This was one of the two games I got free from Sony by way of apologising for letting evil internet terrorists have access to my personal details. Sadly, it’s not that great.
For the first three or four hours, I just couldn’t shake the fact that this was just Crackdown in slightly ill-fitting clothes. Then, as I realised that going vertical and running across rooftops was a better way of playing, I found myself comparing it to Assassin’s Creed as well. It’s nowhere near as good as either of those games.
The main things I disliked were the repetitive missions and Cole’s gluefingers. The former due to having to do sewer substation run after sewer substation run, or “find this thing – oh wait, find 4 more”, or “blow up X – hang on – there’s 3 more of them”, and the less said about the repeated side missions the better. It doesn’t help that all three islands in the game look virtually identical, and there only appear to be about 6 different buildings in the entire game, all copied and pasted across the map.
The other issue was how Cole grabs everything – poles, overhangs, cables, windowledges, trees, phone boxes – all the time. If you’re trying to get away from a baddie, or even just veer slightly in the wrong direction when jumping, you’ll grab something. Or, as it feels more like, it grabs you. And holds you. Still. So you’re a sitting du–oh look you’re dead. Having a button to hold down to say “yes please, I want to grabs things” would be much better.
Bizarrely, there are some things you’d think you could grab (like market stall roofs or some windowledges and shop facias) that you can’t.
Thankfully, it wasn’t all this bad. As the game progressed, and more powers were unlocked and others upgraded, it became more fun. With the rail grind and glide moves, leaping around the rooftops and chasing things down became brilliant rather than tedious, although if you ever drop to ground level (as you often need to for objectives) the climb to the roofs again is jarring and slows the game down.
There were minor complaints (controls, mainly due to the controller as usual, inconsistant framerates, texture pop-in at close range – especially on the big tower in the middle of the second island, and the overall easiness of the game), but nothing gamebreaking on their own. My only other major complaint is with the twist at the end – it’s rubbish. It’s like they got to the end of the writing and pulled it out of thin-air. It doesn’t help that it’s now created a paradox. Sigh.
Overall score: 3/5 Must Try Harder.
You may recall that just over two months ago, my brain became sick and I bought a Playstation 3. A 160GB Playstation 3 Slim, to be more specific. Even though I’ve hated everything Sony have ever made, and after the mistake I made getting a PSP, I promised myself I’d never buy a PS3.
So I bought a PS3. Buh.
Now I’ve had it a bit longer, and PSN is back up properly (sort of), and I’ve downloaded some games and demos and even bought a few games in actual shops (remember those?), I thought I’d update my thoughts on it.
They haven’t really changed.
I still hate it. Its stupid, stupid controller. Its ridiculous on-screen menu system. They still disgust me in physical ways. Other annoyances have crept in now too: the unnecessary “trophy sync” which takes between three seconds and four thousand years to complete. The way all your downloaded and installed games and demos are just in one huge list – and I don’t even have that many games on it! The way that not only do you have to download games, but afterwards you have to install them too?! The HUGE game update file sizes: Why is the whole Noby Noby Boy game download about 350MB, but the first update is about 700MB? That’ll take me three days to download!
And so on.
I don’t like the save game screens. I don’t like the store. I don’t like Home. I don’t like the friends list or the notifications. I don’t like the on-screen keyboard. I don’t like its DVD player UI. I don’t like forced installs. I don’t like how its implementation of HDMI is broken so my HDMI autoswitcher doesn’t autoswitch. I don’t, truth be told, like very much about it at all.
Thankfully, it isn’t all doom and regret. I’ve had the chance to play some games I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to – InFamous, Katamari Forever, Little Big Planet, Back to the Future (yeah, there’s a PC/Mac/iPad alternative but, well, eww), Noby Noby Boy and Yakuza 3. Of these, I’ve completed the first four, got completely confused by Noby Noby Boy, and have spent more time installing and and watching Yakuza than actually playing it.
InFamous was, at best, mediocre. But it was free. Katamari Forever was mostly SuperAceBest, even though half of it was a rehash of previous games in the series. Little Big Planet was terribly disappointing, being a poor platformer with a great (if pointless to me) level construction kit bolted on. And Stephen Fry, who I turned off as soon as I was able.
Back to the Future, though, was amazing. Even if the control scheme tried its hardest to prevent me from enjoying it.
Overall then, I’m not yet converted. I doubt I ever will be, to be honest. I don’t like the console and I feel wrong using it whenever I do. But, it’ll serve the purpose of letting me play some otherwise impossible to play games, so I can put up with it.
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