Recent reviews by Mr. Shakedown

Yakuza 0 is an excellent game that tackles serious subject matter with its own sense of humor. In it, you free-roam around 1980s Japan and beat up thugs in a battle over real estate. Ultimately, it feels like a videogame version of my favorite movie, Ichi the Killer. Every character you bump into has a lot of love and attention poured into them to make them feel unique and alive. If you get this game, you will be chuckling along with Yakuza punks who've misplaced their pants, having children pull at your heartstrings, and you'll be sharing screenshots with your friends of the man called Walking Erection. I've heard from a lot of people that they expect this game to be some kind of GTA clone. It is not anything like GTA, rather it draws a lot from the classic game Shenmue, albeit more action-oriented.

At the time of this review, there's a lot of forum posts from people having difficulties with this PC port. I personally have had the game crash on me a couple times and I've lost enough progress that I've been scared into constantly saving after I do anything. Otherwise, the game runs very well on my toaster and it has no problem picking up any of my controllers. Sega has been very up-front and communicative about fixing the issues that have been present for many people and I trust them to get the kinks worked out soon. I've seen so many ports of games by Japanese companies who just puke up some half-baked PC port and leave it abandoned. This does not appear to be one of those. This is an excellent game, but if you are reading this early on, expect some issues until the patches go out.

I just experienced Blighttown in 60fps for the first time!

In 2016, at the height of the drama surrounding the rootkit situation from back then, I wrote a rather scathing review of this game. The fact is, given that this is the end of the game's Season 3, this is a totally different game now than existed back then, and deserves an updated review.

To begin, SFV revolves around the use of the V-System in place of the Focus Attack from SF4 or the Parry/Overhead from SF3. At its best, the V-System adds some necessary enhancements to the character you are playing. At its worst, some of the returning characters feel like they've had moves gutted until you fill your V-Gauge. Overall, the gameplay gets some criticism from long time fans in that it has been dumbed down too much to be fun. At launch, I would have agreed. Now that the cast of characters has more than doubled since then, I will tell you that how much your skills are tested will depend on the character you choose. Characters such as Menat and Ibuki require tight execution to earn wins with their V-Trigger, while you'll find other characters like Necalli that have a straight-forward gameplan and simpler combos.

In regards to the audio and visuals, these things are subjective, but I find them to be the game's strong point. I enjoy a lot of the character theme music, such as Kolin's and Menat's, even to the point that I listen to the OST sometimes outside of the game. The graphics are a bit more of a mixed bag. The character models were outsourced to multiple other companies and it shows. It doesn't feel like there's a unifying aesthetic for how they model hair, skin, faces, limbs, etc. and it doesn't always feel like the characters belong in the same game. However, I'm quite impressed by the models in motion. There's clear keyposes that make the moves easy to ready, and the characters' bodies squash and stretch to add weight to the punches and kicks. They really showed off the animation quality in characters like Dhalsim, whose limbs flow almost like liquid, and whose stomach explands as he inhales for his fireballs. The more recent additions to the roster have some extra animations after their normals which help sell the action. Zeku does all these sweet animal stances and handsigns, G works on his public speaking after his dash punches.

Ultimately, the next part of this review is going to be the thing which will make or break the game for you, and is something you'll have to accept if you want to play this game. Once you burn through the Fight Money (freely obtained in-game currency) you get from the various single-player modes, it is a serious grind to get any other free content. You get a small amount of weekly missions that add up over months to what a character costs. All of the repeatable sources of FM in the game offer a pittance and will add up to maybe a costume or a character over hundred and hundreds of hours. If you want to unlock more than the 2 colors for your costume, you'll have to play through the survival modes on that character, which is an incredibly frustrating and long time investment for something that many feel should be handed to you for free. The game's interface bombards you with the content you've yet to purchase, your friends you play the game with will be asking you "what's with all these shopping carts on everything?" All of this leads to the game feeling like it always has its hand out. This is acceptable in games like League of Legends, which you do not have to buy into up front, and gives you opportunities to try out characters for free. SFV is a game you pay up front for, but you never feel like you own unless you fork over more and more money.

All in all, SFV is a pretty solid fighting game with a good amount of content as it exists in 2018. I really like their vision with regards to the new characters they've been adding to the roster. My only real complaint that the game is essentially a freemium game-as-a-service that you pay up front for. I recommend this game to those who don't mind investing extra money into DLC. I think the fighting system makes the game worth experiencing overall, but those of you who have less dispoasble income or less desire to pay for extra content may find yourselves annoyed with how much content will be locked away in plain sight.