Ben-DutkaIf I haven't said it before, Happy Holidays to everyone! 'Tis the season…and I love this time of year, don't you? 🙂
I don't know what to say, Kojima…I just don't know what to say
At first, my reaction to Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima saying he wanted to stretch his wings (which we've heard him say before) was the same as everyone else's: "Hell yes, go for it!" And I certainly believe he has earned the right to try just about anything; Konami should be willing to publish any title that comes from Kojima Productions, whether it be another MGS installment or a brand new IP. Kojima is also a bona fide visionary of the industry and a legitimate legend. That all being said, what he says about not having shown the world what he can really do might be true; after all, besides Zone of the Enders , what has he done outside of MGS?
And in some ways, that worries me a little. I know it's sacrilegious to say but grand masters in any art form can't do everything ; they all have their own styles and strengths. So it'd be irrational to assume that Kojima can make any game in any genre and it'll turn out to be top-tier AAA quality. And to be honest, I would want him to try something drastically different…even though the end result could be iffy. There's only one thing I fear- A black mark on Kojima's career, which is what a failed new IP would be. I mean, that would just suck. I really don't want to see that.
Agni's Philosophy took a year, huh?
It's not that I wasn't impressed by that awesome tech demo. I think just about everyone was, at least to some extent. And I also don't believe the production of this demo actually took away from development on any upcoming game, like Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy Versus XIII . There's just one thing that bothers me- Several game designers, including David Cage and Keiji Inafune have stated that we're focusing too heavily on technological achievement these days, and we need to turn our attention to emotional drama and real character/plot substance. Now, what I get from a tech demo is nothing but a high-tech vibe. I understand what could be done with it from a story/character perspective but I'm not actually seeing it yet.
In short, I'm just worried that Square Enix is going to keep going down this "more flash, less substance" path. If you take a full year to create a series of pretty pictures, you seem to have technology as a top priority. And while there's no doubt that the Final Fantasy franchise has often excelled in the realm of technological accomplishment, that is not the problem Square Enix has right now. But then again, look what company I'm talking about? The corporate equivalent of a gigantic identity crisis.
Personal gaming update
Woo-hoo! Finally got a chance to get back to Assassin's Creed III , which is just plain amazing. I also want to finish Hitman: Absolution at some point; it's a really solid game and lots of fun to play. Then there's Okami HD , which reminded me of a PS2 classic's greatness. I have to take one more break from ACIII to deal with Far Cry 3 – review coming ASAP – but after that, I might be able to actually play what I want for more than an hour at a time. You just don't get anywhere doing that.
I hope people enjoyed that Wendy Braun interview ; it's always nice to talk to a cheerful, dedicated individual who loves what she does and enjoys trying new things within her craft. There are too many freakin' whiners these days. Too much bitching and moaning and complaining. I prefer to hear from successful, driven, charismatic individuals, thank you very much.
Kojima is a perfectionist. I believe he will excel at whatever he puts his mind to. Besides being a visionary in the gaming industry, he also backs it up with superb work ethic, which is why I seriously doubt he will fail at any new venture.
PGU: With the birth of my baby daughter this week, I've taken a break from gaming. Hopefully soon, it'll be baby on my arm with dualshock controller in my hands!
Congrats man!
My 16-month-old daughter kept me from the controller for a bit as well. Don't worry you'll pick up the controller again eventually, but enjoy the little spud while she's tiny (they grow surprisingly fast)!
Thanx mate. She's actually my 3rd. So I should be a seasoned veteran at juggling parenting with the odd bit of gaming.
Congrats on your newest lil' future gamer!
i hate this time of year simply because the family always finds something new to fight about.
thank god my godson has his wedding on in jan, so were using that as a excuse to go away for the holiday period.
as i said before the guy needs to grow some balls and stand up for himself!
im not so sure konami is the issue though, it seems allot more like he does not have faith in his team.
its like hes sitting there watching them buy then has to come in and rescue the project.
he needs to let it go and just say whatever, if they screw it up they screw it up i need to move on!
otherwise he will never get onto something different, and will die the MGS man.
of course there putting a high emphasis on technology, especially when next gen systems are suppose to be released this time next year!
i wouldent be surprised if square ends up distributing it within their studios, so its really important for them to be putting allot of time behind it now that way once systems are out the engines out of the way they can just make their games.
imagine the next sleeping dogs, or neir, or hitman, or even tomb raider running on this!
or maybe they will even go into the licensing route?
doubt it, but its possible.
ive been juggling between FC3, hitman, the walking dead and wiiu stuff.
hitman i had to give a break its really starting to bore me!
they dragged the game on FAR too much!
it starts to get really repetitive towards the end and its as if they started to run out of ideas, especially the environments start to get a little bland and boring.
there allot less open and designed to stealth with multiple paths as the earlier levels.
just finished the walking dead today, god what a ending, what a game!
ok it ended on a cliffhanger, as usual, but besides that its such a awesome game!
i cant wait to see what the next series has in store for us.
id like to see the next series change what happens though, one thing that really bugged me with this is you really feel helpless.
when things happen you feel they happened because thats how the games made, not because you f*cked up or did something for it to happen.
just takes a bit of the impact out of it.
when someone dies because you forgot to board up a window it hurts, when someone dies because thats just how the games made not so much.
as for FC3, f*cking brilliant!
never thought id have so much fun just hunting animals, but you do!
only thing i wish they would add is the traps you can use from AC3, especially for the stronger or faster animals.
some are pretty easy, but others they run away so early you dont even need to be close.
either that, or theres no point attacking the tigers or things like that because you WILL die!
i never knew tigers had Kevlar Armour built into their fur…….
as for the wiiu, im really disappointed in it.
both with the games, and the system itself.
the games feel really basic and simple.
the system does not have allot of features the freaking 6 year old ps3 has!
it only supports 6 channel PCM, so no 7.1 something the 6 year old ps3 does.
the wiiu does not support WPA2-PSK wireless encryption, so i had to play around with my router and stuffed everything up took me days to fix it!
still not happy about that!
best way to describe the wiiu is a budget brand new car.
no electric windows, no air con, no ABS, no luxuries just the bare bone basics.
but the problem is the wiiu is NOT a budget console, its f*cking expensive!
its 6 years newer than the ps3, AND 140 dollars more expensive, yet it has half the features!
as for the games, new super mario brothers u for instance, just feels like the wii version through a HD filter.
not a new game.
zombiu is pretty boring and repetitive, and its also SERIOUSLY buggy!
like elder scrolls 5 buggy!
twice suffered the supermarket glitch and had to delete my save game.
how you can create a game in 2012, and not have a restart mission option is beyond me!
i mean come on ubisoft, that is game design 101!
its so sad because ninty really could of had a massive hit with the wiiu!
they have a 1 year advantage at least, they will have a price advantage, all they had to do was deliver a semi modern console!
something that feels like it deserves to exist in the 21st century.
and they could not even manage that!
way to go throw such a big advantage away ninty!
they really could of hit $ony and M$ hard next gen, simply because they have 1 year head start and their cheaper with more content.
but thats not going to matter simply because its so god dam out dated!
when is ninty going to stop this?
when are they going to stop trying to sell us a horse and cart in the age of cars?
i just cant understand why there so god dam anti technology!
especially when there kinda not, they always look for the next gimmick, so why cant they look for advances in console hardware?
Last edited by ___________ on 12/2/2012 9:01:53 AM
Hey man, you're tarnishing your image with all these thumbs up. You better say something inflammatory quick! 😉
I agree with the majority of your post.
Kojima will do great at what ever he tries. I don't think he will be bothered by deadlines. He just seems like he is untouchable right now.
PGU:
I have been enjoying Ragnarok Odyssey for the Vita. It's really a fun game and I am enjoying the Hammersmith very much with his Drill Hammer! Very cool idea as it drills enemies during the attack sequence.
Also having fun playing BOII and trying to prestige.
Everything will be put on the back burner when Far Cry 3 releases! I want to play this game so bad it's all I think about. Seen some trailers and it is going to be very special.
I think Kojima is brilliant but I think he could also get himself into trouble as he is quite ambitious. Sort of like what happened to Fumito Ueda who leads team ICO. I don't think ALL of his games are bound to be awesome as the first Zone of the Enders was not nearly as good as the second.
I liked the tech demo but at this point I just want versus 13 to come out. Any news from Square that isn't related to Versus 13 or KH3 I don't even care about to be honest.
PGU:
I have been playing Blops2 MP casually for the last week still haven't maxed out my level up mostly because I have been busy with other things.
Got a beta invite into Dota2 and I have never played a moba before but decided heck I would give it a try and boy do I love Dota2. I can't believe it took me so long to give a moba style game a try but man I'm glad I randomly got this key because its unlike any genre I have played and the layers of strategy seem endless.
I know he can make good games besides the mgs series. He did make snatcher on the sega cd and it was pretty good. So I don't doubt that he can make even better series than mgs.
Last edited by sawao_yamanaka on 12/2/2012 12:25:00 PM
After playing MGS4 i know this guy has incredible attention to detail. I think anything this 'Super Kami Guru" comes out with will be superb. I'll buy it day one. Even if it isn't MGS.
SE now thinks graphics are the most important thing? I wasn't strongly impressed by the tech demo only because it wasn't gameplay, it was a CGI cutscene. I get why people were impressed but im still trying to get over how good advent children looked, so yeah. Square's becoming more insane by the minute.
My PGU: White knight chronicles 2. I've become addicted to it. Then i also started this thing on Demons Souls. My girlfriend is into this anime called 'sword art online' and if you die in the game you die in real life. So i was like huh… So im re-playing Demons Souls and i can't die once. It's been scary because unlike dark souls, im actually trying to win. I got hit by a red knight and was almost one shot.
I've also been going crazy with Civilization V. I love strategy games and this one really is amazing. I haven't gone online yet but i really don't need to. The AI is challenging. I made this game with one continent and it was a Ceasar vs Nobunaga. I was Nobunaga, and its been intense. Them greeks sure know how to talk crap. He was constantly comparing me to the barbarians. Ah it felt great when my crossbowmen and samurai rushed 3 of his cities and conquered them. Great game by the way.
Really wish they would bring Civ V to the ps3. They 4th one is but i could never find it.
They have civilization revolutions on amazon if you still want it. I know it got good reviews but I never bothered in getting it myself.
Bit late on getting to this but… so it goes.
Kojima also had a producer role on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, so it's worthwhile to say that he knows how to create a good game. At the same time, I wouldn't really expect him to try something vastly different from what he's done before; only different enough to let people know that he isn't a one-trick pony. Either way, I'd put good money on his next game being rated 86+.
I get the feeling that the Agni's Philosophy team was really small and they were trying to do a hell of a lot more than just the video. It just seems impossible that that amount of time resulted in so little… Then again, that is S-E's forte these days so. Eh.
Personal Update:
Finished The Gunslinger, which leaves only War and Peace on my bookshelf. Read a bit of it, and I'm finding it difficult to work out which character is which, outside of a few, but I suppose that's to be expected in a tale of such exorbitant length. Can't comment on my reaction to the narrative content as yet.
And I started replaying Catherine with the intention of finishing it this time. I'm up to the seventh night now and it's bloody brilliant.
Ha, I'm another one late to the party too,
Anyway, I'm in for any new game Kojima want's to try.
As far as $E's tech demo, as I also said in another thread, I can't see why they even bothered making that new engine, since they just stated that they've signed up for more of the Unreal engine.
My own PGU…..
I just finished The Godfather: Don's Edition & really liked it.
Although there were 2 things my AI crew kept doing to infuriate me to no end…..
1. they kept bunching up in doorways & other narrow places during gunfights so I was getting killed more than I should've.
2. As I was starting my bribes of the cops, my dumb-a$$ed crew(or even my one hired guy) would start shooting at the cops instead which gave me automatic 5 badge alert against me that also got me killed needlessly, instead of having those cops help us out in gunfights. So I'd have to hide out for around 20-25 minutes just to drop that 5-badge alert.
Then I started playing The Godfather 2, but I don't know what it was about the game-changes, but I wasn't feeling the sequel at all & I promptly put it away after only 1/2 hour.
I'll probably go back to it, but I think I'll only be able to take Godfather2 game for very short spells at any one time.
So then I popped in Max Payne & I've just finished it.
Man oh man, what a great game! I absolutely loved the dark gritty theme of Max's drunken drugged up foreboding, bitterness, & of him always wanting to stagger off the deep end.
I'm not sure which game I want play next though, either Shadows Of The Damned, both Kane & Lynch's(been stuck on the construction dump truck in #1), Army Of Two:40th Day, Just Cause 2, Stranglehold: Collector's Edition, or Ghost Recon:Future Soldier.
Last edited by BikerSaint on 12/3/2012 8:34:50 AM
Kojima, just do what you wanted to do, and if somehow it fails, learn from it and keep on doing what it is that you want to do. As for Agni's Philosophy demo, I'm impressed, because it shows what they're trying to achieve in graphics for the next gen, and it's on the director on how the story goes for the game so don't put the blame on the graphics department cause they have done an amazing job in this demo.
PGU:
I'm on my second playthrough of Dead Space, it's on impossible mode, just want to get the trophy. After that, Dead Space 2 is waiting, muahahaha. I just took a glimpse and what a scary f*ck beginning. My first impression, it's going to be one hell of a ride, it might be scarier than the first.