Burning Twice as Bright

Patience is not something most gamers would like to practise, myself being guilty of that many times as well. This one time when i decided to skip finishing Fatal Frame III on playstation2 and moved straight to Fatal Frame IV on the Wii did work out better than I thought and prove that patience is not always a virtue. By doing so, i avoided burning myself out and managed to finish part IV after playing the game consistently for about two to three weeks. Just as I started, I was struggling to juggle my playing time between Fatal Frame IV, Yakuza 3 and also Monster Hunter Tri which i recently got. Something had to give with Yakuza 3 seeing less and less playing time than rest, i decided to give that game a break and just concentrate on the two games on the Nintendo Wii. Truthfully I felt a little burnt out having to play Yakuza 3 after racing to finish Yakuza 2 a few months back and the slow pace at the beginning of that game certainly didn't help as well.

Now that I have finished Fatal Frame IV, Yakuza 3 didn't feel like such a drag as before and of course, Fatal Frame III still needs finishing touches before I can even think of playing part IV again. I guess games are always best played when you are not rushing to finish them for whatever reasons it may be.

Day One No More

Yakuza 3 is scheduled for release tomorrow and i came to a decision not to make it a first-day purchase anymore. No, it's not because of the lack of hostess side-mission or the games i have unfinished as that is something i have learnt to come to terms with as an adult gamer. This has more to do with me being content with still playing Resident Evil 5 DLC while the prospect of getting some new games next month intrigued me enough to put off getting Yakuza 3 for now.

I do anticipate having to cope with my friends playing and finishing the game before I do but I realised I would still get the last laugh when i finally finished Yakuza 2 before starting Yakuza 3 in a haste like i would have now.

Host Gone Ghost

Yakuza is shaping up to be a series where Sega seems to never get things right from the beginning of the franchise up until now. Yakuza 1 was dubbed much to purists dismay though Yakuza 2 was left pretty much intact after localization, it was released way too late to even make an impact.

Now Yakuza 3 will have some content cut from its original Japanese version because of cultural differences and lack of time to properly localise everything. Its the kind of stuff that fanboys will chew and debate over for ages to come though it's unlikely to make or break the game. The problem is the content removed though trivial to the eyes of the Sega team happens to be the main appeal to many of Yakuza fans. Yes the hostess game which has evolved from each of yakuza game will not be featured in this forthcoming yakuza release. Not many will admit it but i have seen enough forums and friends to know that a lot of gamers play yakuza because of the hostess side missions.

Stone by Stone

So i finished Bayonetta again on Normal mode, this time i managed to improve all my previous stone ranking to at least bronze, very rarely do i hit the platinum rank so i suspect i'm still a long ways off if i'm to unlock Jeanne for future replays. Often times it's my combo points that bring my ranking down as i tend to stick to my 1-2 preferred combo and once i exhausted them, i just button-mash my way through until the end. A bit disappointed i didn't unlock anything this time around but then again i do have a habit of taking my time with these things. While i would love to play it again to uncover all the secret missions i have decided to give my dualshock3 and disc drive a break as i noticed the disc drive has been emitting strange noise lately. No doubt the burden of having to load everything off the disc in Bayonetta has been straining the lens more than usual but i'm not about to lament here about how inferior the ps3 version is.

Since i still have yakuza 2 to finish before the third installment arrives soon, i guess it's time to get re-acquainted with the dragon of dojima again.

Coming To America (Not)

The truth is finally out, it looks like Yakuza 3 won't be leaving its native home Japan after all.

Can't say i'm really surprised though it does leave me with the inevitable decision which i knew i would have to arrive at, playing the import version. I foresee it to be a long and ultimately unrewarding process since the real charm of the Yakuza series has always lies in its side missions. To top it off, the game is still selling at its original price so it likely won't be cheap to import at this stage. I certainly have the time to go through this meticulous process of playing the import version but i would probably have to finish the second one before i even consider it right now.

Decisions, decisions

As much as i dig the puzzles of the old Resident Evil games, some of the ones in RE Outbreak are just downright devilish. I don't know if anyone's aware but it's pretty hard to figure out puzzles in a game where you are not encouraged to pause the action as it's meant to be an online multiplayer experience. Probably if done in the right context and situation, these would have been hailed as some of the better puzzles in the series but as it stands, they are dreadful (to me at least) because of the timing and placement. It's been months since i first started on Outbreak file 1 but have yet to complete the game probably due to the episodic nature of the game and the fact i'm only playing it on my PS3. This is the last episode and i'll probably shelf the game once that is done in favour of yakuza 2.

Yakuza 2 on PS3

Yakuza 2 being a late entry into the Playstation2 game library plays very well on my backward compatible 80GB PS3 as expected. The graphics upscaled to 1080p still has a very soft grainy look on certain scenes such as the opening demo which i suspected was badly compressed judging from the sheer size and depth of the game. The other cutscenes which were rendered by the in-game engine i presumed, looks much better even when the game zooms in upclose to the characters. The game supports 16:9 widescreen so everything's in proper proportions on a LCD display unlike some ps2 games when you set your ps3 to upscaled the image to fill the entire display. The loading times has also improved significantly, you don't even have to wait for the option to press start to skip the loading come fight sequences. While it's not as fast to the point when it's seamless like in yakuza 3, gone are the days when i would dread getting into a fight in the first yakuza for fear of the long loading time.
You could certainly do much worse than yakuza 2 when looking for a game to play on your ps3 as my previous other ps2 games have been known to display a glitch or two during playback.

This is Your Chance

A few days ago i was pretty chuffed having save USD30 by getting my buddy to buy Madworld and Yakuza 2 from Gamestop. Today i learnt that the Collector's Edition of Resident Evil 5 has dropped to USD79.90 at Play-asia, that's like a USD30 discount not with counting any additional discount vouchers. Sure i'm mad about it especially since the Xbox 360 CE has long since been out of stock, it just goes to show how many more 360 users there are and how well the game is selling on that platform. Nothing much i can do about it, i won't have trade the experience of playing it back on 13rd of March for anything else and certainly won't settle on a standard edition that time while waiting out for the price of this to fall. For those who were waiting out for this big discount now is your chance, it may not be worth it back when it was full-price price but at this price you are certainly getting your money's worth for everything included.

Mad For Sega

Here are the two games my fellow friend string brought all the way back from New York for me, both happened to be games published by Sega and coincidentally have similar black & white covers. I could go on all day about the similarities but i rather brag about the savings i get from having to purchase the games directly from a Gamestop outlet. Yakuza 2 ended up being a bit difficult to find with the only copy available in J&R selling for USD10 more than expected, thus both copies came up to USD29.90 each. Despite all that, the savings compared with ordering from Play-asia was enough for me to purchase another game of similar value. The savings instead went to the Biohazard 5 Official Artworks you can see in the background which i didn't really planned on getting so soon but seeing it's sold-out in Play-asia i didn't really want to take a chance with this. With all these stuff in my possession it looks like i won't be ordering anytime soon from Play-asia...well at least until their annual summer sale.

Where Nothing Amazing Happens

My gaming has been pretty inactive lately ever since finishing RE5 so naturally you can expect less updates as well. Playoff basketball and and comic reading are among the other things occupying my time thereby influencing me to play a little bit of NBA 07 on the PS3 and the PSOne Spider-man which are not exactly great blog material.

Fear not, things should get a little bit more interesting this week as my copies of Madworld and Yakuza 2 are likely to be making its way back from New York courtesy of stringfellow.

7th Heavan

I received my copy of Final Fantasy VII today after having strike a deal with a fellow forumer last week, who was eager to let go some of his PSOne games. Now in my lifetime of gaming, i have only finished a handful of RPG games, probably still enough to count with my good five fingers. There's Final Fantasy X which i regretfully had to cheat my way to finish it as i didn't level up my characters enough near the end and most recently, Jeanne D'arc on the PSP.

Final Fantasy VII was a game that almost any gamer would know even those who aren't into the RPG genre, and i would really like to know what the big deal is all about. After reviving my Playstation2 recently with Yakuza 2, this PSOne game would be a good start towards reviving my PSOne again, which was never really fully-utilised since i bought it so late and never got it modded after bringing it home. I was only about one-third into Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core before cooling off and ultimately distracted by cel-shaded charms of Jeanna D'Arc. I suspected i will definitely be interested to see how the story continues in FVII once i finished Crisis Core.