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Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – highlights from the year

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I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the past twelve months in terms of new entertainment releases. Let’s not forget that 2017 delivered the sequel to my favourite JRPG with Persona 5, gave me a new Nier game, brought me new material from The Upbeats, Major Lazer and Shobaleader One… heck, we even got a decent Sonic game in Mania. With all of this in mind I kind of expected the shortlist titled “Qazi’s Disposable 2018” to provide evidence of a “filler” year – one with plenty of content to enjoy but nothing on the same scale as 2017’s output. This is why I was so pleasantly surprised with the things that I’ve been enjoying in 2018.

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – music

Qazi's Disposable 2018
If the Qazi’s Disposable 2018 shortlist was in physical form it would be full of hasty scribbles and Tipp-Ex as new things regularly edged into old lists, and nowhere was this more apparent than when I was checking out new music. There are a few albums I simply couldn’t cover on this site because I was spending too much time listening to things and not enough time talking about them, but notables outside of the website include The Pack EP by the Upbeats/Truth, Deep News by Halogenix, Collapse EP by Aphex Twin and where’s the drop? by deadmau5. Whether you like layered melodies, big beats or atmospheric wobbles, there was a lot to enjoy – however, I think the best thing I ended up reviewing was No Tourists. It marked a maturing of The Prodigy and showed that they were willing to embrace their older electronic roots when Fat of the Land came so close to discarding them. Elsewhere, The Pack EP was probably the best thing that missed a review: four compact but punchy experiences that all have their own identity and are all worth listening to.

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – gaming

Qazi's Disposable 2018
As mentioned in my intro, I didn’t think there would be a whole lot of noteworthy titles in the gaming segment when shortlisting names for Qazi’s Disposable 2018. I couldn’t be more wrong. Dragonball FighterZ started the year with a bang, boasting some of the prettiest visuals of any game I played this year and maintaining an enjoyable balance of accessibility and depth. Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition finally finished the game’s transformation from a rushed-out mess to a fully-formed fighter. PSVR continued to remind people that the right combination of game and hardware can create an experience as intoxicating as Tetris Effect or the Wipeout Omega Collection update. Oh, and Celeste propelled itself from “that thing I bought with spare PSN change” to the top of my game of the year list because the difficulty is pitched so well and it’s wrapped up in some great presentation. (In hindsight, however, I think it runs the risk of beating you over the head with its theming… and although the writing gets praised for acknowledging a minority, there are a lot of smaller narrative elements that speak to other audiences. I’d argue that the broader themes of crushing self-doubt and glimmers of self-belief – things that everyone can relate to – are every bit as valid as the examination of anxiety and the exploration of mental health.)

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – miscellany

Qazi's Disposable 2018
As for other stuff? I ended up catching up with a slowly building backlog of Blu-Rays, returned to some old favourites via Amazon Prime and the like… and I sadly had no time to watch Die Hard on Christmas Eve (however, during the holiday I somehow ended up randomly discovering old episodes of Batman: The Animated Series on Amazon Prime, which was as entertaining as it sounds.) A special mention to Rampage – the Dwayne Johnson film based on the Midway arcade game – I ended up renting this digitally before it came out on Blu-Ray, and it’s the perfect celebration of Hollywood excess and dumb videogame setups.

Tips for 2019

Qazi's Disposable 2018
So what have we got to look forward to? The third season of The Grand Tour will be released, so hopefully that will maintain the stronger format of the second series… In music, Major Lazer will release the Essentials collection in physical form (and – despite there being no indication of it – I’ll personally be crossing my fingers for The Prodigy to announce “No Tourists: The Remixes” or something similar…) With regards to gaming, Sekiro will be released and everyone will pigeonhole it into pigeonholes instead of praising the game for its own ideas, we’ll finally find out what Babylon’s Fall is about (because they’ll reveal more information and it won’t just vanish into obscurity, right? Right?) Oh and maybe I’ll follow up my Persona 1 rambling with a look at P2: Innocent Sin. Don’t hold me to that though.

Thanks to anyone who’s taken the time to read our content during 2018 – leave a comment if you’d like to let us know what your highlights of 2018 were, or if there’s anything you’re looking forward to next year.

Party Match modes bring team play to Dragonball FighterZ

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Street Fighter X Tekken was a weird game. You could tell that some effort was put into the roster and the desire to combine Street Fighter’s accessibility with Tekken’s aerial combo action, but you always felt like you’d rather be playing whatever the latest version of Street Fighter IV was. However, one mode that I thought was a great addition to the modern fighter experience was Pair Play. A mode built to take advantage of SFxT’s team-based format, this replaced the traditional format of one player pitting their two-character team against another, and instead created a four-player scenario where each player controlled one character in a 2v2 setup. In combining the competitive nature of fighting games with the co-operative strategy building of team play, it was one of the most refreshing online fighter experiences in a while, and if you were with a group of chatty and friendly players it was always entertaining to hear everybody bicker at one another, as they (occasionally) complimented the successful combos and (more frequently) shouted at each other for ruining a team gameplan that was being made up on the fly. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

Party Match modes in DB FighterZ – the new Pair Play

Party Match modes

Let’s slow down for a moment, though – why am I reminiscing over Street Fighter X Tekken in an article about Dragonball FighterZ? Well, earlier this week a new patch came out for the game, updating it to version 1.04. It’s quite a substantial update, adding extra menus and options to make the navigation a little better, as well as improving overall game performance. However, the most significant bullet-point – at least, as far as I was concerned – was the note “Added Party Match”. Unlike the traditional versus mode where two players each have a team of three characters, the Party Match modes (regular party match and ring party match) allow six players to form two teams of three, with each player selecting a single character to use in that team.

Party Match modes in DB FighterZ – how it works

Party Match modes

When a match begins, the active players fight one another whilst other team members can send chat messages, encouraging their teammate or advising them to tag out. The active player then tags out using the shoulder buttons as usual, and then control will be handed over to the player who was tagged in. This means that matches are less about mastering three characters and pitting your skills against a lone opponent, and more about playing to your strengths and finding likeminded team members who you can work together with. So now instead of trying to figure out Captain Ginyu, Nappa and one of the Buus (my current team layout of choice; it’s probably an awful combination but I love the movesets), I can just start one of the Party Match modes, pick Captain Ginyu and focus on what he does best – barging into people and summoning the Ginyu Force at inappropriate times.

Party Match modes in DB FighterZ – get connected

Party Match modes

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m pretty happy to be playing a fighter that has online team play again, and FighterZ is probably going to be more fun than Street Fighter X Tekken in the long-term. The only downside to the Party Match modes is that connectivity in Dragonball FighterZ isn’t always great when you’re trying to fight with other players, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that getting six players to fight together without online issues could be a bit much to ask. Sure, I’ve been successful in public games, but I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to try Ring Party Match with people on my friends list. However, if you don’t mind rolling the dice with your connection, the Party Match modes are an entertaining addition to Dragonball FighterZ.

Dragonball FighterZ is available now for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Dragonball FighterZ full game impressions

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It’s easy to feel lost when you first start Dragonball FighterZ. No, not lost in the numerous gameplay systems that are introduced in the tutorial, or the cast of characters that are unknown to anyone who doesn’t follow the anime (although either of those things can still happen…) In the absence of a traditional menu, one can literally feel lost in the map that you walk around in order to get to certain kiosks that allow for training, online matches, rankings and the like. When I originally played the beta I assumed that it was just a decision made to streamline the whole beta experience, and that this map would be a hub that you would first access through a traditional main menu in the full game – instead, it’s one of the first things you see after setting up your profile and selecting a server to join. It’s a little weird at first, but it’s nothing to dwell on – with the press of a button you can quickly pull up a list of locations to warp to, which may as well serve as your traditional menu, and the gameplay outside of the lobby makes you forget about the initial confusion soon enough.

Dragonball FighterZ – fully featured

Once you know your way around the map, you can appreciate the fact that Dragonball FighterZ is more of a “complete” launch than something like Street Fighter V. Yes, you need to disconnect and set up an offline lobby every time you want to do single-player stuff (or risk using them in online lobbies), and there’s a risk of lost connections, and your friends might be scattered across different lobbies (the game can automatically load you into a lobby with spaces, although if it’s not the one your friends are in you need to talk to Gate Reception at the entrance and switch)…but there’s still more to keep you occupied on day one than there was during the launch of Capcom’s game. Story and Arcade modes are here, there’s a shop where you can buy DLC or open loot boxes for cosmetic items, you can set up private matches with friends using the “Ring Match” feature… and of course you can do training, play matches locally or try your luck against strangers online. Even if you’re starting the game up and not knowing what to do first, Dragonball FighterZ offers quests that work like the excellent daily challenges introduced in SFV’s September update – for instance, the quests I had at launch asked me to try tutorials, combo challenges and ranked matches. It’s nothing new, but it’s a great way to keep players coming back and hopefully we’ll continue to see more varied challenges in the future.

Dragonball FighterZ – what’s the story?

I know that covering the single-player campaign in a 1v1 fighting game is like talking about the graphics in a rhythm-action game, but with the possibility of casual players feeling intimidated by human opposition (and the state of Street Fighter V’s story mode at launch) it deserves a mention. The story mode of Dragonball FighterZ consists of numerous “arcs” that task the player with moving around a map, fighting battles, recruiting allies and ultimately facing a boss encounter for the map. As the player continues to recruit more allies, they can add them into their team of three fighters, and after each battle you can change your team if some of your current fighters look like they need to recover. If anyone played Street Fighter EX3, they might recognise this format from the partner selection of the tag battles in EX3’s Original mode (maybe it exists in other ArcSys fighters that I haven’t played but I can’t be sure.) While the team mechanic reminds me of EX3, the map movement – where you have a limited number of “moves” and shift between connected nodes – feels more like something out of NES curio Godzilla: Monster of Monsters, and I never thought I’d be subconsciously making that comparison when playing a videogame from 2018.

Some nodes have nothing happening on them, others trigger battles against predetermined enemy individuals or teams, and there are allies on the map that you can rescue and recruit. In addition to the map movement, team management and character levelling, you can also obtain “skills” that behave like gems in Street Fighter X Tekken (another comparison I wasn’t expecting to make today) – you can use them raise attack, raise defence, obtain health regen and more. In short, there’s a lot to enjoy in the story mode, and so if you can’t keep up with the online warriors, it’s a nice way of keeping yourself occupied. Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of the anime there are enough cutscenes between battles to keep you engaged, and the initial tutorial battles help ease you into the game if you don’t play a lot of fighters.

Dragonball FighterZ – demanding but fun

I know that I covered the general gameplay feel in my beta impressions, but it’s worth reiterating – the actual matches in Dragonball FighterZ feel immediately satisfying and fun in a way that hasn’t been captured since Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. The shared gameplay options available (normal attack chains, Dragon Rush moves that are like Persona’s All-Out Attacks, Ki Blasts that act as ranged projectiles, Vanish teleports that use a meter to escape a combo) mean that even before you’ve explored the unique special moves of a character you can enjoy the abilities that are more common amongst the roster. Maybe you want to rush in with your auto-combo but someone’s keeping you away with Ki Blasts, so you air-dash to close the distance but they activate a super, but you use *your* super meter to vanish… and on it goes. The worst matches are the ones where your opponent just won’t get off you and you’ve wasted all of your meter on escaping combos; the best matches are the ones where you’re both evenly matched, keeping up with the pace and (hopefully) clawing back an overall life lead. Dragonball FighterZ is definitely harder to wrap your head around than Street Fighter because there’s so much going on and lots of gameplay mechanics that are shared between characters, but these systems open up a lot of possibilities for every player.

I can’t promise that there won’t be moments where you find yourself unable to keep up with whatever an opponent’s doing, but there’s a lot of depth to enjoy for those players who want to invest time in learning the systems… at the same time, if you’re not after ranking glory and just want to have fun with friends, it’s definitely a more flashy and dynamic experience than certain other fighting games. Nobody is ever going to criticise a game like this for being “too busy”, and the depth is there for those who want it; the more casual players can still enjoy it at their own pace, and if you hook up with likeminded players you’ll have a lot of fun. The only other hurdle for people getting into matches has been the handful of connectivity issues – it’s nothing dissimilar to the issues seen during the beta, but they don’t happen often enough to ruin the experience for players. My only hope now is that the player base grows and continues to accommodate both the experts and the newer players; confusing lobby maps and online killers aside, Dragonball FighterZ is the most entertaining game out of the “new generation” of fighters that I’ve played, and it would be a shame to see people bounce off it as a result of a shrinking playerbase that only caters for the hardcore elite. And even if I do drop it when 3rd Strike comes back, the fun matches would have made it worthwhile.

Dragonball FighterZ is available now for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Our first impressions of the Dragonball FighterZ beta

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I wasn’t originally planning on playing the Dragonball FighterZ beta this soon. The rollout plan allowed PSN users with a digital preorder to begin playing on January 13th, with the beta opening up to all users the next day. That being said, I wasn’t planning on drowning in fighting games in January either. With Dissidia NT and Dragonball FighterZ releasing so close to one another, I ultimately decided that Dissidia’s strategic team battling might be something I bounce off when the full game’s available for everybody, so for now I’ll be checking out the more accessible gameplay of DB FighterZ. Pre-order placed, I downloaded the client and began play.

Your introduction to the Dragonball FighterZ beta

Dragonball FighterZ beta

Upon starting the Dragonball FighterZ beta you’re immediately placed in the lobby if the game automatically finds one with spaces – if not, you’re taken to a menu where you select your region and are given a list of lobbies to choose from. The lobby itself has players represented as 3D avatars of Dragonball characters, and from here you can change your avatar, select the characters in your team, view a list of players in the lobby, and visit special characters in the lobby who can show you news, rankings and replays. You can also use a “Z Stamp” to submit one of several preset chat messages (think Everybody’s Golf) and – when you’re done with the pleasantries – head to the World Match area to begin a fight. Here, you can check your team again before entering a casual or ranked battle, whilst match settings allow you to bias searches in favour of certain connection qualities, opponent skill or matches won.

After picking the game type and choosing your saved team, matchmaking begins. Matches themselves are reminiscent of Marvel vs Capcom and recent ArcSys games – you have your 3v3 team setups, Ultimax-style auto combos (executed by repeating a neutral normal attack), big flashy supers pulled off with a motion and buttons, and cinematic camera moments that are pure anime in their styling and reminiscent of the camera tricks used in modern Guilty Gear. Like Marvel, you have to ensure that all characters on a team are knocked out to secure a win, and it can be tricky to regain momentum if your opponent has settled into a groove and is pummeling each of your fighters with ease. Most characters have sufficient specials or enders that help to keep characters airborne and allow for follow-ups, and so it’s easy to use the special moves in conjunction with auto combos and supers for satisfying results.

Training and online play in the Dragonball FighterZ beta

Dragonball FighterZ beta

If you’re not keen on immediately getting in amongst the online masses, there’s also an area in the lobby where you can go through an extensive tutorial. It starts with the basics of movements, normal attacks, chains of attacks, and special moves. It goes on to cover things like guard breaks, autocombos, super combos and assists, and there’s a lot to help out new players. My only criticism is that the guide about the seven dragon balls was misleading – you gain dragon balls during matches and when you have seven you can summon Shenron for a selection of powerful perks. However, whilst it mentions that you receive dragon balls “based on the number of consecutive hits you land” (which I interpreted as a requirement to land increasingly long combos), I didn’t immediately realise that the autocombo will grant the player a random missing ball if you can’t land those consecutive hits with conventional combos. Also, it mentions that after obtaining all seven balls you must then “land the (square) version super combo” – but it isn’t immediately clear about the fact that you also need to have the full seven meters (easily obtained by charging to maximum power), or that what it’s actually looking for is an autocombo with square after gaining the meter (rather than my embarrassing attempts to do super motions with the square attack as a command), which will allow you to meet the tutorial conditions.

As for online matches… my own performance so far has been riddled with fun back-and forths, the aforementioned demolition moments where an opponent finds their rhythm and destroys my team, and at least one satisfying match intro where, after being pummelled with fullscreen projectile spam, I double-jumped into an air-dash and ate an assist but was able to get in before the projectiles could continue. (And yes, I went on to take the match.) You really have to make the most of your movement options and be prepared for any surprises, and recovery windows mean that sometimes it’s worth trying to squeak out supers when it feels like the attacks won’t stop coming. Most importantly, it’s easy to do damaging combos if you catch your opponent unawares, and so it rarely feels like a match is over before it has even begun.

The Dragonball FighterZ beta – a promising start?

Dragonball FighterZ beta

Out of all of the games that have formed this “new wave” of fighters – this, SFV, MvC Infinite, Rising Thunder, Fighting EX Layer, Dissidia – it’s the Dragonball FighterZ beta that feels the most immediately rewarding. Rising Thunder is very accessible but still looks a little bit too much like a proof-of-concept, Marvel and Dissidia are quite polished but also slightly intimidating, and Fighting EX Layer perhaps needed to reveal more in its beta to be more convincing immediately. The Dragonball FighterZ beta seems to satisfy in terms of delivering a polished beta experience, some accessible but tactical fighting action and a decent variety of characters and movesets. The only concern I have is whether or not the netcode will be good enough – there have been a few lag pauses and lost connections as I’ve been trying the Dragonball FighterZ beta, although that might simply be because it’s a beta. Before trying the beta, this was perhaps the most exciting fighter I had seen since Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, and now that I’ve played the beta I feel like there will be enough depth to keep me busy for months. If the connection issues in the beta are ironed out and the netcode has minimal lag issues, this could be a contender.

Dragonball FighterZ is out on January 26th for PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC. You can find the game’s official page at the Bandai Namco website

My highlights from the E3 2017 conferences

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As I write this, the last of the E3 2017 conferences has come to a close and – if you are to believe more cynical types – games journalists everywhere are scrambling to draft their hot takes, expand their wordcounts and plug whatever rubbish they were talked into endorsing via promises of promotional swag. Naturally the likes of Disposable Media are in a different scenario, since we’re a general entertainment website that features content from people who just talk about the things they like to talk about, but it would be remiss not to give the show some coverage. Despite the extent of my eighth-gen hardware being limited to a PS4, Vita and half-decent PC, I made time for each of the main shows – happily, it was worth it, as pretty much everyone presenting the E3 2017 conferences had games worth talking about.

E3 2017 conferences: new hardware and anime “FighterZ”

Let’s focus on the big three for now; there were other E3 2017 conferences but I’d like to cover their games individually as more news surfaces. Microsoft was the first to show their hand in perhaps the most conveniently timed show for people in the BST zone. As expected, they opened the show with news of the Xbox One X and proceeded to show off incredibly pretty Forza Motorsport 7 footage; it’s an obvious candidate for showcasing the graphical fidelity of new hardware, and the large fanbase will ensure it enjoys success on the system. Amongst the more predictable reveals – a new Assassin’s Creed, the aforementioned Forza segment – was news that the terribly-named PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was coming to Xbox, and no annual conference would be complete without the obligatory Minecraft segment. More promising trailers included Dragonball FighterZ (a 1v1 fighter based on an anime I barely follow, but the presentation and gameplay look superb), a new Life Is Strange game and the gorgeous Anthem, so there was a lot to get excited about. (Of course, a number of the games shown off will be multiformat, so it was worth tuning in to the show even if you don’t own an Xbox One.)

E3 2017 conferences: PSVR support and updated classics

Sony’s was the second of the E3 2017 conferences and, as is tradition, it went live during the small hours for UK gamers. Catching up with the conference revealed a mixture of familiar names (Days Gone, God of War), bizarre trailers (FFXV: Monster of the Deep) and some more daring ventures – a number of PSVR titles were there to reassure people that Sony weren’t about to let the headset follow the Vita into obscurity, and a PSVR update to Skyrim could be a huge hit depending on controller requirements and performance on various PS4 models. Another bold gamble came in the form of a new Monster Hunter – it seemed somewhat more simple and bombastic than the handheld titles, and observers have accused it of being a dumbing-down, but I’m curious to see if the new direction pays off. (On a personal note, I was happy to see a new FFXII: TZA trailer after my recent revisiting of the original, and news that Undertale is coming to PS4 may finally prompt me to try out the game.)

E3 2017 conferences: working titles and series extensions

The last of the E3 2017 conferences I watched was Nintendo’s, and whilst Microsoft was busy showing off a new hardware platform, the Kyoto giant was tasked with building the library of the console it released this March. Happily, they’re never shy of falling back on familiar names, and fans welcomed news of more Mario, more Zelda, and more Metroid. As a fan of the side-scrolling platformers I was particularly fond of the trailers for the currently-unnamed Yoshi and Kirby games (unless they really will be called “Yoshi” and “Kirby” as per the trailer outros.) However, with so much to play on my existing gaming hardware I’m still in no hurry to pick up a Switch.

In short, it’s a good time to be a fan of games. Everyone had plenty of trailers to show (and the ratio of trailers to preamble was most welcome) and I know I have a few more upcoming games on my radar now. As always, if you have any thoughts on the E3 2017 conferences that you’d like to share, leave a comment below.

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