This piece is solely the veiwpoint of the author and not of GemuBaka as a whole or any of its affiliates.

While Downloadable Content is nothing new (even the Atari 2600 had a form of it using a phone line), I feel developers of this day and age are using it to be fairly lazy, especially when compared to development studios, say, 10 years ago or so. When I first received BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger for the 360, it wasnt but three days after its release before patches where coming out to tweak the game and I must say it irked me. Why not just test the game more? Games are basically ready months before release, so a few more weeks of heavy playing shouldn't push the game's store release back. Most high-profile games that have come out - Gears of War, Halo, Fallout 3 and Resident Evil 5 - have had to have patches to make the gameplay work the way it was originally intended to. I think highly respected companies such has Namco, Activision, Capcom and EA have gotten lazy to the point of saying, "Well, let's just pump it out ... I mean, if it's too bad, we'll just fix it later." I'm sure glad I at least have some access to the Internet through my 360 since I would feel really bad about spending $60 USD (or for that matter, 20) on a game that's made to be fixed later by means I can't even access.

Even if everyone does have online play, I don't care to see the bar on good gaming lowered. Take a look at Velvet Assassin; the game was released with so many bugs it was basicly unplayable at parts and had to be patched a ton within a few days. I laugh everytime I read that the game received "mixed reviews upon release" ... No wonder: Half those reviews were more then likely reviewing the fixed version.

"But if a game gets fixed, why does it matter that it shipped with some bugs?" I know some of you are saying. Well, it's just that it's hard to improve upon utter crap and developers should be pushing the graph UP and not this WWW shape that I'm seeing. Even at its best, Velvet Assassin recieved around a 7.5 out of 10. Not near stellar, if you ask me. Also, that's if players have access to online gaming. I paid for Velvet Assassin, I should be able to play the game without having to worry about the Internet being there to back me up.

But that's not my biggest gripe. My biggest complaint about DLC is forcing gamers to pay twice for a single game. There are so many exspansions on Fallout 3 that getting everything the game has to offer would cost $120 USD easily. Some of the downloads simply make getting to already on-disc content possible and all of this could have been put on one disc. Why wasn't it? So you would have to pay the big bucks. Most DLC is basically ready as the game is shipped out, so it's not like that extra level or new car wasn't planned well ahead of release and couldn't be added, it simply wasn't. I'd wager if DLC was the standard back in 1997, Final Fantasy VII - known for being a great game - would have released at about the same time without a lot of content it had. Vincent's entire story would be 20 dollars a few months after release. Yuffie would follow for another 20 dollars.  A good chunk of items, spells, the ability of passing level 50 and possibly all of the level 4 Limit Breaks would be another download. Add the fact Square would most likely have been lazy just as developers are getting now, and FFVII would have had its share of bugs. You want to know why it's considered the best game of all time now? It's smply due to the fact Square knew it only had one shot, so it made sure it did the game right the first time.

Face it - DLC is not a way for developers to keep games alive past their shelflife, not a way to show they care about the fans but another way to milk games. The only execption would be for games like Rock Band, where DLC makes keeping up-to-date songlists and owning songs you care about simple, easy and more cost efficient than Konami's old idea of coming out with a new version every six months, a la DDR, or even Japan's beatmania IIDX. Otherwise, I just would like to see DLC getting dumped. When I pay good money to buy a game, I want to ensure that I'm buying a full game since I'm paying full shelf price for it.

 ~Lar

Another review of mine about an older fighting game. With Tekken 6 coming out in a few months I thought I would take a look at one of the highlights of my arcade trips to see how well Namco's beloved Tekken TAG has aged. 

The Tekken games have always been a favorite in American arcades and with the major success of Tekkn 3 in both the Arcades and on PSX back in 1998, Namco decided to up the ante a bit. Tekken TAG was to give players the one thing they wanted most: To see Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 go at it with a tag-team system.  It was a must-play in 2000, but do newer fighting fans need to seek it out?

The game is basically played like any 2D fighter you would have seen 10 years ago with the exception of the fights playing out in 2-on-2 affairs, with players switching out between their two chosen characters much like Marvel vs Capcom or Dead or Alive 2. The classic four-button layout from Tekken 1, 2 and 3 is still intact, with a fifth button dedicated to switching out. Unlike Tekken 3, Tekken TAG used different health values for the characters, making the gameplay slightly more unbalanced then it had been. Nevertheless, with the return of long-lost Tekken 2 characters and the entire Tekken 3 cast intact, there's still plenty of combinations of teams players can match together.

Graphically, the arcade version looks exactly like Tekken 3 due to this game being just an "upgrade" to the existing 32-bit engine. When ported to the PS2, Namco used the hardware to smooth out the graphics and speed things up just a bit (mostly affecting the speed in which you tag out). The result is the most enjoyable Tekken at it's time: A great port of a great game (too bad Tekken 3's port couldnt be on PS2).  Not to say both the graphics and speed are not dated by now, but compared to Tekken 3, Virtual Fighter 3 or even Street Fighter II, the PS2 version has aged better than one would guess. This remains one of the more fast-paced Tekkens to date, with Tekken 5 DR slightly edging it out.

If you have ever played Tekken 3, then you can guess what the sound effects are, as the same ones where reused from the previous game. It's completely forgivable since TAG was just a arcade update to Tekken 3, but after playing Tekken 3 for so long, it gets pretty old. The sound also sounds like those used in Tekken 5, so while they work, they just wouldn't hold anyone's attention. The music makes up for it, as Tekken 3's music score was dumped in favor of new songs. Fans of hard techno will feel right at home here, but some of the songs get really old fast. To make matters worse, the arcade music isn't in the PS2 version, so if you don't enjoy the remixes, you might hate Namco for a bit. If you never heard the first soundtrack, then you won't miss out and you'll enjoy it better than I did.

One of the biggest things a fighting game should get right is replayability and that brings me to my biggest gripe: This plays out almost like Tekken 3 did. If you never played Tekken 3, then you will enjoy this game pretty well, but if you were a long time Tekken fan, then you will see this as the same old game with some new stuff that does, in time, get really old (for example: The levels are new but are based off Tekken 3's). The game has the standard TAG, One on One, Survival and Time Attack modes, with the mini-game Namco is getting known for these days being the famous Tekken Bowl - a bowling game that is EXTREMELY good. The best fighting mode is simply the arcade's TAG mode. While you would think that One on One would simulate Tekken 3, the different HP values I mentioned before throw the mode to the unbalanced side of the court: Xioayu versus Jin or Devil just isnt fair at all. The rest are played out as you would have guessed. The next killjoy for replayability is the character roster. The biggest one at the time (and a large one today), TAG had 39 fighters to pick from. Except for Gon and Jack-1, EVERY Tekken fighter is here. The drawback is, though, that the Tekken 3 fighters were meant to completely replace those from Tekken 2. Unlike Tekken 5, where the old fighters were completely re-programmed, the fighters here fight just like they did in Tekken 2 with some new moves (mostly side-step moves) and fight a lot like their Tekken 3 counterparts. Bruce fights like Bryan, Wang fights like Julia, Lee fights like Law and so on. There is some difference, but not enough. Fans of Tekken 4 or 5 will also notice that the Tekken 3 fighters fight with WAY LESS moves and the same moves aren't used the same way. Since no new fighters were made for this game (the mimicking "Unkown" girl doesn't count), that leaves about 20 different styles to learn.

Overall, TAG is a really enjoyable fighter that gets fairly boring after a while. I feel it's probably one of the better Namco fighters of the era, but casual gamers may not see enough difference between it and the other Tekkens to warrant looking for. If you have never played Tekken before or just want to see how different it is from Tekken 5 a mere seven dollars from Gamestop is a hard deal to pass up. Just keep in mind it was printed in CD format (Blue back disk), so if you have an older system that no longer reads the format, then you might want to stick with Tekken 5.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3

Since nestlekwik recently posted his older previews that included Konami's announcment of a U.S. release of its wildly popular Japanese game beatmania IIDX, I thought I would share my review of it. Hopefully, this will help players who saw Nestle's post and wanted to know more.

Konami gives the U.S. a small slice of the IIDX pie with the U.S. release of beatmania. While a good bit cheaper than importing any of the Japanese versions, do Americans get a decent taste of the goodness?

If you have played any music/rythym game before, you probably have heard of a game known as beatmania. The game was the first Bemani game ever made and kickstarted the music genre back around 1997. Its spin-off, beatmania IIDX (pronounced Two DX) upped the ante and added more keys, more songs, more ... everything. Since then, Japan has received a new IIDX at least once every two years. A few years ago, Konami decided to try its luck at bringing this game to the States. While still a fun little game, it's missing a lot from the Japanes titles - though, if you never played the imports, it'll be fun for awile.

We crave Gameplay

The game is played a lot like any other music game you can think of with the diffrence that you use a keyboad-style controller with a spinning disc-like object that is there to simulate a turntable. There are seven "keys" on the table that are about as big as a mouse button. The goal of the game is to pick between 5Key or 7Key mode, and then hit these keys and spin that turntable in time to music by following falling blocks (much like RockBand).  Like Rockband, failing to hit the note will resuilt in the note not being played at all, but unlike most other titles, if you are offbeat here, then the song is played offbeat, making it hard to get back on the timing. The game judges you by the note, flashing words like "Great!" or "Poor" to tell you how close you were to hitting a note on time. The "Just Greats" (or a flashing "Great") that was in all the Japanese versions was replaced with the word "Perfect!". The change doesnt seem to change the gameplay however.

Another change the gameplay has is the final score at the end of a song, which judges players on their timing much like DDR or In The Groove. The judgement has been changed to resemble that of DDRMAX, and now you are awarded a grade two time higher than you would have had in the import versions. Again, this doesn't really change the gameplay, but can get on the nerves of older fans.

The biggest addition to the U.S. release over any of the Japanese ones is the inclusion of an extra, easier chart for each 7Key song. This helps beginners test the waters of the game engine much more easily than ever before.  

We Got Da Beat!

Music games are made or broken by the soundtracks in them and beatmania is no different. Hardcore fans of DDR will recognize a few songs by the artist Good-Cool, and a couple of dj TAKA's fan favorites such as V and Colors. The rest is mostly either old beatmania songs (pre-IIDX a lot of times) or a brand new licensed song such as Moby's Lift me Higher or Timo's First Day. Fans of dance, techno and anything else with heavy beats will be right at home, but naming all the songs is pointless as there are already FAQs that do that.

The bad thing is, out of only 79 songs, you get 20 that are in 5key format and 50 that are in 7Key format, with about eight that can be played using both. And the sad part is songs on 5Key only have one difficulty. This is completely stupid and just proves that Konami thinks that people will forever replay its games even if they don't add more difficulties. The U.S. version of every game it brings us is always dull after you master the harder charts and this is no diffirent. In this game the hardest song is V, which alot of IIDX players have already played and have moved on to harder songs by playing imports.

Thankfully, getting used to the game is very hard, so the challenge is there, but for people who have already played, it's not enough. It's also worth noting that the movies that play when a song plays are, for the most part, just not that great. But you'll probably never notice it while playing.

Other points of interest

So with only 79 songs to unlock and enjoy, you expect there to be extra modes would you? The game has the standard 5Key, 7Key, Two Player, Practice Mode, Double Play and Course Modes you would expect to have in a Konami game, but other than that, there isn't that much to enjoy. The course mode is fun, since you play a set of five songs back to back and have Internet Ranking, but there isn't much new or challenging content if you've played the game before. Not only that, the game is based off of the beatmania IIDX 9th Style interface. What that means in a nutshell is that there isn't that many extra options to spice up the game. And if people are playing two players, both players have to use the same play mods (such as how fast the game runs, what difficulty you're playing, whether you have the turntable turned off, etc). Again, there were other, newer version Konami could have based this off of and it decided to fail us.

In the end, it's probably better to get this if you have never played it and are wanting to give it a chance. If you played the imports a lot, you'll probably just want to stick with those, but at the current price, it's with buying for the controller, which otherwise would cost you around 70 bucks in itself. I would love to see this game reinvented for the U.S. market with all the trimmings and content the Japanese players enjoy, but knowing Konami, it'll probably never happen

GemuBaka Final Review Socre: 2 out of 5

Purely for newer fans or players who are just tired of hearing rock all the time in their music games.

Pump it UP! has always demanded the best from any fan of the dance genre, but does this version give enough in return?

By MixMasterLar

 A lot of people who are fans of the dance genre of games (or heck, even the rhythm genre of games) have never bothered to try out a little game entitled Pump it UP! The concept is pretty much the same as any pad-based rhythm game that you've played: Arrows on-screen float upward to the top of the screen, where there are a set of outlines. When an arrow reaches the outline, you hit the arrow on the pad that points the same way. Despite the fact that you feel stupid for the first few rounds, the idea of stomping arrows is insanely fun and anyone can enjoy. Pump it UP brings a new twist on the classic routine, though...

Stop Stepping and Start - eh, Stepping Different

Most dancing games have four panels (buttons) that make up the pad: Up, Down, Left, Right. Pump it UP changes things by featuring an Up-Right, Up-Left, Down-Right, Down-Left, and a Center button. If you could look at the Dance Dance Revolution pad, there's a button for PiU for every free space DDR has. While it doesn't sound like it from just reading this review, the panels are close enough for you to press up to two with one foot.

PiU's stepcharts are much harder then the ones you'll see in DDR. They require a lot of energy for the most part. The thing that makes it doable is the timing window in Pump is HUGE compared to DDR's/InTheGroove's. I mean I could jump in the game with timing that big. To the advance DDR/ITG players, that sounds pretty lame, but one look at what the step routines want you to do will make you realize this is a blessing. PIU has the same foot rating as most other "Dance" games (1 being super easy, and 10 being really hard), yet goes all the way to a foot rating of 22 - With DDR's "Flashing Tens" being about a level 11 here.

Sadly, a lot of the step charts are offsynch by a whole beat (Notably the old steps from 7+ years ago). While you can still use the timing window to make a "Perfect" by stepping the beat for the most part, it really brings the fun down a few points

Go Clubbing ... in Korea.

Most DDRs that were released have had a lot of the J-POP songs ripped right out for a more "American" feel. PiU, on the other hand, seems to carry it's origin on it's sleeve. Most of the songs in the game are club-style hits sung in Korean.

The songs are listed in three "Channels." In order to find a song you must flip over to the other "Channel" and find it. The channels are:

BANYA CHANNEL: All the songs are preformed by the in-house group BanYa, being lead by long time music vet Yhapp. BanYa is alot like DDR's Naoki Maeda or ITG's Kyle Ward, making songs in many styles.
POP CHANNEL: Pop songs from around the world. Most of them are in English or Spanish.
K-POP CHANNEL: Pop/club songs sung in Korean. Some have a lot of the song in English, though.

As someone else pointed out, you've probably never heard at least 75% of this game's music before. There are 101 total songs in the Playstation version, and 98 in the Xbox port. Keep in mind that the Xbox version has a step editor so you can create charts for your MP3s that can be played in-game, so for that reason it's recommend that you take the 3 song hit and get that if you can. 

Bare-bones Dancing

So, what do we get extra for shelling out the bucks?
Nothing, really.

PiU Comes with few modes: Arcade, Home, Survivor and Nonstop. Arcade and Home are pretty much the same thing, but Arcade has a timer and Home lets you turn off the health bar. Survivor is a lot like Arcade mode, but if you get one miss, you fail (You can break the combo as much as you like) and Nonstop is an Arcade mode were the Health Bar carries over. With every mode being the same, you'll wonder why you should play them all.

The reason being is that you don't have more than 20 songs in a mode to begin with, and each mode has a DIFFERENT LIST of default songs. You need to beat Y song in arcade mode to play it in Home, you need to beat X song in Nonstop to play it in home, then beat it again to play it in arcade, and, sometimes, you need to beat N song in one mode to unlock Z song in another mode (Of course, you have to beat Z again to play it in the first mode). This system gets really old in a matter of hours. Futhermore, if you've ever played a lot of PiU in the arcades, then your feel like you're paying for the same old stuff. Out of 101 songs, maybe 10 are brand new to PiU. It sucks playing the game 70 times to get BanYa's Winter when you have already played it to death at the arcades.

Hopefully we'll get a new PiU for a next-gen console that will fix this problem. However, I can't give this a great review for two reasons. One: The unlock system sucks. Two: The pad sucks and as of this printing, finding a metal PiU pad on eBay is near impossable.  I enjoyed it only due to having played the game a lot before my arcade got rid of it. I really hope we get another version of the game again since, deep down, it is amazing.

Final GemuBaka Rating: 2 out of 5

Metal Gear Solid is consider a PSX classic for a reason, but Kojima's been pushing the gameplay of the series so for that it isnt worth the 30+ dollars that it demands anymore

By MixMasterLar

My first Playstation game I ever played (and beat) was Metal Gear Solid, a masterpiece by Konami's top director, Hideo Kojima. This was one of the first games to have 3D polygon characters (Kojima said "At the time we started, no other game had them") and had one of the best stories of the PS1 era (not counting RPGs, of course). Playing as an agent named Snake and using stealth instead of action to defeat your foes was awesome, and still is, but now that Kojima has raised the bar four times over, is it worth shelling out the bucks for again?

All about Snake

MGS1 takes place six years after Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MG2 was never released in the US untill MGS3, so gamers at that time probably didnt get that). Snake has left FOX-HOUND to be alone in Alaska and has been living pretty good mushing sled dogs for a living. However, Col. Campbell contacts him one day and tells him that the newer members of FOX-HOUND have taken over a weapon disposel factory near Alaska's Fox Islands. It seems that a new Metal Gear was secretly testing there and they claim that if they dont get the dead body of Big Boss in 18 hours, they'll blow America up with nukes. Snake has really no choice then accept the "offer" and stop them.

So why do a bunch of FOX-HOUND Members want a dead body? Im not telling! The Metal Gear Games are about Hollywood-yype stories, so in order not to spoil the rest, I'll stop here. As far as how the story is told, Kojima does a great job with it. People who love sci-fi will love this, even though everything that happens in the game is based off of "reality."

Pushing 32 bits to the Limit ... Well, Maybe

The graphics are well done for a PSX game. The characters look great in-game, sadly, when you see them in cut sceens (all done with the in-game models) you see how ghetto some of them are. Keep in mind that at the time this was being made, no other game had yet made a full 3D polygon game, so this was a first time for Kojima's team (who were all very new back then). The worst problem here with the animation is clipping, but that doesnt happen often enough to get angry at. Since the entire game is done with the same models the entire time, you'll forget just how bad the ploygon count is. Think Dino Crisis 2 or a sharper Tomb Raider and you'll know what to expect. As for character designs, I've never heard any complaints about any of the enemies, bosses or buddies and I can't say I dislike them either.

Classic Casting

The voices are really good and fit the characters nicely. A great job on Konami's part. While fake names where used in the credits all the voices are acted by the same talents as MGS2 or MGS4. Unlike some of MGS2's characters (Looking at you, Rose) none of your codec buddies here should get on your nerves since the acting is top notch. The lines in MGS are good and you can tell that Kojima worked hard on them.

We want Big Boss

It wouldnt be a Metal Gear game without some awesome boss characters to kick around. MGS2 had some pretty freaky Bosses that were a bit of overkill, and MGS3 - while much more believable - didnt go far beyond MGS2 itself. On the first time around, Kojima hit all the right notes and hit them hard! The bosses arent your regular grunts but are (for the most part) somewhat believable. Some highlights include a giant Alsakan with a vulcan cannon, the now-known Ocelot with his ancient revolver, a ninja out for Snake's blood, and a female sniper who likes dogs. As stated eariler, the designs and voices fit the personallities oh so well.

All About Replay, right?

Here's the kicker and the reason for the low score at the end.

Metal Gear Solid has been punned off of so much in the other MGS titles that even if you never played the game before you might very well see what's coming around the corner. Oh sure, the story itself is pretty different, but how it's told and the order of events is a lot like newer MGS games. Things like being in jail and fighting a sniper have been done in MGS3, and MGS2 did the entire Ninja thing and the hostage deal itself. If you played the others, there isn't much new here.

Not that Im saying it's all been done better since then, there's alot of things that aren't ever repeated. A good example - and one that doesnt spoil anything - is Raven mentions Snake is part Japanese. That fact is never said again.

But, MGS itself also puns off older games ... This wasn't a bad deal at the time due to MG2 not having been in the US, but now that people have had a chance to play it and the original, you can tell that it has the pun thing going on as well. The only way to get max enjoyment is to play this first before the others.

"There are only 18 hours untill their Deadline!"...humph!

Here's another kicker, the game's only about 12 hours long.

I hadn't played this game in 9 years when I played it the other day and I beat it in 9 hours and 50 minutes. If you don't know were everything is, haven't played a MG game before and have it on normal difficulty, you might get 14 hours out of it. Compare it to the 20+ hour MGS2 and 25+ hour MGS3 and you just feel like the game and story go by way too quickly. Add the fact that eBay will make you pay 30+ bucks and you really feel like you need more. The VR Training bonuses don't add up much as a side mode and the backlog is pretty short. If you want more than 10 hours, you'll need to unlock Extreme Mode. In all, the replay suffers badly here.

All said, get this game only if you need to understand the later MGSs more, want a easier, faster MG, or just crave some old-school action (It gives off a PS1 vibe, no doubt). While I love it myself, It's hard to recommend it to everyone.

Final GemuBaka Review Score: 3 out of 5