Posts Tagged review
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time – First Impressions
Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time is the newest entry in the Ratchet and Clank series, which has been around since 2002′s Ratchet and Clank. The series had a rough first entry, in my opinion, caused purely by the lack of a strafe button which made the controls more awkward than needed. The 2003 follow up Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando vastly improved on the series, but 2004′s Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal was when the game became perfect. The controls were the epitome of smooth, precise and intuitive, the humor was incredibly well done and the game’s pacing was spot on. When the series made the jump to the PS3, I took a hiatus due to my lack of a PS3, but I have picked the game up again with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and I must say I am a bit disappointed, although the game does seem quite good.
Up Your Arsenal used a control scheme that I found to be perfect. The left stick moved Ratchet, the right stick aimed, one shoulder button fired and one shoulder button jumped. Frenetic combat was incredibly smooth due to this system that allowed you to never move your fingers off of a stick or button. You didn’t have to move your thumb off of the aim stick to jump or fire. A Crack in Time appears to have done away with this system, and instead used a more standard system where you can shoot with R1, but Circle is used to jump. While this leaves it as a purely normal system, I’m disappointed
with the removal of what I consider to be the finest control scheme ever implemented in a game.
On other issues, the game carries the torch of the old series just fine. The humor is intact, the characters are likable, the explosions are intense and the action is chaotic. It feels very much like the old game series I came to love. At the moment, I’ve only seen old, familiar characters – Ratchet, Clank, Quark and Dr. Nefarious (plus his hilarious butler Lawrence), so I am excited to progress through the game and see new characters that were not in Up Your Arsenal (the most recent Ratchet game I have played).
At this stage in the game, I am liking what I see, but I do think they took a step back on the controls front. I hope they left the weapon upgrade system in place (or improved upon it), but at the moment, I haven’t upgraded any of my weapons. I don’t think this game will top Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for my PS3 Game of the Year, but it can give it a good challenge.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Final Impressions
I finished Uncharted 2: Among Thieves tonight, with my final file time clocking in at 11 hours and 5 minutes. In the end, I am still really impressed with this game. The two aspects of this game that will leave a very lasting impression are the cutscenes and environments.
Uncharted 2 has really raised the bar for cutscenes. Not only is the dialog well done, but the character animation is so incredibly natural that some of these scenes truly felt like a quality movie. No longer will a game’s cutscenes be measured purely as a video game cutscene, but they now have to compete with feature films with acting quality. Every time the characters interacted, the movements and facial expressions were so detailed it really felt like I was watching real people, rather than animated characters in a game. This level of polish really helped the story pop out much more than it otherwise would have.
The other aspect that constantly blew my mind was the environments. From the jungles of Borneo to the mountains of the Himalayas, every environment is beautifully crafted and detailed. Never before have I see such amazing things as I have in this game. Standing on the top of the hotel in Nepal was an incredible experience. I could see the whole town, the mountains behind it, a lake in the near distance, and the peaks of the Himalayas very far off in the distance. This experience wasn’t just a single experience that was crafted for a certain moment. Any time I had a good view of an area, I was thoroughly impressed.
The pacing of the game is also very well done. Coming in at 11 hours was perfect and was exactly when I was ready to move on. The story moves at a great pace, starting off with an excellent starting stage mixing current events and flashbacks to bring you up to speed. The only time the pacing felt a bit off was during stages 17 (Mountaineering) and 20 (Cat and Mouse). In all other stages (26 in total), the balance of platforming and gun combat was fantastic. In those two stages, the balance was very far off. Stage 17 is nearly all platforming and quickly got boring, and stage 20 was nearly all gun combat and quickly got frustratingly hard. So frustrating, in fact, I nearly quit the game. This wasn’t the kind of challenging that is enjoyable, this was the kind of challenging that simply felt cheap.
Another aspect of the game that could’ve used a bit of polish is the gun combat itself, or more specifically, the guns themselves. While there is a large variety of weapons, managing which weapon you have was occasionally a pain and got me killed more than once. When standing immediately next to a weapon, hitting Triangle will either pick that weapon up or pick the ammo up (if you already have that weapon), but during a frantic fight, you’ll often have multiple weapons on the ground near each other, and accidentally pick up a Pistole with 1 shot left, rather than that Desert Eagle ammo you were going to grab. If the weapons were more easily identified on the ground, this problem could’ve been vastly reduced.
In the end, however, all that the game did right outshines what it did wrong to still be a fantastic experience. The amazingly detailed character interaction, beautiful environments, fast and intense gunfights, great platforming and engaging story easily balance out an occasionally frustrating camera and weapon confusion in combat. If you own a PS3, this is truly a must have game. I foresee this game winning more than a few Game of the Year titles, and each one would be truly deserved.
I can only hope other game developers learn from this game. The bar has been raised, gentlemen; don’t disappoint me.
Scribblenauts / Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story First Impressions
Last night, I picked up both Scribblenauts and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story for the DS. I only spent about 45 minutes with each game, but both of them impressed me quite a bit in those 45 minutes. Scribblenauts is an all new experience for me, whereas I was a fan of the Mario & Luigi series of RPGs before picking up Bowser’s Inside Story.
The first game I played was Scribblenauts. This side scrolling game has you playing Maxwell, and you use a notepad to write words, which turn into objects on screen for Maxwell to use. The goal of each level is to get a Starite, either through solving a puzzle or through directly reaching the Starite. The objects that you create are the draw of the game, however, since Scribblenauts’ library is believed to be over 22,000 words. With my experience last night, only two words were rejected. One is a proper noun (Obama) and the other is a copyrighted word (Tazer). All other words that I put in created an object (key, sandwich, time machine, mech, tank, flame, pistol, shotgun, rock, superhero, hippie, smoker, smoke, wind, flame, dragon, dragoon, ninja, and a lot more). The only one that gave me an unexpected result was smoke. I was intending to write smoke, and at the last minute decided to give smoker a shot instead just to see what would happen, and I got a bird, rather than a person with a cigarette.
Each of the puzzles are quite different from one another, and within each one you are trying to use as few objects as possible. If you ignore the ‘few objects as possible’, I doubt any of the puzzles are hard at all, but staying within that rule requires some thought. I also found some odd solutions to puzzles that amused me. In one puzzle, I was to rescue a kitten from a tree and give the cat back to the girl. Instead, I summoned a superhero who did the work for me. It worked exactly as planned. Sometimes, I would just screw around for no real goal. On a puzzle that had me catching a butterfly, instead I made a time machine, went back to medieval Europe, summoned a mech and killed all of the knights.
The only annoyance I’ve had thus far was the overly long and text heavy tutorial. I felt they could’ve trimmed that down by 80% and still given me all I needed. I hear complaints about controls, dealing with mis taps on the DS screen causing unfortunate movements, but I only briefly experienced this before taking an extra second on each tap to make sure I am precise. All in all, the game is very fun and very amusing. It is a great pick up and play game that will work well on my lunch breaks.
The other game of the night was Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. Like Scribblenauts, it had an annoying intro/tutorial, but it was mitigated by rock solid dialog and very clean artwork. This game series has constantly impressed me and BIS is no exception. It follows up Partners in Time and Superstar Saga, which is an offshoot of Super Mairo RPG in a way. It doesn’t seem to change much from PIT, but this is a good thing. The controls, moves and menus are all very well done.
One of the things about this game that always impresses me is the localization team’s efforts. The dialog is witty and culturally applicable. It isn’t just any old RPG storyline, it is a story that is delivered in an always amusing fashion.
The only questionable decision (thus far, this could change) seems to be the side scrolling portions. I was really hoping for some sections of the game to be very reminiscient of old Mario games, but this feels more like regular BIS with a different background set and limited range of movement. I hope that as I progress, the levels evolve to give me nostalgia of the old days.
Both games are fantastic, however, and I will be discussing them on tonight’s recording of Jarate Sandvich, which will broadcast live at 7pm PDT on either ustream or stickam, depending on what kind of technical difficulties we have.
Shadow Complex – First Impressions
Shadow Complex came out on XBLA arcade yesterday, and I eagerly picked it up. I am a few hours into the game and am loving what I have experienced thus far. This is a side scroller in the vein of Super Metroid, and it does a very good job of living up to that game. In the first few hours, I’ve already collected a decent amount of upgrades, gotten a new weapon, and explored a decent chunk of this large underground complex.
The game is running on a 3D engine, with the camera angle always to the side to keep the action moving as a 2D side scroller. However, the level design is full 3D, and sometimes the enemies will be in the background. I was a bit afraid of this idea, since it seemed like aiming would be difficult, but the use of the right stick to point your gun is actually very intuitive. It picks up exactly where the orthogonal controls of Super Metroid left off – the left stick moves you around, the right stick points your gun, and the right trigger fires.
The movement is mostly fluid (I have occasional issues with manuvering around ledges), and the weapon variety is acceptable. I have gotten a pistol and a submachine gun, along with a grenade launcher. The pistol and submachine gun feel very similar except for rate of fire and ammo capacity. I wish the weapon disparity was a little more pronounced, but I’m still early in the game.
All in all, it is doing a good job of being a retro side scrolling shooter in the modern gaming world. At only 10 hours long, I should have it finished within the next few days, letting me get back to Madden. At only $15, this game is a steal.
I will probably skip the second impressions on the game, though, since it is a short game. I will write up a final impressions article once I have finished the game.
Dead Space – Final Impressions
Sitting somewhere at the crossroads of System Shock 2, Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime is Dead Space – a dark sci-fi shooter that clocks in at a perfect 12 hours, which is just about the point that I am ready to call the game completed. Dead Space takes the third person perspective and controls of Resident Evil 4, the setting and basic story premises of System Shock 2 and the UI of Metroid Prime and creates a very well balanced blend that is a fantastic game from start to finish.
In Dead Space, you play as Isaac, fighting your way through a derelict mining station, fending off the infected crew members and trying to make sense of what happened, while trying to stay alive. The infected crew members will take many forms, but all can be blown away through the weapons that you find and buy. The weapon variety is pretty good, but I did feel that most of the weapons weren’t really that effective – the only weapons I consistently used from start to finish were the Plasma Cutter and Line Gun. The Flamethrower, Pulse Rifle and others were only useful in a pinch, which most often happened when I found myself out of ammo for my preferred guns.
Throughout the game, you can upgrade these weapons through an interesting, yet annoying, interface. You find power nodes that you use at work benches to upgrade your gear. Each item (which includes your special modules and armor suit) has a grid based system, with many nodes representing an upgrade to the item’s armor, damage, capacity, duration, health or other appropriate statistics. As you unlock nodes, more nodes become available. However, due to the layout of the grids, there was little advantage in taking certain routes, as it all intermingles frequently. There is no ‘high damage’ route or ‘high capacity’ route for weapons. The most annoying thing about this whole system is how many nodes simply do nothing but unlock other nodes. I often found myself in a position where I had to waste a node just so the next node would be useful.
The story is told through audio logs, text logs and video logs that you find scattered about, along with cut scenes that you can witness, Half-Life style. These logs do a good job of conveying the events that lead up to the infection, and the cut scenes that you are involved in do a good job of showing events that you go through. Very, very rarely do you lose control of the character, which was a good move on the developer’s part. The story is decent to slightly better than decent throughout most of the game, with an odd, but not in a good way, sequence of events at the end. Luckily, the story was not why I was still playing, so I could happily not care less about that weird shift.
The reason I was still playing was the solid controls and camera – which is the reason I continue playing most games that I enjoy. My initial thought on the camera was not good, but once I got used to it, it became just an extension of me, which is just the way I like it. I don’t like playing a game where I find myself fighting the camera or the character to get my command to be recognized properly, and after about an hour, Dead Space felt great. When I told Isaac to aim and shoot, he aimed and shot. When I told the camera to spin right or go up, it went where I told it. In addition to that, there is a brilliant waypoint system in this game that I fully encourage other developers to steal. Simply push in the right thumb stick, and a glowing blue line guides you to your next location. This game is not about exploration or puzzle solving, so this mechanic kept the game moving in the direction it should go – straight to the next combat. The only time the controls ever got a bit wonky was during the zero gravity scenes. You aimed in a certain direction and hit Y to jump, and once you landed, your sense of orientation gets pretty quickly messed up. “The enemy’s gate is down,” indeed.
My biggest complaint with the game lies in the enemy AI. They are brainless and only difficult because you have to aim for the limbs. The ‘aim for the limbs’ concept is pretty aggravating. When an enemy is moving fast with narrow limbs flailing about, and the only way I can do appreciable damage is to dismember a limb, I feel cheated. It feels like a complete artificial difficulty boost. Rather than making the AI smarter or doing something that makes sense, biologically, it is a very artificial difficulty that I could have done without.
In the end, I really enjoyed the game. The 12 hour mark was a great time to end the game, and I actually considered playing a second time through. You end the game with only one or two weapons actually boosted up to significant power, so running through a second time would give me a chance to boost the power on other weapons and hopefully make them viable. With solid controls and camera, a decent story and waypoint system that keeps the action flowing, I would recommend Dead Space. The similarities to System Shock 2 are a bit overwhelming, but not in a bad way, as I feel it does stand on its own as a good game.
Dead Space – second impressions
In my first impressions of Dead Space, I was not thrilled with what seemed to be an overly heavy System Shock 2 influence. Now that I’ve put more time into it (around 6 hours at this point), Dead Space has come into its own and that influence, while still there, is no longer overbearing and bordering the rip-off category. In fact, many of the complaints I had during my first impressions (stasis module feeling out of place, upgrade system feeling out of place, lack of horror elements, nothing really original) aren’t completely valid anymore. While I still agree on all of those points, they have taken the back burner to what has shaped up to be a solid third person shooter.
At this point, the game feels somewhat like Resident Evil 4 meets System Shock 2 meets Metroid Prime. It is a good blend of three games I highly enjoyed – the controls and camera of Resident Evil 4, the setting of System Shock 2 and the combat speed and minimalistic UI of Metroid Prime. While it retains none of the horror of Resident Evil 4 or System Shock 2, I no longer feel like the game is trying to scare me.
The controls felt quite solid after about an hour, and now they feel nice and fluid. It doesn’t try to do a complex control scheme, and by keeping the scope minimal and focusing on getting each aspect right, they left you with a game where I really feel in control of my character. I’ve not had an incident since the first thirty minutes where I felt like I was fighting to get my character or camera into the position I wanted, which lets me just focus on moving around, taking aim, and fighting enemies.
The combat is still a bit on the frustrating side. At times, I feel like I am simply overwhelmed by enemies and my biggest adversary is simply moving the reticule into place to fire at an enemy – but I can only deal significant damage if I target the limbs. In a frenetic battle, I’ll often miss several shots, wasting precious times, and get overwhelmed due to this artificial difficulty booster of forcing me to aim for the limbs. That difficulty is magnified with the pretty useless weapon selection. I have four weapons at the moment – Plasma Cutter, Line Gun, Flamethrower, Pulse Rifle – and only the first two of those are even moderately usable. The flamethrower seems to do incredibly little damage, and the precision of the pulse rifle makes hitting flailing limbs almost impossible. The plasma cutter and line gun have a very wide blade they fire, which makes it easier to hit flailing limbs, and I just switch back and forth depending on how quickly I need to kill a target. I prefer the plasma cutter most of the time, but mainly use line gun against multiple targets, since the particularly wide blade lets me often take down two limbs at a time.
The infected mining station concept does feel a bit stale, but not overtly so – and I’m giving it some credit considering I played inFAMOUS and Prototype just prior to Dead Space, and both are infection stories that released after Dead Space. This infection story is pretty generic – still very reminiscent of System Shock 2, but it is enjoyable enough that I do pick up audio logs whenever I see them. Had they forced me to watch a ton of cutscenes where I lose control of the character, I’m sure I would’ve stopped playing by now. They did a good thing in never taking control of the character from you, in the same way that Half-Life did.
I am enjoying this game, and due to the short length (which I fully appreciate) I may even finish it (a rare event). I’m interested enough in the story to keep going, but not interested enough to watch cutscenes. As long as they let me keep control at all times, they can keep me to the end. I just wish I could get a better weapon, preferably something that can do significant damage with a body shot.
Dead Space – first impressions
I recently got my hands on a copy of Dead Space and have put a little less than an hour into the game, and am coming away with really mixed thoughts. When I first popped the game in and toyed with the opening menus, I was immediately reminded of Metroid Prime with the menu style and design choices. I started up a game on medium and after the opening scene I was ready to begin my journey through Dead Space. Before my hour was up, not only did I feel that Metroid Prime influenced the menu style, but I feel the game was extremely heavily influenced by System Shock 2 – almost a bit too much.
I really like the UI and think EA did a great job at coming up with a creative UI that I had not scene before. In one sense, there is absolutely no UI, but you still manage to get all of the information that you need. All of the popup menus are displayed as a hologram infront of the character, so there is nothing showing up that you see as a player, but your character would not be seeing. It makes the HUD feel minimalistic, yet thorough, which I dig.
The camera bothered me at first, but I think that may have been due to the very close in environment that you start in, and once you leave the crashed ship and get into the mining facility, it eases up a bit and by the time I put the game down after an hour, the camera and controls felt solid, if generic.
The most major thing that is detracting from the game for me is the ‘aim for the limbs’ tactic you have to employ against enemies. As a game that skims the survival horror genre, Dead Space uses enemy combat as a fear factor, and ensures the fights are difficult to keep them scary. I, for one, am not scared by this game in the slightest, and feel that the ‘aim for the limbs’ tactic is an incredibly cheap way of artificially hardening the game. Rather than making a smarter AI, they just make it harder to kill by having you aim for the limbs.
The last thing that I noticed during my initial hour on this game was the disconnected feel between certain elements and the game as a whole. For instance, the game as a whole is a high tech shooter, but the stasis module feels very different and feels more like magic than technology. With not even the slightest attempt to explain why, I am simply led to believe that this stasis module can slow down time on any object it connects with. My suspension of disbelief is strained a bit every time I fire this weapon. It is also strained by the ‘aim for the limbs’ tactic, since that defies basic biology, and the weapon upgrade system. That weapon upgrade system behaves like the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X, an unabashed fantasy RPG. It almost feels like it’s not sure what it wants to be and just slaps together elements from other games.
My final thoughts at this time are that this game is a pretty generic shooter that just stole formula elements from other games and mashed them together. The mashup is a fairly seamless one, but the lack of anything original and new (except maybe the UI, unless I just skipped whichever game it stole that from) feels like true EA.
Catch-22, a perfect film adaptation that lost the spirit of the book
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is in a close tie for my favorite book, along with Neal Stephensen’s Cryptonomicon and William Gibson’s Neuromancer. I watched the 1970 film adaptation last night and came away quite surprised at the accuracy, and disappointed at how it completely missed the point. Each scene felt like a perfect recreation of the scene from the book, but so many scenes were cut out, the plot came out disjointed and incoherent. I can understand the removal of certain scenes, such as the entire Schiesskopf sequence, but other things that were removed were critical to the undertones of the story.
For instance, the M&M Syndicate was shown, but not nearly as prominently as it needed to be to convey how it is a parody of capitalism. Also, the number of missions being raised was only glossed over, rather than being used as a tool to show that the main antagonist of the story is the military structure that is forcing the pilots to keep flying. The stripping down of Major Major Major Major’s scenes to a single interchange with Sergeant Towser was another annoyance – without his background, that scene is only superficially amusing, and all of the undertones are removed.
In the end, I feel that Mike Nichols was so focused on getting each scene right, he lost sight of the big picture. With a few exceptions, each scene is nearly spot on, but the story as a whole is gutted and left shallow. The book is simply too complex to do a perfect recreation in a two hour movie, and the focus should’ve been on getting the feel down. It was enjoyable, but nowhere near as enjoyable as the book.
Prototype vs inFAMOUS – first impressions
I just spent an hour or two playing Prototype after a friend picked up a copy. I have been playing inFAMOUS quite a bit, and comparisons between the two games are inevitable. Both involve a quarantined city, a regular guy suddenly given super powers, and that guy trying to figure out what happened. The comparisons made in the video game media are really quite apt, and somewhat creepy:
- Free roaming city with location based missions and side missions
- Experience gained on kills / missions to upgrade abilities
- Lots of wall scaling and building hopping movement
- Pedestrians all over, with scattered enemies
- Super powered hero who doesn’t know how he gained those powers
- Semi-generic, mostly realistic graphics with exceptionally well done cut scenes to show the story
However, both games are getting quite good reviews, both are hovering around an 85% average, according to gamerankings.com. After a few hours on Prototype, and far more than a few hours on inFAMOUS, I must agree – both are very good games.
While they are very similar in their approach, controls, graphics and character advancement, they do differ in some areas. Prototype is much faster paced, with an emphasis on melee combat. In Prototype, the main character – Alex Mercer, can transform parts of his body into weapons and consume enemies to gain their powers or looks. The combat is far more frenetic and harder to keep track of, but it is balanced with a target lock system that helps you aim in the most chaotic of times. While there are projectiles (you can pick up enemy weapons, like rifles and rocket launchers), it seems like the best weapons are all the melee weapons. In contract, inFAMOUS is slower paced, with no target lock, but less of a need for one since the combat rarely reaches the fever pitch that Prototype regularly dishes out.
This change in pace applies to movement, as well. In inFAMOUS, movement speed is only moderately above that of a regular human at a full sprint, and building scaling is done in a more Mirror’s Edge style, with ledge grappling, rail climbing and other urban exploration techniques. Prototype ditches any such system and lets you literally run straight up a wall with the press of a button. This change is speed makes it far easier to get to the top of the buildings in Prototype, but since you are under fire from far more well equipped foes, you need that boost in speed.
In general, the pacing of Prototype is faster than inFAMOUS, but the rest of the game (enemy count, enemy capabilities, general on screen chaos, target locking) adjusts, so neither game seems more or less difficult or boring due to the general pacing.
Right now, I can’t really judge the story of Prototype – I am way too early in it to tell, but I can say for sure that I like the setup with the web of intrigue. As you find special targets and consume them, you can get their memories and get bits of the events leading up to the start of the game. Each consumed memory opens up a few more people to consume, but this is all done optionally. This compares to the dead drops that inFAMOUS used, where you find recordings left by John, the FBI agent, and listen to his diary of events prior to the blast.
I like Prototype’s setup on this a bit more, but I haven’t really seen how well this works through the whole game, in terms of how often you find these targets, how easy they are to find and so forth. I think it would be quite frustrating to try to find your last few memories, if there was no indication as to where to find them. inFAMOUS has a radar system that you can use to find dead drops in a certain range, but the dead drop setup just isn’t as well laid out as the web of intrigue. However the brilliantly done comic book scenes at certain points are just as good as the web of intrigue. There are fewer inFAMOUS comic book scenes than Prototype web of intrigue scenes, but that is balanced by each one being longer.
All in all – they are equally good, but for slightly different reasons. Prototype is fast, frantic and a hack-n-slash at heart. inFAMOUS is a slower paced shooter with emphasis on wall scaling and more subtle movement.
inFAMOUS – Second Impressions
I spent all day playing inFAMOUS, and actually didn’t put it down until 3:30 AM. For those that know me, they know this is a sure fire seal of approval. A bad or merely decent game would not have kept me up past my usual bedtime of 11 PM – my sleep cycle is way too rigid for that.
After playing it this much, I have started to lean towards the thought that it borrows a lot of it’s elements from other games and does little that is straight up original, but the things it has taken it does incredibly well. The movement is reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, the shock grenades operate and look just like Halo plasma grenades, certain enemies remind me of the shield wielding Ganados from Resident Evil 4, and so on. This isn’t a bad thing at all, because it has it wrapped into a very nice package that is a hell of a fun ride.
The story is starting to unfold a little bit more, with some characters coming out of the shadows. The story is told through two different pieces – the storyline missions where I am working for an FBI agent named Moya and uncovering the truth behind the explosion at the start of the game, and dead drop cassettes that you find throughout the city, left by an old friend of Moya’s, John, whom she is trying to find. The cassettes each tell a bit of the story of what John experienced prior to vanishing, and give a bit more information to the main story as I go through the missions. Certain scenes in the story are told through comic book style scenes that are superbly done, but I do wish they had more of those scenes.
The controls and moveset is an ever advancing beast, which I really like. I keep learning new moves, and am always excited when I go to get the next move. The moves are given when Cole receives a very large amount of electricity through him, which happens during certain missions. It’s a bit predictable when you are going to get a new move – you go into the sewers to turn electricity on to certain parts of the city – but these little areas are also laid out to help you learn how to use the new move, like how the dungeons in Zelda always emphasize the item you got in that dungeon. The movement is very fluid and intuitive, but only when going up. When I try to drop down, either to hide from gunfire or just move down, I often have difficulty getting down. Cole wants to move towards things he can grab on to (which is great for going up, so you don’t slip and fall all the way down very often), but when going down, this is a bit of a nuisance.
There are also some side missions that range from way too easy to painfully frustrating, all with the objective of taking over parts of the city and freeing it from the roaming gangs. On the easy side, I found a picture of a package that I needed to find, and that package was less than 30′ from where I was standing in a really obvious way. On the hard side, I had to stop a prison riot by climbing up the prison tower and killing all of the rioters, and the climb up the tower was so long and not obvious, I fell a few times and by the time I got to the top, the guards had killed all but two rioters. On the plus side, the view from the top of that tower was spectacular.
Visually, it looks good, but probably won’t age well. It’s fairly generic semi-realistic graphics, the kind that always get beat out next generation, and in retrospect looked pretty bad. The comic style cutscenes will definitely age well, but I doubt most of the rest of it will. It does good work with draw distances though. When I got to the top of that prison tower, I could see all three islands of the city. It was foggy, but I could see very far and it looked really good.
Once I finish the game off, I’ll return for a third writeup. It is a good game, for sure, but it may not be incredibly memorable as the years pass. It does nothing to stand out and change the gaming landscape, but everything it does it finely crafted. It was well worth the cost, but I don’t see myself picking the game up again after I am done with it this first time. Sucker Punch did well, as they always have, but this game is a bit on the generic side.