|
Hell with the endings, I still like Y3 just because of Okinawa. For some reason I relly liked the laid back section. Then came the time to get medieval on some bastards and it was all good. Well, 2 was still better. The real question is why Sega marketing is so terrible that people in this thread could do 10x better marketing job?
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 07:35 |
|
|
"We need to go out of our way to make everyone want this game" is always a much shittier option than "We need to market this game to people who might want it if they know what it really is" but then you arent taking into account THE METRICS
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
I think Sega didn't really push how generally intense the story is for the games compared to other beat'em ups. It got marketed as an adventure RPG kinda thing in the US, which it IS but still. People don't understand "RPG but takes place today" in the US. If it's not orcs or Mass Effect people aren't interested. It would have been smarter to handle it the way Ubisoft did Far Cry 3/4 and emphasize the whacky characters and insane fighting moves. The most impressive thing about that game though is how they introduced three new playable characters at once and all three of them are extremely fun to as. They do a good job of making Kiryu the ultimate badass. I love that the song that plays when you first encounter him is titled The Myth and sounds more like the boss themes from Yakuza 2.  Also I like how Kiryu eventually has to fight two of the other playable characters simultaneously. That was such a great "poo poo is about to hit the fan" moment.oblomov posted:Hell with the endings, I still like Y3 just because of Okinawa. For some reason I relly liked the laid back section. Then came the time to get medieval on some bastards and it was all good. Well, 2 was still better. The real question is why Sega marketing is so terrible that people in this thread could do 10x better marketing job? Apparently some actual popular crime novelist wrote the story for Yakuza 2 which is why it's longer and has such a bigger array of characters that each get their little moment while the rest of the series was handled internally. I love the other games just as much but it would be awesome to have a really sprawling Yakuza Papers style tale. "The Yakuza Papers" is awesome if any of y'all haven't watched. It's a seventies film series that's basically the Japanese version of The Godfather, taking place from the forties on which follows a few people through the entire modern rise of the Yakuza in Japan after WWII. They're really good. Similar to Kenzan and Ishin, almost every character in the movies is an analogue to an actual person's life and situations from the forties. The story in movies in general is pretty much true as is. The first movie at least, Battles Without Honor and Humanity should be required viewing for any fan of the Yakuza games. If you get the set with them all it has a timeline/relationship chart which I'm sure inspired the Yakuza games themselves to let you track who works for/killed/is in a relationship with who. Also it's a raw as hell Yakuza flick that was directed by Kinji "Battle Royale" "Shogun's Samurai" "Fukasaku in the early seventies. Why are you still reading this and not watching it. 
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Dec 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
My favorite thing is that even in a series as crazy as Yakuza, where among other things you fight a pair of Bengal tigers with your bare hands in a golden castle which is itself hidden inside another castle filled with henchmen dressed as Samurai, I can say "Hey, remember that loving stupid thing in Yakuza 4?" and everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. It's THAT dumb.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
Yakuza is either proof that "nerds love Japanese poo poo" isn't as true as the Internet makes it appear, or that SEGA has the most inept marketing department of all time. Little bit of column A, lot of column B is what I'm thinking.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:11
|
|
|
Hey, remember the sumo brothel in Yakuza Ishin? You goddamn wish you did.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:12
|
|
|
precision posted:Yakuza is either proof that "nerds love Japanese poo poo" isn't as true as the Internet makes it appear, or that SEGA has the most inept marketing department of all time. I seriously think for that reason that Ishin would do better here than the series proper because of the setting. Any RPG that takes place today is not going to do well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:12
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:I seriously think for that reason that Ishin would do better here than the series proper because of the setting. Any RPG that takes place today is not going to do well. It's also really hard to get some people to understand that Yakuza is an "RPG" in the first place. They might get off better by marketing it as an "open world adventure game", then people who buy it will be pleasantly surprised by the face smashing action. Especially now that Telltale has made "adventure game" a viable marketing term again. Ishin would probably do pretty well here, nobody would actually care about the history stuff any more than they do in Assassin's Creed. Like kids these days even know who the Marquis de Sade is?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
I feel like calling it open world is a mistake though (even if it is) because that cause Yakuza 1 to really fail hard in the US by drawing immediate comparisons to GTA. So people at first were hyped because they were thinking "GTA in Japan." I was lucky in that I was told it was "Shenmue but you're a gangster" so I went in knowing what to expect and get it a chance and was able to understand how it's the greatest series.  Yeah I was saying earlier, I mean even now the PS4 library is small enough that "game where you run around feudal japan with a sword owning everything" would definitely find its niche. Besides AC4, Unity and Shadow of Mordor is there anything else even close to that available?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:23
|
|
|
"Shenmue aint happening but this is the next best thing" Was definitely what made me play the first game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
I remember seeing Yakuza 1 trailers at TGS and assuming it was Japanese GTA. Then when I got the first one in Japanese I didn't understand anything but the fighting was AWESOME. I couldn't finish it until it was localized and I fell in love with all the sub stories. I still have the original PS2 games with a working fat PS2. I plan on playing through the entire series and capturing it in anticipation of 5. Super stoked.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 20:23
|
|
|
The fact that none of my friends stopped and said "But Caitlin, this is Shenmue but with yakuza instead" pains me to this day. I am so upset I didn't start playing this until I bought Yakuza 4 in one of those buy-2-get-1-free deals at GameStop because I was in a mood for a game about yakuza. I was expecting the Japanese version of Sleeping Dogs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 21:58
|
|
|
I'd really like to see the Japanese take on Sleeping Dogs, that game was great. You put on the right jacket and pants and BAM you're Ryo Hazuki.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2014 22:02
|
|
|
Mahjong why can't I quit you? This is terrible. I'm using my clear data to do nothing but play this. Although I have finally learned how to read those number tiles, so that's a good thing, right? Once I finish getting everybody to the top of their tournaments, I may be able finally figure out the pachinko slots.  I don't know why, no matter how much I read on them, I can't get it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 02:34
|
|
|
I just like the dumb animations. I still have no idea what the hell is up with notAladdin.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 02:51
|
|
|
Policenaut posted:That flashback when it's playing out though is god drat intense, if I remember right there's no music or anything just silence and sound effects. The whole scene from him and Majima looking through the guns through the shoot out is seriously the most well shot scene I've ever seen in a game. And then the idiotic twist.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 03:06
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Apparently some actual popular crime novelist wrote the story for Yakuza 2 which is why it's longer and has such a bigger array of characters that each get their little moment while the rest of the series was handled internally. I love the other games just as much but it would be awesome to have a really sprawling Yakuza Papers style tale. "The Yakuza Papers" is awesome if any of y'all haven't watched. It's a seventies film series that's basically the Japanese version of The Godfather, taking place from the forties on which follows a few people through the entire modern rise of the Yakuza in Japan after WWII. They're really good. Similar to Kenzan and Ishin, almost every character in the movies is an analogue to an actual person's life and situations from the forties. poo poo like what people were just talking about in Saejima in Yakuza 4 are exactly the kind of thing Fukasaku's films were a reaction against. There's no moment of sudden redemption, no deep and abiding code of honor that ennobles the thugs and assassins, no adorable orphans being rescued and their innocence perpetually preserved. The recurring image in the Battles Without Honor and Humanity is the bombed-out ruins of Hiroshima, and that's the approach Fukasaku's yakuza films take to their subject matter---they're part (in Fukasaku's vision) of the bullshit idealism and institutional lies that defined pre-war Japan, which lead to and were destroyed by the war.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 03:25
|
|
|
Marketing Yakuza as "kinda like Sleeping Dogs" is at least more honest than "like GTA".
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 04:10
|
|
|
precision posted:Marketing Yakuza as "kinda like Sleeping Dogs" is at least more honest than "like GTA". To be fair to the time SEGA actually tried to market this game, Sleeping Dogs wasn't out and GTA was the big every game must be this quantifier for success. They didn't specifically call it that, but the idea's unfortunately stuck around ever since the first Journo or gamer made the connection and spread it across the internet. This could change if they actually tried again, but Sony can only do so much. Tupperwarez posted:Thanks for this. I enjoy the series for the manly melodrama and over-the-top action, it's like a macho soap opera. But, I also think it's important to be aware that the series paints this romanticized and nationalistic image of the yakuza. There's hints of longing for the good old days sprinkled all throughout the series, between the tiger-punching and hostess-wooing. The Yakuza series is pretty politically conservative, which is a pretty entertaining contrast to all the violence and crime that take place in the setting. I thought almost every action movie Yakuza emulates was conservative as hell? Like everything from Chuck Norris, or more importantly, the First Die Hard. Crabtree fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Dec 24, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 04:18
|
|
|
SubG posted:The Battles Without Honor and Humanity films are awesome, but they don't have a lot in common, in terms of their approach to yakuza culture, with the Yakuza games. The games, and particularly guys like Kiryu and the `period' games, are lifted straight out of the mainstream genre of Japanese yakuza films (called ninkyo eiga or chivalry films). The Fukasaku yakuza films (the Battles Without Honor and Humanity films he cranked out between 1973 and 1975, as well as films like Graveyard of Honor (1975), Yakuza Graveyard (1976)) defined a new, revisionist take on these films. Instead of the stern, serene, honour-above-all yakuza that characterised ninkyo eiga and Yakuza games, Fukasaku's yakuza were calculating, self-serving, greedy, and so on, and no effort made to sugar-coat their problems.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 04:38
|
|
|
Speaking of marketing, I was looking through my old stuff and found the TGS Sega guidebooks I got from 2005-2006. Thought I would post some of the Yakuza print ads since they are badass.     
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 05:01
|
|
|
Crappy Jack posted:Plus it all ties in to some EXCELLENT character development, only for the game to suddenly wuss out at the very last minute and handwave it away. It's basically like Saejima wished hard enough and a magical fairy came down and made all those dead guys all better again. That speech he has in the arena about killing someone being something you can never take back was EXCELLENT. Saejima stood out from the other characters in Yakuza because here was a man who was honorable, and yet had to live and repent for doing something terrible in his past, that no matter what he did, would always be hanging over his head. It was a great character angle for a series full of characters who never really did anything bad and were always morally pure crusaders of justice. Oh, but then it turns out that terrible thing never happened, so now he's just a dude who spent decades in prison for no reason. That is the flaw with RGG. The protags are all DC style superheroes rather than Marvel where the heroes pack heat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 05:04
|
|
|
I was always bothered that Tanimura can't even use a gun, and he's a cop. He carries one around just for his taunt but the hardware Kamiyama sells is just beyond him. E: Nagahama, from Dead Souls, is a really good character concept that I wish they did more with. The idea of a yakuza who wants to be like Kiryu but doesn't get the chance because the actual yakuza life doesn't really give the opportunity to be that badass and honorable is super cool except practically all of it is never shown, and only mentioned in the character entry in Memos. Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Dec 24, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 16:42
|
|
|
Some new Yakuza 0 footage, this time about women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4MLIgtdk4
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 16:52
|
|
|
Tupperwarez posted:Thanks for this. I enjoy the series for the manly melodrama and over-the-top action, it's like a macho soap opera. But, I also think it's important to be aware that the series paints this romanticized and nationalistic image of the yakuza. There's hints of longing for the good old days sprinkled all throughout the series, between the tiger-punching and hostess-wooing. The Yakuza series is pretty politically conservative, which is a pretty entertaining contrast to all the violence and crime that take place in the setting. Man, started looking for the movies since I love a lot of the Japanese 60s and 70s crime dramas and the first film is basically MIA. Going to start with the 2nd as its cheap on Amazon.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 17:31
|
|
|
Only need a game (series) catering hard to fans of 70's 80's Chinese kung-fu and/or wu xia film now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 17:33
|
|
|
Policenaut posted:Some new Yakuza 0 footage, this time about women. Chance of localization decreased by 20%. Chance of these mini games staying if localized decreased by 100%. MrLonghair posted:Only need a game (series) catering hard to fans of 70's 80's Chinese kung-fu and/or wu xia film now. Didn't you play new EA UFC game as Bruce Lee? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 18:02
|
|
|
oblomov posted:Man, started looking for the movies since I love a lot of the Japanese 60s and 70s crime dramas and the first film is basically MIA. Going to start with the 2nd as its cheap on Amazon. Such a bummer that the Battles Without Honor boxset is out of print. I'm really hoping that Blu Rays come out. Like SubG said, Fukasaku's work couldn't be more different than these games. I'm assuming you know that Takashi Miike made an actual Sega Yakuza adaptation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9hwuJ4nAcM Fans of the games would probably be into Miike's other Yakuza films.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 18:14
|
|
|
Policenaut posted:Some new Yakuza 0 footage, this time about women. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 18:26
|
|
|
Big Bidness posted:Such a bummer that the Battles Without Honor boxset is out of print. I'm really hoping that Blu Rays come out. Yeah, seen quite a few of Miike's movies and loved most of them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Policenaut posted:Some new Yakuza 0 footage, this time about women. They made a phone-sex minigame .  Some day, these types of things are gonna go from creepy to funny. Not on Yakuza 0, but maybe some day.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
Vincent posted:They made a phone-sex minigame . The animation of him picking up the phone is so loving Yakuza I can't even.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 19:17
|
|
|
Big Bidness posted:Such a bummer that the Battles Without Honor boxset is out of print. I'm really hoping that Blu Rays come out. Miike's remake of "Graveyard of Honor" is somewhat better than the RGG movie, I think. I'd also recommend Takeshi Kitano's Yakuza movies, namely Hana-bi (Fireworks) and Sonatine. Sonatine should be required watching before getting into the Yakuza games, to be honest.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 20:46
|
|
|
Joe Gillian posted:Miike's remake of "Graveyard of Honor" is somewhat better than the RGG movie, I think. I'd also recommend Takeshi Kitano's Yakuza movies, namely Hana-bi (Fireworks) and Sonatine. Sonatine should be required watching before getting into the Yakuza games, to be honest. I couldn't get into Hana-bi. It just dragged for me. Loved Sonatine though. For Miike, in general some of his movies I do love, but sometimes, man the violence gets way, way too much. Yakuza trilogy though was pretty good. Forgot to add that Outrage (way of Yakuza) was pretty decent as well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 21:42
|
|
|
If we're talking Beat Takeshi and yakuza, I really loved Brother.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2014 22:54
|
|
|
Foam Monkey posted:Mahjong why can't I quit you? This is terrible. I'm using my clear data to do nothing but play this. Although I have finally learned how to read those number tiles, so that's a good thing, right? Funny enough, Yakuza is one of the only ways to play actual mahjong, aside from Funtown Mahjong, that I have found. I don't know why it's so hard to find proper standalone mahjong games, in the US, anyway. I wish I could be bothered to memorize the tiles though. I too would probably do nothing but play it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 01:29
|
|
|
oblomov posted:I couldn't get into Hana-bi. It just dragged for me. Loved Sonatine though. For Miike, in general some of his movies I do love, but sometimes, man the violence gets way, way too much. Yakuza trilogy though was pretty good. And if we're talking about surreal deconstructions of the yakuza film, Suzuki's Branded to Kill (1967) is worth mentioning. Definitely not for everyone, it's difficult to even talk about. But it's as dense a commentary on yakuza-film-as-Japanese-pop-culture as you can find. Worth noting for highlighting the (huge) influence the Bond franchise had on Japanese yakuza narratives of the time. SubG fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Dec 25, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 02:51
|
|
|
Caitlin posted:If we're talking Beat Takeshi and yakuza, I really loved Brother. Outrage, Beyond Outrage (both on Netflix) and Sonatine (unfortunately not on Netflix anymore) are great.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 03:10
|
|
|
precision posted:Outrage, Beyond Outrage (both on Netflix) and Sonatine (unfortunately not on Netflix anymore) are great. Sonatine is on Netflix. I just watched it again today. Well, US Netflix at least.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 04:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 07:35 |
|
|
SubG posted:Miike isn't at his best when he's playing it straight. His best yakuza films are the ones that are fever-dream deconstructions of the genre, like the surreal Gozu (2003) or the Dead or Alive trilogy, which starts out as a more or less straight-ahead cops-versus-yakuza film and then the first film ends with what has to be the apotheosis of all final showdown scenes. And then the trilogy goes even further off the rails from there. Yeah, Dead or Alive ending was something else... Good tip on Branded to Kill. Will see if I can find it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2014 04:32
|
|