A journey with the PS3: I came, I saw, and then I went "Meh"

I've spent the past few weeks in a daze of sorts. DMT? No, I wish. Alcohol? Sure, but that's only partly to blame. No, my real drug of choice has been Sony's Playstation 3.

I've sampled this piece of kit in every manner possible and come to some interesting conclusions. This is a tale of my time with the PS3, split into sections detailing each specific area.

The interface

Crucial to the console experience, the initial interface or hub is as vital as anything. Coming from the Xbox 360, I was at first a little at odds with the lack of eye candy. I then realised that this was actually a rather cheeky little interface; enabling you to customise most elements. Needless to say, I stuck a nice pic of a lady up for my background and was pleased to see it fully on display (unlike with the NXE and its random black blobs of blockage).

DVD playback

The PS3 is the DVD playback king, no doubt. The upscaling is incredibly good. End of discussion. Oh yeah, and blu-ray is good too.

Killzone 2

It seems as if this game is, by itself, a part of the PS3 so integral that it almost seems embedded in the console. I was very won over by the hype before this game came out and I will admit that it was a major factor in my mind when it came to deciding whether to buy or walk on by.

For me, FPS titles are where it is at gaming wise. KZ2 is a mighty title. It is graphically incredible. It is technically impeccable. It has very good online multiplayer. However, here comes the inevitable. It is essentially just another linear FPS. It gets old quite quickly. It suffers from all the old FPS faults and it isn't as good as CoD4 online. Nuff said.

Playstation Network

Now here is where my proper analysis kicks in. We all know that the PSN can barely touch Xbox Live when it comes to ease of communication. However, what amazes me about PSN is simply how reliable it is most of the time when compared to Live. This is largely due to dedicated servers being the norm in most games.

For a game like KZ2, dedicated servers aren't around and yet the lag seldom sets in. It is generally a flawless affair. However, with games like Little Big Planet (see below) lag creeps in like a wasp through your car door on a hot summers day.

"Be gone, lag! Hello?"

The above line about sums up ones inner thoughts and linguistic behaviours during a session of LBP - the game I "wanted" to love. You see, the PSN succeeds only with a few games whilst in others you simply begin to miss Live. I hate admitting it but I have grown accustomed to Live over the years and can't seem to tolerate the choir of trying to arrange a session with mates without the Live tools at my disposal. Even before NXE's fantastic party mode feature, for years Live allowed gamer to send messages, arrange private chat, and quickly send invites. Sony take note.

The PSN is a form of stripped down, bare essentials, online experience in comparison. Like an old Soviet T-34, the thing works but just lacks the polished, feature-ladden sparkle of Uncle Sam's M1a1 Abrams (and yes I do know that this is likely the worst cross tank / online system comparison ever considered by a gamophile on the internet).

In all fairness though, a brilliant new feature has just recently come out with a firmware update. Now you can create private text-based chat channels and use them to communicate with friends when in games. Not quite a party mode but it's close and actually something Live doesn't have.

Little Big Planet

Made just up the road from me, LBP is a unique gaming experience akin to taking five dried grams of psilocybin magic mushrooms. The only difference is that with psilocybin you get to see self replicating machine elves, whereas with LBP it's all about sack people.

LBP represents a lesson for me. This is a lesson I should have learnt a long, long time ago. That lesson is this: don't go telling people to get a game unless you know for sure it's worth the cash. I waxed lyrical about this thing for weeks. The problem was I hadn't played it much online with other people. When you do, things fall apart due to lag.

I've tried playing this with two or three friends and the lag kills all fun. With one other, it is just about playable but even then gets sluggish and hangs during load times. Lag, or netcode, utterly ruins this game online and the whole point of this game is the online component.

PS3 Home

Ah, now the fun bit of my little tale. Home is a kind of Second Life-like, Active Worlds wannabe but without the ability to make your own world and show your mates. Instead, you get an apartment that no-one ever sees because no-one cba to look at how imaginative you are when it comes to arranging generic furniture around a template room.

Home is essentially a 3d realm of Sony hegemonic adware. You get to look at posters for PS3 exclusive games. You get to watch videos of people talking about the PS3. It is all very stomach churning. Home is also unoficially a 3d flirting space where males attempt to chat up females who are, in reality, males looking for lulz.

For a week or two it was fun but I soon got bored of telling people great anecdotes about all manner of things only for them to say "I have no keyboard".

It was all looking bleak for Home until...

Xi

Xi, which literally means something, is a sub Crystal Maze ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. Basically, Sony made a sort of persistent MMO challenge, split into missions and clues. You start in a lobby environment and eventually enter the "games" area. This was the state of play the last time I logged in. It gets updated constantly. However, I'm no longer interested.

In reality, Xi is an exercise in Googling. You need the answer to the first mission? Cba to actually work out the puzzle for yourself? Google the code! Google the next code! Google the answer to everything until you actually have to start doing something with your controller.

The first real mini challenge is a fun series of timed arcade games. You then get to have a go with the six axis tree dodging. Finally, you get to experience a text-based rpg old school style. I was just about still interested up until this point but then suddenly a new mission struck. Now, you're expected to do all those mini games again... only on an expert setting. Read strict time limits and other annoyances. I gave up with it. Where is the incentive? Nah, it's not worth the button pounding.

Browser

If I'm honest, the main reason I got a PS3 was for the internet browser, which I heard was very good. I was pleased to discover it's true greatness. 90% of my PS3 time now consists of just resting in bed watching Youtube, iplayer, Dailymotion, etc. The way you can make videos full screen and view them on your HDTV is just total goodness.

Life with Playstation (formerly Folding@home)

Wtf is this? No, seriously. I still don't know. It seems to be a series of mathematical downloads akin to Seti packets of data for CPUs to churn over. Whilst the cell works, you get to look at a globe and read news stories. Downright random. I wasn't won over. I wasn't even approached by anything from what I can tell.

Conclusion

The PS3 is a highly sophisticated device capable of all sorts of things. Little touches like upscaling and wireless connectivity out of the box impressed me. I actually like the interface too. It's simple and mature, unlike the NXE; a horrendously misjudged mish mash of childish theme and adult content.

Although I like the PS3 for being an all singing console, the sad truth is that I know the 360 will still woo me back to it everytime with its promises of easy mic-based communication, invites, fast and instant downloads, and a vaster library of games. All I know is that last night I was on CoD4 on Live and it felt oh so good.

Here's the deal with the PS3. It's not a games console. It really isn't. It's a sort of blu-ray/dvd player with an internet browser and a decent set of codecs for file playback. This thing is basically a big bad black son of a... media player.

by The Critical Alien
© 2009

A new direction... sort of

I've been thinking about it and have decided that reviews just don't work for blogs. People may disagree but it just seems out of place somehow. I've also concluded that reviews in general are almost a dated concept in this ever-evolving new era of the personal computer.

From now on, I won't be continuing with the review template; that is, I won't give a game a score out of ten. I want to share my thoughts about games I play, sure, but no longer see the point in giving them the review treatment. If a game is pants, I'll just say it.

I no longer believe that scores hold any real meaning, particularly when it comes to computer games. What a gamer thinks one day about a title changes a week later. There are so many things to take into consideration: longetivity, playability, the potential for patches and updates. The list is endless.

I prefer the idea of offering my own take on games without trying to forge a review on top of that. So, farewell to ye olde rating system.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Demo reactions

Precisely what it says on the tin; my reaction to some of the latest demos to hit Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.

Resident Evil 5:

I'm not a big Resy gamer. Not since 2 have I cared, and to be honest I didn't care that much even then. I wasn't that blown away by anything I saw with this demo. I'm not feeling the controls (who is?) and wasn't impressed at all by the death animations of the zombies. The levels in the demo felt linear and horribly tight. There doesn't seem to be much exploration factor and although I never really got my teeth into Left for Dead, I doubt this game will be able to compete in the zombie stakes. Co-op might prove fun but I see no great game to behold here.

Halo Wars:

Oh my. Is it just me? Wars is a sickeningly generic RTS affair. There is nothing going on here. I, for one, can never go back to the old school RTS template after playing games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. This demo just felt dated and stamped with a big sticker marked 'Halo merchandise'. Fun? Maybe for a short while but this really is just a hideously average looking RTS game and nothing else.

Killzone 2:

Firstly for the record, I now have a PS3! Go me. I am going to post something separate soon detailing my experience of the console switch and my take on Sony's side of the gaming pie. Now, KZ2. I went into this demo open minded but with the knowledge that I had been spoiled by years of PC and 360 FPS games. Everyone keeps affirming that the PS3 doesn't do FPS titles. It just doesn't. Well, it now does. I was very impressed by this one. This is an adult FPS game and aims to please the veterans out there. The A.I is smart, the graphics obscenely good, and the general production values are clearly way, way up there.

There seems to be a big fuss right now about this demo's suposede 'trigger lag' and sluggish movement. This is what happens when an entire generation of FPS gamers start their epic journey with titles like CoD4. They grow up thinking it's the norm to be able to pull off a twitch 360' jump head shot from 50 metres, bless them. KZ2 is a different kind of FPS. This is a nice hybrid mix of Vegas and Halo. From my experience with the demo I am certain I am going to love the full game. The multiplayer may very well be the next big thing too.

F.E.A.R 2:

Oh dear. Remember the first time you watched Robocop 2? No? I do. It was a weird experience. You knew that the movie's wasn't all that bad. It was just that it wasn't Robocop. Why? Different Director. F.E.A.R 2 isn't made by the same people as the original and you can tell within about thirty seconds. This is a good example of a bunch of immature games makers being allowed to run with an idea and just keep running. By the end of the demo, you've probably seen more ghosts than you saw in the entire campaign of the original. I basically don't think this will be anything like as good as the first one.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest:

Late to the party with this one I know seeing as it's already out now. All I will say is that I respect Pandemic for trying something new here with the old team deathmatch template. It plays like World of Warcraft pvp split into rounds. Ultimately though, it's just hardcore button mashing. It's also a sad example of poor balancing. You either play as the scout or... well you just play as the scout. Probably not one to buy then.

by The Critical Alien
2009

Review: Gears of War 2

Format: Xbox 360

Category: TPS
Players: 1-10
Publisher: Microsoft

Those gears of war

It look me a while to get round to reviewing Gears of War 2. I wanted to assess it after a long playtest. My initial reactions were positive but I wanted to delve deeper. I wanted to know, for sure, that this was as good of a game as I thought during those first few days. Time will tell I said, and it did.



There is no denying that the original Gears was a great game. It set a level that many titles still fail to come close to. Even two years on, this is still stunning to play. About the most important and integral feature of Gears was its pioneering cover system. Replicated many times but arguably never bettered, this turned what would otherwise have been a brilliant third person shooter into a stellar game worthy of an Xbox 360 purchase.

Gears 2 was seriously hyped prior to launch but the hysteria never reached that ridiculous fever pitch we witnessed in 2007 with Halo 3. It is obvious that due to Gears 2's mature content the marketing was carefully targeted and word of mouth relied upon. In other words, any half serious gamer knew about Gears 2 and had made it a 2008 aim to pre-order.

The truth is that there is nothing overwhelmingly new about Gears 2. It plays just like the original and the visuals are arguably hardly much different. I say arguably because I've been told to go back to the original now after playing the sequel because apparently you quickly realise quite how dated the original suddenly looks compared to the new game. I'm cynical but will confess I haven't tried it.

The cover system mechanic is the same as before but simply didn't require any alterations. The single player is about as dramatic as the original and two player co-op is still a possibility. I have to admit that I just wasn't that bothered about the single player though. This isn't a fault of the game itself. It's just that it has gotten to the point now for me where I crave multiplayer and large scale co-op. I was just too busy on Horde mode.

Simply put, Horde mode is where it's at. Easily the best feature of Gears 2, this is a five player co-operative mode where you are expected to simply hold your ground and survive against increasingly tougher hordes of the locust enemy. It's basically GRAW 2's defend mode... done well. For about three weeks no-one on my Xbox Live contact list could put it down. We lived Horde mode for days on end. I even dreamt of Horde mode. Horde mode... mmmm.

I'm pretty convinced I know precisely why Horde mode works so well. It's because it genuinely requires co-operative team work to get through. Without working together you will get stomped on, hard. By about level 25 it's intense to the point of cardiac arrest danger territory. You know a game is dynamite when you're listening to four other grown men screaming wildly like schoolgirls over headsets at 3am because a Grinder just breached the defences.

When you're done taking on the swarms a very workable matchmaking-based five-on-five adversarial (Tom Clancy language) mode awaits. Now, I've always sucked at Gears when it comes to the player versus player angle. I'm not one of those Quake-style gamers who can be bothered to run half way across the map each time a round begins just in order to pick up some grenades or a sniper rifle. Therefore, I generally mid table it every time and tend to use the shotgun religiously.

For this reason, I wasn't as excited about the team deathmatch stuff as others out there. However, I will acknowledge the fact that it's clearly very good; with a vast number of settings/gametypes to fiddle with and well implemented bots to fill the numbers and practice on.

So, what about time? Has it told? Sort of. For me, Gears 2 was a love affair that actually only lasted around a month. When your Live contacts start failing to accept your invites to Horde mode and you're left playing with the 13-year-old gamers things fade. There are also several omissions here. There should have been a clan creation system, with ladders etc. There also should have been single player co-op for more than two players. Remember, we live in a post Halo 3 gaming world here. I'm also of the opinion that Horde mode now needs a fresh update. Give us the ability to go beyond level 50, create crazy objectives, and allow players to set the type and amount of enemy? Customisation ftw.

Gears 2 is awesome, clearly. I'm just reaching that point now where I can no longer get that excited by a game unless I'm playing alongside lots of pals. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm now officially a co-op whore. Horde mode is Gears of War 2 and, in the famous words of Faithless, I want more.

Summary

+Gears greatness
+Matchmaking for Gears greatness
+Horde Mode
+The greatness of the Gears
-No clan support

9.4 / 10

It's Gears of War 2!

by The Critical Alien
© 2009