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Post by feilong80 on Jun 10, 2011 20:14:00 GMT -5
you do realize you can skip cutscenes by holding down start right? ;-)
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Post by ECM on Jun 10, 2011 21:20:03 GMT -5
Ah, but you see, therein lies the rub: the cinemas are the best part of the 'game'!
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jun 10, 2011 21:46:11 GMT -5
I still don't get what's so bad about that...
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Post by ECM on Jun 10, 2011 22:09:20 GMT -5
About what? The cinemas being the best part of the game? The problem is, first and foremost, it's a *game* not a movie. If the cinemas are the *best* part of the game (bettering even the gameplay), then it must be a pretty god-awful game (or the cinemas must just be absolutely out of this world, but that has, literally, *never* been my experience, since if the gameplay is bad, there's no compelling reason to play a *game* to see the cinematics).
Of course, it could also mean the gameplay is just absolutely horrifically bad, but then we run into the same problem: why are your cinematics better than your gameplay in a *game*? Especially given that you must wade through a terrible game just to get to the shiny CGI. (Which, personally, seems like a massive waste of time when you can read a 300-page novel in the same span of time it takes to beat, say, MGS4, and it's almost a foregone conclusion the novel will have a much better and far more entertaining story (and be more entertaining in general) than the cinematics in a crappy game.)
So, in summation, if the best part of game for you is not the thing that actually makes it a game, then you are, in all likelhood, wasting your time when there are much better options for both raw cinematics (movies) and far, far better storytelling (books), both of which can be 'completed' in far less time than it takes to wade through garbage like FFXIII.
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jun 11, 2011 14:29:23 GMT -5
Well, I personally enjoy the cinematics and the game itself of Yakuza, so, I can't really relate.
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Post by Justin on Jun 11, 2011 14:57:42 GMT -5
I liked Kenzan on PS3. This was mostly due to the fact that it wasn't translated and I ad-libed(sp?) the entire game depending on what my mood was.
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Post by elchevalier on Jun 11, 2011 17:24:04 GMT -5
Eric is making a storm in a glass of water as usual, the cinemas in Yakuza are not THAT frequent. It's a franchise where the story does matter, but it doesn't kill the gameplay in any way, shape or form. I also oppose games that abuse cutscenes, but Yakuza is no Final Fantasy XIII, or Metal Gear Solid 4.
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Post by ECM on Jun 11, 2011 18:17:26 GMT -5
Whoa, whoa, I did not sasy it was on par, cinema-wise, with FFXIII or MGS4, but just because the dude at the end of the bar has had fourteen shots of Mexico's primary export and half as many bears and is going to be spending three days violently ill (not that I'd know anything at all about this particular situation...at The House of Blues...at E3 '99) if he lives, doesn't mean the guy that had half that isn't also going to be sick as a dog, i.e. Yakuza can still have too many cinemas even if FFXIII has way way too many cinemas--after a certain point, for me, the quantity becomes immaterial cause I'm going to wish I was dead any--, err, wait...well, you get the point.
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Post by Justin on Jun 12, 2011 1:13:29 GMT -5
Final Fantasy IV PSP. Wife snagged it from Walmart today when she went shopping for other crap. I really need to snag the ost for this.
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AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
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Post by AllenSmithee on Jun 12, 2011 3:55:30 GMT -5
Does it run as smooth and have all the easy-access stuff as the PSP version of the first game?
Y'know, save anywhere, et cetera?
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Post by ECM on Jun 12, 2011 11:50:04 GMT -5
It does run smooth, but you can't save anywhere (at least in the main game--not sure about the After Years portion).
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Post by ECM on Jun 12, 2011 12:14:22 GMT -5
El Shaddai (PS3): I kinda had a preconceived notion of what to expect from this and, thus far, it's basically almost nothing like what I had envisioned. So instead of an action-adventure a la Okami (the art director for that game directed this game) you get a very, very dumbed-down Devil May Cry, with hyper-linear levels (at least for the first two hours) and a game structure that goes like this:
*Run down tunnel/corridor/spit of land. *Hit open area/bottleneck where enemies attack (a la DMC) and battle your way out w/ DMC-style combat (which is actually pretty good). *Uh, well, repeat?
(And when I say hyper-linear, I mean there are virtually no side paths and, if there are, it's literally 20 feet out of your way before that dead-ends and you have to go back to the rail.)
That's basically it, thus far, which is really, really disappointing since the concept for the game is freakin' awesome (basically a skewed retelling of The Book of Enoch1).
I hope that something changes soon, because I'm losing interest fast...
(And for those that care: the language barrier more resembles a language picket fence rotted by years of neglect, termites and trampled by a herd of bulls, i.e. it's virtually non-existent.)
Dawn of Discovery (Wii): like resource management games such as SimCity and all its myriad, sprawling, descendants? Then you'll probably enjoy this, though (surprise) it's a bit dumbed-down from what you'd expect on the PC (where this game also resides). It's brightly-colored (very little brown! Hooray!) and the Wiimote+chuck combo makes handling games like this light years ahead of all those, crippled, console games of the past where navigating a game like this becomes more about pixel hunting than point-and-clicking.
Gameplay-wise, it's a bit like Pirates (just a touch) meets SimCity, which is an interesting hybrid and there's just enough complexity to keep it from being braindead but not so mcuh that those that don't play a lot of these games (I do, mind you) won't feel overwhelmed.
1 I'm really into what a non-Jew/non-Christian would call Biblical mythology.
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Post by Justin on Jun 12, 2011 13:52:11 GMT -5
It's out! Does it at least look as good in real-time as it did through screen shots?
@smithee - Bladerunner is awesome.
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Post by ECM on Jun 12, 2011 14:52:03 GMT -5
El Shaddai? Yeah, the graphics are (sadly) the best part. There are even some effects I don't think I've ever seen in any videogame, ever, I just wish they were married to a game that was a whole lot better. (I'm thinking this is what happens when you let an artist head up a dev team1.)
(Which isn't to say writer-artists alway suck (see: Mike Mignola) but, in my experience, those that paint/draw/etc. do not generally make for good verbal storytellers.)
1 Kinda like what happened when Image Comics let a bunch of artists write (and before that, Marvel) and we got some of the worst comic stories/characters in the history of the medium. (Plus, we got way more Rob "Gap Commerical" Liefield than any reality ever needs.)
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Post by feilong80 on Jun 12, 2011 21:04:29 GMT -5
I would agree with this. Generally I think artists look at things so heavily from an aesthetic perspective that they don't really know how to engage the other senses. In video games, you have the Sid Meier/Will Wright programmer/designer, which yields certain results, and in Japan you had the designer as planner/movie director/ and sometimes even artist (Miyamoto was essentially an artist, but since that was married to industrial design, he probably didn't think like the typical artist).
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