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)
Apparently, The Cloud is in our future. Instead of buying the latest and greatest PC, you will be playing on a thin client with data streamed over the net from a server. Cam understands, George spreads FUD.
It could be worse- it could be Morbidly-Obese Inclement Weather.
So, Heavy Rain, the PS3’s first big hitter of the year has the makings of a huge hit, particularly amongst non-gamers easily impressed by pores. Despite losing a day of “gameplay” due to the apocalyPS3 this week, I’ve put in a few hours into the game (stopping when it hard locked my PS3 last night) and have gotten a feel for what it’s about. But nearly three hours in- I have picked a fight with some random guy and that was the only action I’ve seen so far.
This means that so far, I’m not particularly impressed by Heavy Rain. The story, the defining element of this game, may not have spun into top gear for me yet- but if it hasn’t, why hasn’t it? And if it has- God help us all.
So far I like and not like bits of this “game.”
Liked:
- Graphics. Even though nothing is happening, what little that does happen is pretty and fluid. Of course, it comes across as one of the high end graphics demos you used to see running instores selling PC’s.
- Trying to do something new with quicktime events.
-sound is well done. Great musical score, even if it borders on the melodramatic. Melodramatic game sounds melodramatic.
Disliked:
story, gameplay, characters, voice acting, hype.
I believe the game will appeal to non-gamers in a way that the Wii does and that’s a good thing if gets people using PS3’s for things other than Blu Ray movies. In time they might move onto actual games like Uncharted 2. But to me, it’s one enormous cutscene that I CAN’T SKIP. Metal Gear games are often derided by people who don’t play them because of the ridiculous story portrayed in the codec screens and cutscenes, but you could always skip these if you just wanted to get to the action. Because HR is a game of cutscenes, that would defeat the purpose of the enterprise.
HR brings back mandatory six-axis motions to effect on screen actions. I won’t use the word control because that would be too generous. To say you control this game the way is offensive to my DS3’s left analog stick. Let’s just say you influence your character the same way the actions in Star Wars influence C3PO- ie reluctantly and like a gay golden droid. The first three hours ofter some mundane home life tasks, an optional fistfight and some SCIENCE FICTION detective stuff. Note to developers: Don’t talk about reality when you offer up The Matrix in Ray-Ban form.
Some the blur is from the game, some is from my camera
“How far would you go?” n my case it’s about 2 Kilometres to the nearest EB games. Trade it in before everyone else does by the end of the first month and clogs up EB/Gamestop’s trade-in exclusions list.
If you are a fan of French cinema or thrillers aimed at the over 40 crowd starring Jodie Foster or Sandra Bullock, you might think the story is riveting. In which case, you could rent a movie with them and use your Six axis as a remote for your PS3. It might be more fun. Maybe the thing that bugs me most is this a story in a genre I often avoid. Maybe I’m not ready for David Cage and company’s bold dream. Maybe it’s a shit game. Who knows?
This Podcats is free yet it’s still a rip-off! Following on fron the last show’s chat about value, we talk about the videogame ripoffs we all know too well.
Controller1.com Vs ClivePwned has some new shirts available. Click Here for more designs
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Developed by Bioware. Published by Electronic Arts.
In 2007, Bioware released Mass Effect on Xbox 360 (with a PC SKU coming soon after) just after being purchased by EA. It was a decent size hit for a new RPG franchise and despite its problems, many felt it was a great first stab at a Sci-Fi RPG game from Bioware that wasn’t a Star Wars game. Some of the perceived issues with the first game: cut and paste side missions, complex RPG stat screens, poor shooting mechanics if you weren’t a hardcore RPG fan, boring first few hours, terrible MAKO driving missions, long loading screens when you’re stuck in elevators, poorer 360 version, and static conversations. I don’t agree with all of those but that’s the collective wisdom. It was also a lot of fun, had great characters and a great story and felt like a cool Star Wars game without having to pay royalties to those fuckers at Lucasfilm.
Mass Effect 2 sees Shepard (who may be imported from the first game if you wish) return literally as a new man/woman after something big that happens in the first cutscene that people may or may not decry as a spoiler but it is in the opening cutscene, dammit). With a new ship and crew, and with a mysterious new paymaster voiced by Martin Sheen, Shepard sets out to build a core team to take on the new big bad for this game. You visit planets, mine them from orbit for minerals used to power up upgrades for your skills, weapons and ships. Then you’ll land on a planet/dock with a vessel to carry out a mission or visit one of the more fleshed out locales where there are multiple missions. There aren’t that many main story missions but each member of your team has at least two missions you’ll want to undertake. The first is to recruit them to your cause, and the second is to secure their loyalty. Recruitment and loyalty missions of course are the meat of the story-based missions. Along the way you’ll encounter a few survivors from the first game (if you’ve imported a save game from ME1, it does depend on what you decided back then). Some will come with you and and some will recoil in horror from you and your new boss but in the end your team is as much a part of the game as Shepard. The team you assemble is generally composed of fairly interesting people, even if most of them are damaged in some way. And almost all of them are killers with a twist (ie crazy, semi-autistic, calm).
The action parts of the game consists of squad-based shooting (or magic if that’s the way you roll), with you and two compatriots (chosen before the start of each mission) tackling an objective that seems like something out of a shooter from a simpler age. Missions are generally short, much much shorter than the first game. Shorter than a midget at a dwarf convention. You can tell Bioware went out of their way to make the game more accessible to shooter fans than the original by the way anything screaming ‘NERD!’ is flashed by on screen quickly so we can get back to the sex and shooting. Even so, you still have to select a team that is balanced. If you’re a soldier, it makes sense that at least one member of your away team is a biotic, etc. Choose unwisely and you’ll find you’re having to take down an armoured boss all on your lonesome since your selected team only have pea-shooters unable to pierce armour and with the wrong powers levelled up. Selecting teams correctly really makes itself felt in the big climax and it’s quite possible to return to the ship with a few empty spaces if you don’t give it some thought. You can of course play as a male or female Shepard, import your character from the first game and choose to play as one of a number of classes from soldier, scout, magic user, tech, etc, but the game for me is third person so how does it play as a Gears-lite game? Not too badly. It still seems to be doing a lot “under the hood” but not as overtly where you can’t do anything in the early stages of the game (like the crime of the original). When you’re not shooting you’re exploring and talking. The exploring (on foot) is a lot simpler and navigation of the more populated areas is simple since few of the environments are all that large. Think of it like GTA but when you go to a mission-giver and accept the mission, the game whisks you straight to a loading screen and voila, you’re at the start of the mission. There’s a lot less back-tracking, fewer “Go to B talk to someone and then return to A and have a conversation” than the first game as well, which is always welcome. While I’m on the subject- Fuck GTA!
In the future, in the year 2009 (which was the fashion at the time), the year was one of releasing sequels to hit 2007 games that slavishly listened to criticism of the first game and jettisoned the stuff people hated. Uncharted 2 mixed up the gameplay more, ACII ejected the by-the-numbers repetition of missions and ME2 cut anything that got so much as a column inch of hate on a message board. So you need to scan for minerals as an upgrade imperative which is the one area this game has actually made much more boring than the first game. It may have been a bit monotonous to drive around the planets looking for blips on your radar but moving a cursor over a globe is 1000 times more boring than sitting in a dentist’s waiting room with only copy of CoD: Modern Fisherman magazine for reading material. I have spent about 38 hours playing ME2 and I would estimate a minimum of 5 hours has been taking up with scanning planets. It’s sort of zen at first but as you go through the game it really slows you down. When I felt the end was near I stopped scanning even with two dozen planets left since I still had so much mineral wealth strip-mined from various planets (some inhabited) that I felt safe I could stop and concentrate on the story and side missions. It’s money you are likely to run out of before the various minerals, and missions don’t often net you all that much. It is said that you need a fully upgraded team in terms of their abilities and your ship’s upgrades to beat the game but it may on the higher difficulties. I played on normal and found I have died much less than the first game. There are no lifts. If the game needs to load, you get a loading screen. The hub areas are much much smaller than before and moving between areas is a loading screen away rather than a long corridor. The streamlining extends to the micromanagement issues of the first game, but don’t hurt the game in any major way (unless you’re a hardcore PC RPG fan). The actual missions are a lot shorter compared to the original, which had many sprawling story missions in amongst the legion of cut and paste side missions. Really only the last mission feels long and then it’s not so long that you’re hoping for a swift death in order to use the bathroom before your bladder leaps up and chokes you from inside.
It’s a highly directed experience, albeit one in which there is a lot of choice. In giving you the choice, Bioware have learned from the rather static staging of many conversations in the first game cinematics are a hell of a lot more dynamic, both in terms of animation and how choices change the flow of action. It’s almost a quick time event but without seeming like a cop out or having David Cage’s lawyers on the phone. You can follow the various prompts for Paragon or Renegade actions. The difference between Paragon and Renegade conversation options is a choice between touchy-feely and snark. The difference between Paragon and Renegade actions will stop someone being killed or something less lethal.
This being a Bioware game (and it has the hallmarks of almost every Bioware game of the last 10 years), there are romances to be had- at least four ladies are open to the idea of a relationship with Shepard (mine, as you can tell from the pics, is a smooth talking newspaper man from the 50’s). I was able to score with two difference ladies in the game. Well, at least I think they’re ladies. One looked like Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta who got drunk one night and now spends her nights looking up Laser Tattoo removal in the Yellow Pages; and the other looks like, well I don’t know. It was kinky with masks and antibiotics and such like.
The presentation is excellent with this being an incredibly polished title. So many of the rough edges that made it to the first game have been polished down so much they shine brighter than a sun surrounded by giant mirrors. On 360, there are few textures that look a little blurry , usually on minor character’s uniforms in cutscene close-ups but apart from that the game is smoother than a bottle of smooth peanut butter dropped from a plane. The frame rate is constant, slowing slightly in cutscenes but never lagging like a first gen 360 title (or even the first game could sometimes do).
Audio is also great with fantastic sound effects and a stellar voice cast. Yes, the trait of having every alien speak with standard US accents is a bit annoying but the impressive voice cast: Martin Sheen, Tricia Helfer, Adam Baldwin, Carrie-Anne Moss and of course Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski (not only the voice of Miranda, but providing the basis of her character’s visuals, with Dat Ass added through CG magic) joining the lesser known but equally impressive cast filling out the major roles. The only audio disappointment is the JMJ/John Carpenter-esque/early 80’s horror synth soundtrack of the original has been replaced with a more standard semi-orchestral score. It’s good, just not as memorable.
One thing to note. The game comes on two discs which will take 12 gigs on your HDD if you install both discs. I installed but I did have to swap discs twice in nearly 40 hours. There’s a serious amount of content here. EA has also added a sweetener to buy this game new instead of used. New owners have the option to download an extra mission, as well another playable character (who’s ok but superfluous) and a free gun and some armour, none of which is all that earth shattering (but if it’s free, why not?”) but not worth the money EA will charge people who buy used down the track. Installing is recommended if you have enough space. I would have preferred if disc swapping wasn’t necessary but you do this less than if you bought three separate games that took the same time to play.
There’s a lot in this game and there’s much I’ve glossed over. It’s just a great experience (no pun intended) for a game. Mass Effect 2 proves Bioware’s still got it. If you like RPG’s of a western bent, you will like this. If you like shooters with a bit more than fragging noobs, you will like this. If you have two lungs, you will like this. Perhaps not you, Raspy One-Lunger with your ventolin, but two lunged creatures will find much over which to be breathe heavily.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Is how long important or what you do with it? Is a not a man entitled to the sweat of his wallet?
Interloper devs. Sometimes the original devs of a series aren’t available, are unwilling or not wanted to make sequels. Is it always gloom and doom?
Two things happen- MW2 had reached the end of it’s playlife in my household (at least for the time being), but I also need a PC game to play at work during lunch. So number two was Far Cry 2 was cheap on Steam last week.
Some things are never cheap enough. Far Cry 2 is one of those things.
When I went to E3 for the first time in 2003, Ubisoft showed the most games I wanted to play. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Rainbow Six 3 on the Xbox, XIII, Rayman 3, Beyond Good and Evil and of course the original Far Cry. Before the next E3 was upon us, I had bought all of those games. Far Cry (on PC) was the last one I bought and I originally wasn’t going to bother. It was cheap on Direct 2 Drive and so I picked it up in one of my early forays into digital distribution. It was ok but I only played for a few hours before getting a bit restless. It was decent but not all that compelling. A year or so later came Ubisoft Montreal taking over the reigns for a port top the Xbox. Far Cry: Instincts was so much more fun and I loved playing that apart from a glitch where the final boss caught himself of the collision mesh and got stuck after I had pumped 50, 000 rounds into him. So while I feel I beat the game, technically I didn’t.
Far Cry 2 came out in late 2008 as one of UbiMon’s big releases for that year (along with the ordinary Prince of Persia reboot). I avoided it for whatever reason and the Focus Test we recorded didn’t change my mind. I was tempted when the 360 version was a $10 buy from Play Asia last year but I didn’t bite. But the steam sale and the need for a cheap PC game came at the right time so I bit.
The game sucks.
So I’ve also been playing Mass Effect 2 on the comfy couch and it is glorious. My save game says I’ve been playing for about 15 hours and have spent much of that time scanning planets for minerals. Gee, I hope these things come in handy because I’m going all Rio Tinto BHP Biliton (or whatever the fuck they call themselves these days) on these planet’s asses. I’m waiting for a Greenpeace’s Space Shepherd (sic) to come and attack me.
Here’s my Shepard. He was the character from Mass Effect 1 imported into the new game and I think his rat-like look goes well with the almost 50’s sounding voice the male Shepard has. He’s got that look because he never got any in the first game. This time he’s starting with his Yeoman, then going after the chick with the tats and then after the girl from Chuck.
So who is your Shepard banging first in ME2?
