Sega announce Yakuza 3 western release!

Yes!!! I'm absolutely made up about this, i thought Yakuza 1&2 were both quality games and i've been drooling over the Japanese Yakuza 3 screenshots and videos ever since it was released, had nearly given up any hope of it getting a western release however due to the poor sales of the previous two games.

Scheduled for March this gives me another reason to pick up a PS3 again in the next couple of months along with Demon Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, God Of War Collection and Uncharted 2.

First quarter of the new year is shaping up rather nicely for a change.

A pleasant suprise.....

Out this week in the US, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has been getting some pretty good reviews over the net so far. I've watched a couple of video reviews myself and was pretty impressed if i'm honest. Didn't have very expectations for this but i'm certainly hoping to pick it up now when it gets a UK release in February.

Judging by the reviews the only thing i don't like about it is the use of ice to indicate the Silent Hill Otherworld as opposed to the trademark blood red rust style visuals.
It certainly does appear to be a pretty brave game in general and a world away from the pitiful cash-in i had assumed it would be.

Here's hoping that when i actually get to play it that it lives up to these new expectations!

Outrun 2 (Multi)

For years we waited for a (proper) sequel to the classic Sega coin-op Outrun but it never came, then when it finally did in 2003 arcades were practically dead in the west and the Burnout series had taken over the home console market by designing a suitably Sega styled arcade racer (Burnout 2).













There was still place however for a great update to a classic series and this is certainly what Sega provided with Outrun 2. Gorgeous graphics, a great remixed soundtrack and silky smooth fast gameplay meant that this was every arcade racer fans dream.













Sumo Digital handled the home conversions and boy did they do a good job, the Xbox version came first and literally blew me away, i didn't think it was possible to make such an accurate conversion of the arcade game at that time but i was proved wrong!

Then they went one better and converted the Outrun 2 SP arcade revision to the Xbox again along with the PS2 and the PSP!! All versions were bloody superb, even the obviously scaled down PSP version.













Outrun 2 continues to live on Xbox Live and PSN as a downloadable title, so if you've never experienced drifting round corners at high speed listening to Magical Sound Shower whilst admiring the bright blue sky then you need to check it out as it's something every gamer should experience at least once.

Aero Fighters (Arcade)

Known as Sonic Wings in Japan 1992 's arcade shoot em' up Aero Fighters basically laid the foundations for the majority of the games that came out of cult development house Psikyo during the period of 1992 - 2003. This includes such classics as the Strikers series, Gunbird 1&2 and the hard as balls Dragon Blaze.

The similarities are mainly due to most of the Video System development team who worked on Aero Fighters going on to work for Psikyo.





















Aero Fighters bears all the hallmarks of the later Psikyo classics, short fast levels, multiple power ups and transforming mech bosses. It was also one of the first shoot em' ups to offer multiple characters to choose from i believe, all with unique ship types with different attributes.





















It was followed by two sequels, both for the Neo Geo MVS arcade system. They were also good games but failed to live up to the awesomeness of the original, mainly in my opinion to the change in screen orientation from a standard vertical to a vertical scroller but on a horizontal screen (as in Radiant Silvergun, Gigawing etc).

Aero Fighters was ported to both the Japanese Playstation and Saturn consoles as Sonic Wings Special but i can't comment on the quality of either as i have only played the PCB (which incidentally only costs about the same amount).

Resident Evil 5 (360/PS3)

Here it is, my long promised slating of Capcom's "franchise rape"

Let me just start by saying that on its own it's not that bad a game, it's certainly better than most 3rd person action games out there, it's just taken as part of a classic series and as sequel to one of the best console games of all time it's a disappointment, and this is entirely down to Capcom's stupid design decisions.

These decisions appear to have been taken to appeal to the Gears Of War crowd and to gain some of that fanbase, this includes.........

Making Chris ridiculously bulky a la' the Gears meaning he just looks stupid compared to how he looked in both REmake and Code Veronica.













Deciding to use a stupidly poor on the fly inventory system rather than the separate screen as in Resident Evil 4. Combine this with a small amount of inventory slots available and you've got a recipe for frustration right there. This also makes the Mercenaries mode much more fiddly than it should be which is a shame as this is the one part of Resident Evil 5 that is bordering on the fantastic.













The biggest problem however, and one that practically breaks the game in places is that Capcom decided in their new "wisdom" to make the entire game a fucking co-op experience.
This removes the majority of any tension as suddenly you're no longer on your own. It does provide perhaps the only scary thing about the game - the shoddy AI, many of the boss battles are stupidly designed around two players working together, which just doesn't work if the second player is controlled by the AI as they will just run straight at the boss and shoot - no strategy whatsoever.
This actually breaks the final boss battle as I found it nigh on impossible to get an "S" rank for the mission as the AI partner just kept running right at the boss and dying ("S" Rank stipulates no deaths in the chapter)

At least if you're going to provide a shoddy AI character then don't penalise me or make it game over when they die Capcom!

I'm not overly bothered about 360 Achievements but this is one game where I wanted to get them all and I also wanted to unlock everything (this is my favourite franchise after all), but they went and practically spoiled this for me too as to unlock stuff you need to collect all the BSAA emblems but yes you guessed it there's one you can only get by playing with another human player!

What an absolute joke, why should anyone be penalised and unable to unlock all the content just because they don't play on Xbox live?













(back to the game)

The setting doesn't really work either, it's too bright for a Resident Evil game and the only moments that felt right were the interior moments later on and the short sewer section near the start.

The bosses are a bit uninspired too, there's nothing there that comes anywhere near Krauser or "It" in Resident Evil 4. I will say though that there is a pretty mental boss battle in Resident Evil 5 that I pretty much loved it's just a shame the rest of them were a bit boring.

The bosses (and the game in general actually) reminded me of Lost Planet which makes sense as both shared the same director (Jun Takeuchi). Lost Planet was alright game but had a lot of flaws, how on earth Capcom decided he was the man to take over their most beloved franchise I’ll never know but I read in this month’s Edge magazine that he wants to make the the next installment in this series even more mainstream as he thinks that Resident Evil 4 only appealed to "maniac players" (Japanese term for hardcore gamers).

No wonder Shinji Mikami left Capcom.....I dread to think what the next installment will be like

Bioshock (360)

Coming from members of the development team responsible for the seminal System Shock 2, 2007's Bioshock certainly has the pedigree and the development talent in all the right places although it doesn't quite manage to meet the excessive level of industry hype at the time of release.
















Bioshock is still a quality game though, it just was unjustly touted in many quarters as the second coming, the game to finally knock Half Life 2 off it's lofty FPS perch. That's not to say it doesn't weave a great story, complete with stunning graphics and sound, there are just a couple of little nitpicks keeping it from being "teh best game ever" material.

The main little nitpick i have with the game is that it is far too easy, which alleviates much of the tension that was present in it's spiritual predecessor.
This is due to the Vita-Chambers scattered around the game - which are basically respawn points if you die, not such a bad idea on it's own but when you combine this with the fact that when you respawn all enemies are in the same state they were when you died - meaning you can keep plugging away at the health of a Big Daddy for example whilst repeatedly dying.
This cuts down what could have been a wonderful sense of fear and panic every time you come across these enemies which is a bit of a shame.













Also the Deus Ex style Plasmid upgrading is a bit dumbed down for my liking, although other people perhaps think the opposite, i just would've preferred it to go even further down the Deus Ex/System Shock 2 route rather than the Half Life one.

I'm most certainly knitpicking however, at the end of the day it's a quality game and testament to that fact is how much i want to play through it again after writing this!

Now Playing:

Ico (PS2)

Bayonetta Demo out in the West!

So i finally got to play the Bayonetta Xbox 360 demo tonight, but only for about half an hour as i had a prior engagement. The short amount of game that i played was absolutely stunning, instantly evoking memories of Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe but with everything ramped up to eleven!

I'll post more impressions after i've given it a proper playtest tommorow evening but it's looking like something very special indeed.

The End?

As reported on kotaku Akira Yamaoka is leaving Konami :(

That truly is the end for the Silent Hill series now in my eyes...