Onimusha 2 is Insane

 

I'm a big fan of the first Onimusha game.  To sum it up in a pithy, not quite accurate way for anyone who’s never played it, it’s essentially classic Resident Evil but with samurai.  It’s one of those games that I return to at least once a year or so to take up the blade as Samanosuke and show the demons of Gifu Castle what for.  Despite my deep love for the first game though, I have extremely limited experience with the sequels.  I played 2 and 3 briefly at launch, never beat them and then largely forgot about them.  I briefly watched the final moments of Oni 3 in a video game bar a few years ago but I was off my face drunk and not really paying attention so I can’t tell you anything outside of “Jean Reno was there” and you can tell that from the box.  

So recently I decided to make a change to this lapse in my gaming experience and I sat my ass down and played through Onimusha 2 and I did not quite get the experience I was expecting at all.  I hesitate to call the game “bad” per se, but maybe I’ll sink as low as “weird and annoying” 

Right out of the gate, from the moment you hit start the vibes are just off.  Onimusha 1 was a different beast compared to Resident Evil but the DNA was still there.  The horror elements didn't really hit with the fantastical designs and stilted English voice work but an effort was being made.  Oni 2 kicks off with an honest to goodness anime OP but with the vibes of a period drama shown on Japanese tv at 1pm for the housewives circa 1995.  This vibe sticks throughout the whole game with an extremely corny and forced romantic sub plot which is occasionally broken up when it remembers what it’s supposed to be a sequel to.  

The weirdness continues as you are greeted with a gold counter on your menu and the ability to gift items to a number of side characters, which by itself is fine but what makes it weird is that you are totally locked out of the system about 2 hours in.  My 6000 gold from the start of the game sat in my inventory untouched until Nobunaga ate shit at the end.  The other thing is that neglecting this system, because I thought I could engage with it later, completely FUCKED my play through.  I found Onimusha 2 to be brutally difficult, something I wasn’t expecting considering the first game is a free clear.  The ending stats showed me, however, that my neglect for the friendship system locked about half the game out for me which is cool from a replayability standpoint but bad from a first play stress standpoint.  I struggled HARD with the final boss due to a lack of healing resources, a lack I would not have had if the ninja could have opened the trick chests or having extra scenes which I assume would have had more meds and herbs.  

Despite the easily missable game systems, the moment to moment sword play was great.  Basically the same as Oni 1 but the enemies in this game are actually sort of threatening and not just piñatas full of exp to farm as I run from one boss to another.  That said though, the bosses are insufferably shit, feeling mostly unfair rather than posing any kind of interesting challenge.  The worst being the weird pig woman with the umbrella who has attacks that I swear cannot be blocked and does insane damage unless you’ve been pumping your armor and completely ignoring your damage output.  The final form of the final boss also just drops the sword play to turn into a boss fight from Sin and Punishment (N64) but with bad controls which was certainly something I wasn’t wanting or enjoying 

The cutscenes are where things get really unhinged though.  I want to call the English voice work terrible but it’s SO bad that I have to wonder if it’s actually being done on purpose and if that’s true I have to wonder why this game is being treated as such a joke.  The game as many laugh out loud “what the fuck?!” moments that need to be seen to be appreciated such as any scene with the foppish umbrella haircut demon swordsman.  Introduced as what I thought as comic relief, harasses you until the end of the game as a main antagonist where you then have a climactic duel with him in the penultimate area.  The one that got the biggest laugh out of me is when Nobunaga’s first form goes down and he shoots some orbs into a slot machine that spins and then turns into an elephant.  Not a sentence I thought I’d be able to write about Onimusha of all things.  I hate that cliche gag of “were they high when they made this?!” But SOMETHING was being abused in both the writing room and the office of the people making the cutscenes, I’m sure of it.

Overall, I like 2 significantly less than 1.  That said though, I’m excited to go and revisit it now equipped with the hindsight of a first play through.  The weirdness of the presentation is something I don’t think I’ll ever get over but I’ll be interested to replay and re-evaluate in about a year.  Watch this space 

Creatively Bankrupt at Capcom

Capcom used to be one of the biggest and best companies out there.  Street Fighter, Megaman, Dead Rising, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, the list goes on forever of great franchises under their belt.  While some of their stuff has gone a bit stale like Megaman, recent releases like Resident Evil 7 show the company clearly still has it somewhere.

Recently they released news that they were remaking Resident Evil 2.  This remake not just being like the RE1 remake on the Gamecube back in those days, but a full on remastering where it's all new fangled over the shoulder stuff now and basically nothing like Resident Evil 2 at all.  Sarcasm aside it doesn't look too bad, even if it's not the remake I wanted or hoped for, it'll probably still be, at the very least, a good game.  However the hype surrounding the remake has set off some money alarms at Capcom headquarters and they have realized that remaking old games=BIG BUCKS.  They have said they are going to "explore" the idea of remaking more of their older games.

This may be exciting for some people that we may be getting nice shiny new versions of Dino Crisis or whatever but to me this news screams that they now have an excuse to be lazy.  Now that they know that remaking old games will generate hype AND dollars, why bother trying to make anything new?  If you google "upcoming Capcom games" the three titles that appear at the top of the search are Devil May Cry 5, Megaman 11 and Deep Down.  So two sequels and Souls-looking dungeon crawl.  Google that in six months and it'll probably just be a list of remakes and a tweak to Street Fighter.

Maybe I'm just mad and cynical because I'm sick of seeing remakes and sequels EVERYWHERE.  Of course, gaming isn't devoid of it's original IPs, there's plenty of indie devs and other companies putting out original stuff but I just feel that it's a shame that a big lad like Capcom isn't using the piles of money it has to try something different.  Let's at least hope that if they do start churning out remakes, they are at least of good quality.

Battle Circuit

So today I had a massive 3 hour gap between my driving lessons so I went down to the arcade about 5 minutes from the school to play DDR.  To my dismay however, there were a couple of people already on it and with limited time before my next class I wasn't about to waste it waiting around for those guys to finish.  The place had the usual selection of rhythm and card games but nestled in the back of this place there was an older cabinet running a game called Battle Circuit. 

Now I've never heard of this thing before but Battle Circuit is a side scrolling beat em' up made by Capcom and released in 1997.  After having a quick glance at the wikipedia page to get that date it looks like the game could support 4 players but the cabinet I was playing on only had 2 sticks so that wasn't happening any time soon.

After you put in your money you get to pick 1 of 5 characters to play as.  These involve a strong guy, a tough guy, a speedy guy , "death blow" guy and one that I don't remember.  I went for the strong guy because I like to keep things as simple as possible.

From there is a pretty standard side scrolling beat em' up.  If you've ever played anything like Final Fight or Streets of Rage then you know what you're getting with this.  The screen fills up with dudes and you punch all the dudes until they fall down dead.  There was some kind of story going on about a disk or something but I was just skipping all of it so I don't have a fucking clue.

What I was kind of surprised with though was just how fair the game felt in comparison to a lot of other titles in the genre.  I'm more than willing to admit that I'm not exactly the best when it comes to games like this but it feels like in a lot of titles enemies, especially, bosses will have moves that come out of nowhere, are crazy hard to dodge and do tons of damage.  Also the further you get into these games the more getting hit feels like coin guzzling dogshit than actual challenge.  Battle Circuit however didn't really do this and there was only one instance where I thought I lost life because of the game cheating me.  It was a woman boss with big thighs who liked to kick things (not Chun-Li, called Barbara or something) who would break your combo to spinning bird kick you across the screen which felt a little shitty but, like I said, she was the only one with an attack like that.

The game also had this upgrade system where you could buy moves or improvements for your character by beating coins out of the enemies as you went.  The extra life however was like, 1000 coins and I was only getting like, 200 a level.  There's only 8 stages too so if you're buying extra health meter or the actual useful skills then you can kiss that extra life goodbye.  The only thing I really disliked about the game was that fact you only got 1 extra life but this was offset by the game only being 50 yen a play instead of the usual 100.  I think if I had to put 100 yen for every continue I probably would have quit after my first game over.

Anyway it's a pretty good game so if you can find a way to play it then you should absolutely give it a try.  I think if you live outside of Japan the chances of you finding a cabinet are pretty slim because even in Japan I've never seen this game before.  But you know, MAME is a thing.....

The New Resident Evil Is a Little Pointless

One game that was released recently was something that I have dubbed ReREMake and while I'm not entirely complaining about it's release I can't help but feel that this is another pointless re-do of a game that didn't really need remaking/porting anymore.

For those that don't know, back in 2002 Capcom released a remake of Resident Evil 1 for the Nintendo Gamecube and it wasn't just a straight up port of the original game, oh god no.  Resident Evil on the Gamecube, which people used to called REMake was Resident Evil 1 on fucking steroids.  The graphics were overhauled like crazy and looked fucking beautiful and they tweaked the game play a little bit for the new version.  On top of that they added a bunch of extra shit to the game so even veterans of the PS1 classic had something new to experience, it was awesome.

So then ReREMake comes along and while I'm not particularly angry about it like I was with The Last of Us Remastered, it still seems completely fucking pointless.  It's not too expensive but on Steam ReREMake will set you back £15 which is a fair price I guess for a game like this.  That said, Amazon UK have the Gamecube version going for prices as low as £6.50 and nearly every motherfucker I ever met had a Gamecube so why not just go dust that off and save yourself £10.  For me in Japan, I can walk round the corner and get the PS1 version in any used game shop ever for 100 fucking yen so trying to justify a £15 purchase for a game I've already played a million times is kind of hard.

Still though, while it seems a little pointless I'm not mad about it for a few reasons.  First, even if every motherfucker did have a Gamecube that doesn't mean they kept it so those who are lamenting their stupid decision finally have a chance to give REMake another go, the game IS 13 years old to be fair.   The second reason I'm not angry is that if ReREMake does well, I hope it sends a message to Capcom about the kind of Resident Evil people want. 

Capcom have had a bad habit for a good while of just taking Resident Evil and making it progressively worse by releasing shitty versions of Resident Evil 4.  I'm hoping that this will send a message not only to Capcom but to other developers is that the kind of survival horror games that real fans of the genre want is shit like this.  None of this Amnesia-esque no combat bullshit, real survival horror games like we had back in the day.

Admittedly I'm going to buy it because my Gamecube and copy are stuck at my family home and I'm halfway across the world so thanks, I guess.  Still though, it does feel a little like a shitty cashgrab by playing on nostalgia but I guess I'll forgive you this time.

The Blue Bomber Returns!.....Kind of....not really

Remember Megaman?! I sure as hell do because it was only a few days ago during a boring part of my afternoon that I sat down and blasted Megaman 4 on NES.

Anyway, Capcom hasn't been treating it's little blue robot very well recently.  The closest thing we have had to a Megaman game was Street Fighter X Megaman, which is fine but it's a fan game and didn't really have anything to do with Capcom from a development standpoint.  I think we also had that Megaman XOver thing or whatever it was called which was a auto scrolling game that bascially played itself for the iPad.  Not to mention Megaman Legends 3 getting cancelled which a lot of people were upset about, so let's just say that the poor guy hasn't been having a good run.

So, what I can only imagine was a case of people being sick of Capcom's shit, Keiji Inafune and a bunch of other people have taken to the internet to crowd fund their upcoming project "Mighty No9", a Megaman game in everything but name.  Basically they took Megaman and changed everything just a little bit to avoid being sued, but not enough so that people won't know what's going on.

I'm not going to talk about the game itself here because one google search will get you a wealth of information on that, so go look up their kickstarter page which has already met it's goal.  The only thing I'm going to say is that I'm hype as hell and I'm glad this has happened.  It's been far far too long since we had a good Megaman game and even though this isn't QUITE the same, it's close enough to qualify.  Capcom sure as hell aren't going to do it so let's hope Inafune and his buddies can bring back the magic.

The Height of Idiocy

DmC: Devil May Cry is still a game I have yet to play, so I will not be commenting on how good it actually is, but as far as I'm concerned, it still LOOKS like a piece of shit.

ANYWAY! The point here, is that DmC is not selling as well as Capcom hoped it would as they have now gone and halved the sales expectations from this title.  While to me, this is neither good or bad, I came across an article that royally pissed me the fuck off.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/capcom-almost-halves-dmc-sales-expectations/0110372

This article, written by Ben Parfitt basically just outlines what is going on with the sales figures for the game.  But he doesn't just say that, he's saying that fans are destroying this games sales figures out of spite, because they changed Dante's hair colour.

Never in my life have I seen a more ignorant prick write things on the internet about video games, and this is coming from ME who writes plenty of garbage on this blog.  He agrees with the notion that "Devil May Cry fans destroy brand out of spite", which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

People aren't buying the game because its vastly different GAME PLAY WISE to what they are used to.  But it's not just different, it's been heavily dumbed down compared to past games, so the whole reason people enjoyed Devil May Cry has basically been removed from DmC.  Couple that with some of the juvenile writing I've ever seen and it's a good recipe for making people turn away.

Not one person gave a fuck about Dante's design once some game play came out, NOT ONE, but this doesn't matter.  Newsflash for you Ben, players don't owe Capcom or Ninja Theory anything.  People aren't buying the game because it looks ass, not out of spite.  Ben Parfitt isn't the only idiot to say stuff like this though, I have seen a couple of articles now calling the fans a bunch of whiny babies for not buying DmC.

But here is the thing, the Devil May Cry HD Collection, to my knowledge, is actually doing pretty fuckin' good.  THAT should be an indication of why DmC isn't fucking selling.  Fans don't want your easy mode "FUCK YOU" garbage, they want more of stuff like Devil May Cry 3/4.

I can't wait to find a pre owned copy of DmC so I can really tear it apart but there is no way I'm giving a penny to Ninja Theory or Capcom for this shoddy excuse of a Devil May Cry game.  Also one more thing!  When I was raging about the game play to my friends on steam and such, they would just say to me "if you don't like the look of it, then don't buy it", which makes sense right, but apparently all fans who don't buy things that they don't like the look of are now all spiteful babies

Fuck you Ben Parfitt and fuck all the "journalists" that posted articles with similar themes.  I suggest that you take those pay cheques and give them to my Charity, because you sure as fuck don't deserve it for the type of drivel that comes out of your head.

DmC: Devil May Cry Impressions

So I've not bought this game yet, nor have I played it, so everything I'm about to say is based on stuff I've seen so far, and it ain't good.

Let me start out by saying, no, it's not the redesign of Dante and it's not his goddamn hair colour.  I hate that whenever someone brings up some legitimate problems with this game, the first thing people start shouting is "well you just don't like his new hair!"  This is bullshit, and I'm pretty sure the people who spent hours upon hours learning combos in Devil May Cry 3 and 4 don't give all that much of a fuck about the way he looks.

Speaking of fucks, the thing I really don't like about this game is the writing and cutscenes.  If you want an example of what I'm talking about, go on Youtube and look up something called the "Secret Ingredient boss cutscene"  This scene literally has Dante and the boss exchange a few "Fuck you"s before the battle starts.  Who approved this kind of writing?  I mean the whole story seems bad enough with "corrupt government/corporations erh mah gerd" but adding excessive amounts of swearing just makes matters worse.  Game writing should be getting better, not regressing into the same kind of lines that teenage boys spout in a schoolyard argument.

Then there is the combat itself, which seems a damn sight less involved than the earlier games.  It looks functional, hell, even fun, but it seems way too easy to get those SSS combat ranks which you had to previously be really good to get.  Take a look at what I mean

Granted this is from some demo play I think, but if it's not been changed then....what the hell?.  If you look up combo videos for Devil May Cry 3 or 4, people do this crazy impressive shit, and even then the SSS isn't a guarantee.  But here it's done with one attack, on one weapon....not good.

Despite all my bitching, I still have yet to actually sit down and play the damn thing.  I'll pick it up one day, when I can find it pre owned because I'm sure as hell not giving Capcom any money for this ruination of Devil May Cry.  But you know what? I'll probably have fun with it, I'll probably even enjoy it despite all it's glaring flaws and crap writing.  One thing I can say in it's favour is that it looks like a very well made game in a general sense, and people would have probably been less annoyed about it if you just didn't slap Devil May Cry's name all over the damn thing.

I really wish companies would stop abusing a big name title just for sales, you could have made this a new IP and it would have sold just fine, you didn't have to spit into the DMC fan bases face on this one.

Capcom, seriously, what the fuck?

I don't think there is a single person who doesn't know about Capcom, I can pretty much say with complete certainty that almost anyone who has played video games for more than a year (probably less) has at least played one Capcom game.

But recently there seems to be a trend of big game developers just taking massive steaming shits all over their most beloved franchises.  Recently I've been talking about Konami and their ruination of Silent Hill, but now Capcom steps up and they have their pulsing anuses aimed right in Megaman's face.

Megaman, or Rockman if you are Japanese, is a series of shooty platform games where you play as a blue robot shooting the fuck out of other robots created by some bastard to take over the world or whatever.  Apart from the cool thing where after killing a boss you gain their power, what fans have really loved about this series is the difficult but fair gameplay these games offer.  If you are unprepared these games will kick your ass, but spend some time learning how to play and getting through a stage requires a good amount of skill and cunning, but without being bullshit.

So, the 25th Anniversary of Megaman rolls along, and Capcom decided to give us a game to celebrate!

So was it a remake of a classic Megaman game?...No
Was a it a brand new entry in the series like Megaman 9 or 10?....No
Was a new entry in the Battle Network series of Megaman games? Or a new portable game?

Nope, none of that shit, what we got was a fucking iPhone game.  That's right, 25 years of greatness, and we get to celebrate it with a fucking iPhone game.  But that isn't the worst thing either, the game is a fucking on rails 2D shooter type thing, with turn based boss fights and 0 skill required.  If you don't believe me, take a look!

Are you fucking serious?!  Everything that was good about Megaman is not here in this version, and it even gives you a choice to SKIP THE FUCKING BOSSES! One of the things that made Megaman so good, and you can just skip that shit if it's too hard for you!

So yeah, Megaman got a big steaming shit right in his face, with bits of corn and blood mixed in it for good measure.

This isn't the only stupid thing Capcom are doing too, there is all sorts of fan outrage at day 1 DLC for their fighting games, and Resident Evil 6 being a load of shit (still not played that one yet)  So please Capcom, just fucking STOP IT!

Resident Evil 6, What The Hell?!

I love me some Resident Evil, but never have I seen a game have such polarising scores across so many different websites before.

So I'm going to make one thing clear, I have not yet played this game, so this isn't a review, this is merely speculation from a fan after seeing all the crap that's being thrown around.

After watching a review and scouring youtube for some gameplay footage, to me, this game looks pretty bad.  It's not completely bad, but from what I've seen it has QTE's and cutscenes coming out the arse which is already a bad sign, but what really makes it look bad is the vastly different gameplay styles between the 4 campaigns. 

Note: I don't think games with cutscenes are bad, it looks like RE6 has a few too many though

Just in case anyone doesn't know, the game follows 4 different lead characters, and each lead has a different style of gameplay.  For example, Leon's campaign is more survival horrorish, which Chris's is a bit more RE5 style military shooter type thing.  The problem with this is that it looks like the game has spread itself too thin and delivers 4 mediocre experiences rather than just 1 really fucking good one.

But that's just how it looks to me, a couple of publications have given it really good scores, and a couple have given it really bad ones.  The user scores on Metacritic are something like 0.4 but I wouldn't say that they were the most reliable things in the world to be honest with you.

I'm still going to pick it up (and Racoon City, even though I know it's pretty bad) and judge it for myself, I'm not one for blindly trusting scores on the big websites, but after seeing some gameplay footage and reading the reviews, the excitement is all gone.