May 25, 2008

My latest gripes


Firstly the PS3 demo for Iron Man. Cack. Boring landscape, flying is finicky, the weapons are weak and unconvincing. Besides that, I've just seen the film. Why would I want to go and redo it all for him? It's just lazy and a shameless attempt to cash in on the movies success. They can stick it!
That's one thing I don't like about games based on movies, there are no surprises. The Lego Star Wars games are one exception, they at least make an effort to inject fresh humour and interesting gameplay.
Another movie-game attempt is The Bourne Conspiracy. From what I saw of the PS3 demo it looks like they at least made some effort at engaging gameplay. The hand to hand combat is pretty standard; light punch, hard punch, block and two heavy attacks that take eons to wind-up before you can deliver them. The finishing moves are interesting as you can keep an eye on your health gauge for the circle icon to start flashing. When it does you tap the circle button to grab your opponent and slam his head into the nearest hard, blunt object. The 'villains' are security guards, cops, marines and terrorists. The shooting gameplay is okay with the cover system becoming the norm these days. It doesn't pack much punch really.
I'm not crazy about the Bourne character's attitude either. He's too angry. That's what made the Matt Damon performance all the better, he didn't go around arching his eyebrows at everyone and throwing shapes. That's just a personal thing I guess. I just don't like this Bourne.
My two biggest problems, with the demo at least, are the loading times and the methods of sliding under closing doors, etc. When you get close to some perilous point in a chase you get a flashing icon of the button your supposed to mash so you can make it through whatever barrier or predicament lies ahead, such as a dangerous jump, etc. Personally I don't like this gameplay. It can work in games like Resident Evil 4 when it's not over used but The Bourne Conspiracy demo seems to have them everywhere. And unlike RE4, I usually didn't spot the flashing icon in time to press the corresponding button as they are too small. Then I'm caught by the guards/marines/cops, whatever.
Which leads me to the second reason I kicked this poxy demo off my PS3. Everytime you're caught or killed there is a loooooong loading time before you retry. Feck sake, it was ages! I'm not a major tech head so I don't know all the PS3 limitations, etc, but I'm sure it doesn't have to be this arse-numbingly long EVERY TIME!!

And last but not least, I went online for a game of Unreal Tournament 3. Only two deathmatch servers using keyboard and mouse. TWO!!?? And one of them with ping of 2500!!
MGS4 can't get here fast enough! :(

- L1

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