Category: Video Games

I had assumed that the Like a Dragon formula could only thrive in the Japanese settings inspired by Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama, but after having a 20-minute hands-on with the game at Tokyo Game Show I can confidently say that the series’ signature streetfighting and silliness has stayed strong in its switch to a sun-kissed Hawaiian island without missing a beat – or indeed a beatdown.

With Ichiban Kasuga trading his wide-lapel leisure suit for a flowery shirt and flip-flops, my hands-on with Infinite Wealth began on a local beach where I had to immediately beach off a gang of local thugs. While it stopped short of a Ken vs Ken-style dance battle, certainly Ichiban and the gang are more fleet footed in combat this time around, since you’re now able to move each character around in order to get into more optimal positions to attack. This gives the combat a far more dynamic feel than that of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, making the street fighting feel more like a more balanced hybrid of turn-based fighting and the series’ more traditional Streets of Rage-style scraps.

In fact, having main Like a Dragon/Yakuza poster boy Kazuma Kiryu join Ichiban’s party only enhances this feeling further, since the Dragon of Dojima brings both his ability to switch fighting stances as well as his Heat gauge with him. This means that once you’ve built up enough Heat by executing a string of attacks in one of three fighting styles of your choice, you can hit the right trigger to go into beast mode and deliver some real-time combos using the face buttons, much like you would in the more traditional Like a Dragon games. As someone whose preference is generally for the beat ‘em up style of earlier games in the series along with the upcoming Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Main Who Erased His Name, I very much welcome the more involved attacks like these to break up the standard triggering of special moves via static menus.

Having said that, there are still plenty of hilariously over-the-top finishers to enjoy in Infinite Wealth. By far the most entertaining of these I experienced was when new party member Tomizawa unleashed the ‘Essence of Buckle Up’; thereby throwing the targeted enemy into the back of an Uber-style minivan, taking them on a high-speed thrillride, before jumping out of the driver’s seat at the last minute just as the vehicle pirouetted into a spectacular ball of flame. In keeping with the long-standing action hero tradition, Tomizawa calmly walked towards the camera without even acknowledging the fiery blaze behind him. Sure makes for a more memorable climax to a street fight than a humble uppercut.

Outside of combat, I took the opportunity to throw shaka hand gestures at everyone I strolled or Segwayed past, managing to make a friend out of a bikini-clad young woman who could potentially become a love interest in the full game. I also wandered out into the surf and swam around; diving under the waves to discover lost treasures in addition to garbage like plastic bottles – the latter of which can be traded in at a recycling center nearby in order to change your trash into cash.

Recycling isn’t the only way to make a buck in Infinite Wealth; in fact just plain old cycling is a decidedly more exciting way to do it, in this case hopping onto a BMX and delivering food in a two-wheeled mini-game heavily inspired by Crazy Taxi. I had a fantastic time tearing through the beachside streets collecting pizza and burgers and pulling off thumbstick-based tricks like spins and backflips in order to build up my combo meter. The more tricks you string together, the better the reward when you hit the brake and skid into a delivery zone. At one point I even managed to launch Ichiban’s bike into the side of a building, then skyward over the rooftop collecting cash all the way. Why? Because it’s big, goofy fun, that’s why.

Of course, you can take the Like a Dragon story out of Japan but you can’t take the signature quirky Japanese humour out of the Like a Dragon game, and as I hopped on to a beachside trolley to catch a ride to another part of the island I inadvertently triggered a side mission to snap photos of local musclebound perverts. Unfortunately this is the exact moment that my hands-on demo timed out, but it’s clear that developer Ryu Ga Gotoku is definitely bringing the seedier side of the Like a Dragon series to its sunny new setting.

My time with Infinite Wealth was about as brief as Ichiban’s board shorts, but it left me to ponder the infinite possibilities for fun that might be hidden around its sizeable Hawaiian island expanse. In fact, a SEGA representative claimed that Infinite Wealth’s environment is three times larger than the Yokohama map featured in 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon, so Infinite Wealth appears like it could well be the biggest game in the series to date. From the small taste I had here at TGS, I’m inclined to think it has the potential to also be one of the best.

Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN AU and is prone to throwing shaka hand gestures to total strangers.

With a brand new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth trailer revealing the release date is imminent (February 29), we here at IGN naturally are full of questions about this next installment in the trilogy of games remaking and essentially rewriting the original classic. So we did the only thing that made sense: we peppered the game’s developers with these questions, and brought the answers back to you.

We spoke to creative director Tetsuya Nomura, producer Yoshinori Kitase, and director Naoki Hamaguchi about everything we just saw in that trailer: Vincent, Zack Fair, chocobos, the Gold Saucer, the open world, and the name “Rebirth” all included. And while the game’s leads aren’t revealing every mystery right away, we did come away with some cool new details about what we can expect. Here’s a full, lightly edited transcript of our conversation:

IGN: To start off with, I actually didn’t know that Nomura-san was going to be here, but I wanted to ask, how involved are you on the project and what are you working on day to day?

Tetsuya Nomura: To put it simply, my involvement is, you know, not too different from Remake.

IGN: So from the preview session, it was very clear that although the path is familiar, there are slight changes – for example, the way that Yuffie is introduced to the party. Can we expect to see more moments like this that subvert the expectations of the players who know the past story?

Yoshinori Kitase: Okay, so, to comment on sort of the differences from the original work, you know, one point being that the order of certain events of the storyline may differ from the original, some may appear or some way, then what happens in the original, but overall, Rebirth will tell the story to the Forgotten Capital sequence, and overall, follow the original story. But as far as how characters join the party, like, with Yuffie, as you mentioned, has been reimagined in a way that sort of better suited for the modern audience.

Furthermore, as you know, within the original Final Fantasy 7, the character Zack Fair is one that doesn’t appear as much in the original title. However, we see at the end of Remake that he has appeared, which, you know, is quite a difference from the original title. And as for Rebirth, there will be a new episode with Zack, that will contain even more of him than the Remake. I’m not able to say much more than this as I would like for players to play and experience this with it in their own hands.

IGN: As you make these changes, I feel like it walks a fine line between for fans who want to see a faithful retelling versus the new changes and new story that you’re telling. So how do you balance making those changes and how much of the story is focused on subverting expectations for fans of the original, as opposed to a faithful retelling?

YK: I do believe that, and with Remake as well, we were able to tell the story and to express ourselves in a new way that doesn’t stray, or defy, the expectations of those who are fans of their original title.

And so, in terms of, you know, the question of balance, I do believe that a good balance between the two was maintained for Rebirth as well.

That being said, while the story that we follow is quite faithful to the original, as you’ve seen in the demo as well, in part one with the story of Cloud and Sephiroth and their journey at Mount Nibel, you see that it has been greatly kind of enhanced and improved upon the original whereas you know there’s sort of limitation based on the technology of that time whereas now we have just this much more like enhanced immersive experience with the voice acting that just adds another layer to these characters, the stunning visuals, and the acting of the characters that just show much more. So we have sort of the same episode that is now retold and invokes a new feeling, like a new deeper feeling within players.

IGN: So you mentioned that Zack has his own episode in Rebirth. What about any other characters from Crisis Core? Is there any world where Genesis returns to the FF7 Remake games?

TN: So, any characters beyond what is shown in the trailer, we’re unable to speak on.

IGN: In the trailer today, we saw a glimpse of Vincent popping out and saying hello. Will he be playable in this game or is he just a companion?

Naoki Hamaguchi: In terms of whether or not Vincent will be a playable character, he will be more of an accompanying character to the party in terms of Rebirth. So this will be similar to how Red XIII was in Remake.

IGN: I also saw some colored chocobos in the trailer today and I know that they were being used for traversal and everything, but will Chocobo breeding be back in Rebirth as it was in the original FF7? And if so, have there been any major changes or additions to the chocobo system?

NH: So to speak upon the chocobo’s role in Rebirth and how they will be utilized by the players within this game. It will be mainly sort of for world exploration, and by sort of using the chocobo, or riding the chocobo, they’ll be able to, you know, climb cliffs and sort of reach new areas that are, you know, not accessible as just by walking. So they’ll be able to explore deeper as you’ve seen in the trailer.

And as you may remember from the original title, one could acquire a chocobo by seeking that chocobo footprint, which was sort of the system in the original. And this time around, we do have a sort of a similar but enhanced new chocobo capturing feature that players can use to acquire the Chocobo that they can then use for world traversal and exploration.

And in terms of the breeding system that you mentioned, something like that does not exist in rebirth. However, for the Rebirth chocobos, each of them has their own unique name and they are able to enter the gold saucer races. There’s also equipment that is specifically designed for chocobos to equip that will enhance their stats and it will affect their performance in chocobo races.

In terms of the chocobo racing, has that been expanded? Are there any more tracks than the one from the original?

NH: Yes. So there are several race tracks that are available and just within the chocobo racing contest, there’s many varied courses that one could challenge. So, in terms of play hours that can be devoted, it’s quite, you know, copious amounts of hours that one could spend on chocobo racing.

One final chocobo question. How comfortable do you think that Red XIII is while riding a chocobo? He looked a little uncomfortable and might have some back problems from the way he’s hunched over.

NH: Yes. Thank you for this very great question, you know, as you noted, Red XIII and how he will ride a chocobo was very hotly talked about topic amongst the dev staff as well. So it was very discussed amongst ourselves and we kind of settled upon Nomura-san’s idea of how he should be riding the Chocobo.

And we really think that this combines both of the comical elements that alongside the serious plotline, that really represents Final Fantasy Seven series, and I’m really happy to see that this was really picked up in the trailer as well.

Speaking of moments from the trailer that are quite funny, we saw Cloud riding a Segway in today’s trailer and I have to ask: Where did that come from? And at what point in the game will he be riding the Segway? I didn’t know there were segways in the Final Fantasy 7 universe.

NH: Yes. Cloud riding a Segway in the trailer is also creating quite a buzz in Japan as well. And so for this, we were thinking of, while Cloud is visiting a lot of various locations throughout Rebirth, you know, Costa Del Sol, is this resort town.

So instead of walking and using a traditional mode of getting around this town, we were thinking to ourselves, is there a sort of a fun more exciting way for Cloud and the party to kind of traverse and get around Costa Del Sol.

So when thinking about this wheeled, hand-controlled transportation device, sort of this Segway-like machine came to mind, and we’re really happy that this is being noticed globally as well as in Japan.

So to finish up, do you have any clues for why this game is called Rebirth?

YK: So for this with the last title, Remake, we were just thinking of this concept of recreating, or reimagining. And so Remake was the title that we chose, and sort of in line with this, Rebirth was thought of as the next iteration that also kind of encapsulates this sentiment of reimagining or recreating.

With that in mind, should we expect to see the Whispers of Fate again throughout Rebirth?

NH: So as you know, with Remake as well, Whispers are these beings that arrive at these pivotal moments within the story. And you know, we aren’t quite yet announcing whether they will be gracing their presence within Rebirth as well. So this is something that we’d like for users to stay tuned for.

Alongside talking to the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth team, we also previewed the game, which you can check out right here. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches on February 29, 2024, and will be a PS5-exclusive…for the first three months, at least.

Zack Fair fans, do we have some good news for you. Not only do we know that the smooth-talking hero of Final Fantasy: Crisis Core will appear in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth – but it looks like he’s getting an entire episode all for himself.

We learned this in our recent interview with Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth producer Yoshinori Kitase, in which he talked briefly about some of the differences between Rebirth and the corresponding segment of the original Final Fantasy 7. Kitase said that the order of certain events in the storyline of Rebirth might differ from the original, and the order in which characters join the party has been “reimagined.” But largely, Rebirth tells the story of Final Fantasy 7 from the end of Remake up to the Forgotten Capital sequence.

But also…it seems like it adds a bit more – involving Zack specifically.

“Furthermore, as you know, within the original Final Fantasy 7, the character Zack Fair is one that doesn’t appear as much in the original title,” he said. “However, we see at the end of Remake that he has appeared, which, you know, is quite a difference from the original title. And as for Rebirth, there will be a new episode with Zach, that will contain even more of him than the Remake. I’m not able to say much more than this as I would like for players to play and experience this with it in their own hands.”

That’s all they’re saying for now on Zack’s role, which seems to be somehow tied into some of the mysterious plot shenanigans in Remake involving the “Whispers of Fate.” Zack got a glow-up not too long ago with the release of Crisis Core – Final Fantasy 7 – Reunion, which is a remaster of the original Crisis Core. Crisis Core serves as a prequel to Final Fantasy 7 and stars Zack, who interacts with characters like Cloud, Aerith, and Sephiroth before their roles in 7.

We recently saw a major new teaser for Rebirth at a Sony State of Play, where we got a look at Cait Sith, the Gold Saucer, Vincent, and a lot more. We also learned that it will feature 100 hours of content, possibly including one very specific scene fans are “dying” to see. Rebirth is currently planned for a February 29, 2024 release date as a PS5-exclusive, and won’t hit other platforms until at least three months later.

We also talked to Kitase and creative director Tetsuya Nomura about the appearance of Vincent Valentine in Rebirth, as well as how chocobos will work. You can catch up on the full interview right here, as well as our preview of the game here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Additional reporting by Bo Moore.

While it’s sadly not playable at Tokyo Game Show 2023, Everstone Studios’ ambitious open-world action RPG was highlighted today in a special IGN Japan livestream, and we’ve got the full 18 minutes of gameplay footage here for you to check out in stunning 4K.

The action starts with a fiery assault on horseback through fields of flowers highly reminiscent of Ghost of Tsushima’s gorgeous vistas, before crashing straight into a boss fight. When he went hands on with it back at Gamescom 2023 in August, Matt Purslow suggested that the boss encounter in Where Winds Meet wasn’t exactly Dark Souls-level in difficulty, but its fast-paced slashing and parrying would suggest that it isn’t exactly for babies either (despite the fact the main character has an infant strapped to his chest for some reason).

With the hulking boss down for the count, we then get a look at Where Winds Meet’s staggeringly detailed character customisation. A simple set of base presets soon gives way to a dizzying array of feature sliders – if you’re the type to obsess over the size and shape of your avatar’s glabella or philtrum then fear not since Where Winds Meet has got you covered. Brow arches, lip sizes, nose tips – Where Winds Meet’s character customisation seemingly offers more conceivable nips and tucks than a plastic surgeon on a Kardashian’s speed dial.

Next up we see Where Winds Meet’s unusual skill attributes. On one page it shows Drinker, Witty, Whimsical, and Poet, which is incidentally the four stages this writer progresses through on an average night out. But elsewhere we see attribute tags like Mountain Lifter, Moon Gazer, and Dreamer. There appears to be around 27 different unique traits like these, suggesting that Where Winds Meet is doing things a little differently to the action RPG norm.

We next see the main character explore a small village, interacting with locals and even petting a friendly cat, before another combat sequence highlights how battles will play out against foes in greater numbers. Here the hero displays an impressive ability to strike each enemy in rapid succession to stun them, allowing him to isolate them one-on-one and take them down uninterupted. The ability to leap off a rooftop and fire arrows from his bow in slow-motion a la Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild also shows alternate ways to take attackers down from a distance.

Lastly, we see the hero take to the skies for a flight ability that appears to be tied to a stamina guage, before indulging in a battle with an angry bear – suggesting that there’ll be plenty of wildlife to contend with in addition to Where Winds Meet’s human enemies.

Where Winds Meet still doesn’t have a release date, and it remains to be seen as to whether developer Everstone Studios can keep the game’s ambitious size and scope in check in order to provide a cohesive experience. Here’s hoping the team can pull it all together, because Where Winds Meet could be very special if so.

Tristan Ogilvie is a Senior Video Editor at IGN AU. He’s currently attending Tokyo Game Show 2023.

It’s been almost a year since I reviewed Pokemon Scarlet and Violet at launch, and I still feel more conflicted about them than any other Pokemon game in all my years loving the series. They dazzled me with their open world design, which felt like the answer to years of fan requests – but the performance and aesthetic hits that came with that innovation were painful catches that didn’t quite feel worth the trade. Still, with two DLCs on the horizon, I had hope that Game Freak would be able to pull it together. Could the first DLC, The Teal Mask, fix Scarlet and Violet’s glaring issues and deliver a robust, new experience that fully embraced the clear potential of what these games could have been?

Nope!!!

For starters, I don’t know how it’s possible, but somehow The Teal Mask runs worse than the base game of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet does. I complained about the poor performance of Scarlet and Violet in my initial review, and had hoped that a whole year later Game Freak would have made improvements to things like framerate, pop-in, weird lighting issues, model clipping, and everything else – problems Nintendo even stated it was working to address back in December. But it hasn’t. Instead, it feels like the DLC has the jankiness turned up about one or two more notches.

It’s still playable: I didn’t run into any game breaking bugs. I did suffer from one hard crash, which while not a huge deal due to the game’s frequent autosave, is still pretty shocking given the franchise’s relatively polished history. But more importantly, during my playthrough of The Teal Mask it was impossible to go for more than a minute or two without a visual distraction. Maybe my Tinkaton was clipping through the ground during battle, or falling into the abyss when an encounter started on a cliffside. Maybe I was watching nearby Pokemon models vibrate violently, or seeing NPCs vanish in and out of existence. Or maybe the whole thing was just chugging, simply because I was riding on my Miraidon and it didn’t know how to handle more than a few trees appearing on screen at once. Look, I don’t expect high-fidelity graphics at the level of the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X in my Pokemon games. But the sheer amount of issues is so distracting all the time that it became an active detriment to my enjoyment. And if Game Freak keeps up its current pace of making performance several degrees worse with each game, by the next gen or so Pokemon might be literally unplayable, because you won’t be able to see anything. Fingers crossed that The Indigo Disk DLC this Winter improves matters literally at all.

I don’t want to keep harping on the performance issues, but one more critical note on this point is that my problems with endgame raid battles from the original review still haven’t been fixed, which tangibly impacts gameplay. Queuing into online raids is still inconsistent due to the very weird way in which Scarlet and Violet refreshes its available raids and doesn’t notify you when they’re full. And once you do get in, completing high-level raids can be challenging due to lag and a weird timer system sometimes skipping your turn, freezing your screen, or otherwise making it impossible to tell what’s going on at any given moment. While some major raiding bugs have been fixed in the last year, it was impossible for me to spend time on the primary endgame content of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet or its DLC without running into this stuff and being frustrated by it.

My feelings about the new Kitakami island region itself aren’t much fonder. Like Paldea, the world of Scarlet and Violet’s DLC is butt-ugly, with low-res textures, little detail in its environments, and a single town mostly made up of buildings you can’t enter and NPCs uttering boring, nothing phrases. That big local “festival” that the trailers hyped up? It’s just a few carts with vendors and some uninteresting NPCs. It’s even more of a disappointment when you consider that Kitakami is based on Japan – a nation that Game Freak has based multiple memorable regions off of before (Kanto and Johto). When I’ve already seen a Japanese-inspired world done in such loving detail in multiple Pokemon Games, Kitakami feels like a massive letdown.

That said, The Teal Mask isn’t all bad. The battling and competitive aspects are still what they’ve always been (good), and it’s still fun to fill up a PC box full of neat little dudes you find running around outside. The island checks all the boxes for that activity specifically: it’s big, full of Pokemon, and has lots of different biomes to poke around in. One of my favorite parts of Kitakami was the mountain at its center with crystalline pools at the summit, numerous caves along its path to the top, and a surprising cavern structure within full of Pokemon hiding around corners and in little holes. But the overall ugliness and performance issues did detract from locations that looked like they were probably quite beautiful in their concept art, just not their final execution – such as when I first laid eyes on those sparkling pools on the mountaintop, or when I crossed a thin, stone bridge to a mysterious cave as the sunset hit the surrounding rock formations.

Content-wise, The Teal Mask largely consists of a familiar Pokemon formula where you track down a legendary Pokemon while learning about local lore. You’re accompanied on this quest by a sibling pair, Carmine and Kieran, both of whom spent most of the story alternating between yelling at me over nothing and challenging me to battles. The Teal Mask’s plot is so overdone that even a Slowpoke could see its twists coming, which is a pretty big bummer after the heights reached during the ending of Scarlet and Violet. This DLC campaign is also short, about seven or eight hours long, though catching every newly-added monster will stretch it a bit more.

The best part of Teal Mask’s story is the subplot surrounding a photographer, Perrin, who sends you on a Pokemon Snap-esque photography journey after a totally different legendary Pokemon. After hours of Carmine and Kieran shouting at me, Perrin’s curiosity and backstory with photography were a refreshing change, and her photo-taking minigame provided a natural avenue for The Teal Mask to expand on something I loved in Scarlet and Violet: discovering Pokemon doing fun Pokemon things in their habitats. Frankly, Perrin’s story is so much more interesting than the rest of the DLC that it’s a shame I couldn’t spend more time hanging out with her and her Hisuian Growlithe instead of being dragged around by the world’s most unnecessarily angsty preteens.

Other new features in The Teal Mask include an expanded Pokedex with a tiny handful of new monsters, a middling selection of new cosmetic choices, and a terrible minigame called “Ogre Oustin’” that involves tanking your framerate further by speeding around on your bike to collect berries really fast. While I’m always happy to praise Game Freak’s Pokemon designs (especially the candy apple-themed Dipplin – cute!), and it’s nice to finally change out of my hideous school uniform, I don’t know what they were thinking with Ogre Oustin’. It’s boring, repetitive, runs terribly (especially online), and yet made me feel bad about not wanting to play it by offering great rewards for anyone looking to build raiding or competitive teams. Terrible.

The ways in which The Teal Mask feels like a step backward from what made Scarlet and Violet astonishing are also disappointing. Scarlet and Violet themselves promoted player freedom: you could go anywhere you wanted at almost any time, and do the major plot points in any order. The Teal Mask mysteriously tosses that in the bin in favor of a far more standard, linear journey. While you can explore any part of the island at any time, there’s no benefit to doing so beyond catching Pokemon. You can’t even do the initial quest – which involves visiting three sign boards around the island – in any order. The sudden loss of that player freedom is painful given how critical it was to my enjoyment of the base game.

It’s also a surprisingly weak effort when compared to Game Freak’s previous DLC attempts in Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra. While both of these DLC were similarly criticized for being shallow in the story department, Isle of Armor added challenge by forcing you to train a brand new Pokemon, while Crown Tundra included multiple new game modes. The Teal Mask does… none of that, and feels distinctly incomplete. Maybe that’s because it was always meant to be just one half of a package with The Indigo Mask, but if that’s the case, then I question the wisdom of splitting the DLC at all.