Yakuza 3 is mostly very ass

 

On my stream I have been playing through the Yakuza series and right before I started the horror month, I polished off Yakuza 3.  This series is generally pretty fantastic but this game, both the original PS3 release AND the remastered version, are pretty fucking awful.  

There isn't really a lot to love about Yakuza 3 but I do want to start by saying that the story for this game is great.  Despite all the problems that I'm about to list off, I was still pretty excited to get around to this game every week just to see what was going to happen next.  I don't know what the gaming equivalent of a "page turner" is but this game is exactly that.  Even when the plot is doing some absolutely insane nonsense such as, without spoiling anything, a show down at a rodeo it's equal parts awesome spectacle and gripping narative.  Despite the stories strengths though there is some issues with pacing where Kiryu, having left Tokyo to start an orphanage in Okinawa, must spend large amounts of time within the main story doing stuff with and for the kids he's looking after.  I know WHY the pacing is like that but it's still a bunch of boring bullshit.  But when it comes to the plot, the positives far FAR outweigh the negatives.

But then there's the rest of the fucking game and holy fuck is it BAD.  The most obvious thing is the combat because you have to spend a lot of time doing it and it's almost never fun at any point.  Yakuza 1 and 2, at least in their original PS2 forms, had pretty stiff combat so I'm not going to begrudge the game for that but the enemies are CONSTANTLY blocking every attack you ever do.  I was also playing on hard mode so my incoming damage was pretty high which made dealing with groups an absolute nightmare and the absolute worst part of all this is that no matter how much I upgraded Kiryu's skills, it never got any easier.  The blocking problem could sort of been circumvented by just grabbing dudes constantly but when you are against enemies that can't be grabbed the combat is just absolutely unbearable.  Eventually you will learn a combo where you do a sort of overhead smash after a 3 punch combo which, even if blocked, will do a very VERY small amount of damage, so most encounters devolved into just spamming that combo until you win which takes a long ass time and is not fun even a little bit.  One thing to point out though is that the final boss just sort of forgets to block at all and ends up being a complete pushover.  Your random street goons will throw up guards so strong that even a bicycle to the forearms won't make them flinch but the head honcho of a Yakuza family seems to be completely oblivious to the idea of self preservation. 

Aside from fighting in the main story though you can also fight and blunder your way through a number of side stories, none of which are particularly interesting and most are overly short and completely forgetable with rewards that are almost never worth it.  There are side stories from the first two Yakuza games that have stayed with me long after I finished and there are side stories in the later Yakuza games that I'm aware of just because the fans like to gush about them but there is basically NOTHING in Yakuza 3 worth talking about.  If there is a good one in there somewhere and it's just slipped my mind then I'd love to hear about it because I'm wracking my brains and got nothing.

The mini games are also very ass, most of which controlling like complete garbage or just being unfun to play.  The worst offender being darts which is basically impossible to control in any way.  I think I would have better luck scoring at real darts with 2 broken hands and a blindfold on than trying to play Yakuza 3 darts normally.  The best mini-game is Karaoke because its just a bare bones rhythm game that the devs basically couldn't fuck up.  Even the things that should be easy, like the gambling are annoying because the menus feel so stiff.  It's really hard to describe just how shitty it is but just navigating through slow menus to double down in blackjack feels shitty.

Then there are a bunch of non mini game side activities which are all stupid as fuck.  For example you can do these things called revelations where you see some funny sequence of events that Kiryu will snap pictures off on his phone via QTE.  Then you get 3 prompts and if you choose the right one Kiryu will become inspired and write a blog post on his piece of shit gara-kei which will then allow him to learn a new move.  It's fine but if you mess up the prompt at the end you fail the revelation and must leave the area for a while for it to come back and then watch the whole silly animation again.  It's funny the first time but when you messed up the prompts twice and are watching the same "tee hee isn't this very silly" chain of events for the third time it's just annoying.  The worst side activity though in this regard is a chase game where you must avoid bystanders and shoulder ram a guy until he runs out of stamina and if you take too long you run out of stamina and the guy gets away.  The problem comes from the fact that judging depth is basically impossible so unless you're sprinting right up the guys butthole you're probably going to miss and the margin for error in these games are very small.  You do it a few times as part of main story missions but the game was so proud of this inclusion that it becomes a full on mini-game all by itself near the end and I think I'd have more fun swallowing nails.

Also in 2022 this is sort of a non-issue but I want to write about it anyway, that this entry in the series on PS3 was the point where I stopped playing the franchise because I was pretty upset about cut content.  There are a few things cut from the original release but the worst of which was the removal of Shogi and Mahjong.  Not only did the PS2 version of Yakuza 2 have both shogi and mahjong, but they even came with extra manuals in the box with explinations on how to play but then Yakuza 3 rolls around and all that shit is just gone.  As someone who is a huge enjoyer of Japanese mahjong I was so mad about its exclusion that I didn't play a single Yakuza game until I started up the series again with Kiwami 1 last year.  Like I said though, Yakuza 3 Remastered on steam puts all this cut content back in, so no fear if you're buying it today, but the fact it happened at all its unforgivable.  

There are a few things to really love about Yakuza 3, for sure, but it's all wrapped in such a thick layer of complete and total bullshit that it's really hard to recommend to people.  If you're playing through the series like I am and want to experience everything the franchise has to offer then I guess you will have ot just grin and bare it but if you're just a casual fan of it then just skip it.  Watch the cutscenes on YouTube and save yourself a bunch of stress. 

Criticism and Developers

 

Being a creative can be tough, I think this is one of those things that everyone knows regardless of how creative you are personally.  Coming up with those ideas, putting those ideas together and then having the confidence in that idea to put it out into the world is quite an amazing feat.  But when you go through that process you are obviously going to come up against criticism for the thing you made in one form or another.  Sometimes it'll be constructive and sometimes your stuff will miss the mark with someone so hard that you'll get a petty and probably dishearening insult towards your work but this is just something you have to deal with as a creative.  Read it, take from it what you can to improve and move on to the next thing.  Some developers, or groups of developers, do not deal particularly well with criticism and the resulting events and both kind of funny and kind of sad.

The reason for this post stems from the recent release of a game called Super Lone Survivor, a re-release of the 2012 game Lone Survivor.  I just want to start by saying that I played the original version of this game and it was actually pretty good.  The atmosphere was heavy and despite the low resolution visual style the visuals were nice and creepy.  The gameplay felt sort of stiff but nothing that you couldn't adapt to and overall I had a good time with it.  One user who bought this game, a guy known in online spaces for playing and speedrunning horror games, bought it as a big fan of the original after being told about the games additional content.  He plays through it about 2 times, encounters basically none of the new stuff and then proceeds to give it a negative Steam review saying that he was expecting a bit more considering the 20 GPB price of entry.  

This then causes Jasper Byrne, the developer of the game, to throw a strop basically blaming him for sales slowing down, rants about him on twitter and causes video game shit-rag Destructoid to make an article on him.  Fast foward one day and the Destructoid article is taken down and Jasper proceeds to claim that he has issued an apology to the writer for the escalation but he did it the "apology" on his personal twitter page with his account locked so no one could see it.  Complete shit show

Lone Survivor has 23 reviews at time of writing and 22 of them are positive.  It's kind of silly to argue that a single bad review would be solely responsible for the slow sales of the game.  Maybe the game is just niche as fuck with the re-release being bought only by fans and a couple of curious new adopters and after that initial rush sales just slowed down naturally.  The worst part is, that despite Jasper's little outburst regarding the review, the store page has been changed to reflect that Super is probably not for people who already own the original and the new content is "hard to find", it's sort of sad.

Let's not single out just Jasper though because this is not the first time that indie devs salty about not being showered with constant praise has led to some embarassing bullshit and this one is arguably way worse.  Summer of 58 by EMIKA_GAMES is an under 2 hour, poorly written, unscary walking simulator with shit game play.  One thing you have to understand is that on steam, if you play a game for less than 2 hours you can actually get a refund on it.  It's not a feature I've ever used, not even for this piece of garbage, but apparently with just a few clicks you can have a full refund for a title as long as the play time is under the 2 hour mark.  

So people bought this game, played it, beat it and then refunded it.  There may have been SOME users who were refunding it just because they could but I would be willing to bet both of my kidneys that most people refunded it mainly because it's just not a good game.  This of course leads to the developer throwing a twitter sook, claiming that he's quitting development entirely because of the high number of refunds.  This of course leads people to start buying the game because they feel sorry for the guy which is actually pretty clever because instead of taking that feedback and improving, he took that pity sale money and instead developed another shitty thing that he released in October of this year.  So much for quitting, huh? 

But these are indie devs, so if we want to be charitable we can at least argue that they are probably a bit more emotionally attatched to the game that they made than something from a AAA company and a huge team.  But even developers of generic AAA dross like Horizon Forbidden West aren't immune to petulant complaining due to bad press or, in this case, a lack of interest in their game.  Horizon, an open world game about killing robotic dinosaurs or something, has had a bit of bad luck when it comes to release timing.  The first game released roughly at the same time as Breath of the Wild and was completely overshadowed as a result and when the sequel Forbidden West came out it was again completely overshadowed by the release of Elden Ring.  

This led to a number of Horizon developers making some extremely petty comments about the game probably just out of jealousy for From Softwares success over their own.  The tweets that got the most traction online out of these were a number of comments from one developer regarding Elden Ring's UI, which is really funny because Forbidden West has that semi-cluttered generic ass open world UI that people having been ragging on for years.  

This case is even worse that the previous two indies because its not even a case of direct criticism really, at least not intially.  It's just being mad another companies game being more successful which makes the petulant whining about Elden Ring and its team even more embarassing.

If you're in a creative field, harsh and/or constructive criticism is something that you just have to face and deal with.  The best approach is to read it, take from it any lessons than you can and then move on.  Trying to rally against "the haters" is just sad and at least indicates to me than you probably have your head up your ass a fair bit.

Less whinging, more creatin' please? Thank you

AVGNs Misaligned Retro Games

Recently The Angry Video Game Nerd released his latest video about DOOM and its various versions and before I get into the meat of this post, can we just take a moment to appriciate just how long James Rolfe has been going with this thing.  DOOM is his 205th episode and while you could argue there's been somewhat of a dip in quality compared to his older stuff, the show is still pretty entertaining to watch.  Hell, I remember being in highschool watching this shit on gametrailers.com when he was a member of that weird duo called Screwattack and his name was the Angry Nintendo Nerd, remember that shit?  Regardless of how you feel about his show, being able to run a web series for THIS long is quite the achievement.

I've noticed over the years from talking to people both in person and online that AVGN has at least had some hand in shaping general opinions on retro games.  There are a pretty significant number of people who will watch an episode of AVGN, see the footage that Rolfe has taken and his comments on the game and come away with a rather strong opinion of the game sucking despite never having played it themselves.  Then, when the topic of that game comes up, they will state very strongly and very confidently about its suckage because they've been totally convinced by the episode.  Having played most of the games that AVGN has covered and having beaten most of them, I'd say that most of the time if a game has appeared on the show, you're probably safe in assuming that it sucks shit.  No one is going to argue that Super Pitfall is some kind of hidden NES gem that has got a bad rap, just looking at it really is enough to just tell that it sucks

But there are a couple games that he has covered that have this awful reputation online that are actually pretty good and I want to talk about those a little bit

Simon's Quest was AVGNS very first episode.  It's an interesting episode too since it's basically got none of the production that we would come to see shortly after it being put out, it's just James talking over bits of game play footage.  There IS a lot of criticise in this game as well, to be fair such as kind of bland level design in the mansions, cryptic puzzles that I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure out and a stupid day/night transition but the game, overall, isn't THAT bad.  Traversing the overworld is generally pretty fun, upgrading your gear is cool and this game basically laid a bit of groundwork down for what modern Castlevania would end up turning into.  If you like the later entries in the series such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow then it can be cool to come back to this one and see the beginning of the idea.  Sure, progress is a little hard to just intuit by yourself but play with a guide and a lot of the frustration sort of just goes away.  I've met a lot of people who have played and really love Castlevania 1 and 3 but have completely skipped over 2 because they "have heard it sucks" and that's a damn shame.

 

This is one that actually really grinds my gears because Silver Surfer for the NES is actually really fucking good but because of that, admittedly quite funny, episode of AVGN I feel like this game gets a lot of flak in retro gaming spaces for no reason.  The graphics are decent-ish, and soundtrack is amazing and the gameplay is tight but holy fucking shit is it HARD.  But that's the problem, bring up a conversation about Silver Surfer and people will go on about how much it sucks when really those "problems" are things that are true for a lot of other shmups.  The big example is how you can't touch any of the walls in a stage or you just die, which yes is sort of annoying but there are plenty of other games where that's true.  R-Type and Gradius do that shit too but you don't see anyone knocking those games for that.  The real issue with Silver Surfer is that your hitbox is MASSIVE which makes avoiding things pretty hard but its something you just adapt to.  With a little bit of memorization and enough skill to keep your power ups, the difficulty of Silver Surfer is no worse than literally any other shmup on the system.  

This was the game that inspired this post, fucking Countdown Vampires.  When I played this as part of my 31 game horror challenge I was also kind of guilty of just thinking it was shit because it was an AVGN feature.  I wanted one shitty game on the list that we could all laugh at but really it was just fine.  Nothing spectacular, not the kind of thing that will be remembered as a survival horror great or anything but functional.  Also we still got a laugh from the weird script and voice acting and overall the experience was pretty enjoyable.  That said though, anyone who even had a passing knowledge of this game all said the same thing of "oh god it's THAT game, that game SUCKS" despite most of them having never played it in their lives.  There's even a decent amount of effort on display with the amount of guns, monster variety and pre-renders.  Hell, there's even one bit near the end of the game where there are 3 different pre-renders for an area that has nothing in it aside from a single box of ammo.  Someone modelled, rendered and got that shit to work in the game just so we could run up and down it and barely pay attention to it while we get an item.  I see you Mr or Mrs 3D artist, good for you.

Yes it's easy, yes the dialogue is terrible but in a sort of endering way that I quite like and yes the game barely has any countdowns OR vampires but you know what, good game.

Countdown Vampires is fucking good

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There are some other examples outside of these 3 of games that he rages at but are really just fine.  Nightmare on Elm Street on NES comes to mind in this regard but you get the picture.  Usually he's pretty accurate about a game being shitty but every so often he does miss.