Random Thoughts & Topics

[vivisectvi]

The bug up my ass is just that it's NOT a Yakuza game. Yakuza shouldn't be a shoot em up.

Well, when you're dealing with zombies, what else can you do but shoot 'em up? The normal Yakuza "beat em up" tactics don't transfer too well when you need to put a bullet in your enemies head to defeat them. ...and it IS a Yakuza game. All of the other bits and pieces of this franchise are in this game.

Maybe if it didn't have the Yakuza name on it I'd feel differently about it.

Persona isn't a versus fighting game, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen and couldn't be fun (and it is, FYI). The game is a spin-off, non-canon, "what if zombies attacked Kamurocho" scenario. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Edit: Also, Yakuza 3 did have a bunch of the mini-games in it, I think, just not the hostess bars. It still had all the gambling dens(with that one mahjong game I had no freakin idea how to play but still somehow kept winning in), the golf minigame, karaoke, darts and...I'm sure other stuff that I'm forgetting.

A lot more than the hostess stuff was cut. The entire trivia game in the arcade was cut, all of the side-quests and mini-games around the massage parlour were cut, all of the shogi and mahjong mini games were cut as well. It's still a great game, but stupid that Sega thought that cutting these things would make it more accessible to us yokels in the West.

 

[fazzle]

The bug up my ass is just that it's NOT a Yakuza game. Yakuza shouldn't be a shoot em up.

Well, when you're dealing with zombies, what else can you do but shoot 'em up? The normal Yakuza "beat em up" tactics don't transfer too well when you need to put a bullet in your enemies head to defeat them. ...and it IS a Yakuza game. All of the other bits and pieces of this franchise are in this game.

You're right, but I think the most correct answer is just not making a Yakuza zombie game. With how self serious the franchise is, it just doesn't lend itself to a wacky "what if" scenario the way other games do. Maybe the game isn't that bad, but going back to the original question, it would be a horrible starting point for someone to try and jump in to the Yakuza game series, because it would give them completely false expectations for what the games are.

I'll admit I've never actually played Dead Souls because the concept itself turned me off so badly, but all the stuff I've seen of it just looks so freaking dull.

 

[vivisectvi]

but going back to the original question, it would be a horrible starting point for someone to try and jump in to the Yakuza game series, because it would give them completely false expectations for what the games are.

Maybe so, but giving a recommendation of "fuck that game, don't even touch that" when you haven't even played the game yourself is kind of dumb. Sure it's not a traditional "Yakuza crime game" experience but that doesn't take away from the fact that it is one hell of a zombie shooter that takes the personalities and Yakuza traditions from that series and drops them into an apocalypse - and that is not dull in the least, IMO. Hell, Capcom could take some lessons from Sega on this one.

 

[FLAM]

I figured it would be better to start with a traditional Yakuza game, but at the same time, I also wanted something closer to Binary Domain (a shooter). But I'm gonna start with a regular Yakuza game, and if I dig it, I'll get Dead Souls. My love for killing zombies has been reinvigorated, which is another reason why I considered Dead Souls to begin with.

 

[KingPK]

So I just spent a half hour playing getting sucked back into Elite Beat Agents. How has a sequel to this not been made yet? It seems like a perfect game for today's tablet/phone game marketplace (even though I'd still prefer playing with a stylus). Jumpin' Jack Flash is still a bitch of a final stage; the final stretch is just relentless.

 

[Mazto]

Wound up with some extra cash, so I picked up Sleeping Dogs.

Fun game so far, I did freak out when it glitched on me when I did like three drug busts and tried to get arrests on them in a row, game froze up. One of the areas had twenty thugs, not looking forward to refighting them all. The combat is fun, and I love-hate the concept that you have to purchase vehicles instead of just jacking them and taking them back to your garage, I keep trying to do a B level car street race, but my car's top speed isn't good enough to win. Need to buy a better one.

 

[bps21]

You get one in storyline that was good enough for me to win the first races. I got through the whole game with the bike they give you and a car you get. Just remember to right stick into the other cars and wipe them out

 

[Mazto]

Yeah, I have that one and I bought a car from the "cheapest" car place so far. And a faster bike, I usually cruise around on my bullet bike. I like the "stat" concept of a certain look boosting XP, but I don't like running to seven different shops to find the pair of shoes that will upgrade me from Minor Thug to Thug.

 

[bps21]

If your looking for all the achievements do yourself a favor and buy an a class car as soon as you can and drive everywhere as fast as you can. There is a gold medal for being at top speed in an a class car for 30 minutes and my reliance on taxis due to laziness left me with 23 minutes to go when I'd done everything else.

 

[Mazto]

Bullet Bike Wheelies is how I get around Hong Kong. I'll grab an A Class ride ASAP though.

 

[fazzle]

It feels like the A-class car races are just flat out broken. No matter how shitty I drive in them, I always wind up destroying the field. Every other class race is a challenge, but the a class ones are just way too easy.

 

[Thoth]

So I just spent a half hour playing getting sucked back into Elite Beat Agents. How has a sequel to this not been made yet? It seems like a perfect game for today's tablet/phone game marketplace (even though I'd still prefer playing with a stylus). Jumpin' Jack Flash is still a bitch of a final stage; the final stretch is just relentless.

There is no sequel because the first game didn't sell enough. I have heard the number is somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 copies sold.

 

[AnonymousBroccoli]

Rock Band Blitz is out now. I have my gripes about some of the initial setup process, and I don't like having to use a Facebook app for the social aspects rather than RockBand.com, or just my XBL friends list.

However, it is quite fun, and having however many hundreds of songs to choose from the start is surely going to give it some legs.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

Pretend for a moment I don't know anything about metallurgy, engineering, or Rock Band Blitz and just tell me what the hell the game is all about.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

Pretend for a moment I don't know anything about metallurgy, engineering, or Rock Band Blitz and just tell me what the hell the game is all about.

The game take songs and breaks them down into 4 or 5 tracks (guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and keyboards sometimes). Each track has it's own track running down from the top of the screen with the notes one one of two sections of the track (left and right). You can hit the notes by hitting the correct button at the same time. This scores you points. However, using the triggers, you can also switch and play another track if your current track is slow and doesn't offer enough notes. When you hit a certain number of notes on each track, the score multiplier goes up and you score more points. So, it behooves the player to switch between tracks and make sure each track's multiplier is high. That's basically it. There's powerups and stuff, but I'm not getting in to it.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

So it's all regular controller based, like Keyboard Hero or some such. Interesting concept with the song blitzing.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

So it's all regular controller based, like Keyboard Hero or some such. Interesting concept with the song blitzing.

Yeah it's controller based. I've heard you can play it on the instruments, but maybe they just meant you can play the Blitz songs on regular RB3. Don't know, haven't really experimented with it, just started it up about 10 minutes ago.

 

[KingPK]

Yeah, that's why all the songs are a separate download; they're RB3 compatible. Kind of confused me at first.

Surprisingly, the default controls for that game work really well. Quite natural feeling.

 

[AnonymousBroccoli]

There's a control scheme called "Typewriter" that will let you kind of play with the guitar controller. Tap the green fret button for the left note; red for right (the scheme calls for A and B respectively, on a standard controller). And then you can use the guitar's D-pad to switch tracks. There may be a way to manipulate the strum bar to use it as the track switcher, but you might have to make it register as left and right, rather than the standard up and down.

Seems kind of convoluted as anything more than a geeky experiment, when the game was designed for a regular controller, and you can play all of the songs properly in Rock Band 3.

 

[AnonymousBroccoli]

Surprisingly, the default controls for that game work really well. Quite natural feeling.

Having played a fair bit of Frequency back in the day, I'm much more comfortable with using LB & RB for notes, and the left analog for track switching. I can't remember what the default scheme for Frequency was, but I used L2 - Square - R2 for the three notes, X for power-ups, and D-pad to switch.

Using the D-pad as an action button just seems wrong. I haven't tried beat-matching with the analog sticks, but that also seems like it wouldn't be quite right.

 

[KingPK]

Holy shit that guitar solo in Cult of Personality almost broke my thumbs. Can't wait to see how crazy it is in RB3.

 

[AnonymousBroccoli]

I just played "It's Not My Time" by 3 Doors Down, and its solo kinda busted me up a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Or878tNdtPI#t=154s

(Skip to about 2:35 if it doesn't automatically)

It's not complicated—it's just LRLR back and forth the whole time—but it is long, and fast enough. I had to skip some notes and adjust my grip just to keep 'er going.

 

[KingPK]

I downloaded it around 10 this morning and it was funny to see nothing but Harmonix guys still on the leaderboards. I think I'm in the 20s on Tom Sawyer.

Challenge me, people!

EDIT: #3 in the world in Epic!

 

[bps21]

The game is super addictive. You get mesmerized by it when you get into a groove. I'm too confused by the power ups still to have great scores though. I'll have to figure that out.

 

[KingPK]

I've found that if a song has a particular track with a lot of notes, the Super [instrument] and Bandmate combo works really well since you can just keep using it on that track and focus on filling up the others.

I do wish they will patch in the ability to set up goals in-game instead of needing my Netbook next to me so I can start new ones.

 

[Kageho]

Don't suppose anyone else picked up Guild Wars 2. Decided that since its mostly a one time fee, why not. Any impressions if anyone has?

 

[Haws Bah Gawd]

A friend bought it and said he enjoys it infinitely more than the original Guild Wars and Diablo 3.

 

[Kageho]

I started at 11:33. I looked back at the clock after playing for what I assumed was just "awhile". It was 1:07. I swore I played like 15 mins I thought.

It's definitely a pretty awesome game. I've also a wasted I think 10-12 slots for a single of every weapon type for single and two handed so I can just have so many different ways to play.

 

[AnonymousBroccoli]

In case the importance of power-ups in Blitz wasn't apparent, let's have a look at a score I just got:

Total: 149,738
Base: 54,488
Solo(s): 20,000
Blitz Mode: 4,900
Finale: 5,300
Shockwave Power-up: 9,900
Pinball Notes: 55,150

I earned more playing pinball (or more accurately, Breakout/Arkanoid) than I did hitting notes the traditional way.

There's a loading screen joke about Shockwave and Pinball going well together, but I'm still not clear on what Shockwave actually does. I'm going to guess it would save the pinball once if you're on the other side of the screen or something. Don't know what it does to actual notes, though. In any case, pinball more than made up the 250 coins it cost, compared to the 300 coins Shockwave cost.

Looking it up, Shockwave sends a wave out, and you get points for every note it touches. It doesn't break the notes like many other power-ups do, though.

Rock Band Blitz Power-Ups: Point Doubler, Jackpot, Runaway Notes, Shockwave, Road Rage

 

[KingPK]

The more Overdrive you have, the bigger the shockwave is as well.

I'm still getting damn good scores with my Bandmate/Bomb notes/Super instrument combo.

EDIT: Highway Star is just notes stacked on top of notes. Great song for the Road Rage power up.