Sakigake!! Otoko Juku: Nihonyo, Korega Otoko Dearu Review

魁！！男塾：日本よ、これが男である。
Title: Sakigake!! Otoko Juku: Nihonyo, Korega Otoko Dearu.

Platform: Playstation 3

Developer: Badai Namco Games

Release Year: 2014

CERO: D

Be a man! At the manliest place on earth, in the manliest game in history.

Gameplay

Sakigake is a manga from the 80's about Momo, a delinquent, who goes to a military-esque school for drop-outs who will shape the future of Japan. That's how the game is set up. In Sakigake, you attend the Otoko Juku (Men's Private School). The game is set up in days, each day you will have a set amount of objectives; these objectives are split into categories: The 108 Battles, Drills, Story, Special Events, and Online Challenge. These different modes are comprised of two main forms of Gameplay: Mini-Games and Battles. 

Each mini-game is pulled straight out of the manga, and they retain the goofiness and manliness just perfectly. Everything from doing Push-Ups over spikes while having weights added on your back to staying still in a vat of boiling oil with a burning candle balancing on your head. Each mini-game adds elements of quick-time event and rhythm which breaks up the battles quite nicely! And for fans of the comic, they will make you very pleased with how they retained the spirit of Otoko Juku.

Onto the Battles. Very solid 2-button 3-D fighting game mechanics (similar to games like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle or J-Stars Victory Vs.). You have a light attack, which does less damage but has the ability to knock enemies back and throw them off ledges; Then the heavy attack, which does more damage and will sometimes stun your enemy. you build up your special bar to use specials, which are incredibly useful. On top of that, every arena is made up of Otokojuku's Specialties (which are essentially traps... manly traps) As you progress through the game you will buy and create your own levels, which you use for fun or for the online.

This game is extremely fun, and captivated me for hours at a time. for the duration of the story, everything was well balanced, broken up nicely so nothing felt redundant, and paced very well. After you've cleared the story missions (which should take you a little over a month of game days) you will continue on as you were with the 108 battles and mini-games. And there is tons of characters and traps to unlock in the post-game so it will keep you busy!

The major downside to this game though is the lack of multiplayer! You will almost NEVER here me actually complain about a lack of multiplayer, but man would this game be perfect for it! With the wonderful character roster and original use of level design, it would add an entire extra level of fun to play with friends! sadly this is seriously lacking... even the online is just uploading your maps for others to try. I have to dock at least a point for this. I'll knock a half point off also for having a really short story but a huge post-game, it can feel redundant after too much play, but only a little, and only if you marathon this game as hard as I did.

otherwise this game is wonderfully fun, and the gameplay is super solid!

Score: 4.5/5

Presentation

Sakigake utilizes cell shading to create it's classic anime style come to life, and it's done right! The character models are vivid and colourful! Each one has a nice inky black used to border and shade the model, and a nice paint-like colour to really make it feel like the manga came to life! On top of the great character models, the menu designs, on screen health bars, special attack text, and so on really fit the style well with the nice brush stoke kanji and use of japanese style. some of the level objects do look lack-luster, on the other hand. not necessarily bad, but not what should be standard in 2014. I'm a sucker for vivid environments, so I also notice them when they aren't so great. That being said, it is the year 2014, we're in the PS4 era, and this game only runs 720p. so this game won't blow you away, it looks good, but not amazing. 

sound-wise, this game utilizes the sound track and voice acting from the anime. and the sound effects sound really heavy, like when you hit someone it sounds and feels like a good heavy hit, I can't stress how important that is games! the music and SFX add a nice charm to this game, and give it the fine touches it needs to feel like you ARE a student of Otoko Juku. Don't expect mind blowing arrangements, these are mostly fun 80's Japanese backdrop music, but it works.

overall, the presentation isn't up to 2014 standards, but it does great justice to bringing this 80's jewel to life! 4 three finger push ups on burning coals out of 5!

Score: 4/5

Story and Setting

The game roughly follows the story that the anime adaptation does, skipping some of the later story arcs and the early episodic stuff in the original manga. Sakigake is the perfect mix of serious and light-hearted, just like an 80's shonen manga. The comedy aspects are very Japanese, and it may be hard for people to get into if they aren't familiar with the culture. However, the humor is on-point! The whole story revolves around a boys-school for delinquents, the head master and the teachers are all martial arts masters, and all of the "youths" look like grown-ass beefy men. Everything you do in the game is set around this context: All of the battles and mini-games are design to prove your manhood. 

The game does an excellent job and recreating the anime experience, all of the characters and scenarios translate very well from the anime and nothing is really changed. One of the big story arcs has the main characters face martial arts masters in games of life and death on the way up a mountain. I've always thought this was a neat anime-trope, and they perfectly recreated all of the major battles, with the crazy conditions as stage hazards or quick-time events. The characters maintain their personalities, and the original voice  actors are all present.

  

Score: 4/5

Final Thoughts and Score

For the importer, the game is fairly accessible: It's a ps3 game, so there is no region locking, and once you get into the action the mechanics aren't super hard to figure out. However, if you want to understand the humor, navigate the menus, or get involved with making your own trap levels, then a moderate amount of Japanese is required.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and there is a lot of variety to the battles with the inclusion of traps and quick-time events. The game brings to life the anime perfectly, has great visuals, and will keep you occupied for hours at a time.

FINAL SCORE: 85% (B)

Review Format Update

Hey all!

It's been a long time since I've posted anything, but I finally have enough free time to come back and do something like this again. For a while I wrote for a friend of mines website, on which I did a review for Ryuu Ga Gotoku Ishin, Kingdom Hearts HD II.5 ReMix (which is now available in English), and a Top 25 PS3 games of all time list. In one way or another, I'll add updated versions of those articles to this blog. (At some point).

Anyway, I'm going to be changing the format of my reviews. The new format will be:

-Gameplay (rated out of 5):
An evaluation of the game's mechanics. Rating will be a qualitative assessment of the enjoyability of the gameplay, the smoothness and ingenuity of the controls, and overall quality and variety of things to do in game.

-Story and Setting (rated out of 5):
An evaluation of the game's narrative, atmosphere, characters, etc. Taking into account that I've reviewed, and will continue to review, a handful of arcade ports (which are NOT story driven), judging story alone is insufficient. So atmosphere, aesthetics, etc. will also be considered here.

-Presentation (rated out of 5):
An evaluation of the game's visuals, music, sound, and technical performance. Fairly basic, a qualitative assessment of how the game interacts with your senses. I will be paying attention to the effort the developers put into things like frame-rate stability and texture quality. But this will have to correspond with what the developers are trying to do, and what technology they had to deal with. i.e. there's only so much you can do with arcade ports or HD remakes, etc.

-Import Friendliness (not rated):
This will no longer affect the final score, nor will it be rated. I will give you the appropriate information on how to get the games and how much Japanese you'll need to play them.

-Final Score (rated with a percentage and a letter grade, F ~ A+):
This will no longer be an average of the previous scores, but my score independently for the game's overall experience.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I may go back and update my past reviews to fit this format, considering I only have a few published anyway.

As always, like us on facebook and let us know what you'd like reviewed! I'm currently working on a review of Sakigake!! Otoko Juku for ps3 (appraently) so I'll wrap that up and post it later today!

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Neon Genesis Evangelion: Battle Orchestra Review

新世紀エヴァンゲリオン バトルオーケストラ 
Title: Shin Seiki Evangelion: Battle Orchestra

Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation Portable

Developer: Gainax

Genre: 4-Player Fighting

CERO: A

The Angels are invading, NERV is mankind's last hope! Suit up and pilot the evas, and stop these monstrosities from causing the 3rd impact and erasing mankind from existence!

Gameplay

In this day and age we have quite a few really powerful 4-player fighting games, the likes of Super Smash Brothers and Playstation All-Stars. On this side of the pond though we don't see most of them. In japan, licensed anime games are littered through out the smash genre: Fullmetal Alchemist: Dream Carnival, One Piece: Gear Spirit, Jump Ultimate Stars, etc. Well this is one of them. Now this game is a lot of fun, but I'll be honest in saying that the mechanics are not terribly impressive. You have your punches, kicks, and ranged attacks. The Ability to use dropped items, specials attacks, and these kinds of things. Which is fairly simple, but like I said its a lot of fun. It does feel kind of clunky, once you've begun attacking you cannot move until you're combo is over, which is annoying if you start attacking in the wrong direction, surely your enemy will get an easy back stab on you. And the combos themselves feel fairly stale, you can feel the contrast from how smooth games like Super Smash play. Aside from this, it functions decently. And the game has a wide array of modes to enjoy. You have a story mode, mission mode, practice, challenge, and multi-player. Every mode earns you money which you ca use to buy new characters and stages! Once you've gotten used to the flaws of the game, I'm sure you'll find a wealth of time and fun in all the corridors of this game. It's not amazing, but it certainly is fun!

Score: 6.5/10

Presentation

I'll Start by saying this game looks great! I'm giving it a good score here, if you want to know why keep reading, otherwise go onto story! Anyway, the first thing that really struck me about this game (especially in the ps2 version) is how wonderfully rendered the eva's are! all the textures are detailed and smooth. obviously this game isn't super high budget, so it's no match to the likes of Final Fantasy XII or Shadow of the Colossus, but damn does it come close! Unfortunately the background environments are a bit stale. As far as menu set-up the text is nice an poppy, everything is stylized to feel like you're inside NERV headquarters, and everything is placed exactly where you'd expect it so it's organized well. I took off half a point here for one presentation flaw, and that is the story mode. With a story like this, and the great looking renders, this game is top contender for having some amazing anime-inspired cut-scenes... but alas, it's that visual novel style text only bullshit that really doesn't serve this game justice. aside from that and the so-so environments, this game earns a great presentation score!

Score: 8.5/10

Story

Let me gush, I fucking love Evangelion.... The story is great, and the game follows the story of the anime so I mean it's perfect! right? well sort of... 

This game follows the story of the anime, the premise of which being: Beings from space, called angels, come to earth and try to destroy mankind and erase them from existence. 14 years previous, an event called second impact occurred, which is widely believed to be the first time the angels appeared on earth. NERV, an organization ran by Gendo Ikari, develops a humanoid android called "Eva" which is the only weapon that can combat the angels. Sounds pretty straight forward, yeah? well along the journey a wealth of secrets are unveiled which makes you question any fact you thought to be true about the show, followed by one of the most controversial ends of any anime I've ever discussed. (I will not give spoilers no matter how old the series is) needless to say, I loved every second of it! 

Well the game does't get super heavy on the details and kind of lets the story flow on the surface level, you will probably get the over all concept, but it doesn't get as deep as the anime or the books. half a point there, and half a point for not having cutscenes (again).

Score: 9/10

Import Friendliness

This Games main menu is completely in english, so basic navigation will be very easy! Once you enter story mode, practice, multiplayer or whatever you should be fine. not much reading is "required" (although will enhance the overall experience) Once you start getting into the mission mode, on the other hand, you will run into some trouble. The mission objectives are actually very Kanji heavy, which requires a native and/or advanced understanding of the language, some of it was a little rich for my blood. Also buying characters and stages will be all in japanese as well, albeit much simpler japanese than mission mode. so we do have the existence here of a small language barrier.

as far as the act of actually importing, you will need either a Chip-Mod Ps2 or a Japanese Original Ps2. The PS2 version is 100% Region-Locked! these can get expensive for your average consumer. On the other hand you have the PSP version, which is natively region free, and is by-in-lerge identical to it's PS2 counterpart.

so it's doable, just depends on if you're a handheld gamer or not

Score: 7/10

Final Thoughts and Score

I had quite a bit of fun with this one, and I still carry it around with me for lunch breaks and the like. I give it a high recommendation  you can get the full collectors edition on amazon for the same price of buying a regular copy, so enjoy the extra freebies!

FINAL SCORE: 7.75/10

Toro Let's Party (Toro to MoriMori) - Review

トロともりもり

Title: Toro Let's Party

Platform: Playstation 3

Developer: Sony

Genre: Party Game

CERO: A

Toro Inoue is back for another quest to become human! Sony's feline mascot has a party game ready for you to play and enjoy!

Gameplay

Toro to Morimori is a party game, up to 4 players, and is loaded with mini games! You start out the game with a few that are playable right away, but the rest you unlock through the story mode.

Story mode is set up like a children's story book, a narrator explains whats going on, then you have dialogue between Toro and his many furry friends, and then the featured minigame (everything is set up episodically)

The minigames are fun! There is quite a variety to choose from including archery, basket ball, centipede, ninja....ing?, and much more. You will have plenty to play with your family and friends, as well as by yourself!

 Impressively Toro takes full advantage of the Playstation's famed Sixaxis motion sensor that's built into the the Dualshock 3 controllers. For example, the ninja star game (pictured above) you use the shoulder buttons to aim, and then flip the controller to throw; or in the basket ball game you use the controller in the motion of shooting the ball to play. Now this works out really well for some minigames, but it feels hard to control on others (not like Lair bad, but still clunky). Now not all of the games use it, so don't expect this to be a Wii game by any stretch, but the use of the Sixaxis definitely adds to the variety this game has to offer.

overall, this plays like a very solid party title. If only it got released stateside, we might have a world competitor to Mario Party.

Score: 8/10

Presentation

As with most PS3 exclusive game, you can expect this game to look gorgeous. And your expectations will not betray you! Not quite to the level of Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy XIII, or The Last of Us but still smooth, shiny, and polished! Toro takes that cartoon style that normally only looked appropriate on the PS2, and reshapes it to fit well with the PS3. Take your polygonal cats, round out the edges, and add some beautiful textures, and you got Toro! The appeal to these graphics, really, is just how sharp and smooth everything looks! the subtitles, the menus, characters, backgrounds, everything just blends so well together.

The menus are simple and easy to follow, the voice acting is great, the graphics are smooth, really no complaints here! this game is very well presented.

I think really the only thing holding it back from a perfect presentation score would be it's "just average" soundtrack and it's lack of animated cut-scenes in the story mode... but I mean these are small complaints.

Score: 8.5/10

Story

Toro is a cat, he wants to be human, so he plays games to earn his right to humanity. That's the basis, the rest of it is just wacky Japanese humor. And it is VERY Japanese humor, if you have no sense of culture you will get lost.

This is a party game, so the story really isn't a huge focus (and I find myself saying this a lot, so I'll review a story game next) but it does have a fun cast of characters, and a good enough story to get the game going.

As previously stated, the story mode is set up like a children's book, and it can sometimes feel kinda strange playing through the story as an adult, because when the narrator talks you feel like you're watching Nickelodeon Junior, which admittedly challenges your masculinity. but just do some push ups and drink a beer and you'll be fine! (You will have this same feeling if you have played Scribblenauts: Unlimited) But, in truth, some children's games are just plain fun for everyone, and that's what this is.

Overall though, the story is cute and the characters are good, nothing to in-depth, but hey, its a party game right?

Score: 7/10

Import Friendliness

I'll just start by saying straight up, this game was released in China with a complete English option. It's region free, the menus are in English, subtitles are English, the instructions  the trophies, IT'S IN ENGLISH. So that's why it gets a perfect score here.

If you buy the Japanese version you will have a bit of trouble, because it is text heavy, but if you don't know Japanese just buy the Chinese+English version, its cheap, its English  it is 100% Import friendly!

Score: 10/10

Final Thoughts and Score

This game is great, its fun, it social, its English, its pretty, this is a high recommendation for anyone looking for a good fun time with friends and family.

FINAL SCORE: 8.37/10

Update Non-Review

This site is going to be dedicated to games that are exclusively across seas, so I will not spend the time reviewing games you can get here (mostly because they have ass tons of other reviews)...
but if you have a game you want to get outside of your region for whatever reasons, and you still wanna know about it, like our Facebook page and contact me!

https://www.facebook.com/GameNoriba

On a side note, since I will not review it, God of War: Ascension has absolutely wonderful Japanese voice acting, and holy shit it is gorgeous! If you like God of War games still (which I've only played the first one so far, so I do) then this is an absolute must! And it was on sale in japan so I ended up getting it for about 25 USD!!

Gundam Extreme VS. Review

機動戦士ガンダム エクストリームバーサス

Title: Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme VS.

Platform: Playstation 3
Developer: Namco Bandai

Genre: Fighting

CERO: A

Gundam is a wonderful blast from the past, with a continuing universe that's been expanding since the 80's! How appropriate that we get a cross-universe fighting game that features every different Gundam universe. This is one of my personal favourites so lets have some fun!

Gameplay

Gundam is, at its core, a brawler. You have your basic attacks, blocks, ranged attacks mapped on the signature triangle, circle, cross, square. as you battle you build-up your EX bare for a super move, which increase your mech's power. unique to this game is your HP bar. you have a certain amount of HP per life, this is the big number at the bottom-left, and then you have your Team's HP bar up top-left. Every Gundam is worth a certain amount of you team's HP, and when you die that number is subtracted from your Team. This mechanic breath's a bit of life into the brawler genre, and gives a new perspective on team play.

And this game has a myriad of ways to present this battle system to you. you have an arcade mode, which feels like it sounds, you have multiplayer, vs COM, online, etc.Then you have the "story mode" type mode that's set up on a a couple grids. each grid has key battles as well as normal battles, all with different kinds of enemies, objectives, and requirements. some fights you will have to have a certain team mate, others you have to play as a certain gundam, you might have to keep someone alive, you might have to maintain a certain amount of HP, kill a certain amount of enemies. point being that the game forces you to play on it's terms, which really keeps a could-be-repetitive game nice and interesting.

In these grids you'll run into battles to earn badges, these are especially specific conditions that are much more difficult to get, and it will feel very rewarding to earn them. earning these badges is also a large part of the games PSN trophies. This part of the game is what I spend the most time on.

That all being said this game is really easy to get stuck in, and you will find yourself going back to older battle to grind required characters that you never use. And every character's playstyles are vastly different, so doing some battle will be grueling if your not comfortable changing like that on the fly.

overall the game is smooth, fun, challenging, and is loaded with content that will keep you coming back for hours!

Score: 8.5/10

Presentation

VS. is one of the prettiest ex-arcade titles to date. The characters and backgrounds are smoothly cell-shaded, which goes really well with it's anime roots. the effects are flashy, colourful, and energetic. the menus are very aesthetically pleasing, and generally easy to navigate. Not to mention the tons of nostalgic gundams and wonderful character portraits from the ages. Really nice Lincoln Park cameo at the home screen, a surprisingly fitting opening song. And, of course, you have the wonderful TV quality voice acting for all the characters from the different series! It's really well put together, but the soundtrack is rather forgettable , almost reminds you of the Dynasty Warriors notoriously average soundtracks. 

Score: 8/10

Story

As with most arcade games, VS. really doesn't focus on story. the Trial Mission Mode (that grid thing I talked about) is about the closest thing to a story this game has. And as with most crossover games, the story that is there is patchy and scattered. The few scenes of story you get are really cool and well put together. But story is clearly not the focus here, and its very steeped in fan-service. If your not into Gundam, its easy to skip past.

You do have, on the other hand, a wonderful collaboration of different Gundam universes and a large pantheon of playable characters. Which is hugely important, especially in the Fighting Game genre, having a dick load of characters!

Score: 7/10

Import Friendliness

By default, being on the Playstation 3 system, this game is region-free. Buy it anywhere, play it anywhere! So that much gives you the accessibility. for collectors, buying it black-label can get fairly prices (last I checked near 80 dollars), but you can get it cheap from Hong Kong for like 30 USD, so its easy to obtain just to play. 

Now, the ugly part, if you don't know Japanese you will have a very hard time getting into it. The menus are extremely Kanji heavy, and for the "guess-and-press"ers, they are organized strangely, so you will have to do research to figure out what you are doing. The game is not entirely un-playable, it will just take a heavy study of online guides and walkthroughs to figure out what certain objectives are and what everything does...

especially in a game with such a wide array of objectives. In short, it's text heavy.

Although, once you do figure out where everything is, you can still enjoy the basics without knowing much. I mean, in the actual meat of the game, you don't have to know Japanese to know how to actually fight.

Score: 6/10

Final Thoughts and Score

This game is clearly sweet, and is still one of my favourite PS3 games. If you can take the time to learn the set-up or the language, you will be in for an incredible fighting game.

Final Score: 7.37/10