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Denver, 3:06 PM
Thu Dec 17
65 posts in the last 24 hours
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08:15 AM
Skleter is the brother of Helter Skelter...who is the guy that Travis kills in the opening cinematic of the first game (leading to him being ranked 10th on the list and being forced into the game).
But depending on how far you got into the first one, there could be things in the 2nd that are REALLY confusing.
The story really takes an odd turn at the final boss fight (which is admittedly an odd place). So you may want to go back and at least find a few videos (if not just beat it) so you can get caught up in that regard.
08:08 AM
Easily one of my favourite games on the Wii, this sequel seems to address all the faults with the original and gives us even more. Can't wait to grab it. =)
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Also graphically, the game seems to have improved. I know you can't tell much by toutube clips, but there are definately more set pieces and better textures than in the last game.
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No argument here since the game is really about the boss fights.
12/16/09
If you just count how long each boss level is, plus you count the length (but only once) of all the part-time jobs and side missions, it's a 10 hour game or less.
I'm not sure what I think of that. I mean, it *is* a beat 'em up. They are generally short games.
On the one hand, MadWorld sorta sucked for how quickly you could breeze through the game (among many other reasons).
I liked No More Heroes about a thousand times more, but the worst part was probably how you had to grind insane amounts of cash to progress in the game, as well as upgrade your beam katana.
If they worked their asses off for No More Heroes 2 and actually produced enough content (bosses, interesting boss levels, amusing part-time job mini-games, more side missions instead of the like 5 that are just repeated in the first game, etc.) to fill that 10 hours without repetition, I will be pleased.
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06:26 AM
Yes, I'm a terrible person.
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04:19 AM
12/16/09
The entire concept of it just makes me wish for Touhou on consoles. :(
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And why would you want Touhou on a console? Just support the franchise directly by purchasing the games from Japan and playing them on your computer with a control pad or arcade stick.
12/16/09
Perhaps I just prefer console gaming to PC gaming? It's not a big deal really. I'd just like to see it on a console.
12/16/09
Just goes to show, popular =/= profitable. Poor Zun.
12/16/09
Touhou was kinda cool once, until a few certain people decided they would never shut up about it :(
I know people who would want to see Touhou on a console just so that it would somehow validate the game and make it mainstream, and therefore cool enough to talk about in ordinary conversation. They could walk into a store, point at it, and exclaim "I know that game! I've been following it since it started!" and be able to talk about it in public like it was cool. But talking about Touhou is never cool, especially now that the otaku community has distilled its essence into three sexual fetishes: yuri, hair ribbons, and armpits.
God, it feels good to get that out. Sorry you had to see that, Kotaku.
12/16/09
Besides I have a feeling that the vast majority of games that are anime-influenced will never become mainstream, something which makes me feel relieved. I don't know why these people you speak of would want Touhou mainstream. The yuri in it would cause media outrage. Just like media outrage would be caused if the Persona series were mainstream.
But I digress. The point I really wanna make is that the gameplay reminded me of Touhou so I mentioned it. Just because I mention something doesn't automatically mean I'm a fanboy.
01:09 AM
Sorry, them's the rules. It's like watching "3 Ninjas" and remarking, "Hey, what a Naruto ripoff."
06:07 AM
So since the game has magical girls in it and is that style of shooter, I went with Touhou. Feel free to recommend other games that you think would be better but don't bitch just because it reminded me of a game I've played.
06:36 AM
Personally, I just like large casts of characters, even if they don't get much personalization. Probably why I drool over new Megaman games as well. Besides, the mostly empty templates really let the fan community flesh out the characters.
As for Touhou going to consoles (or an anime), it would just be really nice to see Touhou given an all star treatment. I mean, Zun isn't a really good artist (character design-wise, I would say he's good, but actual drawing, not so much). It would be great to see the stories more fleshed out. (I know I also just mentioned that I like that the community is able to flesh out the characters, and that this is a seeming contradiction... I guess it is, but I do like seeing both routes)
As for the three sexual fetishes... Well, I'm pretty sure that Touhou has one of the best percentages of non-h doujins. I guess it depends on how far the yuri goes in a doujin. As for hair ribbons, well, hmm, let's just let TV Tropes cover that. I really have no justification for the armpit fetish, but isn't it handled jokingly just as often as seriously? Besides, only a few characters even have exposed armpits (Reimu, Sanae, ...anyone else?)
Now after this long rambling I did, let me just throw out another idea:
You hate fanboys.
I'll admit that some are overzealous and really should be more aware of the interest level of the people around them and some won't look at things objectively (for example, I like Naruto, but there's no way I can say its not without (numerous) problems), but you do have to appreciate their passion for something they like.
08:04 AM
I like Touhou games, I think the art style is interesting and esoteric, and the music is kinda neat. The impact behind Touhou on the internet populations is rather distinct, though.
Most people on the internet speak of 4chan with fear, reverence, and disgust, and name drop it despite having never visited it once. People who visit 4chan know it as a place where the same 600 people on the Touhou board visit every other board and try to force Touhou memes and try to initiate Touhou discussions fairly often. Nobody tells them to GTFO anymore, they just leave the board to stifle discussion and come back a few days later when the Touhou posters have gone. People complain of "the cancer," but Touhou is a large part of the cancer. Also, take danbooru, massive internet anime image board: a couple of years ago, it was a small, semi-thriving community (when it was online, at least). Most of the people left as soon as Touhou fans, always late to the party, discovered they could post Touhou images freely there and have other people comment on them. Two years later, and the collection of bad Touhou art has ballooned, most pictures having multiple comments on a site where most pictures have NO comments. People left danbooru. The Touhou folks sit on the Touhou pages and yap about character pairings and characters having children...it looks like fanfiction.net or Gaia Online. Grown men acting like 13-year old girls. I came to the realization, after watching numerous internet comunities, that Touhotaku are like an infection. They move in, multiply, and replace the sitting community. This brings me to my main point:
Five, six years ago, I was a Touhou fan. After the Touhou community exploded (It's a mystery as to why, outside of "Japanese otaku adore it, so Western otaku have to love it, too"), the community became so annoying that it literally ruined my experiences with the game. People will tell you not to let some bad apples (heeheehee *ahem*... ಠ_ಠ) spoil the crowd, but they've scared everyone else off, and now they are the crowd. Now I can't enjoy my Touhou anymore. My ego wants to play Touhou but my super-ego will not allow me to. Your Naruto comparison is very relevant, in that many people who watched Naruto from the start watched it until it became cool, and then continued watching it happily until the fanbase became so aggravating that every time they sat down and tried to watch it, they were reminded of the fanbase and can no longer take pleasure in Naruto viewings.
Also, like previous poster said, if everybody who wets themselves over new Touhou releases actually bothered to purchase a copy, there would be console releases, and they'd be full price, too, which Touhou fans in Japan would buy without a second thought. If Touhou games were console from the beginning, it would have ZERO fanbase in the Western World. Touhou has fans outside of Japan strictly because of rampant PC game downloading. To go so crazy over a game you'd willingly pirate makes me kinda sad.
This is what I should've posted the first time around.
09:55 AM
I think it's tough for western Touhou fans since there didn't used to be a way to get the games in America. Even now, you have to buy the game and then include shipping from Japan and a nice markup from the place you bought it from (I would have been all over those Figma and Nendoroid Touhou figurines if I didn't know I was playing 2-3 times the price I would in Japan). And they do no favors in terms of localization (which is really just causing a vicious cycle, but that's another story). You have to go online for an English patch anyways.
Since when did 4chan have a Touhou board? Maybe I just haven't been in a while. I know several other boards are just as guilty of trolling other boards. It's like the 4chan way. They can't help but be annoying trolls. Didn't Danbooru always have lots of Touhou? I admit it has a LOT of Touhou, but all of the popular anime/manga/games have large sections. I think Pixiv has lots as well. A Touhou pic was number two just yesterday on Pixiv. Maybe its because I never was involved in the Danbooru community. I just browse and lurk.
Ah, a Bad Apple reference... I can appreciate that. Yeah, I've been watching the subtitled Naruto weekly since the Zabuza arc. That filler is atrocious. Maybe I just don't keep in touch with the fanbase. I talk to friends mostly, and don't really do many forums.
10:10 AM
In any case, there is a Touhou board. They hang out in /tg/, which is (was) tabletop games, but now consists mainly of awesome warhammer art and tsurupettan jokes. /a/ always kicks them out, /v/ hates them, and /tg/ doesn't have the numbers to dispel them.
Incidentally, Touhou games have been available for a long time at Himeyashop. Since about 2000, I think. Himeya's been a rather well-known enterprise, second only to Play-Asia, but their web traffic is very, very low for some odd reason. Everyone always remembers Play-Asia, and nobody remembers Himeya. ;_;. Whereas Play-Asia will sell out of LE releases quickly, Himeya will almost ALWAYS have them. When they first started selling Touhou, older releases were 30 bucks, and the new release was always 40, back when doujin was hard to come by. These days, everything's 20 bucks except Shoot the Bullet, which is 16 bucks (rightfully so). That's where I get all my import/doujin games.
And no, until a few years ago, the Touhou tag only had a dozen pages or so. Now, about 30 percent of danbooru is Touhou.
11:58 AM
Poor /tg/. However, I don't see why /v/ won't let Touhou fans hang out. It is a video game. And I would think /a/ would have enough crossover between people who like magical girl games and who like magical girl shows.
I only got into Touhou a little over a year ago, so I probably didn't notice it much prior to then. Has the Japanese fanbase for Touhou grown lately as well? Danbooru is commonly images from pixiv, so maybe Pixiv just has a lot of Touhou?
Anyways... Himeyashop, huh? I'll have to give it a look. I wouldn't mind sending Zun some money. He needs it to buy alcohol! (I really would like his books in English though)
12:11 PM
Oh, and yeah, the Japanese fanbase was big since game 3 or 4. I think it was just a couple years ago that ReiTaiSai, the Touhou doujin festival, exceeded Comiket in size, scale and visitors. Unbelievable.
12/16/09
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EPIC.
12/16/09
I totally read that in a hard Italian accent, too.
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I wonder if she still has that cell phone charm attached to the hilt of her sword?
12/16/09
That appears to be what she's doing near the end...
12/16/09
She probably added the two new ones.
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12/16/09
Did AJ Glasser actually PLAYED NMH? Helter Skelter is the name of the guy Travis killed to join the the organization. You don't get to kill him, he died in the trailer/openning...
Kotaku could have sent someone who actually played the game to do this preview...
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Besides, I don't know if it was in there when you made your comment, but AJ spells out her scenario pretty clearly:
"I shared a playthrough appointment with some journos from 1UP where we passed the controller around for a series of mini games, a section in Travis's apartment, part of a Shinobu level and the first level of the game where Travis fights Skelter, brother to some dude you killed in the first game (which I confess I never beat)."
So even better, AJ has played the first game.
Let's face some facts. Not everybody finishes every game they ever play. If you're a gaming journalist, this is probably more likely, since while you do have to complete games that you're reviewing, you may not have the time to finish other games in your free time.
So that being said, AJ does clarify that she played the first game, but didn't get to the end (at least, that's what I took from that paragraph). And in her defense, how the hell should she know who the final assassins were if she never got that far? I imagine she was told at this press event that Skelter is the brother of someone Travis killed in the first game (or even more likely, this is mentioned during in-game dialogue), so she assumed it was one of the bosses she never got to.
For fuck's sake, don't crucify AJ for forgetting a fairly obscure character. His name is mentioned in-game like one time, and you see an incredibly brief montage of the Helter Skelter fight. The only other place Helter Skelter appears is in the preview trailer, back when the game was going to simply be called Heroes.
You and I remember him because I assume we both saw that first trailer and thought it was fucking rad, but for someone who didn't follow the hype train and whose only experience is playing the actual game, he's the most forgettable character possible.
03:12 AM
So, I don't hate AJ. Not going to hunt him/her down every article and troll him/her. Nothing against him/her. Actually, I hardly know who the hell is writing the articles. Just don't care. It's just that it's not that hard to research info the the article. It takes time, sure. Time is money, yes (as Half-Minute Hero showed us). But doing near perfect article would prevent trolls like me from... well, trolling.
And, AJ, don't worry about me. I'm the guy who waged a flamewar over whether Capcom of America had the right to rape Sengoku Basara and turn it into Devil Kings (I'm against, of course) in GameFAQs; I waged flamewar against the "DC bright happy stories are the future" in IGN (I'm a Marvel Zombie and IGN hates me); I waged flamewar against the Soul Calibur franchise (I love it, but the last games are depressing). Waging flamewars is my hobby.
03:22 AM
Helter Skelter is a name you would only come across in an early promotional trailer for the game, or some kind of No More Heroes wiki. He got almost completely cut from the actual game, to the point that he wasn't rendered at any point in the game, and instead they just featured a random video montage of the character without even naming him.
I'd expect game journalists to know the main story, but I draw the line at cut content that you would have to watch early trailers and read companion books to really know anything about. Gaming journalists have a job and a life, and can't be expected to have the time or money to be obsessive otaku who know every possible detail about each game they play.
Knowing obscure cross-game story details is just so not important to writing an overall review or preview of a game.
06:14 AM
Anyways, yes, I got your point. He/she/it doesn't need to know the name of the guy who plunged the toilet Mr. 51 used. Got it.
12/16/09
If so, why is it sitting on my shelf untouched.
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Seriously it looks like a fun Cute 'em Up which is more my style than NMH2.
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Argh! I need to go read MegaTokyo and eat some Pocky now!