Tag Archives: PS3

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Resi 5: Old But Not Outdated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, Xbox

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

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Any FPS being released at the moment is taking a risk by coming out in the shadow of Killzone 2 and its unstoppable hype machine, but F.E.A.R. 2, which I’ll hereafter refer to as Project Origin for the sake of my sanity, has been getting some praise of its own. It even controversially scored higher than Killzone in the latest issue of Edge, which has caused consternation in some circles.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

When my copy arrived, I must admit that my first impressions were slightly underwhelming. The first ‘interval’ – that’s ‘mission’ to you and me – takes place in a plush office block and has you fighting your way to the top against some generic special forces guys with a basic SMG and no sign of the game’s standard bullet time feature, and even the scary horror flashes toned down from how it bashed you over the head with them in the early stages of F.E.A.R. It’s really nothing more than a prologue, though, which becomes apparent when it ends in the wake of the first game’s finale.

Once you’re playing Project Origin proper, special abilities and all, it gets much more interesting. In the first few chapters after the prologue you get more variety of enemies – including my favourite: a trooper with a gas tank on his back that will make him blow up in a puff of smoke and giblets if you shoot it – and the scares come in, mostly consisting of apparitions and random psychic attacks on you and your enemies, with sneak attacks from a new kind of baddie that I won’t spoil coming in later. Continue reading F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin →

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.

Games, Impressions, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

I Love Dead Space

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It’s a veritable Halloween in February here, what with this and Left 4 Dead occupying lofty positions in my current playlist and F.E.A.R. 2 shortly to join my collection, but before the inevitable comparisons to Resident Evil 5 start turning things a bit nasty, I have to state how bloody good this game is.

Get it? Bloody good?

Dead Space

I’m not getting into that whole Resi 5 comparison because it only ends in tears – suffice to say that Resi did it first but Dead Space has better controls – and this game can stand on its own merits. Yes, it has obvious filmic inspirations as well, and the similarities between the aesthetic here and stuff like Event Horizon, Alien, and The Thing are so clear as to almost go without saying, but this does its own thing where it matters and has plenty of surprises as it begins to ramp up within a couple of chapters. By that point you’ve been through several of the Nostromo Ishimura’s environments and it starts to mix things up on you a little bit.

It’s actually quite difficult to put my finger on what exactly it is that I like so much because so much has been seen before, so I’m just going to have to shrug and say that it’s just a very good, very polished game. It doesn’t really do anything new, a couple of nifty gimmicks like the dismemberment and zero-gravity sequences aside, but what it does it does well.

Maybe the fact that people have seen a lot of the stuff before is part of the reason why it didn’t set the sales charts on fire, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with a game just doing old things in a polished and pretty way. It has fantastic presentation – the graphical quality is obvious from the screenshots and the HUD design is superb, but the audio is beyond stellar – and, if nothing else, the development team at EA Redwood Shores knew which parts of which games to borrow in making a well-rounded horror experience. Nothing wrong with that when it’s done as well and is as fun as this, right?

This may be tempting fate – new EA is still EA, after all – but fingers crossed that Dead Space did enough business to warrant a sequel.

Editorials, Games, PC games, PlayStation, Xbox

The Year of the DLC?

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So my last informal ‘Year of the…’ post didn’t turn out so accurate, and this one could either herald a brave new frontier for gaming as retail goes down the toilet or turn out to be a damp squib that people aren’t really interested in, but I’m pretty confident that 2009 will, either way, be a big year for downloadable content.

Fable II has just had its first DLC package, Knothole Island, and I happily bought it because I was itching to play more of the game. The same thing is likely to happen later this month when Fallout 3 receives its first downloadable quest line, Operation Anchorage, and again with the other two to come in February and March, Left 4 Dead has more campaigns on the way, and of course GTA IV’s much-ballyhooed expansion, The Lost and Damned, is planned for next month.

It’s a big line-up for a traditionally slow period, cunningly placed to keep players from trading in last year’s games, and although map packs have been a fixture of this generation since the 360 launch, with the silly money being thrown around for exclusive DLC at the moment, could this be when the idea of DLC fulfils its promise? Continue reading The Year of the DLC? →