Did you miss me?

I have not written for a while, again. The excuse this time, for anyone who is still listening, is that I went down to my dad’s house in the countryside for a few days. They do not have any computers or internets there. They did have some witches, but they all got burned. I told my dad he should get broadband, but he said I should not mention it again, because it was ‘witch talk’, and I might get burned.

It was nice to get out of the smoke for a while, and it was good to spend some time resting and sorting my head out, and seeing my dad, in the run up to my now imminent emigration to t3H |\|1p|>()n. It was definitely good to have some proper ‘down time’ – including my dad’s best fry-ups and the local ale festival - before I have to start getting on with leaving my life behind…

I may have been severed from the internet, but I was still connected where it counts: computer games. First and foremost, my little brother had left his Wii over at my dad’s. Although I had already played on it, this was my first opportunity to play at length, and to really get to grips with the controllers. My eyes skidded over the copy of Resi 4; irrespective of how great the new control system may or may not be, I just did not have the energy to play the blasted game a third time. At the risk of sounding like a computer game Nazi, I will admit that the flippancy of Wii sports has never really appealed to me. I did fancy a proper go at Zelda: The Twilight Princess, but my save file had disappeared in my absence. The game that drew me in and kept me playing into impractical hours of the night was a flawed beauty; Red Steel.

Now I am ashamed to admit that the promise of Yakuza based action is guaranteed to have me shaking with violent intrigue, and when I first played on the Wii, this was the game that got me excited. It was a cool, stylistic FPS with (admittedly gimmicky) sword fights, and I loved it from the start. However playing it, as I initially did, for only a short time meant that I had no time to properly familiarise myself with the undeniably difficult mechanic of simultaneous movement and aiming on the foreign (to me) Wiimote. As a result, I went away feeling that Red Steel was something of a lost opportunity.

Having finally spent a respectable amount of time learning the ropes, I learned a new love for the game. Now my little yakaza fetish probably made the experience more exhilarating for me, but I can not tell you how fucking good it felt to charge around suspicious Japanese hotels and clubs brandishing guns and swords. Literally brandishing them. I surprised myself by deciding that the controls make a real difference.

Another part of the game’s strange charm is that it feels anachronistically stunted. Made by the French company Ubisoft, it displays the fruit of the strange little cultural love-in between the European mainland and Japan (everyone in Europe except the British seem to have fond memories of Fist of the North Star and Sailor Moon) and the game is another charmingly clumsy account of orientalist fantasy. It reminds me of the Samurai and Ninja games I used to play in the park as a child, before I grew out of it and… started a degree in Japanese? Oh, fuck!

You play a typically passively silent and unseen westerner who, get this, is going out with the daughter of a yakaza boss! Come on, who has not had that daydream? Just me? I’ll shut up. Predictably, it all goes awry, and rival gangsters kidnap your girlfriend and her dad, leaving just you, an army of malefactors waiting to be dispatched, and some guns. No, lots of guns. And really the tone does not change from there on out. Technically, everything about the game is a little out dated and on the cheesy side: graphics, story, even the gameplay feels as if nothing had changed since goldeneye. Yet this is exactly what adds up to make the game feel so nostalgically pleasing. It entices you to allow yourself to return to the drama and imagination of older times. And did I mention you can shoot loads of people and have sword fights? Good.

Also, I would like to announce a new addition to the blog! Down towards the bottom of the panel on the right, you will find a streaming radio player. It only plays the traditional Japanese folk-blues genre, Enka. It is a brilliant genre, and a yakuza favorite.

Osu!