I canceled my Resident Evil 2 deluxe pre-order. Not because the game doesn't look good, or because I didn't enjoy the demo. And it's not because the game isn't pretty clearly best on Xbox One X, though serviceable enough on XB1 (both the "basic" versions have...serious framerate issues, which are more pronounced on XB1, though the reflections are actually better on Xbox One than PS4, surprisingly enough)
I honestly didn't think it was $70 of game, if that makes any sense, considering how long I know RE2 was, the replayability, and the lack of a Mercenaries mode. None of these things are wrong, they just mean there's a lot less for me to replay.
XBV was just so chill. And it was one of the few oXbox games to really make good use of the music function. You could slot your own music seamlessly into the soundtrack and I took special care to pick songs you'd want to hear at a beach party. The 360 model crushed the life out of that and few games work well with external audio.
I will still defend Xbox 360's custom soundtrack support to the death. Fuck you, devs, if your music was good I'd be listening to it.
XBV is still the only competitive volleyball game that didn't drive me insane trying to play it, back when I basically played every sort of sports game: golf, hockey, (associated) football, etc. XBV2's still the Wave Racer 64 sequel I wanted (because I didn't own a Gamecube).
Beach Spikers on the GameCube was better. But XBV was still really good.
EDIT:
And there isn't anything wrong with the 360 soundtrack function. It works and works well. But it doesn't integrate into games the way the oXbox could. I did plenty of audio streaming with Rumble Roses and Forza 2 and probably a few others. I just lament the loss of the integration.
Shockingly, I remember Beach Spikers--which was also mildly embarrassing to play in public, etc.--but I could believe it was a better sports game, since it focused more on the, well, sport, than the dress-up mechanic as far as I remember. But it didn't have a trailer for Ninja Gaiden in it, so it lost points.
Sega also released a "serious" volleyball game in the same time frame, which was grueling and frustrating to play.
So, this line of conversation caused me to try DOA2U on Xbox 360 for the first time in five years or so. It works great...except 2 of my 3 remaining Xbox 360 controllers are probably dead? Also, my profile was corrupted, so I need to unlock everything again?
Also, I need to see how to calibrate a modern QLED 4K television for Xbox 360.
I fired up DOA5:U on 360 and apparently at some point it updated itself into being Last Round. This is cool except that means you have to hunt through the 600+ pieces of DLC to download the mandatory ones, or else the game won't let you access anything from its main menu. One was almost a gig... a lot for a creaky old 360.
And the official battery pack for my 360 controller has completely given up the ghost. Which makes me glad that AA batteries are an option with Xboxes! I've still got a couple of third party battery packs that I have no idea if they'll hold a charge, but they're charging now.
But aside from those issues, it's nice to play it again. And you can upload your save data to pick up where you left off in the Xbox One version of DOA5:LR, which is neat. Maybe I'll finally pick that up one of these days...
I was about to ask why you'd play DOA5U but that's a very good reason. It's neat that it actually share save data like that, reminds me of SRW V between the Vita and PS4 (not that I owned the former).
Yeah, the Costume Catalog is a pain to handle manually, and I guess the "excuse" is that they didn't want to force people to download the packs as updates. Crap. Hopefully that is improved upon for DOA6.
I was disheartened to be reminded that I've actually saved the Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) demo desk that included costumes from the Japanese release of DOA3 (this would be the only way to get those into the English release of the game), but there's way to run said disk on an Xbox 360--so, you need an original Xbox, mine of which is sitting in a box. So I suppose even that annoying solution is better than the alternative (when I bought Last Round, sure enough, my costume purchases in DOA5U, since I skipped DOA5 and just kept playing DOA4, carried over from Xbox 360).
Holy crap, counters/reversals unbalanced in DOA2U. DOA3 and DOA4 are better than that at least. Ayane's mid-punch reversal isn't just easy to do, timing-wise, it also knocks off 40% of the default healthbar.
DOA5:U was the only one I had to hand and I don't have actual DOA5:LR. DOA4 and vanilla DOA5 are also lurking somewhere but I'd have to dig through a ton of stuff to find them; DOA3 would require less digging, but still some, as well as setting up the original Xbox to run it unless it's BC and I'm just forgetting.
@Jazz - I hope you like the 3DS game; it has a great "the story so far" mode which goes through the whole history of the franchise.
Thanks to the 3DS Streetpass functionality, I had a month's-long rivalry going with someone in my office. Every day, I'd go to work and the little green light would come on to let me know that their Lei Fang was waiting for me to fight, and they presumably kept fighting me as well since their rank would slowly go up. I never found out who it was, but it was one of my favorite Streetpass implementations.
@Synthesis - I lost all of my oxbox saves to mysterious "corruption" at some point, on a 360 that was sitting quietly in a footlocker not being played. I assume it was caused by some random dashboard update or another. I didn't mind too much - even if I still owned Brute Force, would I care about my save? - but I am still a little salty about losing my Fatal Frame 1 & 2 saves.
Also, you can get the DOA3 Booster Disc costumes into DOA3 on a 360 by unlocking them via DOA2U. It's a convoluted process.
God the conversation about DOA and beach volleyball kinda melded together as I caught up and for a good minute I thought I was in an alternate dimension where DOA volleyball had a thriving competitive scene . Was super confused . Also started RE2 and im super stressed , I can almost hear the darkest dungeon narrator quotes while I play. "Dazed reeling...about to BREAK"
The 3DS game was, unsurprisingly, the first actual 3DS (and not DS or earlier) game I bought. Didn't keep me from returning that squeaky little thing. It was probably the best looking fighting game, at the time, that Nintendo ever put on a handheld.
But, on the other hand....no 2 vs 2 tag team (that I was aware of). Of course, that would take three other people with 3DS together, which wasn't that common in the early days (what a reversal). To which I said, "Yeah, the fuck is the point of this? There's not even any Aerosmith."
I think anthem is actively breaking my xbox. It wouldn't finish installing yesterday after I deleted it, and it wasn't working right before I deleted. All my apps stopped workong. Factory reset, deleted games and all.
Played it a little after that, until it crashed . Watched some YouTube. Went to bed.
Watching YouTube this morning go to play anthem. Game won't load just gives me anthem black screen. Hard reset xbox.
It's been at the green loading screen for an hour now. Wtf
Keeping with the theme in here, I dug out a 360 and my DoA2 Ultimate and DoA3 discs. I had completely forgotten about the perspective shift for the last fight in DoA3 story mode and I have to agree that it's fairly maddening. Thinking back to the time, I don't actually think I played much of 3 - I owned it, sure, but I spent more time with the Dreamcast version of 2, and then 2U is such a complete package.
And "Dream On" DOES work surprisingly well with the opening movie. I didn't expect that.
Tengu remains a cheap sonuva, but the game gets points for not making you sit through the instant replay and "Continue?" prompts if you just mash start. Took me four or five times to beat him with Ein and unlock Hitomi and I think that's as far as I go for now.
After a good minute of consideration, LBD wins the weekly award for best play on words.
On a more forward-looking topic, do you like (probably) baseless rumors about the next console hardware specifications and pricing? Too bad, you're getting them.
The changes to the mid counters in DOA2:U and subsequently DOA4 both sort of broke the game a bit for me, effectively nerfing one of the three pillars of the "rock, paper, scissors" concept the game was built on (strikes, counters, throws). I can see why they did it, and I still had a lot of fun with DOA4 but I never found my mojo with it to anything like the same degree - I just sort of landed on being "decent-ish" like I was with most fighting games. Also it was in Itagaki's "everything harder than everything else" phase and against the AI it could just get punishing.
Having unlocked Ayane's 20 costumes in DOA2U, I can confirm: Ein is, just like I remember, far and away the most bastard AI required match in the game. Tengu following him is actually pretty laughable, and Alpha-152 is hard mostly because her attacks are unusually powerful and have wide hit zones. Ein's just has "counter 3 or 4 hits in a row" AI fuckery, on top of being badly in need of what we'd call today nerfing (and in subsequent appearance, he is substantially nerfed).
IIRC, Ein's big weakness is that he has a LOT of mid-punch moves (Kinda like Gen Fu) so if you spam that counter a lot, you can really mess him the fuck up.
IIRC, Ein's big weakness is that he has a LOT of mid-punch moves (Kinda like Gen Fu) so if you spam that counter a lot, you can really mess him the fuck up.
You can't really "spam" counter/reversals in DOA2U because of the timing, but it's usually the way to go. Ein's the fastest male character in DOA2U, and sometimes faster than Ayane (the fastest character period), and he has two absurdly fast kicks (mid and high) that he'll spam, and I'm still worse at reversing kicks than punches. I found sometimes if Ein decides he just wants to throw you, you're better off doing a high, fast kick (Ayane has a few of them, and she, Kasumi and Hayabusa have to fight Ein before Tengu) when he tries to close the gap.
That being said, earning Ein's costumes (and unlocking Hitomi) is absurdly easy.
Really, since his moveset and damage values are unmodified, no DOA2U battle is half as bullshit-ridden as a random chapter sub-boss in SoulCalibur VI. Ein doesn't have "Auto unblockable attack, only vulnerable to kicks, 200% health."
I dug out DOA3 and 4 and gave them a spin earlier. DOA3 has a few slowdown issues on a 360, notably in the ice cave and snow stages, but it was great to give that a whirl again. Omega is still some cheap bullshit, though; the perspective shift and the blurring are stupid but he's just so cheap. But otherwise, it's still glorious. Not bad for a game that will hit 18 years old this year.
DOA4 was a notable jump into HD from 3's SD and is so bright and cheerful to look at with its highly saturated colors, even though the characters look archaic compared to their DOA5 renditions. It also didn't pick up my old save (!). Its story mode is a delight insofar as telling crazy tales from your character's perspective, and not always finishing with the same final boss (e.g. Tina's final fight is against Bass). But the AI is so much more aggressive it's startling - symptomatic of Itagaki's attitude at the time. Still good, though. Looks like I've got some unlocking to do in it, too. Again.
Also I hadn't realised there was a demo of DOA Dimensions on the 3DS store, so as I wait for the cart to arrive I downloaded that. It has a five-round arcade mode and a one-stage example of Chronicle (story) mode, with four characters (Kasumi, Hayabusa, Jann Lee and Hitomi) to choose from. And honestly, I've found it delightful, so I'm looking forward to the full game even more now! It's a shame 3D mode halves the framerate, especially when the 3D is so good on it, but that's a minor gripe. It looks great and plays just as well as its big brethren. A shame a proper tag battle and team battle don't seem to be included in the full game, though.
Indeed, the Xbox 360's emulation is surprisingly comprehensive, but full of various flaws like that, which are noticeable in what were "locked" 60 FPS games like DOA on Xbox.
It really makes you miss what they could do on the Xbox One (or XB1X) if they gave it the Ninja Gaiden Black treatment, which is pretty outstanding. I really want to see what DOA2U looks like at 9 times resolution with some basic antialiasing effects! Damn it, Microsoft and/or Tecmo-Koei!
(Though mostly, I want to get over how bad my Xbox 360 controllers are compared to my XB1 controllers. Not DS3 bad, but bad. And I'm too impatient to use the Hori DOA4 fighting stick.)
Yeah, there's a fair few issues like that in the BC games. PGR2's gear select screen still saddens me (it just goes black, but if you know how to get through it the rest of the game still works - just a stupid annoyance, though, that I would have thought would be fixable). Anyway, it's not bad in DOA3, just imperfect. It drops frames in the ending FMVs, too. But for the most part it plays beautifully.
Looks like I was mistaken about my DOA4 save, thankfully; it just had me unlock Helena again, but everything else is all present and correct.
A shame Nicole (Spartan-458) didn't make it into 5, at least as an Xbox bonus character, but IIRC didn't Rachel inherit her move set? Similar, anyway.
360 BC was pure black magic, and I’m amazed it worked as well as it did in most cases. Combined with the VGA kit for the 360, I played through a ton of oxBox games in my home office when the TV was being taken over by my better half.
Rachel has an expanded version of Nicole's moveset (naturally rebranded, and a few obvious things, like the sticky grenade, removed). Rachel is, coincidentally, one of my mains in DOA5LR.
Though the reason is pretty clear: Nicole (or as I like to call her, "Tex") is a Microsoft exclusive character, even if she didn't previously appear in Halo. Team Ninja didn't want to pursue platform exclusive characters alaSoulcalibur II, and there's a good argument for that reasoning (though they never took the next step of cross-platform play), but that rules out any sort of Spartan, or for that matter someone from Uncharted or a new character from Killzone (I just found how hard it is for me to name a Sony exclusive that has a character suitable for a fighting game that isn't a fighting game).
My own completely unscientific theory is that Team Ninja's heyday has long since past (with Itagaki's departure), and what we've seen from DOA5's incarnations is the comparatively conservative, unambitious move towards a multiplatform title (which is commendable in its own right--exclusivity shouldn't be a suicide pact) that capitalizes on DLC sales. I can think of gameplay changes I agree and disagree with, naturally, but the actual level of polish, the technical achievement, the profile of the game itself, pales in comparison to when DOA4 followed the Xbox 360 launch. Of course, so does the XB1 compared to the Xbox 360 in many respects. Killer Instinct is now the platform's flagship fighter, and to its credit, I hear almost nothing about praise for KI even if it's not really my game. Though that's probably old-fashion thinking, in an age where Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Kingdom Hearts, and even Tekken are all multiplatform games, and not Playstation darlings either. Many of From Software's, and Platinum's, and Konami's offerings have followed suit too. It's part of the maturation of the industry.
Plus, some of the costume packs--the two Shinobi pacts, the Attack on Titan pack, some of the Halloween packs--are pretty fuckin' rad.
I just really, really wish DOA would go BC on Xbox One :tell_me_more: Though I'm fairly certain that the save data from an Xbox game on Xbox 360 will not work on Xbox One, as a fundamental issue of game architecture. My Ninja Gaiden Black saves on Xbox 360--beaten through on normal and hard, all scarabs obtained--were corrupted at some point. :bigfrown: Never mind the controllers, I want the platform and save stability peace of mind!
While I agree about DOA5 never getting the level of profile that 3 and 4 did, and that being at least in part due to it quietly going multiplatform where it got massively overshadowed by the competition, I would disagree about its level of polish and technical achievement, especially the 360 version that looks a generation ahead of DOA4 in many respects. One of those cases where it seems amazing it's running on the same hardware.
But it did itself no favours at all by becoming such an over the top DLC delivery machine (however goddamn beautiful a lot of it is), and releasing in at least four different versions. You need to be a cultural phenomenon like Street Fighter II to pull that off with any success.
And yeah, I get why Nicole disappeared. Oh well, we'll always have DOA4. And Rachel is hardly a poor substitute, as well as being Team Ninja's own character so she's able to be a solid part of the roster.
I don't miss Itagaki; it became pretty apparent that he'd gone from talented auteur to disappearing up his own backside. He may have been instrumental in DOA becoming what it did (not to mention Ninja Gaiden and XBV), but I do think Team Ninja got rid of him at about the right time.
And sorry to drop this in the Xbox thread, but... anyone played XBV3? Wondering if it's worth the import. Although it's a tad spendy...
While I agree about DOA5 never getting the level of profile that 3 and 4 did, and that being at least in part due to it quietly going multiplatform where it got massively overshadowed by the competition, I would disagree about its level of polish and technical achievement, especially the 360 version that looks a generation ahead of DOA4 in many respects. One of those cases where it seems amazing it's running on the same hardware.
The technology progression is inevitable--this is the same reason that Halo 4 looks vastly better than Halo 3 (or for that matter, Halo Reach). I would argue that DOA4 had amazing visuals, particularly lighting effects, for a game that came out in 2005. DOA5 couldn't say the same thing, even if it is a much better looking game. DOA4 was also better reviewed, I think. I don't really mind the DLC machine, especially considering how SCVI has handled costumes, but it didn't deserve the number of re-releases it got (especially compared to DOA4, frankly).
While DOA5 is a competent game, it's really clear that Ninja Gaiden 3 badly suffered for Itagaki's absence. Itagaki might've had his head up his own ass, but it's painfully obvious that Yasuda and Hayashi had no fucking idea how to make a Ninja Gaiden game, much less a competent one. And they got to try twice. If their goal was killing off the series, they succeeded.
You're not wrong about the competition, though it was odd seeing SoulCalibur fall off the face of the earth for that long.
Briefly leaving how badly Hayashi and company fucked up Ninja Gaiden, is anyone familiar with Damon Baker from Nintendo? He's the new Head of Portfolio at Xbox. I've honestly never heard of him.
Briefly leaving how badly Hayashi and company fucked up Ninja Gaiden, is anyone familiar with Damon Baker from Nintendo? He's the new Head of Portfolio at Xbox. I've honestly never heard of him.
I kind of hope we don't see an Xbox Two this year. It might be in Microsoft's interest to push the "generation++" button as soon as they can, but it honestly feels like the Pro and One X could easily stretch things out until 2020 before software starts straining the hardware too hard.
Posts
Steam | XBL
Realtalk-Confession-Big-Brother-Twitchstream-Moment(tm).
I canceled my Resident Evil 2 deluxe pre-order. Not because the game doesn't look good, or because I didn't enjoy the demo. And it's not because the game isn't pretty clearly best on Xbox One X, though serviceable enough on XB1 (both the "basic" versions have...serious framerate issues, which are more pronounced on XB1, though the reflections are actually better on Xbox One than PS4, surprisingly enough)
I honestly didn't think it was $70 of game, if that makes any sense, considering how long I know RE2 was, the replayability, and the lack of a Mercenaries mode. None of these things are wrong, they just mean there's a lot less for me to replay.
I'll pick up a used copy at some point.
XBV is still the only competitive volleyball game that didn't drive me insane trying to play it, back when I basically played every sort of sports game: golf, hockey, (associated) football, etc. XBV2's still the Wave Racer 64 sequel I wanted (because I didn't own a Gamecube).
EDIT:
And there isn't anything wrong with the 360 soundtrack function. It works and works well. But it doesn't integrate into games the way the oXbox could. I did plenty of audio streaming with Rumble Roses and Forza 2 and probably a few others. I just lament the loss of the integration.
Sega also released a "serious" volleyball game in the same time frame, which was grueling and frustrating to play.
Outlaw Golf was actually quite good though.
But don't believe my opinion, because I'm buying Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition over Resident Evil 2. *click checkout button*
Steam | XBL
Also, I need to see how to calibrate a modern QLED 4K television for Xbox 360.
And the official battery pack for my 360 controller has completely given up the ghost. Which makes me glad that AA batteries are an option with Xboxes! I've still got a couple of third party battery packs that I have no idea if they'll hold a charge, but they're charging now.
But aside from those issues, it's nice to play it again. And you can upload your save data to pick up where you left off in the Xbox One version of DOA5:LR, which is neat. Maybe I'll finally pick that up one of these days...
Steam | XBL
Yeah, the Costume Catalog is a pain to handle manually, and I guess the "excuse" is that they didn't want to force people to download the packs as updates. Crap. Hopefully that is improved upon for DOA6.
I was disheartened to be reminded that I've actually saved the Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) demo desk that included costumes from the Japanese release of DOA3 (this would be the only way to get those into the English release of the game), but there's way to run said disk on an Xbox 360--so, you need an original Xbox, mine of which is sitting in a box. So I suppose even that annoying solution is better than the alternative (when I bought Last Round, sure enough, my costume purchases in DOA5U, since I skipped DOA5 and just kept playing DOA4, carried over from Xbox 360).
Holy crap, counters/reversals unbalanced in DOA2U. DOA3 and DOA4 are better than that at least. Ayane's mid-punch reversal isn't just easy to do, timing-wise, it also knocks off 40% of the default healthbar.
Steam | XBL
Thanks to the 3DS Streetpass functionality, I had a month's-long rivalry going with someone in my office. Every day, I'd go to work and the little green light would come on to let me know that their Lei Fang was waiting for me to fight, and they presumably kept fighting me as well since their rank would slowly go up. I never found out who it was, but it was one of my favorite Streetpass implementations.
@Synthesis - I lost all of my oxbox saves to mysterious "corruption" at some point, on a 360 that was sitting quietly in a footlocker not being played. I assume it was caused by some random dashboard update or another. I didn't mind too much - even if I still owned Brute Force, would I care about my save? - but I am still a little salty about losing my Fatal Frame 1 & 2 saves.
Also, you can get the DOA3 Booster Disc costumes into DOA3 on a 360 by unlocking them via DOA2U. It's a convoluted process.
But, on the other hand....no 2 vs 2 tag team (that I was aware of). Of course, that would take three other people with 3DS together, which wasn't that common in the early days (what a reversal). To which I said, "Yeah, the fuck is the point of this? There's not even any Aerosmith."
Wow, I can't believe I'd never heard of that! That's amazing! That's not even that convoluted just...tedious. I can do tedious. Thank you!
Played it a little after that, until it crashed . Watched some YouTube. Went to bed.
Watching YouTube this morning go to play anthem. Game won't load just gives me anthem black screen. Hard reset xbox.
It's been at the green loading screen for an hour now. Wtf
It's making me factory reset it again
And "Dream On" DOES work surprisingly well with the opening movie. I didn't expect that.
Tengu remains a cheap sonuva, but the game gets points for not making you sit through the instant replay and "Continue?" prompts if you just mash start. Took me four or five times to beat him with Ein and unlock Hitomi and I think that's as far as I go for now.
Honestly, I have to agree--I mean, having one beta just flat out refuse to work is bad, but a hardware failure is just a pain in the ass to deal with.
I still need to back up my saves to the cloud so I can port them over.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
After a good minute of consideration, LBD wins the weekly award for best play on words.
On a more forward-looking topic, do you like (probably) baseless rumors about the next console hardware specifications and pricing? Too bad, you're getting them.
The next Xbox's "high-end" model, "Anubis" or "Anaconda" or something, will support ray-tracing and include a 1 TB NVMe SSD, with Dev kits and more coming after GDC 2019. There is some collaboration but, well, whatever.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
Is Fortnite still the only PS4/Xbox crossplat game?
PS - Local_H_Jay
Sub me on Youtube
And Twitch
Rocket League is now, IIRC.
That's about it.
Having unlocked Ayane's 20 costumes in DOA2U, I can confirm: Ein is, just like I remember, far and away the most bastard AI required match in the game. Tengu following him is actually pretty laughable, and Alpha-152 is hard mostly because her attacks are unusually powerful and have wide hit zones. Ein's just has "counter 3 or 4 hits in a row" AI fuckery, on top of being badly in need of what we'd call today nerfing (and in subsequent appearance, he is substantially nerfed).
You can't really "spam" counter/reversals in DOA2U because of the timing, but it's usually the way to go. Ein's the fastest male character in DOA2U, and sometimes faster than Ayane (the fastest character period), and he has two absurdly fast kicks (mid and high) that he'll spam, and I'm still worse at reversing kicks than punches. I found sometimes if Ein decides he just wants to throw you, you're better off doing a high, fast kick (Ayane has a few of them, and she, Kasumi and Hayabusa have to fight Ein before Tengu) when he tries to close the gap.
That being said, earning Ein's costumes (and unlocking Hitomi) is absurdly easy.
Really, since his moveset and damage values are unmodified, no DOA2U battle is half as bullshit-ridden as a random chapter sub-boss in SoulCalibur VI. Ein doesn't have "Auto unblockable attack, only vulnerable to kicks, 200% health."
DOA4 was a notable jump into HD from 3's SD and is so bright and cheerful to look at with its highly saturated colors, even though the characters look archaic compared to their DOA5 renditions. It also didn't pick up my old save (!). Its story mode is a delight insofar as telling crazy tales from your character's perspective, and not always finishing with the same final boss (e.g. Tina's final fight is against Bass). But the AI is so much more aggressive it's startling - symptomatic of Itagaki's attitude at the time. Still good, though. Looks like I've got some unlocking to do in it, too. Again.
Also I hadn't realised there was a demo of DOA Dimensions on the 3DS store, so as I wait for the cart to arrive I downloaded that. It has a five-round arcade mode and a one-stage example of Chronicle (story) mode, with four characters (Kasumi, Hayabusa, Jann Lee and Hitomi) to choose from. And honestly, I've found it delightful, so I'm looking forward to the full game even more now! It's a shame 3D mode halves the framerate, especially when the 3D is so good on it, but that's a minor gripe. It looks great and plays just as well as its big brethren. A shame a proper tag battle and team battle don't seem to be included in the full game, though.
Steam | XBL
It really makes you miss what they could do on the Xbox One (or XB1X) if they gave it the Ninja Gaiden Black treatment, which is pretty outstanding. I really want to see what DOA2U looks like at 9 times resolution with some basic antialiasing effects! Damn it, Microsoft and/or Tecmo-Koei!
(Though mostly, I want to get over how bad my Xbox 360 controllers are compared to my XB1 controllers. Not DS3 bad, but bad. And I'm too impatient to use the Hori DOA4 fighting stick.)
Looks like I was mistaken about my DOA4 save, thankfully; it just had me unlock Helena again, but everything else is all present and correct.
A shame Nicole (Spartan-458) didn't make it into 5, at least as an Xbox bonus character, but IIRC didn't Rachel inherit her move set? Similar, anyway.
Steam | XBL
Though the reason is pretty clear: Nicole (or as I like to call her, "Tex") is a Microsoft exclusive character, even if she didn't previously appear in Halo. Team Ninja didn't want to pursue platform exclusive characters ala Soulcalibur II, and there's a good argument for that reasoning (though they never took the next step of cross-platform play), but that rules out any sort of Spartan, or for that matter someone from Uncharted or a new character from Killzone (I just found how hard it is for me to name a Sony exclusive that has a character suitable for a fighting game that isn't a fighting game).
My own completely unscientific theory is that Team Ninja's heyday has long since past (with Itagaki's departure), and what we've seen from DOA5's incarnations is the comparatively conservative, unambitious move towards a multiplatform title (which is commendable in its own right--exclusivity shouldn't be a suicide pact) that capitalizes on DLC sales. I can think of gameplay changes I agree and disagree with, naturally, but the actual level of polish, the technical achievement, the profile of the game itself, pales in comparison to when DOA4 followed the Xbox 360 launch. Of course, so does the XB1 compared to the Xbox 360 in many respects. Killer Instinct is now the platform's flagship fighter, and to its credit, I hear almost nothing about praise for KI even if it's not really my game. Though that's probably old-fashion thinking, in an age where Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Kingdom Hearts, and even Tekken are all multiplatform games, and not Playstation darlings either. Many of From Software's, and Platinum's, and Konami's offerings have followed suit too. It's part of the maturation of the industry.
Plus, some of the costume packs--the two Shinobi pacts, the Attack on Titan pack, some of the Halloween packs--are pretty fuckin' rad.
I just really, really wish DOA would go BC on Xbox One :tell_me_more: Though I'm fairly certain that the save data from an Xbox game on Xbox 360 will not work on Xbox One, as a fundamental issue of game architecture. My Ninja Gaiden Black saves on Xbox 360--beaten through on normal and hard, all scarabs obtained--were corrupted at some point. :bigfrown: Never mind the controllers, I want the platform and save stability peace of mind!
But it did itself no favours at all by becoming such an over the top DLC delivery machine (however goddamn beautiful a lot of it is), and releasing in at least four different versions. You need to be a cultural phenomenon like Street Fighter II to pull that off with any success.
And yeah, I get why Nicole disappeared. Oh well, we'll always have DOA4. And Rachel is hardly a poor substitute, as well as being Team Ninja's own character so she's able to be a solid part of the roster.
I don't miss Itagaki; it became pretty apparent that he'd gone from talented auteur to disappearing up his own backside. He may have been instrumental in DOA becoming what it did (not to mention Ninja Gaiden and XBV), but I do think Team Ninja got rid of him at about the right time.
And sorry to drop this in the Xbox thread, but... anyone played XBV3? Wondering if it's worth the import. Although it's a tad spendy...
Steam | XBL
The technology progression is inevitable--this is the same reason that Halo 4 looks vastly better than Halo 3 (or for that matter, Halo Reach). I would argue that DOA4 had amazing visuals, particularly lighting effects, for a game that came out in 2005. DOA5 couldn't say the same thing, even if it is a much better looking game. DOA4 was also better reviewed, I think. I don't really mind the DLC machine, especially considering how SCVI has handled costumes, but it didn't deserve the number of re-releases it got (especially compared to DOA4, frankly).
While DOA5 is a competent game, it's really clear that Ninja Gaiden 3 badly suffered for Itagaki's absence. Itagaki might've had his head up his own ass, but it's painfully obvious that Yasuda and Hayashi had no fucking idea how to make a Ninja Gaiden game, much less a competent one. And they got to try twice. If their goal was killing off the series, they succeeded.
You're not wrong about the competition, though it was odd seeing SoulCalibur fall off the face of the earth for that long.
Pretty sure many of her her sambo moves are from them.
Also Phil Spencer drops more hints for E3 2019. Let's see if he can deliver.
(Edit: apparently she may show up eventually as DLC. Naturally.)
Steam | XBL
I kind of hope we don't see an Xbox Two this year. It might be in Microsoft's interest to push the "generation++" button as soon as they can, but it honestly feels like the Pro and One X could easily stretch things out until 2020 before software starts straining the hardware too hard.