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Category: Console

Talking About Television on the Ouya

Brandon 2 Comments

YouTube video

As I mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago, Clayton Grey, No High Scores reader and Don’t Shoot the Food Photoshopper extraordinaire is currently working on Television, an adventure game/WarioWare-esque mashup for the Ouya. Clayton and his partner-in-games Sam Strick recently took the Most Surprising award in the Create game jam sponsored by Kill Screen and Ouya. Clayton was kind enough to answer some questions via email and give a glimpse as to what life is like for independent developers looking to make a go on the Ouya.

Once you’re done reading, be sure to head over to their Kickstarter for Shift, a single card CCG currently in development.

You describe Television as a WarioWare meets Myst endeavor, and the trailer shows off a number of different games that would have been at home on my television during the 80s. Can you expand some on what the game’s about and how the adventure parts mesh with the mini-game parts?

The basic idea is that you can approach the game from a couple different angles: You can casually play around with a myriad of quirky short games, or you can dig in and “read between the channels” for a more complex adventure experience. You can procure items from shows and introduce those into other shows. There will be secret shows and secret channels. We enjoy games about exploration. The idea is to provide a meta-goal for those that pick up the scent. But there’s no hand-holding and no serious tutorials.

How did the idea for Television come about?
The idea originated during a brainstorming session. We had after the contest announcement to decide if we wanted to put down our current work and have a go at this contest. We had already kick(start)ed in for a developer kit, so it made sense from a lot of perspectives. I did some brainstorming about what we could do. We already have a lot of ideas for projects at various stages of development, and this was an opportunity to do something different.

I made some notes about some key ideas, and when Sam and I met up the next morning we started discussing things. We wanted to do something with exploration, something that wasn’t going to skew hard to a particular gender or demographic, and we wanted to do something non-violent. Why go to an console? What does that mean? What things work well on a console that won’t work well on a mobile device?

I had an idea that I had been tossing about for something called the “OUYA? Oh Yeah!”. It was an idea for something to put on a load screen or an interstitial between moments in a game. Totally random. The idea was that there was this weird insecure japanese gameshow host that keeps apologizing for how bad he is at his job. Players would see these questions cards that he would present, but they wouldn’t necessarily make any sense with one another.

We can’t remember the exact moment when it clicked, but once it happened, it just sort of flowered. We really hashed out a lot of the core game then and there. What are channels on TV? What kinds of shows are there? Which would work as games? Since then we’ve continued to flesh it out and nail down some of the core systems we need to make the games work.

What made you decide to switch from iOS development to Ouya development?

There haven’t been a lot of avenues open to independent developers, and that’s changing fast. We decided early on that we would make lots of game for lots of platforms – some of them analog. We’re doing digital games and boardgames. We think it’s important to be diverse. Mobile is a good starting point because it’s a big market, but we’ve never considered ourselves “mobile developers”. The OUYA seemed to have it’s ducks in a row, so we decided to spend the money and get a developer unit.

What kind of technical hurdles had to be overcome to switch development? How is the Ouya as a development platform?

We do our development using ActionScript and Adobe AIR. It’s easy for us to switch platforms from a technical perspective. The OUYA itself has very similar performance characteristics to a mobile device because it basically is a turbo-charged mobile device. Adobe as done an amazing job optimizing their virtual machine, and performance is great once you know what you’re doing! We used the Starling framework to get better performance for 2D on mobile platforms.

What have been the most challenging aspects of developing for the Ouya?

The OUYA team seems to have put a lot of thought into how to make working with the console as easy as they can manage. Right now I’d say the hardest part is waiting for the game data to install while you’re testing on the device. In short, it’s not a challenge, the device is a constraint. It’s not a desktop, and there are definitely things we’d love to do if we had more power. You make creative decisions around that.

Do you have ideas for expanding Television or are you more interested in taking the Create prize money to fund a different game idea altogether?

We’re very flattered to have won, and we’re excited that people were into the concept. The next step is planning. Kickstarter will probably be involved, so the prize money helps, but it’s really a good faith gesture. We’ll need to raise significantly a lot more to make it happen, as we will need to reach out to other tallent to do it in a reasonable amount of time. We’re having conversations.

Many iOS games end up being successful from a download perspective, but fail to make their creators any money. Is the same risk present on the Ouya or is the purchasing infrastructure more creator friendly and less reliant on in-app purchases to make money?

iOS has a known visibility problem. The key is getting enough awareness for your game. For our iOS game, we’re focusing on making a really premium game, because that’s all we can do. It really depends on your business model, and we’re hopeful but skeptical of iOS as a market for game developers. People like to talk about the outliers that made a lot of money, but that’s not an honest picture of what developers can expect. There’s no way to gloss over it. Making money on iOS is hard. There isn’t a single answer. Just make the best game you can afford to make, and really work to promote it and make people aware of it. No easy task.

The OUYA has some key differences. Firstly, the store is curated. That’s a big one. Secondly, they require all games to offer some part of their experience for free. Developers are given freedom to determine how they want to apply that to their game. So we have a lot of flexibility in determining how to monetize. For Television, we’re looking for inspiration from the concept. We’re looking at offering free “local channels” and then offering premium packages similar to cable or satellite. We’ll probably have Pay-Per-View content as well. ?? These are still just ideas, and we’re in the process of working that out. It’s still an in-app-purchase model, but that in app purchase can just be a license for the full game. We have total flexibility in that regard. Super neat.

Now that the Ouya will be available at Best Buy and other mainstream retailers, what’s the best strategy to make sure that Television rises to the top and gets played by all of those people picking up the console at launch?

We’re happy that they’re developing promising partnerships to sell the OUYA. That was a real question when we bought in, and they seem to be doing things right.

Television, like any piece of entertainment, isn’t trying to be for everyone. That said, we’re hoping to reach a broad group of people looking for something new. We feel winning CREATE will be a big boost to awareness. Keeping people informed about development, and telling your story is just as important. It seems the real key to indie game development is about persistence. Just keep making things!

What’s the best way for people to show their support for Television?

Television still needs support: follow us on Twitter and give us a Like us on Facebook. Everybody says that now, but that’s because it’s really important. It’s the best way for us to let you know what we’re up to, so when things happen, you’ll hear about it. We’re probably going the Kickstarter route for funding. That will probably happen in a month or so. So stay tuned!

Aliens: Colonial Marines- Yes, It’s That Bad

Michael Barnes 12 Comments

Aliens Colonial Marines

A copy of Gearbox’s (?) Aliens: Colonial Marines arrived at stately Barnes Manor yesterday. I just had to load it up and give it the same chance I give every other game, despite the fact that it’s received absolutely scathing reviews from every publication except a 9.0 from an EGM reviewer that apparently either has no taste or really is one of those infamous, paid-off journalists. Before we get rolling, let me go ahead and state quite clearly that I am an Aliens fan. When I was four, I had the legendary Kenner Alien toy. When I was 11 years old, I saw Aliens in the theater and as soon as I got home I took my list of favorite movies off the door of my room, crossed off Big Trouble in Little China, and wrote “Aliens” in the #1 spot. So let’s head off those “well, he must not be a fan of the property” claims at the pass.

A few minutes in, and an Aliens fan might be willing to issue a few passes. It’s the pulse rifle. It sounds right. So does the motion tracker. You board the Sulaco, and there’s that aweome dropship. But the creep of crappiness can’t be thwarted. Within ten minutes, you realize that you are playing a very, very bad game. Everything looks ugly as hell. Set designs are cluttered, muddy, and actually kind of difficult to see. The screen tears constantly (on the 360), and I actually found myself wondering if they used the models and animation from the Aliens versus Predator game on the Atari Jaguar. The Xenos are just sad to look at. At one point, one fell out of the ceiling and then ran behind a desk while my squadmate shot at the desk. Remember when that happened in the movies? How about when a marine walked up behind a Xeno just standing there and pretty much tapped it on the shoulder?

The gameplay is barely a consideration- better shooters were designed in the mid-1990s. Earn a new weapon, and it magically appears in your Bag of Holding. Lose your armor bar, and your chest plate pops off. Press and hold X to do a bunch of stuff. I honestly do not believe that at any time anyone playtested this game, and I seriously doubt anyone involved in making this game, whoever they are, actually took the time to vet it before submitting the final code. If they did, they need to be fired immediately and never allowed to work in the games business again.

No pulling punches. The game is an AAA debacle of the highest order, a strata reserved for over-promised, under-delivered games like Duke Nukem (another great Gearbox production) and Daikatana. Yes, I went there. It’s a shameful, sloppy, and intentionally mis-marketed piece of $60 junk that will satisfy no one apart from those unable to discern characteristics of quality or craftsmanship in the consumer products they purchase.

Playing through the first part of the game, I was struck persistently and consistently with the impression that I was playing a game developed over the course of a couple of weeks by garage programmers in a developing country, working with a budget of a twelve pack of Mountain Dew and a wholesale club bag of tortilla chips between them. Yet the brand names “Sega” and “Gearbox” are clearly all over the product.

You don’t have to do much research on the Internet to run into some conflicting reports about this game’s parentage. There are suggestions that Gearbox didn’t design large parts of the game, despite the fact that it is branded as such (presumably to rope in the Borderlands set) and Randy Pitchford has spent the last two years out of the half-decade that it’s been development stumping for it. Timegate Studios, who did the Section 8 games, is co-billed in the start-up screens, and anonymous folks purporting to be Gearbox employees are claiming that it’s as much a Timegate game as a Gearbox one. But then a Sega rep made a plain statement that it’s all Gearbox. Someone is lying to you, the consumer.

Yesterday, reports at Eurogamer and even on IGN have started turning up that the early demos, screenshots, and previews of the game are nothing like the finished product. You can hunt those out and make your own decision on that. But you see the one up top there? The game looks nothing like that. From whhat I’ve seen, Sega, Gearbox, and/or Timegate should be held accountable for fraudulently marketing this game with visuals and even gameplay elements that are substantially downgraded in the retail product. IGN and all of the big ad sites are responsible too, issuing preview after preview, gushing with “this is gonna be great!” enthusiasm to lure you, the consumer into preorders. Within the next couple of weeks, IGN and other such outlets will move on to helping the corporations hype their next big steaming pile, pretending like it all never happened. Disgusting.

It blows my mind that any of the parties involved with making and marketing this game thought they could get away with it. They had to know that this game is garbage. It’s pretty evident that it was rushed to market and carelessly pressed to master with tons of bugs, virtually zero polish, and assets that were not as advertised. Oh, but wait. Massive day one patch. All better, right?

No, because nothing can fix this game at this point and the bad news for Aliens fans aside from the fact that these mountebanks squandered the license is that all of the potential for this to be THE Aliens game is now gone. It’s depressing. Because when you’ve got that pulse rifle and the game’s sickly-looking, hard-to-actually-see Xenos clamber toward you and you hear that sound, you hear what might have been. When you flip up the useless motion detector and hear that distinctive ping, you hear what we SHOULD have gotten from this game. At least they sampled the sounds right.

I almost hate to have written this piece because this game needs to be buried in the desert next to those E.T. cartridges. It really is that bad- and this is coming from the guy that gave Brink a glowing review even though it was released in such a rough state. At least that game had some innovative ideas, frequently compelling gameplay, and a sense that it was made by people that actually give a shit about their product.

Funny to see golden boy developer Gearbox falling so hard on this, another Duke Nukem-class disaster- it’s pretty clear that there’s an A-team and a B-team there. Only one of which works on Borderlands. But hell, for all we know at this stage, a Gearbox employee never touched the code.

At the end of the day, it’s just another bad game. It’ll be mocked and laughed at for a while, then forgotten. Cast off into the Gamestop discount bin with an unceremonious $2.99 sticker on it. Word of advice- at that point, don’t buy the $30 season pass. But what won’t go away is what this game represents- bad development, bad design, and dishonest marketing at the highest levels of the industry. The people involved with making this game and putting it on our shelves, and then asking for our money for it, know exactly what it is that they shipped. They know this is not a game up to standards. This is not a product anyone would stand by. They’re relying on you being too stupid to realize that you’re a sucker before it’s too late and your only recourse is a $12 trade-in credit if you act, like, by Saturday.

I don’t have a cute Aliens quote to go with all of this. Doesn’t deserve it.

So Sick of Your Excuses

Michael Barnes 43 Comments

excuses

It’s not uncommon for folks in the video games industry to say incredibly stupid things- the kinds of things that point out how clueless, in denial, and utterly corporate the business has become. Two recent items caught my eye and ire. One is a statement made by a Capcom executive during a 3Q shareholder call. The question was point blank- why did Resident Evil 6 miss its sale mark of 6 million copies sold, landing somewhere around 4.8 million? The response was typical corporate bullshit, saying absolutely nothing in a way that sounds important. There’s talk about analyzing causes, validation that 4.8 million sales indicates a popular title, and a bunch of unmitigated corporate  bullshit about how marketing and “internal operating frameworks” need to be examined to determine shortcomings (you can make your own “jackin’ off” gesture at home). The other is a comment made by Puzzle Clubhouse CEO Jesse Schell  (who?)  at last week’s DICE conference about how releasing a demo harms game sales, potentially halving them. He went on to explain that the best way to sell games is to release a trailer and provide the consumer with no possible way to try it before you buy it. Love you too, buddy.

Both of these statements put me in mind of the kinds of post-sales failure finger-pointing and “dog ate my homework” excuses that we’ve seen too often in this video games generation- like poor old Warren Spector claiming that Epic Mickey failed because they used a adventure game camera instead of a platform game camera. Or the tired “gamers didn’t get it” response.  For all of the money in the video games business, it’s just incredible that none of these analysts, developers, executives, or stakeholders has bothered to own up to what the truth about these games failing actually could be. Nobody wants to state the obvious and take responsibility for all of these millions of dollars in development and promotion squandered. So many excuses, but nobody talking straight.

It could be that your game just fucking sucked.

Or that nobody wanted to buy it for any number of reasons ranging from market saturation to the $60 price point. Or maybe people DON’T want a Resident Evil game that moves further and further away from the core values of the franchise in ten different directions. Maybe the demo showed potential buyers that the game was just BAD to begin with.

And maybe- just maybe, guys- gaming consumers aren’t Pavlovian idiots responding to your marketing. Maybe- just maybe- consumers should be respected instead of treated as marks for day one DLC scams, unasked for multiplayer, and used game lock-out tactics like online passes. Could it be that maybe people are starting to NOT want the shit you’re selling? Could it be that with more choices available, the guys that treat their customers like mindless trash are the ones seeing losses, failures, and missed expectations?

Hearing these kinds of excuses just points out how the desperate this industry is becoming and how far removed from reality the people in positions of power in it really are. It shows- yet again- that video games and corporations don’t always mix so well.  And it shows yet again the latent contempt these companies have for us. This Jesse Schell character wants to tell the business to NOT let us see their game before we buy. He wants us to make a blind $60 purchase based on a trailer. A trailer. I hope no one listens to this clown, who has no business being CEO of anything.

It blows my mind that people with business degrees, corner offices, decades of experience, and other attractive resume elements can’t see something that I and a lot of you have had figured out for as long as we’ve been spending money on any kind of consumer good. There is no analysis needed, no one needs to be paid a dime for the kinds of simple business wisdom the video games industry has forgotten.

If you make a great product or offer a great service and you treat your customer with respect, you will make money.

Let me repeat that. Consider this a free course in running a business. I don’t think they teach this in MBA school. Memorize it. Jesse Schell- you need to hear this.

If you make a great product or offer a great service and you treat your customer with respect, you will make money.

Really, it is that simple. If you’re making huckleberry pies or satellite guidance systems, all of the marketing and hufflepuff in the world doesn’t make a lick of difference if you’re treating people badly and delivering sub-par product that no one wants to buy. Yeah, you need to get the word out.  But people do not buy things just because of an advertisement- regardless of what the folks in marketing trying to hold onto their jobs will tell you.

I never saw endless streams of trailers, previews, preorder bonuses, transmedia, or an E3 presentation for Minecraft. It seems to be doing pretty well. I wonder if Mojang blames “internal processes and administration” or the availability of a demo for his game selling 20 million copies instead of 21 million.

More and more, I regret ever giving most of these companies and developers my money. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that for too many in the industry that the business/customer relationship is an adversarial one. There are good people in this business, good businesses. Let’s run these corporate jackasses and their excuses for failure out of town and get the good guys back in control. Folks that understand the Barnes Maxim-

If you make a great product or offer a great service and you treat your customer with respect, you will make money.

No excuses.

Saying “No” to Dead Space 3

Michael Barnes 44 Comments

 

dead space 3

I’m a big horror and science fiction fan, particularly of the more intelligent strains of those genres, and I love survival horror video games. All of the above means that I should be practically spooning with EA’s Dead Space franchise in my wheelhouse. I thought the first game was decent but not great, too often relying on carnival funhouse shocks and Cannibal Corpse-caliber gore while underplaying the more compelling elements of the narrative. But I loved the second game and called it one of 2011’s best, everything from the action to the horror and SF elements were better managed and there was a great sense of world-building that the first game sorely lacked. And here we are on the eve of a new Dead Space game, and I will not be buying or playing it.

I was irritated enough by Dead Space 2’s crass reliance on transmedia marketing to tell its “complete” story- I shouldn’t have to buy a tie-in novel or something to get the full context of an element in a $60 video game’s story. I also was disappointed that a poor- and unasked for- multiplayer mode was added to the game, invariably weakening the complete package. But Visceral’s fine work shone through the marketing haze, and I could forgive their transgressions. Looking at what Dead Space 3 offers, the co-op mode has already raised eyebrows since the isolation, aloneness, and quiet are some of the key elements of Dead Space’s atmosphere. But I could have overlooked that. They cram bullshit co-op modes in everything these days, thinking that it’ll keep you from trading your game to Gamestop once you’re done with the 8 hour campaign. It’s nothing new.

But where Dead Space 3 crossed the line for me was in offering a full suite of freemium game-style microtransaction purchases that will enable players to purchase in-game Dead Space Necrobucks or whatever in exchange for your credit card number. These resource packs apparently will enable you to bypass doing things like playing the game to earn materials to upgrade weapons, they’ll increase the rate at which you gain these resources via the in-game collector bots, and of course they’ll skin you up all pretty. All told, there is already some $50 worth of first-day DLC including, of course, a $10 online pass if you dare to buy this marketing scheme of a game secondhand. Oh, and of course Visceral tweeted something or other “teasing” an upcoming DLC story that’s supposed to be “disturbing”. It can’t possibly be more disturbing than watching AAA development fuck itself in the ass like this.

Here’s the rub. It’s been stated that Visceral needs to sell 5 million copies of Dead Space 3. And we know what happens when developers get into bed with corporations and underperform, right? The best way to take off some of the sales pressure and to increase revenue is to treat the game like a $4.99 microtransaction whore, banking on both casual and hardcore gamers experiencing that undeniable urge for instant gratification that leads them to the “shop” menu. Visceral has defended the microtransactions with the usual “you don’t have to buy them” routine, as well as a bizarre argument to the effect that younger gamers raised on mobile games expect there to be microtransactions. They’re also arguing that microtransactions make the game more accessible. In other words, more casual gamers can pay their way through any kind of challenge or gameplay. Really, Visceral?

Don’t tell me in the forums, I already know. I don’t have to buy this stuff, it’s all optional. That’s exactly right, but also optional is my support of Visceral, EA, and other entities that support not only this kind of marketing, but also this kind of game development. We are already far down a slippery slope where games are designed around this bullshit “service model” concept, and that means that games have been and are being designed that are literally created to perpetually generate revenue. The thing is, in a freemium or 99 cent game this is what you should expect because that’s the a la carte business model and it makes sense for both the business and the consumer. In a $60 retail game, it is an insult to the consumer. Worse, it’s a sign of desperation.

So I’m saying “no” to Dead Space 3 and I hope that others do so as well. My protest won’t make any difference though, I’m realistic about it. For every person that says no to these hucksters, there’s five people that will buy this microtransaction garbage. For every person that complains about it on internet forums, there’s five people that will buy the DLC chapter. But what if a million people loudly said “no” to Dead Space 3 and its vulgar, exploitative marketing tactics? What if people like you and me said “I will not play this game” and actually meant it, instead of giving in because we’re “fans” or whatever and giving these companies permission to do this again in other games?

It is a personal choice to buy these things or not, but to choose to do so is to contribute toward leading video games as a profitable business into ruination as it alienates customers and cynically milks the willing with ephemeral, nonsensical nickle-and-dime purchases. I love video games, and I think the people and companies that make them should be rewarded with profit when they provide us, the consumers, with a quality product. But they should not be rewarded for putting microtransactions in a game that’s already $60 at retail.

It sucks, because I probably would have actually bought Dead Space 3. I want to see what happens to Issac, I want to see what Visceral has cooked up with this whole ice planet business. I was really excited about hearing the game again, the second one had some of the best sound design I’ve ever heard in a game. But not only am I not paying one bloody, red cent for this game, I’m also not going to play it at all. I’ll never know what it’s like to play Dead Space 3. And I’ll get by just fine without it.

DMC Impressions- Doofuses May Cry, But This Game Rocks

Michael Barnes 11 Comments

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One of the worst- and woefully dated- things about Capcom’s Devil May Cry series is Dante. Sorry to send those of you who still think that a guy with white hair in a red trenchcoat is “cool” crying into your Trigun cosplay jacket, but Dante is a bad character that really ought not appeal to anyone over the age of 16. It’s that charmingly clueless sense of whatever Japanese “cool” is that’s kept him afloat all of these years, and the fact that he’s starred in at least three great action games that all have their share of clunk and junk ranging from terrible writing to bad pacing to unbalanced design.

So after all of the fan rage over Dante’s makeover, we’re left with the new title in the franchise, DMC, and a host of things that Ninja Theory has done with this long-running brawler franchise. I’m just a couple of hours into the game, having just ushered what the game calls a Succubus to a rather gruesome death in the bowels of an energy drink factory, but I’m not hesitant to state that the new game is the most refined, slickest game in the series. It’s by far the best-written, it’s the best looking, and it is the most seamlessly fun.

I’m going to shoot down any kind of comment about Ninja Theory “dumbing down” DMC right off the bat. The Devil May Cry games are as a whole incredibly fucking dumb. But they’re dumb, rock n’ roll fun, and that’s a good thing. In DMC, when the Z-grade Fear Factory cover band they got to do the soundtrack kicks in and you’re juggling bad guys, spinning around in the air with guns blazing, and hearing the new, chic-er Dante proclaiming awful one-liners it’s just as much fun as the first, third, or fourth game could be. Sure, it’s easier- at least on normal. The combos are simpler and it’s kind of shocking to fight the first boss and never get hit one time. But I’ll be damned if I’m not enjoying it more.

I’ve been constantly surprised by the game, in particular that I actually like the story and not in an ironic “oh, those crazy Japanese writers” way. Hell more or less controls the world with energy drinks and subliminal messages, Dante and Vergil attempt to stop head demon Mundus. It’s really overblown, ridiculous trash- but it’s at least self-aware, smart trash that bites enough from John Carpenter’s They Live to make adolescent-friendly messages about, like, the government and stuff, man. All of the eye-rolling nonsense about angels and demons getting it on and spawning bad-ass swordslingers is present, but the sense is that it’s a game written by folks smart enough to realize that the original games could be both playfully mocked and reverently respected with a single stroke of the pen. Oh, I’m 100% sure the writers (one of whom is apparently screenwriter Alex Garland) were very aware of how terrible some of Dante’s comments are.

I’ve also been surprised by the platforming, which is actually not terrible at all. This time out, Dante’s abilities are split between angel and devil ones and each has a whip associated with it. Angel whip is a grapple, devil whip pulls things. There are some rather nifty jumping sequences that use both of these, and there are plenty of opportunities to explore or wonder if maybe there was an argent key up that way that you didn’t go. Fortunately, it’s a game built for replay so there’s always next time. Challenge rooms, multiple mode unlocks after completion, pursuing the higher rankings, and beating folks on the leaderboards gives this game far more legs than is usual for AAA action titles these days.

I’m also really pleased at how the game is developing in terms of gameplay. New weapons, abilities and concepts are unlocked almost constantly, and it seems- so far at least- that there’s always something new to do around the corner. This is a very accessible game, yet it is not at all a dopey button masher. I love that I can try-before-I-buy all of the upgradeable abilities for every weapon- you can get a feel for how Roulette or Stinger fits into your rhythm before dropping the ability points. Don’t like it? You can respec any time.

It all comes back around to the fighting, and man, is it good. At first, there was a bit of an adjustment period and I didn’t feel like the game was as smooth as the past games. But once I found my particular flow, I was hitting the S rankings and feeling like a total killing machine. It has been disappointing that the enemies are pretty dull and repetitive, but the big boss fights have been memorable if not quite up to the standards of some of the others in the series. That said, at least you don’t have to retry fights 50 times to get it right.

So yeah, DMC turned out really damn good. Probably the biggest surprise of all is that Ninja Theory actually made a really great game, particularly after the sub-mediocre Enslaved. I’m really happy that the team had enough respect for and understanding of the original Capcom designs to look at what worked best, what had grown long in the tooth, and what needed to be completely changed. I’m sure there are still old school Dante fans claiming that this game is some kind of sexual assault or that eeeeevil Capcom is at it again, but for those looking for a great, highly stylized and very modern action game this is your first stop in 2013.

Now, the ultimate question. Is it better than Bayonetta? The answer- absolutely not.