Reviewed on XBLA. Also on Nintendo 64. Developed by Rare (360 version by 4J). Published by Microsoft (360), Rare (N64)
Once apon a time, Rare was one of the top five developers in the world. It’s slate of hit titles for the Nintendo 64 eclipsed Nintendo’s own output. They were also prolific, Their last unequivocal and bona fide big selling classic was 2000′s Perfect Dark. The follow-up to the system selling Goldeneye, but without the expensive James Bond licence, PD introduced the world to Joanna Dark, some choice bad Sean Connery impersonations and a Yoda-sound alike Grey named after a Cheeseburger fetishist.
So it was Goldeneye without Bond or a framerate. It sold well back in the day, enough for Joanna to get a prequel for Xbox 360′s launch, the abominable Perfect Dark Zero, so named because that’s the Metacritic the team was aiming for judging by the released game.
Nearly 10 years after the original release on N64, Perfect Dark is back, ported to the Xbox 360 at 60 frames per second with upgraded texture and sound work (somewhat upgraded anyway), Xbox live support and lofty expectations.
It’s like stepping back in time, but no more so that Duke Nukem 3D. So in a good way.
You play as a Joanna Dark, an agent for the Connery Carrington Institute. Through a number of missions, starting off as simple spy antics, but eventually moving towards more overt science fiction trappings towards the end. You can shoot guns as per any shooter, of course, but you also have a few gadgets thrown in to help with some missions, none of which make a huge difference as they are for very specific locations from a time before context-sensitive actions became commonplace (which, funnily enough turned up in Rare’s next and final N64 games, Conker’s Bad Fur Day).
As a port, it retains the weird AI, the dodgy animation (to modern eyes but not obviously the eyes of Rare circa 2005), the dated level layout, lack of hints and /or feedback, no checkpoints, etc. But also, it has retained the greatness and gained a steady framerate along with its slightly updated texture work.
Multiplayer is much the same with two important additions. It finally runs at a framerate faster than a Power Point presentation and has online play. I can’t vouch for the online portion but I did play a few rounds of split screen with some friends- mainly to kill a certain cab-stealing Englishman. It’s fun in a retro sort of way. But that IS the point.
So it’s silly to complain about the limitations of a game made for the N64. The upgrades have only helped the game but it has to be played in context of what it is, not compared against a modern game like a MW2 or Crysis. The 4J crew have done a nice job in breathing life into something Rare killed in 2005. The reanimated corpse of Joanna Dark is alive and she’s pissed.
A few weeks back, Mrs Controller1 wanted to play Flower so we bought it off PSN and 2 hours later we played it. I don’t have the remotest idea what it is you do with this six-axis controlled relax-o-tron. You wave the controller around in the same way people move controllers in TV advertisements and things light up. It’s a game in a way that games normally aren’t. My wife, who never plays games, played this for three hours straight. Three hours.
Perfect Dark, back in the last days of the N64 as a viable system was a great game hamstrung by ambition on a system that couldn’t handle Rare’s last great game. 10 years later, it’s been ported to the 360 and the results are positive. It’s a relic of a bygone age but still fun to play despite the advances of the intervening years.
Boom Blox Bash Party is the sequel to a game no one played which was a pity since BB was quite a fun diversion. BBBP builds on the original and I, with two friends, spent a good few hours playing this recently. Alls I can say is, the puck levels suck, but the rest was a great way to pass time and grief people at the same time. You can smack talk in any game these days. I remember played Tetris once and getting called a n00b for using the long block. Tetraminos, bitch!
Of course, I am looooving Bad Company 2 despite it’s server issues. DICE have a game that offers the intensity of old Battlefield games, and trumps Call of Duty and is a hell of a lot of fun to boot. You can play as an infantryman and not have your game ruined by guys camping for choppers and tanks. Snipers are the bane at the moment. In a game where objectives are the order of the day, having snipers just sit back and pick off the enemy doesn’t mean victory. for the sniper’s team. EA have been slowly patching the game to improve it but by slowly, I mean 1000 times faster than Infinity Ward and Activision. There’s a single player mode in there at some point but, pffft.
I picked up some cheap games on Steam and Just Cause (the original was one of them). The sequel’s been getting some good pre-release buzz so I though the price was right. I guess my original dismissal of the 360 demo a few years back was correct. It is shash. Best avoided like a DoA Cosplay event at a Weight Watchers event.
Batman: Arkham Asylum was also purchased and installed and apart form the cool intro, I haven’t played it much. It looks so cool but I am seriously regretting not getting a console version. It’s just not the sort of game I like playing on a PC. This is one seriously well put together game. I just need to get around to playing it.
Next up; Bioshock 2 and maybe, just maybe, God of War III.
Lisvender’s Retro Review: Blood Omen Legacy of Kain
I often criticize games for having immature stories, but here’s one whose tale is quite impressive. Brought to you by the heel-draggers at Silicon Knights and their leader, “Mr. Reciprocity” himself, Denis Dyack, Legacy of Kain is a competent Zelda-like from the Playstation 1 era. Few games feature this level of atmosphere, with moody music, punchy sound effects, phenomenal voice acting, and a grim but engrossing tale. Unfortunately, few games also contain this much loading time. The story makes the game worth playing, but the technical flaws simply can’t be overlooked, even by the standards of its day.
The dark fantasy world of Nosgoth is in sorry shape. The Circle of Nine, the keepers of order in the land, are succumbing to a slow insanity. Vampires and bandits scour the countryside. The armies of a neighboring kingdom are planning an invasion, and Kain, a nobleman who was just out for a drink, is accosted and murdered by thugs for no apparent reason. Seems like everything’s going wrong, but then Kain is granted a boon in the afterlife: an offer to escape death and take revenge on his killers by becoming a vampire. He leaps at this chance, but he soon regrets it, and he begins a quest to cure himself and the world by restoring the Nine Pillars of Nosgoth.
I know what you’re thinking: more vampires, huh? Don’t worry, the toothy ones in Blood Omen aren’t the whiny, beautiful, effeminate things you’d see in a Stephenie Meier novel; they are angry, monstrous hedonists who see human beings as little more than livestock. A major thread of the game’s story involves Kain’s slow acceptance, and eventual appreciation, of his undead powers.
Kain is just an intensely likable character. He will encounter mad magicians, plague-ridden lepers, and armies of hellspawn, but his attitude is all a smooth and cynical charm that actually fits, and doesn’t come off as inappropriate or awkward. Kain will comment on every item he receives, every landmark he sees, and every boss he faces, but it never gets annoying: each bit of speech is a poetic, perfectly-delivered delight. Simon Templeman, who voices Kain, puts just the right spin on his lines, and he turns out quite the droll demon.
Kain will travel all across Nosgoth, dueling with soldiers and town guards, feeding on people to restore his health, collecting weapons and armor, learning magic spells, and exploring towns and caves. The game is played from a 2D, overhead view, and it feels very much like Zelda, but with an emphasis on combat. Most of the items and spells in the game function as offensive projectiles.
The sword-swinging action is fast and fun, and it features a difference from most action-adventure games: when an enemy is one hit away from death, it enters a “waver state.” In other words, it gets dizzy. Press Circle while the enemy’s wavering, and Kain will feed on it, causing its blood to fly straight out of its body and into Kain’s mouth. This is one of the few ways that Kain can heal himself, so you mustn’t attack too wildly, or you’ll kill your foes before you can feed on them. Some of the weapons and armor you’ll find have unique qualities that will affect your feeding strategy: the Spiked Mace doesn’t damage enemies much but it dizzies them quickly, the Flame Sword is a mighty weapon but it burns enemies up and leaves nothing to feed on, and the Flesh Armor draws blood into Kain’s body automatically as you fight, so you don’t have to feed manually. The downside of the Flesh Armor is that some enemies have green or black blood, which is poisonous and deadly to Kain, so you’ll want to change clothes while fighting these guys so you won’t ingest any of that junk.
Kain can also change forms, as most vampires do, to solve puzzles or to facilitate travel. He can turn into a cloud of bats and zip to major landmarks scattered across the world. He can change into a wolf, a speedy form that can leap pits. He can melt into a mist form, which protects him from physical damage and allows him to walk on water. He can also take on the appearance of a living person, which helps him to blend into society and chat with the townsfolk. The numbnuts of Nosgoth rarely have anything helpful or even intelligent to say, though, so the real purpose of the living guise is to avoid the attention of town guards, who attack vampires on sight.
As a game released in 1996, Blood Omen has a curiously cheap look. It was that interesting time when pre-rendered sprites were considered cutting-edge, and motion-capture technology wasn’t yet common. The in-game action doesn’t look so bad, as it’s viewed from a considerable distance, but the CGI videos are nigh laughable, with stiff, doll-like characters reciting deep and dark dialogue. It’s good to remember, though, that Blood Omen’s only real competitor at the time was the 16-bit Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. A visual comparison between the two is completely unfair.
On the other hand, it must be said that Zelda has the upper hand in the technical department. Blood Omen may have a terrific story, fun action, and a big world to explore, but its flaws hang continuously over all these good qualities. They cast a shadow over the entire experience.
The loading times in Blood Omen are completely out of control. Moving from one area to another, which is a breeze in any given Zelda game, requires several painful seconds of loading in Blood Omen. The music cuts out, a big red “LOADING” box appears in the center of the screen, and that delicate atmosphere the game has worked so hard to wrap you in just evaporates. It’s worse than the surprise load times in the Half-Life games. The poor designs of some of the levels don’t help matters. Sometimes Kain will enter a new area and be greeted by an enemy projectile. If you don’t react immediately, the attack will shove Kain backward into the previous screen, forcing you to endure two more load times just to get back to where you were.
That’s not the worst part of it, either. The worst part, the truly, completely, all-encompassingly worst part is that the game loads every time you pause and resume it. Given that pausing is the only way to change Kain’s equipment and set up which items and spells he can use, these load times are absolutely exasperating. In my recent playthrough, I often encountered monsters whom I knew were resistant to the weapon I was equipped with, but I refused to switch up because I knew how long the loading would take. The game’s load times actually pushed me into a strategic malaise! Fighting the monsters with a weak weapon was more convenient than equipping a better one!
Remember the Water Temple in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time? Remember how irritating it was to have to go to the Equipment Screen to change boots every few seconds? Well, imagine what traversing that temple would be like if you added five seconds of waiting to every press of the Start button. It’s not a pretty picture, but that’s exactly what playing Blood Omen Legacy of Kain is like.
Blood Omen is now available through the Playstation Store. You download the entire game to your Playstation 3 hard drive. I downloaded it because I enjoyed the game when it first came out, and I expected that playing it from a hard drive would mean that the loading would be reduced. Well, here it is, free from the sluggish form of the CD, and yet its load times are no shorter than they were fourteen years ago. Now, I’ve always thought that installing games from an optical disc to a hard drive was done to reduce load times during play. Have I been lied to for all these years? Was I just wrong about that? Or is the PS3’s emulator just deliberately including all those excruciating seconds of waiting because Sony thought it would complete the nostalgic picture?
If you can stomach the ubiquitous loading, you’ll find a great game in Blood Omen Legacy of Kain. That’s probably the most tragic thing about it: that few people will have the patience to see its excellent scenario through to the end. If the game had reached more people, maybe Silicon Knights wouldn’t have sold the rights to the IP to Eidos, who then turned the series into a buffet of blandness. If the game had reached more people, maybe Mr. Dyack would have spent more time conceiving good action-adventure games, and not wasting it on the ridiculous Too Human.
The opportunity, now, is gone. Thanks to the efforts of today’s largest game companies, the world may never know what will happen if the great and serious story of Blood Omen was married to decent technology. If there’s anyone who can do it now, it’s Goichi Suda, a.k.a. SUDA51, the guy who made No More Heroes and Killer7. That’s material for another review, though…maybe my next one!
Controller1.com rating: 1/3 (2/3 for the very patient)
You know those news stories where an ageing actor is pull over by the cops and is incoherent and rambling like a loon? Well that’s this podcats. Tech failures is nominally the topic but some idiot mentions Crackdown 2 in Cam’s presence and all of the air is suddenly sucked out of the room, inducing a light headed state.
Double Review by LisVender: Infamous and Uncharted 2
They didn’t save the Playstation 3, but they may have saved 3D platformers. These two PS3 exclusives are the descendants of Tomb Raider, Super Mario 64, Contra, and Jak & Daxter. They’ve gathered some of the best elements of today’s games and compressed them into a couple of action-packed packages. They may not have the sunny skies and colorful creatures that you’d see in a 8- or 16-bit platformer, but I can put up with that.
I can also accept that these two games are aimed chiefly at adolescents. Aside from their violence, there’s little to these games that could be called “mature.” They don’t have the dank, secret-filled storyline of Silent Hill 2. They don’t have the devilish wit and detailed world of Grand Theft Auto IV. They don’t have the ballsy, mind-bending design of Killer7. What they have is fast-paced action, slick, responsive controls, gorgeous graphics, and high adventure. They are the descendants of the side-scroller.
Nathan Drake and Cole MacGrath a just a couple of regular dudes who wind up in whole heaps of trouble. Regular, that is, except for the incredible gymnastic skills. These guys are dexterous parkour masters, capable of climbing a thirty-foot street sign, jumping off from it, twisting in midair, and grabbing the edge of a nearby building with one hand. Then, while hanging with that one hand, they can shoot bad guys with the other. Drake can even reload a pistol with one hand! You can’t believe what the backs of the boxes tell you. These dudes are superheroes.
Cole is especially super, as the explosion that rocks his world and turns it into a gangsta’s paradise has left him with the power to control electricity. Before long, he becomes a tool of the government, performing search and destroy missions and generally wiping out evil wherever it roams. Occasionally he’ll jump into a sewer to find a power station that will grant him new abilities. Some of these powers function similarly to weapons in more traditional shooters, but they all have unique twists and applications which make them fun to use. You can also enhance these powers by spending experience points in the pause menu.
Drake doesn’t have electrical super powers, but he’s a hell of gunfighter. His globe-trotting search for the life-giving resin of Shangri-la will see him mow down armies of men with pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. Every once in a while, he’ll have to stop and figure out a simple puzzle, or otherwise cross a series of precarious platforms.
These scenes can be a bit frustrating because the shooting action is so good. The lion’s share of Uncharted 2 and Infamous is spent blowing away bad guys. The games play pretty much alike, with their unique systems for climbing, regenerating health, and taking cover. The only major difference between the two is that Cole cannot blind-fire, which can be frustrating when there are several enemies ahead of you. Drake can blind-fire with the best of them, though, and he can do it quite accurately.
As these two wingfooted heroes are such skilled climbers, the firefights feel more loose and free than in other third-person shooters like Gears of War, which keep your characters anchored to the ground. If you don’t want to simply hide behind cover, you can climb all over the environment and rain hell down on your enemies from whatever angle you wish. There are a couple of scenes in Uncharted 2 that force you to do this.
One of the best sequences in Uncharted 2 involves stowing away on a train. Drake must make his way across several cars in order to save a captured friend, and each car offers a unique shooting or platforming challenge. You’ll have hide from helicopter fire, sneak up on enemy patrols, dodge oncoming signs and lights that can shove you off of the cars, and engage in fisticuffs with an angry mercenary captain. Sometimes you are only provided with one way to take out enemies, but in other situations, you are free to take out your enemies how you like, either in a sneaky manner or with guns blazing. I usually ignore the stealthy route when games offer me such a choice, but the stealth kills in Uncharted 2 are easy to pull off, and they’re quite satisfying. Softening up an enemy patrol with careful sneak attacks will also save you some headaches once the shooting starts.
Infamous doesn’t provide stealth attacks, but Cole’s battle options are nevertheless varied, as he gets to use all of his powers at all times. He doesn’t have to wait for the game to throw him a Dragon Sniper before he can snipe anyone. Cole can throw explosive shock grenades, shove enemies into the air with a shockwave, and use a long-range precision attack for headshots. Mixing these moves together creatively can be tons of fun. They use energy from Cole’s battery cores, but you can refill them by holding L2 while standing near electrical objects, meaning cars, streetlights, transformers, and rooftop vents. It’s reminiscent of the water pump in Super Mario Sunshine.
The major difference between the two games is that Uncharted 2 is linear while Infamous is open-world. Drake may be a veteran explorer, but his games don’t really let him do a lot of exploring. It’s a constant push, push, push toward the next action scene. It’s hard to complain, though, when the set pieces are so detailed and exciting. Infamous may have a big environment to play in, but many of its side missions are clones of each other, and there isn’t much variety in the settings. It’s a weird trade-off. When you’re stuck in a shootout with the baddies, though, you won’t much think about these things.
Though I can only recommend these games to anyone who relishes action and adventure, neither one is quite perfect. Infamous has a pretty weak story, and it’s poorly presented. Major plot events are shown using sliding, ink-splattered images with no dialogue but the constant narration from Cole. In the the age following Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4, this isn’t good enough. The characters are pretty bland and unlikeable as well. The actor who plays Cole seems to have attended the Christian Bale/David Hayter School of Acting, and he sounds like a ten-pack-a-day man. His voice is low, and not especially grating to the ear, but he’s clearly forcing his delivery, and that’s annoying in its own way.
Uncharted 2’s story is also nonsense, with its magic resins and monkey monsters, but it’s still a lot more enjoyable than that of Infamous. Each character is voiced with surprising believability, right down to the smallest grunts, and they’re even legitimately funny at times. Drake is a little too glib for a guy who slaughters men by the dozens, though, and I find Chloe’s constant resistance to Drake’s plans to be irritating. Drake pulls off some superhuman feats in this game, some of them right before Chloe’s eyes, and yet she still questions him at every step. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that Naughty Dog’s writers felt the story needed the extra dramatic conflict.
There are also some fundamental flaws with both games. Infamous’s transgression is the greater one, though. The game is set in a gray and dingy city. A city inhabited by insane people. The citizens meander around in the open, and cars roll casually down the roads. Uh, did these people forget about the bloodthirsty gangs prowling the streets? Are their errands so critical that they’re willing to brave a storm of bullets? When one of these pedestrian morons gets shot by a gang member, he falls to the ground writhing, but no one around takes notice. The bystanders just continue walking. They don’t even run. You can use Cole’s Pulse Heal move to somehow shock the slug out of the wounded man, after which he’ll get up, maybe say thanks, and then continue his morning constitutional. It’s baffling.
Now, if Sucker Punch can’t craft an even slightly convincing real-world city, they should have gone with a different setting. Just put Cole in a place with lots of things to climb and enemies to shoot, and get rid of everything else. I can imagine Infamous’s action working very well in a mountain range, or a forest, or even a Metroid-like alien planet. Cole’s already a superhero; why not make him a space traveler? Call him Captain Cole, Capacitor of the Cosmos!
Uncharted 2 has the exotic stages, but their linear, story-entwined nature creates a different problem. The game’s got too many scenes that give you control over Drake when it’s not necessary. They put the brakes on the game and wreck its pace. There’s one segment set in a peaceful mountain village where you don’t do anything but follow a dude from one building to another. Drake can’t run in this area, so you get to gently creep through town, just looking at things. What is the point of this? Why can’t we skip this? It was mildly interesting the first time I played it, but now that I’m on my second go-round, this chapter frays my patience. There are similar scenes at other points in the game, where Drake is just looking for things and conversing with his buddies, and we’re piloting him around, hunting for the trigger that will let us progress. There is no reason for this. Not every game can get away with what Half-Life 2 pulled off. If a level has no risk of death, let us skip it, or turn it into a cutscene.
BUT! None of these problems are serious enough to ruin the big, blasting action of these two games. They are thrilling, they are satisfying, and they are a blast to play, even for a few minutes. I want more games that play like this. I want to run, jump, climb, shoot, and beat up bad guys. That’s what the greatest video games often come down to, and few games do it better than these.
Currently, I’m playing BBC2 on PC (well, a Mac running Win 7 in its spare time) and despite the typical “EA can’t get their server shit together at launch” deal, it’s quite a blast.
I did play the original Bad Company online quite a bit back in 2008 (on PSN/PS3) and has a great time. I actually am a bit dirty having bought the PC version since I was aiming for a console version this time but several of my now former CoD4 colleagues were preordering with the intention of playing the PC versions on our machines at work during our lunch hour. Away I go to pre-order, ignoring the beta, but these two PC diehards hated the beta so much they went to the trouble of getting a refund from Steam.
So I’m playing the PC version, and it’s a great game. It runs well on my machine but I can’t help thinking some of the issues I’ve had with MW2 are just as prevalent here. We have dedicated servers again, something that MW2 proves is a must for PC games (Hell, they really make online console games light up). But the server browser is a tad ungainly with pings not currently showing up (for me at least) nor is there any way to filter by geographic location (if say, you were sick of being stuck with a US host on MW2, you could stick to servers in or near your country). So in the end I use the quick match option and see where I land. It’s literally Russian roulette since the lat few games were on servers in Europe and one was in Montreal. It was hard to tell because the people who did type messages, typed them in perfect English. No writing as if a text message, 1337speak or barely comprehensible babble. It was a bit hit or miss as far as lag goes (the game seems to cover it up quite well most of the time). You can either hit people or you can’t.
The game offers a very intense dynamic but there are a few balance issues (as there is any game of this sort) as is typical with Battlefield games, some people lead charmed lives. Snipers are the bane of the game right now though this is from DICE, who thought Battlefield Vietnam would benefit from a kit that combined a super accurate M60 heavy machine gun with a grenade launcher.
I’ve not had a chance to play much of the single player, but boy does it feel like a slightly above average Medal of Honor game (oe a slightly below average Call of Duty game). Let’s say it’s a dead heat with World at War and be done with it.
If you’re sick of Modern Warfare 2′s quirks but want something similar, I’d recommend this.
For someone who’s not been much of a PC gamer at home, I’m finding the uber cheap (and ultimately devaluing) Steam sales to be a great way to A) Try out games I wouldn’t have taken a punt on and B) giving me something to do at lunch at work. Far Cry 2 a few weeks ago might have been a waste of $10 but undeterred, I picked up Batman Arkham Asylum and Just Cause today. I’ve been seeing a lot about JC2 that makes me curious so I figure the price is right. Batman AA is recognized as one of the last year’s best games so it can’t hurt if I give it a spin. Even if neither game doesn’t gel with me I can’t complain too much.
So Sony and Microsoft. This is directed to you. You both have the infrastructure on your respective online marketplace mechanisms to offer download versions of your games. Sony’s gone quiet here but MS’s Games on Demand is crying out for two things. Sanity in pricing- especially outside of the US, and sales. I’d buy Saint’s Row 2 as a 360 download in a heartbeat if it wasn’t double the price of the disc version. Both the games I just got on Steam would have been a no-brainer to buy on either HD console if the option had been there.
Back to some more BBC2 and hoping Bioshock 2 turns up soon.
Sony’s new PS3 motion controller has been named Sony Move. Coming later in the year either as part of a PS3 bundle, with the Playstation Eye camera or on it’s own, the Move is turns your PS3 into a Wii HD.
Here are some pictures of what you can do with the controller. (updated with new pics)
The Move comes in four flavors
The Move is refreshing
Sheer Driving Pleasure
Formidable!
“Would you like 1:1 with that, sir?”
The Move will exterminate the competition
Microsoft will be countering Sony Move with it’s own concept, codenamed Natal. When released, Natal will be able to transmit goatse images across the net with a 100ms lag between the spread and you receiving the images. Your gag reflex kicking in is even faster.
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Quantic Dream. Published by SCE
Heavy Rain is not a game per se. It is a multiple path movie with many a quick time event as well as you assisting the character perform basic moves with your fingers playing Twister over a PS3 controller.
France-based developers (not a phrase you hear often) Quantic Dreams, noted for making that game with David Bowie in it a decade ago and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy a few years back, have give us something daring and new for the PS3. The story, which for once is king here, revolves around the hunt for the Origami Killer, a child-murder who drowns his pre-teen male victims, then places and orchid and an origami figure on the victim’s person. During the story, you’ll play each chapter as one of four characters as they all strive for the same thing. Or are they?
“And now for something completely different.” I wish this was photoshopped. I really do.
So at first you’re Ethan Mars, an architect living in a perfect life until a tragedy splits his family apart. Years later, Ethan’s son Shaun goes missing at the height of the Origami Killer’s reign of terror (the Orchid-placing Child-Drowner having been caught the previous summer), and blackout prone Ethan has to face five trials set by the killer in order to save his son before time runs out. Or is he? Then there’s Scott Shelby, a private investigator hired by the families of the Origami Killer’s previous victims. Or is he? Next is FBI agent Normal Jayen, part time junkie and Minority Report fanboy, representing the official investigation of the Origami Killer. Or is he? And then there’s plucky journalist Madison Paige. She gets her tits out.
So you’ve probably heard the game is eight hours of quicktime events and to a certain extent that is true. It’s also got elements of point and click adventures in that, for you often need to explore you location for the next clue. Unlike a point and click, you can only interact with items displaying an on screen prompt (many of these only appear once). You get the opportunity to influence a conversation by selecting questions or answers or even the tone of what you’re about to say. These answers will have a major effect on which path the game will take and it is the game’s major success that there are so many ways this story can unfold. Some or most of the characters can die. It’s not choice in the sense you can make a good or evil choice like in inFamous or Mass Effect but you can affect the storyline fairly radically. You may see a story that’s different from your friends. Failing QTE prompts too often near the end of the game and people will die.
The game itself starts off veeeery slowly, some of which is there to set the scene, some to familiarise yourself with the unique, if clunky controls, and all of it duller than a faded matte-brown Volvo after a dust-storm. Things to perk up after about 3 or so hours and get quite exciting and you start having more action scenes. Control is an illusion in action scenes and a fistfight of just dozens of 1quicktime events triggering one after the other. However, you can’t fail and retry. You let a character and the story merely continues without them. The button prompts aren’t always the same for each event (though if you replay a section they are) so you don’t learn the controls, more you learn where things are on a PS3 controller. Our friend Sixaxis motion control returns to vex us, I’m afraid. Sixaxis is like that cousin you see at family gatherings, you know, the guy who’s a bum, an addict, borrowing money of you, etc. You give him a buck and then tell him to get the fuck out. And like that no good cousin, they come back just as you managed to forget about them. Sometimes, because this is a piece of software on a gaming machine, some control is given to you to do silly mundane things like apply lipstick, change a nappy or remove a bra (weirdest date ever, don’t ask).
This is a bold move away from games aimed at teenage boys. But if any teenage boys do play this, you can see Madison naked several times. Result!
The presentation is mostly good with great graphics (though there may be a glitch here and there or a very occasionally blurry texture) and sound that can be great (sound effects and music) or extremely variable (voice acting). Some of the actors are very good and some are woeful, particularly some of the minor characters who are very obviously French actors. Imagine casting Jean Reno, Gerard Depardieu and Vincent Cassel as Green Berets in an English Language movie set in the US and you get the idea.
So a bold experiment that doesn’t really come off. Do you want this? Well, do you skip cutscenes in other games? If the answer us yes, because you can skip nothing here. If you think you should just watch it on youtube, you can but be aware that what you see there is different from what you would see at home die to the nature of the story and branching paths. I ended up with two playable characters dead and the killer walking free. And from what I’ve read, everyone’s play through is different.
Controller1.com rating 2/3 (0/3 if you’ve no interest in story)
