Archive for November, 2008
PS3 Wins Console Green Race
ps3.qj.net | The PS3 trumps the Wii and Xbox 360 as the greenest console. See link for more details.
What the PS3mote could have been or could still be
There has been talk about this off and on for the past couple years. The technology is called Sixense. I haven’t heard of it being developed in any PS3 games yet though. But I can say with absolute certainty that this has been at least tested by PS3 developers and I’ll just leave it at that.
But if this did come out for the PS3 would you buy it? Would it be used in full length games? Or just mini games like the PS Eye is being used for now?
Yakuza 2 Impressions
Posted by Darrin in Uncategorized, Yakuza on November 25th, 2008
Pros
- Unique Brawler RPG:. This has all the dialog trees, story focus, character development, and side-quest structure of a traditional RPG, but the standard RPG stat-battles are replaced by melee-centric brawling.
- A LOT of game: I spent a full twenty-five hours before I beat the main story mode, and I’d estimate that I skipped 85% of the optional side-quest/mini-game content. This is a BIG game. This easily the most story and quest content of any title I’ve played in the past two years.
- Host/Hostess Bars: This is a mostly dialog-tree based dating sim. It’s surprisingly charming. Unfortunately, I missed the “massage parlor”.
- Atmosphere: I’ve never been to Japan, but this really nails the feel of roaming the streets of urban Japan, or at least what I imagine that would feel like. There is tons of detail in the city. One example of this, is the absurdly detailed food/drink system in the game. You can order various types of food and drink from the dozens of restaurants, bars, convenience stores, and lounges throughout the game and there is a side-goal of trying all the different food types.
Cons
- Story: The story-telling and dialog is on par with a serious 80′s action movie without any sarcasm or joking self-references. Sometimes, I could quiet my inner critic and enjoy the experience, but other times, the story was just too dated and corny and I had to skip over it. Most gamers already know whether they like or tolerate this kind of Japanese video game writing.
- Technology: By now, most of us are acclimated to PS3 tech, so going back to PS2 is a big drop. And this isn’t even one of the more technically polished PS2 titles like Jak 3 or God Of War. The graphics look very blocky and crude and highly aliased. And all the 2D interface screens feel very old and clunky compared to other 2008 titles. BTW, I still do all my gaming on an SDTV (about to upgrade), so it’s not the resolution itself at all.
- Mini-Games: This game has well over a dozen side-quest mini-games such as Shogi (a kind of Japanese chess), Mahjong, gambling, golf, batting cages, a weird 3D arcade fighter game, and a business sim game. I’m impressed that they built that much content, and many of these games are highly detailed, but only a few are really fun to play. If I want to play Shogi or Mahjong, I’d rather play a freeware version on my PC.
- Core Combat: The combat is fun, it has a ton of detail, and there are a bunch of cool slo-mo special attacks to pull off, and there’s a very detailed upgrade system, but it gets repetitive over the long length of this game.
Bottom Line
If you like detailed, epic Japanese RPGs, brawler combat, organized crime fiction, and can tolerate dated tech, then this game is definitely for you.
Yakuza Kenzan has already been released for the PS3 in Japan and the true sequel, Yakuza 3, is scheduled to be released in Japan in Spring ’09. I’m really excited to see these come to the west. The tech improvements alone will fix one of my biggest gripes with this title.
PS3 Rumors
Posted by Darrin in Uncategorized on November 25th, 2008
From dpad magazine:
- Uncharted 2 is coming
- God of War 3 looks amazing
- SCEE will be getting more price-competitive from March 2009 on
- More “technical innovations” to come…
These are pretty small leaks. This is an unconfirmed source, but this is stuff we largely suspected already. An Uncharted sequel was highly likely and there is generally always some kind of price cut and technical innovations coming in the future.
The God of War 3 bit is more than a rumor. David Jaffe, the outspoken director behind the first in the series, has said that the game was shown internally and is looking amazing. That dev team is notorious for having large teams of highly talented art staff, so amazing visuals aren’t surprising.
With sequels to Uncharted and God of War, I’m more interested to hear how they are evolving the gameplay. I’ve loved both series so far, but I would like to see them move away from stricly linear game progression.
Why I Hate LittleBigPlanet
Posted by Gary in LittleBigPlanet, PS3, PS3 software on November 24th, 2008
I’m probably going to get some stick for what I’m about to write but I really started to hate LBP the more I played of it.
First off, I actually loved the BETA. I thought it was great fun, Sackboy was a great character and I had a lot of fun playing it. Then I decided to stop because I didn’t want to get the game and find that the experience would be watered down due to playing too much of the BETA.
Big mistake. The more I played of the game, the more I realised it is absolutely crap as a platformer. You can throw all this stuff about creating levels and all the community stuff at me but none of that can hide the fact that it is unforgivably flawed as a platform game.
LBP is meant to be fun and aimed at bringing on board ‘casuals’ or some of the Wii crowd (aswell as regular gamers), or so we are led to believe. How can a game that infuriates so much due to broken controls that makes controlling Sackboy so infuriating, appeal to people that just want to have fun, when it sucks all the fun out of the experience!
The amount of times I died because Sackboy skidded on a platform or failed to jump high enough or far enough to reach a perfectly reachable platform was bordering on the ridiculous. There was even an incident where one of the bouncy platforms toppled over meaning I couldn’t progress any further on that level so I had to quit out of it!!
I’m talking about the Story levels btw, not user created levels.
LBP is supposed to be a platformer yet it fails, as far as I’m concerned, to get the basic elements of what makes platform games so much fun. The physics in the game cause far too many problems for me. When I jump, I want to be able to actually control myself how far and high I jump, not end up with seemingly random heights and distances regardless of how hard or light I press the jump button. When my character lands he should not continue to move as if he’s on an ice platform and fall on to spikes or to it’s death.
Everything has to be so precise in LBP. This completely takes away the fun of the experience and massively reduces the pick up and play factor for me.
I really can’t see any of the supposed ‘casual gamers’ sticking with a game that can infuriate so easily.
I decided to have a quick play with the level creater tools but gave up as everything felt too fiddly and time consuming. You may argue that I should put the time in to get the best out of this side of LBP but I simply do not have the time to do this.
As a result, LBP became an incredibly annoying game, so much so that I traded it in yesterday and got the flawed and buggy Fallout 3 instead.
Maybe Media Molecule should’ve actually spent more time on getting the game mechanics and platforming elements right and made the platforming fun and enjoyable as a result.
The mass majority will probably not agree with what I’ve written but hey, that’s life. If you love LBP, great! I however will not recommend this game to anyone based on how poor it is as a platformer.
EDIT: Even Media Molecule boss Mark Healey isn’t entirely happy with the control scheme in LBP. Check out the 5.10 mark onwards in this video.
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