I downloaded and played through (a couple times) the Killzone 2 demo last week and I’m still left with this overriding impression: “That’s it?”
That’s not to say that the game doesn’t have some potential, but just that the demo really doesn’t do a great job of showing it off. Sure, it looks pretty, but it didn’t really blow me away as significantly better than, say, something like Call of Duty: World at War (which I just finished playing on the PS3 as well). To be honest, it really doesn’t play much differently than Call of Duty: World at War either (you seemingly walk slower and a bit more “loosely”, and they switched a couple buttons around like the zoom in and grenades, but most of the other controls are the same).
And with such a short demo (it probably takes a maximum of 15 minutes to play… which is about how long it took me to get through it the first time after spending several minutes trying to figure out what “bridge” I was supposed to blow up and what “elevator” I was trying to get to), there’s just not much to sell me on why I should buy Killzone 2 if I’ve already played Call of Duty or other recent first person shooters (or why I should buy Killzone 2 over Call of Duty if I haven’t played either of them).
In order to play the Killzone 2 demo I had to pre-order the game from Gamestop, but playing the demo was actually making me question whether it was still worth getting the rest of the game at the full $60 price. Based on my skimming of some reviews, it sounds like the multiplayer is where the game really excels. If that’s really the case, Sony really should’ve included some multiplayer or even made it the focus of the Killzone 2 demo, because I think they’re ill-served by the one currently out there. I actually think the game will probably turn out better than the demo, but the fact that the demo is a Gamestop exclusive right now is probably a good thing for Sony, as I’m honestly not sure how many people this demo would sell on the game who weren’t already almost definitely buying the game (and yeah, that includes the priceless fanboys who will love the game no matter what and are actually upset with Adam Sessler’s 5/5 review of the game. Wait until they see Edge’s review!)
I may be the only person on the planet who feels this way, but I have absolutely zero interest in historical Fallout scenarios. I’m mildly curious about the backstory to the game, but it’s really only of interest to me insofar as it explains why the world of Fallout 3 is the way it is. Reliving Operation Anchorage? Meh.
I’ve noticed I have this attitude with respect to movies as well, and it might be tied to the fact that past events have already played out - the player (or reader or watcher) can’t get any really new information out of them that isn’t already reflected in something they’ve already played (or read or watched). There’s a certain artistic technique to being able to flesh out backstory while avoiding continuity errors, but I’m not particularly interested in the details. Once you know that Darth Vader is Luke’s traitorous Jedi father, do you really have to see him act out the specifics?
I’m much more interested to see what happens next.
I’m going to be in Steamboat Springs and Australia starting at the end of the week, so I’m getting all of the game of the year nonsense out of the way before I go. I’ve always found the idea of anointing one game “the best” of its peers to be subjectively absurd at best and downright flamebait at worst. So why am I doing it? It’s entertaining and I think it’s worthy of debate, if not resolution.
So herewith, my games of the year, for each console which I own.
Everyone seems to hate 3D Sonic game, and honestly, I’m not really sure why. I loved Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast - although it seems like I’m the only one who did.
Honestly, the 2D games have been an extremely mixed bag for me. The problem with them is that they trade speed for control; as a result, you fly past meticulously created levels so quickly that you have no idea what’s going on, and are challenged mainly to hit buttons reflexively in time to avoid hitting spikes/animals/miscellaneous obstacles. This is the worst sort of Panzer Dragoon-ism, and it surprises me that so many people are so nostalgic for it. Should you dare to slow down enough to locate hidden secrets or examine the landscape, you’ve often inadvertently killed yourself, because speed is so essential to survival. I often felt cheated by the original games for this reason - they were playing me instead of the reverse.
The 3D games dealt with this by making the fastest parts of the game as stylish as possible: Sonic Adventure kept the on-rails theme but focused on making them highly cinematic (think the Whale sequence on the boardwalk at the beginning of the game). Sure, you might not have as much control as in a platformer, but at least you were getting a great experience out of it.
It seems likely that people don’t like the new games because they’re not like the old games, and I think Fallout 3 has shown that that’s simply not a fair criticism. Modifications on a theme are just as valid as slavish recreations.
I picked up LittleBigPlanet the Saturday before its “official” release date when Gamestop got their copies in early. I played it a bit for a few days, but because the servers had not been brought online and were having problems, the deluge of other games, and my travel, I decided I’d give it a little break.
I fired it up again last night, though, hoping to finally see what people had produced to see if there was any user content that was more than just a gimmicky diversion, but unfortunately the servers still seemed to be down. I was limited to the (admittedly pretty good) single player content. Is anyone else still having problems with the LBP servers, or is something wrong with my game/PS3 or whatever. For the record, the PSN store works just fine for me.
*Update* - Online finally worked for me last night. I was able to try out a smattering of levels… a lot of them just seemed to be people finding creative ways to play video game music they liked. There was 1 level I played that I actually really liked and gave 4 stars to… the others… nothing that great yet. I don’t really like the system for finding levels… You can search for adjectives of levels, but you can’t search for just the top rated levels, which seems to me like a bit of an oversight.
I took a trip to Blockbuster tonight to return Lego Batman (which I do NOT recommend, but that’s for another post) and to see if they had Silent Hill: Homecoming available to rent. I took a brief look around the store and didn’t see a case for it, so I asked an employee if they had it. She checked a few places but then concluded that they did not. Not just that they didn’t have it in stock, but they actually didn’t carry it.
I was disappointed, but figured maybe the nearby, larger blockbuster carried it. They called and it was the same story: they didn’t carry it. I thought it was rather strange since the game has been out about a week now and is somewhat of a moderately hyped game in a long-running series, so after getting in my car I called one more nearby blockbuster to see if they had it. The guy I spoke to knew exactly what game I was talking about as soon as I mentioned it and was actually quite enthusiastic about it, but then went on to say that he was disappointed that, for some reason, they just didn’t get any copies from the publisher.
Chris Kohler asks the excellent question apropos of the recent Xbox 360 price drop. He makes the valid point that the console wars are effectively over; Nintendo has won this generation, and neither Microsoft nor Sony are going to reach the position that the PS2 managed to hit in the previous one. So what is Microsoft doing?
I think that Kohler is largely right in his analysis. But you need to consider that that Microsoft isn’t really strictly competing with Sony any longer for the core gamer set: there are outliers, but many gamers have chosen to purchase one or both of the systems at this point. Both Sony and MS, then, are trying to figure out how to get those remaining holdouts to take a chance on the console they didn’t purchase… and since the feature sets are set at this point, price is basically the only lever they have to pull. That’s why Microsoft has dropped its pricing for the holidays - not to get people to purchase a 360 instead of a PS3 per se (although I’m sure there are some people who haven’t gotten either yet), but to get people to buy a 360 in addition to the PS3 they’ve already got at home.
By the way, I’m guessing that with respect to those who haven’t gotten any console yet, I’m guessing a Blu-Ray player isn’t a particularly compelling feature. Either they’re just unimpressed with either console’s line-up (which I suspect isn’t too likely at this point, even if they’re only passingly familiar with gaming), or they’re just very frugal - and are thus unlikely to have the higher-end hardware required to take full advantage of Blu-Ray in the first place. So the price drop seems pretty smart to me… Sony’s already lost a ton of money on the PS3 and probably isn’t too interested in losing more in the short term, and thus probably won’t respond too aggressively to the move. Microsoft can take advantage of that fact.
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.
