Every so often I will actively purge my videogame collection of all the games I know I’ll never play again, or those that I haven’t touched for years. I used to keep everything but, over time, I’ve managed to wrestle the inner hoarder into partial submission. After all, there isn’t the time to keep up with new releases let alone return to everything I’ve already experienced. You have to be realistic sometimes and simply let go. Tying in with this philosophy, I recently decided to turn a critical eye towards my PS2 collection. I’ve long considered this shelf to be slimmed down to the bare essentials but when “essentials” is still around fifty titles, there remains space for improvement.
Rather than simply get shot however, I’ve decided to play some of these games again to see whether or not they actually hold up in the harsh light of 2020. First up, Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance, a 2005 beat ’em up from Capcom. When I originally played this, I loved it. I considered it to be underrated; a hidden gem if you will.
But how does the 2020 edition of me feel about Beat Down?
If you read my recent post regarding my thoughts on Yakuza 6, you might have been under the impression that I was speaking about the game from the perspective of somebody who’d actually completed it. Well, confession time: I hadn’t. But I have now. And what an ending it was too.
But this was more than just the conclusion of yet another Yakuza game: this was the finale of Kiryu Kazuma’s story – an epic, and emotional story that spanned seven main series entries, over a decade of Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku releases (the first being the PS2 original which hit Japan in 2005), and an in-game timeline that began in the late 80’s with Yakuza 0. It’s fair to say that Kiryu went through a lot during that time. He’s been embroiled in countless Yakuza conflicts and shadow games involving corrupt officials, lost countless friends and loved ones to said conflicts, and been shot, stabbed and beaten more times than I’ve had hot dinners.
The Yakuza series has always been OTT, with characters that can survive a highly unrealistic quota of explosions and bullets, but there came a point where Kiryu’s tale simply became far-fetched, so I can understand why Sega decided that it was time to retire the Dragon of Dojima. Nevertheless, I wasn’t particularly happy about said decision when Kiryu and his allies have become much-loved staples of my personal gaming landscape. So this Yakuza 6 ending NEEDED to be pretty good.
So, Sony’s new Wi-Fi router Playstation console has finally been unveiled. It’s opponent? The Microsoft Air Purifier 3000X. Overused memes aside, the battle for gamers’ attention begins here. Will you be Team PS5 or Team Xbox? Does anybody actually care about console warz anymore?
This post – about the upcoming new Paper Mario game – was inspired by a good read on The Wizard Dojo. Check out Scott’s thoughts (and blog in general) – it’s much better than what I cobble together here.
Anyway, there’s this new Paper Mario game coming out soon for the Switch, subtitled The Origami King. You may have heard of it. A lot of Nintendo/Switch fans lost their shit and got super-excited about it (good for them), while others have had a more lukewarm response to Mario’s latest paper-based spin-off. Where do I sit on this one? Somewhere in the middle. The trailer looked fun, but also disappointing. Maybe I’m just an crusty old entitled gamer? Perhaps.
But here’s the issue: The Origami King resembles Sticker Star and Colour Splash – not the first two Paper Mario games that fans desperately want to see a proper sequel to.
Hopefully I’ve hooked you in with that clickbait-esque title BUT, before you berate me for using such shady tactics, I do actually mean what I say…sort of. Yakuza 6 IS the worst game that I have played in the main series (ignoring the Dead Souls spin-off) but it is still a Yakuza game. Branding the sixth chronological installment of Sega’s beloved franchise as the worst one is like being presented with a group of semi-naked Playboy bunnies and being asked to select your least favourite.
What I’m saying is that Yakuza 6 ranks bottom for me, but it’s still a fantastic game regardless of its issues.
I’m slow off the mark discussing this but, then again, what’s new around here? I’d originally planned on talking about the Resident Evil 4 remake right after the news broke, but shit happened and I slacked off with blogging.
Anyway, my question is this: is a remake of Resident Evil 4really necessary?
It’s been a while since I posted something here on Darkstalker90. There are various reasons for that but I won’t bore you with those because that’s not why you’re here, is it? You’re here for some gaming-related content so I’ve skipped over the (frankly embarassing) backlog of semi-completed drafts to talk about a game that has commanded my attention over the last week or so: the mighty Streets of Rage 4.
Go back just a few years, and SoR4 would have been just a fantasy – one of those games that cropped up on many a retro-head’s I-wish-they-would-make-this-but-they-probably-never-will list. The franchise’s future seemed to be confined to re-releases on retro Sega compilations and those iffy plug ‘n play devices. Sega themselves had tried and failed in the 90’s to develop a Streets of Rage 4, and the popularity of the side-scrolling beat ’em up had rapidly waned with the demise of arcade-style gaming.
So it was a pretty earth-shaking shock to say the least when Streets of Rage 4 was first shown in 2018. With Sega acting solely as a licensor this time, it was down to the collaboration of Dotemu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush games to do the series justice and deliver on twenty-six years of fan anticipation. No pressure, then… Continue reading “Walking the Streets of Rage once again…”→
Well, that’s that then: Dead or Alive 6 is officially, er…dead and I couldn’t be happier about it. That’s probably a bizarre thing for a fan of the series to say. Doubly so given that – at the time of typing this post – I still haven’t purchased DOA6.
However, the recent Twitter announcement from Koei-Tecmo, about April’s DLC update being the final batch of support for DOA6, felt like justice in a warped way. The game has badly underperformed at market and consistently attracted low player numbers. It’s a big turnaround from the success of Dead or Alive 5 and there’s a good reason for it.
Greed.
Let’s put this into perspective. Dead or Alive 5 was severely criticised for its fuck-ton of DLC and neverending stream of season passes. Yet, the tide of add-ons was viewed with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smirk. It was Koei-Tecmo playing the “sex sells” card and it more or less perfectly straddled the line between being acceptable and straight-up taking the piss. If any proof was required that the DLC tactics didn’t push fans away, consider that DOA5 had two updated editions (Ultimate and Last Round), spanned two hardware generations, and was supported for six years.
DOA6, on the other hand, is being put out to pasture barely a year after the initial release. To me, this is JUSTICE, because it is a case of a publisher pushing the limits of DLC beyond the realm of acceptability and being punished for it. Gamers were rightly horrified by how brazen Koei-Tecmo were being with DOA6‘s add-on content and clearly voted with their wallets. It’s something that we – as consumers – need to do in order to show big publishers that we won’t lap up any old bullshit.
DOA6 ran into trouble straight away when Koei-Tecmo vowed to tone down the game’s sexuality in order to get more people involved and give the series a greater chance at being taken seriously. As it transpired, it wasn’t the drastic Victorian-era suppression of the female figure that we feared but the story nevertheless generated negative press and worried a good chunk of the DOA fanbase. But it wasn’t paranoia over SJW rule that ultimately killed sales of DOA6. It was the publisher’s determination to wring their customer’s wallets dry.
First of all, Dead or Alive 6 has had FOUR season passes in less than a year! As far I’m aware, Season Passes cover a year’s worth of DLC in most games, hence the name. Not in DOA6 however. Fuck that logic. They were eye-wateringly expensive too, with the most recent Season Pass 4 retailing for $90.
Overall, the game has hundreds upon hundreds of dollars-worth of DLC available to download. You thought DOA5 was bad? Well, Team Ninja really upped their work rate for 6, pumping out new costume packs at an insane rate. It really is the undisputed claimant to the title of DLC: The Game.
This is a pretty gloomy story so here’s a pic of Honkers Honoka showing off Koei-Tecmo’s commitment to cleaning up their act.
But the worst of all didn’t come until this year, when the publisher decided that it was acceptable to charge players for a change of hair colour…and make them pay for said colour every time they changed it.
In a way, the audacity of Koei-Tecmo has to be admired.
On the other hand, the whole saga of DOA6 has been an embarassing series of apologies to the fans, promises of fixes and back-tracking. Add to this the crappy in-game unlock system and the fact that DLC can’t be purchased individually for American/European PS4 owners of the game specifically, and you have a really unappealing fighting game on your hands.
The other big problem is that the game isn’t THAT big of an upgrade over Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, which still looks fantastic in PS4/XBO form, plays brilliantly and isn’t saddled with terrible money-making schemes. Yes, the DLC for that game is still a joke, but it is at least more honest (if you can get past the awful organisation and confusing compatibility Catalogue add-ons) and what’s available is the accumulation of six years worth of steady support as opposed to a relentless tide of DLC being vomited out in single year. I, for one, saw no reason to upgrade from 5 to 6 and have yet to be convinced. Unless Koei-Tecmo announce some sort of all-in-one retail package of the game, then I doubt I ever will.
So I’m glad that gamers have woken up and rejected Koei-Tecmo’s business strategy.
Unfortunately, it does mean that the DOA series may well be mothballed as a result of this commercial failure. I also wouldn’t be surprised if KT blame “market trends” or other vague reasons for the absence of a DOA7, rather than holding their hands up and publicly accepting that they went too far with 6 and allowed greed too much of a say.
I hope that this isn’t the end of Dead or Alive but Koei-Tecmo need to learn from the failure of DOA6 and take a leaf from the books of other publishers of fighting games.
I don’t like to make these sorts of update posts. For one, if I’m going to spend time typing something up for this blog, then I want it to be real content, such as a review or discussion piece.
Secondly, I don’t have a big enough ego to believe that the internet cares about what I’m doing. This blog has about fifty followers and, while I certainly appreciate any views and the odd comment, I’m a realist. Fifty followers isn’t even a grain of sand in the blogging world.
Yet here I am, doing what I just said I don’t want to do.
So why, then? Well, I’m on a small roll here, having put out two mini-reviews over the past few days. I want to keep that ball rolling. New reviews are in the works and I want to get back to doing some more in-depth discussion things. The irony is that this sudden spurt of motivation isn’t even linked to me being stuck indoors due to the big, bad C-Virus. My job means that I will still be going to work full-time unless a) I fall ill or b) my workplace shuts down, which is – fortunately – unlikely given that I work in the food distribution industry.
Once the day job is done and dusted however, I can get back to enriching the internet with entirely unnecessary reviews of games like this:
Yes, I decided that Dead or Alive Xtreme 3‘s sunny beaches, chilled music and bodacious babes would be the perfect antidote to all the misery and worry gripping the planet right now. Was I right though? You’ll find out in the upcoming review which is currently baking in the oven. I probably could have had the review finished by now but I had a lot to say about Xtreme 3 and the resulting review should be reasonably meaty.
I’ve also been on a retro kick, specifically a Playstation one as you will already be aware of if you’ve checked out the previous two mini-reviews on this blog. I’ve dug out another old favourite which has stolen a lot of my gaming time in recent weeks:
Expect a review of this too, once I’m done perving on digital girls with improbable proportions, that is. Priorities and all that.
Elsewhere, I’m continuing my Yakuza marathon with Kiwami 2 – the most excellent remake to my favourite game from the entire series (Yakuza 2, duh). As ever, I was aiming for that sweet 100% completion and, again – as ever – it’s looking unlikely since I absolutely cannot be arsed with the Japanese gambling games. Even the casino has been making me angry. Several hours of trying to win 1000 chips in one sitting to satisfy Haruka’s request has that sort of effect on you. Still, you don’t need that 100% rating or a platinum trophy in your virtual cabinet to enjoy one of the best story-driven series’ of modern times.
Finally, I’ve been dipping in and out of Soulcalibur VI again, especially since I paid up for the second season pass after months of putting it off. So I now have access to Hilde (who actually looks awesome to play as) and her stage, which has such good music that I don’t even feel the need to swap it out with a classic BGM from one of the earlier games in the series’. As a bonus, it looks like I’ve bought in to Season 2 just as Samurai Shodown‘s Haohmaru is about to be added, along with some new creation bits.
tl;dr: expect DOA Xtreme 3 and Destruction Derby Raw reviews very soon and (hopefully) some new discussions/articles.
Most importantly: stay safe, stay sensible and look after each other.
Mini Reviews: I played it…I just don’t have a lot to say about it.
Nobody is more disappointed than me to be writing a Mini Review of Tombi (Tomba to you fine American folks) rather than a full-fat verdict. But after finally playing this game (after a looooooooong wait), I felt so “meh” towards it that I’m struggling to work out what to say.
It’s imperative to understand that my interest in this game goes all the way back to the late 90’s when my Dad surprised us all by coming home one day with a Playstation under his arm. Included in the box was the latest version of the legendary ‘Demo 1’ disc and one of the games previewed on there was Tombi. I think I played the Tombi demo more than any of the full games that we had for the Playstation. I just couldn’t get enough of the comical, extremely exaggerated visuals, vibrant colours, dangerously addictive music and the game world itself, which seemed to be packed with places to explore and secrets to uncover.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get the full game but I frequently returned to the demo for my Tombi fix. Eventually I grew up (in physical age at least…the jury’s still out on my mental maturity) and acquired a disposable income as well as a keen interest in retro gaming. I still wasn’t able to buy a copy of Tombi however, because it turned out that the game was quite rare. You couldn’t find it on the pre-owned racks in physical shops and ebayers wanted big money for this OMG L@@K!!!! MEGA RARE VINTAGE PS1 SONY GAME – something that hasn’t changed when used copies still sell for anywhere between £100-£150 on ebay.
Thankfully, the game was made available in 2012 for a much more sensible price on Sony’s Playstation Network (£6.49 at the time of writing), something that surprised me when I (wrongly) assumed that it would be a niche game lost to the mists of time, or swallowed up in a licensing/rights hell. Even so, I was tardy at downloading Tombi and didn’t get around to it until this year.
So…that’s eight years after it was re-released and a whopping twenty-three years since the game was originally published. It’s fair to say that my anticipation was sky-high, and I was genuinely excited as I watched the progress of the download on my Vita.
They do warn against meeting your heroes however and I’m afraid that I may have fallen foul of this slice of philosophy given how I put a healthy wedge of hours into Tombi but haven’t touched it again since.
Now don’t get me wrong: the game still absolutely oozes with charm and, being a 2D game, it has aged very well compared to all those (then) cutting-edge 3D Playstation games that look rougher than a badger’s arse in 2020. I’m still head-over-heels for the game’s visual style, music and playful humour. I also appreciate the game’s non-linear structure. You will collect loads of items on your adventure, for example, and have to go back to previous areas to complete quests or access new places. There’s a vague Metroidvania feel to things with new areas linking up to older ones in unexpected ways.
And, while Tombi is a 2D platformer, you are able to traverse both the foreground and background. There are also areas that rotate and allow you to explore all four sides of a structure. It’s a creative and clever game that tries to do something different and shake up the 2D platform formula.
Unfortunately, the charm and nice ideas only carried Tombi so far and I rapidly tired of the game, much to my disappointment. Perhaps I expected too much, or had waited far too long. Maybe I had built the game up in my head to be something that it was never going to live up to. More likely, it was the deciphering of cryptic clues to make progress. The difficulty ramps up very quickly too, demanding uber-precision from the player. A challenge is no bad thing in a game (it’s entirely necessary) but when it saps the enjoyment out of the experience, then all the aesthetic charm in the universe can’t compensate for getting pissed off at cheap deaths, being expected to make super-precise jumps and having to constantly re-load my save to try again. I wanted to enjoy the game for all the positive, happy things that I previously mentioned, but ultimately found that I couldn’t be bothered to continue with it.
Will I be selecting Tombi from my Vita’s home screen again? Well, never say never. There is that small voice in the back of my head suggesting that I may have thrown the towel in prematurely rather than rising to the challenge. That said, Tombi is – and always has been – all about the art direction and creativity for me and I’d really rather not spoil those things by persisting with unsatisfying, often frustrating platforming mechanics.
