Saturday, February 22, 2014

Shenmue 3 teased in Japanese PS4 ad?

Look we've been down that road and I pretty much gave up on the idea of Shenmue 3 after the PS3 and 360 were released.  The fact of the matter is, PS4 needs more IP. Yu Suzuki needs funding for Shenmue 3.  Seeing as how the Last Guardian is making the jump to PS4 (see VGCHARTZ.com). And Mark Cerney is now working with Yu Suzuki on a speech at GDC, I consider it a strong possibility.  Now it's been revealed during a launch commercial for the Japanese PS4,  the use name is "RYO H" as in Ryo Hazuki, the protagonist of Shenmue .  At 25 seconds into the video above you see the PS4 user's name: Ryo H.  Look, at heart, I'm a detective, I'm not allowed to believe in coincidence.
See the article in N4G.com http://n4g.com/news/1460751/is-sony-teasing-shenmue-on-ps4
  Looks like I made a good choice getting a PS4.  (see Dualshockers for the full story)

In other news on Dual Shockers, David Jaffe (God of War creator) is working on a new PS4 game, Naughty Dog says there's a "Fifty Percent" chance we'll see The Last of Us 2 on PS4, and they are impressed with its memory capabilities.  Characters of The Order 1886 are made up of over 100,000 polygons.  Yakuza Ishin has released, and is the top selling PS4 game.   Capcom is promising a Deep Down beta coming very soon.

  In other news, it's been leaked that Sony is working on Gran Turismo 7 Prologue as we speak.  As many predicted, The Last Guardian is making the jump to PS4. Now will hat be impetus for them to finish the damn game or is it a new excuse for them to delay it another 3 years?

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Godokunodan Challenges Flash to a First to Ten at SEGA CUP 2014!!



For those of you who don't know, SEGA CUP is Sega's annual Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown tournament. $16,000 in prizes will be given away.  The Tournament is Saturday, April 26 2014 at Super Arcade in Walnut California. Alex Vale of Famed Level Up , will be hosting the event.  I go by the gamer handle Godokunodan" (Five Deadly Venoms) and basically terrorize the VFDC gamer population by beating their toons in humilating fashion, record the fight and post it on Youtube. Hilarity Ensues. I Met Chief Flash, the 2008 World Cyber Games VF champ at EVO 2012.  He came up to me and said " I gotta tell you brother, I gotta shake your hand! The Videos you do are hilarious.    "  I was honored. It made me laugh because I was vindicated. Not everybody wants to be overly polite to each other on VFDC! Flash was a like minded person!.  He wouldn't say it on VFDC, because then they would condemn him like they do me.  A few months later, Flash formed One Frame Kill blog with the original VF Troll, SHang.  They took my tactic of filming one beatdown of an opponent and squared it: They decided to compete with each other to beat the hapless player 10 times. And thus the "Rape Room " was born. "Rape " in this instance is in the video game tense: really badly OWNING someone. Which brings us to present day. Flash has transformed into a heel, just like me, and now there are more copy cats coming out of the woodwork and going to the dark side every day.  Jacko, T-Spam, even SDS Overfiend has made a few comments about wanting to become a VF villain . Its great!! I have inspired chaos!!!  Anyway, Shang and crew have currently targeted a member of my NYC_VF crew: Tricky. This will not stand. Tricky is more than capable of defending himself, but if you attack one of NYC VF, you attack us ALL!!   I will take on Chief Flash in a F T 10 match at Sega Cup, since Shang is too pussy to show to Sega Cup, I'll take it out on Flash!!! Nothing Personal , brother!!!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Will Shenmue 3 debut at GDC?

When people saw the photo of Mark Cerrny and Yu Suzuki last year, a lot of rumors started going around that they might collaborate on Shenmue 3 for PS4.  I didn't want to get my hopes up.  Recently it has been announced that Yu Suzuki will be doing a post mortem speech on Shenmue at Game Developers Conference in March 2014.  Mark Cerny will be translating Suzuki san's speech at the event.  Now I would like to speculate that there might be a Shenmue announcement there, but after years of delays and missed opportuinities to see Shenume return, I was keeping my expectations cautiously low.  recently even Gamespot.com has predicted that GDC 2014 will actually feature a Yu Suzuki announcement of Shenmue 3 for next gen consoles.   Shenmue was originally dubbed the "Virtua Fighter Rpg".  I always loved that game and the sequel.  The game was ahead of its time. It was like the precursor to open world games.  If Suzuki just took the game one step further and let you beat up and accost pedestrians, he could have stolen GTA's thunder.   The game genre was dubbed F.R.E.E.  If they gave players total freedom, like GTA, it could have been as big a commercial hit as it was a cult classic.

      The good part of the Shenmue legacy, open world adventure games , lives on.  Unfortunately the bad part of Shenmue's legacy, QTE's,  also lives on.   Quick Timer Events are one of the worst things to happen to gaming.  The QTE's in Shenmue 1 and 2 were actually really good. I never found myself hating them.  I guess it's because they were cinematically well done in Shenmue, that they blended better with the overall game.  I guess you could call it a good idea gone bad.  They way other companies have implemented QTE's in recent years have been so badly done that they have soured me on those things altogether.

   I think the Walking Dead games from Tell Tale Games have been the best implementaion of QTE's I've seen since Shenmue.  I'd be grateful if they ever finish Shenmue 3, QTE's and all.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Sega Cup 2014 ! Who's Up?

People will say what they will about Sega. Claims that they don't care about fans, or they won't make an announcement for VF6 on VF's 20th anniversary.  To be fair, when  has ANY company made an announcement for a sequel to a franchise exactly on it's 20th anniversary? Never.  When Sega comes through they come through big.  EVO 2012, Sega Cup 2013, and when people counted Sega out, they announced Sega Cup 2014.  Quarter Up.