Karyu Endan

This tangent is because practically no one is talking about it. The story has everything you could ask for from a top tier gaming scandal: servers shutting down for long periods of time; allegations of hacking; save data corruption; some scumbag selling a mod that gives access to “on-disc” DLC early. But no big name gaming Youtuber has said anything. Jim Sterling? Nothing. YongYea? Nothing. TGN Anime? Only a single video released earlier today; no coverage as it happened. PS360HD2? Only a single video defending said scumbag whose mod may or may not be responsible for the corruption bug but is regardless a case of violating the terms of service for profit and shouldn’t be defended. The only sources of news are oGVexx (who I had not even heard of before this scandal), and Namco Bandai’s own twitter accounts, which only updated seldom. Yes, Pokemon Let’s Go and Fallout 76 were released around the same time so I understand why it isn’t receiving as much coverage as it probably needs to, but why is there virtually nothing at all?

Turns out, it’s because no one plays it. Shinobi Striker is something of a meme, being called a “dead game” by several comments. But can Shinobi Striker really be called “dead” if it was never alive to begin with? I went on vgchartz to check how well Shinobi Striker has been selling, and after adding the different versions’ figures up... the result is rather enlightening:

UN Storm 4: 1.45m (PS4) + 0.35m (Xbox1) + 0.11m (Road to Boruto Xbox1) + 0.03m (Road to Boruto PS4) = 1.94m + PC sales.

Shinobi Striker: 0.15m (PS4) + 0.08m (Xbox1) = 0.23m + PC sales.

Namco Bandai lost nearly 90% of the Naruto game playerbase going from Storm 4 to Shinobi Striker, going from nearly 2 million to barely over 200 000. Apparently a lot of people must have had the same thoughts about the game prior to launch as I did. It would be less accurate to say that the game is “dead” and more accurate to say that the game has been an Edo Tensei zombie from the very beginning. It raises the question though... why did it turn out like this?

For one thing, as I said before, no story mode. This isn’t just an issue with Shinobi Striker, but an issue in the Storm series as well. Generations lost sales compared to Storm 2 because it had a watered down story without any over-the-top boss fights, and Storm 3 won some fans back when it returned to form. Revolution also is notably the only game in the Storm series not to sell over a million copies, and the lack of a “proper” story mode was definitely one of the reasons why. Certainly Namco Bandai must have noticed the trend; Naruto fans want deep story campaigns in their games where they can relive their favourite moments of the source material. So it was a mistake on Namco Bandai’s part to not emphasize this point to Soleil and demand their game include a content-rich story mode.

Now what about that small roster size? Storm 4 had over 100 playable characters without even counting DLC, while Shinobi Striker’s base roster is... 20. Five characters for each class (Attack, Range, Defense, and Support/Heal). That’s certainly a hefty downgrade compared to the previous title. It can’t be the only problem though, since Dragon Ball Fighterz has a much smaller roster size than Xenoverse 2 and yet both games sold about the same. So what does Fighterz have that Shinobi Striker doesn’t? I think it’s the quality of the roster. Fighterz’ cast might be small, but every character is deep and unique, with practically every frame of animation referencing Dragon Ball in some way. Shinobi Striker doesn’t really have that. The class distinction makes every character lose depth and uniqueness more or less by default, and the very genre of the game (read: a 4v4 MOBA compared to a traditional fighting game) limits how much any individual character can do. So ultimately Shinobi Striker’s roster is both small and shallow, and thus completely unattractive to a lot of people.

Now I myself don’t care for MOBA’s of any sort (and I know I’m using the term very loosely. Shinobi Striker isn’t what one would colloquially refer to as a MOBA, but literally speaking it is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), but a lot of people do. Otherwise Overwatch and Splatoon would not be nearly as successful as they are. And considering the nature of the source material, where characters go on missions as teams of four all the time, one would think a MOBA in the style of the aforementioned Overwatch or Splatoon would be a natural fit for Naruto as a video game premise. Problem is... It still has to compete with those very same MOBA’s for player time and money, and without the level of fanservice (not that kind of fanservice) needed to make it stand out from the crowd, people are just not going to bother when there are better/more popular versions of the same thing available already. I again bring up Dragon Ball Fighterz. It is so successful because it didn’t try to sell Dragon Ball to the fighting game community, but rather sold fighting game mechanics to Dragon Ball fans. That’s what Namco Bandai had to do with Shinobi Striker: sell the mechanics of a MOBA to Naruto fans. And they did not do this.

No story and a weak roster are part of why Namco Bandai failed to do this. Something else I noticed when looking up the game this past week is that there are only five stages. Five. Stages. And out of those five, only the Hidden Rain Village and Hidden Cloud Village actually reference the series’ locales they’re supposed to represent. Those places actually look and feel like where Jiraiya fought Pain and Taka fought Killer B respectively; all the others may as well just be a generic city, forest, and desert with walls and bottomless pits in the latter two cases. They’re supposed to be the Boruto-era Konoha, the Forest of Death, and the Hidden Sand Village respectively, but you can’t tell that just by looking. Where’s the Kazekage building in Suna? Where’s the central tower or the giant snakes in the Forest of Death? Where’s the gate, the Hokage faces, or the ramen stand in Konoha? Nowhere, or at the very least impossible to see during normal gameplay. And there’s still a ton of stages the game could have but are missing. The Great Naruto Bridge? Chunin Exam Stadium? Tanzaku Town? Valley of the End? Orochimaru’s Hideout? Mount Myoboku? Five Kage Summit? Turtle Island? Toneri’s Fortress on the moon in The Last? The alternate dimensions in the fights with Kaguya and Momoshiki? There’s just so much potential for stages that Shinobi Striker is not tapping into.

It is now the afternoon. Bella came back to her house with Edward and has been there for a few hours when the Blacks pull into the driveway and Edward is forced to leave undetected, and won’t come back until well after they’re gone.

Yes, that’s how the chapter starts. Chapter 16 ended with Alice, Jasper, Edward, and Bella getting ready to play baseball. Naturally you would think that chapter 17 would begin with the Cullens about to play baseball. But this doesn’t happen. Before that, we have to see Bella greet the Blacks at her house, then pick up a phone call from Jessica after they leave, then see Charlie come in and tell him that she’s dating Edward.

It isn’t even done all that tactfully either. The way the chapter opens up Bella mentions seeing the Blacks pull into the driveway and about to knock on the front door. Now, since chapter 16 ended with Bella at the Cullens’ house I was under the impression that Bella was seeing the Blacks from behind, as if the Blacks arrived just before she and Edward did, as Bella wasn’t at her house and needed to come back. But the way the chapter progresses it’s clear that Bella is seeing the Blacks from inside the house, which means that she and Edward had been there already for some time and no mention of this was made before Bella spotted the Blacks coming in.

The setting change was very abrupt and sloppily executed. All that needed to be done was to have Bella narrate something along the lines of “it had been several hours since Edward and I came back to my house so I could wait and prepare for the game” and it would have been clear. But alas, nothing like this happens and the early portion of the chapter is confusing as a result.

Any what happens before the game? Not much. Just like in chapter 12, the scene with the Blacks is pointless. It does have the first semblance of conflict since chapter 15 started with Billy pressing Bella about her seeing Edward and warning her to stop seeing him. But this warning means absolutely nothing for anyone, since Billy leaves without convincing Bella to change her mind and Jacob still thinks the legends are fairy tales. It could have meant something if it persuaded Bella to tell Charlie about Edward even if she still intended to see him, but Bella and Edward were already planning on that since the beginning of chapter 15, so she was going to do that anyway. So again… the scene was pointless filler.

And the call from Jessica? Aside from reminding us that Bella’s human classmates still exist (we haven’t heard from them at all since chapter 12) and setting up a gag of Charlie coming in while Bella’s on the phone, it’s pointless too, or at least poorly placed. Why did Meyer think it was necessary to inform us that Mike and Jessica kissed during the dance in the middle of all this stuff about the Cullens and baseball? It’s nice to know, but not when it breaks up the pacing of the story. Certainly Meyer could have just postponed the news until the following day (a Monday) when Bella and Jessica meet up in Trig class, right?

Wait… that’s right! The human-eaters that Alice foresaw are going to come derail Bella’s schedule later today and it’s going to take the rest of the novel to deal with them, so this was basically Bella’s last chance to talk to any of her human friends for the rest of the book. So not only does the news come in the middle of a mostly unrelated plot thread, it’s telegraphing two things: that the human-eaters are going to fuck shit up; and that Mike and Jessica (let alone the rest of Bella’s human classmates) won’t be appearing anymore.

And that begs the question of why Meyer gave Mike and Jessica so much focus in the first half of the novel if they were going to be completely inconsequential to its resolution. It’d be one thing if she gave each of them big send-offs that completed their character arcs and we could feel like we didn’t need to see them again, but the last time Bella interacted with either of them it was in chapter 12 when she lied to both of them to make them think Edward wouldn’t be with her, and before that Bella was dismissing their warnings about Edward and cursing Jessica to the fiery pits of Hades.

So Mike and Jessica’s honesty and friendship prying was met with Bella’s lies and deceit mercy, then they kissed off-page because human-on-human contact is apparently too boring. They are together in Heaven Hades with a partner equally awesome vile, for the mortal virtue sin of getting in the way of Edward and Bella’s abuse love … The end?

Okay, then. Moving right along…

So Charlie comes in and Bella tells him that she’s seeing Edward Cullen. But only that. I can forgive her for sparing the “gory details” as Edward puts it… and by that I mean him being a vampire. She says nothing about his… visiting habits.

You know, there’s a limit to how much Bella can decide what is and isn’t Charlie’s business. Keeping Edward being a vampire a secret for Charlie’s own protection (even though Bella hasn’t been told about Volturi Law yet)? Understandable. Keeping Edward breaking into Charlie’s own house every night to watch his daughter sleep a secret? Pretty sure that is very much Charlie’s business no matter what Edward is.

Newsflash, Bella: if you have to lie to your parents to feel comfortable about a relationship, then it’s probably not a very good relationship. And it makes you look like a bitch on top of it.

Speaking of people looking like bitches, very early in the chapter, when Bella first notices the Blacks coming in, Edward says “this is crossing the line” and the anger in Edward’s voice makes Bella immediately feel afraid for the Blacks. Now, I’m fairly sure the line Edward is referring to is the non-aggression treaty the Cullens and Quileutes have that was alluded to in chapter 6: the Cullens stay out of La Push, and in return the Quileutes let the Cullens stay in Forks and keep their vampirism a secret. Edward must be thinking that Billy is crossing that line by coming up to Bella’s house and assuming he read Billy’s mind, with the intention of telling Bella to stay away from the Cullens. So in Edward’s mind, Bella is considered Cullen property and the Quileutes have no right to be speaking with her.

This is a display of Edward being a possessive, abusive asshole, but Edward is also patently wrong and being an idiot. The Swan family has known the Quileutes for longer than Edward’s been in Bella’s life. Billy and Charlie are best friends and Bella’s known Jacob since they were both small children. Billy also came up to deliver Charlie some of Harry Clearwater’s fish fry, so he had more than one reason for coming here. And Bella’s truck was a gift from Billy in the first place. If anything, the Swans are an extension of the Quileutes, not the Cullens, and Edward violated the treaty the moment he broke into Charlie’s house, which we learned started in chapter 4, before Jacob said anything about vampires to Bella.

I mean, it’d be wrong for either side to call the Swans their property, but the Quileutes have seniority and more reason to be angry with Bella’s contact with Edward than the other way around.

And Edward has no reason not to know this. He’s been in Forks for years and can read minds, but never picked up on the Swans and the Blacks being long-time friends? Either Forks is not as close-knit of a community as it is presented as… or Edward is an idiot.

Anyway, Edward comes in and introduces himself to Charlie in front of Bella and then the couple say their goodbyes. Not much really happens here. You’d think a lot of emphasis would be placed on Bella introducing Edward to her father since it’s a big step in the relationship, but no. It comes and goes really quickly. All Charlie says to Edward is basically, “Hi. You’re getting my daughter into baseball? Cool. Make sure she comes home safely”. That’s about it. We sat through two whole chapters of Edward introducing Bella to his family, but Bella doesn’t even get half a chapter to introduce Edward to hers? That hardly seems fair. It might as well have not happened at all.

It also turns out that for the trip to the game, Edward decided to pick Bella up in Emmett’s vehicle: a gigantic jeep designed for off-road travel. It’s probably what Edward and Emmett used for their hunting trip. But they’re only taking it part of the way; after a certain point Edward has to piggyback Bella the rest of the way, and it’s making Bella nervous! We get a scene of Edward dazzling Bella into believing she has nothing to be afraid of and letting him carry her, and it is… pointless fluff.

Everything established by the scene is something we already know. Bella forgets any and all concerns when faced with Edward’s dazzling beauty? Check. Edward finds Bella’s uselessness funny? Check. Edward knows he should stay away from Bella for both their sakes but he can’t be arsed to actually leave her? Check.

And on top of all that, there’s still the elephant in the room regarding those human-eaters Alice foresaw, and Bella being afraid because of them is completely justified. And the human-eaters aren’t even brought up in the scene, so here I am thinking the whole scene only exists so that Bella can be placed in a comfort zone only for the human-eaters to disrupt it later. As if Bella getting a tour of the Cullen household and watching a light-hearted game of baseball didn’t already accomplish that.

Speaking of said baseball game… Why did Meyer choose baseball specifically? The only things that matter that come out of it are that Emmett has the greatest raw strength, and Edward is the fastest, but even so all the vampires move so quickly that Bella can’t keep up with their movements. That also sucks all the potential fun out of reading about half a dozen vampires playing baseball, by the way.

And the changes Meyer made to the game to accommodate the Cullens rub me the wrong way too. For one thing, Esme says “if they don’t hit it, it’s a strike”, which means that pitching balls have been removed from the game. I know the idea is that vampire vision and reflexes are so good that they should have no problem hitting the ball no matter where it’s thrown, but this way, it removes all the mind games that go on between the pitcher and the batter.

I happen to be something of a fan of baseball. Grew up playing on little league teams almost every year of elementary school. I was valued pretty highly too since I was a rare lefty and could play first base. I still watch Blue Jays games regularly. So I think I know what I’m talking about when I say that about 80% of baseball happens right at the plate. The pitcher has to pitch differently depending on the kind of batter. Righties and lefties obviously swing the bat from different positions and will drive the ball to different parts of the field. A big hitter will prefer balls farther out so the ball makes contact with the bat’s sweet spot and they can hit a home run, while a small speedster would want to hit balls low so they can make it to first and then steal more bases later rather than risk a pop fly. The pitcher and catcher take this in and try to formulate the best strategy to strike the batter out, which sometimes involves making batters swing at pitches they think will be strikes, but leave the strike zone at the last possible second and become balls. The knuckle ball was developed for this specific tactic. The curve ball can be used this way too, or even the opposite, making the batter think that the pitch will be a ball and not swing at it, only for it to curve into the strike zone and become a strike.

A good batter will, of course, be aware of their own favoured piece of the strike zone and what the pitcher will most likely try to do to strike them out. So they adapt their batting style accordingly to pre-empt the pitcher’s strategy. And the pitcher will be on the lookout for what the batter might be planning and pitch to counteract it. And both sides need to do their best to remain calm in the face of pressure and scrutiny to avoid betraying their intentions via body language. The interactions between batter and pitcher can quickly become a battle of wits at I know you know I know levels. It’s part of the reason why each pitch takes so long to come out in Major League games.

And then there’s the tried-and-true strategy of walking a dangerous batter on purpose to avoid risking them hitting a home run, knowing a weaker batter is on deck, and then goading the next batter into hitting the ball into a double play. The way the Cullens set their games up, that isn’t even an option. Why give Emmett the chance to hit a home run when Alice could walk the guy and get Carlisle to tag him out at second base when Rosalie hits it after him?

Ultimately, the Cullens took all the strategy out of baseball, reducing it down to only a physical competition. And Bella has the nerve to claim their version of the game is better than the MLB. Meyer must not have understood the appeal of baseball in the first place if she wrote a line like that.

By the way, I just spent more time writing about baseball than Meyer did. Only half an inning is covered in detail before Bella skims over the next few and the game is interrupted by Alice having a vision of the human-eaters meeting them and Edward reading their minds nearby. Apparently no one had the foresight to think that maybe some vampires may want to join in on some vampire baseball, so they’re caught unprepared and Edward takes Esme’s place next to Bella to give the human-eaters his undivided attention. The Culllens also decide that since there’s seven of them and only three human-eaters – and that moving Bella away from them could attract them to her scent and lead them somewhere where the Cullens can’t protect her – the best course of action is to stay put and face the human-eaters head on.

In their current situation… yes, that’s reasonable and not at all an idiotic decision. They’re actually being smart for once.

Too bad the Cullens were all idiots for bringing Bella to the game in the first place. They knew human-eaters were coming, and yet they brought a human to watch their game anyway. That is just all kinds of stupid. Even Edward is aware of how freaking stupid this is, since he actually apologizes to Bella for stupidly and irresponsibly getting her into this mess.

The only thing dumber at this point would be to deliberately go against the decision they just made, split themselves up, and run Bella out of there so her scent could carry in the wind and lead the human-eaters right to her without the safety of seven vampires, including a mind-reader, a master medic, a girl who can see the future, and a guy who can suck an enemy’s will to fight out of them by giving them a happy drug. Certainly the Cullens and Bella couldn’t be that stupid, could they?

Oh wait, this is Twilight. Everyone is an idiot. So of course that’s going to happen.

The chapter ends with said human-eaters about to step out of the forest and meet the Cullens. We are finally meeting our villains three-quarters into the book. Altogether… it feels like filler. Like I said at the beginning, the natural progression of the story after the end of chapter 16 would be to cut to the baseball game. We’d get some light-hearted fun showing off the Cullens’ abilities using a Mundane Made Awesome variant of baseball, only for the human-eaters to interrupt the game and cause Mood Whiplash. But before that we got a token scene with the Blacks, then a token call from Jessica, then a token scene with Charlie. And then a token scene of Edward taking Bella to the game, ridding her of fears she should be having given the already-established human-eater threat. They are all intrusive and break up the flow of the story. And as a result, even the game itself is glossed over as if it were pointless, despite it being the title of the chapter. It’s almost as if Meyer had already written out most of the story, but realized that we never see or hear from the human cast in between chapter 12 and the end of the book with the human-eaters derailing Bella’s schedule, so she quickly shoe-horned these scenes with the Blacks, Jessica, and Charlie to remind us they’re still around right as the vampire hijinks begins in earnest.

But honestly, it may have been better if we didn’t hear from them at this point. Not just because they break up the flow of the story, but also because it would give their future scenes more of an impact. Imagine Charlie’s reaction to Edward and Bella being a couple if the first time he finds this out is when Bella is in the hospital after the James incident. Imagine if the first time Mike and Jessica hear from Bella after the dance on Saturday is when she comes home with a cast. Imagine Billy Black not learning Bella is seeing Edward until after contact with the Cullens almost got her killed. They would all have much stronger reasons to oppose Bella’s and Edward’s relationship and there would be some genuine stakes in the conflict for them to stay together. Bella would have to actually make some sacrifices and lose something in order to be with her true love, since staying with him would drive a wedge between her and her friends and father (not that Bella actually cares about any of them).