Category Archives: PlayStation

Impressions, PlayStation

The PlayStation Home Beta

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Admittedly I’ve been against Home from the beginning, but having spent some time with the beta a bit before it opens up to everyone, I have to say that I really can’t see the point of this. It’s bland, boring, soulless, slow, and I can think of a ton of ways that I’d prefer to interact with what community there is on PSN.

The character creation suite is the first port of call, and I’m afraid that I have to make the obvious comparison between Miis and Avatars here: Home has a serious case of the uncanny valley going on. While the other two offerings aren’t realistic in the slightest and yet allow you to make a fairly recognisable representation of yourself, Home takes a far more realistic approach, and as a result I spent ages working on it to end up with someone that doesn’t really look like me at all. It looks more like a real person than a Mii, but wandering around Home everyone pretty much looks like they escaped from the same Gap advert.

It’s early days still, but when there are so few clothing options for your drone/mannequin and it looks like any extra will need to be bought with real money, I don’t see it getting much better.

The monetary issue is a big one as well. I got a summer house free for being in the closed beta, which is a room with some stairs and a fireplace, and a nice view of a lake. It’s functionally identical to the harbour apartment that you start with, but Sony is apparently charging $4.99 for it, and that’s without the palette-swapped furniture that you have to pay extra for. I could understand maybe charging for the cool interactive stuff like arcade cabinets and the TVs that will presumably add in video sharing when that comes back, but the items in there now are just pointless.

The initial 77MB download is just the engine and your starting space, a spartan single-room apartment. If you want to leave the room and visit the Home Square, the central hub, you have to twiddle your thumbs while it downloads, and as it does this, there’s bugger all to do in your room. You want to leave that and visit the Shopping Centre? That’s another 20-odd meg to download. Ditto if you visit a clubhouse or the personal space of a friend who has a house type that you haven’t visited yet. I think I’ve literally spent more time downloading than actually doing anything.

Also, thanks to the dearth of people who have headsets, I’m reliant on text chat to communicate. This is something that I haven’t done on a console since Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast, and for a system that’s supposedly going to attract the Facebook crowd with its intuitive visual interface, it’s very reliant on using a virtual PDA menu – not a PSP or even a Sony Ericsson phone, shockingly – to do anything.

Mainly, though, it’s just plain dull and soulless. Everyone looks the same, for some reason that completely escapes me you have to queue to play the games that are available, and everyone’s as baffled about what you’re supposed to be doing as anyone else.

Tycho from Penny Arcade said today that, “this is what happens when your marketing department tries to make a game”, and that hits the nail on the head. There’s no interesting hook here, and when the big new content like game spaces and new sponsored areas – in other words: adverts – are what you have to look forward to, what’s the point?

Editorials, Games, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

When Worlds (at War) Collide

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It wouldn’t be the first time that it’s been suggested that some people at Infinity Ward may not be too keen on other developers messing up working with their colossally successful Call of Duty franchise in the name of annual updates, Activision becoming the new EA and all that, but this is hilarious.

The Infinity Ward community manager, Robert Bowling, made a post on his blog criticising the tendency of one of the Activision producers on World at War for making unflattering comparisons between the new game and the IW games. Here are the choice quotes:

First of all, you didn’t work on “previous Call of Dutys”, so don’t talk as if you’re down with how / why things were designed the way they were. Second, you’re completely fucking wrong.

[…]

A rule of thumb I like to use is…. when promoting your game. Promote YOUR game. Don’t compare it to another game, or reference what OTHER games did in the past, pitch YOUR game. I mean, you have lots of cool things you could talk about… like Nazi Zombies….

Can you guys please stop interviewing this guy, talk to someone who actually works on the Dev Team at Treyarch and knows what the fuck they’re talking about. Not Senior Super Douche Noah Heller from Activision – who apparently has never played the game and doesn’t even work at the developer.

That is awesome.

You have to love the dig at the Nazi zombies – for those who don’t know, there is literally a mode where you must defend your position against waves of undead German soldiers (video) – because I couldn’t believe that when I saw it. In a game that’s already treading a fine line with its depiction, however accurate, of Japanese soldiers in WWII, I can’t help but feel like that mode was pushing a boundaries of taste just a bit.

This is hardly Wolfenstein with its BJ Blazkowicz and Mecha-Hitler; the Call of Duty series was originally about being a more realistic gaming depiction of World War II by having the player not be the lone, Rambo-like hero but be one of many. So much for that idea, then…

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

Some Thoughts on LittleBigPlanet

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Angry Sackboy

So I finished LittleBigPlanet yesterday. Yes, yes, finishing the story mode is only a part of it, but I think we’ve got a while to go before the community levels are even close to the standard of Media Molecule’s later stages, so I’m working on the assumption that I’ve seen the best that the game has to offer for now.

When I dabbled with the beta I complained about the floaty and imprecise controls, and in fact they did end up getting me killed more times than I’d have liked. But despite that, I still came away with a very positive impression of the story mode. The level design is often exemplary, full of secrets and with some incredibly creative use of the same tools that anyone can use. It’s been a while since I played a good old-fashioned platform game and when I was in the zone with this one it was a wonderful game. The fact that everything in the single-player was made with essentially the same tools that ship with the game shows what potential is in there, and I’ll certainly be revisiting the game down the line.

Now admittedly these are early thoughts, based on about five hours spent working on my themed level – more on that when I’ve got something presentable – but I’ve been disappointed by certain limitations of the toolset. There are clearly more functions than can comfortably fit on a controller, and as such it felt clumsy a lot of the time. Just go a few menus deep and see how often the function of the right stick changes as you move from menu to menu – if you’re modifying something and want to rotate the camera for a better look you have to quit out of the PopIt completely, then make sure you’re in hover mode, which is the one situation in which the right stick can control the camera. Continue reading Some Thoughts on LittleBigPlanet →

Editorials, Games, PlayStation

LittleBigFuckup

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So with less than a week until its release, one of the PS3’s most important games has been recalled and pushed back, all because of one complaint from someone who has guaranteed himself a lifetime of hate mail after he made the post with his PSN ID attached. To be fair it’s not his fault because he just asked for a quick patch, not a full recall, but you only have to browse through that thread for the post-delay posts to see that people inevitably aren’t seeing it that way.

The fact that LBP was recalled after a single post from a Muslim player while Resistance’s complaint from the Church of England garnered only an apology does somewhat play into certain groups’ hands, though. Don’t expect to hear the end of that any time soon.

It does seem like an unnecessary reaction to me. Like the guy asked for, a patch would have sufficed for now, and the song could be properly removed from all future pressings. Everyone’s happy, and the handful who’ll buy it without online access and even notice could, I’m sure, just ask for an exchange for future ‘fixed’ versions. Now there are probably millions of discs that will end up being destroyed – or on eBay at hugely inflated prices – and the marketing effort will be disrupted as people go to check out this new game that they’ve seen the reviews for and it’s not there.

I’m deliberately avoiding the ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘I think we all know why this garnered such a reaction nudge-nudge-wink-wink’ rubbish that I’m seeing everywhere because I hate it and it’s a bit Daily Mail, but there’s no reason to ruin it for everyone else because of a song that’s generally available on iTunes, free to listen to on MySpace (‘Tapha Niang’ in the audio player on the right), and apparently won a Grammy.

Religion is a personal choice, as is listening to a pretty beautiful song and playing the game. I’m not going to get political with that whole debate about whether religion deserves to be put on a pedestal – it doesn’t, but I said I’m not debating it ;) – but please, don’t make Everest out of a molehill when the most people want is Ben Nevis.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

WipEout HD

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You can’t deny that Sony has been worlds ahead of Microsoft and Nintendo in terms of digitally distributing its games this gen. Not only does PSN let me buy stuff in real money – incidentally, that makes me more likely to make an impulse purchase than one that requires me to work out how much I’m actually paying – it’s also let me download ‘proper’, fully featured games. Warhawk, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, Siren: Blood Curse, Burnout Paradise, and now WipEout HD – all impossible with Microsoft’s backwards size limit for downloadable games and, for many reasons, impossible on the Wii.

© MrTroubleMaker

Mini-rant aside, WipEout HD is just the kind of thing that we should be getting as downloads. It’s relatively slim on content with only a few tracks from the PSP versions, but it’s 60fps at 1080p (almost), tight and addictive to play, and it’s only £11.99. I defended the pricing of Braid when I posted about it, and while I appreciate that WipEout is less of a commercial risk than a self-funded indie project, this does kind of make it look bad.

WipEout’s been something of a fringe series for a while now, having only two PSP games and a poorly received PS2 iteration since the series’ glory days on the PS1, with most fans still considering WipEout 2097 – the American title, WipEout XL, sounds too much like washing powder for me – to be the high point. It’s a shame because it was one of the titles largely credited with being responsible for the establishment of the PlayStation, and, quite remarkably, it’s managed to remain both cool and futuristic over a decade later. The design work on show here was so far ahead of its time that real life hasn’t managed to catch up yet. That’s pretty much this series and Blade Runner that can boast that. Continue reading WipEout HD →

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

LittleBigPlanet Beta Impressions

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LittleBigPlanet

I have a feeling that the work that goes into the best user-created levels in LittleBigPlanet will pale in comparison to the sheer force of will required to get a beta key out of Eurogamer as its servers melt. Having done it twice (the disappointing SOCOM and now this), I’m convinced that I’ll be able to build the Sistine Chapel of LBP levels with a few hours of messing around.

Okay, that’s probably optimistic, but I have spent a good amount of time playing with this beta/demo – the lines between those two things are now so blurred that even the executable doesn’t know which it is – and want to weigh in with some impressions.

First off, for all the user-generated stuff in this game, the beta comes with the first handful of levels from the game’s somewhat orthodox ‘campaign’. The levels have all been put together by developers and, as such, are more professional than the giant penis levels that are likely to turn up soon – I’m shocked and strangely disappointed that I haven’t seen any yet – but it’s all done with the same objects and toolsets that you and I will have. Playing through brings unlock after unlock as pretty much anything you come across will shortly be given to you to use in your own creations. And that’s pretty much the point of this mode: to provide ideas and the raw materials for you to run wild. Continue reading LittleBigPlanet Beta Impressions →