Has anyone here doe a hard drive swap on their PS3 before? I am going to switch my 40GB one for a 160GB some time soon. Anything I should know?
Has anyone here doe a hard drive swap on their PS3 before? I am going to switch my 40GB one for a 160GB some time soon. Anything I should know?
So is this Dante's Inferno game supposed to be any good? For some reason I really want to check it out, but I haven't heard much about at all. I'm curious what the general consensus is.
I just started Uncharted 2 (thanks Tom!). This current generation of video game systems are amazing: they've finally made it possible for game designers to faithfully recreate a Matthew McConaughney movie.
I found the opening to be really lame: uninspired gameplay, clunky control mechanics, awkward camera angles with annoying cuts... It was almost Dragon's Lair-esque in that I felt like I was just being prompted to perform obligatory controller moves so that they could start their next animation sequence. It might as well have been a cut scene for what little actual control I felt I had over what was happening (and it was clear there's no real way to fail).
But I get it: it's like a movie. And now that I'm a little further in, I'm enjoying it. As much as I'm not a fan of cut scenes, the story here is pretty good and has drawn me in to some extent, and now that I'm actually playing a game (shooting guys, moving towards a goal) I get why people love it. It has a really specific mood/vibe, that "cliffhanger adventure with some comedy" recipe that the early Indy movies and Romancing the Stone captured. This is obviously linear video gaming done right... But I'm still not convinced that's the best kind of game.
A true sandbox would be horrible, but I think what people like me mean when they say "open" is the illusion of free will. No game can actually let you do anything, but the ones that manage to tell a story while giving you the feeling that you are choosing your path are the ones that really feel unique and special. They're doing something movies can never do, which is put you inside the game. We've all had that feeling of being so immersed in a game that you forget you're playing a game, or when you put the controller down you think about things that happened in the game as you think of things in your life, and I just don't think that can happen when the path is so rigidly defined for you.
I'm not saying "linear" games can't be fun or satisfying -- I really liked Batman, and that was totally linear -- I just feel that trying to deliver the experience of playing a movie is a creative dead end for the industry because it robs games of one of their greatest assets: the power of choice.
The "power of choice" is a relatively new thing in video games. I think it's a good thing to have, but video gaming has only recently gotten into that aspect of having a controller. I don't think it's what makes a game better than another.
nathan smart!
http://www.nathansmart.com
I think it's just being overwhelmed by the Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII and BioShock2 talk. That's why I thought it was weird that Assassin's Creed II and Dragon's Age were making large DLC available right when those three games were hitting.Originally Posted by ASR
And here's my nonspoiler tip for Isos of the day:
Answer: Use a Crossbow.
Question: Why is it so hard to kill these fucking guys?
DaggerofChrist unmasked
If you have a PS3, there's no reason to get Dante's Inferno, since it's an unabashed rip-off of God of War. I tried the demo and it was fun enough for what it is, so if you have a 360, it might be worth at least downloading the demo.
Hong Kong Film Net
http://www.hkfilm.net
I don't mean in a narrative-defining sense, where choices change the outcome -- go back to the "illusion of choice" thing I said. I just mean feeling like you could do other things instead of following the narrow path the game has laid out for you. Twilight Princess has a very linear storyline, but the fact that you travel all around to different lands and can stop and do different things at your leisure makes the story part feel more like you're in control of what you're doing, when in fact everyone pretty much has the same narrative experience playing it. That game has a great balance of free-roaming and linear; GTA: San Andreas is a little more free-roaming and the story is a little less cohesive and satisfying, while games like Batman and Uncharted are not free-roaming at all (I guess you can roam in Batman, but you're on an island prison, so it's not like you can deviate much from the tasks at hand).
I guess I just don't really care about that feeling in a video game. I enjoy a romp through a realized world like Fable or something but I tend to zone out in those situations. After about an hour or two of trying to do everything I come across I usually just find a cheat and beat the game as fast as possible. With a game like Uncharted I actually savored every moment of it. I even stopped myself from playing at times so as not to finish it all in one go.
I don't think there's anything wrong with either play; it's obvious these are personal preferences.
nathan smart!
http://www.nathansmart.com
I thought it was awful, just one of the most wretchedly stupid games I've ever played. It's a direct rip-off of God of War without any of the fun that might imply. The controls are really stiff and combat is unpleasant. And it's just like the trashiest game. You play SUPER BAD ASS Dante who starts the game out sowing a cross into his chest and screaming in agony for no reason. Then you beat the shit out of Death and rip his guts out with his own scythe. Death is depicted as a skeleton but this is no reason not to show gallons of blood pour out of him. And for as much shit as Bayonetta got for its character design, there is no reason too feeble for this game to whip out some tits. Definitely play the demo before you buy it.
Last edited by MikeDinosaur; February 8, 2010 at 2:11 PM.
Not the mention the part where, after killing at least 50 dude, a cutscene plays where Dante casually strolls into the city center, stares around for 30 seconds, and has a random mook strool up behind him and stab him in the neck and kill him.
I'm not much for God of War or Dante's. My roommate is a huge fan of those types of games. But even that little bit of horrendously presented gameplay and story segregation was jarring...especially since the hack n'slash/action genre generally has you playing as people who can punch God in the throat.
Alright, looks like I can safely pass on this one.
I finished Mass Effect 2 and I'm replaying it to get a perfect game for the next one. I fucked up a little the first time. I'm glad they took took out that terrible vehicle you drive around in but they replaced it with a also boringly annoying minigame where you have to find buried minerals based on frequency detections. Why do these games keep making you do the most boring, monotonous things imaginable?
Winter is Coming: Summer 2011.
I actually really appreciated the opening, but possibly it's because I saw it as a very engaging way to execute a game mechanics tutorial. It threw you into the middle of the story--trapped in a train car that's dangling from a snowy mountainside, then jumps you back in time, with the expectation that you will eventually return to that train wreck later in the game and discover how you ended up there. And, while unspooling a little bit of the narrative, it walks you through some of the basic controls of the game i.e. running, jumping, dangling, shimmying, finding treasures, and shooting people in the face.
Uncharted 2 is filled with a lot of set pieces like that first one, and maybe you sacrifice some free will but what you get in return is a meticulously designed thrill ride. Plus, when you get into the shootout sections of the game the levels are built in such a way that even if there is a single goal you must achieve, there are numerous strategies you can employ to get there.
On the other end of gaming, a friend just let me borrow Fallout 3 because it seems I have a bit of free time on my hands and I wanted to make the best possible use of it. I'd avoided this game when it was released because I am usually bummed out by RPG/Action hybrids. And, after a couple hours of playing the game, my suspicions were concerned. Here is a really thoughtful, detailed video game world that I don't care to spend 3 solid months exploring.
The problem with Fallout 3 -- for me, anyway -- was that despite its futuristic, post-apocalyptic setting, I could easily see through that narrative and directly into the medieval fantasy RPGs that inspired it. I was still a character roaming between pubs, trading posts, and boarding houses, and picking up scraps of information (and just scraps of stuff, in general) from harlots and shifty proprietors. Except now, instead of smiting bugbears with my allotment of hit points, I would shoot some radiation-clogged mutant with my allotment of action points. I quickly grew impatient.
I think it's simply personal preference, but I would rather have the story unloaded through discovery based on my actions rather than my many (MANY) chitchats with incidental characters. And if I have to discover something through conversation, I'd rather that happen in a well-executed and entertaining cut scene than by standing there, facing another character, in a way two people would never position themselves. All those dialogue trees are kind of open-world "lite," anyway, because they've been scripted with various outcomes. They just do it less efficiently and far more awkwardly than a quick, informative cutscene or some archival tape my character stumbles across, and then can listen to as a soundtrack while continuing to explore an environment and, ideally, get some decent use out of that semi-automatic handgun.
(i promised myself i'd write today. this post counts, doesn't it? please?)
weblog: http://www.tremble.com
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It's nice to see that there's someone else who didn't fall for Fallout 3.
Oblivion, but with guns and a re-skinning, didn't appeal to me either.
I think one of the big differences between open world games and linear games is that of mechanics.
Fallout 3 had a ton of different missions, but I can't think of a single time where the mechanics of the game actually changed. Sure, I could get better versions of what I already had, but there was very little I could do that was NEW. Each mission is just a slightly different combination of the same old mechanics, and I get bored quickly. Every mission was some combination of "Go here, shoot something, press X near this object, go somewhere else."
I mean, it makes sense from a design perspective. It's difficult to design a mission without knowing exactly what the player is capable of at that moment. Linear games don't have that problem.
To use a tired example, look at Half Life 2 in comparison. In one section, you have well implemented control over a hoard of Antlions. In another section, you're using your vehicle's boost feature and various environmental devices to keep from being killed by antlions. In yet another you're in a pitch black parking garage with just a flashlight trying not to get killed by zombies. Another has you using portable turrets to defend a position. Once these set pieces are over, you move on to another main mechanic.
The game forces you to constantly adapt to new challenges. This is the real boon of linear games, in my opinion. I don't think that feeling has ever been replicated in an open world.
I'm a MAN, dammit!
It's true that it's a good tutorial for how to play the game, I guess I'm just reacting to how the game is played. Having just come off Batman (whose controls are complicated but ultimately very slick), I find it clunky and uninspired. It doesn't feel fluid or organic at all to me -- for example, why do you have to hit X to climb up from hanging when pressing up is a more natural and seamless way to do that? I press up to climb a ladder, then when I reach the top I pointlessly have to press a button to complete the climb? Dumb. And swinging: you hold in the direction you want to swing, when my instinct is to go back and forth to build momentum. It all feels very anti-intuitive to me.
I do like the shootouts, but I am not very good at them and probably need to be more patient. It seems like games are loathe to just let you blast the shit out of bad guys anymore -- to which I ask: what's wrong with that every now and then? Now it's all "take your time and figure it out," which takes away some of the visceral thrill of shooting people (it takes about 10 bullets to take a guy down in this game, for God's sake!).
And don't get me started on cut scenes! Even if they're well acted and everything, I want them to be brief and let me get back to playing. I turned my PS3 on to play a video game, not watch a movie. I like how Batman put a lot of the cut scene-type exposition in voice-over -- even if it was contrived for the Joker to be talking to us over the PA all the time, at least it lets you play the game while exposition is dumped in your ear. Sometimes Uncharted feels like it's constantly interrupting your playing experience to show you a scene. I'm pretty sure I got to a point today where there was a 2 minute cut-scene, then a little game sequence where I ran from a truck shooting at it for about 15 seconds (one of those things where no skill is needed and it might as well be another cut scene), and then another 2 minute cut scene started. Just let me play the game, please.
A good game should be fun whether you care about the story or not, and I'm not sure Uncharted passes that test for me. Maybe if/when I get better at it I will enjoy the game-play more.
This is a must-have where I come from:
This is an amazing forum on gamer psychology. For instance, I loved Fallout 3 and hated and eventually bailed on Half Life 2, which to me had a boring story I didn't care to see through. I have two chapters left in Assassin's Creed II, not counting the DLC chapter, I will never go back and finish it. Just typing "Demon's Souls" makes me so mad I could cry.
I really have no opinion of linearity vs. sandbox; I usually go by the reviews. For instance, right now, I have no idea what the game play is like in Heavy Rain, but the reviews have been stellar, so I'm excited to check it out. It was the reviews for Mass Effect and BioShock that made me buy an Xbox 360 after having already bought a PS3.
And this is one of the things I LOVE: being able to change the look of my character as the game progresses. I want to see the armor and weapon upgrades reflected in the look of the character. Between missions in ME2, I have changed the colors of my armor every time. I did one, pinkish with light green tints, that I call my Hello Kitty armor. So I am kind of bummed that the armor of the other squad members doesn't change.
Also, I haven't been using the special armors because they have closed helmets. I want to see my Shepherd's face. And speaking of which, on Tuesday, Feb. 9, there will be a new free armor and shotgun available as DLC.
DaggerofChrist unmasked
You bailed on Half Life 2 because of the story, but did you stick with Fallout 3 for story? You could never convince me that Fallout 3 has better, less repetitive game play then Half Life 2. Was Fallout 3's story really all that compelling, though? In games like that, there are so many side quests and diversions that it's very easy to lose focus on the main story.
If I don't do the side quests, then I feel like I'm missing something. If I do all of them, then I REALLY lose interest with the overarching story. Part of a compelling story to me is a sense of urgency, but if I can spend 20 gameplay hours between major plot points, how urgent can it really be?
That's my own neurosis, though, I'm sure.
I'm totally with you on in-engine rendered equipment, though. Going back and playing JRPG's that don't change your character model is infuriating to me now.
I'm a MAN, dammit!
Cutscenes are the death of video games to me. They're why I stopped playing Metal Gear Solid. If it were up to the makers of cutscenes, movies like this heap of poo would come out in theaters every summer. I think it's very interesting to point out Fallout 3 's borrowing sword and spell devices. I always saw the stark animation/gameplay similarities to Oblivion but was too busy getting into the game to notice the literal structure of the story was borrowing from the genre all the way back to Dungeons and Dragons. I guess I liked both genres enough to not care? I know if Fallout 4 has a bunch of cutscenes I will probably get bored and see right through it too.
I like this new genre hybrid era of games though. Good! Most games doing this are taking risks that I haven't seen in a while. 2000-2005 was a period of style stagnation that was pretty frustrating to me. Most of the hot games were 3D platformers. For instance, I'm looking forward to playing the Bayonetta demo even though I don't think I'll like it, because it sounds like they took ideas so different that the premise sounds dreamlike, but they somehow blended them together.
I remember playing Katamari and thinking "It's been forever since I played something this surprising. I wish it wasn't so clunky and buggy!" For a stretch I never wanted to play a new game because I thought it would be both polished and unique. But now it happens 5-6 times a year.
BioShock 2 after work today! Cannot wait! I've been anticipating this game since I beat the first one...!
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