Game does look cool... but am I the only one that's actually put off by the way they're shoehorning Majima into everything now?
I was saying it not too long ago, but it bears repeating: too much Majima is a bad thing. He was so memorable in the first two games precisely because his presence was minimal. He was the cool, crazy, unpredictable badass, so when he shows up at various few-and-far-between points, those points absolutely stick with you . If he's constantly popping up, his appearances mean less and less. Plus, the atmosphere will take a goddamn nosedive. I haven't played through Kiwami yet, but I can only imagine that the "Majima everywhere" system is going to completely neuter the tension of the battling cages segment when I do. In the original PS2 version, it was tense and dark and compelling because you didn't know what this psycho would do, and even if I've seen the story before, that atmosphere will still remain. But if you have Majima jumping out of trashcans and showing up in goofy costumes for the whole game up to that point, it's just gonna seem like a joke.
So, honestly, I really don't want to play as Majima in Kiwami 2. I wish that kind of thing was just left out.

People bash it because of the cut content, but who cares? Am I seriously the only person wo has EVER played the series that greatly detests the hostesses stuff? I thought cutting all that out and just going on dates was super for the pacing, saved in-game money and just made for a less-detracting experience.

No, you're right, the hostess stuff has never struck me as terribly compelling either. I almost always skip right past it. Only tried delving into it once, in Y2 I think. It doesn't seem like something Kazuma, as a character, would actually bother with, so it's always felt out-of-place and pointless.
But the cut content has nothing at all to do with why I personally place Y3 kind of low when ranking the series. It's not a bad game in the least; in fact, I actually consider the early Okinawa sections to be the closest any game has ever gotten to a genuinely Shenmue-esque atmosphere. Not in terms of literal aesthetics, obviously, but rather in the sort of laid-back, leisurely progression through a small-town story that it has. A lot of people complained that it was too slow in the beginning, but I quite liked that myself.
But, while pretty much every single other title in the series has a narrative that feels grand and affecting to the entire Yakuza franchise, Y3 is the only one that strike me as feeling much smaller and less-important than any of the others. You could remove it from the series entirely, and you wouldn't really be missing anything necessary to the other games. It doesn't even do anything new in regards to gameplay, really, outside of removing the fixed camera during exploration (which Kenzan did previously anyway, right?).
It's a good game regardless but, cut content aside, I still think it makes total sense why it tends to rank a little lower among fans.

Messing around with the photo modes. Every game should have this feature, seriously. I just imagine being able to capture shots like this in something like Armored Core or Assassin's Creed and I get all excited. This kind of thing ought to be standard practice by now.

http://oi68.tinypic.com/4ncys.jpg
http://oi65.tinypic.com/2vcepvm.jpg

^^Posing in an 80s new wave music video?

Developed a bit of an obsession goin round takin pictures when I finished Arkham Knight:

https://i.imgur.com/sZg5E2B.png
https://i.imgur.com/gPmJIX6.png
https://i.imgur.com/ayIu28J.png
https://i.imgur.com/ZRiEDp9.png
https://i.imgur.com/iuF0KLy.png
https://i.imgur.com/DK9pPMr.png
https://i.imgur.com/HFZOkAO.png
https://i.imgur.com/E1cvf2p.png
https://i.imgur.com/fiyIcT0.png
https://i.imgur.com/PzgQhMO.png
https://i.imgur.com/mgnchyE.png
https://i.imgur.com/xjXr5qS.png
https://i.imgur.com/Ij9A5sy.png
https://i.imgur.com/5e6CaZD.png
https://i.imgur.com/GpwzQLp.png

That's... pretty fucking rad, actually. Does the PC version of Arkham Knight have some kind of screenshot mode (Mad Max and the PS4 version of The Last of Us had a thing like that)? Or is it the work of some outside program?

Was just trying out Tomb Raider Anniversary yesterday, and ran across a glitch where the enemies refused to attack.
So we became friends.

https://image.ibb.co/mwiQab/20170928224857_1.jpg
Lara Croft: Queen of the Wolves.

Since when does any of this qualify as "sexual assault"?
I don't know shit about NeoGAF. I don't pay attention to or bother with most gaming sites or forums or whatever the hell it is. So I know nothing about the guy or the people surrounding him. I don't care to know.
But just going by the article, two instances are mentioned: he grabbed somebody while in a drunken stupor back in 2012 ("grabbed," mind you; for all we know, it could have been on the shoulder), and he got in a shower naked with someone, then left when told to .
The actions of a dumb douchebag?
Sure. He doesn't sound like anyone I'd want to be friends with.
But calling this "sexual assault" is a disgusting exaggeration. "Sexual assault" is an actionable offense. It's the kind of thing people go to prison for. Hard prison. Like, "fuck you up the ass while an excited Southerner slaps you in the face and tells you to oink like a piggie" prison. Then you get stabbed with a toothbrush shiv.
The guy is clearly a dumbass, but the things he's accused of are just stupid frat boy bullshit. He didn't rape the girl in the shower; he left when she said she wasn't interested. Whether he acted like a jerk later is besides the point. And whatever "grabbing" he did five years ago was done while inebriated, and apparently led to nothing else afterward.
Sure, he sounds like a complete dong, and people can do whatever they want to defame him on the internet. But phrasing it so that he sounds like a dangerous criminal is ridiculous.

@ OL. Your post is very disturbing. You excuse his "grabbing" because he was drunk!?
(No, it wasn't 'maybe just on her shoulder' - OBVIOUSLY!. Even 30 seconds research would have informed you).

When is being wasted ever an excuse? "Yeh, your honor. I mowed down those school kids in my Porsche but, to be fair, I'd had 2 bottles of JD and a line of coke".
Where is the cut-off point when being drunk doesn't qualify as an excuse?
Is it before or after rape?

Then you excuse him getting into the shower naked with a shocked woman because he "left when told to".

Is it acceptable to surprise anyone by showing up naked and hoping it's welcome?

Would you make the same excuses if your mother, wife or daughter were telling you the story? No.
Maybe the definition of sexual assault should be changed:
Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient - unless you're drunk, or misjudge the situation. Then you get a free pass.

Maybe one day a guy will surprises you by getting naked and jumping into a shower with you. Maybe he'll leave when you tell him to. But maybe he''ll just f*ck you up the ass. Maybe you'll like it and you'll both live happily ever after. Who knows.

TBH I suspected you were a creep after your 21st Oct post in the Screenshots thread.
But thanks for the confirmation.

If YOU are an administrator/moderator for the dojo then, as with NeoGAF, I want no part of it. I'm outie.

Fix up.


:lol:
You do realize you just directly compared drunken groping to the mass shooting of school children, right?
Clearly you're the level-headed type.
But if you'd read my post with any ounce of non-bias, you may have picked up the vague hint that I wasn't saying it was excusable behavior, but that it was non-jailable. The guy's not a criminal, he's just a dumb jerk. And the fact that someone's a douchebag isn't an excuse to throw them in jail.
And likewise, my post in the screenshots thread was a sarcastic joke about how unsubtle and bad 3D 90s games looked. But I understand that one with such a sophisticated sense of humor such as yourself might not have recognized that.
We'll miss you! :hello:

No clue if anyone will even post in here, but I have fun with this stuff, so maybe others will too.
Half the fun of playing anything on Steam, for me, is the ability to take screenshots. My finger hovers over the screenshot button during just about any cutscene of any game, and occasionally I go out of my way to set up cool shots during actual gameplay as well.
Sometimes it's all about the beauty of a shot, sometimes it's about how brutal it looks, sometimes it's nostalgic, sometimes it's just something funny.
Whatever the case, I love doing it, and it's always nice to see what other people come up with as well.

So post your shots here. Any game, any reason.

Might end up being a failure of a topic (not a ton of activity here lately), but I'll keep up with it as long as others do.
Can also be PS4 shots (though those are harder to take accurately, since the system tends to be a bit slower).

I'm playing a bit of the first Kane and Lynch earlier, and Lynch knocks someone out during a cutscene. It happens too fast to notice anything when you're actually playing, but her expression cracked me up when I finally saw it while sorting through the shots I'd taken. :lol:
http://oi66.tinypic.com/eg73ti.jpg
"Bitch, you just got Lynched ."

Looking good for the most part, but I will admit: I cringed when the trailer basically started with Peter pining after a normal life.
Facepalm, eye roll.
I used to love Spider-Man as a kid, but I'd say his absolute greatest weakness in terms of appeal is his propensity toward whining about being a fucking superhero . I can really do without that shite.
Still, the game looks ever higher-grade than I was expecting from a production value standpoint. Very pretty. And the little bits I've seen of gameplay really are basically "Arkham meets Spider-Man," so that should be all good.

I do consider it to be one of the greatest games ever, personally, mostly for the fact that it's so simple and elegant in its design, yet still manages to be as exciting and beautiful as it is. Few games before it could pull something like that off so effectively, and most games after it still over-complicate things.
Looking at the remake though, it's actually even prettier than I was expecting. Very nice upgrade. We still have yet to see legitimate gameplay, far as I'm aware, so hopefully that's remained relatively untouched. It's strange with videogames sometimes, where the slightest changes can makes something feel totally different. I know they're aiming to make it basically the exact same thing, but the slightest change in physics could make it feel "weird" to old fans, so hopefully that's not the case.

Ugh. I actually think Fox is on a pretty good path with the X-Men franchise at the moment. Giving it up to Marvel would seriously fuck all that up. Marvel is obsessed with their continuity and accessibility. If Marvel had owned the X-Men a few years ago, we never would have gotten movies like Logan or Deadpool, or tv ventures of the caliber of Legion. They would want it all to fit in with their shite little Avengers universe, and force it all to have the same PG-13 sense of humor and mega-mainstream appeal.
Fuck all that.
Some people blow their loads at the thought of Wolverine and Captain America teaming up, but I've always, ever since I was a kid, thought that the X-Men works much better if treated like it's in its own little universe. Even in the comics, crossovers with the rest of the Marvel universe always felt strangely crowded and ill-fitting to me.
Really hope this doesn't happen.

^^I feel like all this shit is being exaggerated anyway. I'm not some diehard, "he's never wrong" type of supporter of him or anything, I just think it all sounds a bit extreme for a guy who's comedy act is primarily based around taking a level-headed look at how weird and shitty the rest of the world can seem.

Shenmue is just a proven money sink for them. It technically made them next to nothing in profits with the first two games. Businesses typically run based on the numbers, and the numbers don't work out in Shenmue's favor. Even that 800,000 views is paltry compared to the views that more successful games tend to get.
I mean, they're worth way over a billion dollars so the amount required to get Shenmue III fully funded should basically be nothing compared to what they're worth, right?
That's not really how things work. That's like saying "Donald Trump is worth however many billions or hundreds of millions... why doesn't he just give me a million dollars? It's like nothing to him. He can afford it."
70 million has never been "basically nothing" to anyone. It doesn't matter how much Sega is worth, 70 million will always be a lot of money. And if they could put that toward more profitable ventures instead, then there's no way they're going to just throw it out there for a brand that previously didn't even break even.
The success of the Kickstarter likewise means nothing. It only proves that the people who put money into it are interested, not that the public as a whole is. Shenmue still isn't a huge name, no matter how well the Kickstarter did.
In another topic you also once said that 50 million would be nothing to Bill Gates, so we should get him to help fund the game. I get the sneaking suspicion you might be slightly naive about these things.

So Civil War was alright. Always hated the comic event, but this one just kind of took its name rather than the story itself, so it's not so bad. Still, one of the reasons I hated the comic was that there was an obvious "right" side and an obvious "wrong" one to the conflict, and that element is still very much intact. In order to force the story into motion, you have to make some of the characters side on the "wrong" end of things, and that in turn hurts the characters.
The comic story made me hate Iron Man, when previously I fucking loved Iron Man. The movie doesn't quite hit that extreme, necessarily, but it definitely steps in that direction. Tony Stark is a fucking prick, and not even a fun one anymore. Even with all his Robert Downey Jr.-ness and witty witticisms and whatnot, he turns into a total asshat in this movie. The biggest reason being
his total willingness to recruit a child to act as a soldier for him.
Yeah, Spider-Man is fucking fifteen years old , and Tony Stark sees no problem recruiting him to fight another team of superheroes. He doesn't even present the political issue to him and convince him onto his side; he just uses his identity as rich Mr. Stark to friggin' peer pressure Peter Parker into it. The only reason Peter goes with him is to impress him, because "holy shit, celebrity!"
No two ways about it, Tony Stark is exploiting a child. He's Solidus Snake.
Not to mention that blaming the destruction of the previous movies on the Avengers is moronic (well, ignoring the fact that Ultron was Stark's fault anyway), and with so many super-threats to the world out there, the Avengers are the only protection the world has. So regardless of the casualties the world has suffered (which were the fault of the villains, not the heroes), limiting the Avengers is a dumb fucking idea.

So yeah, motivation-wise and all that, I have some issues with the way it damages certain characters. Same problem I had with the comic story.
But regardless, the action is still great, and most of the characters are still fun as hell. Captain America, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Falcon; all friggin' gold.
Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, and Scarlet Witch however; all either as boring as, or as dumb as a bag of rocks. Dear god, Elizabeth Olsen does quite possibly the worst attempt at an Eastern European accent I've ever heard in a movie.
Waitaminute, that spiraled into negativity faster than I meant for it to...
It's a fun movie with problems. Good popcorn stuff.
But I think Winter Soldier was better.

HOLY SHIT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVTKEc-mu8

Compared to this, that Gotham By Gaslight movie DC is coming out with soon looks like absolute dogshit. Actually, that looked like dogshit even before I had this to compare it to, but this just drives the point home even further.
Can't wait. This looks amazing.

Currently alternating between a bunch of stuff, which is generally unusual for me; I usually try to focus on one at a time.

Bought a game called Ruiner on the recent Steam sale. My current avatar is from it. And actually, the avatar sums up the game pretty well: cool aesthetics and a whole lotta killing. I'm not usually interested in twin-stick isometric shooters, but this one has enough personality and enough of a sense of cool to genuinely keep my interest. The fact that it's cyberpunk (not just futuristic, but genuine cyberpunk) helps too, since I'm a nut for that shit. It's fecking hard though.

(EDIT: May as well spread some love while I'm talking about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg2uB60DFS0 )

Also started a game called Scrap Mechanic. I think it's still in early access. There's no story or anything, but the whole game is all about building whatever the hell you want using a huge variety of scrap. My first attempt at a car failed pretty hard, but I'm still learning. And that's really the bottom line with it: there's a lot to learn. The potential for amazing things is high though, so it's been keeping my interest.

Found out The Saboteur was on gog.com, so I grabbed that too, fitting in with my recent groove of trying to play old PS3 favorites on PC. Game is just as fun as ever for me. Only disappointment being that there isn't a whole lot in the way of graphics options. No anti-aliasing, no option to remove motion blur, and the draw distance remains relatively short for characters and cars (even though my computer could totally handle it if the option were there to change this stuff). Still, getting to play with mouse aiming is great, and everything else functions really well with a "wasd" setup. And it looks better than the PS3 release regardless, so it's all good.

Was just looking through my PS3 games, trying to look for ones that might have also been released on PC. On kind of a kick lately, getting games from that era and seeing how well they run on my system.
Well one game I ran across that wasn't released on PC was Asura's Wrath, and just seeing it made me start thinking about how goddamn much I always loved it back in the day. Only about five years ago now, but it strangely feels older, probably because of how quickly it built up nostalgia for me.
Being a game all about an angry god punching things, it very easily could have been just a flat, goofy actioner, but I always remember the soundtrack really giving it such a great emotional backbone.
This is basically just the theme, but man... every time I hear it, it's friggin magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ5mhzi9kKQ

Gimme a damn remaster already. The graphical work was insane in that game. Would be amazing to see it running on all cylinders on current tech.

Like Mitts said, there's really nothing out there that's going to scratch that itch in any kind of precise manner; Shenmue is unique, and though it gets compared to it very often, so is Yakuza.

The best mention I've seen in this topic so far is Kenka Bancho. It definitely has a few things down pat; brawler mechanics (and customizable combos, which is a treat), an open-ish world to trounce around in, a uniquely-Japanese aesthetic and atmosphere. Takes a little while to level up though. At first, the combat seems really slow, but as you improve, so does your speed. It also has lots of options for customizing your clothes and hair. I'm a bit of a sucker for Japanes gang genre stuff, so it's got that appeal as well. In short, it ain't exactly Shenmue or Yakuza (and being a PSP release, you may have to excuse its slight clunkiness), but it's a really fun game to dive into regardless, and totally deserves to be played.

A much less-obvious one that people often forget is Bully.
No, it's not Japanese. And yes, it is by Rockstar, which means it lacks in subtlety, and has plenty of infantile jokes and gags. Not the most Shenmue-esque qualities in the world.
But it does have a prominent hand-to-hand combat system, which lacks much depth, but is still a lot of fun. It runs on a strict clock for every day as well, giving you a limited amount of time to do things during the day before you have to get back to bed (or collapse from exhaustion). Though it isn't Japanese, it does have a really good small-town atmosphere too, as well as a ton of side-activities to waste time with, including a riding mower minigame (may as well be comparable to forklift driving), newspaper delivery, and many others.
Not the most obvious game to recommend to a Shenmue/Yakuza fan, but when it comes right down to it, it still check more boxes than most other games would.

the storyline is anything but 70s martial arts, so it's incredibly unfitting.

"Anything but"?
Eh... I wouldn't say that.
The story is basically "martial arts badass killed my father, now I seek revenge." That's literally about 90% of 70s kung fu plots.

(I know I'm way late in replying to that, but I haven't looked at this topic in a while)

Based on this topic so far, I don't think I even understand what qualifies a game as being a "sim."
Previously I would have assumed a sim would primarily be a game that handles its subject matter realistically, in a realistic setting; most flight sims, for example, or something like the Gran Turismo series.
But now I'm seeing mentions of The Sims (which, despite the name, obviously isn't a realistic life simulator), Stardew Valley, Actraiser, Persona, Deadly Premonition, and Harvest Moon.
So uh... yeah. I'll just mention the Styx games as being my favorite murderous robbing goblin simulations. And Asura's Wrath is easily my favorite angry god on a quest for revenge sim.
I friggin love sims.

It's a thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yVOMHz9luo

Haven't seen any screens or gameplay yet, but I think we know what to expect. It'll probably look a lot like Dark Souls. But remastered.
Honestly, I might be a little more hyped if they were doing Demon's Souls Remastered; not that it's the better game necessarily, but updating it would probably make the bigger difference. All the same, Dark Souls was a damn masterpiece regardless, so gimme 60fps in Blight Town and I'll be happy anyway. Plus, it'll probably include all the Artorias DLC as well, which I never got to play. So whatever, I'll be buying.

Over here they kept trying to talk up the American team, but there just wasn't a ton to talk about after almost all of them flubbed a few things here and there (not to take anything away from them; it's a hard-as-fuck sport to begin with, so they're all talented as hell anyway, even if they were to finish last).
I know it's probably irritating when the "trendy" thing of the moment keeps getting airtime, but I have to say I'd have gladly taken more talk about Hanyu on tv here; at least the guy totally deserves it. Absolutely everything I saw of him (and have watched online) was downright exceptional. Dude's an artist through and through, rather than just someone grabbing at points.
It was kind of funny, it almost seemed like they were trying to talk him down on tv here ("Oh yeah, he's great, but Nathan Chen can do 15 quads in a single program, yadda yadda") , but once he actually performed, they had to shut the hell up and just recognize that he was better than anything the US had to offer. :lol:

Totally agree about Uno, though. He's been downplayed far too much. I've rewatched his free skate a few times online now, and I have to say it might have been my single favorite thing in the entire Olympics.
He falls once in the first 25 seconds, gets up like nothing happened, and continues on totally unfazed. When I mentioned how certain performances can become just so mesmerizing and absorbing, this is exactly what I was talking about; the second half of that program was obviously better than most of the guys, but I'd say it even put to shame most of the stuff done by the gold- and silver-winning Russian girls (who had a ton of hype surrounding them, and definitely delivered).
I'm not sure how things were portrayed in other countries, but watching it here, it was like Uno came out of absolutely nowhere. No talk about him beforehand, no hype. Total underdog kind of thing, and I loved watching it. It was like seeing Memento for the first time without knowing anything about it beforehand; mindblowing.

Sorry, I don't know how to be concise about anything anymore. :lol:

Is it just me, or have the Biohazard dev teams never really figured out how to animate mouths properly for some reason?
The lip syncing always looked weird to me in earlier games, but I always figured it was some kind of quirk of the graphics engine or something. But I just watched a bit of the opening for this one (seriously, just go take a peek on youtube or something), and it's still just as present as ever. Possibly stranger than before, too, since the graphics are generally more realistic, yet still have that problem anyway.
It's like they never figured out how lips, teeth, and tongues actually work in conjunction with each other. The mouths always look like the person should have a speech impediment of some kind, like a lisp or something, and yet the voices coming out of them are totally normal.
It's just weird to me because this isn't some common videogame problem, or even a Capcom problem; it's just something I've always noticed in the Resident Evil series specifically. Graphics engines change, entire dev teams change... and yet the problem is always there.
Did somebody put a really weird curse on the series or something? I can't imagine they just have the same confused guy doing mouth animation across every game for over a decade...

Well this is new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtX05ZJ95jA
3D remake? HD remaster? Shitty iOS version?
No idea yet, but I'm getting the urge to go back and finally get through that PSP version. Been on backlog forever. Damn near the top of the backlog, but it's just been sitting there regardless.
Also nice to see Square going back into the old Enix properties. More of that, thanks.

Place seems a bit dead at the moment, so hey, why not a new "favorites" topic? Maybe help pick this shit up. Obviously, just post some of your favorite alternate outfits in gaming. There are tons of them in fighting games, and superhero stuff tends to go nuts with it. Plenty of other places. Anything that isn't the default look applies.

I've just been playing through Spider-Man: Edge of Time, and was pretty delighted to see that the 90s Ben Reilly costume was unlockable. This was the costume being used in the comics when I first seriously started reading them way back when, and it's remained just about my favorite Spidey costume for all these years, even more than the classic look.
Only bummer is that it's only playable with Spider-Man 2099. Which, don't get me wrong, ain't horrible (I actually like Miguel O'Hara a helluva lot more than Peter Parker, honestly), it's just that the moves and powers aren't really a match for Ben Reilly.
Still, great costume. And a tasty chunk o' nostalgia for me.

http://oi63.tinypic.com/2hh17gw.jpg

Spiritual successor to what is, in all likelihood (hard to be concrete about this stuff), my overall favorite game of the 16-bit era?
Fuck yes I'm preordering that.

http://oi64.tinypic.com/29nymiu.jpg

Feels like it's been in development for freaking forever , and even September feels far off. But at least it's actually in sight now.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time
http://oi66.tinypic.com/2cgjvqb.jpg http://oi65.tinypic.com/2ppgcxs.jpg

Within the past couple months I finally started reading the old Spider-Man 2099 comics from the early-90s. Never got to when I was a kid, yet the image of him has always remained ingrained in my head as an iconic reminder of the 90s; always gives me a warm, squishy feeling, the same way Genesis games, the X-Files, and Batman the Animated Series do. Low and behold I'm loving the hell out of the comics, so what better time than now to try out Miguel O'Hara's only legitimate appearances in gaming?

Shattered Dimensions actually features four versions of Spidey: Amazing (regular ol' modern-day Peter Parker), Ultimate (teenage, wearing the symbiotic black suit), Noir (an angsty 1930s version fighting gangsters), and of course 2099. The game is essentially split up into episodic levels (unlike the usual open-world mold that most Spidey games aim for), with only a loose shell of a story linking them together. And while the story is nothing particularly engaging, the dialogue is, on occasion, genuinely funny and entertaining. Weak story or not, it's still enjoyable hearing all the well-written chatter left and right. It's a good sign to me that the writer of this one, Dan Slott, is apparently also the writer of the new Insomniac-developed Spider-Man game coming to PS4, so I'm looking forward to that a little more now.

http://oi68.tinypic.com/1535s8o.jpg

Gameplay remains relatively the same between the characters (run around levels, beat up badguys, move on), with the one really notable exception being the Noir version. Instead of being all-out action, his levels are generally stealth-based. It's not the greatest stealth in the world, but the extra spice is always welcome when it pops up. And, if anything, I am really surprised by how much I liked this version of the character. I'm not particularly jazzed about reading the comics he's from (they're a byproduct of Marvel's post-2000 "cash in on whatever's hip" mentality, and apparently Sin City was on the brain when they did this), but his setup is still surprisingly engaging.
Regardless, I still had the most fun playing as Spidey 2099, since he was the whole reason I started this to begin with. He does have an occasional mechanic that pops up from time to time which is really cool, in which he'll go into free-fall and have to dodge objects and fight a boss, but it's used very, very sparingly; too sparingly, if I'm entirely honest.
And while the idea behind the voice casting for the different Spideys is great (they basically cast all the actors who have played him in old cartoons and whatnot), I think the 2099 version is horribly miscast. He's too jokey/goofy, and sounds like an old white guy making jokes to his grandkids. Kind of strange for a character who's supposed to be a half-Mexican 20-something.
Last note, Shattered Dimensions is also the first place where Nolan North got to voice Deadpool, which he would later do in the official Deadpool game itself. Perfect casting. Can't wait to play the Deadpool game now, if only to hear more of that.

Edge of Time carries over most of the same gameplay from Shattered Dimensions, though now it's no longer necessarily level-based. Or rather, the levels aren't split up and accessed from a menu this time. One scene organically flows into the next, and it feels much more cohesive, less disjointed. It's just one genuinely exciting action scene and race against death after another, and it doesn't let up for hours. It's pretty great.
This time around, rather than jumping between dimensions, we instead see Spider-Man 2099 communicating with modern-day Spidey through time, usually with one getting into a jam and the other having to take measures to affect the future and change things in some way. It's a fun dynamic, though it's all very, very scripted; this ain't no sandbox.
Speaking of scripting, this one is written by Peter David, original creator of Spidey 2099, so everything feels really, really spot-on in that regard. Miguel O'Hara was also recast, so he sounds a helluva lot more like I've been imagining him as I read the comics.

http://oi66.tinypic.com/io3pj6.jpg

Overall, even more than Shattered Dimensions, this was the game I really needed to scratch that itch I had. It's hard to imagine there'll ever be much more in the way of Miguel O'Hara as a main protagonist in a videogame, so this was a helluva lot of fun, and a real treat for a comics dork like me, who actually thinks stuff from the 90s was pretty rad.
If only we could get a genuine open-world Spidey 2099 game; man, the freakin possibilities.

Totally random thing here, but it just occurred to me: I really, really hope the dub for Shenmue III doesn't include a ton of "wink to the audience" nods to the old dubs. With as long as Shenmue has been around, it's had plenty of time to gain a reputation on phrases like "let's get sweaty," Ryo asking about sailors and whatnot, that kind of shit. I just really hope the English voice actors don't feel the need to call back to that stuff, like they think they're being clever or something. I hope the dub is played totally straight, just like the first two games were.

I'll probably opt for the Japanese track anyway (long as it's included), but I'd still prefer not to have anything groan-inducing like that from the English one.

Don't buy a ton of games anymore. Typically not newer ones, anyway; mostly just stuff on Steam, outside of Rocksmith which I got earlier this month.
Saw that Natsume was bringing over yet another River City/Kunio-kun game though, so I preordered that and finally picked up the last one they put out. Natsume's a nice little company, but they don't advertise for shit. Hard to find out that they have anything new without looking directly at their site, or stumbling upon something on Amazon.

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Kinda funny, I always actually liked the sound of the compressed dialogue; made it feel even more like a dubbed-over movie from the 80s to me. Not that better quality would hurt anything necessarily, I just always thought of it as an extra atmosphere-contributor, even if the effect was unintentional.

It was pretty specifically a Kojima/Del Toro project, so with Kojima having separated himself from Konami... I'd say chances are close to zero. No doubt there will be another Silent Hill one day, but it won't be whatever they'd been putting together before.

There are some conspiracy theories to take a bit of solace in though. Some believe that Kojima's next game, Death Stranding, is pretty much taking up the reigns of his intentions with Silent Hills as it is. So whatever we would have seen in SH (conceptually, at least) may still be making an appearance in that (EDIT: Mr357 beat me to mentioning it).
Still others (myself included) believe that Kojima never actually intended to make Silent Hills a full game to begin with; rather, PT itself was made as a kind of artistic "resignation letter" from him to Konami. There's some really interesting, interpretive proof out there if you look it up.

Besides, I think PT stands pretty well on its own regardless, doesn't it? PT had its own horror gimmick of traversing the same hallways over and over as things slowly change and warp around you; a full game of that would be absolutely ludicrous (not in a good way). And if it wasn't going to be like that anyway, and was going to open up into a more traditional Silent Hill game... then why would PT hype us up for that? It'd be a completely different experience from what the "demo" showed us, and it was the "demo" that made us excited to begin with. So what would even be the point?
PT is pretty much its own game, and can fully be appreciated as such. Pining after a full on "Silent Hills" is kind of meaningless at this point.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it being improved upon, but like Kiba and I mentioned in another thread, the compressed audio actually contributed pretty well to the atmosphere back when we first played the games. They are, after all, based in the 80s and take place across Asia; the compressed audio mimics the feel of an old 70s/80s karate/kung fu dub.
Much like putting intentional film grain into something to make it feel older, the compressed audio helps to plant you firmly in the 80s. Decompressing the audio wouldn't kill the games or anything, but it would detract a bit from the Shenmue I know and love. As it is, nothing else in gaming really sounds like Shenmue; you can hear an uncredited voice clip from it elsewhere and know immediately that, yes, that's Shenmue. I personally kind of like that it's so identifiable that way, and "improving" the audio would only serve to remove that aspect.

I’m going to guess they didn’t intend to make the voice tracks sound like that at all. It was a necessary evil due to hardware constraints.

Well yeah, of course it wasn't intentional. But then, you could kind of say the same thing about scan lines, or the curved screen edges of old TVs in retro sprite-based games. These weren't things that were planned for when devs made games back then, and yet they remain elements that some people actually prefer to see when playing them nowadays (hence their optional inclusion in a great number of retro re-releases). The compressed audio is really no different; it's a technical restraint/imperfection that some people nowadays actually prefer as an atmospheric element. Call it a nostalgia thing, but then... why shouldn't we feel some level of nostalgia for Shenmue's many quirks?

(although I gotta say, it is nice for the UK to get preferential treatment with games for once! :D Even if this is only a preorder I'll take any win i can get :) )

Heeeeeey now, you guys actually got S2 on Dreamcast with full Japanese audio back in the day, while the US got shafted. Don'tchu be talkin about no "for once."
I'ma fight you.

lol I still don't find Haruka's parts cringeworthty...

Not to beat a dead horse (I've rambled before on it), but it's mainly the bits where Haruka's manager is explaining to her that being a pop idol is some kind of noble pursuit, that she gives people something to love, so she needs to work extra hard at it or whatever. Meanwhile there's touching music playing in the background, as if the developers themselves actually believe this crap.
Because yeah, being a little girl in a skimpy outfit singing squeaky baby songs mainly for the pleasure of lonely 20- and 30-something-year-old men (which the game totally acknowledges during the "meet and greet" minigames) is super noble.
I'm not sure if the series can make me cringe any harder than that stuff does. That stuff actually hurt Haruka's character for me; I see her on the cover of 6, and all I can think is "ugh." Never used to be the case before Yakuza 5. She seemed like a really strong character until then.
But yeah, rant over. Just had to specify.
I wouldn't mind Haruka's section so much if it were, say, poking fun at the idol scene, or if it were about some kind of corruption or crime going on within. But instead they go the "follow your dreams and be an inspiration by becoming a child sex symbol!" route, and I just can't really dig on that so much.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway , I've finally played into Yakuza Zero a pretty good deal now.
Weren't people making Mr. Shakedown out to be some kind of super-difficult fight before? I've beaten him about ten times now (damn good payout for it, so I've been hunting him down), and all you have to do is run around and hit him as he comes out of his charge. Takes a long time, but it seems easy enough. Not a big deal, long as you catch him in an open enough area.
And the 80s atmosphere is pretty great (love how the sidequests draw directly from that stuff, like helping a yanki band seem tough, or tracking down a kid's stolen videogame cartridge), but I am a little disappointed at certain visual elements. Like... why are all these posters of hosts and hostesses clearly made with modern styles? The hairstyles and shit are nowhere even close to what would have been common in Japan in '88. Takes me out of it a bit, having to see guys who look like they're in a modern boy band or something. I just wish I could say the atmosphere is completely on-point, but it's a bit of a mixed bag here and there.

^^Hey now, careful on spoilers. That wasn't too revealing, necessarily, but still.

But yeah, I played a bit of the opening while skipping cutscenes (since I'm not up to 6 yet; just wanted to try it for the gameplay), and yeah, the scale of Kamurocho itself seems to have been expanded. Streets are definitely wider, and I wouldn't doubt if buildings in general were made a bit taller. Makes it all feels a little more realistic now, so that's nice. I'm playing Zero now, and the environments are starting to feel a little "videogame-y" at this point (after 5 games covering the same streets), so that upgrade in 6 is definitely very, very noticeable.

Also, just have to say it; it feels good when you finally throw your first enemy off of a building. I lured a pack of guys up an entire stairwell just to try that out. :lol: