste of what we’re missing out on over here. Knowing how to read kanji is a must considering the amount of dialog, especially in the menus, but there are enough common threads to get you through and start curb stomping your way into the game. The controls themselves are fairly simple because of this, with the X button used to acknowledge people on the street if you can talk to them or menu choices, and the fighting system is fairly simplistic which can be both a good and bad thing.

Unlike the first two Yakuza titles from Sega, this one takes you to feudal Japan where you’ll be taking a kimono wearing tough guy bearing a strong resemblance to Kazuma out to mete out some personal justice. The first demo that I pulled was one that put me on the streets of a city celebrating a festival of sorts. After getting through a large helping of dialogue, I was able to wander around and check out the dancing people in the streets, musicians set up on small stages, the lanterns hanging everywhere, and the colors that filled the central avenue. You can’t talk to everyone and most of the time, I just followed where the mini-map had pointed me to where I spoke to a person that moved me along whatever it was I was trying to do.

There were a few side quests, though, that introduced me to the fist fighting system in the game, allowing me to punch, kick, and grab my enemies to throw them on the ground before curb stomping them as I did with Kazuma in the first Yakuza. I rescued a kid that was being bullied by some guys, and a flashing object nearby hinted that it could have been used to bludgeon one of them with sapling love. The game uses Havoc physics and the fighting looks pretty cool and it keeps things pretty simple. Button mashing pretty much saved me, although I had to vary my kicks and punches to deliver more punishment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to use the stick.

Later on, I made it to a temple where an old guy helped me out by pointing to a cat nearby and a reflex test came up. Two bars appeared and started to count down. I hit the X button, and the cat pounced on a mouse, eating it. Feudal Kazuma suddenly became inspired, whipped out some paper, and I had a choice to make. Once I did, he painted a picture of the cat pouncing which enabled him to learn some really slick sword move that was shown off in a stylish cinematic. I’m guessing that little sequences like this will help you learn new fighting techniques which is an interesting way of putting it.

I couldn’t do anything more at the temple and began walking around trying to find something else to do. One side quest had me rough up some guys on the street, and another had me chasing after a geisha girl and fight a few more guys that showed up.

The menu had some other details that I could see and it looks like the RPG system is back with the ability to level up and improve Feudal Kazuma’s abilities and carry an inventory of stuff. Stores were in the demo allowing me to purchase goods and talk with others, and it feels like a much larger version of the first game. The graphics weren’t bad, but they weren’t fantastically awesome, either. Some of the textures, especially with the people in the game, looked pretty plain especially in the faces where details could occasionally appear blurred. The environment looked good, though, especially in HD.

The second demo had several challenges that I could try without resorting to the sandbox. One of these was all about fighting allowing you to fight it out with fists and with dual swords in separate encounters. The combat system was extremely easy to use, although I had no idea if there were any special moves that I could pull off. With the dual sword stuff, mashing on the button was all that I really did, although I managed to abuse a combo where I’d slash up a thug, impale him with both the katana and tanto (I think it was as tanto), and flip him over. At the end of this combat scenario, I faced off against a huge boss guy dressed in red, samurai armor and wielding a huge spiked bat. Taking him out was pretty easy, though, easier than I thought it would have been, when all I did was button mash and use that impaling throw combo. It’s just a demo, though, so I didn’t expect much of a fight, but was surprised at how easy it was.

The other system shown of was the hostess system. In the original Yakuza, Kazuma could visit hostess bars and basically pay to flirt with a hostess for company while eating, drinking, and generally having a paid conversation for entertainment. If you were slick enough as Kazuma, a hostess might even start calling him after hours. In the demo, you spend time with geisha who basically does the same thing. One huge improvement, however, was in the facial expressions that were delivered. Although some of the talking animations for most everyone looked pretty stiff, you could tell that they spent time in making the faces look as expressive as they could and it worked pretty well here. The only problem were the hands. Feudal Kazuma’s looked like giant man paws when they held up a saki cup, and the geisha’s looked like they were hacked from stone. But other than that, it was just like what it was in Yakuza for the most part.

There’s also a horse riding feature in the game where you can shoot from horseback where you didn’t have to worry about the horse, only about aiming the bow (after holding down the R1 button to get an arrow cocked and ready) and hitting the right button to duck whenever you had to ride beneath a low branch. Other than that, it felt more like a simple shooting gallery.

All in all, as plain as the gameplay seems, it still feels like a nice change of pace and you don’t get many period pieces like these that try to immerse you in a slice of historical life without resorting to giant demon snakes, undead, or wire-fu action. Besides, I liked the first Yakuza despite its warts and am hoping that this makes it out on this side of the Pacific…if Yakuza 2 ever gets released first, that is.

But I just bought Titan Quest….

I didn’t have any time before now to get into Titan Quest, a game recommended by many including a friend at work that was a heavy Diablo II player in the past. I liked the demo, but wasn’t sure if I really wanted to get back into the whole Diablo-esque hack ‘n slash gameplay again so it kind of languished in the back of my mind as a game I’d pick up later on. When, later became now and I also picked up Immortal Throne to add to the fun.

And then on Neogaf, someone posts that Iron Lore has closed its doors.

It might not have been the game for me a few years ago, but many other players found that it was an exciting monster killer on PCs that helped to be the balm they needed to assuage the need to wait for Diablo III. But it was a creative title that was critically appreciated with a great community behind it, and to see another talented developer forced to end its run is never good news.

Best wishes to everyone at Iron Lore in finding a way to stay on their creative feet. I’m sure they will and who knows, some of them may end up as a part of Diablo III. Stranger things have happened.

Forces of Corruption – A lovely afternoon

So I’m playing Forces of Corruption and can’t finish the main campaign because one of the heroes disappears. It’s the Seleaucami mission where you can send Urai Fenn to corrupt the planet. You need to build a small army and send them down with him to the planet surface in order to take it over, only he’s not there anymore. I find out that it’s a bug and that basically, because I was saving over one of my files as I proceeded in the game, I have to recoup several hours worth of game just to get back to where I was.

In the years that I’ve been a PC gamer, I’ve head to deal with plenty of crap that was released from Daggerfall’s bug infested save system to Stonekeep’s game killing bug halfway through the game where I couldn’t get ahead. I’ve lost count where I’ve had to redo everything in a game on the PC because someone failed to allocate enough Q&A. Is there a fix for this? Nope. You simply have to restart the campaign if you don’t have a save to go back on.

The sad part is that I’ve read replies to people that have had issues about PC problems that are genuinely helpful, and other replies that were basically useless. You know the kind, the ones that say “I didn’t have any problems like that” and nothing else. Well, good for them, but it doesn’t change the fact that even though RROD’s don’t happen to everyone, you should have the good sense to realize that it still sucks. Congratulations on being part of the 80% whose 360’s haven’t yet been returned. How about you program a fix for Forces of Corruption so that I can also feel as smug and self satisfied as you?

I also get the feeling that some PC players see things like this as a badge of honor, something to deal with that separates them from players that “have it easy” on consoles, giving that knowing nod when something goes wrong and treating console players like casual gamers that should know that playing is serious business and that you might find yourself technically challenged at one point.

I’ve been gaming on a PC since the eighties when I cut my RPG teeth on Apshai (I was too young to get into Rogue) and it snowballed from there. If I couldn’t play a game, I read about in CGW when Greenberg and Scorpia graced its pages with gaming wisdom, when Derek Smart’s 3000AD had first become a cover story, when reviews were reviews without scores and talked about games in the same breath as well written entertainment. I love PC gaming but as any of us will tell you, it’s a love and hate relationship with certain things…bugs being one of them. But it drives me up a wall whenever I run into one that so obviously breaks the game, making me wonder how that was missed.

This also made me reflect on how I view saves between PCs and consoles. On consoles, I keep multiple saves to experience those parts of a game that I thought were very cool whether it was a cutscene, a battle…whatever. On a PC, I keep multiple saves for almost the same thing, but mostly as insurance that I don’t get stuck thanks to a bug. Silly me thinking that Forces of Corruption, like Empire at War, would continue in the same way since I occasionally give the games I play the benefit of a doubt in that they will do exactly what they are supposed to.

I feel half tempted to go back and continue with Blue Dragon or Persona 3, or get in some laugh time with Metal Wolf Chaos on the Xbox, or getting back into Crysis or The Witcher, or loading up DOSBox to play a few golden oldies that I still have stored away. I have yet to get back into the talkie version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. But I hate leaving something like this unfinished and if there is one thing that being a PC gamer has taught me…it’s patience.

game over, man…game over!

It was announced last year that Sega would bring the Aliens franchise to next-gen systems and it looks like that even more information has been announced detailing more on what the game will be about. From the description, it sounds like developer Gearbox will be leveraging their experience with their “Brothers in Arms” franchise by replacing Nazis with Aliens, and Allied soldiers with Colonial Marines which would be fantastically awesome. The last Aliens game that I had played on a PC was the one that Activision had made decades ago. I missed out on the whole “Aliens vs. Predator” genre, probably because I was trudging through another dungeon at the time. Still, I was hoping that someone would pick up the franchise rights and continue on with Cameron’s vision of scary things that go bump in space and it looks like Gearbox will be doing it justice.

A few scanned shots have also made it onto the web courtesy of Tiscali which you can see here.  From the shots, it looks like the concept art is sticking close to what Ridley Scott had ordered up for Alien, and which James Cameron continued with in his sequel which is awesome. There was just something that felt functional and real about those sets, as if they were a slice of a very possible future where nothing was guaranteed to work right just because it had a little chrome plating to make it look like slick tech.

gears of war 2 announced with lame teaser

When Halo 3’s teaser came out, fans pored over every detail splashed onto the screen. The Covenant fleet, the massive structure that opened up, Cortana’s chilling epitaph in telling players that this was how the world would end…

But with Gears of War 2, instead of seeing Fenix stand at the edge of a battlefield leading the final remnants of his people against a black storm of Locust streaming out of holes torn into the ground, or something that had the same kind of impact that their “Mad World” commercial delivered with a sobering mix of music and deafening silence, we get…boring narration, shadowplay, and a logo.

The most exciting part of the teaser was the release date…November 2008.

C’mon Microsoft, I know you can do better. I was hoping for some Locust tenderloin, if not something actually in-game to get me pumped up. Still excited, but not because of this.

Too human = Cyber-Diablo?

IGN posted a series of videos showing off a round table discussion of Too Human with Denis Dyack and his crew on the RPG systems and how they will play into the action packed setting of the gameplay along with a few others showing off new footage of what it will actually look like. I’ll have to admit that I’m even more impressed now that I’ve seen how far its come and the first thing I thought of was that this looks like what might have happened if Diablo and Neuromancer had a baby together in Valhalla.

Parts of the action also reminded of Devil May Cry, when he does the whole “sliding over the floor to strike” bit with his blades coming down on whatever the player is pointing them at. The only thing missing were red souls zipping out of the corpse, but it still looked like it could be fun. The crew go on to describe the new treasure chests that will be in the game (obelisks) and upgradeable abilities and equipment. If you decide to imbibe the cybernetic juice, you’ll benefit from huge hit points and massive damage. If you play it more by sticking to your human flesh, you’ll be rewarded with a more strategic experience but will also have the benefit of modding out your equipment beyond what you can by being cybernetic. It sounds fairly balanced and I’d like to see how it all works together in the actual game.

One other DMC-like nod was with the arena levels, special areas where players will be able to test their skills in battle to earn powerful prizes, much like how you’d take Dante into a secret mission in order to test your abilities against a crazy challenge such as not being hit while taking down a locust horde of beasts.

None of the classes were really discussed, but a lot of gameplay was shown off which looks like it could be what hack ‘n slashers could sink their thumbs into. The Diablo feel comes through with the phat loot that is apparently going to be dropped everywhere, and the RPG system and seconds-brief look at the skill trees has got me excited at what kind of character you can craft with the game.

And yet, there’s something that just keeps me from making me too excited about it. Some part of me is tired of the slashfest that the game looks like it will deliver ad nauseaum with very little else to do outside of that, much like how Dungeon Siege turned me off when I realized that was all that I was going to be doing throughout the game. The story could be solid stuff, though, and the visuals don’t disappoint from what was shown off with the backdrops and the weapons, but even so, I’m not really looking forward to simply blowing through hordes of monsters just to get to the next level if there’s nothing else that is compelling me to configure, farm, and fight my way through.

It looks good, and this is the same crew that brought out Eternal Darkness so I’m hoping that they haven’t revealed some of the juicier bits of the experience…like beastly bosses, dramatic storytelling bits, or any of the other minor rewards that I’d like to experience along with the population control…until much later. But right now, Too Human is back on my personal radar.

AOU goodness

I was surfing around to see what was new in arcades and checked out some videos released from the AOU Entertainment Expo in Japan last week. Arcades are still pretty healthy in Japan compared to the withered husk that we in the States have to deal with, and seeing these titles just makes me wish that weren’t the case.

BlazeBlue from Arc System Works, the same devs behind 2D fighter Guilty Gear, shows that 2D fighting isn’t dead quite yet with a collection of new characters and some sparkly new cell sprites beating each other down. There’s a vid posted here on Youtube of the trailer which shows off some of the hyper powered anime attacks tearing everyone up and the official site shows off a few screenshots of the action like this one:

Street Fighter 4 was also shown off at the show at a huge booth where everyone that showed up were able to get their 2D kung fu on with other fans. Youtube comes to the rescue again with some videos showing:

Ken vs. Chun Li

Guile vs. Zangief

Ryu vs. E. Honda …Hundred Hand Slap is back in 3D

Crimson Viper vs. Abel

General gameplay

And here’s a shot of the new character, Abel, as he tries to take on Ryu (courtesy of Famitsu):

And even Samurai Shodown makes a return in 3D with Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny (Samurai Shodown Sen) with this footage showing off Galford fighting saki-mouthwash spitting Haomaru. The official site is located here and I’m pretty excited to get back into the slash ‘em, beat ‘em action of the series if it ever sees the light of day over here on a console or if I run into an arcade that actually has one of these units. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon.

Two pieces of garbage and one superhero

I sometimes wonder how the next generation could have stinkers as bad as the two that I had just played through but fortunately, Crackdown made everything all better.

Unfortunately, I had played Crackdown first before diving into the mind numbing horror of the next two.

Genki decided to leave behind their racing roots with Kengo: Legend of the 9 which crushed any hopes that I had for the game to be a spiritual successor to Square’s Bushido Blade. How can a sword game fail? Here’s the answer. The short story: play Kengo only if you want to know the true meaning of pain and suffering.

The next one up was Transformers: The Game. It’s probably safe to say that movie tie-ins are pretty much made to order, capitalizing on the film that they’re named after with few exceptions. It’s too bad Transformers actually succeeds in making fighting as a giant robot as painful as Kengo did in trying to be the ultimate digital samurai. The only parts that really worked in this rusted chunk were the music, the transformations, cut scenes, and the original voice actors from the First Generation animated series. If someone gives you this as a gift because you like Transformers, they might hate you.