Darrin

Is GTA 4 Overrated?

May 4th, 2008, 20 Comments

GTA 4 is getting perfect reviews everywhere. This is probably the most highly reviewed game ever made. This game is being hailed as the best game in the last 10 years and a break through in new story telling devices.

Is this level of praise excessive? Does this game really warrant this level of praise?

gta41.jpg

I say the praise is warranted, because:

It really is good

Subjectively speaking, it really is good. I rank GTA as the best series that I’ve played in the past ten years, and GTA 4 as the best iteration of that series. Technically, it’s excellent and narrative-wise, it delivers a very smart sarcasm and wit, which is very rare among games.

The appreciation for this game is widespread, and not just among critics

Some other games have a small but highly vocal community that establishes the illusion of a general consensus of excellence. For those games, I’d say the widespread praise isn’t warranted. GTA is definitely not in that category. It is loved by a genuinely wide audience that includes critics, heavy gamers, and lots of people who don’t normally play games at all. I know many people in real life who don’t normally play any games, including Wii or the so-called casual games, but love GTA. The enjoyment and appreciation is very widespread so correspondingly widespread praise is warranted.

Backlash?

Plenty of people don’t like GTA, and have completely valid reasons as to why. But obviously, that goes for any game. Halo is probably the only other game that generates nearly this level of hype and attention, and that is notorious for having swarms of detractors.

It’s innovative

Again, subjectively speaking, it’s unusually innovative and original. Nothing is completely original. Everything including GTA has numerous influences, but GTA is far more innovative than most other games of recent years. GTA has practically spawned its own genre and a swarm of imitators.

gta42.jpg



Darrin

GTA 4 Buggy?

May 3rd, 2008, 22 Comments

I was just about to post another complete set of GTA 4 impressions, but when I went back to play another mission or two… it started locking up. The game locks up on load about 70% of the time, and when it does successfully load, it freezes within a few minutes. I’ve also seen a cut scene freeze while the dialog kept playing (I couldn’t skip the cutscene or quit out of the game). I’ve tried to play over a dozen times in the past day and no luck.

I had gotten about five solid hours of play time before this started happening, and if I play under a different user account (without my save game, of course), it seemed to work fine. Also, my PS3 is otherwise very stable and last night I played several hours of MGS:O and other games without any hiccups at all, so it’s definitely the game and not my system.

Looking on the official Sony forums, lots of people are having this issue. Of course, lots of people aren’t having this issue as well.

But wow… What is arguably the biggest and best game launch thus far in the PS3’s lifetime and it ships with substantial reliability issues. Hopefully, this will be fixed by a downloadable patch soon, but that is annoying.

Anyone else having any issues?

UPDATE: Thanks everyone. Disabling Internet connection seems to fix the issue for almost everyone including myself. I was getting very consistent crashes and when I disabled the Internet, I played several hours without any hiccups at all. Hopefully this will be patched shortly.

Darrin

PlayStation Store Update 5.1.08

May 1st, 2008, 3 Comments

Lots of content this week. I’ll be picking up Echochrome for the PS3. It’s a still at $9.99. And I’m curious to see what the level creator is like :)

North America

Games/Demos:
-Echochrome - $9.99 (includes 56 levels unique to the PS3 version and a level creator)
-Echochrome (PSP) - $9.99 (includes 56 levels unique to the PSP version and a level creator)
-Dark Sector Demo

DLC:
Rock Band tracks - $1.99 each:
-The Mother Hips – “Red Tandy” (master)
-The Mother Hips – “Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear” (master)
-Smashing Pumpkins – “Zero” (master)

Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore downloadable songs ($1.49 each)

Trailers:
-Battlefield Bad Company Redford Blog
-Kung Fu Panda Trailer
-Dead Space Announcement Trailer
-Dead Space Ship Date Trailer
-Turok - “Kane” Gameplay Trailer
-Turok “Bring It” Trailer
-NBA Ballers: Chosen One TV Spot
-Wyclef’s “Fast Car” Music Video

Wallpapers:
-echochrome Wallpapers (x4)
-Kung Fu Panda Wallpapers (x3)

United Kingdom

Games/Demos:
-Ape Quest (PSP) - €9.99 / £6.99
-Ape Quest (PSP) demo

DLC:
-NFS ProStreet - Car Packs (all contain different cars)
–Bugatti Veyron - €2.99 / £1.99
–McLaren F1 - €2.99 / £1.99
–Extender Pack #1 - €4.99 / £3.49
–Extender Pack #2 - €4.99 / £3.49

-Snakeball - Team Pack - €2.99 / £1.99

Trailers:
-Kane & Lynch - “Map Pack”

Other:
-Dark Sector theme
-Haze theme
-Haze wallpapers
-Rainbow Six Vegas 2 theme

Japan

Games/Demos:
-Battle Fantasia demo

DLC:
-Call of Duty 4 - Map Pack 1 - ¥1000

Trailers:
-Fifa Street 3
-Motorstorm Complete

NeoGAF



Darrin

Metal Gear Solid 4 - New Video [Spoilers!]

May 1st, 2008, 5 Comments

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

! x 100 and I love the ending

Darrin

Metal Gear Online Beta Impressions

April 30th, 2008, 10 Comments

First off this game is not for everyone. You either love it or hate it. Me personally I love it. Big improvement over MGS3 Online. Don’t think this will be your standard FPS, it is not! That’s what makes MGO unique and fun. There is a big learning curve if you’ve never played a metal gear game. But there is a training mode to practice your shooting, CQC(close quarter combat), movement, adjusting the settings to your liking, etc. Which you should do before you jump into a live game, because you’ll get slaughtered quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.

It still took me some time before I really got used to the controls, and adjusting the settings to my liking. It’s a blast to roll over people in the barrel. But if you roll for to long you will throw up. It works great to hide barrels and boxes. Most of the time people just walk by, but you’ll get people that shoot boxes and barrels just to be sure. The catapult (I call it the man cannon), is so great. You hop on and you can move it to two angles, then just press triangle and off you go flying into the air. I like to rotate the camera in mid air to get a good look at the whole level almost and see if I can spot any enemies while flying. Then you nail the landing on both feet and continue on. You always know when somebody is flying because of the scream they make, lol.

Then there is the magazines with bikini clad ladies. Works the same as usual, but this time you can actually turn the pages and choose which sexy lady you want to “distract” you enemies. I think there is a about 4 pages. The CQC is fun, I finally leveled up my knife skill to lv3 so I can slit throats. So fun to hide around corner and grab a enemy passing by and knock him out or kill him. If you have CQC level 3 you can actually disarm your opponent of his weapons, inject a virus, knock him out, etc. I don’t have this yet, but I’m working on it.

The skill system has 4 slots and 16 skills total. For example you can select a gun type mastery which reduces the recoil and faster reloading or Fast Movement which would be useful for CQC or just getting away from enemy fire. But if you level up a skill to level 2 it will take 2 slots, and level 3 (max) takes 3 slots. Which I wish wasn’t the case. Because if you want to slit throats with a knife. You have to have lv3 knife and lv1 cqc, and that takes up all your slots. Wouldn’t be so bad if you could swap out your skills after you die. But you can’t until the whole round is over.

The SOP system is great addition. Just press triangle near your team mates and you are all linked to the SOP system. Once you die your not connected and you’ll need to connect again. This outlines them with your teams color (red or blue), and it’s still visible threw walls even. You can tell if your teammates are distracted by a magazine, stunned, being killing etc. There is even a skill that allows you to hack into your opponents SOP system and if the guy you hacked into is connected to his team mates you basically know the locations of everybody on there team!

On Monday Konami released another game mode, Sneaking Mission (my favorite), and a map called Midtown Maelstrom. Somebody at random is picked to be Snake, and if there is at least 11 players somebody gets to play as the Metal Gear Mk. II robot. To win Snake must collect 3 dog tags from enemies without dying, which can be very hard sometimes. While this is going on there are two teaming battling it out. For a team to win they have to kill snake up to 5 times (depending on your server settings). If Snake doesn’t collect his 3 dog tags or he doesn’t die five times from a team. Then the team with the most kills win. It’s a blast.

Snake has Octocamo, which takes the color and texture of whatever he’s against if he doesn’t move for a couple seconds. Sometimes he is extremely hard to see, think of it like trying to find predator cloaked during a fire fight. But for the Octocamo to be truly effective you have to keep changing the suit to match your environment. Snake also has another great tool in his arsenal, the Solid Eye vision system. Which allows him to switch between Night Vision and binoculars. Another cool thing is you can even do a hold up with Snake. Just point your gun at a guys back and he’ll say Freeze! :D

Playing as the Mk. II robot is a blast too. It’s basically invisible in the shadows, in the sunlight it casts a small shadow. The Mk. II only has one weapon & purpose really, to assist Snake in winning. He can deliver shocks to people to knock them out so snake can collect the dog tags.

Had a epic MGO moment over the weekend! A guy had my team member in a standing choke hold just outside the warehouse doors. I was hidden inside the warehouse with my sniper rifle. I zoomed in on the opponent doing the CQC choke hold and boom head shot. Team member saved. Then he saluted me! :)

This game is so fun, I haven’t even been tempted to try out the new CoD4 maps I bought, or anything else really. A easter egg I found, is when your booting up the game and your on the screen with your character. If you rotate the camera for a while, your character with get dizzy and fall down. If you just sit there he hides in a box. Oh Konami what else have you hidden! lol This is exactly why I love the MGS series! I could go on and on about MGO, but I’ll shut up now.

Henning

Poll: Did Rockstar Go too Far?

April 30th, 2008, 24 Comments

Pursuent to Darrin’s post about GTAIV’s “ladies of the night”, I got to thinking. Personally I think that this is going too far. Having sex with a hooker, following her out of the car, and shooting her in the head. It offends the sensibilities, and I’m not ashamed to say I won’t be buying the game.

That’s not to say it’s otherwise not a good game. And this poll is not asking you about whether or not GTAIV is a good game, or whether you enjoy it. I want to know what you think about how it’s pushing the boundaries. For some reason, society thinks that pushing the boundaries is always a good thing, no matter what the boundaries are. Personally I feel that some boundaries are just best left alone.

Vote in the sidebar, as always.

Last Poll’s Results:

What do you think of in-game messaging on the PS3?

* Very important - must have both voice and text.: 62% (269)
* Very important, but just text is good enough.: 14% (61)
* Not important to me.: 13% (56)
* Somewhat important.: 11% (46)

Total Votes : 432

Henning

XPlay Looks at LittleBigPlanet

April 30th, 2008, 1 Comment

Henning

Burnout Paradise PS3 Owners get Cool Feature

April 30th, 2008, 2 Comments

Now this is what I like to see. Developers are using the PS3’s unique abilities to do unique things with the PS3. Has your memory card slot gone unused? Soon you can use it to bring Burnout Paradise savegames to your computer and upload it to criteriongames.com where it will be analyzed and you can see all the stuff you’re missing!

PS3 players with the recently-released Bogart software update will be able to import their save game via USB drive or Memory Stick and analyse it on criteriongames.com!

Based on that, we create an interactive map that allows you to view the location of all incomplete discoverables. That includes Jumps, Smashes, Billboards, Junkyards, Body Shops, Paint Shops, Gas Stations and Car Parks.

Our technicians are just putting the final touches to this feature – we expect it to go live imminently!

Cool stuff.

PS3 Paradise players get all the love!

Gary

GTA IV Early Impressions

April 30th, 2008, 8 Comments

Yesterday saw the release of arguably the biggest name to hit this gen to date: Grand Theft Auto IV. Unlike a lot of people, I didn’t go to any midnight launches to guarantee I got a copy ASAP, although it had crossed my mind. Instead, I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk which was selling it for […]

Darrin

GTA4: Ladies of the Night

April 28th, 2008, 6 Comments

With all the controversy surrounding previous GTA games along with Bully and Manhunt, I was expecting the devs to cool it this time and keep a low profile. I was wrong.
This video is not safe for work at all. Higher res version here.

I have to admit, this game looks like a ton of […]

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