Category Archives: PlayStation

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 2009 Conference Review

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Hard to believe that it’s been the best part of a year since Final Fantasy XIII went multiplatform and Nintendo stunned the world by reaching new levels of mediocrity, but E3 has been restored to its former glory and with it came three conferences from the console manufacturers infused with announcements and yes, bitter tears. Same format as 2007 and 2008, in chronological order:

The first was Microsoft, which started us off with a strong showing. We knew some of what was going to be there, but there were no complete leaks like last year’s NXE unveiling, and most of what we knew was in name only. It’s fairly normal at this point to go into E3 without much knowledge of what we’ll be playing on our 360s at the end of the year, and we can now see a strong line-up taking shape: Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, and the re-emergence of a fantastic-looking Splinter Cell: Conviction, which has got me all hot and bothered for the series again. Modern Warfare 2’s footage wasn’t as mind-blowing as COD4’s from two years ago, but my preorder’s in.

The headlines will undoubtedly be grabbed by two unveilings, though. The first is Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which is a huge PR coup for Microsoft but isn’t a mainline Metal Gear and so isn’t quite the shock of last year’s FFXIII reveal; still, I like MGS4’s Raiden, so colour me interested. Secondly, we’ve got Project Natal, which I don’t expect to work nearly as well as the video suggested, but if it does it’s certainly an incredible technical achievement. Expect much talk about that over the coming months.

Plus Microsoft got the fucking Beatles to show up. God knows how much that cost…

Criticisms? As a closet fan of the Halo novels I’d like to have seen more than a teaser of Halo: Reach, but I understand that ODST is the one that they want you to care about for now. But mainly, where was Rare? The token Killer Instinct and Blast Corps rumours of course didn’t come true, but no new Perfect Dark? Not even another Viva Piñata? Hello?

But that aside, Microsoft did what it had to do with aplomb. The 360 has a great selection of games for this year and we now know that stuff like Alan Wake is finally coming in 2010, and MS is even showing signs of making a serious attempt at coming out from the bald space marine niche where it’s been happy to exist. This one gets a solid A.

Nintendo had simultaneously the most and the least to prove going into E3, sitting comfortably at the top of the sales charts but also leaving much of its traditional audience – or at least the ones who can’t convince themselves that Smash Bros is a good game – underwhelmed, exemplified by last year’s showing.

Super Mario Galaxy 2, Team Ninja’s Metroid, and Golden Sun DS. That pretty much summed up what we got that I’m interested in, and I really am gagging for a go on Metroid. It’s better than last year’s and the first two are undoubtedly AAA titles, although it still had a depressing emphasis on games that our demographic probably doesn’t care about. No great DSiWare content? No Virtual Console for DSi? Nothing entirely new for the hardcore audience? Instead, we get something to monitor your pulse and more Wii Fit.

I can’t in good conscience slate a conference that unveiled both a proper new Mario and Metroid, so I’m going to give this one a B-.

Sony‘s was a show of two halves for me. It started off with Uncharted 2, which looks spectacular, and if it’s nearly as good as the first game – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be – it’ll be a certain purchase. MAG didn’t demonstrate particularly well because it’s a bit slow and complicated for this context, and I’m not convinced that the headset-free PSN is the best place for such a co-op game, but I love my multiplayer shooters and I’m intrigued.

It’s good to see renewed support for the PSP, even if I won’t be buying a PSP Go, and maybe this commitment from Sony coupled with reduced development costs will see a renaissance in the system. I hope so, because I’m a fan.

Final Fantasy XIV was a surprise, to say the least, but I’d love to hear the difference in cheers between when it was announced and when everyone saw the little ‘Online’ under the title. Not the megaton announcement that XIII was last year, and the slight disappointment was compounded by what came next. The tech demo for the Wii Remote waggle wand lost some of its impact coming after Microsoft’s controller-free controls and a further demonstration of Wii Motion Plus and just went on for far too long, particularly when there wasn’t actually a game to come with it. The same goes for ModNation Racers, which wasn’t even that impressive and seemed to last for an eternity – I wanted to kill myself when he promised to create a track “in less than five minutes”. I was reminded of the endless demonstration of Gran Turismo HD from the infamous E3 2005 showing.

It ended very strongly with Gran Turismo 5, which I don’t really care about as I’m not exactly a fan of realistic racers, and the holy duo of The Last Guardian and God of War III. It goes without saying that both of those are must-haves, and I’m just disappointed that it looks like we’ll have to wait until 2010 for both of them.

Much like the Microsoft one it showed a host of great games, and it only really suffered from the slack middle section. That doesn’t stop it getting an A as well, though.

Overall, then, a far better show than last year’s, and fans of all platforms will have come away with something worthwhile even if this year’s show has pretty much confirmed motion controls as the way of the future. And hey, no sales graphs either. Gaming needs to make a song and dance about itself like this once in a while, so let’s enjoy the rest of the show.

Until next year…

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

inFamous: It’s Not Crackdown but…

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The above post title pretty much sums up how I feel when playing through inFamous.

I loved the feeling of freedom that Crackdown cultivated. I loved its comic book style. I loved how the story didn’t matter and was simply an excuse to move forwards. I loved how you could do it in any order you liked. I loved how it didn’t take itself too seriously and so ended up being quite charming.

inFamous

None of the above statements apply to inFamous – or at least not to the same extent – and when you’re as blatantly in love with Realtime Worlds’ adventure as I am, it’s immediately on the back foot. But despite this, I still really enjoy it. Is it something the game does right or is it just that the free-roaming city-’em-up is a genre that can’t fail to be brilliant and addictive in my eyes?

It’s probably a bit of both. inFamous also goes for a comic style, but it’s far more gritty and tries to do it more literally with story scenes presented as animated comic book panels. The story is complete nonsense, and I challenge anyone to recall the details. It takes itself kind of seriously here, trying to tell a forgettable conspiracy story with another gruff-voiced protagonist, and it does sometimes get in the way when you take time out from collecting agility orbs blast shards to spend some time wondering around in a daze because you got hit by mind-controlling tar – yes, really – again. The developers of Crackdown realised that running around with super powers, exploring the rooftops and mowing down largely helpless, dumb enemies was where the fun was coming from, whereas Sucker Punch has made enemies who are actually capable of fighting back against a powered-up Cole.

Fair enough, this isn’t an attempt to remake Crackdown, but that game’s a clear inspiration. Crackdown’s sense of humour was exemplified by its achievements, which went a long way to convincing a lot of the system’s doubters that well-designed rewards that often came out of cool stuff that you wanted to do anyway – climbing the Agency Tower and jumping off is the most obvious example – could become an important part in of the game in themselves. inFamous’s trophies, similarly, are indicative of the way you go through the game: beat this boss, clear this area, unlock some powers…

Even the trumpeted morality system is incredibly binary, not really forcing difficult decisions on the player or bringing about any real consequences. It’s mostly quite heavy-handed, and the only ones that actually offer a morality option are the designated ones: on the second island a side quest tasks you with saving a guy’s brother who has been dressed up as an enemy, and the only way to complete it is to save him. Where’s the evil option to execute him for collaborating? That’s just one example.

I’m sounding incredibly down on the game, I know, and I’ve got my work cut out to make this sound positive because I really do like the game a lot. The fact is that when you’re not bogged down in story the fun of charging around a city without limitation is still there, and when a mission doesn’t take you underground, away from the best part, and instead has you climbing some of the tallest buildings in the game, which are usually far more complex than Crackdown’s fairly basic geometry – although generally less impressive in scale and with a far more limited draw distance (check out this video to remind yourself just how far you could see in Realtime Worlds’ game), as each of the islands is more firmly segregated – it’s got the same feeling of barely constrained freedom.

Sucker Punch has also leveraged its experience from the Sly Cooper series to make the precision jumps very intuitive, as the game will make slight corrections to your trajectory if you’re heading, say, a little to the left of that climbable drain pipe or are going to overshoot the power line. Cole isn’t as agile as a powered-up agent from Crackdown, but this is done just right to keep the platforming effortless and allow you to feel unencumbered even despite the arguably smaller scale and certainly smaller jumps.

I know I should let it speak for itself and I know that it’s not Crackdown, but it’s such a clear inspiration here. Rest assured that inFamous is an excellent game in its own right and is thoroughly recommended. Just think of it as a way to keep you going until Crackdown 2, which must surely be announced at E3. This has to mean something, right?

Editorials, Games, Nintendo, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

Multiplayer Shouldn’t Be a Necessity

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I adored BioShock, and while it lost some of its lustre and great ideas once it reached a certain point, one thing that I couldn’t criticise it on was the lack of multiplayer. It was never an issue as the actual FPS mechanics weren’t anything special, and it was the isolation and the experience of exploring this strange world on your own that really drove me forwards.

It reminds me of Metroid Prime, where a fantastic sort-of FPS that was about exploring a strange new world by yourself was met with criticism for its lack of multiplayer. And sure enough, where Metroid Prime 2 came with a half-baked multiplayer, BioShock 2 is set to come with its own effort.

Back when Metroid did it, I can remember making the argument that multiplayer is completely at odds with what makes both Metroid Prime and the Metroid series as a whole great. The games, up until then, were all about being isolated on a hostile alien world, exploring while hunting and being hunted, and even when it moved into the first-person perspective those were still the ideas that carried it. It was never a shooter, in other words, and therefore didn’t need deathmatch, and that description pretty much entirely applies to BioShock as well.

Just look at where Metroid has ended up. Hunters and Prime 3 aren’t bad, but Samus and her bounty hunter friends don’t feel like Metroid to me.

I hate this need to clamour for the bullet point on the back of the box. It’s disrespectful to the effort that goes into crafting a rewarding single player, and while I could understand it if, say, a Call of Duty came without multiplayer, it’s wrong to say that every game needs it. Complaining that a story-led FPS doesn’t come with multiplayer is devaluing a great work in order to appeal to people who don’t appreciate the work that went into the game anyway, like criticising Schindler’s List for not having enough action scenes.

I don’t like to sound like a pretentious twat, which I think is somewhere that this argument comes dangerously close to taking me, but I really think there’s a point here. Starbreeze makes fantastic first-person adventures and has had a great reputation for this since the first Riddick game on the Xbox, and both subsequent releases in this vein, The Darkness and Assault on Dark Athena, have had, respectively, shockingly bad and mediocre multiplayer modes that nobody plays anyway. The people who appreciate the games have no interest in the multiplayer, and the people who would whine about the exclusion have games that they’d rather play in Call of Duty and Halo. Developers should save the money and make an even better story.

To me, this is another example of why games aren’t taken seriously, and it doesn’t help when the gaming media is often guilty of marking games down for not coming with multiplayer, continuing to mix up objective consumer advice and a review, because they’re not the same thing. Games are art, are they? Well then we’d better mark down Hamlet for not having any musical numbers.

Editorials, Games, Impressions, PlayStation, Xbox

Resi 5: Old But Not Outdated

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If you need proof of how far certain genres have come in the last few years, just look at how gameplay that was considered a revolution in 2005 is now being treated as a relic in its next-gen sequel – I am, of course, talking about Resident Evil 5. Blame Dead Space for spoiling us if you like, but the fact is that few genres have come all that far in the last five years in any respect other than visuals.

Resident Evil 5

I’m nearing the end of Resident Evil 5, and yes, it does feel clunky after we’ve enjoyed the improvements to the formula in games like Gears of War and Dead Space. Yes, managing the inventory in real-time is an unnecessary attempt at creating tension. Yes, the partner AI is prone to lapses of judgement – although at least this time it can shoot back. Yes, the setting lacks that unsettling, macabre tone of Resi 4. Yes, we’d all like to run and gun. These are flaws that make it worthy of being marked down against its predecessor, but everything else that that game did right is in here as well. It looks great, it has that same satisfyingly precise gunplay, the boss battles are impressive, the battles are intense…

Maybe it’s played things too safe, which is what people seem to be piling on about, but the fact remains that when you play Resident Evil 5 as Resident Evil 5 and not what you think Resident Evil 5 should be, you’ll have a great time.

People are rightfully disappointed in Capcom’s conservatism, but it’s still based on what few will dispute is a classic game and a frontrunner for the best game of the last generation. Dead Space moved the survival horror/action sub-genre forward, but it hasn’t made Resident Evil 4 a worse game and thus to say that Resi 5 is a bad game is hyperbole.

Don’t let me stop you throwing some vitriol over the DLC situation, though. Capcom deserves a kicking over that, if not the game’s overall quality.

Editorials, Games, PlayStation

Killzone is the New Battlefield

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Back before it got bogged down in such nonsense as story and trying to make us care about its characters – or even having characters, for that matter – the Battlefield series was about nothing more than being an absolutely brilliant multiplayer game, into which you’d happily sink dozens of hours.

Killzone 2 is slightly different in that it does have a proper campaign to play through, but in every other respect I think that it’s the heir apparent to what is still the peak of the Battlefield series: Battlefield 2. Hell, it even has the ham-fisted attempts to make us care about the paper-thin characters with crappy AI as we play through the engine tech demo that is its campaign – an approach borrowed from Battlefield: Bad Company for good measure.

Now before I bring down the wrath of the Killzone Defence Force, let me be clear that I mean this in the nicest possible way. Killzone 2’s campaign is passable and a great way to show off the home cinema but not something that I’ll play through more than once, but the multiplayer mode is one of the best that I’ve played in a long time, and certainly the best since Call of Duty 4 stole my life away for a few months over 2007 and 2008. I’ve already played a dozen hours while finding time to play The Lost and Damned and Street Fighter IV, and I don’t feel like I want to slow down yet.

Alas, the controls are still less than ideal. You can’t polish a turd, as they say, but for the multiplayer Guerrilla has mercifully put the turd next to some potpourri. There’s a touch more aim assistance to make firing from the hip less hit and miss – mostly miss – and the slightly clunky cover system has been done away with, and it generally feels less encumbered with the campaign’s affinity for making you feel the weight of your character.

It’s probably a decision based on the fact that human-controlled players are likely to be more wild and reckless, but perhaps it might have been a good idea to let us use these controls throughout the entire game? Just a suggestion…

But what I’ve found to be its most interesting feature is the way that it rotates game types in the same match, meaning that whereas my time in a game like Battlefield 2 would be spent flipping between team deathmatch and conquest-style games without exploring the offerings further, every match of Killzone will randomly flip between deathmatches, conquest, assassination, and other objective-based modes without returning to the menu or lobby. It’s a simple idea that I’ve never seen done before, and it adds a wonderfully unpredictable slant to how the game is going to play. And, of course, you can just choose to play a straight deathmatch, which the game is still very good at doing.

The Battlefield comparison goes further than the superiority of the game’s multiplayer experience, though. This just has a very similar feel, like the realistic imprecision of the guns that makes killing someone with an assault rifle from a distance at best blind luck, if not almost impossible. It’s annoying when faced with AI opponents who aren’t working with the same limitations as you, but against similarly encumbered humans it becomes more of a game of skill, seeing who’s best at carefully aiming and picking their shots before the other guy can, and it’s nearly impossible to win by jamming on the trigger because the recoil is likely to hit everything but your opponent.

Look me up if you’re online – PSN name: NekoFever (stats currently down) – because I’d be more than willing to have a game.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

Killzone 2 First Impressions

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I’m as frightened as the next person about the ravenous cult that this game seems to have built up over the last year or so, but very occasionally the fanboys do pick a winning horse. I’m saying this having been impressed with the visuals of the demo but been left underwhelmed by the gameplay, where I felt that a combination of the PS3 controller and the game’s attempts to convey weighty realism combined to make it feel clunky and imprecise.

But then I borrowed a promo copy and played through the first two missions…

Before I go any further, I’m going to mention specifics of gameplay and what happens in these missions. If you’ve played the demo and seen the gameplay trailers you’ve seen most of what I’m going to talk about, but I know some people are going dark on spoilers now.

Killzone 2

Aside from a short sequence on your ship at the beginning, the demo is the first part of the game itself, and it’s essentially how that entire mission progresses. You have a set piece on a mounted gun that culminates in the very impressive collapse of a building and a sequence in a tank – this bit wins praise for being a vehicle section in an FPS that isn’t shit – at the end of the level, but other than that you’re playing an extended version of the demo.

The second mission is far more impressive. It’s the same sequence shown in the E3 2007 footage, set in the night-time streets as you attempt to take out the Helghast arc cannons – those are the big lightning guns – while facing heavy resistance from some of the bigger enemies, a couple of which you would have seen in trailers. It’s grimy and atmospheric, and despite being set on an alien world it feels as real as, say, the Middle Eastern streets in something like Call of Duty 4. Very impressive, and the end hints at bigger things to fight than just a bloke in heavy armour.

Now you don’t need me to tell you how good it looks, so I’ll just go as far as to say it looks magnificent and like being almost certainly the best-looking console game yet. What few flaws I saw – the occasional jagged shadow and physics glitch, mainly – were minor next to how incredibly solid everything looks, with a real sense of weight to things that I haven’t seen matched, and I’ve seen plenty of games that go for a similar style recently. Expect this to be the benchmark for any console game with lofty graphical ambitions for a long time to come. The textures, the effects, the staggeringly believable animation – all top drawer.

If I was being really picky, I’d complain that it brings you out of it when you see half-arsed effects like the medical gun thing used to revive downed allies, which looks like a sprite popping out of the barrel. But I’m not, so I won’t.

The sound is what I found most deserving of praise, though, and I haven’t heard it talked about nearly as much as the visuals. On my modest 5.1 system I was getting DTS sound that was constantly active, both with action going on around me and with atmospheric sounds in the background, and one sequence in particular where I was fighting in an underground drain in which every shot rang out with echos off the metal walls blew me away. It sounded notably different both to fighting in the open and in enclosed areas with concrete walls.

And to think that on a better setup I could be playing it with 7.1 PCM audio…

The presentation combines with the sensation of weight that the game carries to really make you feel like you’re inhabiting a physical body, firing actual bullets. There’s just enough inaccuracy to your fire to feel realistic without frustrating you when your shots don’t connect, and you quickly realise that it’s more about pinning enemies down with fire – something that works well with the highly impressive AI – and popping off a few shots at them when an opportunity presents itself than it is going for one-shot-one-kill accuracy.

Now as for the controls, I’m still not entirely convinced, but I’ve found a layout that suits me much better than the defaults that those who didn’t like it may want to try out: I essentially turned it into Call of Duty, swapping to the Alternate 2 preset with hold to aim turned on and x-axis sensitivity bumped up a few notches. Like I said, I still have issues with it, but I wasn’t fighting the controls like I was with the defaults. If anyone knows a layout that can stop my thumbs hitting each other on those sticks and get rid of the occasional Sixaxis control mini-game for turning cranks and arming bombs, please drop me a line.

Expect a more comprehensive impressions post once it’s actually out and I can play more of it, but colour me very impressed so far.