Author Archives: GI - Brandon Beatty

Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny — 3Q2015 issue

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Onimusha 2 has ele­ments of sat­is­fy­ing sequel

Pre­vi­ous­ly, I reviewed the first game in Capcom’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed series Onimusha, where his­toric fig­ures and moments in Japan­ese his­to­ry were mixed with action/adventure gam­ing, third-per­son com­bat and brief moments of puz­zle solv­ing. After play­ing the first game, I won­dered if the sec­ond install­ment would keep the suc­cess­ful for­mu­la and raise the bar for future install­ments. When I received Onimusha 2: Samu­rai Des­tiny, I put on my cus­tom-made samu­rai armor and pre­pared to have my ques­tions answered.
Onimusha 2 con­tin­ues the plot of cho­sen war­riors work­ing to pre­vent Oda Nobuna­ga from uni­fy­ing Japan through the use of demons called gen­ma. Set 10 years after the first game, Nobuna­ga has risen to pow­er despite the defeat of his demon­ic bene­fac­tor Fort­in­bras, who was stopped by orig­i­nal pro­tag­o­nist Samanouske Akechi. With Samanouske in hid­ing to per­fect his new demon slay­ing abil­i­ties, it’s up to Jubei Yagu to take up the sword and acquire five leg­endary orbs and use them to stop Nobuna­ga before his dark plans of con­quest becomes real­i­ty and demons become the dom­i­nant species of Earth instead of man.
Game­play in Onimusha 2 remains the same but does have some new ele­ments. Dur­ing com­bat with ene­mies, you can still fight through ene­mies, but if timed cor­rect­ly, Jubei can per­form “Issen” (light­ing slash) on var­i­ous ene­mies, allow­ing him to con­tin­ue for­ward, giv­ing him a brief minute to defend him­self or retreat. Anoth­er ele­ment is the require­ment to solve cer­tain puz­zles to obtain cer­tain items or gain access to cer­tain areas. For these puz­zles, I high­ly advise uti­liz­ing patience and strong mem­o­riza­tion as they have a much stronger effect in Onimusha 2 than in the first game. The final new ele­ment is role play­ing that enhances the sto­ry­line. Jubei can not only inter­act with non-playable char­ac­ters, but also gain allies who will give infor­ma­tion or assist him in boss bat­tles pro­vid­ed he is in con­stant con­tact with them or if his allies are not involved in their own plans to defeat Nobunaga.
In addi­tion to new allies, you will notice that Jubei is nor­mal­ly equipped with his sword, but can acquire weapons such as bows and arrows, a matchlock gun and oth­er weapons that use the pow­er of nat­ur­al ele­ments. Jubei does have two oth­er advan­tages to help as well: The abil­i­ty to tem­porar­i­ly trans­form into Onimusha with enhanced attack pow­er; and, the pow­er to acquire var­i­ous souls with­out the use of a ogre gaunt­let to upgrade his armor and weapons.
The con­trols will not present any lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty espe­cial­ly if the Dual Shock ana­log con­troller is used. You can appre­ci­ate the qual­i­ty of the char­ac­ters’ move­ments in game­play and in the cut-scenes which may make one won­der if they are play­ing a samu­rai adven­ture game or watch­ing a movie.
The music per­formed in this game is excel­lent as Capcom’s sound team always brings their best efforts, guar­an­tee­ing that the music will be a treat. If you enjoy instru­men­tal Japan­ese themes, you’ll prob­a­bly love the soundtrack.
Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Des­tiny did exceed­ed my expec­ta­tions for a game to be con­sid­ered a true samu­rai mas­ter­piece. This not only shows that Cap­com can unleash their bril­liance if they real­ly try, but also shows oth­er devel­op­ers that in order to bring a superb gam­ing prod­uct involv­ing var­i­ous ele­ments of Japan­ese cul­ture, they must will­ful­ly present his­tor­i­cal ele­ments prop­er­ly while craft­ing a high qual­i­ty sto­ry­line. I can not wait to start the next chap­ter of the Onimusha series where the next des­tined hero strikes anoth­er blow to Nobunaga’s ambitions.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom — 2Q2015 issue

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Tat­sunoko takes on Cap­com in Wii brawl

Every­one who reads GI knows that I’m an otaku. I’m also a big fan of clas­sic ani­me that has set the stan­dard for today’s ani­me. Most of the awe­some-lev­el ani­me old and new has came from Japan’s world-renown Tat­sunoko Pro­duc­tions. So, when I heard that Cap­com was reviv­ing its “Ver­sus” series, I thought that Cap­com was run­ning out of gam­ing ideas. That was until it was announced that Tat­sunoko would play a major role. I thought it was a joke, but I was in shock when the rumors were true and thus the ques­tion came about: What would hap­pen if Cap­com’s heroes met Tat­sunoko’s heroes in a gam­ing for­est? Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars for the Wii answered that ques­tion for me.

Devel­oped by Eight­ing and pub­lished by Cap­com, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is a 3D game that places var­i­ous char­ac­ters from both com­pa­nies’ top-sell­ing series into a exclu­sive fight­ing game treat. Inspired by the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series, TvC allows duos from either Cap­com’s or Tat­sunoko’s ros­ters to fight against oth­er char­ac­ters with the win­ning team going on to face Yami from Cap­com’s adven­ture title Oka­mi. If you like to mix a Cap­com char­ac­ter with a Tat­sunoko char­ac­ter, that’s also pos­si­ble as a way to give the game­play more vari­ety. In addi­tion to the orig­i­nal arcade mode, there are sur­vival and time attack modes that allow you to test your skills via lim­it­ed health regen­er­a­tion and defeat­ing your oppo­nents in the short­est time pos­si­ble. An addi­tion­al fea­ture includes a mini-game shoot­er called “Ulti­mate All-Shooters.”

Con­trol is han­dled with three but­tons, which great­ly sim­pli­fies the learn­ing curve. It’s sim­pli­fied even more thanks to the Wii’s Clas­sic con­troller, Game­Cube con­troller, third-par­ty arcade sticks and the reg­u­lar Wii remote. You will love the char­ac­ter ros­ter con­sist­ing of each com­pa­nies’ top fran­chis­es such as Street Fight­er, Rival Schools, Viewti­ful Joe, Lost Plan­et, Darkstalkers/Vampire and Mega Man for Cap­com while Tat­sunoko is rep­re­sent­ed by Karas, Tekka­man, G‑Force and Yat­ter­man. There are oth­er char­ac­ters that can be unlocked via use of mon­ey (Zen­ny) earned in each game, which also will allow pur­chase of alter­nate end­ings, cos­tume changes and oth­er unlock­able surprises. 

The music is top-notch in each stage, but the intro and end­ings songs are fun to sing and dance to. In par­tic­u­lar, the Gesellschaft (Clear Skies) and the Dai­go Tem­ple (Cher­ry Blos­som) stages are favorites.

Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars is an answered prayer for fans of fight­ing games and ani­me. As a first-time con­nois­seur of this type of crossover, TvC is delight­ful game expe­ri­ence. As an otaku gamer, Cap­com can work on my damn nerves at times with their no-thought deci­sions, but in this case, they worked with a renown ani­me com­pa­ny to bring a qual­i­ty prod­uct to a sys­tem that was in SORE need of well-round­ed games. Now only if Cap­com can make amends with Kei­ji Ina­fu­ne. They might be respect­ed once more.

2UP EVALUATION

All of the raz­zle daz­zle hype aside, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is some­thing I want to play. I’m already a fan of most Cap­com fight­ing prop­er­ties, and I love the Ver­sus series, so I’m going to play what­ev­er they come up with next to join forces with and cre­ate mag­ic. In this case, it’s ani­me relat­ed as well, so there’s a win­ning com­bi­na­tion all the way around.

I did­n’t know much about Tat­sunoko before play­ing the game, but after spend­ing a lit­tle time immersed in the super sen­tai world, I learned that it’s some­thing that’s com­pelling to return to time and time again. Nice mechan­ics, an inter­est­ing ros­ter and gor­geous atten­tion to detail with the envi­ron­ments and sound­track make it a nice pack­age. My only gripes are that the sto­ry does­n’t real­ly make a whole lot of sense (real­ly, Yami from Oka­mi, Cap­com? That’s it?), and that not know­ing that much about Tat­sunoko actu­al­ly works against me. Oth­er than that, there’s isn’t a rea­son why I would­n’t play this con­stant­ly, even if it is a Wii exclu­sive. That’s just anoth­er rea­son to go out and buy the now-defunct console.

TvC triv­ia

* The orig­i­nal title for TvC was Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Cross Gen­er­a­tion of Heroes.

* While the game devel­op­ers had the OK to add any char­ac­ter from Tat­sunoko or Cap­com, Tat­sunoko did deny some choic­es because of licens­ing issues; orig­i­nal­ly, Phoenix Wright was sug­gest­ed, but was pulled because of dif­fi­cul­ties with find­ing prop­er attacks for him.

* Most video game review­ers such as G4’s Adam Sessler and IGN’s John Tana­ka were doubt­ful about an out­side-of-Japan release because of Tat­sunoko’s final approved ros­ter of char­ac­ters. They were licensed in oth­er coun­tries, despite being owned by Tat­sunoko, and the lev­el of recog­ni­tion of some char­ac­ters was a concern.

* As of 2012, Cap­com USA senior vice pres­i­dent Chris­t­ian Svens­son has stat­ed that Cap­com could no longer sell the game in phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal form because licens­ing rights with Tat­sunoko expired.

Devil May Cry — 1Q2015 issue

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Cap­com’s instant action plat­form­ing classic

In pre­vi­ous install­ments of Otaku Cor­ner, I reviewed man­ga based on Cap­com’s Dev­il May Cry. Ever since DMC’s arrival in 2001, it has grown from a crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed series to writ­ten and visu­al adap­ta­tions in comics, writ­ten nov­els and oth­er var­i­ous mer­chan­dise. Orig­i­nal­ly set in the Res­i­dent Evil uni­verse, because of tech­nol­o­gy restraints and an expand­ing reverse sto­ry­line from Res­i­dent Evil, the series was port­ed to the PlaySta­tion 2. Hav­ing enjoyed expe­ri­enc­ing the man­ga’s action, I won­dered if I would feel the same when I played the first DMC game? I was about to find out.

Dev­il May Cry has ele­ments that are sim­i­lar to Res­i­dent Evil; the only dif­fer­ence is that you will be deal­ing with super­nat­ur­al ene­mies instead of those who were cre­at­ed by uneth­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments. You assume the role of Dante, a demon hunter/investigator who uses his skills to exer­cise demons for prof­it and to avenge the loss of his fam­i­ly from said crea­tures. One night while work­ing, Dante is hired by a mys­te­ri­ous woman named Trish, who after a brief but amaz­ing test of Dan­te’s skill, hires him to go to an aban­doned cas­tle where Mundus, the demon who is respon­si­ble for the death of Dan­te’s fam­i­ly, is plan­ning a return from hell. Unknown to our badass hero, he has tak­en on a a job that starts out as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for vengeance, but soon will unlock an ancient birthright and his true des­tiny as mankind’s newest pro­tec­tor against demon­ic forces.

Game­play in DMC is a com­plete 180 from Res­i­dent Evil as the bat­tle style is more melee com­bat that run­ning and hid­ing from zom­bies. I found the con­trols pret­ty easy to use, thanks to the ana­log sticks that allow plen­ty of free move­ment to jump and take full advan­tage of Dan­te’s sweet com­bat moves. You will love it when Dante gets to busi­ness imme­di­ate­ly with use of his twin hand­guns that can infict dam­age rapid-fire style and his awsome­ly designed sword Alas­tor that can be upgrad­ed to unlock new attacks. He also has a BIG trump card to real­ly make the demons howl with the use of “Dev­il Trig­gers” (think Goku or Veg­e­ta going Super Saiyan with an arse­nal of weapons and being in god mode).

The graph­ics are beau­ti­ful as Cap­com devel­oped a great game engine and made great use of the PS2’s tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties to bring out the action with­out using the god-awful cam­era angles found in Res­i­dent Evil. I per­son­al­ly liked how each cutscene brought DMC’s sto­ry­line togeth­er with­out any over-the-top dra­ma. The ene­my vari­ety is good, too, rang­ing from demon mar­i­onettes to giant owls and oth­er demon­ic crea­tures. I enjoyed the voice act­ing because it was not forced, flow­ing in sync with the game’s plot. I am proud to say that I would def­i­nite­ly replay this game when I’m feel­ing like I want to rip some demons apart.

Dev­il May Cry is a stand­out orig­i­nal game that is wor­thy of its praise from gam­ing crit­ics the world over. I find this anoth­er tes­ti­mo­ny to the fact that Cap­com can do them­selves and their cus­tomers jus­tice by being true to their craft. I was pleased with my first DMC gam­ing expe­ri­ence and await more in future install­ments of this series.