All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!

[Vepariga]

http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/12/05/ps4-exclusive-ace-combat-7-gets-first-awesome-4k-screenshots-and-information/

Some really nice screenshots for AC7, looking good!

Edited December 5, 2015 by Vepariga

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

you know what's crazy ace combat 7 trailer was using in game engine. unreal 4 engine is awesome.

you know what else is crazy? Yakuza 0 is coming to retail and digital. today is a good day.

[treatment]

Interesting.

Will this be like the previous AC (assault horizon?) shenanigans with the helicopters, which was quite sucky from all reports?

or will this be like the awesome AC6?

Edited December 5, 2015 by treatment

[anime52k8]

that's the first time I've heard AC6 called awesome.

[treatment]

that's the first time I've heard AC6 called awesome.

It was awesome to me with my xb360.

Pretty straightforward and exciting shoot-em-ups and no weird shenanigans like those in AH.

I remember playing AH at Fry's and couldn't figure out why the boss was still alive after I alpha-strike hit the motherlovin' out of it multiple times.

[mikeszekely]

that's the first time I've heard AC6 called awesome.

It wasn't the best game in the series, but it was light years better than Assault Horizon.

[Chronocidal]

It was a lot better if you played it and paid no attention whatsoever to the story, but going from 50+ aircraft in AC5 and Zero to something like 15 in AC6 was just incredibly jarring and lame. Though, I will admit, I had a lot of fun with the Itano Circus launcher on the superplane.

But yeah, "better than assault horizon" doesn't take much. What they did with that game was basically fanbase-i-cide.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Chronocidal

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

another few trailers coming at ya:

Nioh was started by Koei-Tecmo and finished by team ninja, sorta looks like dynasty warriors and slower paced ninja gaiden

Indie games:

This is from a euro team with members of FF7 and FFtactics:

also the ps indie games from adult swim looked surprisingly interesting:

Death's Gambit and Rain World looked like retro 2d scrollers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oOGlpY0aHg#t=27

i thought overall PSX was a good showing. got me excited looking forward to the coming year.

Edited December 6, 2015 by davidwhangchoi

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

Just a heads up on a good deal

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax - PS3 - $11.53 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Persona-4-A...na+4+arena

i just ordered.

[no3Ljm]

So cool to watch it in Japanese.

Yoshinori Kitase talks about remaking fan favorite Final Fantasy VII for the PS4.

Edited December 7, 2015 by no3ljm

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

So cool to watch it in Japanese.

Yoshinori Kitase talks about remaking fan favorite Final Fantasy VII for the PS4.

thanks for the vids noel! nice to see the interview. i'm so hyped for this.

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

terrible news yesterday. FF7 remake is going to be multi part series. i hope it doesn't mean episodic content.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/6/9859580/final-fantasy-7-remake-will-be-a-multi-part-series

Kotaku is reporting square responded

http://kotaku.com/sounds-like-the-final-fantasy-vii-remake-will-be-episod-1746564216

"It means instead of concluding in one entry, multiple entries are being considered in development. Each entry will have its own unique story. As a gaming experience, each entry will have the volume of content equal to a full-sized game."

sounds like it may be like ff13...

Epic announced FF7R is using unreal engine 4, and more info from neogaf highlighted below:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1152062

Quick stuff from interviews

-they made multi-release since they would have to cut stuff out if they made it in one game. The detail of the game will be so dense, and you will be able to go to various locations within Midgar that you couldn't go before.
-there will be some stuff that has to be cut, but there will be lots of stuff added. overall volume will be big
-They are working with various companies outside, including CC2
-The battle system is real-time, action feel. The degree of action will be "Dissidia > Kingdom Hearts> FF7 remake" It will be more tactical.
-Although it's action style, it has ATB as well.
-You can control other party members, but you can keep control one if you want
-3 party members at a time like the original

some stuff I didn't put in my first summary
-Character model is supervised by Visual Work's director.
-They don't want to go with 100% realism for the characters since it might make it hard to recognize certain characters. So they are going as real as possible, while keeping the character's personality.
-Advent Children model data is over 10 years old so they can't really use it.
-Everything from the trailer (excluding the stuff that was shown from E3 reveal) was real-time. The end scene where Cloud gets off the train, it transitions directly to the gameplay.
-Cloud looking sick is partly due to the lighting. Nojima likes that Cloud looks very sick.
-Cross-dressing is obviously in the game, but Nomura didn't design it yet.
-All the party member's design is renewed like Barret.
-At first they thought of going with AC design of Barret, but decided not to.
-ATB and Limit gauge is there but they are different from the original. ATB turning red is something important.
-Battle tempo will be similar to Dissidia. Battle is done by people who has experience in both Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts..

Edited December 7, 2015 by davidwhangchoi

[dizman]

The game I never knew I needed in my life, 100ft Robot Golf! It's sad but I'm more excited for this than AC7.

[no3Ljm]

thanks for the vids noel! nice to see the interview. i'm so hyped for this.

terrible news yesterday. FF7 remake is going to be multi part series. i hope it doesn't mean episodic content.

You're welcome David. Me too. Superhype. I really don't mind spending time playing this one. As for the content, I guess, we need to spend atleast $200-300 for the additional content on this one. Oh well... that's how the trend goes when it comes with video games. But to be honest, I really don't mind adding story content into. It will make the experience worthwhile playing this one. I just hope that making Midgar bigger means we can spend too much time with it too and not on the open world map after.

[renegadeleader1]

Given FF7's scope and scale I'm not surprised at all its going to be split up into different releases. I'm disapointed with the battle system though.

[mikeszekely]

Well, my Shield finally arrived today. I didn't get a lot of time to mess with it yet, but here's some initial thoughts:

-The decision to use Android TV instead of regular Android was an interesting one. The interface is clearly much better to navigate with a remote or controller than regular Android, but for the less savvy it also limits the apps that can run on it, as the Google Play store will only display apps optimized for Android TV. Fortunately, Android TV is mostly Android with a different launcher, so it's possible to download/create APK files and sideload them. Just be sure to grab an app that can show sideloaded content.

-Setup was simple and easy. Voice recognition is built into both the controller and the remote, and seems to work pretty well. The menus are snappy, and there's no lag anywhere.

-Plenty of multimedia apps available. Youtube, Google Play Movies/Music, and Plex are all preloaded, and I was able to find Pluto TV, Kodi, VLC, Crackle, Hulu Plus, MX Player, Drama Fever, HBO Now, etc very easily. The apps I tested (Netflix and Pluto TV) worked as expected.

-Built-in Google Cast, so it doubles as a Chromecast.

-Haven't tried gaming or streaming with it yet. Probably not until the weekend, when my wife can watch the baby.

-Hardware seems solid. The console itself is a little smaller than a hardback book, and about half and inch thick. It's made of pretty unremarkable plastic, but it's built with an uneven, angular top. When the system is on, that leaves what looks like a glowing green check along the top. It's kind of cool. Likewise, the controller is solid, with a good feel and heft, but probably not as good as the PS4 or Xbox One's. The remote is really nice, though. Most of the front is plastic, but the back and edges wrapping around onto the front are aluminum. The buttons (enter, back, home, and microphone) are a higher-quality plastic, with a dpad wheel around the enter button. Instead of volume buttons, it's got a capacitive sensor in the middle. Slide up to increase the volume, slide down to decrease it. And one thing I really dig is that, like the higher-end Rokus, there's a headphone jack built into the remote if you want to watch Netflix or something without disturbing a spouse/partner/roommate/etc.

-The console has two USB ports on the back. They can be used to charge accessories like the remote and controller, both of which have built-in rechargeable batteries, but they can also be used to load flash drives. There's also a microSDXC slot which is great for people like me who opted to buy the cheaper 16GB console.

All-in-all, it's a pretty impressive as a media player. Pretty much all the streaming options except Amazon Prime Instant Video are there, as well as plenty of apps for streaming from a media server or loading content from a USB drive. I don't know if it's good enough to justify the price tag, regularly $200 for the console and another $50 for the remote, but it beats the heck out of Chromecast or Roku and makes the Black Friday pricing of $149 with a free remote seem totally worth it. Indeed, the only devices I own that are better media players (excluding PCs) are my PS3, PS4, and Xbox One, all of which are more expensive.

Who knows if it's worth it as a gaming console, though. I mean, there's a Shield Hub where you can buy games optimized for Shield, but they're mostly PC ports that I already have. And as a serious PC gamer, Android gaming in general hasn't been particularly attractive. The Shield could make a pretty fantastic retro console, although it seems a lot of emulators will need to be sideloaded. That said, though, there are some good games available on the Shield (for example, I was surprised to see that I bought Final Fantasy III for Android at some point), so if you don't have much in the way of gaming consoles and don't feel like investing in something like a PS4 you'll probably find something to play. Plus there's PC streaming if you have a computer that meets the requirements, and a cloud-based PC streaming sub service. I'm going to give the three months a try, so I'll let you know how that turns out later.

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

Well, my Shield finally arrived today. I didn't get a lot of time to mess with it yet, but here's some initial thoughts:

Thanks Mike for the review, i was staring at the shield during blk friday w/ the bonus remote, curious how you felt about it, sounds like it fits what you were looking for

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

omg! this Yakuza 5 game is awesome and has nice little details.

in a shop right now. you can pick up manga issues and start reading them. They have Initial D, Attack on Titan, Ghost in the Shell,etc. nice touch!.

Edited December 8, 2015 by davidwhangchoi

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

This is kind of silly but got this in the mail today:)

Asdide from that, i played Yakuza 5 till 4am in the morning. I put the Wasteland on hold. Btw, Fallout 4 pc patch went out today.

[GU-11]

This multi-part series thing for the FF7 Remake could be a deal breaker for me. The whole thing they got going with FF-13 1/2/3 never sat well with me. And anyone remember Xenosaga? They originally planned for 6 parts, and hastily wrapped it up in 3 due to staff quitting or being transferred (if memory serves). A story series being suddenly cut short inevitably leads to narrative problems, and when you're dealing with a series that can take years to finish, something's got to give somewhere down the line.

What worries me the most is that they didn't even say how many parts there are going to be. Could be 3 parts, or it could be 10. And I don't want to be waiting for years just to complete the whole story.

Yakuza 5 puts a smile on my face though. Can't wait to pickup a copy!

Edited December 9, 2015 by GU-11

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

Had a question from Yakuza 5 (there's college student you help prep for college exam)

Any math majors

Question:

What is the probability of getting a total of seven when you roll two dice?

[anime52k8]

1 in 6

[David Hingtgen]

Xenosaga's problem wasn't that it was cut down, it's that they chose to focus on the least-important least-interesting aspects in the space they had left. Heck, Kos-Mos was basically an extended cameo in Episode 2. "let's have the entire game be about Jr and his clones".

Ziggy's cell-phone game backstory seemed more interesting than XS Ep 2.

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

1 in 6

the game said that is correct, awesome thanks! ~ pretty smart.

The questions starting to get really hard...

Physics:

Question: what do you call the energy that an object possesses based on its mass and its height above the Earth's surface? (i'm just going to google this one since it's straight forward and not a random math problem)

this is such an awesome game with these neat side quests.

Edited December 9, 2015 by davidwhangchoi

[Major Focker]

potential energy

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

potential energy

yes, the correct answer was gravitational PE.

was able to google most of them except the probability one.

i got 2500 bonus xp!

Yakuza 5 is screwing up my day schedule but it's been a blast. i never had so much fun collecting trash all over the city for community service rank (mini quest)

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

Game Informer: "New Persona 5 Details You Won't Find Anywhere Else" (released today 12/9)

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/12/09/persona-5-story-and-characters-interview-katsura-hashino.aspx

Let’s talk about the main cast: the protagonist, Ann, Ryuji, Yusuke, and Morgana. What do you think makes each cast member interesting?

The protagonist himself has a similar character as the heroes from the previous games – silent and cool, where you don’t always know what he’s thinking. This is mainly because we want the player to be able to empathize and identify with the protagonist, so he can better serve as the player’s avatar during the game. However, since he’s something of a roguish antihero leading this story of thrilling phantom heists, we’ve added a nuance of brash audacity to his character. Ryuji meets the protagonist in April, on the first day of school, and ends up a crucial part of starting the group of phantom thieves. With a shared secret, and their loyal reliance on each other, he and the protagonist make great partners in crime. He has kind of a mischievous personality, and through their exploits as the phantom thieves, he wants to reform society and make their names infamous around the world. Ann is one of the game’s heroines. Since she’s lived abroad, she has a distinct, foreign air about her that draws people’s attention. However, they also tend to keep her at an emotional distance because of it. Yusuke has great artistic talent, and he’s seen as an oddball who thinks differently than most people. Lastly, there’s Morgana... At first glance, you might assume [he or she is] merely the mascot character of this title, but [he or she is] quite well-informed on the strange “other world”; more so than the protagonist and his team. Morgana takes the role of a prideful instructor, and has a very particular set of standards for the expected aesthetics and conduct of a phantom thief. However, even Morgana has no idea of [his or her] own origins, and quests in search of those answers. [Note: Atlus would not confirm Morgana's gender]

Resident Evil 0 is coming out Jan 16th

it has an all new

Wesker Mode:

Edited December 9, 2015 by davidwhangchoi

[mikeszekely]

I didn't get my copy of GI yet. Or I did, and I didn't read it. What's the cover?

While I don't have thoughts on Persona 5 (except that I want it), nor do I wish to interrupt the Yakuza love fest, I had a little more time to mess around with the Shield.

Basically, apps fall into three categories... works on Shield and you can get it from the Play Store for Android TV, works on Shield but you can't get it from the Android TV Play Store, and doesn't work on Shield/Android TV. The first category seems to work well enough. I played my Android copy of Final Fantasy III, and it worked brilliantly. There are also more emulators than I originally though, however not a lot of free ones (most of Robert Broglia's .emu series of emulators are available, though, and are honestly worth the cash).

The second category is a little more odd. While you can download or rip apk files then load them with a file explorer app, sometimes apps that don't show up in the Android TV Play Store still work on the Shield, and you can get them by logging into the Google Play Store on your PC's web browser, finding the app you want, and then picking to send it to the Shield. In some cases, like PPSSPP, that created an icon like any other Shield game/app. In other cases, like Mupen64, it didn't. However, there are apps you can download (like the aptly-named Sideload Launcher) that will show all the apps installed on the Shield, not just Android TV-compatible ones. Depending on the app, it may work fine with a little tweaking of the settings like Mupen64 did, or it might work with some issues like Nostalgia did.

The third category are basically apps with no controller support. I guess it might be possible to sideload them, but the Shield doesn't have the feature that the Shield Tablet does to map touch controls onto the controller, so there's no point.

Now, like I mentioned before, there are probably more Android games with controller support worth playing (especially if you don't own a gaming PC/console already), but it's a relatively minor draw for me. Where the Shield really excels, though, is as a retro gaming console. I ran the following emulators and tested with these games:

NES.emu (Nintendo) - Mega Man 3

Snes9x EX+ (Super Nintendo) - Super Mario All-Stars

GBA.emu (Gameboy Advance) - Mega Man Zero

MD.emu (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Sonic the Hedgehog

PPSSPP (PSP) - Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception

FPse (PlayStation) - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Mupen64+AE Free (N64) - Super Mario 64

All but Mupen show up in the regular Android TV home screen and worked fine with the buttons pre-mapped and working on the Shield controller, with the usual stuff you expect from modern emulators like a fast-forward option and save states. That said, they all had plenty of options to tweak. I was even able to map the right d-pad button for player 2 to the R1 button, making the cheaty super jump in Mega Man 3 cake. All of the games ran at full speed without any hiccups or glitches (that weren't deliberate, like emulating slowdown or sprite flickering that was in the original game). Mupen launched fine, recognized the controller, and was totally playable, but it had to be launched via Sideload Launcher since it doesn't show on the homescreen, and I had to tweak the settings a bit to get rid of the on-screen touchscreen controls and to enable non-touch menus. As I mentioned, I also tried Nostalgia, but the free version didn't have enough tweakable settings to be comfortably workable with only a controller. So of the emulators I listed, the only free ones are PPSSPP, Snes9x EX+, and Mupen64+AE. I bought the rest, but they were all $5 or less. If you really don't want to pay, there are plenty of free emulators for Android out there, but to me it was worth it to get ones that worked perfectly with Android TV and a controller.

Added bonus: Sony has a PS4 remote play app they released for their Xperia devices, but the fine folks at the XDA forums have ported it to an apk file that can be used on many Android devices, including the Shield. I hear you can even use a DualShock 4 over USB (although the Shield controller is supported). I'm going to try that next.

EDIT: Yeah, that didn't work. The app installed, and I could launch it through Sideload Launcher, but whenever I'd tell it to look for my PS4 it'd pop up a "You don't have an app for that" message.

Updated impression: I'm digging what the Shield can do a bit more. With how much space PlayStation and PSP ISOs can take up, I'm starting to wish I'd have bought the 500GB version, but I was able to put my entire NES/SNES/GBA/Genesis collections and a few favorite PSP, N64, and PlayStation games onto a 32GB microSD card with room to spare. I'll just pick up a 128GB card later, and beyond there's always USB storage.

Still yet to test: PC to Shield streaming, Nvidia's PC game cloud streaming service.

Edited December 10, 2015 by mikeszekely

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

nice detailed write-up mike. how powerful is the cpu/gpu, you think it can emulate ps2 games as well?

[mikeszekely]

nice detailed write-up mike. how powerful is the cpu/gpu, you think it can emulate ps2 games as well?

Well, it's tough to say. AFAIK, there is one PS2 emulator available for Android, but it's still early in development and doesn't run well on anything. And for it to really work on Shield, it has to be navigable entirely with a controller.

The PS2's Cell architecture is just a pain in the rear to emulate. I mean, even with a relatively mature PS2 emulator on a Windows PC with an i7, 16GB of RAM, and a GTX 970 PS2 emulation is pretty hit or miss.

That said, I just installed a Dreamcast emulator on it (but I don't have any Dreamcast ISOs, so I can't test it right now). And I've heard people having some luck running Dolphin, a Gamecube/Wii emulator, although I probably won't try that until Dolphin 5.0. The last stable release is two years old, and the version in the Play Store is even older.

EDIT: I know you asked about power... it's hard to compare to PC CPU/GPU performance, since ARM vs. x86 is kind of an apples/oranges thing. AFAIK, though, the Shield Tegra X1 is the best SOC out there, blowing Apple's A8X (the iPad Air 2's) chipset out of the water, and beating the A9 (iPhone 6s) in multithread and GPU performance (the A9 takes it in single thread). It's expected that Apple's A9X will outperform it in the CPU department, but still lag on the GPU side.

Edited December 11, 2015 by mikeszekely

[mikeszekely]

After playing Final Fantasy III all night, I'm a little lukewarm on the Shield controller. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty solid controller, but the ergonomics just feel off, and the d-pad is kind of mediocre. Plus, I find myself occasionally hitting the volume buttons when I don't mean to. Lastly, while it hasn't caused an issue for me in a game yet, I kind of think I'd prefer physical buttons to the Shield controller's capacitive back, start, home, and power buttons.

I'm strongly considering picking up Razer's Serval controller. Although it was meant to be used with Razer's Forge Android TV console, it's a standard bluetooth device so it works with just about all Android devices (including the Shield) and even PCs. I here it even comes with a clip so you can use it with a phone, which could be nice since Final Fantasy III supports cloud saves. I haven't been able to test a Serval personally, but I have a Razer Sabertooth and my only complaints with the Sabretooth were that it's wired-only and that the mechanical buttons are a little louder than I'd prefer. The big strike against the Serval, though, is that it's pretty expensive. Direct from Razer it's $80, and Amazon sellers are asking over $90.

Interestingly enough, the Forge TV hasn't been a hit with consumers. While initial press was that it was a huge improvement from Google's own Nexus Player, the Forge TV is best know now as "the only Android TV device without Netflix." So, Amazon Warehouse Deals seems to have a number of the regularly $150 Forge TV + Serval bundles in the $75 range. As that's cheaper than a Serval by itself, I'm kind of tempted...

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

i woke up to this article on kotaku this morning:

http://kotaku.com/you-really-need-to-play-the-yakuza-games-1747406314

i whole heartily agree everyone with a ps3 needs to give Yakuza a try.

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

more Yakuza love:

Debut Trailer for 6 just came out today:

this is the first game built for ps4 ground up: Please let yakuza 5 and zero sell alot in the west. i need this game!!!

such nice details:

[Scyla]

So after picking up Dishonored at release date (which was apparently over three years ago) I finally was able to play it and finish it today. It is a really well done game and I recommend it if you haven't played it already. Sadly I've encountered some quick safe glitches so I wasn't able to finish it with no kills and no alerts on the first run. I'm debating right now if I should:

1. Buy the DCL
2. Play it again with the highest difficult setting and no kills/alerts
3. Play something else

At the moment I'm tending to 3. and start Witcher 2 (a game I also bought on release date and never played) or finish the Dragon Age trilogy with Inquisition. Hm decisions decisions. I think I will play Transformers: Fall of Cybertron first which I've gotten during the last Steam sale.

[edit:] Regarding FF7: I'm sure the game will be disappointing.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Scyla

[Guest davidwhangchoi]

Still yet to test: PC to Shield streaming, Nvidia's PC game cloud streaming service.

mike s. how is the PC to shield streaming, were you able to test it out? i think you got a good deal for this on blk friday.