INiS, Threat or Menace?

[chronovore]

Follow-up to my earlier topic on LiPS:
http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=30182.0

INiS continues to threaten the fabric of time-space continuity in music genre games. Their latest effort is Karaoke, a good idea muddled by mediocre execution. Admittedly, it's not nearly as horrendous as their LiPS game, but I am still surprised that MS is still giving INiS a free pass to dance past the TCRs whenever they want.

It's F2P if you just want to sing from the random 5 free songs they have, which change regularly. It was pretty fun, so I bought a pass, and have been encountering the typical INiS half-assery.

Silly bugs, let me count them:

• Needless Warnings: Just as with LiPS, the game has TWO SAVE DATA FILES; it tells you this every time the player starts the game, just before the Storage Selection dialog shows. Every time. Here's an idea: SEARCH FOR THE FILES. SEE IF THEY'RE THERE. If they're found, don't present the warning dialog AND don't present the Storage Selection dialog.
• Needed Warnings Not Present: It's a singing game; the first time a player starts the game, it warns them to connect a microphone. After that, it doesn't warn you again, ever, if a mic isn't connected. Insipid.
• Mysterious Game Save Conditions: It still does LiPS' "Connecting... Saving" thing, where it tries to connect to servers and then saves data, which is where so much of LiPS data-eating errors occurred. It seems to be on faster servers now, and I've yet to see the servers be unavailable, which was frequently the case with LiPS, but I'm still wary of any game which decides it needs to save something, ANYTHING when I'm back out from the Main Menu back to the Start Menu. What could possibly have changed? It's not like I was in the Options Menu, and it saves after each song has been completed. BAD MENU FLOW.
• Loading Errors and Graceless Fail States: The game allows players to set a song to be a Favorite; this sub-list of the full set of available tracks can be selected at any time, and you can Sing Now or Add to Queue directly from it. Unfortunately, it doesn't check to see if the song is available when added to the queue, and instead is stuck in an ENDLESS loading loop. A number of songs I favorited are no longer in the Library, but they remain in my Favorites. BUG.
• Mistaken Error Messages: In the above case, it will eventually show "KARAOKE SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE. TRY AGAIN LATER." It's available, though; it's just the selected song which isn't. Why not just show "loading error" or "song not available," and move on to the next song in the queue? The game works on a time pass, and any amount of time where the game implies it is not currently playable is money people will want back.
• Kinect "Pose" Gameplay is poorly implemented. Nothing like trying to sing a song and then trying to match a pose, only to have the game decide that you're not really close enough to the pose for it to register. So players basically are trying to contort and re-position themselves while trying to sing at the same time... not exactly great situation for a party game. In fairness, MS probably insisted on implementing Kinect functionality, and INiS studio, like any Japanese dev, is probably the size of a utility closet, and the Kinect "testing area" is in a Port-a-Potty. In a neighboring prefecture.

Is anyone else playing this game, or am I the only one stupid enough to play an INiS game?

[Himu]

Neither. They are our savior.

OUENDAN

[Rufus]

Filipinos looove them some Karaoke.

[Joe Molotov]

Neither. They are our savior.

OUENDAN

Until they make Ouendan 3, they're on my shitlist.

[pilonv1]

nobody outside of japan gives a fuck about karaoke

My gf's parents and friends love it. I was subjected to the soon to be father in law screeching some local tune recently.

Of course they'd never use an Xbox for it, they have one of those fancy dedicated karaoke machines.

[chronovore]

Yeah, Ouendan is a great game. Patel showed me some later levels, and I realized I'd probably never clear them. 

But they've shown themselves to be less than competent ever since then. I picture those external dev producers at MS sitting around and figuring out new things to add which iNiS will never understand why they need to add it, then adding it the wrong way.

Oscar, I had already guessed that I'm alone in Japan, but I'd not thought that karaoke would be utterly dead outside of Japan. I'm going to guess that there was some kind of ROI research before this project was undertaken, but I suppose that it's just as possible that this is a contractual obligation project.

Played it again today, figured out a few more common courtesy UI things which should be added. The lead UI artist is an acquaintance, but I suspect the actual work lays with the UI designer.

[Don Flamenco]

ouendan was like 10 years ago and i had to import it.  what have they done for me lately

[Bebpo]

Gitaroo-man PSP port


Wait, that was like a year 1 psp game .


I like Inis a lot, and don't think they've lost their talent.  More that they got stuck in a cycle to make money to survive instead of fun music games they wanted to make and I feel sad for them  :'(

[Positive Touch]

BRING BACK COIL AND 326

[chronovore]

Positive Touch, where is your avatar pic from? It looks JUST LIKE a guy I worked with last year.

[Rufus]

He's a shop owner from Deadly Premonition.

[chronovore]

I thought I'd try to knock out the 20-song-long-playlist this morning, was well into it, when INiS' first server problems have reared. I've had it tell me the karaoke service is down 4 times today, kicking me back to the Start Menu, to re-re-re-read the warning that the game uses two save data files, before being allowed to select them. The playlist I made was still waiting each time, it allowed me to continue the playlist, but I suspect not the progress toward 20 songs at a run.

Anyway, yeah, INiS can blow me.

[Positive Touch]

Positive Touch, where is your avatar pic from? It looks JUST LIKE a guy I worked with last year.

hahaha how can someone like that exist in real life

[chronovore]

I posted it to his Facebook wall, and everyone was stunned at how similar it is, and are now goading him into making it his profile pic.

Then again, I look more or less like my Bore avatar: pale, red goatee, no chin, and a big mouth -- usually in a grey or black hoodie; it is just one frame out of a Penny-Arcade, but Bebpo even asked if I'd commissioned it. So this kind of thing does happen.