Fall update

June was all about Football, Tactics and Glory. It turns out there was also some sort of World Cup in Russia - as some of you may have noticed ;-) -, so I guess I enjoyed being immersed in football all month long. I already stated how much I love this little game and how easily I spend hours on it, so no more talking about it.

Next, I touched Voxel Turf. I was intrigued by the promising cocktail of city-building / GTA / Minecraft but I admit I was disappointed. During my 6 hours of gameplay in single-player, I must say it still feels quite empty and basic : the creative part is unpractical while the action part is bland, and all of this occurs in an ugly environment.

My ABC plan has remained fallow for some long weeks. I nevertheless made progress on it in June when I beat Hand of Fate. There again, I liked the concept more than the implementation. It's certainly a good idea to mix cards and beat'em all but I found the game repetitive (gosh, those Dealer's lines hammered again and again were infuriating) and the fighting stages a bit muddled. From a few months away perspective, HoF already began to fade away in my mind and I'm afraid it won't leave much of an heritage in my gamer memories.

Verdict on Hand of Fate : 5,5/10

Then it was the time I found out Dead Cells. I put my hands on it just before the end of early access. The game was already well polished, with a hand-crafted balanced difficulty and good-looking pixel art. It took me 38 hours to finish it once. I'm not the best at this kind of roguelite, but the mixture with a bit of platformer and metroidvania works very well. The game never ceased to beacon me so that I try "just that extra run", until I finally beat the final boss. The controls are among the best I experienced and it's really fun to try the different combo and styles you're offered to forge thanks to buffs and a vast array of weapons.

On top of it, the game's made by a little French studio : it's their first major title and I'm happy they managed to make such a best seller.

Verdict on Dead Cells : 9/10

July was holidays time so I played very little while August was still a lot about Dead Cells.

And finally, from late August up to these last weeks, I spent tens and tens of hours on Yakuza 0. This game's simply brilliant. It was my first encounter with the series and had read a bit about what to expect (namely, few in common with GTA, in spite of the mafia topic (yes, yakuza = mafia) : don't judge a book by its cover). So, I wasn't disappointed by the small map or rail-guided main quest. Basically, this main quest feels like watching a series (a good one, like The Wire), with episodic progress through nice cut-scenes. Going forward in the story always translates into crushing foes with your fists ; Y 0 is basically a BTA and you never spend more than 2 minutes in the imaginary colorful streets of Tokyo and Osaka without being dragged in street fights with hooligans, drunkards, punks, mobsters, in short, bad guys crying for being pummeled.

If like me you fondle original-language (especially Japanese) with subtitles, the voices are neat, especially the yakuza guys (so that's almost everyone in a yakuza game : hats off to Kuze who sounds so badass !). Musical tunes are also very good and catchy.

A word about the 2 protagonists : I much prefer Majima Goro over Kiryu Kazuma. Kiryu is less interesting to me, more of a yakuza cliché : he's the ultimate fist-fighter, too serious, almost without any humor, often naive and dumb-looking with his white-knight tendencies. Majima has a great background, with realistic emotional cracks, and his exposition scene (in which he scolds a customer with the most delicate diplomacy) is awesome ; contrary to Kiryu, he knows how to play a role (he can act dumb but isn't at all), in turns cuddles then punishes. Like Kiryu, his gullibility sometimes hurts the realism of his status but I forgive him because he's so much more fun to watch and listen (this Kansai accent !). BTW, about this gullibility thing, the whole game suffers from this risky balance between cold realism during the cut-scenes and outrageous funny behaviors during substories or mini-games. But I somehow liked this unpromising mix.

Back to the story. Little by little, once I had grasped the 2 main characters, my interest for the main quest - as good as it is - began to fade away as I found out all the substories and secondary activities you can do. Among other things, you can practice fishing, base-ball, karaoke, dancing, card games, mahjong, shogi (Japanese chess), remote-controlled cars races, bowling and I must forget many other activities. The 2 bigger games in the game (real estate for Kiryu and cabaret club for Goro) are the best part and before I realized, I spent much more time in these than driving forward the main story. Even though I knew before playing this game that there was a shitload of activities ans substories, I definitely think the core of the game lies there rather than in the BTA part.

Verdict on Yakuza 0 : 9/10