Get ready to hit the seedier side of Tokyo and slug it out in HD ? Yakuza 3 is coming. The “real” Yakuza 3. As first reported on 2chan, the latest issue of Famitsu quotes Yakuza series director Toshihiro Nagoshi as stating that the game is a direct sequel to Yakuza 2, and is in development exclusively for PS3.
Nagoshi states in the Famistu article that Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan! ? which is set in Edo-era Japan ? is actually considered a spin-off from the “main” Ryu ga Gotoku series (Yakuza here in the West). No release date has been announced for the series’ third (well, technically fourth) installment, but we’ll keep you posted.
Lets hope this uses a full on next gen this time .
I’ve been playing The Bourne Conspiracy , and I hope this team play it a bit , Thats what should be inthe next Yakuza game , and That is a game with next gen pyshics and Interactive environments only with that SEGA style and magic
Bourne is hardly next gen, it looks like an average PS2 title. The context sensitive combat could be neat at times though. But then every fight just became a series of random attacks and blocks until you had enough power to unleash the context sensitive death sequence. Not good for Yakuza.
What do you expect with the Unreal 3 engine ?. I take it you haven’t played Kenzan then ?.
Animation that worse than that seen in Yakuza II - Check, rubbish water effects - Check, No use of pyshics , minimal use of next gen shaders - check , no interactive environments - check.
At least there’s Some use of physics in Bourne , the scenery does react now and again to player actions , there is some decent water effects
When did I ever say Kenzan looked better than Bourne in any way? Bourne is still an average looking game, comparing it to something worse doesn’t make it actually good.
As for what I expect from Unreal Engine 3 titles, that’s certainly far more than a game that looks almost like Max Payne 2 did back in 2003 considering it’s one of the most advanced engines used to produce some of the most visually accomplished games available (or not yet) for both consoles and PC including titles like Mass Effect, Bioshock, Gears of War, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Borderlands and many others.
Not that I have anything against low-end looking games but complaining about Kenzan’s graphics and then looking up to a sub par game that didn’t really use the technology its developers had available is silly. I don’t think anyone wishes for Yakuza 3 to be similar to Kenzan, I just hope Sega have better plans than Bourne quality in graphics or gameplay.
In gameplay terms the 1st Yakuza is better , but I’m on about graphics and use of next gen tech . To me Bourne looks ok , horribly overrated Unreal engine , I really don?t know why it gets so much credit when none of the games that use the tech look that great , not even Bioshock (it?s the Art Direction that makes that game) .
Bourne still looks a lot better than Yakuza Kenzan , which is my point At least there’s so use of pyshics and next gen shaders , it watter effects look next gen , and I do like the way the Environment around the player is put to more use and is more interactive , I mean in Kenzan is next to impossible to smash any object that?s part of the scenery , at least in Bourne things smash, cars break and explode that sort of thing .
There’s next to no player interaction in Kezan with the surrounding scenery , I’ll go as far to say there’s far more in Yakuza II and the animation is way better too, you feel the impact and pain on the bodies flying in Yakuza II , thats missing in Kenzan .
Yes, Unreal Engine 3 sucks and all the developers paying hundreds of thousands for the engine are out of their mind when they could use a cheaper one and have a better result, right? I mean, none of the Unreal Engine 3 games look good (Mass Effect, ugly, Lost Odyssey, ugly, Bioshock, ugly if it wasn’t for the art direction, Gears of War, ugly, etc) so I guess that means there are many other engines that provide much better results so you can enlighten me with a few examples (not just one please).
As far as I’m concerned, the engine includes all the things artists need to include the beautiful things they want like pushing extreme amounts of polygons, several layers of high resolution textures including parallax and normal mapping, up to date lighting and shadowing techniques, a great terrain system, data streaming and whatever tech mumbo jumbo I can’t think of. So, what more should the engine do? Create art by itself?
Anyway, this does nothing to hide the fact Bourne’s art direction sucks since it looks like a game from 2003 when most other games using the engine (good or bad whatever, it’s not the issue) look anything from twice to ten times as good, realistic and detailed. If their engine actually sucks, then all the better for the games’ artists ability and all the worse for Bourne’s developers’ disabilities.
Also, you’re impressed with stuff breaking and exploding? Half Life 2 (and Doom 3 to a lesser extent I guess) must have made that popular and mainstream knowledge back in about 2004 with most every big game coming out after that touting its own physics based eye candy and interactivity. Catching up eh? By the way, that’s there because of the engine chosen also, physics systems and all that fluff.
About everything else, I guess you’re also having an argument with that imaginary person who kept saying Kenzan is great. Have fun you two, I’ll stay out of it.
It’s fine to hate Kenzan, it’s fine to want better, but it’s ridiculous to look up to Bourne, a sub par linear action game which relies on a melee combat system (which I admit is neat but) that gets old fast and does just about everything else wrong, especially if you’ve watched the movies/read the books and see the story and potential butchered.
If it seems so impressive to you, you must not have been gaming much in the last decade. An average action game isn’t what I want Sega to model Yakuza 3 after. Kenzan is sub par enough, we don’t need another one. They should just take a look back to Yakuza 1 & 2 and update those concepts to modern (not Bourne) standards.
I’m a console player , I do not like so called console developers using Middle ware tech ,I rather they use thier own In-House game engines , like Ubisoft or Capcom have done for most of thier In-House games (Yeah , Yeah I know they are singed up to Unreal 3 too)
And to me id new tech blows Unreal 3 tech out of the water and maybe this time can run on consoles , with out needed buckets fulls of Ram , maybe run at 60 fps too Which is next to impossible with Unreal 3 on consoles or so it would seem
I must have played a diff version of Doom III to you tehn, and if I was on about a FPS you’ll have a point . I’m comparing Bourne to Yakuza Kenzan at the any of the day, or maybe you missed that point ?
I don’t hate Kenzan , I’m just ledown by the poor game engine thats powering the so called next gen game , and that even though its on a next gen system it does nothing to move the bar forward for the series at all, eveything inthe game could be done onthe PS2 , at times it looks like a PS2 game , thats my point
whats standards are those then ?.
I’m asking for the next Yakuza too start to use next gen physhics , have some of not all of the scenery that?s interactive or destructible, move the combat forward to something approaching that of Ninja Gadien
Damn. Every time there’s a thread made about Yakuza it turns into some kind of arguement. Keeps the board lively, I suppose.
At any rate, I hope Yakuza 3 turns out well. I’m still eagerly anticipating the NA release of Yakuza 2, so I can’t say I’ve been thinking about Kenzan or 3 in any real capacity.
Your quotes are different to my post, but anyway, you really don’t offer any examples of an engine that would have been better for poor Bourne to realise its potential and not be held back, except for an engine that’s yet to see the light of day outside a couple of technology demonstrations. Way to go. And yet you already consider it better AND better performing? Try waiting for a game that uses it first, though considering by that time it will have been several years from UE3’s initial launch it makes sense it will be able to offer something better. It doesn’t right now, last year or when Bourne was started.
Your “in house” preference is pretty weird considering most Japanese engines don’t hold a candle to western engines of UE3’s (and id’s then) caliber. But even if some do have as good or better technology, it’s still weird fetishism to plainly ask for “in house” technology instead of just the better option, whichever that happens to be at the time.
Some of those companies you claim have so grand tech actually licenced UE3 as you acknowledge yourself. But the fact you acknowledge that and try to pass it off quickly doesn’t make it any less important since I’m sure they didn’t do it out of falling for some sort of hype, they must have seen something they deemed worthy to invest so much money in it and they probably know a heck of a lot more about it than you or I do.
Also, okay, point taken about Doom 3 specifically (even though it was one of the first games to offer realistic physics for objects, it wasn’t used much at all), but you still failed to counter the actual point which included HL2 and most every big game afterwards. So what if many of them are FPS games, so what if many of them are even bad games? We were discussing engine capabilities and in this part in particular we were talking about the wonders of shit breaking and blowing up. This wondrous novel feature (lol) can be demonstrated in games of most any genre and quality.
Maybe you’re the one who missed the point of your own argument when you brought engines and their potential features (like physics) into the discussion then.
And since you seem to keep driving the conversation in areas it was never meant to go because you can’t argue the actual points made, I’ll once again say I never said UE3 is the ABSOLUT BEST option, I said it is ONE OF THE BEST current engines and my main point was that Bourne was not in any way held back by the engine, rather it was held back by its own developers since the engine is much more capable. I said all that because YOU brought up the engine as an excuse for Bourne’s visuals when I critiqued it.
In short, it’s ignorant to claim Bourne’s shortcomings were due to its choice of engine when other games have demonstrated the same engine is capable of a lot more than what Bourne offers. It’s worse to ask for Sega to look up to a sub par linear generic action adventure game which does nothing to exploit available technology or creativity.
I can’t offer examples of games Sega SHOULD look up to like you ask me to because there’s nothing similar and I won’t force some silly comparison like you have done with Bourne just because it has a “woo I can trigger sweet fatalities using the environment and objects like in the movies” feature.
I could say they can take inspiration from the dark cinematic aspect of Mafia, the open ended world of GTA IV, the visual quality of UE3 (fine, and id tech) and beyond, the adventure and character elements of Shenmue, the top notch cut scenes of Kojima, the art direction of their own Yakuza and for the combat simply do what they see fit with it (but for environment and objects usage, Dead Rising and Stranglehold give clues) since they’re one of the few developers attempting this kind of gameplay anyway.
You won’t get a specific “it should be like this one game” from me because Yakuza 3 should basically be Yakuza over anything else. Yes, we can more or less agree on “next gen Yakuza” just not our definition of what that would be.
Aye its worrying and troubling to see many top Japense developers have such a hard time trying to grasp Next Gen development , but IMO Capcom?s MT engines looks better than any Unreal 3 game I?ve seen, nothing can touch RE5 for graphics and every Unreal 3 game I own doesn?t come close to the graphics found in Lost Planet Ninja Gaiden III, Ace Combat VI, Blue Dragon game engines are up there with any I’ve seen this gen too imo .
1st off I don’t consider Bourne to be a poor game or look that bad really . I much rather a developer use a console as a console and write a engine using the console own tools. Yeah sure you’ve got me on id new engine , but when it comes to PC , I’ve always been more or a fan of the id engines .
[quote]I’m sure they didn’t do it out of falling for some sort of hype, they must have seen something they deemed worthy to invest so much money in it and they probably know a heck of a lot more about it than you or I do.
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I don’t doubt they do , I’m just saing I’m not that impressed with the engine at all , not on a console it doesn seems that a console has enough ram to use Unreal 3 tidy . And as for you point about a developer knowing more than me, well thats Obvious , but what people can?t comment or pass views , We all have views on films on music , you don?t have to be in the industry to be able to past comment or post you impressions though.
Because there just completely diff genre?s , style’s of game I doubt you?ll see many games use Unreal tech to power a car racer , its not suited to that style of genre . These days its really rare to see a scrolling beat them up , even rarer to see one with interactive environments or real physics . I like to see that put in Yakuza III , whats so terrible or wrong to want that ?
[quote]In short, it’s ignorant to claim Bourne’s shortcomings were due to its choice of engine when other games have demonstrated the same engine is capable of a lot more than what Bourne offers. It’s worse to ask for Sega to look up to a sub par linear generic action adventure game which does nothing to exploit available technology or creativity.
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You’re the one listing shorting comings about Borune , I quite like the game , just I feel if it used a In-House engine it maybe could have looked better , I never at any stage tried to make out the engine held back gameplay .
And as for Yakuza , I want the game to move forward the fighting and combat systems was perfected onthe PS2 , now to move the game forward , I like to see Interactive with the environment , and some use of physics . I would love to see the same done to Spikeout as well
Ahh I take it you haven’t played Yakuza II then . If want a Shenmue style game , then you’re not getting Yakuza which at its core is noting more than a Streets Of Rage beat them up with RPG’s Elements thrown in , In part II you’ll see some of the best cut scenes , some like MGS can go on a bit too (the intro is like 7 mins long) that’s why its comes on 2 DVD’s . In pretty much ever way SEGA took the series as far as it can go .
To move it on they’ll need to make the Environments more interactive to the player actions and introduce some physics , which I think GTA IV does with the Euphoria physics engines . That why its can still seem fresh and worth getting , even thought the core game is nothing new at all, and hardly a step forward
I never said you said it looks bad, I’m the one who said it looks sub par and your first line of defense was to blame the engine which spawned the whole discussion. If you had said “no it’s a great game” instead of defend it in a way that puts down the engine, we’d sure have talked about completely different things instead.
I shouldn’t have to repost this since it’s in the original comment anyway, but since you neglected to quote that part:
So what if many of them are FPS games, so what if many of them are even bad games? We were discussing engine capabilities and in this part in particular we were talking about the wonders of shit breaking and blowing up. This wondrous novel feature (lol?) can be demonstrated in games of most any genre and quality.
I’ll once again add that Unreal Engine 3 specifically has been used in a diverse range of titles from Japanese RPGs to third person cover or stunt based shooters to whatever. It can do pretty much anything efficiently, and even a beat em up as seen in Bourne since you love it so much. I’d love it too if it was done better (and it could have been done better with the same engine), I was pretty excited prior to its release, though I always thought it looked sub par and would never have guessed it uses Unreal Engine 3 just because of that.
Nothing is wrong with just wanting “better stuff” my point was that Bourne hardly does any of that elegantly enough to look up to it, Sega should get their own vision for the combat, not make it like Bourne’s where you end up exchanging a few simple moves and then triggering an environmental context sensitive fatality.
There’s nothing wrong with fleshing out a game to include other elements that give it depth, like exploration, interaction with NPCs that goes beyond beating the shit out of them, and the odd adventuring section, even if they’re not its main points. I never said it should be just like Shenmue, I simply mentioned a bunch of games which could be used as inspiration for different aspects of Yakuza 3, not games to make copies of.
I’ll vote for Dead Rising as the best all around example of beat-em-up gameplay for next-gen, though it’s not necessarily the best model for Yakuza’s structure. And I’ll agree Capcom has shown the best console tech so far, though other than DR and LP (so far) and maybe Uncharted, I haven’t seen anyone else show up the UE3 for next-gen’ness. It gets flak for always looking kinda the same, which is somewhat deserving, but Gears of War is still the apex of sheer visual sophistication IMO, and Lost Odyssey shows just how much more impressive the Japanese characterizations can get when they fully embrace the meta-imaging possibilities UE3 is focused on.
And most Unreal 3 consoles games look poor imo , with low res textures and pretty poor animation , John Woo stranglehold , like Bourne had these issues . I’m not sure if its The teams or the tech, the point is those games had at least some Interaction with the environments , made some use of physics . Kenzan uses Havok , though you?ll never know it when playing the game
Still even now , when things blow up thier effect the surrounding scenery is nothing more than a bcal texture on the wall , maybe that?s why DICE are making such a big deal of the froastbite engine .
Yeah and bar EPIC’s own efforts , I’ve never been that impressed with the Unreal 3 engine . On console I’ve been more impressed with Developers own engines , like those seen in Lost Planet , GRAW, Assassin Creed , COD IV ect
And my point with Yakuza III was that SEGA should make " a game with next gen pyshics and Interactive environments only with that SEGA style and magic". I’m not wanting or asking SEGA to copy Bourne to the letter , I just want Yakuza III to use next gen tech to make the environments more interactive and reactive to the players actions , in order to take the series to the next gen
Those parts already happen in Yakuza inpart , and beating the sh8t out of people is what Yakuza is all about , its nothing more than SOR meets a RPG.
Stop. Seriously, just stop. You’re trying to talk about technology that you don’t seem to understand, and it’s getting ridiculous. Havok isn’t a game engine, so comparing it to Unreal Engine 3 is dumb. Havok is a physics engine. Unreal Engine 3 includes PhysX, which is also a physics engine. Additionally, Euphoria is an animation engine, not a physics engine.
Hell, you give props to Ninja Gaiden II for crying out loud… that game doesn’t even run at HD resolution. The graphics are rendered at 585p, and 720p is the minimum to qualify as HD. Despite its sub-HD rendering, it STILL has framerate drops. Nevermind that the graphics really aren’t all that impressive anyways… an awful lot of shiny surfaces and leather, some explosions, blood, and not much else. Maybe that’s what you consider good graphics, I dunno. Personally, it reminds me of Sega’s Phantasy Star Universe on 360, another game with an inefficient graphics engine that also renders at sub-HD resolutions and has framerate issues.
Personally, I find Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune to be the most visually impressive game across all the consoles so far. The facial and body animations for characters are the best out there, and the environments are fantastic. There’s so much subtle detail that brings together an amazing presentation.
I don’t think anyone compared different things directly, it’s just that one moment we were discussing graphics and the next physics thus making the whole debate confusing.
I’ll add that since Unreal Engine 3 is a complete game engine which includes visuals, sound and physics I didn’t feel I have to differentiate it and talk about PhysX specifically when discussing its use of physics since it’s very possible to have radically different implementations of such and I was talking about UE3’s implementation. Not to mention that when you buy UE3, you buy the complete package, not just the visuals, so it can be judged as a complete package, though in theory it’s possible for someone to buy UE3 but replace its physics engine with a different one. Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 did that for Unreal Engine 2.5 which originally used Karma but Ion Storm replaced it with Havok. Nothing similar has happened for version 3 yet as far as I know.
Just like TA points out, Kenzan uses Havok, a rather powerful physics engine (assuming it uses version 2+), but you’d never notice it since the environment is apparently hardly interactive. He was just talking about physics at that point I’m sure, not visuals. Valve’s Source titles also use Havok but the interactivity is far beyond what’s seen in Kenzan. It’s all in how it’s implemented so when I discuss Source for example I’ll talk about its ability to have great physics also, even if it’s just using the Havok SDK (greatly enhanced by Valve however, since apparently they worked with Havok 1 and Havok 2 spawned from their intense collaboration with its developers). Other non Source games using Havok also have worse physics implementations, like the mentioned DX2 and T3.
[quote]Havok isn’t a game engine, so comparing it to Unreal Engine 3 is dumb. Havok is a physics engine. Unreal Engine 3 includes PhysX, which is also a physics engine. Additionally, Euphoria is an animation engine, not a physics engine.
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I don’t think anyone here tried to make out that Havok is a game engine , So I don’t really get where you’re coming from on that one . Also I do know about Physx not least as Bourne uses it , or in the likes of GRAW II (i’m quite like that game :)). I’m sorry I did get it wrong about Euphoria , I thought that and DMM were both much the same thing , for that I’m deeply sorry .
Hey lets not go by what we read on the internet, you try playing Chapters 7, 12, 13 and tell me they don’t look impressive , becasue chapters 13 and 14 are a knock out when it comes to graphics , scale, and use of Art
I can name you loads of games that freature pretty good game engines yet suffer slowdown at key points, due to a lack of being optimised
And as for the Res thing , well wow most of the 360 and PS3 games use the upscale trick, Call of Duty IV makes use of such the same trick , I defy you not to be impressed with that game engine on the 360 though
I agree its one of the best looking games, thought I wouldn’t say its the best onthe 360 or PS3 . Imo I think Motostorm is still the best looking PS3 game , and Lost Planet is the best all round looking game on the consoles (360 version) but thats my view before you jump on my back
Yes I was enjoying the debate with you, over it all , I don’t think anyone of use made out Havok was a game engine at any stage what so ever . And imo you’re right, even thought it was one of the 1st , Half Life II is still one of the only games to make Pyshics work in a game (not just they to look good) and for it to be integral to the gameplay
I’m curious… what TV do you game on? it’s very relevant to the discussion, because I can’t help but wonder about your idea of best looking games.
By the way, I played Ninja Gaiden II and Call of Duty 4. Both games run at sub-HD resolutions and thus are very jagged on my 46" HDTV. It’s not THAT big a deal since I play Wii games after all, and I play games for their gameplay and not their graphics… nonetheless, if we’re going to discuss game engines, then it’s important to be fair.
After all, you seem to hate the Unreal Engine 3… which actually renders at HD resolutions, and for all the talk about framerate problems, Gears of War 2 is shaping up quite nicely, and Mirror’s Edge is looking pretty fancy.