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Nov 17th, 2013 at 11:55:32 - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3) |
I think this was my first Ratchet & Clank game. If I played one back on PS2, then I have no memory of it. The clever titles make me think I’ve played them all though because I always remember “Up Your Arsenal” and a couple others. I hardly ever play games like this, silly cartoony platformers. R&C reminds me of Mario, Sly Cooper, Sonic…games like those. One of the two things that kept me from giving the game a 10/10 was the humor. Some of it was funny but some was too silly (pretty much everything about Captain Qwark), venturing into kid game territory. The other negative, just to get it out of the way, is a UI issue. It’s very easy to select the wrong weapon in an otherwise brilliant weapon selection system. Pressing triangle pauses the action and brings up the weapon select menu, an octagonal menu with each point mapped to a direction on the D-pad (up, down, left, right and all the diagonals). Pressing L1 or R1 while the menu is up switches pages. There are 3 pages each with 8 customizable slots. 24 easy-to-access weapons, items and abilities on a console? Yes, please! The problem is that when you choose a weapon, the selection sometimes doesn’t stick. Diagonals are particularly prone to the problem. Trying to press up-right, for example, very often bounces around from up-right to just up or right and you wind up with the wrong weapon when you exit the menu. It’s hard to explain exactly what happens in writing, but the feeling of it is that the D-pad for the menu is too jittery and there needs to be some way to lock your selection so it doesn’t ‘slip’ as you release triangle and exit the menu. It happened the entire game so I don’t think it was me.
Otherwise, this game was pretty amazing. It took a little getting used to how cartoony it was. Now I appreciate the colorfulness. There’s creativity oozing from the game. The animation is great, enemy and weapon design also a high point. TONS of weapons, very zany armory R&C carry around with them. One is a tornado launcher, and then you control the tornado with the Sixaxis controller. The game makes very cool use of the Sixaxis by the way, something that the Xbox 360 controller was really lacking. Of course that’s moot now that the next gen is underway. Another weapon was an insect swarm. I killed the last boss in about 15 seconds by tossing out insect swarms and blasting him with some mega charge weapon. There were creatures you could toss on the ground that would attack enemies who got near, auto-locking rockets, a crazy disc launcher that ricocheted buzzsaws everywhere. There were also all kinds of neat gadgets and the hacking game was cool, reminded me of Marble Madness. Just a lot of fun stuff!
Another high point was the puzzle sections with Clank. There are these mysterious robot things called Zoni that help Clank when he’s alone. Their actions are mapped to the D-pad too. Approach some when you find them and select “follow” and they spring to life and follow. When something, say a platform you need to cross, can be repaired, select “manipulate” and they fix it up. When something needs to be charged select “charge up” and they will charge it. They also attack enemies. When you need to jump far, select “levitate” and they help you float for a few seconds over obstacles. All this made for some interesting puzzles, but unfortunately none too difficult. I watched a review of A Crack in Time, which the internet says is the best R&C game, and those Clank puzzles look even more awesome because you can manipulate time and copies of Clank. It looks like The Swapper. Anyway, count me a fan of a series I didn’t know I liked!
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Nov 11th, 2013 at 07:58:30 - Infamous 2 (PS3) |
Infamous 2 was pretty much what I expected. Mostly the same as Infamous 1, but streamlined in about every way imaginable. Most noticeable off the bat were vastly improved visuals, actual animated cut scenes, and smoother character animations and controls. I played through again as evil Cole.
They did a better job of the good/evil thing in this game, primarily by adding characters who represented each side. Luo is "good" and Nix is "evil" and they are like the angel and devil on your shoulders when the team is planning an operation. Luo will usually want to do things cautiously and minimize innocent casualties, while Nix will want to use subterfuge or sacrifice innocents or go in guns blazing or whatever. Adding the characters makes the good/evil choices a little less obviously black and white because you see motivations and logic behind both choices. But in the end, the good/evil characters are stupidly reversed. I thought that was really really dumb and didn't make sense. Also I felt a little betrayed by the designers because I wanted to destroy the city with Nix, who I'd been wreaking havok with the entire game.
I also realize the writers suck at penning twists. The 'twist' at the end of the first game was stupid. The twist in this game was...better, but still pretty lame. Here's the thing about twists. Twists should not be where someone tells you a ton of new information that you did not know, could not have known, and otherwise had no clue about. Twists should make you go "OOOOOOH!" For a great twist, there should be subtle hints and clues throughout the narrative. You should be able to guess at the twist, or at the least reflect back and see evidence of it. The movie The Sixth Sense is an awesome example. The twist isn't just "I see dead people" and the viewers go "What?!" The viewers go "OOOOOH" and half my friends rewatched the movie and marveled at how they set up the twist throughout the entire film, but you wouldn't necessarily catch it it was so well done. Anyway, not that the Infamous writers should be master storytellers, but still. Two games, two completely fail twists.
But at least the end of the second game was fantastic! The twist in the first game actually ended the game, came right at the end. The twist in the second one is a little before, and even though it's kinda dumb, everything afterward is incredible, except Nix and Luo switching alignment. You get to cause some mega mega mega destruction, and there's a very touching moment at the end too. I dunno if it's because I played both games back to back or because the second game did a better job of character development, but I felt a tug at my heart when a certain someone passed away. There is definitely room for a sequel again. One is being developed for PS4 but I dunno how it's related yet.
What else...Gameplay is essentially the same. There's a nifty new hotkey for switching powers. Press and hold left on the d-pad to bring up all powers and which button they are assigned to, then press whichever button to cycle through unlocked powers for that button. That's a very efficient scheme for switching powers. They changed the power upgrade system a little too, but I think everything from the first game was still there with a couple additions. The coolest addition is definitely the lightning tether, which works like the grappling hook from Just Cause 2. You can sort of slingshot your way around the city using that and your flight.
There are all the same pickups and mission types. I didn't do but 1/3 or less of the extra missions, and even then only the 'evil' missions. You still go around collecting blast shards, except this time they're indicated on the minimap, which made finding them easier and more fun. I must have collected 95% of them. There are also still dead drops, but instead of satellite dishes that you have to track, they are on messenger pigeons flying around that show up on the minimap. You shoot down the pigeon then go find where it landed. Oh yeah, there are various other ways you can increase your alignment, which are pretty funny. For evil, you can break up groups of protesters and, this is the best instructions "silence street performers," because as Zeke said, "No one likes being forced to listen to that garbage." Haha. So whenever you hear some street trumpet or bongo drums or see a human statue, you can go thwack them and get some evil points.
There is a mission editor and you can play user-generated missions. I tried a few at the end, made by Sucker Punch even, but they are just not very exciting especially compared to the actual game. So no value there for me. I even filtered for highest rated.
Good times.
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Nov 8th, 2013 at 05:38:35 - Infamous (PS3) |
Finished Infamous. It was pretty cool! It's a sort of open world game like GTA meets Assassin's Creed, though not as grand in scale as either. All I knew about it before hand is that you shoot lightning and that there was some good/evil system. That's the nuts and bolts of it.
You play as Cole MacGrath (or McGrath...or Magrath...) and the game begins with you in the center of a giant explosion that's left part of a city in ruins and left you with nascent super powers. Turns out a terrorist organization used you to courier a bomb that blew up en route. Turns out you're a 'conduit' so it doesn't kill you. You discover you have powers, come into contact with an FBI agent, go on the trail of another agent who was captured by said terrorist organization, strengthen your electric super powers, and attempt to track down the terrorist super weapon. The story is pretty good up until the finale, where they used some cheap tricks to set up a sequel. More on that later. There are several questionable moments/holes. The characters are all serviceable, but there's not much to them. Cut scenes are told in graphic novel style, which fits the gritty super hero theme.
The good/evil system works with the gameplay but isn't great with the story at a handful of points. I don't want to give any specific examples for fear of spoiling. I played as evil Cole. Even though I did many evil acts, the story carried on and all the story NPCs continued working with me. There's a particular evil act I did in the end that makes hardly any sense given the bad guy's motives and the game's ending. The bad guy's motives, revealed after you defeat him in the end, are just silly. They are the cheap tricks to set up a sequel, where he spills info about a bunch of shit that wasn't in the game and that I didn't even think was possible in the game's universe. I went on and started the second game to see how it begins, and also evil Cole at the end of the first game makes 0 sense in the context of the beginning of the second, even though I took the option of continuing my Infamous 1 evil story. If you're evil, at the end of Infamous, Cole is basically on top of the world with his powers, rules the city with an iron fist, and is a selfish mass murderer. In the beginning of the second game he's befriended his old friend Zeke again from the first game (play the games, this makes no sense, big plot hole) and is working with some other FBI agent. If he's a super badass who does whatever he wants, why is he out taking orders from government agencies? He has super electricity powers that no one else possesses...
Anyway, the meat of the game is your sizzling electric powers. You unlock more as you go, lightning bolts, grenades, sliding on electric wires and train rails, summoning huge lightning storms, and on and on. There are a lot and they are all cool. You can cause A LOT of mayhem, picking up and flinging cars, blowing up objects, tossing missiles and grenades like there's no tomorrow. It's a ton of fun. The whole setup with electricity is really well done. You need electricity to take full advantage of your powers, but the bad guys obviously don't want you to have electricity, so the game starts with sections of the city off the power grid. Main missions sometimes involve turning on the power to sections of the city, and then you can go there and do stuff. Trains start running, lights turn on, side missions become available, and so on.
There are plenty of side missions to do. I actually found them all good fun. A handful involve killing enemies for one reason or another. One type called 'photographer' involves you doing specific things like 'blow up a car' or 'blast an enemy into the air, then hit him with a grenade' and the photographer takes awesome action shots. In another, you follow a courier and steal his package. Some types open up after story missions of that type. So I had a story mission where I had to disable armored buses that were driving around killing people. That becomes a side mission type. You can also try and do all the 'stunts,' which are destruction-related tasks sort of like the photographer missions. I did 11/21. Whenever you do one, it tells you what the next one to try for is. If I kept playing the game, that's the first thing I would try and do! I got stuck on 'shoot an enemy in midair with a lightning bolt and in the same jump hit him with a ground blast.' I could never get it quite right. There are also the requisite open world collectibles. I was happy to see they served a purpose in this game. Collecting blast shards, which are little blue objects scattered literally anywhere, on the sides of buildings, under bridges, in garbage piles, nets you additional max energy. I enjoyed collecting them for a while, then it began to feel like pixel hunting and I needed more and more shards to get an energy boost so it quit being worth doing. Then there are dead drops, which are little story bits providing some back story on two of the characters. I got almost all of those, 30/32, usually searching for them on the way to missions.
Doing side and story missions nets experience you use to upgrade powers and sometimes nets 5 blast shards, which is a lot! Finding 5 shards can take a while if you're collecting one at a time off the sides of buildings, but some of the side missions take just a minute. Side missions also clear the area of enemies. I did them all on the first island, about half on the second and none on the third. Some side missions are good/evil ones. If you do an evil one it blocks the good one and vice versa. Many of the good/evil options are so black and white it's funny. And Cole has these voiceovers like "Hmm. I could save this person from getting mugged. Or I could just walk away." HMMMMM. Suffice it to say, it is REALLY EASY to choose good or evil and not screw it up.
That's everything off the top of my head. Should knock out Infamous 2 over the weekend. I hope the characters are more interesting and that there are less plot holes and things that don't make sense. Other than that, I'd take more or less the same game, with usual sequel streamlines and improvements!
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Nov 2nd, 2013 at 09:16:21 - Tales of Vesperia (360) |
Finished Tales the same day as FFXIII. I am SO over JRPGs for a while!
I'd say the game began around an 85% for me and ended on a 70%. It outstayed its welcome by 15 or so hours as well. I think I'm just tired of the Tales series, perhaps have grown out of it. I haven't played one in a long time, since Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube.
Tales of Vesperia is all about friendship and being stronger together and learning to put others' needs first...blech. It started out all funny and charming, especially compared to FFXIII's complete lack of charm (save Sazh), but a handful of the characters ended up being really annoying. I liked Yuri, the main. He had a cool attitude and was voice acted very well. Estelle and Judith were also pretty good. Repede, the pipe-smoking dog, was the best of course. As usual, the children characters just got under my skin. Karol is like 10 years old and is a monster hunter. How original, a monster hunter. Then he becomes a guild leader of the guild that Yuri forms with him. Why would you form a guild with an annoying 10-year-old kid? I dunno. Unfortunately the guild becomes the centerpiece for the whole 'let's stick together' theme and it was just so cheesy that I didn't really want to play anymore after that. Rita is the other character I disliked. She's also a kid, a "genius mage" and a researcher. Yeah, a 12-year-old expert scientist. She goes on and on about science and research. As a Ph.D. student, I cannot stand science and research being talked about in uninformed ways. In Rita's world of science, she just "discovers" things left and right. She uses the scientific method...literally, she said at some point "hypothesis, method, collect data, observe...that's the secret to winning!" or something equally idiotic. She's always figuring things out, but contrary to her scientific method, she always discovers things abstractly instead of empirically and then assumes they will work. I know it's fiction, but damn the game's representation of research irked me to death! There were more annoying non-main characters too...ah, JRPGs...
Here's a quick breakdown of the story. There are things called 'blastia' that power various systems in cities and whatnot...regulate water supply, form barriers to keep monsters out, etc. Blastia is going missing/being destroyed, so monsters are invading everywhere. "Monsters." They're never any specific enemy, just "monsters." Anyway, you go off trying to find what's happening to the blastia and after a while the story goes deeper and deeper and gets super convoluted. There are ancient beings called Entelexia and there's some bad thing called Adephagos that I thought was one enemy but turns out at the end it was plural the whole time (??) and seriously I had no frackin idea what was going on for the last 10 hours of the game and I really didn't care either. The story was really really weak.
Combat remains fun, yet repetitive. Tales is known for its active combat system where you run one character around the field mashing buttons and scoring combos. Combat system is deep but became B B B B B B X B B B B B B X... repeat ad infinitum. Every fight can be won like that, especially once you set particular skills and tweak your party and the AI behavior. There are tons of types of combo attacks and special moves and tons of weapons that you learn skills from by wearing them and getting "LP" points. Enemy types are recycled like crazy. I just watched the trailer for Tales of Xillia, the new Tales game, and they have the SAME enemy types on the trailers in that game. Come on guys, new enemies...
There's tons of extra content and a new game + mode if you're into that. Fans will probably love it, but I think it's my last Tales game. I was so bored and did not care at all for the last couple play sessions. This is one I wish I hadn't bothered to play. Very mediocre experience for me. Scratched Tales of Xillia off my 'to buy' list.
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