Author Archives: GI - Brandon Beatty

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 — Issue 39

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Gun­dam sec­ond game not yet there

Pre­vi­ously, I reviewed Dynasty War­riors: Gun­dam 3, which set the stage for me to try the oth­ers in the series. Lit­tle did I know, I would be learn­ing a valu­able les­son: Not every pop­u­lar fran­chise will always have best-sellers. An excel­lent exam­ple would be Dynasty War­riors: Gun­dam 2.

Gun­dam 2 fol­lows the same ros­ter of char­ac­ters in var­i­ous entries in the Gun­dam uni­verse, includ­ing some char­ac­ters and mobile suits that were only fea­tured in Gun­dam movies. To com­pen­sate for a lack of a sto­ry­line, DWG2 has two modes: Story, where you can play as one of a select group of char­ac­ters from their respec­tive Gun­dam series; and, Mis­sion, where you choose a char­ac­ter with var­i­ous mis­sions set in the uni­ver­sal cen­tury time­line and you can inter­act with var­i­ous char­ac­ters from other series. As you move along, you gain expe­ri­ence points to increase your level and col­lect var­i­ous mobile suit parts. There is also a chance to earn new skills just like DWG3 as you advance to higher levels.

Gun­dam 2 also spe­cial mis­sions where you can fight against other oppo­nents to earn licenses to pilot dif­fer­ent suits, earn the trust of other char­ac­ters to fight beside you and acquire higher-level parts for mobile suits. The mobile suit lab and ter­mi­nal fea­tures help you to keep up with chang­ing events and cur­rent devel­op­ments with dif­fer­ent mobile suits.

What I like about Gun­dam 2 is that every char­ac­ter is legit in the Gun­dam uni­verse, which made me won­der if I saw the actual Gun­dam series with that char­ac­ter. Also, the open­ing cin­ema was high qual­ity, show­ing off the minor suits such as GMs and Zakus, who were observ­ing the OG RX-78, Strike Free­dom and Nu Gun­dam suits doing bat­tle while the Saz­abi and Psy­cho Gun­dam lurked in the shad­ows. Addi­tion­ally, I also appre­ci­ated Namco Bandai, Sun­rise and Koei retain­ing the orig­i­nal Eng­lish voice actors to reprise their respec­tive char­ac­ters; this gives DWG2 the needed cred­i­bil­ity as an offi­cial Gun­dam video game.

How­ever, despite the good, the bad parts stick out like sore thumbs. When I try to fight in other bat­tle­fields, I’m restricted in mov­ing, which weak­ens my attacks, and leaves me vul­ner­a­ble. Also, the in-game cam­era was VERY unhelp­ful, espe­cially in boss fights with giant ene­mies where I was pilot­ing my mobile suit on low energy while run­ning and avoid­ing attacks by giant ene­mies like Psy­cho Gun­dam, Big Zam, and Queen Mansa. I also found cer­tain parts of the game have unre­al­is­tic time lim­its to fight ene­mies to achieve cer­tain objec­tives. Finally, I found the biggest insult to me as a Gun­dam fan was the graph­ics; these feel like cheap knock-off paint jobs of Gun­dam and lower-rank mobile suits alike. To be fair, the asso­ci­ated pilots look like their anime coun­ter­parts, but the suits were not given the same treat­ment. Unfor­tu­nately, I would also be remiss if I did not include the LONG wait to obtain skills, unlike in DWG3. I could unlock and pur­chase new skills in addi­tion to lev­el­ing up char­ac­ters more effi­ciently via train­ing ses­sions in the lat­ter game’s shop.

There are hits and misses that the qual­ity assur­ance teams should have noticed, but there are bright spots such as music and voice act­ing being excel­lent. I would still play Gun­dam 2 when I have free time, but Bandai Namco did such a rush job on it that I feel jus­ti­fied almost not rec­om­mend­ing it. I’m just glad that DWG3 is a far supe­rior prod­uct and sticks to the essen­tials that make Gun­dam, well, Gun­dam. Dynasty War­riors: Gun­dam 2 is on the way but not quite there.

Yakuza: Dead Souls — Issue 39

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Yakuza and zom­bies mix well

In my vast inven­tory of inter­ests, mafia movies are one that would make me curl up on a week­end after­noon with pop­corn, drinks and other treats in hand. While I know that some famous mafia movies and tele­vi­sion series are being devel­oped into video games, Sega’s Yakuza series is already a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of action, adven­ture, and the mafia. I was thrilled to com­bine my love for the series with zom­bie ele­ments in Yakuza: Dead Souls.

Set a year after the events in Yakuza 4, an unknown dis­ease out­break in the dis­trict of Kamurochō has affected its res­i­dents, turn­ing them into zom­bies through bites. As a result, the Japan­ese Ground Self-Defense Force has been called in to assist with the slow and expand­ing quar­an­tine. Dur­ing this chaotic time, cer­tain ene­mies of the Tojo clan have arisen to take advan­tage of Kamurochō’s suf­fer­ing. The fate of Kamurochō and Japan rests in the hands of four men: Shun Akiyama, a loan shark try­ing to save his sick recep­tion­ist; Goro Majima, a feared yakuza and con­struc­tion com­pany owner who is fight­ing his own infec­tion; Ryuji Goda, a dis­graced yakuza and takoy­aki chef whose clan has a tie to the out­break; and, series pro­tag­o­nist Kiryu Kazuma, who runs a children’s orphan­age and returns to Kamurochō when his adop­tive daugh­ter is kidnapped.

Dead Souls is an open-world game that com­bines action, adven­ture, and sur­vival hor­ror ele­ments. The plot is one akin to samu­rai movies where there are four chap­ters with four parts for each char­ac­ter with the final chap­ter reserved for Kiryu. Con­trols for move­ment and the game cam­era are sim­ple with the ana­log sticks. You will also be given “memos,” a list with spe­cial sec­tions to teach you basics such as using weapons, eva­sion, and close quar­ter com­bat, which help when fac­ing off against the legion of zom­bies. I appre­ci­ated the abil­ity to level up each character’s attrib­utes through use of soul points that upgrades abil­i­ties to carry more items, improve knowl­edge of zom­bies, weapons mod­i­fi­ca­tions and pro­tec­tive gear, and mas­ter advanced close quar­ter com­bat techniques.

As the game pro­gresses, your cur­rent char­ac­ter will be assisted by three NPCs: Reiko Hasekawa, a researcher who offers infor­ma­tion and rewards for com­pleted tasks; Gary “Buster” Holmes, a firearms expert who helps the pro­tag­o­nists and their tem­po­rary com­pan­ions with gun train­ing; and, Renji Kamiyama, weapons seller and mod­i­fier of weapons and pro­tec­tive gear who can also be used as a pawn­bro­ker to buy rare items.

I also appre­ci­ate the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of var­i­ous zom­bie ene­mies; that orga­ni­za­tion method can help you plan the appro­pri­ate strat­egy or sim­ply avoid con­tact with them. While you’re run­ning around Kamurochō, pay atten­tion to the music. It’s one of Sega’s best sound­tracks in the mod­ern era and puts the Yakuza series among Sega’s go-to ros­ter of great soundtracks.

The graph­ics are OK for the time when it released. It’s good for an open world game, though there’s room for improve­ment. Though, com­pared to other games at the time, Yakuza: Dead Souls doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily out­shine the com­pe­ti­tion; it just merely com­petes. The only real prob­lem I have with Dead Souls is the inclu­sion of sce­nar­ios where you must chase down peo­ple while fend­ing off zom­bies. I know a yakuza got to make his money, but Sega was putting these char­ac­ters in dan­ger­ous con­di­tions with­out any pro­tec­tive gear, which is slightly unrealistic.

Dead Souls is great to play on a day off or slow week­end, though I would offer two pieces of advice: Do not play late at night, and do not play while COVID-19 is still around. It’s a nice attempt to mix mul­ti­ple gen­res. I can say this with no doubt: Sega’s got a smash hit ready to secure all bags and show its com­pe­ti­tion why it does not pay to under­es­ti­mate the Yakuza.

Fun Facts:

* Yakuza is the term given to transna­tional crime orga­ni­za­tions based in Japan. They are also known as” boryoku­dan,” which the Japan­ese police advise for pub­lic media to use when cov­er­ing yakuza-related sto­ries. The yakuza also call them­selves “ninkyo dan­tai,” or chival­rous groups.

* Accord­ing to Japan’s National Police Agency as of 2020, there are at least 25,900 active yakuza mem­bers, despite rigid leg­is­la­tion aimed to com­bat yakuza involve­ment with the Japan­ese pub­lic. These mem­bers are accounted among the three major yakuza fam­i­lies: Yamaguchi-gumi, Somiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai.

* Yakuza groups have been known to oper­ate in major U.S. cities and use Hawaii as a hub to con­duct var­i­ous legal and ille­gal enterprises.

Gundam Versus — Issue 38

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Gun­dam soars in top-notch mecha simulator

I’m a HUGE Gun­dam fan. Next to my love of Mega Man, Gun­dam is my sec­ond great­est obses­sion. Because of lim­ited space, I’ll have to be con­tent with the lim­ited Gun­dam merch that I have amassed. The lat­est addi­tion was given to me for my recent birth­day; it made me recall play­ing a Gun­dam arcade fight­ing game at Nashicon 2016. Would it serve to sat­isfy my hunger for giant robots caus­ing mas­sive dam­age and beat­ing them­selves to obliv­ion? “Gun­dam Ver­sus” for PlaySta­tion 4 gave me my answer.

Gun­dam Ver­sus has some unique advan­tages going for it as a fight­ing game. Its source mate­r­ial is based on a uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized anime series. Unlike other fight­ing games, it does not have a sto­ry­line, allow­ing you to jump straight to the action with­out know­ing back­ground story. That sold me as some­one who knows a series’ back­ground, not need­ing knowl­edge about spe­cific char­ac­ters’ background.

The abil­ity to choose a series favorite from a ros­ter of more than 90 mobile suits from var­i­ous Gun­dam works ensures that you are not lim­ited to char­ac­ters in Gun­dam series only aired in the U.S. Each stage is open area, allow­ing you to plan offense or defense with the ben­e­fit of hid­ing or run­ning from your oppo­nents while recov­er­ing from attacks. Also, you can have two addi­tional char­ac­ters to back you with one serv­ing as a strik­ing part­ner to tag team oppos­ing forces with the per­fect tim­ing. They are avail­able to have a train­ing ses­sion to get you famil­iar with your cho­sen suit.

Those who are not accus­tomed to run-and-gun gam­ing will get frus­trated and want to quit play­ing. The open bat­tle­field requires a 360-degree view, which the PS4 con­trols are decent enough to help han­dle the action. While Gun­dam Ver­sus made an hon­or­able attempt to include all Gun­dam ele­ments, some open­ing themes were played on repeat way too much and that took away the focus from game­play and placed it on the music. Music for the game is top notch, which is to be expected from the Bandai Namco sound team. This was the first time the team did an inter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Czech Phil­har­monic Orches­tra for the open­ing visual. That adds some fla­vor and extras to the pre­sen­ta­tion. While I was dis­ap­pointed that the game didn’t offer an Eng­lish dub track, the orig­i­nal Japan­ese audio for the Gun­dam fran­chise ensured that Ver­sus has the appro­pri­ate Gun­dam feel.

A down­side is that cer­tain series I liked and wanted to use suits from are stuck as paid con­tent, which left Gun­dam fans like me at Bandai Namco’s mercy regard­ing afford­able pricing.

Gun­dam Ver­sus is a tes­ti­mony of how anime, sci-fi and fight­ing games have merged to cre­ate a prod­uct that is playable for every­one, regard­less of fan­dom knowl­edge. As a Gun­dam afi­cionado, Ver­sus is well worth the time spent play­ing and is the next best thing to own­ing a Gun­dam or mobile suit. I wel­come this new addi­tion to my Gun­dam col­lec­tion as I con­tinue my quest to build a mas­ter­piece col­lec­tion of all things Gundam.

Final Fight 2 — Issue 38

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Cap­com brawler takes fight worldwide

As a child of the early ’90s, Final Fight not only increased my addic­tion to arcade games, but also intro­duced me fur­ther to Capcom’s sky­rock­et­ing rise as a game devel­oper. I dived into Final Fight 2 to relive my arcade glory days.

In Final Fight 2, time has passed since Mike Hag­gar, Cody Tra­vers and Cody’s friend Guy defeated the Mad Gear gang, restored peace to the streets of Metro City and res­cued Haggar’s daugh­ter Jes­sica from the Mad Gear’s leader, Bel­ger. That peace is short-lived when the rem­nants of Mad Gear return under a new leader and kid­nap Guy’s fiancée, Rena, and Guy’s sen­sei, Genryusai.

With Cody away on a trip with Jes­sica and Guy away on secret train­ing, Hag­gar is joined by Rena’s sis­ter, Maki, and Haggar’s friend Car­los Miyamoto on a world­wide quest to crush the Mad Gear and res­cue Rena and Gen­ryu­sai. FF2 has a lot going for it; it’s a direct sequel never released in arcades with a lot of new mate­r­ial despite no new gen­eral mechanics.

FF2 has an expanded bat­tle­field with Hag­gar, Maki and Car­los start­ing their jour­ney in Hong Kong and end­ing that jour­ney in Japan. The main pro­tag­o­nists make their way through sev­eral locales in Europe in their search for Rena, all the while sur­rounded by improved graph­ics over the first game. The back­grounds are high qual­ity, and the sprites are well-drawn and crisp for each char­ac­ter with a lot of atten­tion to detail.

The atten­tion to detail also shows up in the con­trols. Over­all, con­trol is sim­ple even though each char­ac­ter has a unique fight­ing style. Hag­gar still has his pro wrestling moves, Maki makes use of Nin­jitsu and Car­los prac­tices mar­tial arts and sword skills. Though they are generic in exe­cu­tion, it’s fun to see how each char­ac­ter oper­ates dur­ing the fight.

Power-ups are still obtained via smash­ing var­i­ous objects and range from steamed Chi­nese buns to a pair of shoes that can increase health or score points. Find­ing either a Gen­ryu­sai or Guy doll will give an extra life or invin­ci­bil­ity. As for the music, it is arcade per­fect just like its pre­de­ces­sor. It’s a nice sound­track of early Cap­com brawler, and it fits the action per­fectly in each of the game’s locations.

As much as I enjoyed FF2, the game does have some flaws. While each char­ac­ter has their own awe­some spe­cial moves, using them does cost health. That’s annoy­ing when you’re try­ing to use more pow­er­ful moves to defeat bosses and try­ing not to die at the same time. Also, dur­ing the timed bonus stages, con­trol is hit or miss when strik­ing objects; if it’s not done per­fectly, you lose the bonus points. I also got frus­trated when I couldn’t take the weapons I found into other areas. That cheap­ens the use of the weapon and makes it use­less shortly after pick­ing it up. And, the chal­lenge level is ridicu­lous. I needed a cheat code just to get to the real end­ing in expert mode. It’s too easy to die and tak­ing hits from off-screen ene­mies is terrible.

Final Fight 2 placed the series in the ranks of Capcom’s top-tier fran­chises. While it hasn’t seen the level of push of say, Street Fighter or Res­i­dent Evil, the beat-’em-up is fondly remem­bered as one of Capcom’s crown­ing achievements.

Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers 2 — Issue 38

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Furry duo return in solid fun

In a pre­vi­ous issue, I reviewed Disney’s Chip ’n Dale Res­cue Rangers for the NES. I reviewed the game as a nod to the times of the late ’80s and early ’90s where you knew the ins and outs of your favorite shows, includ­ing the open­ing and end­ing theme songs. With the arrival of Dis­ney+ and Capcom’s re-release of Dis­ney Afternoon-themed games for cur­rent con­soles, I heard that Disney’s dynamic duo had another game for the NES. I reviewed Chip ’n Dale Res­cue Rangers 2 to see if it would jump start my care­free kid memories.

Res­cue Rangers 2 starts off with our furry heroes and their com­rades enjoy­ing a well-deserved rest after stop­ping their noto­ri­ous arch neme­sis, Fat Cat, in the first game. How­ever, like most great vil­lains, Fat Cat was able to mas­ter­mind his escape from prison and acquire the leg­endary Urn of the Pharaoh to re-launch his fiendish plans. With Fat Cat on the loose and hav­ing evil spir­its at his dis­posal, the Res­cue Rangers are the only ones stand­ing between Fat Cat and world peace.

Res­cue Rangers 2’s game­play is exactly like the orig­i­nal; you can choose either Chip or Dale to bat­tle through sev­eral lev­els to do bat­tle against Fat Cat’s legions of hench­men who are deter­mined to stop our heroes from sav­ing the day. Chip and Dale can jump, duck and used pint-sized boxes to throw either hor­i­zon­tally or ver­ti­cally to defeat ene­mies. These boxes have var­i­ous power-ups, such as acorns, to replen­ish health, extra lives or Res­cue Rangers plaques that can earn Ranger icons. These icons will give the char­ac­ter of your choice an extra heart.

The con­trols also remain the same from the first game. Res­cue Rangers vet­er­ans will be famil­iar with the con­trol lay­out, but new­com­ers will go through trial
and error until they are comfortable.

All the lev­els and back­grounds were done with great care, mak­ing me believe that I was play­ing an actual episode of Res­cue Rangers. I com­mend Cap­com for let­ting Dis­ney ani­ma­tors work their magic on heroes and boss char­ac­ters, ensur­ing that the bosses pro­vided a chal­lenge with­out los­ing Dis­ney elements.

As much as I enjoyed Res­cue Rangers 2, it’s not with­out some flaws. I stated ear­lier that con­trol­ling either Chip or Dale would take prac­tice; that is impor­tant since dur­ing stages, you can­not go back to a lower level to pick up items with­out los­ing a life. That makes things unnec­es­sar­ily tough. Also, the Res­cue Rangers’ roles were dras­ti­cally from the first game. The first game incor­po­rated Mon­terey Jack, Gad­get and Zip­per into find­ing hid­den paths, scout­ing for ene­mies, and backup and reach sup­port; they’re now reduced to back­ground scenery with lit­tle screen time.

Audio-wise, the music sounds dialed-in like the music from “1945,” show­ing that Capcom’s devel­op­ment starts strong but becomes weak in cer­tain areas. Finally, the chal­lenge level is high, but I advise play­ers to have spe­cial cheat codes enabled if they want to fin­ish this game. You shouldn’t have to use them, but they are a must here.

Chip ’n Dale Res­cue Rangers 2 has deliv­ered, keep­ing intact all the ele­ments that made it a Dis­ney favorite but, unfor­tu­nately, keeps some of Capcom’s bad habits as well. The Dis­ney After­noon lives on in this small but solid sequel.

Devil May Cry 5 — 4Q2020 issue

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Fifth time’s a charm: DMC 5 hunts down payoff

“Devil may cry.” To some, it sounds like the lat­est quote from one of Hollywood’s biggest action stars. To me, it’s one of Capcom’s biggest fran­chises that does not involve “Street Fighter” and “Res­i­dent Evil” that is a labor of love to play. Nero and Dante are back along with some new faces to raise more demonic hell across next gen gam­ing con­soles with the hack and slash style of gam­ing that put it on the map. I waited five years to play the fifth install­ment of this series and the kick-ass pro­mo­tional song “Devil Trig­ger” helped move that wait right along. In April 2019, me and EIC Lyn­d­sey were on a spur-of-the-moment gam­ing shop­ping spree and not only did we pick up a PlaySta­tion 4 Pro, but also we picked up a bounty of games includ­ing DMC5. Could it sur­pass pre­vi­ous suc­cesses that defined the series?

In DMC5, years after the events in DMC4, Nero has got­ten Dante’s bless­ing to jump in the demon-hunting busi­ness but one May night, Nero is accosted by a famil­iar foe who has not only taken the demon sword Yam­ato, but also Nero’s demonic arm. Vow­ing vengeance, Nero pur­sues the foe to Red­wood City where he is intro­duced to a new evil known as Urizen. He, Dante and fel­low demon hunters Trish and Lady are swat­ted instantly by Urizen. Now hav­ing a HUGE chip on his shoul­der, Nero returns with a new arm and part­ner in crime, Nico, and sets out on his sec­ond adven­ture filled with old and new allies and ene­mies while mak­ing his name as a mas­ter demon hunter to sur­pass his infa­mous uncle.

Game­play in DMC5 fol­lows the same high-speed action for­mula found in pre­vi­ous games in the series. Con­trol­ling Nero, Dante and the newest char­ac­ter V is per­fect. Nero still has his trusty sword Red Queen and revolver Blue Rose, but instead of his Devil Bringer he uses a pros­thetic arm called a Devil Breaker, which was devel­oped by Nico. It has extra punch than the Devil Bringer and can be upgraded after bat­tles with var­i­ous bosses.

Dante has his dual pis­tols Ebony and Ivory as well as his usual swords Rebel­lion and Sparta, but also has five addi­tions: Cav­i­lare (a motor­cy­cle that when sep­a­rated, becomes a buzzsaw-like weapon); Bal­rog (yes, THAT Bal­rog), gauntlets and boots that increases Dante’s melee power ten­fold; KalinaAnn2, a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the Kali­naAnn used in DMC3; and, Dr. Faust, a hat that shoots out red orbs when worn.

V has some tricks up his sleeve with his famil­iars Grif­fon, a demon hawk capa­ble of fir­ing light­ning bolts and pro­jec­tiles; Shadow, a panther-like famil­iar that is melee com­bat ori­ented, using its body to form blade and nee­dle weapons; and, finally Night­mare, a golem-familiar that moves slowly, but packs a MAJOR punch against giant ene­mies. I should also note that Night­mare can change his height to titan-level and use a huge laser beam to destroy enemy bosses, which allows V to use his Royal Fork cane and its copies to land the fin­ish blow.

Another fea­ture I liked in DMC5 was the train­ing ses­sion that allows you to learn and prac­tice avail­able skills before pur­chas­ing them, allow­ing you to decide whether to buy or hold off.

The RE5 engine brings every detail to life, com­ple­ment­ing Dolby Atmos sound’s abil­i­ties, which made me think I was play­ing a 3D movie instead of a video game. The voice cast is a mix of well-known and new voice actors led by Reuben Lang­don, Johnny Yong Bosch and Daniel South­worth repris­ing their roles as Dante, Nero and Vergil, respec­tively. Stephanie Sheh returns as Kyrie but in voice form only. I also give kudos to Brian Han­ford for voic­ing V and Faye Kingslee as Nico. Brad Ven­able as Grif­fon stole the show, and Kate Hig­gins (Bleach, Code Geass) and Wendee Lee were excel­lent as Lady and Trish.

The only neg­a­tive thing I have about the game is the cam­era con­trol. It has improved GREATLY, but it still takes some time to mas­ter­fully plan a character’s next move. The power-up sit­u­a­tion that occurred in DMC4 was fixed, but you still need to con­serve your red orbs, espe­cially if you use Dr. Faust.

DMC5 is wor­thy of replay because of its excel­lent blend of action, drama and envi­ron­ment. Cap­com is doing this series right again and while I don’t agree that milk­ing a fran­chise is the best busi­ness deci­sion, DMC fans can begin to for­give Cap­com for its lack of judge­ment for DMC: Devil May Cry. Let the heal­ing begin.

Fun facts

  • Reuben Lang­don, Johnny Yong Bosch and Daniel South­worth have a con­nec­tion to the Power Rangers fran­chise. Bosch was the sec­ond Black Ranger in Mighty Mor­phin’ Power Rangers and the Green Ranger in Power Rangers ZEO and Power Rangers Turbo, while Lang­don did stunt work and South­worth played the Quan­tum Ranger in Power Rangers: Time Force. All have pro­vided voice and motion cap­ture work for the DMC series.
  • South­worth and Wendee Lee had dual roles as Urizen and Eva, Dante’s and Vergil’s mother.
  • If Red­wood City looks like Lon­don, you are cor­rect. Cap­com sent the DMC5 devel­op­ment team to Lon­don — specif­i­cally Mid­hurst in West Sus­sex, Rochester, Kent, Can­ter­bury and Leeds Cas­tle in Kent — for inspi­ra­tion in design­ing loca­tions in the game. Var­i­ous mod­els and clothes were acquired and scanned in Lon­don and Serbia.
  • In addi­tion to the RE5 engine, Cap­com used Microsoft’s Sim­ply­gon graphic soft­ware to assist with graph­ics and the inter­mis­sion graphics.
  • The most notable song of the game, “Devil Trig­ger,” by Casey and Ali Edwards, has had more than 2.8 mil­lion views on Cap­com Japan’s YouTube chan­nel. Ali Edwards was also the lyri­cist and vocal­ist for the game’s end­ing theme “Legacy,” with com­po­si­tion by Kota Suzuki.

Airwolf — 4Q2020 issue

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Let this low-flying mess stay grounded

As a child of the 1980s, there was one major require­ment I had to know: the major prime time action shows and what nights and net­works that they came on. Two of those shows were Knight Rider on Fri­days on NBC and Air­wolf on Sat­ur­days on CBS. These two shows were so pop­u­lar that Acclaim Enter­tain­ment was able to get license rights from Uni­ver­sal Tele­vi­sion to develop video games for both shows. In a pre­vi­ous issue of GI, we reviewed Knight Rider for the NES in the Tor­ture of the Quar­ter sec­tion. Could Air­wolf break this curse of pop­u­lar shows turned into hor­ri­ble games? It was time to find out.

Air­wolf fol­lows the plot based on the TV show in that you take the role of Stringfel­low “String” Hawke, who is given a mis­sion by the CIA to res­cue pris­on­ers of war from unknown ter­ror­ist groups using the top-secret heli­copter known as Air­wolf. As String con­ducts the mis­sion, he finds out that one of the pris­on­ers being held is his long-lost brother who was declared miss­ing in action dur­ing the Viet­nam War. This gives him added incen­tive to carry out his given mission.

Airwolf’s game­play is a sim­u­lated first-person view that was applied to the Knight Rider game. You have the view of Air­wolf that is clear enough to see your ene­mies and to attack enemy strong­holds such as air­craft tow­ers, pris­oner camps and repair depots. How­ever, this is the game’s Achilles’ heel. Con­trol is not flex­i­ble when you need it to be dur­ing dog­fights with enemy air­craft. You’re required to shoot first or destroy air­craft tow­ers if you don’t fire your lim­ited mis­siles with pre­cise tim­ing. The inflex­i­bil­ity rears again when you land at a pris­oner camp land­ing gen­tly and still die.

The graph­ics were OK, but they were akin to flight sim­u­la­tor games that were highly pop­u­lar dur­ing the ’80s. To give Air­wolf a frac­tion of a chance for a good review, I found the debrief­ing scene excel­lent, giv­ing me the appro­pri­ate data of destroyed ene­mies, res­cued pris­on­ers and inter­cepted missiles.

Sadly, I was ENRAGED that Acclaim could be this sloppy with a fran­chise such as Air­wolf. Don’t get me wrong, Acclaim did go on to make bet­ter video games based on pop­u­lar fran­chises, but like Knight Rider, Air­wolf failed to show me any redeem­ing rea­son for replay.

Air­wolf — like Knight Rider — are games that are rec­om­mended only for the diehard fans of the ’80s that want to relive the action-packed nights of their child­hood. While I loved both shows, unfor­tu­nately their action-packed for­mula that pro­duced major rat­ings for TV did not trans­late well into video game for­mat. Acclaim did learn well from these mis­takes, but they gave the first Mas­ter­Class les­son in video gam­ing of being care­ful with pop­u­lar fran­chises. If you want my advice, skip both games and play them on read­ily avail­able emu­la­tors; you’ll save time and hard-earned money.

Fun Facts

  • Air­wolf was cre­ated by Don­ald P. Belis­ario, who was known for pop culture-worthy shows such as Quan­tum Leap, Mag­num, P.I., JAG and NCIS, which is still air­ing on CBS.
  • The actual Air­wolf was based on a Bell 222 heli­copter designed for cor­po­rate travel, emer­gency med­ical trans­port and util­ity trans­port. A full replica of Air­wolf was on dis­play at a Ten­nessee avi­a­tion museum but has since been sold to a pri­vate col­lec­tor in Bel Aire, Calif.
  • There were numer­ous ver­sions of Air­wolf made for var­i­ous home sys­tems, but a side scrolling arcade ver­sion was devel­oped by Japan­ese devel­oper Kyugo in 1987. Acclaim released the NES ver­sion a year later, after the show went off the air four years earlier.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse — 4Q2020 issue

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Drac­ula slays in thirds

Castl­e­va­nia. The name alone is well renowned to vet­eran gamers world­wide as one of Konami’s mas­ter­piece fran­chises, hav­ing expanded from the NES to var­i­ous gam­ing con­soles and a glo­ri­ous revival in anime form thanks to Net­flix. As a video game vet­eran myself, I know of the many bat­tles between the GOAT vam­pire hunt­ing Bel­mont fam­ily and the infa­mous prince of hor­ror mon­sters, Count Drac­ula. Ever since I was exposed to the first Castl­e­va­nia game, I fell under its spell, want­ing my chance to place a stake into Dracula’s chest. I finally got my chance to do so when I got my first game, Castl­e­va­nia III: Dracula’s Curse for the NES.

In Dracula’s Curse, you take on the role of Trevor C. Bel­mont, fore­fa­ther of series hero Simon Bel­mont, who is called upon to save his vil­lage of Warakiya from Drac­ula and his res­ur­rected army of dark­ness. Trevor has one small but pow­er­ful advan­tage with him: the abil­ity to trans­form into three part­ner spir­its: Alu­card, Dracula’s for­got­ten son; Grant Denasty, pirate ter­ror of the seas; and, Sypha Bel­nades, vam­pire hunter/mystic war­lord. Along with this shaper-shifter abil­ity and equipped with the mys­tic whip and Pol­ter­geist ax bequeathed by the Pol­ter­geist King, Trevor sets off into the night ready to do bat­tle against Dracula.

Game­play is basic like most action-platforming games with sim­ple moves such as mov­ing left and right with the con­trol pad, jump­ing with a but­ton, and attack­ing with basic weapons by using com­bi­na­tions for spe­cial weapons. These con­trols have spe­cial des­ig­na­tions for Grant, con­trol­ling how high he can jump and climb walls, and for Alu­card, who can trans­form into a bat. To give this team of vam­pire hunters an extra advan­tage, Trevor can upgrade his mys­tic whip to a long-ranged chain whip and can use var­i­ous Warakiya items such as the ban­shee boomerang, bat­tle ax and a pocket watch that tem­porar­ily freezes ene­mies. Sypha has her magic staff as her main weapon in addi­tion to using ele­men­tal orbs that can pro­duce fire, ice and thun­der attacks. Grant has use of the dag­ger, but he can only use the mys­tic ax as his sec­ondary weapon. Alu­card has use of a destruc­tive ball that can be upgraded to shoot three directions.

While I appre­ci­ate these effec­tive tech­niques to dis­patch the undead, there were flaws such as learn­ing to time each attack or risk falling off a stage. Also, whichever part­ner spirit Trevor teams up with, the part­ner takes dam­age, cre­at­ing a strug­gle to sur­vive in cer­tain stages. I also learned that you col­lect stone hearts to power weapons and if Alu­card is your part­ner, he would turn into a bat. That’s fine but that skill eats up your hearts and if you run out, he could turn back into human form putting him and Trevor in a MAJOR bind.

Adding to the frus­tra­tion, there is a time limit to com­plete each stage, adding either chal­lenge to game­play or mak­ing you curse and smash your con­troller to pieces.

A word to the wise: Dracula’s Curse is chal­leng­ing but LOOK hard for spe­cial items such as leg of were­wolf, which refills your life meter; and, the invis­i­bil­ity potion that also gives tem­po­rary pro­tec­tion to give you the upper hand. Also, if you must go up a row of stairs, ALWAYS press up on the con­trol pad to walk oth­er­wise you will fall and lose a life.

The game’s music is excel­lent, stay­ing true to the series’ theme of clas­si­cal hor­ror. If you heard a Castl­e­va­nia theme before, you won’t hear any­thing new here. This isn’t Castl­e­va­nia IV just yet, after all. The replay value is there although it will require you to have patience to and excel­lent strate­gic skills when choos­ing paths to take and part­ner spir­its to work with.

Castl­e­va­nia III: Dracula’s Curse is an exam­ple of how Kon­ami built a respected fran­chise in its early days with­out dis­re­spect­ing their devel­op­ment staff and let­ting them do what they do best. Dracula’s Curse is good but not with­out its quirks and flaws. If you love old-school plat­form­ing in the Castl­e­va­nia con­trol vein, jump in and part­ner up to take on Drac­ula once more.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 — 3Q2020 issue

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Gun­dam, Dynasty War­riors carry on tradition

“Gun­dam, what a strong sound­ing name.”- Lacus Clyne, Mobile Suit Gun­dam SEED/SEED Destiny

Next to my love for Mega Man, I’m also a fan of the Gun­dam series. Since 1979, the space mecha anime has brought thought-provoking per­spec­tives on issues of human­ity and war, and has cre­ated a stan­dard for all sci-fi series, espe­cially anime with sci-fi and mecha ele­ments. Through var­i­ous series, mer­chan­dise (includ­ing video games for var­i­ous con­soles) and other media, Gun­dam and its stu­dio, Sun­rise Inc., has secured its place among the GOATs of global pop cul­ture. Lyn­d­sey and I have also taken a lik­ing to the Dynasty War­riors game series. I thought: “What would hap­pened if a Dynasty War­riors game was made with Gun­dam ele­ments?” I got my answer in Dynasty War­riors Gun­dam 3.

In DWG3, you play as a cho­sen indi­vid­ual who has been selected to a pass a test of skill and deter­mi­na­tion. Your requests come from a mys­te­ri­ous Gun­dam suit that asks why humanity’s exis­tence in the uni­verse should con­tinue. This test is con­ducted in four orig­i­nal story arcs that pair char­ac­ters from var­i­ous Gun­dam series such as the MS Gun­dam, Gun­dam Wing, G Gun­dam, Gun­dam 00, Gun­dam Uni­corn and oth­ers who have heroic, vil­lain­ous or neu­tral opin­ions to this mys­te­ri­ous Gundam’s test. These arcs also con­tain side mis­sion that explains each rep­re­sented series’ his­tory, rein­force a group’s cama­raderie or dis­plays each mobile suit’s spe­cial abilities.

Con­trol of these suits is easy whether you use the PlaySta­tion 3’s ana­log sticks or con­trol pad. Shoot­ing and melee attacks are flaw­less, and good con­trols help to pull off some dev­as­tat­ing com­bos to drive oppo­nents back for a moment. In true Dynasty War­riors form, your char­ac­ter will have a part­ner or part­ners with sim­i­lar abil­i­ties and lesser suits to help take down cer­tain key areas of stages. I’m sug­gest­ing three pieces of advice when play­ing: Plan to take places such as repair hang­ers, suit fac­to­ries and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­ers ASAP; know when to team up with your com­rades to take on stronger suit; and, keep an eye on your side map to avoid being lost.

At the end of each stage, your char­ac­ter will be shown how many expe­ri­ence points he or she earned and how much gold was col­lected. These ele­ments help you to earn new skills and more stronger suits. To help your char­ac­ter out, there is a tuto­r­ial stage with prac­tice mis­sions that will help them earn more points or to refresh basic skills.
The graph­ics were designed as if you are play­ing in an actual Gun­dam episode with spe­cial detail given to the suits and their sur­round­ing envi­ron­ments. Namco Bandai and Koei did a great job with keep­ing the game’s for­mula sim­ple: Keep Dynasty War­riors ele­ments intact while adding Gun­dam elements.

The sound is on point with the addi­tion of Dolby Dig­i­tal Sound ensur­ing that every sound effect stays true to Gundam’s legacy of high-level anime action. Credit should also be given to the Ocean Group for assist­ing with voice cast­ing, which included some of the orig­i­nal anime Eng­lish voices per­form­ing their respec­tive char­ac­ters for the game. The replay value of DWG3 is very high and is per­fect for a Gun­dam enthu­si­ast or for a friendly scrim­mage at your local anime convention.

Gun­dam is and will always be the absolute stan­dard bearer in sci-fi mecha anime. DWG3 is an exam­ple of how to build an anime mas­ter­piece and present it for a dif­fer­ent medium. With its 40th anniver­sary, the Gun­dam name has earned the respect of many anime fans new and old with a qual­ity title such as Dynasty War­riors Gun­dam 3 to carry on the Gun­dam tradition.

Fun facts

  • Gun­dam was not Sunrise’s only smash hit. They con­tin­ued the trend with the Big O, Cow­boy Bebop, Out­law Star and Code Geass, dis­play­ing Gun­dam design traits in each of those shows.
  • Gun­dam has made its Hol­ly­wood appear­ance recently in the movie “Ready Player One” and will do so again in a live-action movie being devel­oped and co-produced with Leg­endary Pic­tures (Pacific Rim, Poké­mon: Detec­tive Pikachu, Hang­over trilogy).
  • Brad Swaile, Richard Cox, Brian Drum­mond, Michael Adamwaite and Kirby Mor­row are five mem­bers of the Eng­lish voice cast that reprised their orig­i­nal respec­tive roles. Swaile and Cox played Amuro and Kai in the orig­i­nal Gun­dam and returned to voice Set­suna and Allelu­jah in Gun­dam 00. Mor­row and Swaile also played Trowa and Qua­tre while Drum­mond voiced Zechs/Milliardo Peace­craft in Gun­dam Wing. Adamwaite voiced Rib­bons in Gun­dam 00.

Mega Man X Collection — 2Q2019 issue

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A mega col­lec­tion of Blue Bomber greatness

I’m a huge Mega Man fan. If allowed to, I would dec­o­rate GI head­quar­ters in every room with gear resem­bling Capcom’s infa­mous Blue Bomber. After Mega Man’s last adven­ture on the NES, I found that dur­ing the tran­si­tion from 8-bit to 16-bit gam­ing a new char­ac­ter known as Mega Man X would appear, giv­ing the Mega Man series a new chap­ter set years after the orig­i­nal. While I played a few MMX games when it was on SNES and PSOne, I real­ized that I liked the X series but won­dered if Cap­com would do a col­lec­tion for the PlaySta­tion 2. My wish was granted in Mega Man X Collection.

MMX Col­lec­tion is sim­ply as adver­tised: A col­lec­tion of the first Mega Man X games released. It con­sists of MMX and MMX2 from their SNES debut; MMX3 — another SNES game that was ported to PSOne; and MMX 4, 5 and 6, which were released for PSOne. There is also an unlock­able game, “Mega Man Bat­tle and Chase,” an exclu­sive never released out­side of Japan.

In each MMX game, you take con­trol of “X,” a new ver­sion of the Blue Bomber cre­ated by Dr. Light years after the orig­i­nal Mega Man. X is a more pow­er­ful ver­sion of our blue titan but with free will. 100 years later, after Dr. Light’s death, X was found by Dr. Cain, a robot­ics expert who devel­oped robots based on X’s design known as “reploids.” How­ever, this began a rise of rebel­lious reploids, known as mav­er­icks, which led to the for­ma­tion of a group known as mav­er­ick hunters to stop them. Alas, the mav­er­ick hunter’s leader Sigma became a mav­er­ick (and the series’ main vil­lain), forc­ing X to team up with another mav­er­ick hunter named Zero to stop Sigma’s plan for global domination.

Con­trol of X is sim­ple as any reg­u­lar side-scrolling game, espe­cially with the option of switch­ing between the ana­log sticks or direc­tional but­tons. X’s main weapon, the X-Buster, and other weapons he acquires from a level boss can be pow­ered up in addi­tion to find­ing upgraded boots, hel­met and armor via secret areas in each level. Using a sub screen, I appre­ci­ated that it was under­stand­able and sim­ple in orga­niz­ing items and weapons since, in other side scrolling games, look­ing for needed items is time con­sum­ing and morale-draining. Zero is also playable in MMX 4, 5 and 6 where con­trol­ling him is a guar­an­teed good time as he is not only equipped with his own Buster weapon, but also his sig­na­ture Z-Saber cuts ene­mies down to size.

The graph­ics have been refreshed, ensur­ing that a thought­ful bal­ance of action-adventure and anime-styles ele­ments are intact. Capcom’s music depart­ment did an awe­some job remix­ing each game’s sound­tracks. With the amount of detail put into this game, the replay value is high, espe­cially if you’re want­ing to get deeper into the Mega Man lore.

The Mega Man X Col­lec­tion is the per­fect answer for a devoted fan­base of the Blue Bomber. While the MMX series may be in ques­tion, I hope Cap­com hears Mega Man’s fans’ calls to con­tinue his leg­endary return to gam­ing as the MMX col­lec­tion is a great way to con­tinue Mega Man X’s hunt.