All week it’s been “waaah they’re cutting this in Yakuza” and “waaaah they’re cutting that in Yakuza”, and I’m getting sick of it.

I want to start this article off by saying that I am against developers cutting content in general, especially when the game is already 2 years old. Couple that with a $70 price tag and you have a recipe for disaster.

But then there’s Deacon. He’s following the Sega blog. He’s bitching and moaning about the cut content. “Fuck you Sega” he says. He even wrote a comprehensive article complaining about said missing content.

There’s one problem. Whilst the content is missing, he wont be missing it. Did he have any interest in pursing the hostesses in the first two games? No. Will he play Mah Jong more than once? No. Shogi? Not a chance. (It’s an awful game if you ask me.) How about managing the host clubs? Surely not.

But hold on a second. The hostesses ARE in the game, just not the clubs. Sega has not said how you will be meeting the girls and whether or not you can woo them, so right now we’re complaining about Shogi, Mah Jong and playing a work simulator.

Pre-orders are down 75%. That’s a good way to make a statement, yes. If you’re really this disgruntled about the cut content, don’t buy the game. Go ahead and complain. You’re a die-hard fan, and you absolutely won’t accept Sega butchering your baby, right?

Are you people really that angry that you’ll practically guarantee you’ll never see another western Yakuza release, despite there being two others out in Japan? Would a fan completely reject any prospects of future games to prove a point? For content that really isn’t that good?

Yakuza is like a steak, one you’ve really been craving. You ordered it and waited patiently. The table that ordered before you got one of the same that you ordered, and you watched them eat it. It looked delicious. Finally the waiter shows up, and brings you half a steak. He says “Here’s half a steak at full price. We won’t be able to bring you the other half, but if you wait a while longer we’ll bring you another one, although you’ll have to pay for the second.” Outraged, you could storm off without paying, and eat no steak. Or, you could eat your half a steak and enjoy it, be it a little overpriced, because you REALLY wanted that steak, and when the second steak comes you can enjoy that steak too, because you really do love steak.

If you don’t want Yakuza 4 by all means keep bitching and don’t buy Yakuza 3, but if I loved something enough to care about it’s content I would just be happy and enjoy the content I have. They didn’t have to keep releasing sequels to a game that only sold 40 thousand copies.

I’ve been trying to (once again) refinish Majora’s Mask, after watching an inspiring speed run the other day. Friday and Saturday, I played for a couple of hours and finally quit playing just outside of Woodfall temple. I resumed my save Saturday night and just started on the dungeon, when Kylie decided to turn off the Wii. To understand why this is a big deal, you need to know how Majora’s Mask’s save system works.

To save, you can either a) Save and return to the first day or b) Save on an owl statue.

When you save and return to the first day, you lose all your money and ammo, plus you always start back in Clock Town, which is not very practical when you’re in a dungeon.

If you save on an owl statue, you save and quit. Once you resume that save once, it’s gone, you have to save again.

When Kylie turned off the system I lost everything from the time I last went to the first day to the start of the Woodfall temple, which is everything leading up to the dungeon, or about 45 minutes of gameplay. That evening I went back and refinished that part in record time, and quit in the same spot outside Woodfall.

Today I went back and finished the temple, collecting all 15 missing fairies inside. I returned the Deku princess to her father and completed the butler’s challenge to get the pig mask. After leaving the place where the butler was I went to pause the game, and it froze.

Seeing as when I started playing I had resumed from an owl statue, I was taken back to when I last saved and returned to the first day, which was exactly where I started after Kylie turned off the system. 3 or so hours, lost.

Needless to say I threw the controller across the room and haven’t touched it since, only I really want to keep playing. We’ll see if I feel like finishing that dungeon again.

Since Deacon has been doing this, I thought I’d copy his idea and do one of my own.

The idea is this: Pick a few games that you’ve been meaning to try out or play more of, set a playtime goal for each one, and try and accomplish it before the deadline - a week. As someone with very limited time to play video games (cleaning, cooking, working, childcare and nursing consume most of my day) and someone who loves to make and check off list, this seemed like a fantastic idea to me.

Unlike my husband, however, I’m not going to set unrealistic for me hour long goals. Instead we’re aiming for 20 minute playtimes here, something to pick up and play between loads of laundry or while dinner’s cooking.

• That new Harvest Moon game on the Wii (0/20 minutes)
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on 360 (0/20 minutes)
• EVO Search for Eden on Wii Virtual Console (0/20 minutes)
• Mischeif Makers on Wii Virtual Console (0/20 minutes)
• Wii Fit Plus on the Wii - For working out purposes (0/60 minutes)

For a total of 140 minutes or 2.3 hours or two hours and 20 minutes.

Other goals for this week include trying to finish reading “Does this clutter make my butt look fat” even though it’s a terrible book. I’m almost done and therefore invested. Expect a review soon.

So Deacon introduced me to Torchlight, which is basically a simplified version of Diablo. I was reluctant at first to try out this indie title, but much to my surprise I quite enjoyed it.

So much, in fact, that today I played for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I said I needed to find something else to do, but…