What I Hate About Japanese Video Games

I’ve been on a limited posting schedule as of late due to a recent addition to my budding nuclear family. Don’t start stockpiling canned goods and head to your bomb shelter at the thought of me reproducing. I’d rather kill you so you can tell me if hell has frozen over. My last few posts covered my take on Saint’s Row 2. After that brief hiatus I’m ready to get back to what I love, and that’s spewing hate.

I feel like a homosexual in the 50’s when I say I hate Japanese video games. Wondering if there’s anybody else out there like me and filled with resignation every time a Japanese game scores so well on many different sites. This is the skinny on what I despise about our flashing light loving brethren across the way.

The stories. Some of them have a story I can follow. The only reason I can follow them is because they’re cut from the same cloth as so many bad acid flashbacks, complete with bright colors and flashing lights. They have an overlying supreme evil, star an ambiguously gay bad ass, optional female sidekicks, and far too many environmental and social themes. When described like that, it doesn’t really seem too bad but it is.

There is such a thing as having too much story. So much story you have a Scanners moment and your head explodes if you try to decipher everybody’s motivation or relationship to everybody else. Another flaw is replacing story with supreme acts of badassery and expect the player to completely understand. Then the characters start to speak.

Dialog. It’s usually spoken in a constant scream, smug self satisfaction, or with unbridled disdain. There isn’t fear or stressed dialog. It’s “I”M GOING TO KILL YOU,” “I love killing fields of people because I’m just that good,” or “I’m going to kill you, your family, and skull fuck your empty ocular cavities when I’m done.” They don’t say it with that much affluence. I couldn’t tell you much more than that because in some games, I watch the cut scenes, some games I skip them, and in Japanese video games I go to the kitchen, warm up some pop tarts, eat them, and come back with enough time to rub one out before the game lets me play again.

The characters. The men are from opposite ends of the sexual preference spectrum. They’re either grizzled or queer with no in between. With the characters I’m mostly complaining about the women. The women are always porn stars with a secret agenda or victims of the ultimate evil… just like real life porn stars. The characterization isn’t always what’s wrong. They are frequently the bustiest women in all of video games with the bounciest physics. I know women are conscious of their bust size, but sweater kittens that large are bound to cause serious back problems in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I like boobs more than the next guy, but I can’t imagine a woman being able to perform any actions with her arms if she can’t reach her own elbows.

The controls. The RPGs require too much of my time to get through one battle. There are occasionally options to hotkey your attacks, but determining how to put together an attack or spell takes just as long as most battles. With the rest of the games they take tried and true control schemes and shit all over them. The joysticks move the camera and character, the right trigger always fire, left is secondary weapon, A is jump, B is melee, X is action and Y is a wild card. The D-pad and secondary shoulder buttons are open for whatever the developer needs them for but it’s anybody’s guess if that’s what they do in Japanese games. I played the demo to RE 5 and the game was okay, but I couldn’t learn the controls for the life of me. There’s needs to be some kind of strictly enforced standard. Something to keep the genres open to the masses.

There are always exceptions to generalizations. I don’t care about so many awful children’s platformers or games that suggest I “gotta collect them all.” Really, I don’t care about Japanese video games.

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