Retail Gamers

Seriouslyy, Japan. It’s just you and Frank Johnson talking here, no one else. Come on, let’s be honest w/ each other. It’s ok, only like 12 people come to this site anyway! It’s ok to come clean with good ol’ Franky J. Just repeat after Frank Johnson: ”I Japan, have no idea how to handle down loadable content and achievements!” SAY IT! Don’t give Frank Johnson any of your bullshit Japan! You and some of your developers are terrible at DLC & Achievements! Don’t think so?! Well, shall we explore your rubbishy ways?

Frank Johnson will start with one of the least painful attempts at DLC. Recently Kotaku posted that Ninja Gaiden 2 now has downloadable costume packs called “Shadow Walker”, “Demon”, & “BioMetal”. Each pack has five different costumes and each pack cost 200 Microsoft Points. Now, Frank Johnson isn’t going to freak out on you Tecmo, Frank Johnson won’t go all Bad Company on you. But seriously, these should be in the game. Free. Pretty lame to charge people for a different color suit.

 This next example is just shameful. Back in October 2007 Namco Bandai released Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360. Not even 7 days later (in Japan & Asia) DLC was released! 4 complete levels, 200 MS Points each! Listen here, Namco Bandai: The point of DLC is to add new content to an existing game, not pull content out of the existing game prior to launch then charge mofos for it 6 days later! THAT IS STUPID! Unless Frank Johnson is dead wrong here. Go ahead, tell Frank Johnson he is wrong! Tell Frank Johnson that those 4 levels weren’t quite done for release date and they needed at LEAST 72 more hours of development time!

 Now Japan, that wasn’t that bad was it? Let’s chat about achievements.

One of the worst offenders of terrible achievements is Capcom. Capcom makes great games, with stupid achievements. Devil May Cry 4’s ridiculous achievements comes to mind first. What’s wrong with you Capcom? 

Please, take a look at Devil May Cry 4’s absurd achievements!

 If you read over those you would know that Capcom wants you to beat Devil May Cry 4 33 times in order to get all the achievements! Either Capcomthinks their game is that good or they think Americans run on 87 hour days. Let’s try making achievements that aren’t demoralizing, ok Capcom?

ARE YOU HIGH TECMO!? You want gamers to beat your game 12 times?! Let Frank Johnson get this straight… Play the game using ONLY one weapon, the entire time and receive 5, COUNT EM, 5 Achievement points? SIGN FRANK JOHNSON UP! That sounds not only practical, but butt loads of fun!

Other Japanese achievement based torture devices include Blue Dragon, Earth Defense Force 2017, Dead Rising and Lost Planet.

Achievements should be fun to get, you should be able to play through on maybe a more difficult setting, pay attention to what you are doing/collecting/shooting and receive 600 - 750 achievement points. Not this crazy crap like play through 75 times on ultra super hard death kill suffering mega dammit mode using only the dance mat and Rock Band Drums as your controller and beat the game without dying, losing health or looking at the TV to receive 3 achievement points.

So there you go Japan, these are just a few examples of your lack of understanding of what DLC and Achievements are supposed to look like. I would say use the U.S. or other countries as examples of what to do but we have companies like EA and UBI Soft F’n up achievements and DLC every other release….

-Bitching By Frank Johnson

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