Hopefully I’ve hooked you in with that clickbait-esque title BUT, before you berate me for using such shady tactics, I do actually mean what I say…sort of. Yakuza 6 IS the worst game that I have played in the main series (ignoring the Dead Souls spin-off) but it is still a Yakuza game. Branding the sixth chronological installment of Sega’s beloved franchise as the worst one is like being presented with a group of semi-naked Playboy bunnies and being asked to select your least favourite.
What I’m saying is that Yakuza 6 ranks bottom for me, but it’s still a fantastic game regardless of its issues.
I’m slow off the mark discussing this but, then again, what’s new around here? I’d originally planned on talking about the Resident Evil 4 remake right after the news broke, but shit happened and I slacked off with blogging.
Anyway, my question is this: is a remake of Resident Evil 4really necessary?
It’s been a while since I posted something here on Darkstalker90. There are various reasons for that but I won’t bore you with those because that’s not why you’re here, is it? You’re here for some gaming-related content so I’ve skipped over the (frankly embarassing) backlog of semi-completed drafts to talk about a game that has commanded my attention over the last week or so: the mighty Streets of Rage 4.
Go back just a few years, and SoR4 would have been just a fantasy – one of those games that cropped up on many a retro-head’s I-wish-they-would-make-this-but-they-probably-never-will list. The franchise’s future seemed to be confined to re-releases on retro Sega compilations and those iffy plug ‘n play devices. Sega themselves had tried and failed in the 90’s to develop a Streets of Rage 4, and the popularity of the side-scrolling beat ’em up had rapidly waned with the demise of arcade-style gaming.
So it was a pretty earth-shaking shock to say the least when Streets of Rage 4 was first shown in 2018. With Sega acting solely as a licensor this time, it was down to the collaboration of Dotemu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush games to do the series justice and deliver on twenty-six years of fan anticipation. No pressure, then… Continue reading “Walking the Streets of Rage once again…”→
Well, that’s that then: Dead or Alive 6 is officially, er…dead and I couldn’t be happier about it. That’s probably a bizarre thing for a fan of the series to say. Doubly so given that – at the time of typing this post – I still haven’t purchased DOA6.
However, the recent Twitter announcement from Koei-Tecmo, about April’s DLC update being the final batch of support for DOA6, felt like justice in a warped way. The game has badly underperformed at market and consistently attracted low player numbers. It’s a big turnaround from the success of Dead or Alive 5 and there’s a good reason for it.
Greed.
Let’s put this into perspective. Dead or Alive 5 was severely criticised for its fuck-ton of DLC and neverending stream of season passes. Yet, the tide of add-ons was viewed with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smirk. It was Koei-Tecmo playing the “sex sells” card and it more or less perfectly straddled the line between being acceptable and straight-up taking the piss. If any proof was required that the DLC tactics didn’t push fans away, consider that DOA5 had two updated editions (Ultimate and Last Round), spanned two hardware generations, and was supported for six years.
DOA6, on the other hand, is being put out to pasture barely a year after the initial release. To me, this is JUSTICE, because it is a case of a publisher pushing the limits of DLC beyond the realm of acceptability and being punished for it. Gamers were rightly horrified by how brazen Koei-Tecmo were being with DOA6‘s add-on content and clearly voted with their wallets. It’s something that we – as consumers – need to do in order to show big publishers that we won’t lap up any old bullshit.
DOA6 ran into trouble straight away when Koei-Tecmo vowed to tone down the game’s sexuality in order to get more people involved and give the series a greater chance at being taken seriously. As it transpired, it wasn’t the drastic Victorian-era suppression of the female figure that we feared but the story nevertheless generated negative press and worried a good chunk of the DOA fanbase. But it wasn’t paranoia over SJW rule that ultimately killed sales of DOA6. It was the publisher’s determination to wring their customer’s wallets dry.
First of all, Dead or Alive 6 has had FOUR season passes in less than a year! As far I’m aware, Season Passes cover a year’s worth of DLC in most games, hence the name. Not in DOA6 however. Fuck that logic. They were eye-wateringly expensive too, with the most recent Season Pass 4 retailing for $90.
Overall, the game has hundreds upon hundreds of dollars-worth of DLC available to download. You thought DOA5 was bad? Well, Team Ninja really upped their work rate for 6, pumping out new costume packs at an insane rate. It really is the undisputed claimant to the title of DLC: The Game.
This is a pretty gloomy story so here’s a pic of Honkers Honoka showing off Koei-Tecmo’s commitment to cleaning up their act.
But the worst of all didn’t come until this year, when the publisher decided that it was acceptable to charge players for a change of hair colour…and make them pay for said colour every time they changed it.
In a way, the audacity of Koei-Tecmo has to be admired.
On the other hand, the whole saga of DOA6 has been an embarassing series of apologies to the fans, promises of fixes and back-tracking. Add to this the crappy in-game unlock system and the fact that DLC can’t be purchased individually for American/European PS4 owners of the game specifically, and you have a really unappealing fighting game on your hands.
The other big problem is that the game isn’t THAT big of an upgrade over Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, which still looks fantastic in PS4/XBO form, plays brilliantly and isn’t saddled with terrible money-making schemes. Yes, the DLC for that game is still a joke, but it is at least more honest (if you can get past the awful organisation and confusing compatibility Catalogue add-ons) and what’s available is the accumulation of six years worth of steady support as opposed to a relentless tide of DLC being vomited out in single year. I, for one, saw no reason to upgrade from 5 to 6 and have yet to be convinced. Unless Koei-Tecmo announce some sort of all-in-one retail package of the game, then I doubt I ever will.
So I’m glad that gamers have woken up and rejected Koei-Tecmo’s business strategy.
Unfortunately, it does mean that the DOA series may well be mothballed as a result of this commercial failure. I also wouldn’t be surprised if KT blame “market trends” or other vague reasons for the absence of a DOA7, rather than holding their hands up and publicly accepting that they went too far with 6 and allowed greed too much of a say.
I hope that this isn’t the end of Dead or Alive but Koei-Tecmo need to learn from the failure of DOA6 and take a leaf from the books of other publishers of fighting games.
I don’t like to make these sorts of update posts. For one, if I’m going to spend time typing something up for this blog, then I want it to be real content, such as a review or discussion piece.
Secondly, I don’t have a big enough ego to believe that the internet cares about what I’m doing. This blog has about fifty followers and, while I certainly appreciate any views and the odd comment, I’m a realist. Fifty followers isn’t even a grain of sand in the blogging world.
Yet here I am, doing what I just said I don’t want to do.
So why, then? Well, I’m on a small roll here, having put out two mini-reviews over the past few days. I want to keep that ball rolling. New reviews are in the works and I want to get back to doing some more in-depth discussion things. The irony is that this sudden spurt of motivation isn’t even linked to me being stuck indoors due to the big, bad C-Virus. My job means that I will still be going to work full-time unless a) I fall ill or b) my workplace shuts down, which is – fortunately – unlikely given that I work in the food distribution industry.
Once the day job is done and dusted however, I can get back to enriching the internet with entirely unnecessary reviews of games like this:
Yes, I decided that Dead or Alive Xtreme 3‘s sunny beaches, chilled music and bodacious babes would be the perfect antidote to all the misery and worry gripping the planet right now. Was I right though? You’ll find out in the upcoming review which is currently baking in the oven. I probably could have had the review finished by now but I had a lot to say about Xtreme 3 and the resulting review should be reasonably meaty.
I’ve also been on a retro kick, specifically a Playstation one as you will already be aware of if you’ve checked out the previous two mini-reviews on this blog. I’ve dug out another old favourite which has stolen a lot of my gaming time in recent weeks:
Expect a review of this too, once I’m done perving on digital girls with improbable proportions, that is. Priorities and all that.
Elsewhere, I’m continuing my Yakuza marathon with Kiwami 2 – the most excellent remake to my favourite game from the entire series (Yakuza 2, duh). As ever, I was aiming for that sweet 100% completion and, again – as ever – it’s looking unlikely since I absolutely cannot be arsed with the Japanese gambling games. Even the casino has been making me angry. Several hours of trying to win 1000 chips in one sitting to satisfy Haruka’s request has that sort of effect on you. Still, you don’t need that 100% rating or a platinum trophy in your virtual cabinet to enjoy one of the best story-driven series’ of modern times.
Finally, I’ve been dipping in and out of Soulcalibur VI again, especially since I paid up for the second season pass after months of putting it off. So I now have access to Hilde (who actually looks awesome to play as) and her stage, which has such good music that I don’t even feel the need to swap it out with a classic BGM from one of the earlier games in the series’. As a bonus, it looks like I’ve bought in to Season 2 just as Samurai Shodown‘s Haohmaru is about to be added, along with some new creation bits.
tl;dr: expect DOA Xtreme 3 and Destruction Derby Raw reviews very soon and (hopefully) some new discussions/articles.
Most importantly: stay safe, stay sensible and look after each other.
Mini Reviews: I played it…I just don’t have a lot to say about it.
Nobody is more disappointed than me to be writing a Mini Review of Tombi (Tomba to you fine American folks) rather than a full-fat verdict. But after finally playing this game (after a looooooooong wait), I felt so “meh” towards it that I’m struggling to work out what to say.
It’s imperative to understand that my interest in this game goes all the way back to the late 90’s when my Dad surprised us all by coming home one day with a Playstation under his arm. Included in the box was the latest version of the legendary ‘Demo 1’ disc and one of the games previewed on there was Tombi. I think I played the Tombi demo more than any of the full games that we had for the Playstation. I just couldn’t get enough of the comical, extremely exaggerated visuals, vibrant colours, dangerously addictive music and the game world itself, which seemed to be packed with places to explore and secrets to uncover.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get the full game but I frequently returned to the demo for my Tombi fix. Eventually I grew up (in physical age at least…the jury’s still out on my mental maturity) and acquired a disposable income as well as a keen interest in retro gaming. I still wasn’t able to buy a copy of Tombi however, because it turned out that the game was quite rare. You couldn’t find it on the pre-owned racks in physical shops and ebayers wanted big money for this OMG L@@K!!!! MEGA RARE VINTAGE PS1 SONY GAME – something that hasn’t changed when used copies still sell for anywhere between £100-£150 on ebay.
Thankfully, the game was made available in 2012 for a much more sensible price on Sony’s Playstation Network (£6.49 at the time of writing), something that surprised me when I (wrongly) assumed that it would be a niche game lost to the mists of time, or swallowed up in a licensing/rights hell. Even so, I was tardy at downloading Tombi and didn’t get around to it until this year.
So…that’s eight years after it was re-released and a whopping twenty-three years since the game was originally published. It’s fair to say that my anticipation was sky-high, and I was genuinely excited as I watched the progress of the download on my Vita.
They do warn against meeting your heroes however and I’m afraid that I may have fallen foul of this slice of philosophy given how I put a healthy wedge of hours into Tombi but haven’t touched it again since.
Now don’t get me wrong: the game still absolutely oozes with charm and, being a 2D game, it has aged very well compared to all those (then) cutting-edge 3D Playstation games that look rougher than a badger’s arse in 2020. I’m still head-over-heels for the game’s visual style, music and playful humour. I also appreciate the game’s non-linear structure. You will collect loads of items on your adventure, for example, and have to go back to previous areas to complete quests or access new places. There’s a vague Metroidvania feel to things with new areas linking up to older ones in unexpected ways.
And, while Tombi is a 2D platformer, you are able to traverse both the foreground and background. There are also areas that rotate and allow you to explore all four sides of a structure. It’s a creative and clever game that tries to do something different and shake up the 2D platform formula.
Unfortunately, the charm and nice ideas only carried Tombi so far and I rapidly tired of the game, much to my disappointment. Perhaps I expected too much, or had waited far too long. Maybe I had built the game up in my head to be something that it was never going to live up to. More likely, it was the deciphering of cryptic clues to make progress. The difficulty ramps up very quickly too, demanding uber-precision from the player. A challenge is no bad thing in a game (it’s entirely necessary) but when it saps the enjoyment out of the experience, then all the aesthetic charm in the universe can’t compensate for getting pissed off at cheap deaths, being expected to make super-precise jumps and having to constantly re-load my save to try again. I wanted to enjoy the game for all the positive, happy things that I previously mentioned, but ultimately found that I couldn’t be bothered to continue with it.
Will I be selecting Tombi from my Vita’s home screen again? Well, never say never. There is that small voice in the back of my head suggesting that I may have thrown the towel in prematurely rather than rising to the challenge. That said, Tombi is – and always has been – all about the art direction and creativity for me and I’d really rather not spoil those things by persisting with unsatisfying, often frustrating platforming mechanics.
Mini Reviews: I played it…I just don’t have a lot to say about it.
Prior to playing Overboard! (known as Shipwreckers! to my NTSC-U readers) on the Playstation, I had heard a lot about it. The game does, after all, crop up on many people’s “hidden gems” lists and “cult classics” countdowns. It’s also a rare thing: a game for Sony’s debut console that comes with a good rep and doesn’t cost the earth to source from the likes of ebay.
Unfortunately, I will have to burst the nostalgia bubble and say that I didn’t really get on with Overboard! but I can, nevertheless, see why the game has the following that it does.
You guide a dinky pirate ship through maze-like waterways, fending off enemies and circumventing all manner of hazards in your quest to collect treasure and capture ports. Your galleon boasts a hell of a lot of cartoon-ish charm, as do the enemies and overall visual style. It’s these appealing aesthetics and enjoyable music that form the bulk of Overboard!‘s appeal but it also controls well and does a deft job of staggering the introduction of new weapons, enemy types and mechanics.
Overboard! is a piece of simple but effective puzzle/action game design that doesn’t need discs full of CGI or an unnecessary storyline and, as much as I enjoy those things, I’m all for a more straight-forward, unbloated experience that prioritises gameplay. It reminds me of Kula World in that respect, and that should be a good thing.
So I was surprised to feel a dull apathy towards Overboard! once I’d finished appreciating the presentation and fun tone.
First of all, it’s incredibly easy lose your ship to enemies and hazards, especially fire-based obstacles. You have the weapons to deal with enemies but I found it extremely fiddly to switch between them on the wheel-like selector, and often skipped past the one I wanted in my rush to get to it before my vessel was sent to Davy Jones’ locker. It was a problem compounded by being attacked from the sea and by bomb-dropping birds from above at the same time. I tended to try and ready the weapon I wanted before advancing into a new area and it usually turned out to be the wrong one for the situation, resulting in a lot of health lost.
Having to restart also means dealing with sluggish load times, something we were liberated from a long time ago with modern games and now struggle to accept when getting our retro fix. I could suffer this though because I expect it. What I couldn’t suffer was the way in which you can save yourself into a corner. The game allows you to save to the memory card after completing each level. Unfortunately, it also saves your lives and ammunition and doesn’t allow you to have another go at a failed stage with replenished lives/weapons. You have to re-load your save and start again with whatever you had at the point of saving, so it’s entirely possible to save with zero spare lives and be stuck with that bum deal every time you load up.
Overboard! is one of those games that I desperately wanted to like because it has a lot going for it. Sadly, I couldn’t gel with the weapon selector, being constantly killed by hazards that I wasn’t prepared for, and the save system. It’s by no means a bad game at all but I also have no desire to play it again.
Whenever there’s a discussion about which of Capcom’s forgotten fighting games (so anything other than flippin’ Street Fighter, then…) should be brought back in a blaze of current-gen glory, there’s usually only one franchise that tops the polls: Darkstalkers. As a huge fan of the Darkstalkers, I can’t suppress the fanboy in me very effectively and I tend to agree. That said, there is another fighting game with a cult following that has been pushed to the back of Capcom’s storage locker for far too long: Rival Schools.
I’ve always been aware of Rival Schools but it was one of those games that I didn’t get around to playing in period. Until recently, the closest I came to the franchise was playing as Kyosuke in Capcom Vs SNK 2 and Batsu in Tatsunoko Vs Capcom. That all changed when I was slimming down my collection and testing out game discs (many of which I’d bought years ago and never played) before listing them for sale on ebay. The Playstation port of Rival Schools: United by Fate was one such game and there was a part of me that had to wonder why I had shoved this to the back of the shelves and ignored it for so long, especially since I’m a big fan of classic Capcom.
It’s what’s inside that counts
The first hurdle that needs to be cleared, when playing Rival Schools for the first time in 2020, are the horribly outdated visuals. Look, I’m no graphics whore. I grew up playing the Playstation and I’ve also enjoyed Sega Saturn and 3DO games long after they were “current” systems, so I’m no snob when it comes to old 3D. But it’s an unavoidable fact that we’ve been spoilt by the realistic graphics of the last few hardware generations, so returning to the era that pushed crude textures and pioneering polygons into the mainstream is always going to be jarring and requires a brief adjustment.
As such, I was initially taken aback by the character models in Rival Schools when I first booted up the game. Perhaps I’d just become accustomed to the perfect curvature of Sophitia’s bosom in Soulcalibur VI, or maybe it was because I’d not played Rival Schools before so my eyes weren’t prepared. Whatever the case, some of the most enjoyable fighting games of the 90’s – Tekken 2, Street Fighter EX and Virtua Fighter 2 – all look pretty blocky these days but that shouldn’t (and doesn’t) detract from the quality of the games.
Spoilt for choice. Some fantastic portrait art too.
So once I’d acclimatised to some of the derpy expressions and Tiffany’s cubism-inspired tits (complete with a primitive jiggle effect), I found myself enjoying the game, warts and all. In truth, the characters only look janky up close during win animations. During regular gameplay, they actually look pretty good for their age and you’d be a fool to expect much better from the original Playstation. Perhaps Tekken 3 and Soulblade are a little easier on the eyes but Rival Schools isn’t that far behind.
But it really is what’s under the skin that counts.
Rival Schools is presented as a three-dimensional fighting game fit for the late 90’s but, in truth, it’s a bit of a hybrid. While it does have a sidestep feature and dynamic camera angles to capture the crazy super moves, it still feels like a 2D fighting game. That’s because it uses the familiar Street Fighter-style inputs on the d-pad and a light/heavy attack set-up over on the buttons.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing however because I immediately knew what I was doing, allowing me to pick the game up quickly and concentrate solely on getting to grips with Rival Schools‘ unique mechanics.
First up, Rival Schools is a tag-team fighting game of sorts. I say “of sorts” because you can’t actively tag back and forth between your two characters, as in the Marvel Vs series, but you can switch in between rounds. You can also utilise your partner for powerful combination super move known as a Team Up Technique. Depending on your partner, the Team Up move can be an outrageous tag-team super move for big damage, a stat boost, or even a cheeky health boost. I really like this tag-team system because it injects strategy into a fighting game; do you choose a partner that can restore health and simply use them solely for that purpose or do you forfeit the stat/health boosts, select two characters that you are competent with, continuously switch between them and opt for the big damage Team Up Techniques?
Tiffany’s kiss restores health. She doesn’t discriminate between boys and girls either…
Each character also has a selection of “Burning Vigour” super move attacks. These and the dual-character Team Up Techniques are all ridiculously awesome because they are incredibly over-the-top and feel stupidly OP. These crazy moves also tend to be shown off with different camera angles, taking advantage of the game’s 3D engine. I’ve played a lot of Capcom fighting games and I have to say that the Burning Vigour and Team-Up Techniques in Rival Schools are probably some of the most visually satisfying of the lot.
You also get plenty of access to these attacks too because the super guage fills up faster than The Flash on Speed. Some may criticise this because it makes the game feel easy and the super moves throwaway. I get that, and agree to a small extent, but Rival Schools is more about the entertainment factor than being a serious tournament game.
But there’s still more to the core gameplay. For instance, there is the Textbook Combo (a nice school-themed pun!) which is the ability to string together a short sequence of light and heavy hits, similar to Darkstalkers‘ Chain Combo system. You can also launch enemies skyward then jump up to hit them with a Textbook Combo in mid-air and even cancel into Burning Vigour supers. If it sounds similar to the the Vs series’ air combos then that’s because it feels exactly like that, down to the launcher input being the same.
There are also Defensive Fall and Get Up Attack techniques, as well as dash attacks. Finally, there is the Dodge ability that snaps you out of the 2D plane and back into the 3D realm. You can dodge sideways in either direction and, if you time it just right, you can evade an incoming attack at the very last moment and slide all the way around to your opponent’s back to catch them off-guard with a combo or deliver a different, more powerful throw attack that can only be used at an rival’s back.
A loaded package
Away from the actual gameplay, Rival Schools is simply bursting with charm and it’s easy to see why so many people love this neglected series. The characters are bold and full of personality, the music is terribly catchy and there is a big effort put into the presentation of the game. There is an anime-style intro upon booting the game up, for example, multiple animated endings and every character has their own unique illustrated endings to their stories. It’s one of those games where even the sound effects for selecting menu items are endearing.
The characters all feel unique to play as, and there are twenty of them to choose from as standard. That said, the veteran fighting game player will spot some cheeky imitations in amongst the roster, such as Hideo who is essentially the Ryu of Rival Schools with Shoto-style special moves. Roy seems to have borrowed Ken’s Shoryu-Reppa super move and Street Fighter Alpha‘s Sakura is included in the line-up. Overall however, the roster isn’t simply a copy-paste job; the majority of the fighters have their own style and are fun to experiment with.
Capcom really went all out with the Playstation conversion of this game too. There are two discs: an Arcade disc and the Evolution disc. The Arcade disc alone would have been acceptable enough since it features a fantastic conversion of the arcade original, a training mode and extra, bonus features. But Capcom also threw in the Evolution disc which is just so much more.
The Evolution disc contains an optimised, more balanced version of the game and more characters. As well as unlockable, alternate outfit versions of four of Rival Schools‘ female characters (complete with unique Team Up Techniques), there are 24 pre-edited special characters – mash-ups of the original characters and their moves. You also have the new Group Battle, League Battle and Tournament Battle modes, as well as the Cooperate Battle which allows four players to get in on the tag-team fighting with the assistance of the Playstation Multi-Tap. Finally, there is a “Lesson” mode and an art gallery. Phew!
It seems surreal in this post-Street Fighter V age to be playing a Capcom fighting game that had a warehouse of kitchen sinks thrown at it. To any younger readers of this blog, I would say this: go play PS1 Rival Schools and you’ll understand why us grumpy old farts moan about the bare-bones menu screens on modern fighting games, and the way that there is nothing to unlock (unless you are paying by credit card).
Conclusion
Rival Schools: United by Fate was an incredibly pleasant surprise and I think I need to be sent back to education myself for making the schoolboy error of not playing this sooner (enough with the school jokes!). After spending a good amount of time with the game, I can definitely confirm that the characters have just as much charm and appeal as Morrigan and co. from Darkstalkers. What’s more, the fighting system is excellent and strikes a perfect balance between the technical stuff and accessible, mental fun. It certainly wouldn’t need much to be brought up to scratch for a modern revival, something I’m now very much all for.
The only downside is that the Playstation port isn’t the cheapest used game to pick up these days, and it hasn’t been re-released on PSN outside of Japan (reportedly due to licensing issues) which certainly doesn’t help. That said, I think that Rival Schools is worth every penny of your money if you are a fighting game nut or a fan of classic Capcom.
I’m very late to the party on this one. Pretty much every videogame journo and Twitterati has ripped Koei-Tecmo to shreds over this pay-to-change-your-character’s-hair-colour debacle but guess what? I can still come along and pick up the scraps…and tear them into even smaller pieces. That’s just how I roll here.
It’s already well-known that Dead or Alive 5 saw Koei-Tecmo turn their famous fighting game into a hybrid fighting game/dress-up experience. Sure, DLC was around on the Xbox 360 in the days of DoA4 but it was the fifth installment that really saw the publisher slip into bed with DLC and flaunt their staggering stamina stat by fucking, non-stop for several years. The resulting offspring was a library of add-ons that allegedly (I haven’t fact-checked) exceeded $1,000.
Many were disappointed that the publisher had sold out to the portion of the fanbase that was more invested in the sexy stuff than the actual gameplay. DoA5 was almost like dressing up a bunch of dolls and playing with them, rather than taking this punching thing seriously.
And, as much as I agree with that, I have also defended the game numerous times. After all, the gameplay was probably the best it had ever been and the graphics were fantastic. I also really enjoyed the ability to customise stages with past music. As for the DLC…well, nobody was forcing you to purchase costumes. If you want it, then buy it. If you disagree that strongly, then boycott – simple. I bought a fair few outfits but only for my favourite characters. Yes, the prices were sometimes heavier than Tina’s in-game bust but, again, you were still able to play the game without buying maid outfits and the yearly batches of Halloween costumes. If it extended the life of the game and kept you playing, then that’s a good thing.
This one of my favourites that I paid for. Conveniently (and amazingly) that chain of flowers always manages to remain in the right place to keep the game PEGI 16-rated.
That said, I wasn’t blind.
There’s a balancing act between accepting a DLC structure and being taken advantage of. Arguably, the latter was already happening given that Koei-Tecmo were well aware of how sexually appealing DoA‘s girls are to their consumer base hence the drive to squeeze more and more money from fans by selling increasingly-skimpy bikinis and risque outfits.
As I have already said, I don’t mind cherry-picking the DLC that interests me if it keeps me playing and enjoying a game for longer. BUT there is a tipping point when that aforementioned fine balancing act fails and you – as the customer – must put your foot down and say “no,” if things tip into the realm of the publisher just taking the piss. This is what has happened with Dead or Alive 6.
It must be mentioned – before I continue – that I still haven’t played DoA6 because every time the game is in the news, it rubs me up the wrong way and I’ve yet to read anything to convince me that things have changed. It got off to a bad start when Koei-Tecmo claimed that they were going to be cleaning up the series’ image. I’ve already talked about that at length before but, to quickly re-cap, I am an unashamed fan of the boob physics and revealing outfits. I see it as escapism and harmless fun. It’s DoA‘s USP for crying out loud. The last thing I wanted was the series to bow to the pressures of the Woke generation. Yes, it wasn’t a deal-breaker (as I also made clear in my DoA6 reveal post) but it was disappointing.
So I would have still bought the game but worse was to come. First, there was the really crappy system of unlocking new constumes. Then came the absolute bullshit of western PS4 owners being the only group that couldn’t purchase costumes individually, meaning that you had to buy entire packs or commit to the big-money season passes.
Perhaps these things have been fixed – I don’t know. What I do know is that the balance had well and truly shifted in my view, and even I wasn’t able to defend the janky, money-grabbing execution of DoA6. As much as I still wanted to give it a go, Koei-Tecmo had simply gone too far. At the end of the day, DoA5 was still on my shelf and still everything that I’d ever wanted from the series. Why expose myself to shit that was just going to piss me off and attempt to rape my wallet?
As a King of Fighters fan, I have to admit that I do want to play DoA6 to try out Kula.
Give us humans enough time, however, and we get over it. DoA6 had been creeping back onto my mental “maybe I’ll finally buy a copy?” list. Then this fucking hair thing happened.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, you can now use Premium Tickets – which are obtained in exchange for actual money – to change the colour of your character’s hair. Paying to dye Kasumi’s hair is pathetic enough, you might think, but this is no normal DLC. In fact, it isn’t even DLC proper. It’s a non-permanent micro-transaction that has to be paid for again if you switch said character’s hair back to the default colour. It only costs one ticket (which is $1.00) but that isn’t the point. The point is that you are effectively renting a hair colour. Koei-Tecmo’s audacity with this is a new low in my opinion. Paying for something so small in the first place is straight-up robbery but, if you have to do so, then it should at least be a permanent option unlocked/added to your game.
Heck, I’d want to go even further. If I’ve got to pay a dollar to swap Kasumi’s hair colour then, without wishing to be too crass, that buck had better also cover a hue change for the bush between her legs. Then again, judging by the fan-made renders and in-game mods of the DoA lasses, they’re all bald down below anyway so that’s my value-for-money notion in the bin.
You know, I thought that Street Fighter V was having a laugh when the game wanted the player to pay for palette swaps but this is something else. Koei-Tecmo has at least responded to the slating on Twitter:
“Dear fans, we hear and acknowledge your disappointment behind our roll out of the new hair color feature for DoA6. We greatly appreciate your feedback, and are working towards a solution that helps to mitigate this issue and will share our plans in the coming days.
We apologize for our misstep, and are working hard to resolve this situation. We thank you in advance for your patience and hope you continue to enjoy DoA6.”
“Misstep”? Bullshit. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. To me, it seems as if they decided to push the envelope anyway to see if they could get away with it, and if they couldn’t? Well, just pass it off as a glitch or a harmless error of judgment. This isn’t an “issue” or a “situation”; it’s straight-up taking the piss and it isn’t even funny anymore. Previously, we would joke about DoA being a shopping simulator or a dress-up game but I’m not laughing now. The joke isn’t funny.
I’ll be voting with my wallet and continuing to not purchase a copy of Dead or Alive 6.
I’ve recently earned my first ever platinum trophy in a Playstation game. Bearing in mind that I’ve been playing trophy-compatible Playstation games since the PS3 days, you might be wondering just why has it taken me so long. The short answer is that I simply didn’t care about trophies, no matter how much bragging I read about trophies (or Xbox Gamerscore) on the gaming forums I was once heavily into. I was finished with a game once I’d completed the story or gotten bored of messing about in a post-credits open world. My trophy count didn’t even factor into it. They were simply annoying little “ping!” sound effects that disturbed the game.
But it seems that I’ve finally succumbed to the pull of trophies…sort-of. I lost my platinum V-plates thanks to Spyro: Reignited Trilogy but it should be noted that the three games included in this remake package are EASY to plat’. Many of the requirements for unlocking trophies are insultingly easy and involve menial, non-skillful tasks. I achieved most of them by pure chance for example, including 97% trophy completion for Year of the Dragon, on my first run-through, without even looking at the trophy list. What I’m saying is that I don’t really class this very first platinum trophy as an “achievement”. Yes, there were a few fiddly trophies that took several attempts to snag but, overall, the difficulty level was nothing to write home about.
I completed the Reignited Trilogy last year but, on a whim, I decided that I fancied another run of the game before I got into another story-driven or open-world game. Knowing that I’d almost accidentally platinum-ed the game(s) the first time around, I thought it would do no harm to have something extra to do on my second visit. So it was that I decided to fill in those blanks and collect that first platinum trophy.
More importantly, this made me think about how my attitude toward trophies and achievements has mellowed over the years. Hence why this topic is going to be first in an ongoing “Shifting Perception” series; a series that aims to examine how many of my gaming opinions have altered over the years.
How I used to think
At the start of this post, I implied that I had traditionally been indifferent towards trophies and achievements but, while that is certainly true, I also used to be strongly against the concept. Y’see, I’m not a show-off or a braggart, and I’ve certainly never been interested in trying to beat other gamers when it comes to high scores or – in this case – an achievement tally. I’ve always been more interested in simply enjoying a game myself. I never understood why some people were so hardcore when it came to their virtual trophy cabinet or the size of their Gamerscore.
So, while others were embracing the concept, I was actively trying to avoid it. After all, it added nothing of value to my gaming experiences. I was more annoyed at how some PS3 games used to briefly stutter when a trophy notification was popping up!
It also didn’t help that I became aware of a particular breed of gamer during the PS3/Xbox 360 era: the species of gamer that put their achievements before the pure enjoyment of the hobby. These were the gamers who would intentionally buy crap games, childrens titles or movie tie-ins that came with easy trophy/achievement lists. A few hours “work” and they could max these games, boosting their platinum trophy collection or Gamerscore with little effort. I even frequently saw articles in gaming magazines and websites that promoted this sort of thing by listing off ten or twenty games that you could buy cheaply on the used market and quickly max out.
Terminator Salvation (PS3) – a notoriously easy Plat to achieve.
In my mind, it invalidated the entire trophy/achievement thing and made a mockery of it. Some games were incredibly difficult to achieve the platinum trophies or full achievement score on, requiring multiple play-throughs or genuine skill and persistence to get. With these games, maxing them out MEANT something. But what did those hard-earnt platinum trophies count for when Dave down the road had three, four or five times as many for beating a big stack of bargain-bin games designed for kids below the age of ten? At a surface level, you can only see the number of trophies attached to another gamer’s profile so, unless you dug deeper, you wouldn’t see that Dave’s trophy collection was just a superficial front.
I just didn’t get it, and this dark practice did nothing to make me want to join in.
How I’ve changed
Over the years, however, my attitude has changed somewhat. I have less gaming time on my hands these days so I tend to want to play less and get more out of what I do play. It’s why I’d rather play a handful of games and invest in the DLC, if it’s any good, rather than trying to rush through as many new releases as possible.
I suppose this is the main reason why I’m not so against the trophy and achievement systems anymore. After all, it’s something that helps you get more out of games before putting them on the shelf or trading them in. As long as I can maintain a nice balance and not end up becoming one of those sorts of gamers that I’ve just criticised, then it could be fun going forward.
It also takes me back to the days when I didn’t really have a disposable income and therefore had no choice but to replay games and squeeze every last drop of value from them. It’s a more humble and balanced approach in my opinion and beats the alternative of having shelves upon shelves loaded with more games than I’ll ever have the time in my life to play, let alone complete. Been there, done that.
Sometimes, we wonder how gamers in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s had the patience or skills to complete some of the most unforgiving, balls-hard games ever coded. The answer is that they weren’t spoilt or drowning in cash. They had a game and it had to last them so they had to get good at it. If trophies or achievements had existed back then, you can be sure that gamers would have wrung even more out of those old cartridges/tapes/floppy discs and maxed out those brutal games.
Platform(s): Playstation (reviewed), Arcade
You also get plenty of access to these attacks too because the super guage fills up faster than The Flash on Speed. Some may criticise this because it makes the game feel easy and the super moves throwaway. I get that, and agree to a small extent, but Rival Schools is more about the entertainment factor than being a serious tournament game.
Darkstalker90 Gaming 