Category Archives: PlayStation

Editorials, Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox

What’s Happened to Japanese Gaming?

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It really wasn’t that long ago that almost every classic game would come out of Japan. I’m looking at my PS2 collection now and I see Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Katamari Damacy, Okami, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Street Fighter, Shin Megami Tensei, and so on. Look further back at the PS1 and it was the same, and the Dreamcast was arguably even more weighted towards Japan.

This generation couldn’t have been more different, though. Look at the big new IPs that have been hits, the big games for this Christmas, and even the successful games of generations past that have received next-gen makeovers: almost all Western games.

Lost Planet and Dead Rising hit early on and boded well, but where are their sequels, let alone the second volley from Japan? Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 have done well, but DMC4 was still a disappointment by many accounts – including mine – due to its recycled environments and conservative design, and who was it that helped in redesigning many elements of the Metal Gear formula, including its increasingly cumbersome controls? Ryan Payton, its American producer, who has spoken about the Western influence that he fought to bring into the new game. Even the mighty Ninja Gaiden disappointed me on its next-gen debut.

The RPG genre, which has traditionally been dominated by Japan, in very much in transition at the moment as well. Where are the big-budget next-gen JRPGs? With the exception of Lost Odyssey, I’ve found all of them so far to be extremely disappointing; Final Fantasy XIII is at least another year away and Dragon Quest IX is a DS game; the latest MegaTen game, Persona 4, is on the PS2. Meanwhile we have Western devs mixing RPG conventions with their favoured genres, bringing us stuff like Mass Effect. Hell, someone even spilt their RPG in my Call of Duty 4. Continue reading What’s Happened to Japanese Gaming? →

Games, Impressions, PlayStation, Xbox

Going Off-Road

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate driving games, but I love racing games. There’s a subtle yet important difference, and the distinction is enough to make me thoroughly enjoy a Burnout, or even something more real-life like PGR or GRID, while rendering Gran Turismo as gaming kryptonite. The former are all A Few Good Men; the latter is sitting in on a trial for shoplifting.

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

Off-road racers, though, are a slightly more difficult beast. Even if it contains such vile language as ‘gear ratio’ and tries to make me consider the state of my virtual vehicle’s suspension, thrashing around in the mud is undeniably fun – we’ve all known this since the first time it rained in our back gardens – and the fact that there are very few serious off-road racers gives it a hit ratio with me that’s far above straight racing games. How much fun could a game where your rider breaks his back on a ten-foot fall really be, anyway? If I’m racing along a mountain, I bloody well want to be jumping off it. Continue reading Going Off-Road →

Games, PlayStation

Warhawk is the Best Game on the PS3

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The above is a little-known fact, kept secret by a cabal of people who prefer to play good but overrated six-hour romps or watch their games more than they play. Some even say Resistance holds that title, but they’re simply letting us on to the ruse by saying something patently absurd.

Warhawk

I don’t know what it is that got me playing Warhawk so much – and I started playing long before the recent 1.5 patch added trophies, before you suggest that I’m interested in anything other than the gameplay – but it really is fantastic. It reminds me of Battlefield 1942 at its peak, even, unfortunately, down to the hit-and-miss infantry combat. But even if running around on foot with most of the weapons is generally as effective as hitting a tank with a damp flannel, when you’re in said tank or flying around the map in one of the titular aircraft it’s hard to find fault.

It’s now been out for over a year and is still getting significant content and balance patches to add everything from new skins to whole new modes, as well as three ‘booster packs’. People pretend not to notice that the boosters are £3.99 for one map and vehicle, but it’s only because the underlying game is so strong that they daren’t speak out, lest the free stuff go away. Continue reading Warhawk is the Best Game on the PS3 →

Games, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox

E3 2008 Conference Review

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Same format as last year, but with added bitter fanboy tears. In chronological order:

  • Microsoft – I wasn’t blown away, to be honest. Seeing live gameplay of Resident Evil 5 was initially my highlight, in the same way that the Call of Duty 4 was a gem in a pile of (mostly) shit last year. Gears 2 and Fable II both look good and are certain purchases that it’s nice to have dates for, but things like avatars do nothing for me and the occasional cool feature and probable gem do not a great conference make. No Alan Wake (the new Duke Nukem Forever?), no big new IP announcements, a new interface that I’m not convinced about. Just the warm feeling from the fact that there was no motion controller announcement… yet.
     
    But then Square dropped the bomb. As last words go, FFXIII on 360 put most of Steve Jobs’ infamous “and one more thing” reveals to shame. Not even a rumbling of this news before the show, which is remarkable in itself, and it dealt a big blow to Sony early on. With the possible exception of Gran Turismo, this has been Sony’s trump card since FFVII in 1997, and it was the one third-party PS3 exclusive that I thought untouchable. Make no mistake; that announcement was huge.
     
    It doesn’t change the fact that the rest of it was relatively lacklustre, but it feels like it was all a ruse to lead up to that. For the biggest E3 megaton – something that I thought was becoming a lost art – since “five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars”, this one gets a…
     
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  • Nintendo – If you ever need reason why so many hardcore gamers seem to have abandoned Nintendo to focus on the fight for second place, this is why. Last year’s Wii Fit reveal was a disappointment and in that respect this at least had something that vaguely interests me in Animal Crossing, but it’s still basically the same thing as Nintendo brought out on N64, GameCube, and DS. It might have more online functions, but all I’m going to be thinking about is how much better it could be done on Live and PSN.
     
    Add another mini-game compilation, another peripheral, and, in Wii Music, one of the most pathetic ideas I’ve ever seen (I can’t help but think of the musical chairs game in The Simpsons when Bart was put into the remedial class). Someone summed it up for me on a forum post when they said: “At least now that Nintendo has show that it hates hardcore gamers we won’t have to pretend to like the Wii any more.”
     
    Thanks for the good times back in the day, Nintendo, but I’ll take an insular industry that makes games that I enjoy over this popular tripe.
     
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  • Sony – Sony really didn’t deviate too much from what was largely a successful formula last year. The embarrassing Home jokes were gone, and no baffling cameo from Chewbacca, and we just got games. It deserves credit for making the most entertaining Powerpoint presentation in history. LittleBigPlanet can make anything interesting.
     
    On the games front, Resistance 2 looked good but early, and while stuff like God of War III and MAG sound promising, didn’t Sony learn anything about showing CG trailers a couple of years ago? When your big reveals are CG and your lead game is one that pretty much everyone who cares enough to watch a conference has finished at least once since it came out a month ago, it doesn’t make it look like there’s a lot of content.
     
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This E3 will go down in history for the Final Fantasy XIII announcement, which put the Microsoft conference ahead on entertainment value alone. Other than that, very disappointing in my opinion. No big new game announcements (so far), no proper price drops or anything, and the bitter taste in my mouth that the mainstream press is going to be fawning over Nintendo finding a way to charge you to play air guitar.

Editorials, Games, PC games, PlayStation

Mandatory Installs Must Die

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Remember those halcyon days console gaming was the easy option? You plugged it into the TV and into the mains, popped the cart – or disc, latterly – into the top, and hit the power button. None of the hardware incompatibilities, patches, or faffing around that PC gaming required.

Now, though, you can add networking to the mix, which isn’t yet necessarily as simple as it perhaps ought to be, and, of course, the minefield that is connecting your new device to an HDTV. Still, those have given us benefits for those who can do a bit of research, and even the dreaded patching is done automatically and quickly (mostly), meaning that a bug is no longer either something to deal with or wait for the second pressing.

But unfortunately, the one thing that I always hated about PC gaming has made the jump: installs. What started as a worrying but quick (Resistance, with its 220MB install) or optional process, taken through the promised land of Uncharted, which managed lush graphics with barely a load and no install, has now almost become the standard, and I HATE IT. Continue reading Mandatory Installs Must Die →

Games, PlayStation, Tech

PSN Slow? Switch to Ethernet

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It’s a frequent argument that I see between the “PSN is free!” and “But Xbox Live is better!” crowds, and I’ve been firmly in the latter camp. The rubbish download speeds, sub-Xbox (that’s the original Xbox) feature set, poor or complete lack of integration in games, optional features that should be mandatory, bloated download sizes (over 150MB for a Super Stardust HD patch), unreliable connection, etc. Most of the complaints still stand and I’d rather pay for a good service than get an adequate one, but I’ve at least I’ve found the cause of the first and last ones.

I’ve seen a few complaints about the quality of the PS3’s built-in wi-fi, and indeed mine can only manage a 40% signal strength through a single wall that leaves my laptop with almost 80%. Downloading a firmware update through PSN takes over an hour compared with 20 minutes or so to download through my computer and a USB drive. The final straw came when I tried four times to download the patch for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, which took well over an hour to download a third of the way, only to fail completely.

With the aforementioned issues in mind, I splashed out £13.99 for an ethernet switch, the Netgear FS605. (Any should work; I just went with Netgear because I like its stuff.) The ethernet cable that went directly into my 360 now goes into that, and it supplies Internet goodness to both systems, with two free ports for anything else that might turn up in future.

The improvement was immediate. The GT5 patch downloaded first time within about 15 minutes, and I was able to download the 720p Resident Evil 5 trailer fast enough to stream a good chunk of it. Much more satisfactory, and closer to the speeds that I’ve always been getting from Live.

Completely unscientific and anecdotal without any evidence or statistical basis it may be, but I’ve proven (to myself, at least) that the PS3’s wireless is rubbish and furthered my pro-wired networking agenda. A stable, secure 100Mbps network is just better than a wireless 54Mbps (theoretical) one with signal strength and passwords to worry about. Mine’s now quite happy to stream 1080p video from my computer, which just wasn’t happening with both on wireless connections.