Category Archives: PlayStation

Best of 2011, Games, GOTY, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2011 #5: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimImagine the plaudits a Bethesda game could boast if it made one that actually worked. Skyrim suffers from fundamental bugs that have plagued this new/old engine through Oblivion and two Fallout games so far, and yet it’s still managing to clock up incredible numbers of awards along the way. I can only assume that a Bethesda game with actual polish, once the critics recovered from the shock of it, would result in calls for all other developers to give up and go home for the year.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my progress so far in Skyrim, not so much as a narrative experience but a simple experience. Skyrim – the province, not the game – is gorgeous, and a nice change after the unending green of Oblivion and brown of Fallout 3. It’s amazingly atmospheric, from the mist around the mountain peaks to the auroras in the night sky, all of which just makes me wish it would be less bloody buggy.

This might seem like a low placement on the list next to the growing list of GOTY awards that it’s getting elsewhere, and that’s not even because of the questionable QA job. I just found myself seeing the dice rolls happening under the game’s skin more than I’d like and more than I do when playing games from BioWare, the other Western RPG developer that can seemingly do no wrong. I’m so used to seeing the bugs in a Bethesda game that I take it in my stride, but kludgy combat that got in the way of the exploration – the reason why I’m playing this, ultimately – got on my nerves. Next generation, as well as a genuinely new engine from Bethesda, how about letting me stealthily kill someone with a single arrow without having to trudge through 50-odd levels of guards running at me with arrows sticking out of their head?

Skyrim didn’t grab me like it did some, apparently, but I still enjoyed what it had to offer. Although I found other Bethesda games more immediately appealing – I say ‘immediately’ because I’m far from finished with it and may yet warm further to its unique charms – and desperately want some new tech behind these games, this is probably the best of Bethesda’s open-world RPGs. And that’s high praise.

Best of 2011, Games, GOTY, PlayStation

Best of 2011 #8: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

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In what was a quiet year for me, my ambivalence towards Uncharted 3 was one of the few things that got me on my soapbox. In that case, its inclusion in this list is either, like Gears 3, emblematic of the strength of the series, or possibly an indication that, outside of an obscenely packed tail end, the year wasn’t all that great for gaming. While there’s some truth in both answers, and I stand by my assertion that it’s an overrated game, there was enough to enjoy in Uncharted 3 to say that it’s mostly the former.

The fact that I found it disappointing is less a criticism of this game and more unmitigated praise for Uncharted 2, which still is peerless as a piece of cinematic action; if this had topped it, it would have been far more surprising. My complaints aside, it was just as much of an achievement for in-game characterisation and blending gameplay and cinema – even if the ratios were occasionally somewhat off, you had to admire it technically during sequences like the plane crash and its seamless transition to the similarly brave desert sequence – as it was a great action game… when it worked. It didn’t quite reach the astronomical highs of either of its predecessors, but it’s still fresh enough and done with such panache that it makes the lack of creativity in most action games all the more obvious.

What Uncharted 3 has left me with more than anything is anticipation for Naughty Dog’s recently announced new project, The Last of Us. I never much cared for ND’s games until this series, but talk of resources being diverted from Uncharted to the new game has me very, very excited.

Best of 2011, Games, GOTY, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

Best of 2011

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For what has been hailed as a vintage year for gaming, 2011 sure took a long time to get going. It was only a couple of months ago that I’d purchased a grand total of two games that didn’t come from the App Store, and then we had a big game a week for a while there, putting ridiculous strain on the funds of any gamer. There was recently a comment from Activision’s Eric Hirshberg on the entirely manufactured and unnecessary ‘rivalry’ between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 that I think the whole industry could take note of:

“We shouldn’t be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie.”

Not everyone has the money or dedication to spend hundreds in a single month to play everything, and it’ll suck the industry dry for every company that doesn’t have a billion-dollar marketing budget. So how about spreading the love a bit, even if it means making the spring into Christmas-lite?

As always, any game that was released somewhere in the world and was played by me for the first time in 2011 is eligible for the list, starting tomorrow, even though there are a few notables that are excluded on this basis. And for reference, here are my lists for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

Uncharted 3 is Way Overrated

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This is an industry with a media that seems built on hyperbole, and the embarrassment of riches that the last month has brought us has taken it to new heights. Arkham City was one example, even inspiring some hacks to further undermine review scores with hyperbolic trash like this, but I found it hard to get too riled up when the game turned out to actually be bloody amazing.

When it came to Uncharted 3, though, I just don’t see it. Perhaps the urge to come out against it is a reaction to the utter insanity provoked within the community by some very reasonable criticism of an apparent sacred cow, or maybe I’m right, thanks to having the unusual ability to look beyond the phenomenally pretty graphics and be put off by PS2-era design issues that have no business being in such a supposedly polished, modern game.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Opinions, eh? Yeah, fair enough, but I’d love someone to argue in favour of Uncharted’s pathetic enemy AI. I thought that old trick of all enemies suddenly gaining omniscience as to your position as soon as one of them is alerted had died out around the time of Metal Gear Solid, but it apparently stowed away on the trip from the 90s when Naughty Dog was dragging Indiana Jones into the present. Otherwise quite competent stealth sequences take a nosedive if you’re spotted, as laser sights converge on your hiding place after someone caught a glimpse of you 20 feet from your current hiding place. Dive under water and swim away, climbing up on the far side of a boat where no one can see you should help, right? Nope. They all know where you’ve gone.

But, hey, if the fight descends into carnage you can always just shoot them. Oh, wait. The gunplay is shit too thanks to inconsistent aiming and enemies who seem to shrug off headshots before dying from a bullet to the arm. The janky aiming has been acknowledged by Naughty Dog and will supposedly be changed to something more like Uncharted 2 – I’ve never been a fan of the shooting in these games, mind – in a patch, but how does it even make it into the final game? What wasn’t great has been broken.

One other complaint is one that’s more endemic to the game, though. Uncharted 3 is extremely linear, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing because I love a rollercoaster ride of a game as much as anyone, it does a terrible job of hiding the tracks along the way. It’s inconsistent in corralling you onto the right route, making what looks like a viable path – or evenslightly to the left or right of the one true path – result in a quick trip back to the last checkpoint. I’ve even had bits where an attempt to drop an entirely safe distance to the ground results in instant death, while scripted falls from much higher are taken in Drake’s stride. I’ve always treated Uncharted as a bit like the post-2003 Prince of Persia games, being great platformers once you get past the annoyance of substandard combat, but I felt like Uncharted 3 wasn’t nearly as solid in that respect as its predecessors.

My last complaint is a spoiler, so I’ll keep it brief and advise anyone who hasn’t finished the game to stop reading.

Besides the fact that fighting Ghost Rider is frustrating as hell when piled on top of the issues with the game’s combat, am I the only one who thought the game’s final act was Uncharted 2’s all over again? Swap the train ride for the admittedly awesome horseback chase; throw in another the lost city that’s somehow never been spotted from the air despite sitting in the middle of a perpetual sandstorm – an able substitute for Uncharted 2’s blizzards – full of annoying, apparently supernatural enemies; and then the escape by the skin of your teeth as it collapses around you with all of its treasures. Haven’t we been here before?

I didn’t hate Uncharted 3, as much as I might seem down on it; maybe it was inevitably going to disappoint after such staggering highs as Uncharted 2. I can’t escape the feeling that this was somewhat rushed, perhaps with Naughty Dog working on its new project, which, based on its existing pattern, will surely be Unkarted.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

LTTP: Heavy Rain

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Like many people who played it, I really enjoyed Fahrenheit, David Cage’s previous attempt at fulfilling his noble ambition of moving storytelling in games beyond the infantile nonsense that it defaults to. That is, I enjoyed it until it went completely off the rails.

That game’s most impressive achievement was the speed with which it tossed aside a brilliant opening, brimming with possibilities, and completely lost it. As far ahead of most games at the time as the cut-scene direction was, it didn’t take long for me to stop enjoying them because I had to spend their running time staring at two little on-screen prompts, and don’t even get me started on the plot machinations. Just baffling.

Heavy Rain

My disappointment with Fahrenheit was perhaps the main reason why I skipped Heavy Rain on its release. I’d heard all the promises before, and even today I put Cage, up there with Peter Molyneux on the scale of bullshit. I’m so used to being let down by their unfulfilled promises that I have a mental filter on everything they say, treating it as a joke that I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be even close to reality. It’s like the racist uncle who you just nod your head and smile at, because you stopped actually listening to them years ago.

Once I sat down to play it, though, I quickly realised how much better this is. Some odd pacing and a flawed interface aside – how about telling me what a given selection of stick motions are going to do instead of giving me one chance to make the ‘right’ choice? – it’s more mature than Fahrenheit and seems to be evidence that Cage has finally learned some restraint.

I’m still not convinced that this is the future of in-game storytelling, however. Putting aside the actual content of the plot, which is admittedly better than most games but still far below the standard of the best available in other media, Heavy Rain is still far more of an ‘interactive movie’ than it is a game. You can spend all the time in the world on brilliant animation, voice acting and careful choreography, but it does nothing for games when all of these awesome action sequences are QTEs. I’m not entirely averse to this mechanic – God knows I go on about Shenmue enough – but I’m not going to pretend that it does anything for gameplay design, which is the reason we’re playing games rather than watching movies.

Quibbles aside, Heavy Rain is well worth experiencing. It’s just that it reinforces my opinion that while trying to advance narrative in games is certainly admirable, copying the conventions of Hollywood too closely simply dilutes what makes games special. And for all its ambitions, my recent playthrough of the Half-Life 2 games suggests that maybe it’s barking up the wrong tree.

A decent game, but it would be a better movie. Pick one and stick to it.

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 2011 Conference Review

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Every year, at about this time, the gaming world comes together to show us why it’s going to deserve our money this year, and as happens a couple of times a decade it seems like we’re in a generation running on fumes. Indeed, one of the big three has shown its hand already, and such a bold statement of intent will surely mean appearances for the next Xbox and PlayStation in the next 12 months.

And for reference, here are my reviews of 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. This year I’m adding the stipulation that I won’t factor in multiplatform showings, since as impressive as Modern Warfare 3 and BioShock Infinite looked, that has no bearing on the relative fortunes of the consoles on which they were demonstrated.

So, in chronological order…

Microsoft

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Last year, I wasn’t happy with the first look at real-life Kinect stuff, but I gave it a pass because I was confident that Microsoft knows its market – the people who made the Xbox a success where other ventures had failed. Now, I’m not so sure. How many times during that conference was something that looked interesting unveiled, only for someone to come out and sacrifice their dignity by squatting, hopping, waving and – shudder – fist-bumping in front of thousands of people? Ryse (formerly Codename Kingdoms), which was last year positioned as something new from Crytek for the Xbox core audience has suddenly become an on-rails Kinect game. Fable? An on-rails Kinect game. Ditto Star Wars, Sesame Street… and I have to say I’m nervous after seeing the Master Chief floating through an exploding ship in a fashion not far removed from what a bunch of avatars were doing in Disneyland Adventures not long before.

I’m probably just being paranoid on that one. There’s no way that Microsoft would risk a valuable and popular franchise with that kind of nonsense, is there? Wait… what was that Fable game again?

Back in my territory, Gears 3 looks good, but it’s Gears 3. It’s not going to blow any minds after anyone who’s interested has already played the beta, if not the two previous games, and let’s not forget that this is the second E3 for a game that was originally going to have been long out by now. It’s not new.

So with Halo 4 only present in CG form and a remake of the first Halo hardly likely to win over anyone, I guess it falls to Forza 4, then. In fairness it did look gorgeous, with nary an embarrassing Kinect demo in sight, and after Gran Turismo dropped the ball there’s a big opportunity for Microsoft and Turn 10 to nab that ‘real driving simulator’ label. Not that it matters to me, though. As I’ve said many times in the past, I couldn’t care less about driving simulators and need my virtual driving heavily diluted with arcade action. Bring back Bizarre Creations and Project Gotham, I say.

D

Sony

Sony’s offering was better than Microsoft’s, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to sound excited. On the PS3 front, putting aside re-releases and Move games, I make it Uncharted 3, Ruin, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time and Starhawk. The former and latter are looking excellent and I loved their respective predecessors, but we already knew about them. The others? Meh. I’m sure they’ll be perfectly good but I can take them or leave them.

Coupled with Microsoft’s damp squib, it seriously seems like this generation is running on fumes. Whenever the PS4 and next Xbox turn up, we don’t appear to be in danger of having another PS2, still receiving significant games after the release of its successor.

But of course, the big deal was the first E3 for what was formerly known as the NGP: PlayStation Vita. Strange name, but it makes a break from the PSP and it’s of secondary importance to what is an impressive piece of hardware. The graphics it’s pushing look superb, and the cloud functionality brings the niche connectivity features between the PS3 and PSP into a realm where they might actually get used, as long as its utility isn’t going to be predicated on buying two versions of the same game.

It’s said, however, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and that’s exactly what Sony is doing with the Vita. Even as someone who likes the PSP and still buys games for it, and with the 3DS not so far setting the world alight, it’s an extremely powerful handheld that’s hosting pocket versions of big-console games, and it didn’t work last time. Looking at Uncharted: Golden Abyss, we’ve even got the banner franchise being farmed out to a minor first-party studio. I’d like to be proven wrong, and I’d like to be able to play it for more than three hours without charging, but I’m not expecting either prediction to go my way.

Based purely on the fact that Sony’s conference wasn’t entirely focused on utter shite, it gets bumped up two grades. Then gets one taken away for not featuring The Last Guardian.

C

Nintendo

If big hopes were on Nintendo with the knowledge that it was to unveil new hardware, they were only enhanced by the other platform holders’ failure. And like many people, I came away disappointed here as well.

First, the other stuff, though. It generally takes a lot for Nintendo to get me excited because I’m a bit bored of another Mario Kart, another 2D Mario, and so on. And don’t get me started on bloody Smash Bros. I’m not yet burned out on Star Fox and I’ll always love Zelda – especially when I’m getting a free one for my under-utilised DSi – so I’ll give them those two.

To be honest, I’m still digesting the Wii U and wondering what to think. I’m generally positive, which may surprise some, even if some subsequent revelations have dampened its gloss somewhat, but we’re going on the press conference, and that was disappointing. I don’t know anyone who didn’t leave with questions, including whether or not it was even a standalone console. It was a failure of communication and, to be honest, the aforementioned disclosures have left me with questions over how much of the omitted information was deliberate. Time will have to tell because it’s certainly not coming this year, but it’ll be nice to have the option of playing Nintendo games alongside half-decent third-party offerings. Until the new Xbox also comes out in late 2012 and restores the console power status quo, of course.

Sadly, the announcement that I’m most looking forward to trading for my hard-earned currency is the Zelda symphony CD. That makes it extremely underwhelming, but that’s one more new announcement that I’m excited about than the other two, so Nintendo comes out on top by default.

C+

This has to be the most disappointing E3 in years. The three conferences were average at absolute best and I struggle to think of one new announcement that interests me. Also, gone seems to be the pleasure in finding obscure new announcements hidden away in the nooks of the gaming news sites, because there aren’t any – maybe we’re finally seeing the impact of every studio that doesn’t make nothing but million-sellers closing down. Running on fumes doesn’t even begin to describe this generation from the looks of things.