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Controller1.com Focus Test: Bound in Fail

Today we boot up Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and God of of War: Chains of Olympus. Yep, we load up these games. We see the splash screens and even the main menu.

 

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Now playing: GTA Chinatown Wars

I’m currently on holidays with the wife. To sate my gaming desires whilst on the road, I’ve bought my DS Phat with GTA Chinatown Wars and my PSP 1000 with God of War: Chains of Olympus. Of course, I can’t charge the PSP battery enough  so that CoD CoO can update the PSP’s firmware (one nice thing about the original DS and the Lite is that you don’t have to worry about this bullshit). So Chinatown Wars is the game du jour.

GTA:CW is Rockstar Leeds making a 3D GTA game from a top down perspective. Its got all the colour, edginess and humour of a full console version without the feeling that something is not quite right, as was the case with the two PSP iterations.

Your stylus is used appropriately, to manage your menu items, emails, GPS map, etc and the traditional dpad + buttons used for driving, moving and combat. This being a DS game, there has been an attempt to add stylus gameplay into the mix, such as using touch screen actions in minigames- such as hot wiring cars.

It works, mostly. Maybe its because I’m sill playing on the original DS, but I’ve found using the dpad to be somewhat painful after a short time. The game is still fun, but jeez it is hard. Its not easy to pin down why, but I found myself having to replay missions again and again.
Happily, the makers have taken one of many people’s criticisms of GTAIV to heart. If you fail a mission, you see the mission briefing (skippable, of course) and then you have the option to skip the travel to the missions by pressing select. Hallefuckinglujah!

So if you’re going to make your game hard, at least make retrying easier. Thanks Rockstar Leeds. Theeds.

E3 2009- part 2. I Need a Drink

To continue: the Sony and Nintendo conferences were held today, the first day of the show, proper.

So let’s get into it….

Sony
God of War III is coming in March 2010. It looks like a painting come to life according to David Jaffe and I’m not going to argue with him, merely ask him not to visit goth art galleries anymore whilst inebriated. the fourth game in the trilogy 9(!) will close out the series (!).

PSP Go! was announced. People were shocked. People who woke up from coma’s were shocked anyway. Its a slimmer, UMD less PSP that will go on sale in a few months for US$250 alongside the current PSP-3000. PSP will finally see Gran Turismo portable, which seems to have taken a leaf out of Pokemon and Monster Hunter’s huge popularity in Japan by allowing trades over wifi. There’s a new Metal Gear portable game, Peacewalker or Pisstaker or something and this looks to be set a few years after Metal Gear 3. There’s the previously mentioned Little Big Planet PSP, Motorstorm and Assassin’s Creed PSP; as well as a newly announce PSP Resident Evi, PSP Infamous and PSP Soul Calibur.

On the PS3 front there’s the duel wand motion controller, currently unnamed and listed for release sometime in 2010. You can now get your waggle in three different flavours, depending on which system you own. As far as games go there weren’t many surprises, as most had been either announced, teased or leaked before the show. What games were shown mostly look pretty cool. Uncharted 2 looks to be fantastic, but we new that. MAG looks to be big and expansive but we knew that. The demo was nice in showing the strengths and weakness of the concept. Another quick look at the new Ratchet game in one of Sony’s many montages and a new Final Fantasy online game, FFXIV for release in 2010 on PS3 only.
But the exclusive that looks most intriguing is Agent, from Rock Star. Its set in the 70’s so I’m sure we’ll get that period completely inaccurate (you know early 70’s hippie fashions and giant afros with disco music). You’re an assassin. Its a Rock Star game so you’re never going to be handing out leaflets in a mall.
Assassin’s Creed 2, not shown on the Ubi conference, was demoed but as Jade Raymond was no where to be seen we’ll skip that. Just kidding. Can this game redeem the flaws of the original? Time will tell. PS3 is getting some exclusive DLC. Its called the PSP version and if you buy that, you get some extra weapons to use. Also shown is a cartoon racer where you can make and share tracks. Moving right along, there’s The Last Guardian, from the makers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Even though the trailer showed up on the web a few days ago, its still nice to see.
Overall, better than last year but we knew 95% of the content previously so the surprise factor was lower. Personally, GoW III, Ratchet and Uncharted 2 are my must haves on PS3 out of what was shown here.

Nintendo
Well, if they could put the word Mario into any more products they would. They started by talking about mario’s evolution and how they want to take Mario into 4D. By this they mean a 4-player coop version of All New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. A 2D renaissance has taken place with this and Epic’s XBLA game announced yesterday, but hopefully this won’t merely be the DS game upscaled for Wii (though bets on that’s exactly what this is).
Of course there would be WiiFit 2. Nintendo may not be making the kewl games like they used to but your grandma needs something to do in between lawn bowls and writing angry letters to the newspaper. Motion Plus was pimped yet again, with what seemed to be a familiar montage of what you could do with it (deja vu circa the Wii’s2006 launch).
Wii Sports resort seems to be less of a tech demo and more of a “this is what we should have done all along” game.
Along the same vein, Red Steel 2 (Motion plus only, it seems) is going to try and fulfill the promises Ubi made in 2006 with the big selling but reviled original.
We have a Final Fantasy game for Wii, Crystal something. Open world gayness from SE. Weeeeee. A DS Kingdom HeartZzzzzzzzz. Mario and Luigi told from Bowser’s side. oh dear. Golden Sun. Oh well, some fanboys should be happy. But Women’s Murder Club? Cops: A recruit ?. I think my DS will be getting dustier and dustier.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong Mini’s March Again, is more puzzling action, this time with a level editor- buts its a DSi Ware game only. As is a Wario Ware title where you make your own games. I sometimes thing games where the idea is to make your own games is rather lazy on the part of developers.

There was a long build up to an announcement by Satoru Iwata (Nintendo Japan Head dude). The build up was to one of those cheap things you clip on your finger to monitor your heart-rate. The internet goes “huh?” The next announcement lead to believe its a joke at the expense of fanboys. Its Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii!

Also, making sense of the recent bundling of the three Metroid prime games on one disc is a new Metroid Game from Team Ninja. Its called Other M. And its semi side scrolling.

IN THE BARGAIN BINS…

Today I went shopping and looked around for some games in the bargain bins. I’m usually too impatient to wait six months before I buy a game. I mean, I don’t need game on Day 1, but I usually aren’t able to wait until a game is in the big sales.

I saw some games that might been OK had I been in the mood like Frontlines Fuel of War with a T shirt and a book for AU$35 and a number of other games not worthy of writing about (ie only the stuff you’d expect to be in the bargain bins, shovelware or flops). But one title did catch my eye.

God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP for AU$25 (about half the RRP). Its the only PSP game I’ve seen in the Top 10 in All Format Sales Charts for a long time. So OI thought, what the hell, I’m going away for a bit and I might need something for the travel.

So of course, I haven’t actually played my PSP since Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters in 2007. Its a first gen PSP-phat. It might be heavy and slow but its built like a brick shithouse. It also has, I disovered when i returned home, a dead battery. Time to try and find a cheap replacement.