Gaming Weekend: Who Needs Achievements? Edition
After a couple weeks there in January where I posted hundreds of Achievement Points, the recent arrival of the PSP and the PS3 has made my pursuit of gamerscore wane a bit. And while I certainly played 360 this weekend, I didn’t do so with score-boosting as a motivation. As such, I played just to play and… well, it was kind of nice, really. I also got some more play time in on the PS3 and began to see the difference in design philosophies between “grown up” kiddie games and games that are actually for kids.
Heavenly Swordsmanship
I completed Heavenly Sword this weekend, which isn’t really saying much because when people say this game is short, they don’t kid. I played for an hour or two last Saturday when I first rented it, then put in maybe—maybe—an hour each evening after work until Thursday morning where I wrapped it up before noon. All told it took me maybe seven hours to plough through the thing and while I won’t deny enjoying myself for those seven hours I mean honestly: Sixty bucks retail? Really?
The game looks pretty phenomenal. The difference between in-game/zoomed out view and the close up character models is kind of striking and man do you end up wishing they’d spent some time at least trying to make the hair seem like something other than a malicious parasite attached to people’s skullcaps but the scenery and the models and the animations are pretty impressive. Plus it has the best lip syncing I’ve seen… not just in a video game but in any computer-generated animation. Andy Serkis does a wonderful job at the motion capture but it’s the way they were able to get his little, subtle facial tics and barely perceptible expression adjustments to come through that was really impressive. Give appropriate nods to WETA’s motion capture team there.
As for the game itself, it’s kind of a mixed bag. On one hand the fighting segments that ostensibly make up most of the game (Nariko’s parts, essentially) are very God of War-like, only not as fun. The Heavenly Sword, in my mind, ought to make me nigh unstoppable against regular shlubs but it isn’t until very, very late in the game that you wield any power of that sort. And the game seems to want you to play it in a strategic manner using the various stances and blocks rather than as a button-masher but frankly, it’s a lot more fun as a button masher and I think they should have just embraced that.
The sections where you play as Kai are significantly more enjoyable, using the Aftertouch system to guide arrows into dude’s kneecaps and tracheas is a lot of fun (the sections where you man a cannon as Nariko are similar and also enjoyable). However they even manage to occasionally mess this up by having you get into situations where you have to execute to a particular degree of success or else the bad guys will get too close to your position and force you to do a run-and-gun style thing (Kai can’t really fight face-to-face the way Nariko can) that is more frustrating than anything. There is one section where Kai is supposed to thin out the ranks of attacking assassins and when you finish Nariko has to fight off whomever slipped past Kai. This kind of reward-based section is a really cool idea and something that could have been fleshed out into a remarkable dynamic but like a lot of other things with Heavenly Sword, it felt unfinished and abandoned in favor of getting the game out the door.
Story-wise the game is nothing particularly new but I was fairly intrigued by the setting and the characters even if the plot itself was kind of dull. I hear they’re working on a sequel and I think there is fertile narrative ground here if they do it right and, you know, take the time to finish it.
Oh, This is Platforming Now?
Having finished Heavenly Sword, I went back to my local rental shop and picked up a copy of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. I heard a lot of good things about it and since I’m sort of catching up with the PS3, I figured I’d give it a shot as a change of pace from my usual 360 fare (there aren’t a lot of platformers on the 360).
Now, I admit that I am a n00b to the R&C games and I don’t play a ton of platformers either. But I play enough video games to sort of know what the score is when it comes to most any genre and what I found utterly incomprehensible about this title is that it does nothing to ease you into the game. There is no character introduction, no beginning tutorial, and even once the game has begun to sort of explain some of the available moves to you (well into the action, mind) it never really bothers to describe the concepts in the gameplay like the collectible cogs and gears that fall from downed enemies nor the power-ups and destructible environment elements.
Eventually one’s gamer vocabulary can fill in the gaps but I wonder at the decision to not even provide the option to ease series newcomers into the world.
Something else that struck me as odd was that for how much praise the game’s visuals received, I haven’t so far been terribly impressed with what I’m seeing. It looks nice enough but I can’t say that it’s leaps and bounds beyond something like Kameo and I was far more impressed by Heavenly Sword’s graphics than these. Still, I’ll concede that the game does have a pleasant feel and the action/platforming are solid and responsive. Plus there is a nice Saturday-morning cartoon vibe going that has had me laughing out loud a couple of times already. And I can tell the game is enjoyable because I had a hard time putting it down last night so I could go to bed and get some rest, doing the “okay, one more section” routine that often gets me into trouble.
The Rest of the Weekend
- Silent Hill Origins – My PSP took a short break earlier in the week as I try to savor the best horror-themed game I’ve played since Resident Evil 4, but it didn’t work and I ended up putting SH back in and pushing through some of the Theater section. I do wish the plentiful melee weapons were a bit easier to use as the choice becomes: Use melee weapons to mild effect and use a lot of health items, or rely on firearms and save the health items but find yourself bit by the dreaded ammo scarcity. Neither choice is exactly the one you want to make.
- ATV Offroad Fury – One of my failed attempts to try a PSP change of pace, this game is practically unplayable. Avoid at all costs.
- NHL 07 – My other PSP replacement therapy; it’s actually not a bad hockey game but unfortunately the whole time I played I kept thinking one thing: “I could be playing Silent Hill right now.”
- Mass Effect – I started a new character with the primary motivations being to run through as a Renegade and to focus only on the necessary main quests, avoiding side quests wherever possible. I’m playing as a male soldier this time which is interesting because it becomes quickly apparent that combat is simply not a significant obstacle, while things I took for granted the first time through like unlocking crates and secure lockers is not just a given. Also, it’s significantly more fun to be a Renegade than a Paragon: Most conversations lead to you pulling your gun on someone and making them do what you want.
- Rock Band – We played another hour or so in Joey Big Hat while waiting for Lost’s season premiere to start. We decided that since we’d hit the cap where we need to move to the next difficulty level if we want to earn new fans that we’d try “practice mode” which means doing Quickplay Multiplayer and working through the Easy song progression not unlike doing the Solo Tour. Unfortunately we got unraveled because we quickly hit the difficulty threshold of some members but not others and ran into songs that I (as the singer) don’t know at all and required frequent rescuing which limits the amount of “practice” you can claim.
- Call of Duty 4 – Mostly I popped this one in to see in HD (it looks great) but I also made my way back to the section that gave me the most trouble on the Hardened difficulty level (I’m working through Veteran now) and predictably I got pretty frustrated with the frequent kills.
- Dead Rising – Another “I gotta see this in HD” game, I played for a short while and reminded myself why I love the game but it had been so long that I forgot what my purpose was in this run-through (probably some kind of Achievement Boosting) so I ended up losing the Case Files and giving up without saving.
- Burnout Paradise – More tooling around. More crashing. Slightly more progress on the Licenses. Still no Showtime mode unlocked and still no Friends list folks who also have the game to try online with.
Demo Watch
- Rez HD – I thought for some reason this game (whose praise I’ve been hearing for years but had never been able to try) was a music/rhythm game for some reason. I was kind of pleasantly surprised to find it’s actually a psychadelic rail shooter with an addictive mechanic and some great in-game music that plays a role in the game but is not the focus. I can’t yet decide if I want to plunk down the $10 for the full version, but I’m very tempted.
- The Club – I know people tend to think you either “get” this game or you don’t. I’m pretty sure I get it, I just don’t care for it.