Nostalgia Mode Initiate: Looking for Modern Gems vol. 2

As you may remember from my previous endeavors, I have succeeded in the past at finding a modern day gem of a game.  It was a fun and unique game for pennies on the dollar that anyone can likely find in the used section of your game store.  This latest title however was not nearly the success story of the prior installment of this now established series of Looking for Modern Gems.  This is a tale of tragedy, of lost hours, and even more so, lost souls.  Anyone unlucky enough to even so much as peek into the instruction manual of this title know of the horrors one must endure with this experience.  This is a cautionary tale of unfortunate proportions, so if you are actively looking for a way to ruin your week, have I got the game for you.  

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is yet another Koei "warriors" title fashioned in the same manner as Dynasty Warriors as a 'hack-n-slash' title of ridiculous proportions.  You punch, maim, victimize, annihilate, mutilate, murder, and otherwise "お前はもう死んでいる" (You are already dead) everything in your path.  On paper...sounds awesome...in practice...quite possibly the worst gaming experience I have subjected my pitiful soul to.

Story: 

Have you ever seen/read Fist of the North Star?  Well then...yeah.  You got it. 

Gameplay:

Hole-ey-shit this game is bad.  I mean, I have played my fair share of warriors titles in the past, the controls are fairly shit, it's repetitive as all hell, and levels take like 10 minutes to beat because of the shear number of objectives.  The games can be laughably easy and tourtureringly difficult all in the same level.  There just isn't a polite way to sum up a warriors title, they are just shit.  But even though they are shit, many of them bring something quaint along.  Dynasty Warriors: Gundam for instance, I mean, nothing wrong with flying around murdering thousands as your favorite gundams/pilots from the series right?  Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is a departure from quaint, it leaves a shit taste in your mouth because the game shovels shit down your throat at every waking moment.  There is zero escape, and zero mercy.  

Controlling Kenshiro's gang of 8 playable characters (10 including DLC) is about as satisfying as caressing an dead man's ballsack (response time is the same too).  It is almost as if they decided to take the cast and thrust them into full-on autism mode just so you wouldn't enjoy playing the game.  Each button press feels like a 500 lb. toddler attempting to walk.  You'd be better eating a piece of glass for each enemy you want to kill, at least then you'd feel like you're accomplishing something.  Every stage has missions that pop up, every mission boils down to "kill this bastard" and "don't die".  The game is tediously annoying and offers up nothing fresh no matter which character you play, or how many different stages you attempt to go through.  Every level i did seemed to take hours to complete, more than enough time I was just trying to find some health so that my useless characters stand a chance against the super-powered ranged units and have some leeway against the boss so that  I wouldn't have to torture myself any longer with repeating the level.  No matter how many character you attempt to play, there is no reason not to just pick Kenshiro.  Kenshiro can at least grab an enemy and "pain train" them by running them into the other baddies.  This is the fastest and most efficient way I have found to kill people in this game, you can easily kill 30 or so in the same time you'd kill 6 with normal moves.  Thanks to the pain train technique, the last level I was willing to sit through only took me 17 minutes. 

Presentation: 

I am willing to admit at first, I thought the game looked kinda cool.  The characters have a very gritty texture look about them that is very "Fist of the North Star" looking.  The crazy ridiculous effects held true for a while and I didn't mind it's appearance at all.  Then I actually played a level, this game is fucking ugly as sin.  The visuals are cheated and cheap, the textures would look cleaner if you made them in minecraft.  The enemies have like 4 variations of normals with zero variation of the special units per level.  The soundtrack is as bullshit as it was in the other Dynasty Warriors games, namely one repetitive shitty rock track that keeps blaring in repeat as you take 30 minutes with beating a level (even with local co-op assistance).  The voice acting is only slightly worse than stabbing myself in the ear with knitting needle, so needless to say, i was impressed.  I wish I could say that putting the game on mute would make it any more bearable, but that would be like putting a bandaid on a broken leg.

Result:

Fucking fuck this game, fuck it to death with everything I can possibly fuck it with.  It is unhealthy how bad this game is, and to think we just got a sequel to this piece of shit.  I will not play the sequel, I don't care if it wins GOTY, I cannot sit through another second of that shit.  The game ruined the entire franchise for me.  I can never watch or read it ever again.  The game is clearly some hell spawn that only exists to remind us that we are mortal, weak, and incapable of stopping tragedy. 

14% 
+ Nothing
- Everything
I give this title an extremely generous 14%.  It is by far one of the worst games I have EVER played.  And I have sit through some shitty fucking games (Shaq-Fu).  The only reason it doesn't get any lower of a rating is because it is still a game.  There is a beginning, and end, and a goal.  Other than that, it needs to be purged from existence and forsaken by all.
 

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