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• In Defense of the QTE: Ninja Blade

  Now that the man’s winding down his career, let us honor Yu Suzuki for his most important contribution to game design: the QTE. Hey now. I can hear you rolling your eyes. We might be sick of pressing the X button every single time Crystal Dynamics wants Lara Croft to kick a tiger with style, but the quick time event provides us with some of videogames’ most satisfying thrills. They aren’t inherently bad. They’re just implemented very, very poorly. This week, you’ll be able to walk out into the world and pick up a copy of From Software’s Ninja Blade. Hell, you can go home right now and download a demo of Ninja Blade just to have a taste. One level is all you need to exemplify just how good quick time events can be in a game. Here’s why. Read More... Posted Apr 06 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, microsoft, xbox 360, madworld, sega, resident evil 4, god of war, yu suzuki, tomb raider, indigo prophecy, quantic dream, tomb raider legend, lara croft, yakuza, yakuza 2, yakuza 3, crystal dynamics, ninja blade, from software, leon s kennedy, qte, Fahrenheit

• Anything Less Than the Best is a Felony: Arkham Asylum Might Be the Best Batman Game Yet

  Batman is awesome. I would never say that Batman wasn’t awesome. Batman is only a tool though. A conceit, a platform, a set of rules to tell entertaining stories with. There’s something people tend to forget every time a new Batman game gets announced. Bats hasn’t had a very good videogame career, but everyone seems to think it has to do with the medium. It isn’t that videogames starring Batman are usually bad. It’s that everything starring Batman is usually bad. There are three good Batman movies to four terrible ones. There is one good Batman cartoon, and four others that can physically damage three out of five human senses. There are a number of very good Batman comics. There also happens to be over one thousand Batman comics that suck. As of 2009, there is one excellent Batman videogame (NES), a handful of okay Batman games, and close to twenty that are trash. Not trashy. I mean the sort of thing you put in the garbage. After watching a playthrough of Batman: Arkham Asylum’s first twenty minutes, I’m willing to say that Rocksteady Studios has the potential to make the first great Batman game. No fanboy hyperbole here. It actually looks that good. Read More... Posted Mar 03 2009, 08:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, gears of war, metroid prime, eidos, yakuza, batman, rocksteady games, arkham asylum, harley quinn, epic, wb interactive, the joker, commissioner Gordon, batman arkham asylum

• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Character

  Next time you start telling somebody about a game you were playing — not a puzzle game or anything equally abstract — pay attention to how you refer to what you were doing in the game. Are you saying, “Then I jumped on the goomba!” or are you saying, “Then my guy jumped on the goomba!” Is it you finding the boomerang or is it Link? Are you driving the car, making the basket, managing the farm? Or is it your proxy, that little character walking about when you push a button to the right, that window meant to be a human being’s field of vision? As much as I thought about open worlds in 2008, I spent just as much time wondering what role character plays in great game design. A great game character doesn’t need to be one specific thing. It can be you, a literal representation of how you see yourself physically and even spiritually. It can also be a suit for you to put on, a fiction that you can inhabit, a doorway into story that isn’t just different from your daily life, but quite literally impossible. There was no shortage of astounding games in 2008, but there were a handful that, for me, were wholly defined by how they let you inhabit their characters, and characters made both for and by the player. In my first look back at ’08, I mentioned how it was character that ultimately kept me from getting the most out of Grand Theft Auto IV. There was just too much dissonance in how Niko Bellic was represented. There were three Nikos. There was the Niko you see speaking in cutscenes, a haunted, practical man of honor, making a new life for himself in a new country by hunting down the demons of his past. There was the Niko you guided through the game’s structured missions, a ruthless, opportunistic murderer who would destroy anything and anyone for a buck. And, finally, the Niko that you played, the blank slate who could do anything in Liberty City, whether it was enjoying a nice walk on the beach or assaulting an international airport with nothing more than a motorcycle and a baseball bat. At no point in GTAIV did these three Nikos meld into a single character, and the constant contradictions between them made it impossible for me to enjoy the game after a certain point. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Yakuza 2 (my absolute favorite game of 2008) were two of last year’s greatest achievements precisely because they didn’t fall prey to GTAIV’s representational failures. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 06:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, top ten, gta, playstation 2, mario, soul calibur, peter molyneux, yakuza, yakuza 2, best of 2008, soulcalibur iv, fable ii, kazuma kiriyu, old snake, goomba, solid snake

• Trailer Review: Yakuza 3

  Kazuma Kiryu and I are going to hang out. We’ll go out and he’ll show me the sights, take me to a hostess club, and we will laugh and laugh. Chances are, some dudes in puffy winter jackets will start some shit. I will hold their leader in a headlock and Kaz will drop kick that mofo so hard that Canadian children will say, “Ow” in their living rooms, thousands and thousands of miles away. We’ll high five each other then, before listening to a hardboiled detective tell us of intriguing and nefarious dealings in the Tokyo underworld. It’ll be sweet when the jazz rock starts playing. That heady day will only end when I’m woken up in my study, a firm bionic hand on my shoulder and a disapproving voice asking if I’m “dreaming of that Celestial roustabout” again. I will lie, of course. A white lie to soothe my beloved Commando’s nerves. But I will treasure that dream all the same. Yakuza 3, as you can see from this trailer, looks totally frigging rad. Read More... Posted Nov 14 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, trailer review, bionic commando, sega, yakuza, yakuza 2, yakuza 3, kazuma kiryu

• Bringing Sexy Back: Toshihiro Nagoshi

  I mentioned it earlier today, but Sega’s been making me feel all tingly on the inside lately. It’s been a goodly while since Sega made my heart flutter, but they just keep making all the right moves. More than anything else from the publisher, Yakuza 2 has been the real inspiration behind all the tinglyness. No bones about it, I freaking love that game. It is awesome. But I got to thinking today, to whom do I owe my thanks for all the warmth inside? Well, certainly crime novelist Hase Seishu. His careful pen is responsible for Yakuza’s ongoing and thoroughly entertaining story. But producer Toshihiro Nagoshi certainly deserves a heaping spoonful of thanks as well. And you know what else? He is sexy as hell. Read More... Posted Nov 05 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, bringing sexy back, sega, super monkey ball, yakuza, yakuza 2, Toshihiro nagoshi

• Sex/Violence: Oneechanbara and the New Localization

  I thought about filing this under the Japan Scares Me category, but frankly Oneechanbara doesn’t scare me. It merely makes sense. I am not surprised that Japan makes games about a woman in a cowboy hat and lingerie who runs around with her pre-pubescent sister killing zombies with a gigantic sword and who ultimately goes insane when she’s completely covered with blood. This is just what Japan does. I’m pretty sure that there are soft drinks whose canisters are decorated with the exact same scenario. It’s probably called Refreshing Breast Blood No Zombie Drink White Plus. Chances are I would drink it. Because I delight in these things. It’s curious, though, that Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers is coming out in America at all. Read More... Posted Oct 23 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, xbox 360, wii, ubisoft, sega, shiren the wanderer, yakuza, d3, zombies vs ambulances, oneechanbara, simple 2000, izuna, envangelion

• Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone

  Videogames are rich with memorable moments. Born of both play and story, there are those images, those brief passages of achievement, that are emblazoned in your memory: the first time you clear 100,000 points in Tetris, the dogs bursting through the window in Resident Evil, the booming march that begins to play after the baby metroid’s sacrifice during Super Metroid’s climactic battle with Mother Brain. We are tied to these events thanks not only to those games’ mechanical and artistic design but because of our agency in them. We facilitate these conclusions and, since the game is well-made, we feel them. Another classic: Solid Snake’s first fight with the cyborg ninja, Grey Fox. Like so much of the Metal Gear Solid series, this sequence is ludicrous: simplistic to play, overdramatic, over-everything. But when Grey Fox begins screaming, “Make me feel!” and your controller begins to shake in time with his uncontrollable gesticulations, the scene becomes something else. In 1998, rumble technology was still relatively new in home gaming, so having this drama reflected in the physical world made that much more of an impression. Every time Snake was kicked in the gut or when you landed a hit amidst this half-man’s yowling was tangible. I feel a lot like Grey Fox when I play videogames these days, particularly action fare. I want an action game to make me feel. Not necessarily a profound emotional reaction – though that’s always a plus – so much as a physical one. Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, metroid, star wars, resident evil, metal gear solid, sega, lucasarts, tetris, yakuza, die hard arcade

• Surprise of the Week: Sega Releases a Good Game

  Man, that PS2 just keeps hanging in there, doesn't it?  We're nearly 8 years after the system's launch and still getting some pretty high-profile games; part of me wishes that the PS2 wasn't on its last legs (as far as  quality software goes), because that would mean we'd still be seeing the great output that Japanese studios gave us last generation--when development costs were merely crazy instead of wholly and intractably insane.  But in the world of reality, Yakuza 2 ships today, and it's pretty important. If you didn't play the first Yakuza, you're not alone; it came out in the Fall of 2006, when the world cared only for the tidal wave of next-gen was about to hit. I actually found out about the game long after its release date, and GameFly-ed it the following Fall. Yakuza was actually pretty surprising for what I assumed would be a ripoff of Grand Theft Auto--okay, it kind of is a ripoff of Grand Theft Auto, in its own way. Add a distinctly Japanese sense of game design to the GTA series, and you've basically got Yakuza; and obviously, there are some benefits and drawbacks to this equation. Read More... Posted Sep 09 2008, 01:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with no comments Filed under: sega, ps2, grand theft auto, bob mackey, yakuza