Finished Killzone 3. I good blockbuster FPS with a slightly preposterous setting, but good fun.
Bloody short though isn't it?
Sounds like DS2 is a much better game than the first one. Which I didn't like that much. But it looks like its getting hard to find now that THQ has gone.
Superfrog on Vita tells me we should have way more platformers like these. Level design isn't great though imho, but the Vita screen is the first screen I've used that beats the good old CRT in every way. I look forward to Rayman Legends even more now.
I thought DS2 was incredibly disappointing. From its near non-existent story (that doesn't have any impact on the bigger picture) that painted the grim reaper as nothing more than a pathetic errand boy, with a principal antagonist you never met until 5 minutes before the end, to the vast stretches of empty space that served little purpose besides padding the game's length. The loot system felt needlessly tacked-on as well. It made searching for hidden chests that much less enticing because 9 out of 10 times you'd only find a bunch of crap you never needed anyway. In DS1, every hidden chest was worthwhile because the rewards were all put there by a designer.
I didn't really like the combat either. It was incredibly hectic and read very poorly on screen due to the busy art style. Everyone in that game had spikes coming out of spikes. Great fit for a comic panel, but one hell of a big mess in motion. Skill trees were also weak, with loads and loads of stuff like putting down a point for an extra five-percent chance of inflicting critical hits. How very exciting.
I didn't really like the puzzle design either. Instead of trying to integrate them into the environments like the developers tried to with the first game, DS2 was all straight up Zelda-style puzzle rooms with pressure plates, switches and levers. I also thought the game's strict adherence to the old rule of three - it is always three keys you have to collect, or three spirits, or whatever thingamajic as long as it comes in threes - was bordering on self parody.
Last but not least, the game didn't really end. It just stopped. You could really tell how the team ran out of time and money as the game progressed.
Great music and voice acting though. Michael Wincott has one hell of a fantastic voice.
I think my biggest problem with the loot was how it slowed the pace of a game which was already quite slow moving to begin with even further down. Every enemy in that game sorta burst into a loot Pinhata upon death, and then it was back to the item menu screen again. (not a very well designed screen by any measure)
I also really missed the first game's stronger emphasis on story. Granted, it wasn't a particularly mind blowing yarn in the first game either (rather convoluted and dopey in fact), but there were still some really cool characters in that game. The Giant at the forge (I loved his little who-can-kill-more angels challenge) , the angels, and especially the demon Samael (was that his name?) were surprisingly well written. They also moved the plot along, and they even surprised me at times (I was quite shocked when Samael actually honored his end of the deal). Now compare this to all the quest givers in DS2 who basically have one single characteristic and one single characteristic only: they are all lazy as fuck and cannot be bothered to do anything by themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the game. I did finish it after all. I just thought it was kind of all over the place and really could have used some focus. (that focus actually comes later, and it's a rather jarring transition)
I'm playing Max Payne 3, my first Payne game. Not bad, just repetitive and I'm wondering why I should care about any of the people in the story, no one in it is worthy of empathy.
I ended up hating MP3 although I forced myself to complete it. You're right, everyone in the game is an unlikeable arsehole - there is literally nobody in the game to empathise with. And it is very repetitive; changing little throughout the whole 8 hours or so.
I think I'll just take a break, after TLoU, everything is kind of a let down.
Puppeteer is going to be released next month. And we'll get a demo next week.
Tearaway was delayed until November.