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

[simbob4000]

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.

Vanquish and Binary Domain. They're both third person shooters, and they're the best ones from the 360/PS3 era...with Vanquish probably being one of the best ever made.

[Xero Kaiser]

Platinum Games even does third person shooters better now.

Fixed.

Let's not pretend that there are other Japanese developers on their level.

[simbob4000]

Fixed.

Let's not pretend that there are other Japanese developers on their level.

No, you messed it up.

Binary Domain is a Japanese third person cover based shooter done by Sega's Yakuza team, and it's better than the American stuff too.

[Kid A]

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.

Stuck in a rut is almost an understatement. The transition to HD killed a lot of the small esoteric devs, and from there Japan started chasing precedents of the west. So basically the era where Japan was just constantly innovating and being mad prolific died out in the console space, though in a way it still lives on in the psp/ds/3ds libraries.

[Black_Adam]

I like both, though growing up I probably played more Japanese games from the SNES to PS2 era. Souls games are just about my favourite series right now second only to Rocksteady's Arkham games. Still love series like Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Persona, Yakuza, Smash, Mario Kart etc.

My 2 favourite games of last year were Bayonetta 2 and Evil Within.

The Japanese public seem to prefer handhelds now so the output from Japanese devs is naturally more geared towards handheld games. But still I think they will continue to release quality console games for a long time.

[simbob4000]

Creatively speaking the west was at an all time low last gen, although some developers faired extremely well monetarily. The western developers that got big around that time were all old PC guys, and the new consoles, especially the 360, were basically PCs.

Although Japanese developers seemingly didn't know what to do then, (the Square side of Square Enix didn't know what to do with Final Fantasy at all) when all is said and done there were probably more good games that came out of Japan last gen than the west. There was also a good number of years during the last generation where game's media seems to bitch about everything coming out of Japan...even if it was great.

I'm not sure if last gen killed as many Japanese developers as American developers and studios.

[sunofdarkchild]

The first few years of the 7th gen saw extrodinary creativity from Western devs. Gears of War was actually refreshing in 2006, 2007 saw Mass Effect, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, and Portal. Even COD4 was a creative and risky move at the time. Eventually it devolved into sequalitis, but for a while western developers were going wild with new ideas.

The rising costs of development had a negative affect on mid-level developers, though. The number of copies needed to be sold to turn a profit grew to the point where many couldn't keep up. On the other hand, at the end there was a big indie boom that's still going strong today.

[LoneNecromancer]

The first few years of the 7th gen saw extrodinary creativity from Western devs. Gears of War was actually refreshing in 2006, 2007 saw Mass Effect, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, and Portal. Even COD4 was a creative and risky move at the time. Eventually it devolved into sequalitis, but for a while western developers were going wild with new ideas.

The rising costs of development had a negative affect on mid-level developers, though. The number of copies needed to be sold to turn a profit grew to the point where many couldn't keep up. On the other hand, at the end there was a big indie boom that's still going strong today.

Yep. Kingdoms of Amalur was an infamous example. Sold over a million copies, which is impressive for a new IP from a new studio, but needed over 3 million sales just to break even. Granted they shouldn't have been so ridiculous and blown the budget on R.A. Salvatore (allegedly) whilst promising big things to get a government loan (uh is that allegedly too?). The studio collapsed as a result. Then a year later the Square Enix president resigned after a 10 billion yen loss attributed to "poor sales" despite the games sold well, just not enough to make enough of a profit on their ridiculous budgets.

Though thanks for mentioning Uncharted. Uncharted 2 is one of my favourite games ever, it's just wonderful in every category.

[Panfoot]

Eh, maybe I would have said that 7 or 8 years ago but today, nah. I just don't have the patience and time to slog through a Final Fantasy game these days and I'm kind of done with nintendo for a while(or at least until that new star fox game comes out, otherwise I never liked zelda and I have no desire to play another 2D mario game anytime soon). Plus my favorite series haven't had it good in a long while. Resident Evil went from horror to just a third person shooter that tried to ape to much from western games(though Revelations 2 was a step in the right direction) and Silent Hill suffered the same fate, though it's promising return is now dead. I guess the only japanese stuff i've liked or looked forward to in a while is MGS5 and the Souls games(though I was really disappointed in Dark Souls 2).

[simbob4000]

The first few years of the 7th gen saw extrodinary creativity from Western devs. Gears of War was actually refreshing in 2006, 2007 saw Mass Effect, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, and Portal. Even COD4 was a creative and risky move at the time. Eventually it devolved into sequalitis, but for a while western developers were going wild with new ideas.

The rising costs of development had a negative affect on mid-level developers, though. The number of copies needed to be sold to turn a profit grew to the point where many couldn't keep up. On the other hand, at the end there was a big indie boom that's still going strong today.

Gears of War is nice, but it's not some bastion of creativity; and the first game has some big drag spots. Mass Effect was an interesting promise that felt like it was being abandoned by game two, and clearly was by the end. Gameplay wise it's not all that good, and games much touted dialogue wheel wasn't really new, The X-Files game had something similar back in 1998. Funnily enough, in 1998 reviewers ripped the idea apart. BioShock is a pretty average first person shooter gameplay wise, and is a dumbed down version of System Shock 2 (1999). Assassin's Creed had really cool and fun gameplay mechanics...it's also an incredibly tedious game. I think Assassin's Creed might have the fastest dip from seeming incredible to being something you don't want to play anymore. Uncharted is very average gameplay, but with good presentation. Of those, Portal is the only thing I would use the words "extraordinary creativity" with.

I don't think I would say taking that series out of WW2 was a risky move, people were already sick of WW2 shooters by then.

With Mass Effect the first game wasn't really good, it was more the idea of what the series was going to be that was, which is something it never became. The game also had a lot of big weaknesses, but you could imagine how those could be worked out and improved into something great...only I guess BioWare couldn't, because they just dropped stuff for Mass Effect 2. Weirdly one of the big things they touted around before Mass Effect came out was the idea that you'd have to make choices on which missions you take, there's even a cinematic in the first game (if you stayed on the main menu too long) illustrating this idea, (it shows you team standing around looking sad because they can't answer a distress call because they have something bigger to deal with) only this is something you'll never have to do because you have all the time in the world to do whatever mission you want (even when they say it must be done now). The dialogue wheel was also meant to work in a way it's never yet worked it, which is funny, because when reviewers talk about it, they talk about it like it works in the way BioWare sold it. Originally the dialogue wheel was meant to change conversations by when you interjected, cutting someone off might get a different reaction, shit like that, which they haven't ever done yet.

[Kid A]

Bioshock is basically a dumb po-faced version of MGS.

[simbob4000]

Bioshock is basically a dumb po-faced version of MGS.

Metal Gear Solid? What?

BioShock is dumb System Shock 2. If you're saying it's dumb Metal Gear Solid, well, I'm not sure how the hell you got there. They both have human characters in them I guess.

[JCAll]

Vanquish and Binary Domain. They're both third person shooters, and they're the best ones from the 360/PS3 era...with Vanquish probably being one of the best ever made.

Have you ever wanted a high tech robot suit whose only function is to let you powerslide around like a rocket powered Megaman? Because that's Vanquish.

[simbob4000]

Eh, maybe I would have said that 7 or 8 years ago but today, nah. I just don't have the patience and time to slog through a Final Fantasy game these days and I'm kind of done with nintendo for a while(or at least until that new star fox game comes out, otherwise I never liked zelda and I have no desire to play another 2D mario game anytime soon). Plus my favorite series haven't had it good in a long while. Resident Evil went from horror to just a third person shooter that tried to ape to much from western games(though Revelations 2 was a step in the right direction) and Silent Hill suffered the same fate, though it's promising return is now dead. I guess the only japanese stuff i've liked or looked forward to in a while is MGS5 and the Souls games(though I was really disappointed in Dark Souls 2).

Resident Evil has had an action focus since RE2, which is when they started throwing ammo at you like it was going out of style. RE4 just gave it good controls, and actual added tension by not allowing you to reload in the safety of the inventory screen. RE5 has problems, but I'd say that's more down to softening things from RE4. Still, RE5 was a pretty fun co-op game. And while they were trying to reach a western audience, there aren't really any western games that play like it.

[simbob4000]

Have you ever wanted a high tech robot suit whose only function is to let you powerslide around like a rocket powered Megaman? Because that's Vanquish.

I didn't know I wanted one until Vanquish.