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Yakuza 6: Song of Life — Issue 53

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Yakuza 6: Song of Life

Sega, 2016

Yakuza­’s swan song

Ah, Kiryu Kazu­ma. Sega’s leg­endary for­mer mob­ster turned hero is a liv­ing video game leg­end. Every time he defeats a heinous col­league from his past, he wants to go back to his hon­est life of tak­ing care of his fam­i­ly of orphans. Sad­ly, no mat­ter how much the Drag­on of Doji­ma desires peace, new ene­mies arise with grand delu­sions of pow­er to rule Japan in pub­lic and its under­world of crime. As always, Kiryu saves the day at sig­nif­i­cant risk to his phys­i­cal and men­tal health. This time, those threats hit home with even greater secrets and risks that could unleash pos­si­ble civ­il war in the crim­i­nal under­world (Again? Yes, again) in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

Tak­ing place after the events in Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6 has our hero doing three years in prison. Var­i­ous crime groups such as the Saio Tri­ad and the Jing­weon Mafia have tak­en advan­tage of the Tojo Clan’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. When Kiryu is released, he finds out that his ward Haru­ka Sawa­mu­ra, who was a ris­ing pop idol, sud­den­ly retired and moved to Onomichi city in Hiroshi­ma where she has an infant son, Haru­to. Kiryu then dis­cov­ers that Haru­ka is in a coma at a Kamuro­cho hos­pi­tal after a hit-and-run acci­dent. With these explo­sive ele­ments plus a mys­te­ri­ous secret in Onomichi that could cause a rag­ing gang war through the coun­try, Kiryu once again sets out to stop those who bring harm to his city and his family. 

The con­trol in pre­vi­ous Yakuza games that won me over remains and is improved thanks to the rebuilt Drag­on game engine. When not in fight­ing mode, Kamuro­cho has been giv­en a refreshed, crisp view. I appre­ci­ate the detail in Kiryu’s fight­ing scenes; he can use weapons to do mas­sive dam­age and look nice while doing so. Anoth­er new fea­ture is item stor­age. While stats must be increased to be able to car­ry more items, Kiryu can now use his smart­phone to hold var­i­ous food and health items and lev­el up when­ev­er he gains expe­ri­ence points. I espe­cial­ly liked the idea that Kiryu can obtain cer­tain drinks from vend­ing machines, includ­ing beer, which will increase his fight­ing pow­er. I also love the clan bat­tles fea­ture where Kiryu can form a group to take down var­i­ous char­ac­ters in a time lim­it and win cash and expe­ri­ence for his fight­ers. And I also enjoyed the Club Sega sec­tion where I could play arcade games like Hang-On and Vir­tua Fighter.

The music is excel­lent and var­ied, mak­ing me feel that I’m watch­ing a Yakuza movie than play­ing the game. If the game’s excel­lent detail to vital areas of game­play was not enough to sell me on it, I was stoked to find that Kazuchi­ka Oku­da of New Japan Pro Wrestling and acclaimed actor/comedian Beat Takashi made appear­ance as main vil­lains in the game.

How­ev­er, as much as I love the game, there are some neg­a­tives in Yakuza 6 that did­n’t make me stop play­ing entire­ly but gave me some pause. Dur­ing the fight­ing scenes where Kiryu gets ahold of an ene­my’s weapon, he dis­patch­es them in true Yakuza fash­ion, vio­lent and, at times, gory and dis­turb­ing. It was a bit much for me and seemed kind of unnecessary.

Anoth­er thing that both­ers me is the ram­pant and obvi­ous Sony prod­uct place­ment. It takes away from the game a lit­tle bit because it’s dis­tract­ing and is also unnec­es­sary. I know I’m play­ing the game with a Sony prod­uct; I don’t need it shoved in my face con­stant­ly that this was orig­i­nal­ly a Sony exclu­sive game.

Final­ly, there is a side quest that Kiryu can’t turn down. It’s not real­ly a side quest but the game tries to present it as though it is. That’s annoy­ing. If you want me to do the quest, just mark it as manda­to­ry and move on.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is a mag­num opus to Kiryu Kazu­ma, but it also marks an evo­lu­tion point for the series. Although Kiryu is no longer the pri­ma­ry pro­tag­o­nist, he has been in new Yakuza games such as Like a Drag­on. For now, Kiryu and com­pa­ny can take a well-deserved break with this chap­ter in the life of the Drag­on of Dojima.

Street Fighter 6 — Issue 53

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Street Fight­er 6

Cap­com, 2023

Per­fect Street Fighter

We love to say that this isn’t your old man’s what­ev­er when­ev­er some­thing has changed. As cliché as this is — and make no mis­take this is cliché — Cap­com’s newest entry in the old man fight­ing game that is Street Fight­er isn’t your dad­dy’s Street Fight­er. It isn’t even your broth­er’s Street Fight­er, where he used to let you beat him up in ver­sus mode and hit you with Flash Kicks to mag­i­cal­ly come back and win. No, this is the young man and casu­al’s Street Fight­er. This is a new era of fight­ing designed to get every­one involved whether they’ve exe­cut­ed a Hado­ken or not.

Street Fight­er 6 came out with a fresh coat of paint, new mechan­ics but some­thing dif­fer­ent under the hood. It plays like Street Fight­er V, but with­out the V‑Trigger mechan­ics. Now, it’s back to the basics and Dri­ve Gauge, a new mechan­ic that can turn the tide of a bat­tle quick­ly. The Dri­ve Gauge rewards offense and cre­ativ­i­ty in com­bos while dis­cour­ag­ing defen­sive turtling. This plays into the larg­er, estab­lished Street Fight­er reper­toire of super arts and par­ries. It’s nice for a vet­er­an because it’s some­thing new and good for new­bies to the world of Street Fight­er because it’s not super com­pli­cat­ed to learn.

Some­thing else new that ben­e­fits every­one is the intro­duc­tion of three types of con­trol schemes: Clas­sic, Mod­ern and Dynam­ic. Clas­sic plays much like the old Street Fight­er of yore with a six-but­ton lay­out (Jab, Strong, Fierce, Short, For­ward, Round­house), Mod­ern has a sim­pli­fied four-but­ton lay­out (think Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2) and Dynam­ic is an offline only slant where the CPU choos­es the most appro­pri­ate but­ton press­es for moves. It’s a strong, smart deci­sion designed to open the door for more play­ers to get involved in your long-run­ning series that seems over­whelm­ing and daunt­ing at first.
Anoth­er smart deci­sion includ­ed is the tuto­r­i­al and vari­ety of modes. SF6 does its darn­d­est to have some­thing for every­one, and it’s imme­di­ate­ly seen in the modes avail­able at the start. Fight Hub, a return­ing and revamped World Tour Mode and a robust train­ing mode make this a mas­sive buy and win for the fight­ing game con­nois­seur. Fight Hub is where you’ll prob­a­bly spend most of your time; it’s where match­mak­ing takes place as well as emu­lat­ed old­er ver­sions of Street Fight­er live. 

How­ev­er, I tend to live in World Tour Mode. As a devot­ed fan of the orig­i­nal mode (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 52 for our cov­er­age of the pop­u­lar mode from Street Fight­er Alpha 3), as soon as it was announced I knew I was a day one pur­chase. And with more than two years of wheel­ing and deal­ing with my cre­at­ed char­ac­ter, I can enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly say I love it. I enjoy run­ning around the fleshed-out Metro City (of Final Fight fame) with my looka­like fight­er. I love that they took the con­cept born of Alpha 3 and gave it a soul and per­son­al­i­ty after so many years, and I love that it’s easy to get into and plays as well as it does.

The beau­ty of this new chap­ter of Street Fight­er also lies in the char­ac­ter and envi­ron­ment designs. Street Fight­er has always looked nice and SF6 is no dif­fer­ent. The stage design is gor­geous, and the char­ac­ter mod­els look nice. Even the weird cre­ations that can come out of World Tour Mode have a nice look to them. We spent time at GI going through some of the char­ac­ters and just mar­veling over how far Street Fight­er has come with char­ac­ter design because it’s evi­dent in this game just in the char­ac­ter select screen. The new­bies in Marisa, Manon, Kim­ber­ly, Lily and JP are fun and cool, and the old­er stal­warts like Ryu, Ken and Dhal­sim look fan­tas­tic. The sound­track, while lack­ing in some areas, does have some toe tap­pers. Though I’m not a fan of Juri, I love her theme and Luke’s has grown on me. I’m almost cer­tain there will be more addi­tions to my lik­ing as more sea­sons are released and revi­sions are made.

While there is so much to like here, I do have some nit­picks to address. First, while I’m a fan of see­ing famil­iar faces, there are so many return­ing folks that don’t need to be here. We are in a post-Street Fight­er III: 3rd Strike land in-game sto­ry-wise, so why are we still deal­ing with M. Bison/Super Dead Dic­ta­tor™? Cap­com said he real­ly was dead after the in-game events of Street Fight­er V, so hav­ing him as DLC is unnec­es­sary. Like­wise, I don’t need to know what Aku­ma is up to. I want more of the 3rd Strike char­ac­ters back and I want the mys­tery of G, my favorite Street Fight­er char­ac­ter, solved. Also, Cap­com bet­ter not give us a mil­lion paid revi­sions, either. They bet­ter roll out updates as free upgrades and act like they’ve learned their les­son dur­ing the past 34 years of Street Fight­er II agency. I say this because I can see the writ­ing on the wall, and I don’t want to have to pay for the next upgrade of the main­line series.

I love Street Fight­er 6. I love see­ing the plot pay­off of old­er games (i.e. Li-Fen, the young girl in the intro of 3rd Strike, is here and old­er, which helps tie down when the game takes place), and I love to see the con­ti­nu­ity of Street Fight­er and oth­er Cap­com games com­ing togeth­er. I real­ly enjoy play­ing SF6, it’s teach­ing this old dog new tricks and I find myself ful­ly invest­ed in the future of the grand­dad­dy of fight­ing games more than ever.

Street Fighter Alpha Anthology & Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX — Issue 52

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Street Fight­er Alpha 3 Max (PlaySta­tion Portable)

Let’s get this out the way quick­ly: Alpha 3 Max is the best portable ver­sion of Alpha 3 avail­able. It’s even one of the best ports of Alpha 3 among the numer­ous ports of the game. It has every­thing that its big broth­er con­soles have and then some, with the mas­sive final updat­ed ros­ter that each suc­ces­sive entry has intro­duced, and improve­ments made to the dif­fer­ent estab­lished modes. 


The graph­ics are nice and large, and the music is still as top notch as ever. But there is a catch because there always is: This is only avail­able for the PlaySta­tion Portable. So, if you can track down that defunct sys­tem, get this to have it on the go and have a blast as only one can with Alpha 3 in its final form glo­ry. It’s worth a look just for the com­plete ros­ter alone.

Score: 4 out of 5

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Street Fight­er Alpha Anthol­o­gy (PlaySta­tion 2)

This col­lec­tion of Street Fight­er Alpha games is sub­lime, espe­cial­ly if you have a PlaySta­tion 2 lay­ing around. It fea­tures all the Alpha games, remix­es and arranged ver­sions, the Alpha 2 Gold revi­sion and a nice port of Super Gem Fight­er Mini-Mix. The best part of the col­lec­tion is that it plays nice­ly in every game. It plays like a dream and han­dles well with a good PS2 con­troller or joystick. 

 

Even bet­ter is the includ­ed Hyper Street Fight­er Alpha, which allows pit­ting dif­fer­ent Alpha char­ac­ters against each oth­er using that spe­cif­ic game’s mechan­ics and rule­sets. Think Alpha 2’s Rose ver­sus Alpha 3 V‑ISM Rose. That’s the hid­den draw of the game, one that’s not adver­tised and that you won’t dis­cov­er with­out time invest­ed. How­ev­er, with smooth play and con­ve­nience much like 30th Anniver­sary col­lec­tion, this is a must buy for the PS2 collection.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection — Issue 52

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A mild col­lec­tion of peak ear­ly Street Fighter

There was a time when all the ear­ly gen­er­a­tion Street Fight­er games weren’t avail­able in the same place. Us old-timers had to own mul­ti­ple sys­tems and col­lec­tions on those sys­tems to com­plete the library of fight­ing street games. But then along came the 30th anniver­sary of the land­mark fight­ing game fran­chise and would­n’t you know, Cap­com thought it pru­dent to offer a bonan­za of Street Fight­er. Whether or not it’s a boun­ti­ful buf­fet is still up for judgment.

Street Fight­er 30th Anniver­sary Col­lec­tion aims to do one thing: Give you all the Street Fight­er you can shake a stick at. Includ­ed out of the box are: Street Fight­er, all ver­sions of Street Fight­er II (includ­ing Tour­na­ment Bat­tle, exclu­sive to the Nin­ten­do Switch); Street Fight­er Alpha, Street Fight­er Alpha 2 and Street Fight­er Alpha 3 Upper; and, Street Fight­er III: New Gen­er­a­tion, 2nd Impact: Giant Attack and 3rd Strike. This essen­tial­ly cov­ers all the bases for ear­ly Street Fight­er, which is great. Give me every­thing in one pack­age and let me choose what I want to play. But alas, there is a catch: All the ver­sions includ­ed are the arcade ver­sions of the games. That means, for exam­ple, with Street Fight­er Alpha 3 you aren’t going to get World Tour Mode. What­ev­er you received in the arcade is what you’re get­ting here so I hope you like the vanil­la ver­sions because that’s what’s served here. That’s not a bad thing if you love Street Fight­er, and it’s the smart solu­tion because includ­ing the home addi­tions would have pushed this col­lec­tion to dou­ble discs or more.


The pack­age is fine graph­i­cal­ly. The games includ­ed are going to look exact­ly the way they did when they were released, which is exact­ly how they should here and isn’t the focus. What should be the focus is the sur­round­ing pack­age and it’s nice. The graph­ics look clean, and menus are invit­ing. How­ev­er, I do have a gripe with the menus: Cap­com is in dire need of a copy edi­tor. I found at least one error in the text (Aku­ma’s bio in Super Street Fight­er II X for the curi­ous), and this isn’t the first time I’ve found this type of thing (there’s an error in Super Street Fight­er IV’s text as well). 

As a for­mer pro­fes­sion­al edi­tor, this type of thing in video games gets on my nerves. Cap­com is a bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­ny; hir­ing a copy edi­tor to spell check the menus and text should­n’t be a prob­lem. It reeks of slop­pi­ness, though I should­n’t be sur­prised as this is the same com­pa­ny that refus­es to trans­late the board game in Project Jus­tice or the dat­ing sims in both ver­sions of Rival Schools. But I digress. The pre­sen­ta­tion is good, and it looks fine on mod­ern systems.

The music is the same as the graph­ics: just as you remem­ber it and per­fect­ly fine. There is a sound test and that’s help­ful if you don’t already have any of the tracks in your music col­lec­tion. There are a few remix­es in the menus that you may not have heard before, but there isn’t any­thing note­wor­thy like say Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion. The extras are mid, though some of the art­work and the offi­cial time­lines pro­vid­ed are neat. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of it and there should be with this many games included.

And just like the pre­sen­ta­tion, the playa­bil­i­ty is just as good as you remem­ber. I was able to fin­ish sev­er­al games in the arcade mode — once I adjust­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty, which is a god­send — and every­thing felt great even with a PlaySta­tion 4 Pro con­troller. I also jumped online to test the net­code, and it was decent. How­ev­er, with the supe­ri­or Fight­cade now in full swing, fight­ing online with 30th Anniver­sary has been made irrelevant.

This is the col­lec­tion to end all Cap­com col­lec­tions for their fight­ing games. Yes, Cap­com insists on releas­ing oth­er col­lec­tions with these games, but this is a good stop gap if you want the main­stream stuff all in one place. Come for the nos­tal­gia and the con­ve­nience and maybe stay for the extras. Three decades of Street Fight­er should be a spec­ta­cle to behold but it’s lack­ing in the knock your socks off draw-ins. It’s still a rad street fight, however.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Ultra Street Fighter II — Issue 51

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The sixth time’s the charm

Ultra Street Fight­er II needs to be the final final challenge

As a Street Fight­er fan of a cer­tain age, I can remem­ber the many jokes back in the day about Cap­com nev­er learn­ing how to count to three. It was­n’t a lie, though. Cap­com could­n’t count to three because they con­tin­ued to make major revi­sions to Street Fight­er II while oth­er fight­ing game series were start­ing and mak­ing sequels. More than 30 years lat­er, even after Cap­com learned what trés meant in New Gen­er­a­tion, Giant Attack and 3rd Strike, we’re still return­ing to the SFII well and I don’t know if this return trip with the buck­ets was worth it.

By now, we all know the sto­ry of Street Fight­er II: A bunch of World War­riors get togeth­er and fight the mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal dictator/drug runner/supernatural enthu­si­ast M. Bison. Some­one among the based crew that is Ryu, Chun-Li and Guile got their revenge and faced him at the end of the sec­ond World War­rior Tour­na­ment until the ever-present Aku­ma showed up and prompt­ly took Bison out with a well-placed Rag­ing Demon. Except that giv­en the sto­ry events of Street Fight­er V: Cham­pi­onship Edi­tion, this no longer holds true exact­ly (see Bison’s res­ur­rec­tion in Street Fight­er 6’s DLC). Any­way, at the point of Ultra Street Fight­er II: The Final Chal­lengers, Bison is dead, on his way to hell with gaso­line under­gar­ments on for his var­i­ous mis­deeds. This has always been Street Fight­er II’s sto­ry­line in its basest form, and noth­ing notable has changed about it in Ultra. 

The con­trols also are the same old Street Fight­er II that’s been played and rehashed to death dur­ing the past 35 years. It’s the same shoryuken, hur­ri­cane kicks, and hado­kens you’re used to, and to Cap­com’s cred­it, that’s the best thing they could have ever done. Don’t fix what isn’t bro­ken and what gen­er­a­tions have learned to cut their teeth on. That said, if you can play Super Tur­bo, you can play this because that’s all this is in terms of how to play Street Fight­er II. And to mit­i­gate the poten­tial issues, buy­ing a Pro Con­troller is a smart idea, but you already knew that if you bought this port because there is no way you’re casu­al­ly play­ing a port of a 35-year-old fight­ing game with­out know­ing you need a decent controller.

Now, the one thing that has changed is the graph­ics. Graph­i­cal­ly, this is more in line with the weird Street Fight­er II HD Remix that fea­tured ani­me style graph­ics. It’s kind of gor­geous but also kind of not. It feels a lit­tle like a rehash of that port and not too many peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it out­side of the fact that it was one of the few ports of Super Tur­bo released in the U.S. Some of the stages look great and ben­e­fit from the art style change and some of them just look rather meh. Also, one of the few things that mer­ci­ful­ly stayed the same is the sound­track. SFII has always had an excel­lent sound­track and it, too, is untouched from the Super Tur­bo version.

The new addi­tions to this are what’s going to influ­ence your deci­sion to get this or pass. On the ros­ter side of things are new­com­ers Evil Ryu and Vio­lent Ken. Why, they aren’t new you say? Exact­ly. They aren’t new at all if you care about Cap­com fight­ing lore. Evil Ryu is a main­stay evil ver­sion of the beloved Ryu who’s been hang­ing around ever since Cap­com USA for­got to ask if he was real or not in the hey­day of Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Vio­lent Ken is a lit­tle deep­er but not by much. If you played the weird SNK vs. Cap­com Chaos — bet­ter known as SNK’s attempt in the Cap­com vs. SNK series — you’d rec­og­nize this ver­sion of Ken. He also kind of made a what-if appear­ance in Street Fight­er Alpha 3 in the arcade sto­ry mode. While I get that they’re a nov­el­ty and peo­ple love these char­ac­ters for what­ev­er rea­son, I’m not sure I under­stand why we need­ed anoth­er ver­sion of Street Fight­er II to include them. Because for the folks play­ing along at home, this makes the sixth ver­sion of the game to be released as an offi­cial port. By the time this was released, Cap­com was talk­ing seri­ous­ly and mak­ing a lot of noise about Street Fight­er V, so this is unnec­es­sary quite hon­est­ly. And throw­ing in the mori­bund and extra Way of the Hado mode does not jus­ti­fy the need for a whol­ly new ver­sion of this game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Street Fight­er II. It was instru­men­tal and paved the way for my favorite genre of video games. I’ve played every ver­sion of SFII at this point and every spin­off of it, too. But when it comes to these high­ly unnec­es­sary retreads of the same game that Cap­com won’t let loose, I have a prob­lem. As much as I have come to love the fran­chise in my lat­er years, I can’t stand that Cap­com beats the SFII horse to death while ignor­ing their oth­er viable fight­ing game fran­chis­es such as Rival Schools/Project Jus­tice and Vampire/Darkstalkers. We get it, Street Fight­er II is extreme­ly pop­u­lar. But Cap­com has released enough ver­sions of it to last a life­time and this ver­sion is not need­ed. Cap­com real­ly needs to let this be the final chal­lenge for sure.

Metroid Dread — Issue 51

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Metroid Dread a return to form for vet­er­an series

That fore­bod­ing sense of … dread. The antic­i­pa­tion of walk­ing into an unknown room and pos­si­bly find­ing a secret. It’s the stuff many old-school gamers and Metroid fans like me cut our teeth on grow­ing up with Metroid­va­nia games. The orig­i­nal Metroid set the tone, but Super Metroid is the house of cards that every­thing in the genre rests on. And Metroid Dread, while an admirable attempt to recre­ate that nos­tal­gic feel­ing, is a few mis­siles short.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me: I love Metroid Dread. It’s the return to form that we all expect of a Metroid game, and you can tell that with­in the first five min­utes. The open­ing cin­e­mat­ic picks the sto­ry up after Fusion where Samus Aran, the bad­dest boun­ty hunter in the known uni­verse, has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly solved the X Par­a­site threat and ush­ered in galac­tic peace once again. Despite that, the Galac­tic Fed­er­a­tion receives ver­i­fied proof that the X are not extinct and sends EMMI (Extra­plan­e­tary Mul­ti­form Mobile Iden­ti­fiers) to the plan­et ZDR to inves­ti­gate the mys­tery of why the X Par­a­site has reap­peared. Soon after the EMMI land, all con­tact is lost with them. Ms. Aran is sent in to inves­ti­gate their dis­ap­pear­ance, and short­ly after land­ing, finds her­self in com­bat with a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure that resem­bles a Chozo. Giv­en that the Chozo oth­er than her­self are also extinct, it’s an even deep­er mys­tery that Samus is deter­mined to solve.

The sto­ry is inter­est­ing, and I was gen­uine­ly invest­ed in learn­ing about the EMMI and what they found on the plan­et. I was even more intrigued about the Chozo war­rior because I’m well-versed in the lore of Metroid and any­thing that calls back to Super Metroid and Samus’ ori­gin sto­ry is going to have my atten­tion. It also ref­er­ences Metroid Fusion, obvi­ous­ly, and parts of Metroid II: Samus Returns — which is the excel­lent remake of Metroid II: The Return of Samus. Lean­ing on the old­er sto­ry is a smart move because you’re prob­a­bly going to go back and play the old­er games and the remake, and you’re going to buy into the sto­ry of the cur­rent game a lit­tle bit easier. 

What isn’t a lit­tle eas­i­er, even on the easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el, is the com­bat. Lis­ten, I’m a Super Metroid expert and I can even claim beat­ing the orig­i­nal Metroid, but the first hour of Dread is hard. I got stuck on the sec­ond EMMI chase sequence and had to go watch a detailed demon­stra­tion of what to do because I just was­n’t get­ting it. And, yes, I love this about Dread. Metroid, at its core, is about explo­ration, prob­lem-solv­ing and fig­ur­ing out things by tri­al and error. I’m doing that in Dread, though my old-man reflex­es and patience are get­ting in the way. But this is what I want out of my Metroid game to a point. The oth­er side of this, how­ev­er, is that I did­n’t care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Fusion in 2002, and I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Dread now. That fran­tic feel­ing of not know­ing what to do in a sequence that means instant death con­stant­ly is not a good one, and I had hoped that it would­n’t return 20 years lat­er, but here we are. I’ll fig­ure it out and learn to live with it, I guess, but it’s not one of my favorite parts of the game.

One of the oth­er things I do love about Dread is the atmos­phere. The music hits the sweet spot of nos­tal­gia and new with leit­mo­tifs of Super and the orig­i­nal game mixed in, and the graph­ics are gor­geous. I’ve long been a fan of the music of Metroid, and this is just anoth­er mas­ter­piece in the long his­to­ry of the series. Also, Samus has nev­er looked bet­ter. She’s more fleshed out with mod­ern graph­ics, but my favorite hero­ine is sim­ply stun­ning even in the stripped Pow­er Suit. And while ZDR is no Zebes, it’s a deli­cious­ly dark envi­ron­ment that invokes the best part of brood­ing moody dark plan­et that fits right in Metroid lore.

While I love a lot of Dread, there are some things that I don’t quite love. First, as a vet­er­an Metroid lover, I can’t help but won­der why it took so long to get a side-scrolling ver­sion of Metroid again and why it fol­lowed Fusion after so many years. Dread is fan­tas­tic, but Fusion was not exact­ly Super, and Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to make Fusion work. I’d rather Dread had its own iden­ti­ty aside from the cleanup of Fusion’s mess. 

And while we’re at it, Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to lean into Super’s lega­cy. It’s well-known that Super is our favorite game of all time. That is not a secret. How­ev­er, unless you’re going to give me a full mod­ern remake of Super, don’t tease me with some­thing almost there. 

Dread is a tease, a “what if we were to remake the great­est game of all time with mod­ern con­trols” exper­i­ment. To quote the awful Ronin in Avengers: Endgame, don’t give me hope. Don’t give it to me halfway and then be like, naw, you know what? Let’s just call it Metroid 5 and we’ll revis­it that Super remake lat­er. This tech­ni­cal­ly isn’t Dread­’s fault, because it’s an excel­lent game and it’s giv­ing me, the Metroid fan who did­n’t want a first-per­son shoot­er Metroid, exact­ly what I’ve been ask­ing for since Fusion. I’m not ding­ing Dread per se; I’m ding­ing Nin­ten­do for being a tease and a ter­ri­ble one at that.

Metroid Dread does almost every­thing right: The atmos­phere is Metroid, the graph­ics are Metroid, the sto­ry is Metroid and the secre­cy is Metroid. It’s a must-play if you’re into the series and even if you aren’t, you still need to expe­ri­ence it just to see how the grand dame of Metroid­va­nia does her thing and cre­ates per­fec­tion. It’s just that if you’re walk­ing into this think­ing you’re going to get Super Metroid lev­els of per­fec­tion, you’re going to be dis­ap­point­ed. It’s not Oth­er M lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment, but the lay­ers of Super haunt the out­come. Then again, let’s face it: Noth­ing is going to touch Super’s lev­el of nuance. And Dread is still fine for it. Dread near­ly hits on every lev­el, and it’s the side-scrolling Metroid adven­ture we non-first-per­son shoot­er fans have been wait­ing for. It’s just that you must be will­ing to look past the dread­ed com­par­isons to Super Metroid to see its true finesse.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge — Issue 50

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Nin­ja Gaiden 3 fin­ish­es comeback

Mod­ern­ized tril­o­gy finale falls short of masterpiece

I would be fool­ish to not acknowl­edge one of the most leg­endary nin­jas in video game his­to­ry. Ever since the appear­ance of the “Tec­mo Presents 1989” screen herald­ing the Nin­ja Gaiden series, Ryu Hayabusa has tak­en up his fam­i­ly’s leg­endary Drag­on Sword against many demon­ic foes and their lack­eys who desire Earth to fall under their rule. Through many 8- and 16-bit adven­tures, Ryu has con­quered many foes that were not just fuel that cre­ates night­mares but those who were sci-fi adja­cent with foes who were half-demon and half-tech. Ryu took a hia­tus and even­tu­al­ly returned to his role as a nin­ja guardian defend­ing his home vil­lage (and the world) through new adven­tures on next gen­er­a­tion con­soles. I was able to expe­ri­ence Mr. Hayabusa’s lat­est feat in Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.

In Razor’s Edge, Ryu, now the head leader of Hayabusa vil­lage, is called upon by the Japan­ese Self-Defense Forces to deal with a ter­ror­ist group known as the Legion of Alche­my whose leader has a deep grudge against the beloved drag­on nin­ja. When the LOA launch­es a bru­tal assault on the British prime min­is­ter’s home, Ryu responds and destroys the LOA’s foot sol­diers but arrives too late to save the prime min­is­ter and is attacked by the Regent of the Mask. The Regent of the Mask places a curse called the Grip of Mur­der on Ryu’s right arm, which absorbs the souls of Ryu’s ene­mies and takes the Drag­on Sword into his arm. To make things worse, the Regent makes a threat to world lead­ers to either sur­ren­der in sev­en days or be destroyed. With time of the utmost essence, Ryu along with long­time ally Ayane and JSDF agent Mizu­ki McCloud must stop the LOA to pre­vent fur­ther glob­al chaos.


Razor’s Edge’s graph­ics are like cur­rent hack-and-slash games on the mar­ket but also have sub­stance. Team Nin­ja devel­oped each stage with care and kept ele­ments that make Nin­ja Gaiden a fan favorite. Start­ing in Lon­don the roads are instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as are the back­drop of Big Ben and the Knight bus­es instead of a copy and paste insert­ed stage. The cut scenes, stage start, and recap areas are beau­ti­ful­ly done and add pol­ish to all char­ac­ters with­out going too far to explain who’s good and evil. A small gripe about the pre­sen­ta­tion and graph­ics is that the stage start/recap areas were too sim­i­lar to the Met­al Gear and Tom Clan­cy series where it’s a bit too dra­mat­ic in some areas and they don’t allow the awe­some graph­ics to set the tone. 

The con­trols to guide our hero are sim­ple but need prac­tice in some areas that require park­our-type jumps to get to oth­er parts of some stages. In some parts of the game where Ayane is called upon, she is a lit­tle more flex­i­ble than Ryu, but that does­n’t make the con­trols more dif­fi­cult. I did have a few issues with con­trols regard­ing bat­tles with boss­es that require more focus to strike var­i­ous spots. Also, when Ryu is required to use his kunai to climb, tim­ing to focus on climb­ing is need­ed while var­i­ous ene­mies fierce­ly attempt to elim­i­nate you. It taxed my patience and was kind of tedious. 

The music is paired per­fect­ly with each stage and has a bal­ance from slow-ris­ing to ener­getic when fac­ing off with var­i­ous ene­mies. The LOA muse­um is my favorite stage; while bat­tling through the stage, ene­mies, includ­ing attack dogs, pop out to attack you with fierce music. When defeat­ed, the music goes back to a light rock style. The game music is excel­lent all-around, and the voice act­ing is per­fect with Troy Bak­er as Ryu and Ali Hillis as Mizu­ki. The cast includes well-known voice actors such as Yuri Lowen­thal, Stephanie Sheh, Jan­ice Kawaye and Michael McConnohie. 

While I enjoyed Razor’s Edge, I do have a few dis­likes. First, its tar­get­ing sys­tem for Ryu when he uses his nin­po has hit and miss accu­ra­cy, tak­ing out some ene­mies while miss­ing oth­ers. My oth­er prob­lem is that while the game has var­i­ous dub and sub­ti­tles includ­ed, the Eng­lish sub­ti­tles were not timed well with its audio, which made the sto­ry dif­fi­cult to fol­low in some cut scenes. Notic­ing that, It was­n’t a deal­break­er, but it was disappointing.

Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge breathes new life and new adven­tures into a leg­endary nin­ja in video games. Ryu Hayabusa is a prime exam­ple of being able to teach an old dog a few new tricks and they suc­ceed. The third game in the remake series puts the Hayabusa name back at the edge of greatness.

Soulcalibur VI — Issue 48

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A new stage of history
Soul­cal­ibur returns to its roots

It’s been a long time since Soul­cal­ibur was good. And I mean, real­ly good, where it’s about the fight­ing and the locales and the sick char­ac­ter designs. Because make no mis­take, Soul­cal­ibur hit a brick wall right about the time of the fourth entry. Seri­ous­ly, no one asked for Star Wars draped all over Soul­cal­ibur, yet there we were with Yoda and the gang mak­ing them­selves at home in the series known for its sword and sor­cery. But then some­thing hap­pened: Some­one on Project Soul said, “you know what would be great? Return­ing back to the thing that made us suc­cess­ful in the first place: Soul­cal­ibur.” And here we are with the sixth entry and it’s a return to form.

Soul­cal­ibur VI is essen­tial­ly a retelling of the sec­ond game in the series, Soul­cal­ibur. The evil sword Soul Edge has fall­en into the wrong hands through­out his­to­ry, and it has now found its way into the embrace of one Siegfried. Sigfried, hav­ing lost his ten­u­ous grasp on san­i­ty and real­i­ty in gen­er­al, has trans­formed into the Azure Knight, bet­ter known as Night­mare, and begun wreak­ing hav­oc on the world in this demon­ic pos­sessed guise. There are those who seek the sword for right­eous rea­sons and those who seek it for greed and glo­ry, but the sword must be stopped. Because it’s a retread of Soul­cal­ibur, not too much has changed sto­ry-wise. The entire cast of the game has returned with some new folks sprin­kled in for good mea­sure. This is fine because that cast was leg­endary and set the stan­dard for future entries.


But what if you want­ed to do a lit­tle some­thing dif­fer­ent this time around? The excel­lent char­ac­ter cre­ator has every­thing cov­ered. This mode is so well done and such a time sink. I spent at least two hours mak­ing a rea­son­able fac­sim­i­le of the Cap­com’s Ruby Heart — my favorite pirate — and it was pain­less and easy to do, even with the default offer­ings. This cre­ator mode has been around a long time in Soul­cal­ibur — since the third game — but here it’s refined and pol­ished. I spent more time here than any­where else, and what I want­ed to make was only lim­it­ed by my lack of ideas.

Despite lack­ing in skill with Soul­cal­ibur over the years, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the ease of jump­ing into fight­ing. I have had an extend­ed absence from the series, but I could still pull off moves and com­bos with old favorites like Mit­su­ru­gi, Cer­vantes, Ivy and Vol­do. The fight­ing felt pol­ished and clean, much like old­er entries, which is crit­i­cal in draw­ing in some­one like me that has­n’t real­ly played much since Soul­cal­ibur II.

Anoth­er good nos­tal­gic draw was the pre­sen­ta­tion. Soul­cal­ibur as a series has nev­er lacked in the aes­thet­ics depart­ment, and this game is no dif­fer­ent. It looks nice, with good char­ac­ter mod­els and entic­ing back­grounds. Because it’s basi­cal­ly a remake, the back­grounds are ref­er­ences to pre­vi­ous stages but with a more mod­ern cleanup job applied. I absolute­ly loved the orig­i­nal Soul­cal­ibur’s look and still do, and this ver­sion does good in remind­ing me of why that is. While not quite as ground­break­ing in its graph­ics as the arcade and Dream­cast port were 25 years ago, they’re still quite breath­tak­ing and beautiful.

And, there isn’t too much to dis­like about Soul­cal­ibur VI. I’m not fond of the AI dif­fi­cul­ty, which seems a lit­tle too spot­ty. A few match­es felt like rub­ber band­ing in the sec­ond round if I won the first round, but then if there was a third round, the AI would just stand there and let me wail away. That’s weird in a fight­ing game, but then again, most Soul­cal­ibur entries felt that way in the begin­ning of the series. I just wish that was fixed by the sixth game.

Over­all, Soul­cal­ibur VI tries to make up for the mis­steps of the past with a sol­id re-imag­in­ing and return to its roots. Though it’s been five years since release and no new con­tent has been on the hori­zon, it’s a still a viable fight­ing game for those who haven’t dived back into the world of souls. The soul still burns in this rehabbed and reformed sequel.

Mega Man X Legacy Collection — Issue 47

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A good start to a long-last­ing legacy

I’m a huge Mega Man fan. It start­ed with the orig­i­nal series and evolved to include the X series. Fear­less GI leader Lyn­d­sey gift­ed me a trea­sure trove of Mega Man X games wor­thy of Cap­com’s next gen­er­a­tion blue titan, and Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion has risen to the top of the pile.

The first disc of Lega­cy Col­lec­tion cov­ers the first four MMX games that were released for the SNES and PSOne. In these games, you con­trol our favorite hero in blue or his lat­er part­ner Zero in their quest to achieve peace in the future. Each game has a dif­fer­ent sto­ry that builds on the pre­vi­ous game, but over­all X and Zero are the stars of the show with var­i­ous ver­sions of long­time antag­o­nist Sig­ma attempt­ing to achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Each of the first four games has var­i­ous boss­es X or Zero faces with the suc­cess­ful result of gain­ing the boss’ weapon or skill that can be used for var­i­ous lev­els. X has a slight advan­tage in the game by using hid­den upgrade cham­bers designed by the late Dr. Light that increas­es fire­pow­er, speed and protection. 

The val­ue of the first disc is per­fect for fans or those begin­ning the X series and increas­es with the ani­me-inspired designs of heroes and vil­lains, which encour­ages replay of all the col­lec­tion’s games. This first disc also has a lot of inter­est­ing ele­ments that include pre­sent­ing 16-bit and ani­me-style inter­mis­sion screens that were includ­ed when the games were orig­i­nal­ly released. Cap­com also intro­duced a high-res­o­lu­tion fil­ter, giv­ing the game’s graph­ics a stream­lined yet col­or­ful approach and a unique box frame for each game. A music play­er con­tain­ing all the music from the orig­i­nal games also rounds out the pre­sen­ta­tion extras, which were nice. 

One of the oth­er cool addi­tions is the X Chal­lenge, which pits you against two leg­endary boss­es of the series while choos­ing three weapons to use. This requires some fore­thought and under­stand­ing of the series’ mechan­ics, which is a wel­come change of pace when you want some­thing dif­fer­ent from the sto­ry modes. I also thought that the art gallery and the ani­mat­ed movie focus­ing on Sig­ma was a nice touch. 

The only crit­i­cism I had of the col­lec­tion is with some of the oth­er extras. Cap­com decid­ed to show off nev­er-before-seen Mega Man X col­lectibles that were only avail­able in Japan. Cap­com nev­er did license these out­side of Japan, mak­ing fans like me curse them for their dense busi­ness prac­tices. Because, real­ly, why would you tease oth­er regions with this, know­ing Mega Man is glob­al? It just seems like anoth­er slap in the face where Mega Man is concerned. 

Mega Man X Lega­cy Col­lec­tion is a great trib­ute to the X series. Despite my hang-ups with Cap­com, this is a great love let­ter to Mega Man X fans and can be a tem­plate to con­tin­ue the sto­ry of X and company.

Capcom Fighting Collection — Issue 47

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Give this col­lec­tion a fight­ing chance

Cap­com tends to tread a lot of the same ground these days. Whether it’s “get­ting back to their roots” with Street Fight­er’s mod­ern ver­sions or return­ing to the past with a lot of upgrad­ed col­lec­tions, Cap­com sure has a way of remind­ing you that, yes, they made Street Fight­er and a bunch of oth­er fight­ing games. The ques­tion is do we care? Yes and no, if this cur­rent col­lec­tion is to be judged.

I will admit that, despite being a strict Mor­tal Kom­bat old head, I am inclined to speak up about my favorite genre in fight­ing games and how it relates to Cap­com. This col­lec­tion, filled to the brim with noth­ing but Cap­com fight­ers, aims to show that Cap­com had some hits and mem­o­rable prop­er­ties. Fight­ing Col­lec­tion fea­tures 10 entries: Vampire/Darkstalkers 1–3, Vam­pire Hunter 2, Vam­pire Sav­ior 2, Cyber­bots: Full Met­al Mad­ness, WarZard/Red Earth, Hyper Street Fight­er II: The Anniver­sary Edi­tion, Super Gem Fight­er Mini Mix/Pocket Fight­er and Super Puz­zle Fight­er II Tur­bo, with the North Amer­i­can or Japan­ese ver­sions avail­able for play. In all cas­es, these are arcade rom ver­sions gath­ered togeth­er in one spot and you can freely switch between them on free play. Col­lec­tion-wise, this is a top-tier pack­age for those who love fight­ing games made by Cap­com. Main­stream mon­ey mak­er that’s still around today? That’s Hyper Street Fight­er II. Obscure weird fight­er that no one even knows that Cap­com made it? Take your pick from Cyber­bots and WarZard. Cutesy, chibi fight­er that unabashed­ly mocks its mak­er? Puz­zle Fight­er and Pock­et Fight­er have that on lock. Defunct series that should still be a thing, but Cap­com does­n’t pay atten­tion? All of the Vam­pire you can pos­si­bly shake a stick at sat­is­fies that require­ment. There is lit­er­al­ly some­thing for every­one here. But the ques­tion is, do you want it, espe­cial­ly now that you know what’s avail­able here? As ear­li­er, yes and no.

While the pre­sen­ta­tion is top-notch, the actu­al assort­ment of the games involved is a mixed bag. Gen­tle read­ers, I just com­piled and cre­at­ed an entire issue devot­ed to Vam­pire (Edi­tor’s note: That’d be Issue 46. Go down­load it now if you haven’t.) and its inner work­ings and the his­to­ry behind the series. Know­ing that, please explain to me why I have Vam­pire burnout and why I had it before I did that issue because of this col­lec­tion. Cap­com does this song and dance every sin­gle time Vam­pire is whis­pered some­where by some unsus­pect­ing gamer who loves the series and wants to see it once more have its day in the sun. I wrote an entire col­umn in that pre­vi­ous issue dis­cussing the need for a Vam­pire revival — a new game, not an old rehash — and how we were nev­er going to get that because Cap­com does the series dirty constantly. 

Well, would­n’t you know it, Cap­com pulled a skunk out of their hat by includ­ing all of the Vam­pire games here. It’s like they said, “Well, you asked for more Vam­pire. Here, be sat­is­fied that we released all of them final­ly in North Amer­i­ca and shut up.” You know, I’m slight­ly hap­py but I’m more offend­ed than any­thing else. Because, as you should have read by now gen­tle read­er, Cap­com is nev­er going to give us a new Vam­pire game with­out there being some weird­ness attached. And because this col­lec­tion sold “OK,” — not great, just OK — you know we aren’t get­ting a new game. Because it did­n’t set the world on fire in sales does­n’t mean the demand isn’t there. But I digress. Every­thing else in this col­lec­tion has been released in some way, shape or form in either region, so it was­n’t nec­es­sary for their inclu­sion, either. 

What I would have pre­ferred to see are Rival Schools, Project Jus­tice, Star Glad­i­a­tor and Plas­ma Sword. These are defunct Cap­com series that they also like to act like they did­n’t cre­ate. Rival Schools and Project Jus­tice are espe­cial­ly egre­gious because while they’ve been port­ed to PlaySta­tion Net­work, we haven’t got­ten a full, unal­tered port of either game. A mod­ern trans­la­tion of the board game and sim­u­la­tion mode in both games is not that hard, but I digress again because we know we are nev­er get­ting it. It’s a shame because this col­lec­tion as pulled togeth­er in 2022 could have used some bet­ter curation.

While I love Cap­com fight­ing games, I’m OK about this col­lec­tion. It’s nice to have these in a mod­ern pack­age for mod­ern con­soles but I’m not enthused about the behind-the-scenes fool­ish­ness that could have been avoid­ed with bet­ter curat­ing on Cap­com’s part. There are some heavy hit­ters that could have been includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly that would have made it a bet­ter pack­age, and the extras includ­ed could have been bet­ter also. How­ev­er, it’s not a ter­ri­ble pack­age and is infi­nite­ly use­ful and valu­able to the fight­ing game pop­u­la­tion so it’s not a total wash. Cap­com could col­lect bet­ter, though.