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28
Jan

Playing in the down time

   Posted by: Con in Games

I’ve been sick for the past week with a cold / throat thing so there hasn’t been a great deal of “work” going on. Spent most of it on the couch powering through some games and 3 series’ of Sopranos. Some thoughts on the games though:

Skate 2
The first installation of this game had me enamoured for months. Having skated for a number of years growing up it captured the feeling of skateboarding, the constant banging your head against a wall over and over to get that one trick right. The career mode was frustrating as hell, something I’d forgotten until I stuck Skate 2 in and started playing, the frustration came rushing back.

It’s small things that irk me about it, challenges that if you bail you’re forced through two dialogue boxes, then a 3 second countdown before you can try it again. Surely a play tester who on their 50th attempt at a “noseslide, gap, tailslide” who bails because a pedestrian walked in front of them would ask “Why do we have this 5 seconds of down time before I can try that again?” Seems strange that with so many eyes on these games that small annoyances like this slip through.

All will be well when I give up on career and just play Free Skate.

Kane & Lynch Dead Men
I avoided picking this up anywhere near release because of the negative press it recieved. I’m not sure it was warranted, I don’t know, I felt as though I’d been lied to though about 2 hours in. Under the obviously false pretense that I had purchased an urban heist action shooter, Kane & Lynch let me down slowly over the very short story line, eventually dumping me in a heap with a terrible ending.

The controls were a little clunky, the cover system was odd (a button for cover works fine, ask Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas), A.I for teammates was next to useless but overall in it’s early stages the game was fun. It has a very “european” feel to it, might’ve been why it didn’t sit well with some.

Resident Evil 5 Demo
Disappointment. With a capital D. Zombies on Valium, slow clunky controls, over animated actions, cut scenes dropping vertical sync all over the place, terrible (as always from Japanese games) interface / menus, poser characters that irritated me the second they were on screen. I’m biased against Japanese games, they just don’t sit right with me. Japanese food on the other hand, that’s another story.

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  • Francis

    well that’s interesting.

  • lefin

    not all japanese games are bad, the final fantasy series was good and is still good. chrono trigger is aswome too.

  • http://none Ewet8 or colin

    so is time crisis and also pokemon is a good time killer but yea is you want a good zombie game go for left 4 dead it is sweet and if youve played half life there is some secret areas in the game where its vaguly familiar….

  • Con

    Don’t get me started on Japanese RPGs, there’s pages of ranting to be done there.

    I think my biggest problem with them is the interface design. It might be a translation thing, but as someone who spent 7 years designing user interfaces and directing interactive projects, getting the way people use your product right is a huge part of the product being good. Just amazes me that even in the Western game dev studios that people still mess up interface designs, figure they’d get people who know what they’re doing rather than leave it to some programmer.

    Left 4 Dead I’ve been playing since the pre-release demo, love it to death. Can’t wait until more content comes out for it.

  • http://none Ewet8 or colin

    im getting it soon so for the 360 if yoiu have one, ill see ya online my gt is ewet8
    well im off to play 360 bye all

  • Ranger250

    MantisKnight for me

  • someguy

    GTA San Andreas

  • HeavenlySword/NewAgeOfPower

    Res Evil 5, actually, whole series interface sucks, gameplay sucks, it makes no sense whatsoever (smashing a watermelon to get ammo hidden inside? wtf?)

    Controls are unbelievable, i hate console controls but Res Evil is a new level of hate.

    You have to play left 4 dead, although its probably not a good idea to implement teamplay in flash, the game forces you to work together- although I don’t like fast zombies.

  • http://none Ewet8 or colin

    im going to post it here now

    ok con id like to email you with this but
    have you ever thought about puting the last stand on xbox live if you did you can make
    1 and 2 for free and when you make 3 you can make it like 500 microsoft points and you can talk to them i know….i had seen a game from the net and i saw it on the live maket place………
    now i am a complete novice at making browser based games and well ithought that
    if you give them the “data” they put it on the market place and then when you download it it become like the site the game loads off of when you play it on the net.
    please email me with a reply at ewet8@yahoo.ca
    thanks
    colin

  • noah

    hey release the street fighter 4 demo for ps3

  • XxPlaguexX (Archr)

    I jsut couldnt help myself when I saw you mention GOW2 =P
    U got an Xbox or wat lol =D
    Anyway, I’ve been visiting this site heaps, waiting for even the slightest news on The Last Stand 3. I’m guessing som1 gets infected on the boat/plane? And were you serious about removing the defense elements? If you do, that’s be pretty good, cos the many hours of me playing LS1 and 2 have made me wanna run at some zombie and cut in half with the chainsaw.

    P.S. Sin Mark kicks butt! =D

  • noah

    where is ls3

  • killingman

    Ya thats good to know i hope you get better and start taking it eazy it is destruction were i am people r all getting sick and nice checking on games but re5 demo is good it is just the controls you say then then press start and go to options and were it says type a type b type c or type d do type d

  • Adam

    Everyone has there own opinion, i personally think that resident evil 5 is a very good game, a bit choppy. The real game is also pretty short about 18 hours of game play compared to resident evil4 which had about 45 hours of pure awesome. I can see where u come from.

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