Blackthorn
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- Joined
- Jan 11, 2008
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Got to play/watch more games than I'll play this year, thought I'd write up my impressions on each of the important ones.
Left4Dead: Incredible. Didn't get to play because of the enourmous queue that only ever increased as the day went on, but I was glued to watching for the majority of my time at the expo. By far my personal game of the show, and from what I saw everyone else felt the same way. Before the show only 2 people out of the people I went with wanted to buy the game, by the end there wasn't a single naysayer. Seeing it in action, with all the yelling and screaming from those watching and playing showed that Valve simply can't help from striking gold.
Fallout 3: Before the event I didn't know if I wanted to take the console route or the PC route for this game. After the event, I had my answer. The console version is a very, very ugly game, far below what I expected from a modern game and from Bethesda. This is mainly down to extreme aliasing that had me doubting whether it was running at 720p, and blurry textures I thought no longer existed in this generation. Looks aside, everything else I found immensely enjoyable, and my worries that VATS wouldn't work have been settled. I found myself mixing VATS and real time combat on the fly, each suited for different situations. Both work well, except on mutant dogs which don't seem to be killed by anything. Only spent my time messing around with the combat, so can't comment on the story side, though my friend went right into the story route and he had to complaints. And there's a two headed cow.
Mirror's Edge: Somehow this manages to work, but takes a hell of a lot of getting used to. Proper platforming in first person is a new and strange feeling, and I found myself wishing fairly often that I was seeing things in third person. The demo at the show is the short roof piece with the helicoptor finish we've seen in the gameplay videos, so there wasn't much new. So far seems very linear, but also hard to master. There's a real feeling of weight and momentum to your character that makes a huge difference to how you play. I'm wasn't blown away, but I wasn't disappointed.
Killzone 2: Didn't get a chance to play myself but HOLY BALLS this game is pretty. I'm talking photo-realistic pretty. I had no idea the PS3 was capable of such things, but I sure hope more developers try and squeeze the same amount of visual quality out of it. I don't know if it's doing anything new, I don't know if it's fun, I don't even know if it's at all playable, but my God it's gorgeous. Other than that, I've nothing else to say.
Prince of Persia: Last game I played and my surprise runner-up for my game of the show. By far the most visually creative game on display, the painted art style is beautiful most the time and breathtaking at the rest. The platforming is a perfect middle-ground between the skill of the old Prince of Persia games and the fluidity of Assassin's Creed. The combat took a while to get used to, and I found it very challenging and at times clunky, but it does feel as if it will be rewarding to master. Has shot right up my list for my wanted games. One complaint is in the voice of the Prince himself, which already started to annoy me in the short amount of time I played.
Resident Evil 5: Play Resident Evil 4 and imagine it looks incredible and is slightly easier to control and you get the idea. Even the animations when you shoot enemies remain unchanged. Luckily, this isn't a bad thing since 4 was one of my top games of the last generation and I felt right at home back playing 5. Got my heart pounding like no other game at the show did, and the relentless brightness of the Africa setting is definitely scarier than the gloomy villages of 4. The co-op mode is bound to eat up hours of my time, and makes me wish it was a feature they'd included previously.
Left4Dead: Incredible. Didn't get to play because of the enourmous queue that only ever increased as the day went on, but I was glued to watching for the majority of my time at the expo. By far my personal game of the show, and from what I saw everyone else felt the same way. Before the show only 2 people out of the people I went with wanted to buy the game, by the end there wasn't a single naysayer. Seeing it in action, with all the yelling and screaming from those watching and playing showed that Valve simply can't help from striking gold.
Fallout 3: Before the event I didn't know if I wanted to take the console route or the PC route for this game. After the event, I had my answer. The console version is a very, very ugly game, far below what I expected from a modern game and from Bethesda. This is mainly down to extreme aliasing that had me doubting whether it was running at 720p, and blurry textures I thought no longer existed in this generation. Looks aside, everything else I found immensely enjoyable, and my worries that VATS wouldn't work have been settled. I found myself mixing VATS and real time combat on the fly, each suited for different situations. Both work well, except on mutant dogs which don't seem to be killed by anything. Only spent my time messing around with the combat, so can't comment on the story side, though my friend went right into the story route and he had to complaints. And there's a two headed cow.
Mirror's Edge: Somehow this manages to work, but takes a hell of a lot of getting used to. Proper platforming in first person is a new and strange feeling, and I found myself wishing fairly often that I was seeing things in third person. The demo at the show is the short roof piece with the helicoptor finish we've seen in the gameplay videos, so there wasn't much new. So far seems very linear, but also hard to master. There's a real feeling of weight and momentum to your character that makes a huge difference to how you play. I'm wasn't blown away, but I wasn't disappointed.
Killzone 2: Didn't get a chance to play myself but HOLY BALLS this game is pretty. I'm talking photo-realistic pretty. I had no idea the PS3 was capable of such things, but I sure hope more developers try and squeeze the same amount of visual quality out of it. I don't know if it's doing anything new, I don't know if it's fun, I don't even know if it's at all playable, but my God it's gorgeous. Other than that, I've nothing else to say.
Prince of Persia: Last game I played and my surprise runner-up for my game of the show. By far the most visually creative game on display, the painted art style is beautiful most the time and breathtaking at the rest. The platforming is a perfect middle-ground between the skill of the old Prince of Persia games and the fluidity of Assassin's Creed. The combat took a while to get used to, and I found it very challenging and at times clunky, but it does feel as if it will be rewarding to master. Has shot right up my list for my wanted games. One complaint is in the voice of the Prince himself, which already started to annoy me in the short amount of time I played.
Resident Evil 5: Play Resident Evil 4 and imagine it looks incredible and is slightly easier to control and you get the idea. Even the animations when you shoot enemies remain unchanged. Luckily, this isn't a bad thing since 4 was one of my top games of the last generation and I felt right at home back playing 5. Got my heart pounding like no other game at the show did, and the relentless brightness of the Africa setting is definitely scarier than the gloomy villages of 4. The co-op mode is bound to eat up hours of my time, and makes me wish it was a feature they'd included previously.
