Is there anyone else here who prefers Japanese video games over American ones?

[Kid A]

I just don't think western games were remotely interesting until the rise of the indie market. Of course I'm generalizing; Valve and such companies made some good stuff, but overall my feeling is just bleh.

And I do think Japan has been way ahead of the game as far artistic vision and craft goes, at least since the advent of NES.

[simbob4000]

The western market produced some of the most interesting games in the '90s (and into the early 2000s) on the PC. Sadly they stopped doing that when they moved into console development, they also let whole genres wither away in that time.

[jump]

LOL that's hilarious.

How many Pokemon, Dynasty Warriors and Mario Party/Kart/whatever games are there again?

If you think this is a problem that's exclusive to western devs, you must not play very many Japanese games after all.

I always feel Mario gets unfairly targeted for this, yeah there loads of Mario games but they are mostly spin off which play nothing like the last game with Mario in the title and direct sequels happen on different consoles rather than a it being a yearly release.

[JCAll]

I always feel Mario gets unfairly targeted for this, yeah there loads of Mario games but they are mostly spin off which play nothing like the last game with Mario in the title and direct sequels happen on different consoles rather than a it being a yearly release.

Mario has at least 5 different series to star in at any given time. Between the 3D platformers, 2D platformers, vs Donkey Kong, Party, Kart, RPG, basically every sport that has ever turned a profit, and whatever weird thing Nintendo makes on a whim, like DDR, Puzzle and Dragon, Paint. Hell, Mario might as well just be his own genre anymore.

[jump]

Mario has at least 5 different series to star in at any given time. Between the 3D platformers, 2D platformers, vs Donkey Kong, Party, Kart, RPG, basically every sport that has ever turned a profit, and whatever weird thing Nintendo makes on a whim, like DDR, Puzzle and Dragon, Paint. Hell, Mario might as well just be his own genre anymore.

Plus the Mario RPGs are split into different groups of Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi and the old Super Mario RPG. At one point even Splatoon was gonna be a Mario game. I still say whilst Mario is ridiculously over done it's still rare for a sequel on the same console to come out tho.

Only the Kart, 3D platformers and vs Donkey Kong games are the must buy ones for me with Paper, Bros, & Luigi I can be persuaded into getting if the feed back is brilliant or I see it cheap and Party, Golf and Tennis I just flat out ignore.

[Kid A]

I always feel Mario gets unfairly targeted for this, yeah there loads of Mario games but they are mostly spin off which play nothing like the last game with Mario in the title and direct sequels happen on different consoles rather than a it being a yearly release.

Even the direct sequels don't have much in common. I mean it goes from 64's open ended weirdness to Galaxy's linear puzzles (to be fair this has a direct sequel, but not really a problem), and then 3D World where they revamp classic platformers.

[tombo]

Speaking as someone who went crazy on games in the 80s and stopped at the GameCube because of health problems. I've never really been aware of the origin of the games I'm playing. I know there was some national pride here in the UK at GTA and Tomb Raider being British, and I know the classic Nintendo series like Mario and Zelda are of course Japanese. I wouldn't have sat there as a teen playing Resident Evil 2 thinking "I am playing a Japanese game".

[LoneNecromancer]

Western games are pretty much the same as they've been since the 90s. That is, no personality, mechanically void, but just really pretty looking.

Nah. First that's wrong about the 90s- there's plenty personality to be found in the collection of shooters, strategy games, western RPGs - Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape etc.-, Tomb Raider and those other games that started the action/adventure- and then that's also wrong about today. Of course a lot of the big AAA games come off like that, but even so GTAV has outsold just about everything and I don't think people would consider say that's lacking in personality.

[Kid A]

Nah. First that's wrong about the 90s- there's plenty personality to be found in the collection of shooters, strategy games, western RPGs - Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape etc.-, Tomb Raider and those other games that started the action/adventure- and then that's also wrong about today. Of course a lot of the big AAA games come off like that, but even so GTAV has outsold just about everything and I don't think people would consider say that's lacking in personality.

I wasn't trying to say all western games are ****, though not sure I agree with those examples outside of Fallout and GTAV. I'll even go further and say I also like Arham Asylum (not the sequels though), World of Goo, Heavy Rain, and some others. And then there's Valve and indie games, etc. But the overall trend of western games come to me come off as bland and uninspired.

My beef goes beyond just the popular, recreational games like Call of Duty or whatever. I noticed that a lot of mediocre bullshit like AssCreed or Infamous Borderlands gets passed off as great. It's like the standards are really low.

[The Chou Lives]

Standards are dropping for everything. In one way or another. ( A sore subject in fiction in general)

But I prefer both styles depending on the games in questions as games can be good. I personally thing Planescape and Fallout2 beat the shot out of any JRPG. ANY.

I do love Japanese action games though. Fighting and otherwise.

[simbob4000]

Japan even does third person shooters better now.

[JCAll]

Japan even does third person shooters better now.

Between Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya, Japan practically invented modern third person shooters.
Before that, remember it was Konami that developed Contra. Contra is still the yardstick I uses to measure action.

[simbob4000]

Between Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya, Japan practically invented modern third person shooters.
Before that, remember it was Konami that developed Contra. Contra is still the yardstick I uses to measure action.

No, not really. There were actual third person shooters on PC before either of them made a third person shooter. If you're talking about the over-the-shoulder view they all use today, Splinter Cell did it first. If you're talking about the stick to wall and shoot from cover mechanics almost everyone uses today, WinBack and Splinter Cell both did it before it showed up in a MGS game.

[sunofdarkchild]

My favorite developer is Nintendo, but take them out of the equation and I'd lean towards Western developers. With the exception of thereally weird stuff like Platinum developed games they've moved closer together. Ubisoft made an RPG with mechanics and an artstyle I'd normally associate with Japan while some of the biggest JRPGs like Xenoblade and The Last Story have taken on western mechanics.

Last Gen Japanese developers were in something of a rut while Western developers were at the top of their game. I think that so far the reverse has been true this gen.

[bloodofthegods]

No, not really. There were actual third person shooters on PC before either of them made a third person shooter. If you're talking about the over-the-shoulder view they all use today, Splinter Cell did it first. If you're talking about the stick to wall and shoot from cover mechanics almost everyone uses today, WinBack and Splinter Cell both did it before it showed up in a MGS game.

One of the Splinter Cell games back on Xbox (though I got it for it's play compatability on my previous model 360, I have a Slim now), whose name I forget did really great with that, and was probably my first third person shooter (over the shoulder) that I played and really enjoyed it. I never had a PC, I've always been a console player, though consoles are more becoming PC's with price point and added capabilities and PC's with controllers and not just keyboards and a mouse, and titles that are on consoles too, so it's not saying that out of one being better than the other. But anyway, I'm straying from my point. I've always liked the style of Gears of War, Dark Sector, Dead Space, and Army of Two for my shooters. Are there Japanese shooters of this type that are available on American consoles? As tombo mentioned above, I've never paid mind to the country of origin of the games I play. It's mostly just what's available on the consoles I own, and what looks/seems interesting. And now with such a large library of games, and a diminishing amount of time I have to play games, I get less and less, so finding something I really enjoy is of greater importance. And if I do want to spend money on a shooter, it's rarely going to be a FPS. My only exception really, that I've enjoyed despite being a FPS is the Metroid Prime series. But I've been following Metroid since NES, so I am a bit biased.