I have to say that if the game is as good as this trailer is beautiful, Ubisoft has a big winner on its hands. The inclusion of a Sigur Rós song for this trailer was a good choice, although their music always has such a powerful meloncholic affect on me. I wonder if the game will actually evoke this same mood. Hopefully, the trailer is not deceptive in this sense, but the artistic style is certainly appropriate for it.
You’ve probably heard by now that one of Sony’s biggest theoretical exclusives, Final Fantasy XIII, is coming to the 360. To be honest, even before I owned a PS3, this was never a huge concern of mine. To begin with, I knew the game was basically never coming out. And as much as I liked Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, I never really got too into any of the other ones (got close to the end in VIII, barely started IX, played a little bit of X… X-2 and XII are on my shelf unplayed).
But, yeah… I know there are a lot of Final Fantasy fans out there and this will make probably half of them ecstatic, a quarter furious, and a quarter who don’t care. Either way, this is, at the very least, a major psychological blow to Sony and a big coup for Microsoft. A friend of mine was literally trying to sell his 360 to pick up a PS3 MGS4 package because he figured he could play MGS4 and (what he most wanted) Final Fantasy XIII whenever it finally came out. Based on this news, that is no longer going to happen and he is keeping his 360.
As much as I liked some of the later MM games, I always felt like Mega Man 3 was the pinnacle of the genre, and so I’m glad to see that Capcom’s ninth entry in the series looks like it’s getting back to its 8-bit roots. Three cheers for Dr. Wiley, Dr. Light, and the classic style I remember so fondly. Hope it’s good.
Well, I picked up what’s apparently the new best game ever and while I’m actually quite enjoying it, I’m a little confused as to why I need to do another 3 minute install after the first act. Yes… after the initial 8 minute install before you play the game, there’s another 3 minute install after the first act, and (I’m assuming) after every act. I suppose this is good space conservation for those that don’t end up completing the game, but rather than make people pause for several minutes after each act, couldn’t they have just installed the whole thing to begin with? I mean, after watching a pretty cool scene, I kind of want to see what comes next, not sit and watch Snake smoke for 3 minutes. (By the way, does smoking in a videogame automatically guarantee an “M” rating as it does with movies and “R” ratings?)
Call of Duty 5 details have come out, and it looks like we’re returning to World War II. This has of course prompted a whole host of complaints from sites like Destructoid, who argue that WW2 is played out and that we should be looking at other conflicts for inspiration. I’d agree that there are plenty of games like this out there, but this complaint strikes me as largely unfounded.
First off, why are there so many WW2 games? For one, it’s because the war was one of the few with undeniably, unambiguously ”good” and “bad” guys. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone - Pat Buchanan aside - willing to argue that this wasn’t a “good war.” As a result, you can mow down hordes of other human beings without feeling too terrible about yourself. And you get a nice warm glow inside when you accomplish your objectives. Second, it’s epic: there just aren’t any other wars out there in the modern era with the same kind of epic scope and scale that World War 2 has… even WW1 was relatively uninteresting trench warfare for a significant portion of its duration. As a result, there is a lot of ground to mine. Third, it’s got neat gadgets. WW2 was where many of the tools of modern warfare, like the tank and air combat, first came into their own. Therefore, designers can make a fairly diverse and interesting experience out of combat. And finally, it’s got a happy ending: the right people won. Good gameplay scenarios in an epic battle between good and evil: sounds like it should get a lot of attention.
Additionally, there just aren’t that many other attractive scenarios. The most obvious US battles of the last 150 years or so would probably include the US Civil War, World War I, Korea, and Vietnam. Yet the first has quite a few games of its own. And the latter three just aren’t very inspiring: Korea had an ambiguous outcome, and it’s not nearly as widely known as most other fights. And Vietnam is such a cultural touchstone, with so many political connotations, that it’s tough to come up with a real game that isn’t also a political statement.
Also consider the fact that even now, companies are able to advance the WW2 game in any number of ways - from CoD’s original European-focused titles, to RTS’s like Close Combat and Company of Heroes, there are plenty of recent games that do more than simply parrot their forebearers. If the genre is stagnant, let’s hear complaints. But “no more WW2″ is reflexively negative without due reason.
And lastly, it would be remiss to note that the Pacific theater is one that hasn’t been touched on in nearly the same detail as Europe. The fact that CoD 5 is targeting this area seems like a great reason to consider it optimistically. The CoD series hasn’t let us down yet.
If you thought the GTA IV Hyperbole was great, you haven’t seen anything yet. Now that it’s been about a month since GTA IV’s release, we can safely put that game in the rear view mirror. The hot new ticket is here in the form of Metal Gear Solid 4. Are you ready to be blown away?
First out of the gate, and therefore the most important review ever, is this leaked Gamepro review that says “It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest games of all time” as it awards it a 5/5. It also says, “This is videogame storytelling at its absolute best, and represents a new high watermark for the craft, easily surpassing the superb BioShock and the subversive Grand Theft Auto IV.” It must be those feature-length movies that really must represent the great advance in “interactive” storytelling.
Some guy with far too much time on his hands has apparently matched up photos of New York with screenshots of Liberty City. Behold the power of unemployment.
Also, some dating advice that applies to the real world.
Destructoid points to a Eurogamer analysis that somehow determines that GTA IV runs at roughly 33 FPS on the XBox 360 and 28 FPS on the PS3. Like Destructoid, I don’t see this making much, if any, appreciable difference to the experience. Despite this difference, as well as the PS3’s slightly worse resolution, most people who have played both versions seem to think that the PS3 looks slightly better than the 360 version due to some extra filtering that’s done on the PS3 version. My guess is that this extra filtering can be done on the PS3 because of it’s extra CPU power. With this new information, though, the strategy for successfully creating apparent visual parity between the 360 and PS3 versions of the game becomes apparent:
Perhaps the most critical review of GTA I’ve yet seen, courtesy of Dubious Quality. I’m not nearly as critical of the game as he is, but I think he (and to a certain extent Penny Arcade) have hit on a major reason that I think the 100%ers are nuts. Basically, this Kotaku post summarizes the issue well: when the top non-violent things to do in your game include listening to the radio, meeting strangers, and driving around, you have a problem. In short, Rockstar has painstakingly modeled the minutiae of New York without asking whether those minutiae are fun.
Take, for example, the carwash. Authentic? Sure, but who enjoys going to a carwash? After I finished the mission requiring its use, I found myself asking if I’d ever use it again. The answer was a definite no - cars are plentiful in the game and I tend to destroy mine pretty easily. If the carwash isn’t enjoyable, why bother? I see similar problems with additions like the strip club, restaurants, and subway. Yet at the same time, the violent aspects of the game have almost been toned down - you can’t rampage without serious police problems, nor is there gameplay-related customization like in Crackdown. And for me, there’s the rub. The city simulation is academically interesting but not compelling, whereas the violence is intriguing but circumscribed.
If you think I hate GTA, you’re wrong. The mission and plot are definitely holding my attention, and they’ll keep me playing through most, if not all, of the game. But I don’t see me playing it compulsively. After all, I don’t need a simulation of life. For that, I just turn off the game.
That’s what IGN says about GTA4. Alright Rockstar, you’ve gotten my attention. Will it live up to the hype? I guess the rest of the world will find out next Tuesday.
