Tokyo Game Show 2009

Game Event from Jae - Tuesday, 06 October 2009 @ 3:17am

Let me start by saying Japan is a great country to visit. Living there would be a little hard for me to handle especially because everyone automatically thinks that I can speak Japanese. Damn my goodlooking Asian traits. Tokyo Game Show is the biggest videogames convention in the world and it's great to be able to be a part of it. Truth be told I've carefully planned my honeymoon to allow for a trip to Tokyo at the same time as TGS, what a coincidence!

The expo itself is housed in the Makuhari Messe convention center which is not exactly central Tokyo. With my limited knowledge of the Japanese Railway it was a task and a half just getting there. Even on the second day I still took the wrong train! TGS was spread across three main halls with two of them filled with games from the likes of Square Enix, Sony CE, Ubisoft, Capcom, Level 5, Konami, Microsoft and many others. The third hall was mainly a retail side and food outlets, didn't waste my time on crappy mess-hall food, you can easily get a good meal at the shopping center outside the train station. On the public day the walkthrough between the two gaming halls was the meeting place for cosplayers with enough sun light to give them a good look in their photos. Press had their own entrance on the opposite side of the hall, a couple of young kids were in the line in the early morning with me and a TGS staff member came over to tell me I can't take my kids through on press passes. As if I would allow my kids to go to an event with booth babes and borderline porn cosplayers.

Ubisoft more like Uberhard!

So onward to the games, of course the biggest game on show was Final Fantasy XIII. Surprisingly there were abundant stations set up of the game, I'd say at least 35 all up. Seeing as the traffic in TGS is about 180,000 people the station numbers were warranted. I was forewarned by people outside that FFXIII will have the longest queues so it was the first game I went to try out. If you've read my previous preview of the game you can see I already have a high anticipation for it. In the TGS demo you get to summon Odin with Lightning and Shiva with Snow. What I really noticed was the graphical quality this time. Snow's stubble on his face is really well done. I am seriously considering learning Japanese fluently so I can get this game in December this year and play through it, but I say that about every Final Fantasy!

The other big game from the show was Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. Definitely not my cup of tea. You need to be briefed on the game first (in Japanese) by a 10 minute presentation as the controls are not very pick up and play. The thing to note is that the controls for the game see you using the four buttons on the right side of the PSP to navigate your camera angle. Just like Resistance on the PSP this will take a while to get use to. I got me some time with Ubisoft's Red Steel 2. I admire the new animation angle that they have going for it but I'm yet to see improvements in using the motionplus control. Hacking and slashing still didn't feel right and it was easy to make a mistake or get some irresponsiveness during a fight.

Elixirs to replenish your aching legs from all the standing

God of War III plays as well as expected. The graphics have that wet look similar to Soul Calibur IV which I don't find too impressive but the main feature is the epic battles to have in the game. You get to fight a Chimera like mini boss where the finishing moves included cutting of it's snake head tail and snapping off one of it's horns to stab into it's skull. That looked damn cool. Also a good improvement is the placing of the quick time event buttons. In the past God of War games you had to focus on th center of the screen to look out for the X, O, Triangle or Square icon to appear. Now they've mapped each button to the far north, south, east and west edges of the screen respectively. The advantage there is that you can focus your view on the action of the battle and just lookout for the icons out of the corner of your eye. Sounds simple but it does make a big difference.

Princess Peach IRL in Yakuza 4

Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles is going to be a bigger game than I expected. The highlight at that booth was the Claire Redfield look alike booth babes. My booth babe kept yelling "Sugoi!" and clapping whenever I killed a few zombies, such great encouragement. I got to play the new quest with Leon and Krausse. It's a seperate story arc made exclusively for this game and judging by the cutscenes it will have a good story of it's own. Some new enemies are in this version including zombie pirahnas that can jump out of the water at you. I had a quick go of the stereoscopic version of Wipeout HD. Putting on 3D goggles and playing a game made me feel like I was playing an 80's Nintendo vision game. To be honest I don't find the 3D feature to be that much of a big deal. Your Wipeout ship looks as though it is seperated from the track but it's nothing extraordinary.

Luckily on the first public day press were allowed in 30minutes before the public so I managed to get straight to the Left for Dead 2 demo on 360. My wife and I played co-op mode on the carnival map, she's a L4D1 nut so she pretty much led the team through it. I managed to encounter the new enemies; charger, jockey and the spitter. The charger is suprisingly weak in terms of health, the spitter was smart in breaking up the group and the jockey rode me like a 70's porn star. When you pick up an ammoless weapon, like a chainsaw or baseball bat, you automatically drop your handgun. I found the axe to be a fun weapon to swing and slice up the infected. It's quite disheartening to know that this game has gotten a ban from Oz and puts a big hurdle in getting the title. Let's hope the appeal helps over turn it's rating.

Does this make your Gear Solid?

A title I didn't have the patience to wait for the first day was Heavy Rain. With only 3 stations set up it was a minimum 75 minutes to wait on a Press only day! On the first public day the line was suprisingly shorter so I gave it a quick go. There were two demos you could play, one had you play as an old guy in a convenience store that witnesses a robbery and the other has you as a Neo/Keanu guy in a car garage. The first thing you'll notice with heavy rain is that the controls are not standard analog stick moves. In fact the left analog stick moves the characters head and the R2 button is used to walk. I've not played Indigo Prophecy so I can't compare the gameplay but the game, to me, can be likened to Shenmue where it's aim is to tell a good narrative. Except this game didn't seem to have a fustrating "find Chinese people in a Japan villiage" quest at the very beginning. Playing the garage scene your player can put on a high tech glove and sunglasses that allows him to become a walking CSI lab. Tapping a button will scan the immediate surroundings for any clues. When a clue pops up you use the right analog stick to push it in the motion prompted. Then you'll start analysing the clues, for example you will view fingerprints on a garage tool and your sunglasses will immediately tell you who's fingerprints they are. The game does look interesting but I lack the attention span to scan a room for clues, maybe if it was a strip bar I'd make more time. I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so.

Do you come with the PSPgo? Oh you!

PSP Gobiggest message I got at TGS this year is that the PSP is here to stay and has a lot more life left in it. Games like MGS Peace Walker, Phantasy Star Portable 2, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy XIII Agito, Parasite Eve 3rd Birthday and Kingdom Hearts are all big titles that can revitalise the system, not to mention the new PSP Go model due out in November. My biggest concern with this piece of tech was the hand grip and whether or not my above average un-Asian like hands would fit well on it. Rest assured they are fine, if you've ever typed on an iPhone length-wise than it is of a similar distance. The shoulder buttons are snuggly behind the screen and out of view, the PS button and screen adjustor buttons are on the screen panel whilst all other buttons are on the bottom part. The new X O Square and Triangle buttons may take a little getting used to. They now click in slightly like many modern mobile phones so the feeling of hitting each button is slightly different. Now the only concern everyone should have is the fact that it cost almost as much as a PS3! A great console but I'd wait for it to go below $350 before spending hard earned cash on it.

WWE VS Raw 2010 has to be one of the best things I saw in TGS this year. I'm sure Cav has given you the low down on the gameplay mechanics and improvements to the game. The part I got a real good look at was the community network functions of uploading and sharing user created players and stories. Never has a game this generation done this before and to see it come from a wrestling game first is just amazing. Yuke's, the lead head director of the game. Gave us the tour of this function. In total there are over 120 possible story arcs and variations you can make in a story. The example of a scene I saw was a car bomb going off infront of a player, any player you choose. Any text, minus the usual profanity, can be included to help explain your story. Off the top of my head I could think of 100 possible story scenarios that include a car bomb; a Fast and Furious side arc, a Mission Impossible reanactment, a J Harrison assasination fantasy - I could go on and on. The possibilties are endless. Right now the content online has been made from internal team members, based on the characters and stories I saw you're going to have a great time even if you only download content instead of making your own. The community content has a YouTube-like ratings system and you can even search for content using key words. It's going to be hard to top this function for games to come, being someone that doesn't usually play wrestling games I'm keen to pick this one up just so I can have a look at the creativity that the online community can have.

The WWE Vs Raw 2010 crew doing the "AG" sign

It makes you wonder sometimes the goal of cosplayers. I think they're pretty much just attention whores that like to have their picture taken, kind of the pot calling the kettle black . The cosplayers on the first public day looked real good. Majority of them dressed as Final Fantasy characters, the best of which I thought was the one that posed as the Onion Knight. Other notable ones were a Bayonetta chick that was definetly a pro (in the cosplay sense not sure about the other kind of pro) and a guy dressed in what I can only describe as real hardcore. This is the first convention where I've seen lines of over 40 people waiting to take pictures of scantily clad Japanese girls. It's very obvious that the common male from the land of the rising sun is very much perverted. One of the longest lines was for a girl dressed as Cammy and she simply wasn't all that. It was her camel toe and her bare butt cheeks that had all the hentai obsessed photgraphers lining up to take happy snaps for their collection.

Say noooo to crack kids

I don't really know how words can sum up TGS. I hope someday I can come back to a year where they premiere all the next gen consoles, that would be SUPA SUGOI! The showing this year was excellent, with an oddly big focus on many PSP titles. As a gaming expo, it has been the best experience with the sheer number of games, attendees, press and cosplayers. Now I just need to come up with a reason to have a second honeymoon to LA for E3! As for Japan itself, I'm definetly coming back in a few years to see all the things I didn't get to do in my 10 days here. Embracing the culture, meeting randoms everywhere, trying to have a conversation with the helpdesk staff at any store or trainstation are all experiences to be had in Japan. Also any excuse to go stupid on sake binge drinking will make all your troubles dissapear, at least till the next morning.