Unreal is Visually Unsatisfactory

I’ve played two games so far that use the Unreal engine: Bioshock and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

When Bioshock was released, it received rave reviews for its graphics — usually, this really meant art style.  I think the graphics were unique that early in the current 7th console generation, but compared to the graphics and art style of current games, Bioshock is not good at all.  Batman has been popular this year; I’ve only played it for about an hour, so I don’t have strong impressions about the game itself.  Its art style is quite different from that of Bioshock and seems ok, but very undistinguished.

However, there’s something about the two games that makes them look extremely similar.  It could be a characteristic look that wet surfaces have.  To me, both these games have a slightly unpleasant visual aspect.  I look at the graphics and grimace.  The surfaces, the rendering doesn’t impress me; it is extremely mediocre.  Objects somehow don’t seem to stand out from the general background.  The rendering seems heavy-handed somehow, like they used shadows too heavily or tried too hard to bump-map everything.

It’s hard to tell without playing more Unreal games, but I think it is the engine and not the games that put me off.

The PS3-X360 Graphical Power Debate?

PS3 and X360 fans and publicity spin doctors have been at each other’s throats about which is more “powerful” graphically.  It’s one of the biggest debates in gaming today, up there with “PSN vs. XBL”, “does the Wii compete with the PS3 and X360″ and such.

The Question

Part of the problem in blog comment and online forum shouting matches is they don’t usually specify what they are arguing about.  A whole variety of questions are addressed.  Two people will argue against each other, but their posts will be about slightly different issues.  Here are some examples of different questions:

1. Is it cheaper to develop a game with the graphical quality of a Halo game on the PS3 or the X360, assuming that it is developed for only one console?
2. Is it cheaper to develop a game with the graphical quality of a Halo game on the PS3 or the X360, assuming that it will be a multiplatform game?
3. Is it possible to develop a game of Uncharted 2 graphics quality on the X360?  Which development would be cheaper?

These questions may all have different answers, some favouring the PS3 and others favouring the X360.

It’s important to clarify that I’m only considering graphical horsepower, not art direction.  A game might “look good” to someone.  This depends on two things: graphical power and art direction.  Art direction is the subjective component.  Graphical power corresponds to things like anti-aliasing and the number of polygons rendered, light sources and polygon detail.  Appreciation of graphical power is also partly subjective.  Different people prefer different types of anti-aliasing, for instance.  However, it is a lot more objective than art direction.  So I’ll focus on graphical horsepower — that is what I mean when I use the word quality.

The mulitplatform question is particularly muddy.  It’s unclear even what the question means.  Suppose you developed a multiplat game with development primarily on the X360, then ported to the PS3 (but made absolutely sure the quality was the same).  How to specify how much money was spent on each console?  You can’t count the original development cost towards the X360 and the porting cost towards the PS3, since that would be unfair to the X360. On the other hand, it is well known that it is hard to make a port with the same quality as the original so the cost of the PS3 is unfairly inflated as well.  (The same problems crop up if you flip the roles of the PS3 and the X360.)

Suppose for now we focus on non-cross-platform games.  This may be unfair to the X360, looking only at questions which are favourable to the PS3, but the question is hard to define.  Hopefully I’ll have a way to reasonably ask the multiplat question after some thought.

Focusing only on single-platform development, any question comparing the two consoles boils down to the following:

Is it more expensive to develop a certain quality of game for the PS3 or the X360?

It is important to note that the above question is not a single question.  It is a series of questions depending on the quality of game you are interested in.  For example, you might ask the question for a game of the quality of Uncharted 2, or a game of the quality of Halo 3.  The answers might be different.  It might be impossible or prohibitively expensive to create a game like Uncharted 2 on the X360.  On the other hand, it might be cheaper to create a game of the quality of Halo 3 on the X360.

Evidence

So far all I’ve done is define the question.  This is a very important step; you have to be clear about what you are asking first.  Now let’s talk about evidence.  For a fixed game quality (e.g. U2, Killzone 2, Gears 2 or Halo 3 quality) how do we assess the evidence that X360 or PS3 is cheaper to develop for?  Here is one rule.  If

1. the quality of game A on the PS3 is better than the quality of game B on the X360 and
2. there are games on the PS3 as high quality or better than game A
3. there are no games on the X360 higher quality than game B

then this constitutes evidence that at quality level A, the PS3 is cheaper to develop for.   It isn’t proof.  It’s just one piece of evidence.  If you have tens of games better than A on the PS3 and no games better than B on the X360, then the body of evidence is inching towards proof.  Otherwise it’s just one piece of evidence.

We do have such a situation.  Game A is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Game B is Gears of War 2.  No game on the X360 has better quality than Gears 2.  Uncharted has better quality than Gears 2.  And there are two games, Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2, that are better than Uncharted on the PS3.  This is evidence that the PS3 has higher graphical capabilities than the X360 at the Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune level.

If, tomorrow, someone makes a game on the X360 that’s higher quality than Uncharted 2.  Then the above piece of evidence would no longer hold (condition 3 would be violated), and we’d be in the reverse situation: there would be evidence of the X360’s superiority at the Uncharted level.  But as it stands today, the PS3 has the advantage there.

When we are talking about games at the Halo 3 quality the question is a lot harder to answer.  We could look at the development cost of a game of similar quality on the PS3 and compare, but it would be hard to agree on one of “similar quality” and development costs depend on many things other than graphical quality.  Evidence of sorts is provided by developers such as those from Valve who feel the PS3 is much more expensive to develop for.  However, there are credibility issues with developers who are firmly in one camp.  Just as we wouldn’t take Naughty Dog’s word for the theory that the PS3 is more powerful, we shouldn’t take Valve’s word for the opposite theory.  So far, I can’t think of a clear way to establish evidence at the Halo 3 quality level.

God of War III

The first two God of War games were so good, so fantastic, that it’s hard for GoW III to live up to that level of hype and expectation.  I haven’t played the GoW III demo, but I’m hopeful that it will look good.  That said, I have some specific worries.  The worries came up after I played the demo for Dante’s Inferno on the PS3 recently.

Dante’s Inferno is a God of War clone.  I don’t mean it is similar or borrows ideas or moves, or that they are similar because they are both hack-n-slash, as some people seem to imply on various discussion boards.  No, Dante’s inferno feels like a re-skinned God of War.  EVERY thing is the SAME, from the moves to the jumps to the types of attacks to the camera behaviour.  I had an eerie feeling I was playing a PS2-era God of War game.  And that’s where my worries began to set in.

Take the camera, for instance.  For a PS2 game it might have been ok to have a fixed uncontrollable camera, but this somehow feels very dated and restrictive on the PS3.  It is too old school with the kind of graphics and scenery I’m expecting to enjoy on the PS3.  It may be that some of the other games, such as Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2, have spoiled me.  But I really want to be able to admire the scenery if I want to, and be able to look in any direction I wish.  Heavenly Sword was a game in the God of War genre (indeed it got a bit of criticism for being a GoW derivative when it was first released) that had beautiful visuals AND a user-controllable camera.  I agree that the camera was used to great cinematic effect in the first two GoW titles.  But it just doesn’t feel right on the PS3.  And Uncharted 2 showed us how you can do both things: the user’s control of the camera can be taken away briefly during specific set-pieces or cinematic moments in the game, while still allowing the user to control the camera.  I REALLY want to be able to look at whatever I want.  Another argument in favour of the camera being game-controlled is that the player is free to spend more time fighting, increasing the amount of time spent involved in the game.  This may be valid, but it’s always possible to implement a “camera spring” that takes over if the user isn’t actively controlling the camera, so the player can do his fighting and once that’s done, enjoy the scenery if he wants to.  This is something I really hope they don’t mess up on.

The gameplay itself is supposed to resemble the older version a lot.  I hope that they change it a little, because keeping it too similar to the originals would feel a little old.  There should be a sense of a refresh, of something vastly better and superior and more comfortable, since we’re now on a next-gen console.  That is not to say they should change it completely — I’d want it to remain a God of War game.  I’d like the changes to be subtle but new and different enough to feel like it’s an update rather than a continuation.

Another gameplay concern I have: I thought God of War mixed it up pretty well.  Uncharted 2 showed us how important it is and how rewarding it can feel if the pace is broken up with a feeling of some well-earned respites breaking up the intensity of the combat.  I hope the GoW folks learned from this and put in a few well-made cooldown points in the game.

Magic on the PS3

I really want to play a medieval dungeons and dragons type RPG.  I want it to have a lot of rationalized magic.  By that I mean no JRPG-style weirdness.  I want characters to slowly acquire magic skills via plot elements in the story (not by simply “picking up” a magic item).

I want a deep high fantasy story in a universe that is revealed gradually to the character, full of “wow” moments and epiphanies.  But the character’s story should be fairly linear and designed. Only designed stories are good.  It’s very hard to make good randomized stories that change based on choices.

I want current graphics realizing a beautifully art-directed world.  (PS3-level current graphics, not just X360-level current graphics.)  If it’s going to be a multiplatform, I want it to be all it can on each platform.  No dumbing down the PS3 version because MS is going to be pissed off otherwise.

I want to be able to spend as much time as I wish micromanaging my inventory and abilities.  If I want to do very little micromanagement, that should be ok.  If I want to do it more, that should be ok too.  On a 50+ hour RPG, my mood on this topic is bound to change quite a bit.  I should never have to micromanage inventory if I don’t want to.

I want zero grind.  Leveling up my abilities should be through specific story events and quests that I complete, not by grinding away at beating random monsters.  There should be no random fights.  Each fight should be designed to be interesting, engaging and tedium-repellent.

Games I’ve Played

It’s been a while since the last post.  In the interim, I played a bunch of games — some good, some bad.  Here are some impressions.

Final Fantasy XII

My enjoyment of role-playing games is erratic.  I enjoy them immensely for a while.  But then it starts to feel repetitive and the grind really gets me bored.  Fighting the same monsters over and over in generic randomly generated combinations really gets old fast for me.  I very much prefer designed fights in environments specifically designed to be interesting — as in shooters or fighting games.

I had these same problems with FFXII.  I was a complete newcomer to RPGs — well, other than Diablo II, which I didn’t realize was an RPG at all — when I started playing FFXII sometime in early 2008.  It was a weird experience.  You had effeminate heroes, schoolgirly heroines, and worst of all, cute monsters.  I hate cute monsters right now, partly because I’ve also been playing the incredibly repetitive Dragon Quest VIII.  I played it about 3/4 of the way through, then got too bored to continue.  For about a year.  Then sometime in September 2009 I picked it up again and finished it.

One thing I did like about FFXII is the gambit system.  I hate fights in most JRPGs — the gambit system frees you up from the drudgery of continually pressing the same button during ridiculous turn based fights.

Speaking of boring, repetitive RPGs, Oblivion tops the list of those for me.  The fighting in Oblivion is much better than in most JRPGs — you actually do some real hack & slash.  But I found Oblivion boring for other reasons, maybe because I was too eager to play the weird leveling system.

Bioshock

This game is supposed to have all kinds of awesomeness.  I’ve come back to it three times so far, and I don’t know why but I find it extremely boring.  The atmosphere, art direction, voice acting are good, but I find the gameplay boring, the controls unresponsive, the graphics muddy and uninspiring.  The story is good end-to-end but drags in specific places.  The game is far from a write-off, but I’m having some serious boredom issues with it.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

This was a game I picked up soon after I got my PS3 Dec 2008.  I started playing it, amazed by its ridiculous, bewildering difficulty level.  Had to give up after a while — I wasn’t in a place where I could deal with that level of aggravation over an extended period of time.  So, had an 8-month hiatus, then started it up again recently.  I’m only in chapter 5, but man, I’m feeling the pain.  My thumb feels a sympathetic twinge of pain everytime it hears the starting music.  So I’m playing it on and off.

I don’t hate this game; it’s fair even though hard.  And that’s more than can be said for some other games.  The MGS series is one.  I love the series, but it just doesn’t play fair.  The difficulty there comes from some clumsy, unintuitive controls with an artificial lag.  Other games have combo animation freeze that make it hard to fight.  NGS has some of that animation freeze, but overall it all feels fair.  When you die, you immediately perceive that it’s your fault.

Resident Evil 5

I had the misfortune to play this game right after Uncharted 2.

That statement needs some explanation, maybe.  See, RE5 was touted as a game with fantastic graphics.  ”One of the prettiest games of this generation. Lighting, textures and landscapes are often stunning.”  This was how IGN described the graphics.  When I played it for the first time, I would not have said this.  I would have used “muddy, uneven textures, blurry graphics, and an overall lack of production values” to describe the graphics.  (I believe Microsoft is dragging these standards down — MS will not permit a higher quality PS3 release, something which would be quite easy to pull off given the additional storage and processing capability of the PS3.  Anyway.)

But that would have been unfair to Capcom.  After playing it for a while, I got used to the graphics.   This game is a real mixed bag.  The character animation is really good, the graphics, though not remotely in the league of Uncharted 2’s, are actually very good too once you get used to them.  The gameplay is classic Resident Evil 4.  Very enjoyable, very tight.    Replayability is high.  It’s a lot of fun playing with different weapons, infinite ammo, and costumes.  The Mercenaries minigame is pretty awesome.

On the bad side, the menu and interface design is a dinosaur, something out of the mid-90s.  It’s clunky and frustrating.  Infinite ammo is great, but once you unlock infinite ammo on a weapon at a certain level, you get infinite ammo even at harder levels.  This makes it possible to beat the game real easily on the second playthrough at the harder levels.  Having a partner can be a pain at times — when playing as Chris, Sheva tends to take out too many of the baddies (the AI is a really good shot).  When playing as Sheva, Chris is a huge pain in the ass.  He always wants to get ahead of Sheva and block up the whole view.  Sheva uses about a third of the screen real estate, and Chris always positions himself so he uses up another huge chunk so you can’t  see anything.  Especially irritating during fights, when he makes it nigh impossible to aim.

Uncharted 2

This is of course the big enchilada.  The fact that it makes RE5 look like a previous gen title says something.  The graphics are polished, but also bright, colourful, beautiful with a fully varied palette.  No sepia brown or grey-green sheen here.  About the graphics, I do think they could have done with a little bit of antialiasing.  This was also true in the first Uncharted: Naughty Dog seem to have decided to go without antialiasing rather than use AA and potentially spoil some of the visuals.  The result is a super-sharp, super-crisp look that’s great, but I did occasionally feel some textures looked too sharp or too textured.  Now this is only a complaint within the league of games that it’s possible to compare with Uncharted 2.  At this point, there are only 2 such games: the first Uncharted and Killzone 2.  It’s very hard to compare Killzone 2 and U2, since their art direction is very different.  But overall, I tend to prefer the Uncharted look, if only because of the more varied and positive colours.

It’s not just the graphics, of course.  Every single aspect of the gaming experience has been fine-tuned here to remove any ounce of tedium and let the player focus purely on the gaming experience.  The fabulous checkpointing means that, barring one or two places, you don’t need to worry about dying and keep saving periodically, interrupting your gameplay and distracting you from pure enjoyment.  Of course, the reduction of load times to ABSOLUTE ZERO during gameplay contributes hugely to this too.  All of the controls, the menus, are designed with this in mind: that they should help the player, not get in his way.

U2 is sometimes described as a platformer, but I think this is a bit misleading.  It lacks any of the precision that is needed in platforming games.  Instead, the game actively assists the player, adjusting for any miscalculations he might while jumping or traversing the environment.  The platforming elements and environmental traversal here are purely atmospheric elements.  They are not meant to provide any kind of challenge; there is zero difficulty and/or skill involved in these.  In that sense they are not really part of gameplay.  Instead, they simply move the story along, playing a bit like an interactive movie, and add a sense of vertigo or wonder.

The designed firefights are truly awesome.  I wish there was a way to pick a particular fight and go through it without actually having to play the entire chapter (or having to remember which save game is which).  The world is so traversable in all directions that trying different strategies during firefights is immensely enjoyable and rewarding.

E3

Well, E3 has rolled around, and from all accounts, Microsoft has hit the ball out of the park.  Being the conservative company that it is, I don’t expect anything equally big from Sony this time around.  A newly designed PSP, possibly a slim PS3 and a few games we already knew about.  Nice, but that doesn’t hold a candle to Project Natal. Sony needs to stop living in the conservative past and actually start diversifying its innovations. Something that Microsoft is doing. It’s no longer enough to say that the PS3 has a bit more computational power and point at the RRoD to drum up sales for the PS3!

Update: So I’ve seen Sony’s Playstation motion controller demo video and had a chance to compare it with Microsoft’s Project Natal. I have to say I’m much more impressed with the PS3 controller demo than with the Project Natal demo. Natal sounds cool as a concept, but the demo appears designed to hide the device’s lack of precision. Ripples following a hand motion? Come on, I’m sure you could do that with the PS2 eye toy. If the stuff we saw in the Milo demo is real, it is truly impressive; but the demo cuts so many times it  doesn’t seem Natal currently has those capabilities.  I do think that as a concept Natal is much better than the PS3 motion controller.

The PS3 motion controller really blew me away with its precision. I’ve been reading about the technology for a while (someone found Sony’s patent and it’s been known ever since). I didn’t expect much from a device that’s essentially a stick with some LEDs on the front, but it’s actually very impressive what they can do. I guess all that processing power did pay off.  It’s not nearly as spectacular as Natal — but it works.  Natal is spectacular, but does it work?  And every game looks like a physical workout.  Do people want to spend that much time working out in front of the TV?

Dead Space: Wow!

As usual, my impressions come very late after the game has been released.  Almost a couple of years late.  That’s because I prefer to buy my games after their price has fallen to reasonable levels.  To me, reasonable for a fantastic game is about $35.  So, when Amazon began selling Dead Space for $32, I jumped at the chance, took the plunge and bought it.

I started playing it immediately, though I was in the middle of several other games.  It hooked me and I kept playing until the end.  It’s a fantastic game!

There are several interesting things about this game.  The first is something that has been said before in various reviews, but when you play it this really strikes you.  It is the incredible confluence of ship design and level design.  The game’s designers seem to have decided to make every part of the starship credible.  By this, I mean that the areas on the ship seem convincingly functional.  The crew quarters have the type of bunks found on other space-constrained accommodations, such as aircraft carriers and submarines.  The officers quarters are appropriately luxurious, though not overly so.  The engine room, mining areas, cargo bays, and every other part of the ship is just convincing.  Every bit of machinery, every piece of stowed equipment and furniture, feels appropriate, as if there is a good reason it should be there.  Nothing feels out of place.  Overall the starship gives the impression of being extrapolated from the design of real-world ships.

It isn’t just the ship design that was convincing; it was the level design as well.  By this I mean that, as the game progresses through various areas of the ship, the tasks the player has to accomplish are completely inspired by the ship design; these are things that you’d have to navigate, given the design of the ship.  No part of the ship feels as if it was simply tacked on to give the player something to do.  The levels are organically driven by ship design, and yet manage to stay refreshingly interesting.

The sound in the game is one of its most important components, as would be expected in a survival horror game.  Multiple layers of scary sounds are a constant, relentless feature of the game.  The tension created by these sounds is constant and fear inducing.  What I found interesting, and I thought this was genius on the part of the game’s sound designers, was the type of sounds that you hear.  It appears as if every sound is carefully ambiguous.  For example, you get startled at something like a monster scream.  But if you think about it, the sound could equally well be a human voice or the whine of machinery starting up.  You hear something like footsteps echoing around you, but it could equally well be a container getting knocked around or the groan of distressed metal as it expands or contracts.  This ambiguity keeps you on edge, keeps you guessing about what’s going on around you.

The sound system in the game is unique in another way: various techniques, such as the fear emitter system were used to layer sounds based on the player’s (and necromorph’s) actions.  There’s a great interview here that describes the various sound techniques that were used, and specifically talks about the Fear Emitter system and the Creepy Ambi Patch, which generates those ambiguous, creepy ambient sounds.

The movie and game influences in this game are there for everyone to see.  First, the controls are obviously a Resident Evil 4 clone, without the quick U-turn.  I have mixed feelings about the “clumsy control” trick that video game designers use, for example, in Resident Evil 4 and the early Metal Gear Solid games (I haven’t yet played MGS3 and MGS4).  Clumsy, laggy controls increase tension and are a way to increase difficulty, but they can also simply irritate at times when it’s hard to just do what you want.  In Dead Space, they’ve found the perfect sweet spot for the controls.  Although RE4-esque, the controls are actually much more natural than in that game.  You have all the same features as RE4, but you learn the controls within seconds and they feel like a natural extension of your mind.  You want to do something, and you find that your hands are doing it already without you having to think about it.

Apropos of controls, the weapon design has been talked about a lot, as has the new “strategic dismemberment” style fighting.  Strategic dismemberment really does serve to increase the tension.  But it’s not just that: there’s something viscerally more satisfying about it than headshots.  While it sounds gross, neatly amputating a monstrous limb with the plasma cutter is vastly more satisfying than scoring a headshot.

The ship design game is of course heavily related to the Alien series, most closely resembling Aliens, the second movie.  In fact there is very little difference between the two.  The grating on which you walk, the type of machinery, the sections with organic alien growth, the dripping ceilings: a lot of things are the same. Dead Space is more browns and reds, while Aliens was more blues and blacks.  One aspect which resembles RE4 more than Aliens is monster design.

Finally, I really do love games that tell an interesting story.  Dead Space is one of the very best in this aspect.  I would compare it with Half Life 2, but really HL2 has story concepts rather than a story.  That is, you see a lot of things in HL2 that make you wonder about the story, but not much story is actually revealed.  HL2 creates an atmosphere of unslaked science-fictiony curiosity.  By contrast, Dead Space, while also science-fiction, reveals it all.  The story unfolds slowly throughout the game, and you get various pieces that are introduced at the beginning, get fleshed out throughout the game, and resolved satisfactorily at the end.  It’s hard to say which style is better, but I found Dead Space’s storytelling very satisfying.

Complaints?  There are several, of course.  It’s unusual these days to have a lot of backtracking in a game, but  Dead Space reuses entire levels several times, where you’re going back to the same areas later in the game for new tasks.  Most of them made me groan, although in one or two of them it was interesting to see the same levels from a different perspective.  The camera is actually very good, better than most other 3rd person games, but very occasionally it can be bothersome.

Now I can’t wait for Dead Space 2.  Though I’m probably only going to be able to afford it a year after it comes out.  Sigh.

PS3, 360 vs. Wii

When sales figures for the latest console generation are produced, the Wii usually leads the pack by a large distance.  It’s interesting to hear the arguments people make about whether the PS3 and 360 are really competing with the Wii.  A lot of non-game-related writers (reporters who don’t really understand games, but write one-off gaming articles, usally for large newspapers) put them in the same basket.  Among gamers the opinion is divided.  Some (including the PS3 and 360 PR execs) say that the Wii is in a market of its own, while some say the Wii is competing directly with the PS3 and 360.

Personally, I think they don’t compete directly.  A few exceptions notwithstanding, the majority of women think of solo gaming as an obsessive loner activity.  It isn’t just that they are uninterested.  They are actively repulsed by it.  The Wii has successfully made huge inroads into the wife/girlfriend space. To a great extent, this is because of its image as a social, physically active, non-geek, non-loner device.  The PS3 and 360 are exact opposites of this.  I think it’s possible for the PS3 and 360 to change the loner/asocial/geek image, but this would take huge effort.

What about network play?  It’s very popular, and by definition very social.  But it’s still qualitatively different from the way interactions happen over the Wii or in real life.  When they’re social it’s still an online socialness — the same type of socialness usually associated with among people who chat online or live in Second Life. You could imagine breaking out your Wii for people to play with in the midst of a party, but your PS3 or 360 would generate very little interest.

I believe cost has a little to do with it too, but not much.  Most women are actively opposed to the PS3, simply because it’s possible to play loner games.  I know of at least one couple who chose the Wii over the PS3, not because of price or availability of interesting games, but simply because the wife didn’t want the PS3.  She preferred a Wii + a $250 Blu-Ray player: she was uncomfortable with the PS3 entering her home.

Sony has apparently developed some sort of motion-sensing controller.  It will be interesting to see whether it can make the PS3 more family friendly.  I already own a PS3 (and I don’t own a Wii), so if Sony came up with something like a Wii Fit or Wii Sports replacement, I’d certainly spring for it!

Killzone 2

Ah, I just beat Killzone 2.  Fantastic game.  The immersion is just incredible.  When I first started it, it made me a little nauseous because of the way the screen moves as the character walks; I was a bit worried initially, but I got used to it soon enough!  The graphics are, of course, awesome, though the texture quality is a tad inconsistent at times (very detailed textures on some surfaces and blurry lower res textures on other surfaces right next to them…).  The graphical complexity of the levels is incredible.  Both sounds and music are fantastic.

A lot has been said about the controls in this game.  They slow you down to a slightly deliberate pace.  The controls are not too clumsy, though I wish the manual had explained that you only need to click L3 to sprint, not hold it down.  Would’ve saved me a lot of pain.  Aiming was also quite frustrating for me: you turn sluggishly but then accelerate too rapidly.  This means that I either can’t train on the target on time, or I overshoot and waste time.   The problem is there’s only one modifiable setting for this: sensitivity.  It might have helped if there was sensitivity and acceleration.

There’s quite a backstory to this game, if you read up on it on the website.  Unfortunately, none of that makes it into the game itself.  The game is just one long fight with zero storytelling in it.  This I found very disappointing, since I love story-based games.  The Metal Gear series, which I’d been playing on the PS2 just before I started this one, also raised my expectations of extra interactive details within a game, which made me a little disappointed in Killzone 2.  Other than fighting, there’s not much to do or see in that beautifully savage world except collect “intel” and shoot Helghast emblems.  I couldn’t help feeling, every second of the way, that they could have done much, much more with the game.

I was also quite disappointed at the length of the game.  I am quite bad (in terms of skill) at FPS games, not to mention I tend to progess in a leisurely fashion, gawking at all the graphics.  Normally takes me 20-30 hours to finish an FPS the GameSpot and IGN editors call a 12 hour game.  But I finished Killzone 2 in 15 hours (yeah, I know — way too long).  It should’ve been a lot longer.

But this game really isn’t about story.  It’s about pulse-pounding, adrenaline-pumping immersion.  And it’s incredibly good at that.  Highly recommended.

The PlayStation 3 Has Too Many Games!

The PS3 has too many games.  I’m struggling to find enough time to finish the games I have, and new games are being released thick and fast.  I think the biggest competitor for games on the PS3 are other games on the PS3.  When reports say some PS3 games aren’t doing as well as expected, I think it’s because there are too many other PS3 games to play.  Here’s my current list of PS3 games; only including games that are already released.

Games I’ve Beaten: The Orange Box, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Resistance: Fall of Man, Killzone 2, Heavenly Sword, Dead Space

Games I’ve started and like, but am yet to finish: Bioshock, Resident Evil 5, Little Big Planet, Valkyria Chronicles, Metal Gear Solid 4, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Mirror’s Edge

Games I’ve started that bore me, and am yet to finish: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Games I bought but am yet to start: Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas

Games I’m definitely going to buy: Resistance 2, InFAMOUS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, God of War 3, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Games I might buy but not sure: Fallout 3, Prince of Persia

Well, I look at the upcoming lineup and it leaves me anxious.  There are so many games coming out, how am I ever going to find the time to play ‘em?  I don’t wanna miss out on any of the fun, but there just isn’t enough time in the world!