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Game Director Faceoff: Hideki Kamiya vs Shinji MIkami

Zaku

Member
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Alright GAF, simple thread with a simple premise. Which game director do you feel is better and why do you feel that way?

Relevant Info

Hideki Kamiya has directed Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta, and most recently, The Wonderful 101.

Shinji Mikami has directed Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, the Resident Evil remake for Gamecube, P.N.0.3, Resident Evil 4, Godhand, Vanquish and most recently The Evil Within.

Both had a long, storied history at Capcom before transferring to Clover, which eventually became Seeds and finally Platinum Games, where Hideki Kamiya remains to this day and where Shinji Mikami directed Vanquish before leaving to found Tango Gameworks to make The Evil Within.

So cast your votes, GAF. The winner (in a week or whenever this thread finally dies) will go on to face another game director (and so on) until we finally figure out the best game director overall.

Edit: Due to how close this has been I'm going to clarify terms, because this vote could easily be rigged if I choose the cut-off time. For the purposes of this thread, the thread dying entails it going a full 24 hours without a post made by anyone except me, and should the thread lumber on for the full week, the cut-off for votes will be at exactly 7:43 AM.
 

Zaku

Member
Whoops. Missed putting it in his list.

And by produced, I was using the term as in "producing a work", not as in "producer", though I should probably change that for clarification.
 

impact

Banned
Mikami definitely. Kamiya making Okami and TW101 kind of soured me on him, and how can I not choose the guy that brought us REmake and Vanquish, two of the best games ever made.

Actually Mikami is responsible for every single good Resident Evil game. Mikami FREE.
 
I've enjoyed Kamiya's games a whole lot more, so I'm gonna go with him. Plus, that track record is pretty much flawless. Okami is GOAT material.

He's the grand master of Twitter burns as well.
 
At least Kamiya's quality is consistently good. Mikami's shit the bed before.

True, but I'd argue that Mikami has reached higher highs too. Although I do dearly love Okami, so not really sure where I stand. Both are great; among the best directors working today.

I'd vote Mikami because his games appeal to me a little more, but Kamiya has an amazing resume too.
 

Korigama

Member
uh what

It's not like he's his dad or something
I think they're referring to Kamiya having been Mikami's protege. During his interview with Iwata, Kamiya brought up the negativity generated within Capcom following the mistakes made with the original plans for RE2, yet noted that Mikami continued to believe in him rather than choose another director to restart the project.
Maybe it'd help if you also listed metacritic and sales data for each title they were responsible for?
Pretty sure no one cares about the Metacritic scores for anything either of these two have made. Sales data wouldn't exactly be particularly useful in gauging the quality of their work, either.
 
Who directed MGSR? I'm gonna have to go with mikami, his games are more appealing to me, even though resident evil and DMC were incredible.
 

elhav

Member
Both are just as good imo. Why?
Because they both made some of my favourite games, and they have a similar approach to game design etc.

But Kamiya gets and extra +1 from me because he has directed Okami, but I am not sure how much Mikami was involved with it as well.

Anyways they are both the real deal.
 
Almost every game Kamiya has made is probably somewhere in my top 15. I can't say the same for Mikami, so I'll go with that. This is a bit of a silly thread though, seeing as Mikami coached Kamiya to begin with and gave him a leg to stand on.

God Hand is really fucking good, also.
 

ramparter

Banned
I've finished none of these games, I bought RE Remake and RE4 back on GC, I've played a lot of RE4 but I think the series should focus on RE2 style. Anyway, I'm more interested in Kamiya's work right now, will buy Bayonetta 1&2 sometime soon.

PS: But I have much respect for both since they have a history of quality games.
 

Ramza

Banned
31849-why-dont-we-have-both-gif-meme-IfmC.gif


Seriously, I can't choose. They're both too amazing in my eyes. I'd love to see a new collab project between them.
 

Phear

Member
Kamiya is god tier. Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Bayonetta. Says all. Plus DMC. Didn't play W101 yet, but will do.
 

Hag

Member
Mikami just because he's Kamiya teacher/master/protege whatever you want to call.

He was the one that keep pushing Kamiya to direct RE2 (You can see this info on kamiya twitter or interviews)
 
Kamiya has a consistent quality in his games, which is lower than Mikami's peaks.

I want to say Mikami because God Hand, but Kamiya created DMC, so it's hard for me to pick one. I guess it depends on which era of Mikami this comparison is being made.
 
This is too hard both guys have made fantastic titles that are critically acclaimed and appeal to a wide demographic of people. I love both too much, even though both have some titles I don't necessarily care for. However the ones I do like are instant classics for all of time. I will not chose.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Man, this is such a hard one for me. On one hand, RE4 is one of my favorite games of all time so Mikami gets huge props there, along with creating RE1 to kickstart that whole franchise. Dino Crisis and Godhand are just the cherry on top of that. PN03...welp. Vanquish honestly didn't do much for me, which surprised me. I kinda wanna revist it some time in the future to see if it ends up clicking. TEW, despite its clear faults, I really enjoyed.

Kamiya with DMC1 was another great start to a franchise, and Bayonetta just took that whole genre to another stratosphere. VJ is amazing, and W101 is a great content loaded action game that is a totally unique spin on combat. I fucking LOVE these types of games and I can't imagine what state the genre actually would be in if the world never got DMC1. RE2 is actually my favorite of the classic RE games, too. Still, I don't think his record is spotless as I couldn't get down with Okami at all and consider it a dud. I don't like any singular game Kamiya made as much as RE4, but they're no slouch and many of them rank very highly for me anyway.

I guess I'd go with Kamiya, kicking and screaming.
 
Mikami's work has probably had more impact on the industry as a whole and also Capcom and especially Kamiya. Kamiya is no slouch either though and I'd argue that his best games are better than Mikami's but considering both of them have such wildly different portfolios, it really depends on the criteria you set for what counts as "superior".

Then why do you want Vanquish 2 on Wii U exclusively? So transparent lmao

Well, it's not like he's trying to hide it :lol
 
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