Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts

Sunday, January 20, 2013

E.X. Troopers - over 350 screens in HD



With Capcom deciding not to localise E.X. Troopers for the west, and with it only selling 26K copies in Japan, compared to the 220K which Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 reached during the same week, I'm puttingonline over 350 hi-def screenshots which I've taken. The game deserves more recognition than it's had. For me, E.X. Troopers was my GOTY of 2012. The controls were tight, the action fast and intense, the progression system balanced and fun, with plenty of post-game content. The visual style is also gorgeous. In several ways the game reminds me of Burning Rangers for the Saturn. The online multiplayer never seemed to work, but even so, the game is fantastic. If you own a PS3 you should import it. 

These screens are for anyone who wants them. Use them to create a detailed translation Wiki or FAQ. Use them for reviews, previews or Capcom campaigns. I don't really care. I might use some of them for an article on Hardcore Gaming 101, and I might not. But for Japan only releases it can be difficult to find decent quality screenshots without watermarks. Consider these my gift to the internet. They include character profiles, food items, weapons, tutorial instructions, cut-scenes, gameplay, and a guide for the 10 question quiz, plus miscellaneous. I didn't get EVERYTHING, but I think got enough. Apologies for some of the screens being too dark - you'll need to use an art package to brighten these. I only realised a few hours in that my capture device makes everything too dark if more than one console is plugged into it. Lesson learned for the future! I hope these are of some use. Do what you will with them. The ZIP file is hosted courtesy of Alan Stringer, AKA Dandy Sephy online. Many thanks to him for helping out!

EDIT:
A non-hyperlink link:

http://t.co/4TX38l16

 

Posted by Sketcz at 1:33 PM 13 comments
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

PS3 Sixaxis on a x64 Windows PC


Whatever the hell you do, under NO circumstances use MotioninJoy – that stuff reeks of pure dodgy. Instead let us show you the safe way to use your PS3 controller on your x64 Windows PC. In my case, I was running Windows 7. First there’s a rant, so if you want the solution, just skip to TAMAMY DRIVERS.

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Having decided to play Xenoblade Chronicles on PC hooked up to my HDTV instead of the Wii on my SDTV, I needed a controller. There are plenty of safe and easy options for those using the older x86 (32bit) versions of Windows, such as XP. My main rig is x86 XP, but the PC I borrowed for Xenoblade was Windows 7 and x64 (64 bit). Problem: most drivers designed for x86 will permanently disable all your USB ports if you try to put them on a x64 computer (I don't know why, apparently they just do). They will mess you up.

This blog post is to correct a misconception on the internet – an attempt at undoing a dangerous fallacy. Googling for info on the above will reveal countless websites all proclaiming the pleasures of a website/program called MotioninJoy, which allegedly allows use of the Sixaxis on x64 Windows.


DO NOT PUT THIS CRAP ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR COMPUTER.


They state quite clearly that because their drivers are unsigned you need to boot x64 versions of Windows while holding F8 and then from the menu choose to ignore mandatory signature enforcement. I did this. Then I downloaded it, did a virus scan and then ran it.

Anyway, after running it, suddenly ESET, NoScripts and a couple of other safety countermeasures were giving off RED WARNING LIGHTS and KLAXON SOUNDS – this little trollop was trying to access servers in Zhiang province, or god knows where in CHINA. All I know is suddenly I’ve got a wall of Chinese names and server numbers because apparently I’m trying to connect to something I shouldn’t be and a dozen dirty sources are trying to connect to my system. So I immediately cut the hard line on my rig and shut it all down.

Let me tell you how I roll: I do not allow random programs to connect to unknown servers in countries on the other side of the world known for their dodgyness to download crap I don’t recognise. For all I know they were uploading the digital mind of CHAIRMAN MAO onto to my rig, or viruses, Trojans, root kits, or worms.


One website claims you can install it offline, by downloading another pack of files, but this disables use of the joysticks. What the hell is the point of that? If I didn’t want analogue joysticks I’d use my Saturn pad. They force you to go online so they can potentially rodger you senseless. Seriously WTF is up with them trying to force you to connect to Chinese servers to download random things you can’t even see. Let me use an analogy. You wouldn’t expose your genitals to a hornet’s nest, would you? You might not get stung even if you did, but why take such an unnecessary risk? Do NOT trust MotioninJoy.

Regardless, it’s all redundant, because there IS an alternative, a solution that allows Sixaxis usage with analogue joysticks on a x64 system, and it doesn’t require destroying your PC, and it’s free and totally excellent.


TAMAMY DRIVERS – THE DRIVERS YOU CAN TRUST


Japanese coder Tamamy has made drivers that work on Windows XP, Vista and 7, on both x86 and x64. You have to manually install them after connecting your control pad, but they work well. Although being unsigned, same as MotioninJoy’s drivers, means you need to boot while F8 each time you start your computer (again, same as MotioninJoy).

Even so, you can plainly see the INF files that comprise it (unlike MotioninJoy), plus it doesn’t connect to the internet and you have full control over it (unlike MotioninJoy). This is the perfect solution in my view.


GET THEM HERE:
http://tamamyikesu.web.fc2.com/sd_devicedriver.html


ENGLISH TRANSLATION



Please note, I used them without problem on Windows 7, but obviously use caution with this kind of stuff. Myself and HG101 can’t be held responsible for misuse.


On an ironic side note, the mods at DC-Emu, a forum I have long realised to be filled with denizens of wrong logic (the Katana Dev Kit and Smash Pack says hi fellas!), actually locked the thread on Tamamy’s drivers. While Googling for info on this I came across a DC-Emu thread on them, where everyone was chatting, happy as Larry, on how best to use them. Suddenly a mod comes along and locks the topic, saying: “Enough of this, enough of this, MotioninJoy is out now, everyone stop talking about this and move along and use that instead – no more talk of Tamamy, go and connect to Chinese servers and use MotioninJoy like the good proles that you are. Move along now.”

I actually pictured the mod with an Orwellian era moustache and truncheon, goading the slackjawed forumites into submission.

Frankly I think that’s a travesty. MotioninJoy is not only garbage, but it’s dangerous garbage. And they were openly advocating its usage, while trying to turn people away from a safer and more trustworthy source of drivers, where you have full control over their implementation, and you know precisely what you’re installing. They even locked the goddamn topic on it, effectively censoring any discussion of Tamamy’s drivers. Madness, pure madness!

Conclusion:
For Sixaxis use on a PC, use Tamamy’s drivers.

Posted by Sketcz at 4:28 AM 47 comments
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Japan News roundup for April 27th 2011

I just like that image.  You're going to see a Kotaku story Kotaku readers about Japan's Nikkei price dropping dramatically.  Which makes sense unless you look at the 3 month average.  What happened in the middle of March?  3DS launch?



Though this may be the last place I'd expect you to learn it from, the hackers that "compromised" the Playstation 3's "protective barrier" probably have your credit card data.

Irem's Doki Doki Suikoden got 5 and 6s in Famitsu.


Nippon Ichi is making a Bikkuriman game with Disgaea characters. official site


Japan DSiWare just released an impressive looking Virtual On clone, Battle of Elemental.


Posted by Rudie at 3:41 AM 1 comments
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Hong Kong PSN



I promised to look at the HK PSN nearly a year ago. I even took the photos. Then, not only did I stop visiting the HK PSN, but I also failed to make the post. Here it is - very late! Mainly for the benefit of the chap who asked about the Kojima video on the HK store, and to clear my blog folder of "TO DO" stuff before the year's end (might as well brush this stuff away while everyone's drunk on brandy infused mince pies). Much like Kojima and the guy in the photo, I dangled something just out of reach. To make up for it, there's photos idol models, as featured on the HK PSN.


The Hong Kong PSN used to be awesome, since they accepted UK credit cards back in 2008. For whatever reason they didn’t check that your fake PSN address matched your credit card address. But then someone changed the rules and it was no longer valid.

Since then I lost interest in the HK store, since it was no longer an easy access point for imports. It does however still have a few interesting things, none of which I can even be sure still exists.

* The 400mb Hideo Kojima video was pretty cool. Here's a Youtube video.
* Street Fighter IV tournament videos. How awesome is this? Apparently they had like a pan-Asian tournament, on SFIV, and the HK store hosted videos of it. This alone is worth starting a HK account for. Why didn’t the US or UK stores have videos of this event? Because they’re run by idiots, that’s why. I don’t care if the show doesn’t have direct relevance to my locality, I want to watch top tier players slug it out.
* Japanese PS1 games with English names a descriptions, which is handy if the Kanji on the Japanese PSN store proves too difficult.
* A few Japanese games, with ENGLISH options. This was my main reason for using the HK store. Before that garbage themed Tetris game came out in the US/UK, it was available first on the Hong Kong store, IN ENGLISH.
* Demos for games not available elsewhere. I don’t know if Pixel Junk Shooter now has a demo on the US/UK store, but for months and months, the only PSN demo for it was on the HK store. Well done Hong Kong!
* Special discounts: they often have special offers, and cool stuff around Chinese New Year.
* Lots of music videos by local singers – some of them really cool, in a weird 1980s kind of way (the Miriam Yeung 2008 AGS song is very 1980s).
* A whole series of idol shows, which I can’t even begin to pretend to understand what’s going on – but it has plenty of video footage of attractive young women, wearing bikinis, in hot tubs and outdoor showers. This appears to be some kind of major phenomenon, with quiz shows and other stuff... which I don’t even know how to describe.

Enjoy the photos, make a HK account, then complain in the comments section that none of this information is relevant any more. When I first got my PS3 in 2008 though, the HK store was seriously awesome stuff - especially since none of my PS3 owning friends/colleagues had anything near this kind of stuff on their HDDs.

Merry Christmas!
Posted by Sketcz at 7:13 AM 3 comments
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Yakuza 3 reviewed by real-life Yakuza


As pointed out by regular reader Zack, BoingBoing has a fascinating feature up where they get three real-life yakuza members to play Ryu ga Gotoku 3 and give their opinions.

Midoriyama is a now-retired former mid-level faction boss. Shirokawa is a high-ranking boss from a different group connected to Midoriyama through a ritual sake exchange. Kuroishi knows them both but is also from a different group.

This is an ingenious feature, and a fantastic example of proper investigative games journalism. While most print publications are happy with their annual April Fool gags, phoned-in email interviews, and outdated news, it's great to see something serious like this being attempted.

My favourite section of the interview is towards the end:
Ironically, the sections that Shirokawa seemed to enjoy the most were cut out of the US version: mahjong, the sexual massage parlor, and the hostess clubs. After I explain to him what Sega cut from the US version, he said: アメリカ版を買った奴がかわいそうだ。セガＵＳＡが最低だね.(Translation: I feel sorry for the people who bought the American version. SEGA USA sucks.)

Yes indeed, Sega USA does suck. I for one loved the mahjong in Yakuza 2.

Read the full feature HERE.
Posted by Sketcz at 8:32 AM 6 comments
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Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Do you want Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 diary entries?

Having recently received several packages all at once, I now stand on an even bigger pile of games/films/books which I will at some point be experiencing. The question is, do you want me to write about Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 on PS3?
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When the second in the trilogy went platinum on PS2 I bought it online for less than £20, but only managed a few hours before deciding to sell it. My Japanese ability has faded over time and while I liked the premise of a lazy summer-time game, it seemed like too much effort to enjoy. I ended up getting £2.50 for it on eBay.

Months later I read Nick des Barres review in PLAY magazine – please have a peruse of the scan above. Nick normally writes pieces which I would describe as very important, since he tends to document things which would otherwise go unreported, or even if they are covered elsewhere, are covered by people without the Japanese language ability or insight to do so properly. His Folklore review in PLAY, for example, expertly described the international situation that videogames are now in, with Japan being ignored in favour of western games despite still being able to produce such high-quality titles. Nick correctly predicted that few would appreciate it. Three years after release I am still in awe of Folklore, both for its majestic beauty and its substantial combat mechanics with plethora of attack options. In terms of visuals, story and gameplay, I took as much satisfaction from Folklore, if not more, than I did from Uncharted 2.
Which reinforces my belief that contrary to what the world is saying, Japan is in fact doing just fine in terms of creativity. She’s still making great stuff, but we in the west are defiantly stamping on her still-breathing face declaring, not so much with mourning but rather a demented schadenfreude, that she is at last dead and irrelevant. The Eastern serpent is slain, long live the devout Western followers of his Holy Roman Emperor, David Jaffe. And the more I hear it, the more confused I feel, because I have more cool Japanese games to play than I have time for – and I don’t even own a 360, which has several exclusives. It’s sad, when you read about Japanese companies like Marvellous Entertainment on the brink of bankruptcy, despite having been involved with numerous excellent titles, such as Muramasa, No More Heroes, Little King’s Story and Red Seeds Profile (yes, Deadly Premonition is excellent). Long-time localiser Jeremy Blaustein summarised western attitudes quite aptly in an interview I did with him.
But back to Boku no Natsuyasumi 3. Nick’s exquisite write up encouraged me to keep an eye out for it, so when a forumite I knew was selling it, along with the Japanese guide book and bonus diary booklet, at a very low price, I had to have it. This is probably not the game to prove my statement about Japan’s continuing ability, and based on my impressions of the second this is very much an acquired taste (you need to be into playing foreign RPGs), but as the review states: games don’t always have to be about guns and tits. And while I won’t be able to appreciate the implied nostalgia factor it’s aiming for (I wasn’t a child in Japan circa 1975), I’m very curious to imbibe the historical and cultural snapshot which it provides. Hey, maybe it should be recommended playing for Western University students studying Japanese anthropology?
I won’t be starting BnN3 for a number of months still, but I wanted to gauge interest to see if people would like daily diary entries, in much the same way your character in the game writes them. I once wrote a Seaman Diary (for the Dreamcast title), and while I won’t replicate the Mr Biffo/Digitiser style of that, my hope is that regular entries should motivate me to play the game more than I did the second title on PS2. There’s every likelihood I’ll get distracted after 3 entries, but hey, maybe it encourages me to go the distance for the game?
Posted by Sketcz at 5:09 AM 10 comments
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

In defence of FMV games – PART 3

Excuse the rushed nature of this, but I wanted this final entry done before Derboo commences his week-long Koreathon. Following on from part 1 and part 2, I conclude my ludicrous attempt to examine every FMV game ever. Unsurprisingly it turns out I’ve barely scratched the surface. But it gives me an excuse to use more of FMV-meister Tom Zito’s semi-erotic photography (it would be fully erotic, but I’m under strict orders to censor my entries to be work safe). Tom was of course the head of Digital Pictures, which made a lot of console FMV titles, all of which I enjoyed tremendously. Tom, if you’re reading this, we of HG101 can be your friends. But only if you want us to.

Starblade (3DO)
Rails-shooter featuring polygon graphics, ported from an early 1990s arcade game. I seem to recall reading somewhere, debate regarding the nature of the visuals: whether pre-rendered streaming FMV footage, or real-time generated polygons. Taken from an NTSC-uk topic...
Siland: Silpheed on the MCD is an odd one, it's not strictly playing video in the background, but yet, nor is it playing realtime 3d, it's sort of streaming poly co-ords from the disc. Basically the bulk of the 3d calculations have been precalced, and then are streamed from CD and rendered in the frame buffer as it goes. Isn't there still some argument over how it is done, or has the question been answered conclusively? Personally I think it is simply streamed video of CG that was originally rendered using the MCD's colour palette to avoid artefacts, how you describe it being done is much cooler though.
Rebelli0n: Rendering the video using the MD colour palette wouldn't avoid artefacts, as compression artefacts are independent from the palette used , they are result of the reduction of information in the video, with a lossy codec. However, it could be argued it's using some form of lossless compression, that because it's all flatshaded, and low colour it maybe is efficient/low bandwidth enough to be viable on the MCD. On the flip side, You could argue that the polygon method is itself a form of video compression. But, what ever it is, you can’t go far wrong thinking of it as video really, it’s only the people who think it's a shining example of why the MCD is a misunderstood 3d powerhouse who are wrong.
Either way, it’s available for the Sega CD, with enhanced versions on the PS1 and 3DO.
SCORE: ***

Supreme Warrior
I’ll admit I downloaded this with the intention of playing it on my Xbox emulators. Not having the instructions, I could never work out how to actually fights – various icons pop up, implying I need to push a button, but I soon died and saw Game Over. Still, this is 2-disc game and gets super bonus points for having both English and Cantonese dubbing (a disc for each). There doesn’t seem to be subtitles for the Cantonese version, but it sure does remind me of those old subtitled Hong Kong films I used to watch as a kid.
Hadleyb asked:
For anyone that's ever played Supreme Warrior - ever seen the scene where the fire boss is in a paddling pool with a rubber ducky? I triggered it once by mistake and have never got it since or found anything online about it. One of my favourite FMV games ever for sure.
SCORE: ***

Wirehead
Technically impressive, since they managed to fit a lot of high-quality footage onto just one disc. Over-reliance on difficult QTEs and limited lives let it down slightly, but it’s a great yarn the first time through. You control a guy’s mind via remote control and have to help him survive various goons, from skateboarding, to an aeroplane, to a grizzly bear in the woods. This has a lot of diversity!
SCORE: ****

Voyeur (CDi)
Loading this up presents you with a keycode entry screen – designed to prevent minors from playing it. And with fairly good reason: there’s several scenes showing young women in sexy lingerie (including one featuring a lesbian kiss), scenes of bondage and S+M, plus overtones of incest and other questionable things. Though it’s nothing more than you’d find in an episode of CSI, or such like. You sit in an apartment and, at your leisure, watch the Reed family in their mansion, using a zoom video camera. You can also look for clues through open windows, reading computer screens and memos left in the open. The object is to find out who wants to betray future president Reed Hawke and who he will kill, so as to warn the family or inform the police. It’s actually a very clever thriller which, much like Johnny Rock, manages to achieve more with its limited FMV footage than Heavy Rain managed with its dynamic engine. There is some clever randomisation as to which family member you should warn, ensuring it plays differently each time.
SCORE: *****

Thunder in Paradise (CDi)
This is a two-disc set, with the second disc containing an entire episode of Thunder in Paradise, an achingly bad rip-off of Nightrider, set in a military speed-boat, complete with 1980s-styled guitar-riffing song. This is another amazing title which epitomises a lot of what I like in FMV games. Live-action C-grade actors (Hulk Hogan!) making idiots of themselves, hi-resolution and top quality video footage (it requires the CDi video card), fast-paced blasting action and an element diversity in that, depending on what you do in earlier chapters, you take control of different characters later on. It’s not a huge change, but the slight alterations to later levels keeps things interesting and encourages a repeat playthrough. The story involves Hulk Hogan’s thoughts being copied and used in a military cyborg-human which can turn invisible, which then runs amok, prompting them to jump in their speedboat, put neural transmitters on, and shoot random enemies with a “soft gun” on a tropical island. It’s full of other amazingly ridiculous things – at one point you can access two music videos in-game. One features nothing but dozens of bikini clad women running around an island, while another features quick-edited shots of Hulk Hogan’s head alongside shots of his boat, timed to ripping guitar music. What more could you want in a game?
SCORE: *****

Jeopardy
The high-score is because this is actually great fun with other players. It’s not deep, or worthwhile, it’s just silly fun. It’s fun for the same reason that Buzz and other gameshow titles are fun – the enjoyment is dependant on other people and actually has little to do with the game itself.
SCORE: ****

Earth Command
Quite a decent world strategy sim: you’re in charge of the planet and you can decide everything, from which countries are allowed guns to how much tax others must pay and what kind of pollution laws there are. I don’t think it works quite as well in practice as it sounds (when I banned guns in certain South American countries, there was suddenly a rise in armed militants), but it’s a neat and very ambitious idea. Plenty of FMV too.
SCORE: ****

Lost Eden
Not really so much FMV, this is more of a graphic adventure, featuring talking dinosaurs in some fantasy land. My CDi’s memory died on me so I never got very far. I have no idea how good it is – could be an interesting slow-burning adventure. One for HG101 to cover perhaps?
SCORE: n/a

Snow Job (3DO)
Technically very accomplished FMV game, which is a lot of fun and unfortunately not very well known. Predating the Casebook games (see below), there are similarities between the two in terms of the 3D photo-realistic environments.
In Snow Job you play ex-cop Jock, who has to head to New York to investigate your ex-lover Lara and the fact that she might be about to get murdered. You meet up with old cop buddies, hacker dudes, and brush shoulders with gun carrying criminals, all over the course of a week, trying to solve the mystery before time runs out. And if you dawdle, you may wake up one morning to find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun. In a way Snow Job does pretty much everything Heavy Rain does, and more, albeit without QTEs and generally a much better written story. The copy-buddy dialogue is quite good for a start. Gameplay mainly involves visiting areas and looking for clues via the panoramic viewfinder. One major aspect involves solving a daily crossword puzzle found in the newspapers which you have to buy – the criminals are communicating via the newspaper, and solving it each day grants you access to their computer server.
There’s also a 3D maze section, and dialogue options. The criticism is that with such ambitious scope, it’s also quite difficult, and missing a single clue early in the game could lead to game over later on. Otherwise it is excellent, and arguably one of the best games the genre has to offer in English.
SCORE: *****

the FEAR – PS2
This game comes on 4 DVDs, which should give an idea of how much high-quality video footage is contained within. I actually wrote a review of this for NTSC-uk. Here’s sample:
A bevy of young, slim women, all aged between eighteen and twenty-five, along with a few men, end up going to a giant mansion with a disturbing and troubled history, all with the intention of making some films. The doors shut, they’re trapped inside, and slowly one by one they start getting killed in increasingly gruesome ways. Eventually it’s left to one man to save the day, rescue the woman, and make it out alive in order to enjoy his reward. The FEAR gives the player direct control of movement within the environment. Addressed by the NPCs only as ‘Mr Camera’, everything is viewed in first person with control being very much like old dungeon crawlers such as Wizardry, sans the random battles. Every angle of the house has been painstakingly filmed along with close-up views of important areas. Movement is done in great big strides, with ninety-degree-angled turns. Each and every step having been filmed in order to maintain coherence and fluidity. At each ‘standing zone’, the player can choose to get a closer look at and examine detailed areas, for clues or valuable items such as keys. There are a grand total of 1251 pre-recorded cut scenes to search for that, once viewed, can be watched again at the player’s leisure via a “Specials” menu. While there is fun to be had from playing through the game and watching the cinemas, a great deal of the time the player will be left wandering the haunted corridors, bored and waiting for the next cut scene to kick in. Which is a shame, since had it been translated it would have been the pinnacle of FMV gaming.
SCORE: ****



GAMES I’VE NOT PLAYED

Crime Patrol / CP II: Drug Wars

Quick Draw Show Down (by CJ Iwakura)
This is among the hardest FMV games ever made. You need split-second timing for the expert levels. You can't pull the gun from the holster until the icon says so, and the expert mode is ridiculously strict. The 'boss' is a real-life quickdraw expert, and he is FAST. (Also, the villagers run out and loot his body when you win!)

The Last Bounty Hunter (by CJ Iwakura)
Far as I know, this was the 'last' ALG game. It's like an extended Mad Dog McCree game, and really good(and difficult). I never got to play it until it got a DVD release(better than nothing).

Braindead 13
Animated sci-fi FMV-esque game, it is absolutely hilarious. A slacker electronics repair guy goes to a haunted mansion to fix a mad scientist's global domination machine, and gets assailed by his crazy variety of monsters and mansion traps. A must play.
"You're not one of those funky-lookin' mad scientist guys bent on takin' over the WORLD are ya?"
"How did you know?"
"Man, I've played a LOT of video games, and I KNOW an average-"
"AVERAGE? AVERAGE?! I AM NOT AVERAGE!"

Power Rangers (by CJ Iwakura)
Should also mention the Power Rangers FMV game on the Sega CD. It’s silly, but fun, possibly done by the Masked Rider team. It’s a quicker nostalgia trip than watching the episodes again, that’s for sure.

Escape from Cyber City (by anonymous)
Ever heard of Escape from Cyber City? It was an animated FMV game for the CD-i and was quite good, if I remember correctly. I ask because I actually owned it as a kid (I was unfortunate enough to actually have a CD-i instead of a REAL game console), and nobody else seems to have ever heard of it. YOUTUBE LINK.

Gabriel Knight
Phantasmagoria
Tex Murphy
I’ve not played any of these three, but they appear to be quite accomplished titles for the PC, and each has a rather meaty feature on HG101. Click the links in the names for more. Otherwise, Sean Lane posted the following in the comments:
The only games I actually liked of these amount to four. Gabriel Knight 2 and the last three Tex Murphy games. They all still have that B movies quality feel, but something about the characters really makes them believable or not as "over-the-top" as many FMV games tend to be. I especially like the way the Tex Murphy series handled the acting and presentation, with each sequel toping the last in seriousness, believability, humor, writing, and performance. But those games of course play like adventure games,and you get the added benefit of the characters thinking or talking between movie sequences, creating a much stronger bond than an on-the-rails FMV game or one filled with a ton of QTEs.

O Story (PS2)
Very early PS2 release, it’s kinda described as an FMV dating-sim. Taken from Wikipedia: The player takes the role of a young man who dies in a motorcycle accident. He is sent back to earth as a ghost by Ai, the angel of love, who tells him that he may revive if he gains the love of a girl named Lina within six days. There’s a fairly good GameSpot review.


428: Fusa Sareta Shibuya de
The above video is really good, despite the annoying advert at the start. Famitsu scored this a perfect 40/40. Taken from Wikipedia:
“428: Fusa Sareta Shibuya de is a visual novel set in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo where the narrative is presented using a combination of scrolling text, live action stills and video sequences. It’s an adventure game where players take part in events from the perspectives of multiple protagonists, all acting in parallel with no knowledge of each other. Set in the modern Japanese city of Shibuya, Tokyo, the characters are involved in a mystery that cannot be solved without their interactions, and the plot is advanced by following clues found within the game's text and accompanying video sequences and making decisions on which path each protagonist should follow.”
Unsurprisingly we will never, ever see this in the west. Ever. Which I find rather saddening. Available on Wii, PS3 and PSP.

Imabikiso (忌火起草)
Another visual novel by Chunsoft, featuring FMV clips. A demo was available on PSN but is not anymore. Available for PS3 and Wii. Very little info available online. Halverson’s PLAY magazine did a preview, by Casey Loe I think, and he said he’d like to see it in English. Look at the screenshot. How could this not be totally awesome in English?

Casebook series
A cool series of short, photo-realistic FMV games with a 3D viewer model similar to the one in Snow Job, and what would appear to be some fun little detective stories. Best of all, these are download titles selling for $5 each (well, they are quite short). I would love to see these on one of the current three consoles – I contacted the team asking if they had such plans, but didn’t hear back from them. It’s developed by a small team in New Zealand. A demo is available, but I had trouble downloading it – it went very slowly. The official website.


HYSTERIA PROJECT REVIEW (PS3 version tested)
It’s a bit disappointing to end this three-parter with what is, comparatively, a mediocre title, but it’s the latest in the genre to see release (apart from the Casebook titles – though they’re PC only), and it’s cheap. Two dollars. That’s two hundred pennies, or cents, or whatever you call them. That’s not a lot of money. Here it buys you 15-20 minutes of FMV horror, part choose-your-own adventure, part QTE. The game starts with you waking up in a shed, your hands and feet bound by tape, a masked murderer wandering off into the woods. You need to escape, after which your chased by your assailant and need to avoid him by hiding and running through the woods. After completing it, you unlock various police case files you can read, which flesh out the story. It’s alright. Not amazing, but for $2 a decent download. Mainly it’s worth playing to think to yourself: you know, a full-blown HD FMV game would be pretty rad. The FMV, when played on a PS3, is pretty grainy (the iPhone version might be better?), and some later sections feel repetitive, but if you’ve read this far then you obviously have an interest in the genre. There’s worse ways to spend $2, and hopefully extra sales would encourage the team and other developers to release something more ambitious on consoles.
SCORE ****


CONCLUSION:

We now live in an age where large games can be easily and cheaply downloaded, and we also have the benefit of massive storage media such as Blue-Ray. All of this would allow for cheap distribution of older FMV games, or the creation of modern, high-definition games which are designed around the lessons learned over nearly 30 of FMV game development. The Wii already allows the downloading of some Laserdisc games, albeit with problems due to sloppy porting, but there is so much more that the genre can provide us.

I hope that over the past three entries I’ve convinced you that FMV games do have merit, and can be enjoyable. The question is, would you buy a modern FMV game if it were in HD and had some well crafted gameplay elements? Would you pay $10 to download the Casebook titles on a current gen system, or $10 for the PS1 version of Psychic Detective on PSN?

I personally hope that we start to see a resurgence in FMV games.
Posted by Sketcz at 4:52 AM 10 comments
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