Yakuza 3 Review

Yakuza 3 is an awesome game. There are hardly any beat em' up games anymore but this is one franchise that excels at it. It really reminds me of river city ransom, which is probably one of my favorite original Nintendo games. But that's another topic altogether. Yakuza has excellent action, many mini games to keep you occupied, and an innovative way to learn new moves.

This game also has one of the most bad ass protagonists known to all video games. Kazuma Kiryu, you're my hero.

Graphics

Let us start off with the graphics. I am not a huge stickler when it comes to graphics since i grew up playing the good ol' Atari and Nintendo, which makes me quite happy since i can respect and appreciate old graphics. This does not necessarily mean graphics can not break a game for me; it can, but rarely does. Graphics are not a huge factor in a game for me, but they always add an awesome amount of uniqueness to a game.

On to the graphics of Yakuza 3, they are not the most terrific but they are definitely not the worst for a current gen title. The cut scenes are really polished (and there are many) and done well, while the in game graphics are good at best. There are no frame rate drops at all so that's a huge plus.

Gameplay

Yakuza 3 shines in this department, and truly makes the game. There are rarely any good beat up games at all, because they are so repetitive. Well the fine developers of this little gem ingeniously through in mini games that were actually created well.Some lack in certain areas, but others are well designed. Throughout the story you will end up playing many mini games, one of the many is golf, which reminds me of how a golf game was on the Sega Genesis.

Yakuza 3 also has a leveling system, which is quite self explanatory for RPG fans. Kazuma has 4 stats which can be upgraded through doing side stories, beating bosses, and the normal lackeys. The stats are Mind, Body, Technique, and Essence. Mind increases your heat gauge, which is used for special moves and for buffs during heat mode. Body increases your health and power of throws, and so forth. This is not the only way to learn moves though, there is yet another mini game that is kind of like hide and seek. There is a minor character that sends you e-mails of certain locations and you try and find the event. When you do, you do a little quick time event (press the buttons while they show up on the screen) and you receive a new move or technique. It is really quite addicting, but can be a little frustrating at times when looking for the events.

This game is pseudo open world game, you cannot do whatever you want and there are random encounters with enemies when you travel throughout the few areas that are given. Although these areas may not be the biggest, there are many things you can do. GO to the arcade, a bikini bar, and many other places and it keeps the game fresh. Bored of kicking ass? Well check out the bikini babes dancing. Don't wanna be a perv? Then go play some video games inside a video game!

The battle system is quite simplistic, but it takes a while to get used to. I haven't played the previous two installments much, but from what i understand they are quite similar. The battles are intense and somewhat short in length at times but it fits the games pacing. The battle system has quite a bit of depth to it, and you can only perform certain special moves in certain situations or status. There are moves that require a certain status of HEAT, or a certain number of enemies and so forth. You can grab enemies, throw them in to their colleagues, bash their head in to the ground, beat them against a pole, or whatever is in the environment. There are many different ways to beat someone's ass in, and it kicks ass. Throw weapons in to all of this and it adds in to an amazing amount of heats moves within the game.

With all of these actions you perform, it actually controls quite well. Albeit it uses a quick time event system in battle it doesn't hinder the pacing of battles at all. It allows them to feel very intense and exciting without making the controls bad, or too confusing.

Story

Yakuza 3 has a very complex story that takes awhile to ease in to. Kazuma Kiryu is an ex-yakuza who now lives in Okinawa that runs an orphanage. One day he receives a notice for an eviction, and he soon learns that its from the local yakuza. After he deals with that with an ass whooping, it then skips forward a year and he learns his good friend was shot back in tokyo. I don't want to get too involved as it would ruin the story.

Re-playability

After beating Yakuza 3, you can continue the game in New Game Plus which gives you all the previous stats you had in your previous save and what not. There are many sub story missions and little extra things within the game to keep you busy for at least 50 hours, which is quite amazing for a game this generation. Overall, this is an awesome buy for a game.

4/5 ; 80%

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker Review

I need to start by saying that I'm biased. I'm a hardcore Metal Gear fan past the point of mere obsession. I literally fantasize about being Big Boss. I listen to the MGS series soundtrack on my iPod and see myself, as Snake, doing ridiculous things. I walk around doing a bad impression of Snake's voice all the time. I could go on for a while about how into this franchise I am but that wouldn't exactly be reviewing the game.

So now that that's out of the way I'd like to say that Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is one of the best games in the series bar none. Yeah, it's a PSP title. It doesn't feel like it though. I would get really invested in the game and it felt as good if not better than some of the console games in the series. There are limitations to the controls on the PSP (lack of a second analog nub be damned) but even with these limitations the game controlled well enough that I wanted to keep playing it.

I played it for a long time time too. As of the writing of this review I've clocked in at about 117 hours. That's more time than I've spent with some RPGs and I'm still playing it. So why am I still playing it? I'll break it down for you:

It's Pokemon. It's X-Com. It's Monster Hunter. It's Metal Gear. It's all of these things and it's addictive as hell. The game is broken up first into menus. These menus allow for the management of Mother Base (the precursor to what would become known as Outer Heaven, the base Big Boss establishes in the 1980's in South Africa), soldiers who are members of MSF (Millitiares sans Frontiers), and your R and D department. Mother Base actually acts like a hub menu for everything else in the game. This is where you'll assign members of MSF to different teams. These teams include the combat unit, the R&D team, the mess hall team, the medical team, and the intel team. Assigning staff to each of these teams allows for a number of different things to happen. For example, putting more people in your R&D team allows for development of better weapon and equipment. Assigning staff to the combat unit makes it so you can send troops on missions known as "Outer Ops". The mess hall team is in charge of making food and keeping the morale of all your troops high and the medical and intel groups do what you'd think they'd do.

Outer Ops is part of the game that reminds me a bit of Pokemon. It's nothing as in depth as Pokemon gameplay-wise but it does add to the overall experience. As you progress through the game you can capture enemy soldiers. Once they're convinced to join your cause you can send them on missions in the Outer Ops section of the Mother Base menu. Not only can you capture soldiers though. In some specific instances you can also capture enemy vehicles which add greatly to your ability to finish outer ops missions. You don't take direct control over anything in Outer Ops. You pick the mechs (tanks, helicopters, APCs, etc) and the soldiers that you want to send on these various missions and then you leave it alone. Once you return from one of the main story missions or an Extra Ops mission you can check on the results of the Outer Ops. You can choose to watch an animated depiction of the battle or go through a list of statistics to find out how the battle played out in your absence. Afterwards you gain items and experience for your soldiers.

That brings me to the missions where you do take direct control. These missions are divided into Main Ops and Extra Ops. Main Ops are all the missions that are a part of the games story. Extra Ops are the hundreds of extra added missions that unlock both as you beat Main Ops and Extra Ops missions. These missions add hours of replay value to the game. When you select a mission, either Main or Extra, you're taken to another menu where you can then choose to listen to briefing files (this is where you'll get the bulk of your classic MGS style codec conversations and there are hours of recorded character dialog in here) or select your load out for the mission. It's left mostly up to you how you play through these missions and there generally isn't a wrong or right way to do it. That is of course if you aren't a crazy person who likes seeing that they've gotten an S ranking on a mission. I'm still trying to S rank all the missions in this game. A great number of the missions in this game allow for local co-op with a friend or online via adhoc party on the PS3 but because my only other friend that has this game broke his clavicle I had to finish the damn thing by myself. The later boss fights are most certainly designed with co-op in mind. My final fight against Peace Walker took me 46 minutes and 15 seconds. There are also unlockable Monster Hunter missions in the game and while I managed to take down two Rathalos by myself I don't think I'll be able to do the same with the Tigrex that came immediately after them.

I've gone on about menus and management but how does the game actually play? It's a third person stealth action game. It has elements of a third person shooter mixed with gameplay elements from the previous Metal Gear Solid games. Particularly Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots. The camouflage system from MGS3 is in here. When you choose your load out before starting a mission you can also choose your camo type. A list of rating based on the camo and environment it's best used for are available but after you unlock both the battle and sneaking suits there is little need to use anything else. Use the sneaking suit for every mission requiring stealth and the battle suit for boss fights and when you want to kill everyone in a level.

The shooting is lifted from MGS4 and for the most part it works really well. You move with the thumb nub on the left of the system and you hold the left shoulder button to go into aim mode. You then use the face buttons to aim and the right shoulder button to fire. It takes some time getting used to using the face buttons to aim but it ended up being the most accurate and comfortable of the available control schemes.

Graphically the game is amazing. I don't think I've seen a game on the PSP that looks as good as this one. The character models all look great and some of the characters can even be examined in a model viewer mode (strangely, only the female characters) where they can be panned and rotated. The environments also look nice. Not as nice as the character models but still pretty good. Sometimes you'll spot the occasional muddy texture or texture pop in but those things can be overlooked. The frame rate seemed consistent enough and didn't drop at all from what I could tell. It's almost on par with Snake Eater in the looks department.

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker also has some excellent sound design. It has a great soundtrack and a few moments in particular actually made me get emotional. I'm not going to spoil anything but I will say that if the sound design and song choice had been different I wouldn't have reacted the way I did to a helicopter battle near the end of the game. The game's AI boss battles are also made better by the fact that each of the bosses is equipped with a vocaloid module and sings some of the most haunting music ever. If you find yourself crying manly tears while playing this game, blame the music.

Oh yeah. The story is pretty damn good too. It's the most straight forward story in the Metal Gear Saga thus far. It's a simple set up. Big Boss founds MSF and is one day approached by a young girl and her teacher. He is asked to bring peace to her country and he refuses at first. Then they play him a tape with a voice he hadn't heard in a long time. The voice of someone who should at this point be dead. This is what really spurs him onward through the story. Finding out what really happened to this character (I really don't want to spoil anything) is one of the high points of this game. Having played through MGS3, Portable Ops, and now this... I can tell you I have a much greater respect for Big Boss than I did before.

That's Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. It's amazing. Excellent gameplay, sound design, story and graphics. There is so much more I could write up about the game and maybe I'll write an updated piece on it in a year or so to see if my opinion on the game has changed but I have to go ahead and end this. I hate giving a numerical value for a score but I suppose if I had to I'd give Peace Walker a one billion out of five and I'd award it game of forever. I know that's how long I'll be playing it.

Ico review

Ico is not a normal game; there is no HUD, has minimal dialogue, and it just makes the game much more of an experience and much less of a typical game. After playing this game, i didn't realize how much the emotional attachment i had with the characters. Through all the interactions the two characters have throughout, the two grow on you. It truly is mesmerizing, i did not know i cared about the two til' the very end though....


Graphics:

Ico is a first generation ps2 title, that being said its 9 years old. The graphics may seem dated, but for the time they were awesome, especially since this game was originally coming out for PS1. If you ever play the game, make sure you actually look around the areas since they really are beautiful.


Story:

Ico is a little horned boy who is taken to a large castle by the villagers. The villagers sacrifice people who have horns because it is a supposed omen, and ico suffers the same fate. They lock him up in a tomb and leave, but shortly after Ico has a nightmare about him roaming around the castle but a shadow grabs him then pulls him through the wall. He then wakes up and he finds a loose rock in the tomb and he was able to push himself out of it. He then roams around the castle and ends up finding a princess in a cell, and he releases her. After a little dialogue, a shadowy figure grabs her.... Due to the little dialogue through the game, the main plot doesn't come up til the end, but other than that it's a boy meets girl kind of story and the objective is to escape the castle....

Game Play:

Ico is a simple but effective platformer with simple puzzle mechanics. However what makes it such a good game is the fact that there is no HUD, and nothing there to over complicate things. There is no health bar, there is no map, there is no currency, there is no inventory. This makes the game much more engaging, since it makes it feel like you really are close to Ico....

The battle system in the game is the only bad thing i have to say about the game, it's not bad, but rather quite frustrating. The reason i think that is due to the fact i was kind of rushing through the game, and did not take the time to watch the patterns of the shadows and such.

The puzzles all deal with the environment and are quite simple, but there were a few where i was actually quite stumped, but then again it was because i was not paying attention to the environment.

The only downside is how short the game is, although if it was longer it would have been drawn out and ultimately not as good. It is a meager 5 hour game, but i am sure that you could beat it much sooner. There was a side quest skipped which acquired a much stronger weapon but i didn't bother.

Conclusion:

Ico is probably one of my favorite games, and is definitely worth a play through even if you are not a hard core gamer. It will surely captivate your heart. Fumto Ueda the game designer, truly is able to create games that end up being more art than a video game.

4.5/5 ; 90%