I'd advise holding off a bit on the new Ninja Gaiden. It's being handled by Spark Unlimited. They aren't known for consistently cranking out quality titles.
Also, Halo 4 is the only FPS I'm interested in this year, but I'm waiting for reviews. It looks amazing, but you never know. Heck, my backlog is gigantic. I might even just wait for a price drop. You know one is coming eventually.
From what I've played of it, your views are spot on. I would have picked this one up and had my brother over for some nostalgia fueled brawler action, but that's not going to happen due to things I've already discussed elsewhere. That being said, I love the over the top aesthetic, horrible horrible puns (Release the crackin!) and the soundtrack is totally awesome. Too bad the game play is kind of lacking. True, that's the nature of old brawlers, but I was really hoping they would evolve the game a little bit beyond what they did, and speeding the action up a hair would have helped as well.
Congrats Nintendo, this is how you properly launch new hardware. Unless ZombiU is amazing, I don't see a system seller on there as far as I'm concerned, but I see plenty of appealing titles for launch day purchasers.
So, Double Dragon Neon. I don't know if you guys remember, but I did a preview of it ages ago. In it, I levied a few complaints about what I saw, and what I believed they needed to improve. The visuals were not an issue, and I completely loved the score to the game. Good call Julian, putting that in the podcast by the way.
While there were some improvements to the final product, I originally didn't think it was enough. The game still felt sluggish and poorly paced. I played the demo a couple of times and just decided I didn't like it. The next day, Julian was tweeting about it and he and I had some back and forth, which led me to play the game again.
The second time around it all clicked. I was able to play the game and really enjoyed it. I was considering purchasing it when I noticed the look on my wife's face. She was not pleased about something. So we talked about it for a bit and she basically said she really hates the way women are portrayed in the game and actually went so far as to ask, in a very nice and non-demanding way, if I wouldn't play it anymore.
This is the first time she has ever said anything like that in as long as I've known her.
I was honestly a little shocked. Both her and I have a... how should I say this... tastefully perverted sense of humor. For example, in Tales of Vesperia she laughed pretty hard when one of the less gifted female characters, Estelle, made comments to a more developed character, Judith, about the fact that Judith was bouncing, while mournfully stating "I wish I could bounce..." She even laughed about the "thunder tits" joke in the opening cinematic to Neptunia (we don't have a PS3, so I don't know if the entire game would bother her.) I explained everything I could about the satirical nature of the enemy, and how it fit into the ridiculously over-the-top nature of the game, but it didn't matter. This was the first time I had seen my wife honest to God offended by something like this, so I had to know more.
After quite a bit of discussion, here's what I think is the problem: Those dominatrix chicks have nothing to them at all except T&A. All they do is show up, act like strippers, talk dirty, and die when you punch them a lot. By contrast, Estelle and Judith (keep in mind, Judith's outfit is almost as bad as the whip cracking Double Dragon baddies) have more to them than just sex. Estelle's comments come out as genuine and humorous. Judith, despite her clothing, is a deep, mature character. Maybe they have a pervy side, but it's a side to the character, not the whole package.
Now maybe it's not exactly fair to compare a fully fleshed out RPG character to a glorified punching bag in a brawler title, but I believe that's the biggest part of the problem; since they aren't "real" characters, they have no apology for being sexually nasty and come off as nothing more than titillating fan service. If you're going to make a woman fighter, make her one. Make the jokes, but make them more than just one note. The occasional dominatrix would have probably been OK, and she probably would have found that funny, but one after another after another I think was just too much. It also didn't help that this was the only way women were presented in the entire demo.
Now don't take this too far, I get the joke, but I intend to treat it like one. If I hear a joke I find funny, but know it will offend my wife, I might laugh if I'm not in front of her, but I'm not gonna repeat it. Likewise, while I personally get the joke that is the world of Double Dragon Neon, it's certainly not worth upsetting my wife for a few hours of game play and laughs. Honestly, I feel lucky that my wife does get and appreciate the jokes that she does. So while I'm not gonna pretend to be a Knight in Shining Armor and decry the game as an affront to all women, I am going to state that it's just not a good fit for our household, and I'm OK with that.
Any chance you can replace the 'papes with Wii remotes? That would be epic.
Nintendo TViiis fantastic news for me. The game pad / tablet thing makes it extremely useful. When we eventually get a Wii U, my wife can watch her romantic garbage on the tablet while the boys and I slap the crap out of each other in Smash Brothers. VICTORY!
I'm just guessing here, but I imagine they'll be hired as consultants by EA / Bioware a time or two as well.
I also predict that when / if this happens, EA/Bioware will very quickly notify the media.
I vote Dragon Quest IX. I'll play that, and I'll try to talk my wife into it.
Has this changed now that the doctors have gone?
