Tuesday, 4 May 2010

I'm Super, thanks for asking!

It's amazing, that in this day and age, if a linear game takes more than six hours to complete it outlives it's welcome. GTA IV, Fallout 3, that's fine. They've got plenty of things tucked away for the ADHD generation to stumble across, and it's easy to poddle off and play something else for a few weeks and drop back into it if needs be. Yep, £40 is perfectly acceptable for six hours of disposable entertainment.

Take Darksiders for example. One of the finest games so far this generation, capturing the feel of absolutely classic games like Soul Reaver and Primal, and throwing a gripping and engaging storyline and at times jaw-dropping visuals to boot, but after 16 hours of game time, spread over the course of two weeks, it had dragged on a little bit too long.

So when I finally dropped the last enemy last night (enemy is the only word I could use which is still accurate and doesn't give anything away) and laid my pad down, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong, it is a fantastic game, but I was aching for something new.


"I'm a fuckin' Demon!"

But I will at least remember it fondly, and shit, I'm going to recommend it to anyone that will listen (I started that last night by passing the word on to my Elder Scrolls freak sister). As I said, the graphics are stunning in places, with vibrancy in colours on a par with Uncharted and Just Cause 2. And the voice acting is absolutely fantastic, with Mark Hamill and Moon Bloodgood leading the D-list way and Liam O'brien (me neither) doing his best Simon Templeman impersonation as the lead character. The boss fights mostly play out like N64 Zelda bosses, but it does have a go at the 'Epic Boss' style of God of War, without quite pulling it off. I also noticed that, when dismembering an enemy, the wounds are just hollow and red, no meat or bones, which is a bit of a letdown, but doesn't mar the experience and is only really noticeable in some of the larger enemies. Speaking of larger enemies, the end boss is a Fuck Off Dragon. But it's considerably easier to kill than the one in Dragon Age.

The preceding game on my shame pile turned out to be InFamous. For those who don't know, InFamous is a PS3 exclusive free-roaming Superhero game. You play as Cole McGrath, one of those annoying Parkour messengers who was unknowingly delivering a bomb to somebody when it went off, levelling half the city. Being at the epicenter of the blast, Cole naturally develops super lightning powers instead of getting vaporized. But when a plague breaks out, the city is locked off, and gang crime becomes rife. So Cole decides to become the people's protector. Or a public menace. yeah, the game has a karma system.


If you take the evil route, you actually become a Sith Lord.

Well, I've only played for like half an hour so far. Honest first impressions? well, it's a bit... shit really. Surprisingly ugly for a PS3 exclusive, and the fiddly climbing and jumping and hand to hand combat without any kind of lock-on function make it seem no better than Spider-Man 3. The only moral choice I had to make was when I found a food drop, and I could either let the citizens share it amongst themselves or take it all for myself, and sit atop my tower feasting, laughing at the starving peasants below and zapping anybody that comes near. Very black and white. So far, it's not a patch on Prototype, which I can't help but compare it to.

Moving on, Super Street Fighter IV arrived last week, much to my joy. This update to SFIV boasts ten extra characters, a new ultra combo for each character, the return of the car/barrel smashing bonus rounds, redone intros and endings and a bunch of extra multiplayer modes including 8-player team battle and a winner-stays-on type of affair, again for up to 8 players. So the fact that it wasn't just DLC is kind of justified.


Ibuki is a force to be reckoned with.

The characters are a mixed bunch. There's Adon from Street Fighter, and Cody and Guy from Final Fight (or all three of those from Street Fighter Alpha if you prefer), T. Hawk and Dee Jay from Super Street Fighter II, and Makoto, Dudley and the awesome Ibuki from Street Fighter III making a return, along with two all-new fighters. Firstly, Juri is an agent for the evil S.I.N. organization, using Taekwondo and drawing power from a 'Feng Shui device' in her prosthetic eye. Rather than give her the power to arrange furniture, it actually lets her kick fireballs at people, go figure. The second is Hakan, a Turkish oil wrestler who lubes himself up before each fight. I'm telling you, you can't make this stuff up.

Played a few rounds against Raz7el online too, and aside from quite a bit of lag, the game remains pretty tight. I also don't like to brag, but I handed his ass to him on more than a few occasions. Dan Hibiki is awesome.

Well, that's about that. Expect more of an opinion on InFamous next week, and a look at Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. See ya!

2 comments:

  1. Grainger (CPC6128)5 May 2010 at 13:41

    Yeah, I played the first hour of inFamous and also found it a bit underwhelming. I've been told it gets better as you increas your powers. Not sure when I'll return to it....maybe your blog will encourage me to dust off my copy. No, not gonna happen with Final Fantasy XIII to finish and Red Dead just around the corner.

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  2. To be fair, the other time was when I bashed you on Dead or Alive, where you claimed to be not dick at all

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