Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Yakuza Series 16th Anniversary Kenzan Live Stream Announced

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 032021
 

December 8, 2021 is the 16th anniversary of the Yakuza series, and to celebrate, RGG Studio will be live streaming Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan.

Kenzan is one of two historical spin-offs, neither of which has ever been localized.

According to the announcement tweet, translated by Gematsu, RGG Studio will spend 24 hours and 16 minutes (I assume because it’s the 16th anniversary) playing Kenzan, after which they will reveal new information on topics such as merchandise.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean they will announce any games. However, the choice of game seems strange.

It would make sense to live stream one of the more recent games, to promote it and encourage more sales. It would make sense to go all the way back and stream one of the original games, to celebrate the series’ history. But why choose a PS3-exclusive spin-off title?

My hope is that the choice of Kenzan is because they’ll announce a remake or remaster, which would give us a good chance of finally getting Kenzan in the west!

Of course, it could just be that they thought it would be a fun game to look back at for the anniversary. It’s still a good opportunity to remind RGG Studio and Sega that we’d love to play Kenzan!

Update: Sadly, the live stream involved no announcements.

Metroid: Zero Mission is an Exciting (and Sometimes Tense) Adventure

 Reviews, Video games  1 Response »  Tagged with: ,
Dec 012021
 

As we approached the release of Metroid Dread, I decided to catch up on the Metroid games I hadn’t played yet.

…I’m working on it, okay??

I recently finished playing Metroid: Zero Mission for the first time, after dragging out my Wii U since it didn’t look like a port was coming anytime soon.

Zero Mission is a remake of the first Metroid game. It’s only the second Metroid game I’ve played, having finally finished Metroid Fusion a few years ago, but I love the basic exploration-driven principles of the genre.

So I had a great time exploring in Zero Mission and backtracking whenever I could access new areas, although I missed a lot of the hidden items since some felt too tricky for me to spend the time trying to find them.

Some of the boss fights were tricky for me, but I did manage to get through them. And the section at the end (which I understand was added for Zero Mission) was surprisingly tense. I liked that a lot.

It’s less story-driven than Fusion was, and Fusion wasn’t too story-driven to start with. Still, I come to this genre for the gameplay first and foremost, despite my love for story-driven games, so I can’t complain about that.

Overall, I’m happy I went back and played Zero Mission. Now I’ve played two Metroid games, so I only have a few more to go! How do you feel about Metroid: Zero Mission?

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