Metal gear solid 4

Cut scenes go on forever.

Great but seemingly pointless cut scene interactivity.

At the end of Act 1, there was ample opportunity to take out Liquid. But that would end the game prematurely, of course.

Vamp seems to know "old" Snake's face.

Sleeping Dogs

(6/4/14 - )

Cool
Superb hand to hand fighting dynamic. You actually need to learn your moves. Button mashing won't work.
Great interaction with scenery.
Nice online comparative scoring.
Nice upgrades.

Not cool
The driving dynamic is disappointing.
Some checkpoints are way back. Annoying when on complex missions.
When defending an attack with 'O', if you die, the 'O' can buffer and immediately stops the mission rather than starting from the check point.

Blunders
Tiffany texted saying she was in trouble. I didn't know what to do, so I called her on my mobile. When she answered, it was all a bit "Oh...Hey! I wasn't expecting this, but why don't you drop by and sing to me?".
I dropped by and then she was all agitated about a gun someone has left with her.

The last of us

Pros

Weapon and tool upgrades are nice.
Ducking under low doorways on horseback.

Cons

Melee weapons are as unused when dropped by enemies who just used them on you.
Companions very often get in the way and stand in clear sight in covert situations. (But maybe aren't getting seen)
Companions seem to flip between knowing the terrain and putting Joel in charge of path finding. Joel is the player, who doesn't know the route.
Weapon upgrades infrequent, but probably realistic.
A new trick like sidling along a ledge in Hunter terrain would have been useful in other previous scenarios.

Silly

There are loads of scissors in Boston!
The phrase "we're almost there" seems more for morale than geographical accuracy.
Ammunition is often in short supply but when hanging upsidedown in Bill's trap, Joel seemed to have infinite bullets.
Some dead bodies seem to lie hovering above the terrain.

Bugs

I pushed a tool cart through Ellie.
A Hunter walled through a wall in front of me. Although I was in stealth, he should have seen me as well.

Observations

There was much more emphasis on ducking and crawling earlier in the game.
There are drawers and cupboards everywhere but only a select few are available for opening.
Armoured humvee seemed to get to impossible areas.
A girl's diary chronicles her family's descent into desperation and eventual fleeing of their home including explicit descriptions of leaving town. But the diary was (presumably) found in her bedroom when it should have been wherever she went...unless she ended up in another suburban family house.
Joel's a real arsehole to the girl sometimes. Some people are like that, but can't we be a real hero?
The dartboards in the Irish pub are about 3 feet higher than regulation, but then the dartboard in a deserted suburban American house is about right.
Staggering on broken crockery in the restaurant betrays your location, while walking around on the pool table in a bar up the road doesn't disrupt the balls or make a sound.
Surprising lack of health kits and supplements in the hospital.

GTA5

Pros
Great scenery.

Great falling over.

Great character interaction when meeting coincidentally.

No flying through windows when crashing cars like GTA4. (Aha...you can fly through windows in some crashes...it's just less regular, or due to a more specific set of circumstances)

Stats (stamina etc.) much more realistic  than San Andreas.

Guns not hard to come by.

Amazing ambient city sounds.

Rain sounds on car bodies.

Stair walking more realistic than ever before.

You start with money, an open map, and a large range of cars.

Multi character game managed nicely. I tried to put Trevor and Michael together prematurely but Michael was laying low after the jewellery heist.

Red (blood) tyre tracks :-s

Everything seems to be a proper object. You can knock bags over. You can knock bags out of people hands and knock those bags over. Bits of car which fall off have their own weight and can be moved around.

You can hire cabs. A nice borrow from GTA previous.

Great bleeding in water.

Nice waves crashing against cliffs.

Great underwater scenery.

Cons
Cars change position and colour and sometimes disappear.

Sometimes a lack of car variety regionally (might be intentional)

Blocked areas: tennis coach's house after we pull down the balcony. You can get to the destroyed balcony, but not in the house despite clear space.

No rooftop hidden guns for fun and guaranteed gun locations (more realistic though)(actually, there are hidden weapons, just not conveniently haloed in blue)

As Trevor up north, I saw P2 and tennis on the map. I took a long drive there to find P2 was Franklin's paparazzi mission and obviously unavailable, and the tennis stopped when I arrived, but that was in Michael's back garden, so understandable since that would have really thrown the cat amongst the pigeons.

No rainbows in GTA world.

Turned a car upsidedown attempting a jump in a carpark. I stole a car which was about 10 yards away meaning to use it to try to turn the other car over. When I turned back to the original car, it had gone (didn't realise I could self right a car with left joystick)

Get in the wrong door of the cable car and it won't trigger payment or go anywhere.

Franklin shaved his beard! I didn't tell him to do that!

Something weird about scuba diving controls which I found difficult.

There's a blocked off area of the Los Santos subway under construction. You can climb on top of the obstruction, and there would be room enough to go into the tunnel, but it's magically blocked. Unusual for GTA.

Silly
Barbers can cut hair longer and grow beards.

After completing an off-road race, I paused to send a message (in real life) without pressing X to continue. In the time it took to create and send the message, at least two game days passed and there was a long rain storm. When I eventually pressed X to continue, the off-road groupies gathered at the finish line were still there, as was the dead body of a racer all curled up to his/her crashed autocycle.

'Helping' the police apprehend a criminal will earn you a wanted status as well.

I was a passenger in a cab, watching the world go by while updating this blog. I heard sirens, then a crash, and for some reason then I 'fell' out of the cab and was run over twice and rag-dolled down the road a bit. I stood up and ran back to see what had happened and saw a parked police car and two policemen shooting at a crashed van. The driver got out and was shot dead by one of the cops. I went to get his gun which had fallen into the road. One cop got back in the car and drove off without his mate. The other cop then strolled to the dead van driver next to me and said something like "That'll teach you to fuck with the law!" then turned around and walked straight into the van and stumbled backwards and said "Shit!" then looked at me and said "What you lookin at?!".

I chose the mercy option when disposing of Al DiNapoli, the movie star, for Nigel and his lady friend. I let him out of the boot (trunk) next to the freeway and he gave me $3000. He promptly ran in to traffic and got knocked down and killed. For starters, I might as well have taken the non-merciful option, for seconders, he dropped a further tenner when he got killed! Cheeky git!

Further to that, having seen All DiNapoli run over and killed with my own eyes, a news report said that he was at home alive and well and planning on spinning his ordeal into a money making story!

I sent Chop home from down town and then booted it home in a very fast car to find he'd beaten me home.

I thought I'd found a jump up behind Franklin's safe house in the hills (seems it wasn't), and jumped my car into a swimming pool. Chop was in the car, and he got out, but remained walking around under water despite my efforts to save him. Although he sounded a bit distressed, he was fine. I couldn't get him out though, so I sent him home. Then he was just not there any more. Of course when I got home, there he was.

I startled someone jumping over a fence and they dropped their donut. A close up revealed that a bite had been taken out of it.

While doing the "getting the files back" mission for Martinez, I tried to steal Trevor's truck. That was obviously not allowed during mission play, so I climbed onboard to see where he would go. He refused to move until I got off, delivering the full set of Trevor's driving related tirades, seemingly without taking breath.

Some nice chat on lorry CB radio.

Cool
Lester references GTA4 protagonist, Nico Bellic, before first jewellery heist.

Brilliant how in-car dialogue will pause and/or change for traffic incidents.

Vaporising birdlife in helicopter rotors.

Indeed, if you steal a car pulling a boat on a trailer and drive it into the sea, you can drive the boat away.

Ursula uses meat cleavers for darts! ("Now put the diaper on!")

I retrieved a car from railway lines with the tow truck for Tonya and JB, because it had broken down. When I took it to the garage, I couldn't steal it.

You can do bunny hops and endos on BMXes even though it's never part of the story line. Trevor is remarkably good at it. Even in a frock!

Bugs
Male cop had female voice.

I parked a car in the (empty) Pillbox Hill Garage then selected the car and left. Noticed the car was a different colour, so went back in....2 cars! Chose a car, left, went back, 3 cars! Repeated until the garage was full. Free cars....but then most GTA cars are 'free'.

The container ship 'Ocean Motion's name (painted on the back) flickers when viewed from in the water.

Franklin received a saucy text from Ursula, so I called her. We arranged to meet at the Sandy Shores marina. I was on Del Piero beach so I thought I'd get a cab and skip the ride. When I arrived there, both me and Ursula exited the cab at Sandy Shores, the cab drove off, and she didn't know me.

Since Trevor crashed the train on the bridge, the wreckage has always been there on the tracks. It's solid to my character, but trains drive through it.

L.A. Noire

(December 7th 2011 - ....)

Cool

Nice atmosphere.
Convincing environment.
Nice interactions.
Good movement.
Nice control organisation.
Game is set in 40's USA. The Stars and Stripes are 13 stripes and 48 stars - consistent with fact. Good!
The water coolers are usable...seemingly to no end, but he doesn't put the cup to his lips, nor does anything come out of it

Uncool

Fire extinguishers are not usable - bummer. I wanted mischief.

Observations

0.2% for simply starting the game.
Car damage repairs itself.
Car make/model can change while parked up and out of shot.
Herschell Biggs sometimes refuses to drive - just no reaction to being asked to drive. I don't know if this is in line with his stubbornly individual attitude, or maybe a programming issue, but no other partner has refused. The game also crashed during this session. This might be related.


Oversights

In a/the Pawn Shop robbery, I armed myself with the shotgun of a dead robber, and approached the last robber on the roof, only to find myself automatically rearmed with my pistol (fortunately).
If you reverse the car into a cut scene trigger, the cut scene corrects the car orientation.
Why would I not be interested in a pair of shoes outside the front door of a potential murder suspect when footprints are one of our biggest clues?! - Why would I be interested in an inconsequential fishing lure and reel at the same premises?!
Swings swing when you walk into them, flowers move and rustle when you walk through them, but you ghost through washing on washing lines. (postscript: most washing actually does move when you walk through it.This seems to have been isolated.)
I destroyed the chandelier at the library (museum?) and a whole film set while closing the Black Dahlia case and my end of case report was exemplary featuring only tens of dollars city damage. Well, it is the 50s I suppose...everything was cheaper then ;o)
I drove a very very beaten up car with bullet holes and a burst tyre to a side mission which invoked a car chase. My car was immediately repaired. 

Bugs

Got trapped between the chair, the desk and the wall in the coroners office. Had to restart the mission.
Fist fight in the Maldonado murder case: A picture on the wall kept disappearing and reappearing while battering a suspect up against it. The knockout blow sent him ghosting through the wall. The end of fight cut-scene had Cole finishing it on the other side of the room.
A pedestrian crossing the street disappeared.
Game crashed while investigating spilt popcorn during the Black Caesar case.
During the praying family arson case, Biggs was following me so closely that he ended up stood on my shoulder.

Batman: Arkham asylum

(July 15th - xxxxx 2011)

Cool

Nicely delivered atmosphere.
Looks cool - combination of old Gothic and modern/future technology.
Nice Batman fact sheet.
Really good Joker vocal performance.
Button/move combos are a bit complex, for the amount that you use them. Complex combos are nice though.
Investigation mode is nice, but a bit superhuman - I know it's Batman, but identifying the number of distant baddies and goodies and if they're armed, through walls and ceilings?...useful though.

Not cool

Can't perform 'moves' until you learn them. OK in some cases, but running? I still can't jump at will.
Can't knock baddies off ledges to negate them.
Batman's character is a bit wrong. He's not saying the right stuff. But I don't consider myself an aficionado.


Undecided


Batman is maybe too big?
Off centre third party viewpoint. It kind of frees up a large amount of the screen but makes things to your left a bit of a mystery.
Free roaming, but kind of linear.

Amsuing

Some phone conversation along the lines of:
Girl: Hi, I'm looking for Phil?
Joker: I'm afraid he's not here at the moment. I'll see if I can find him.
....
Joker: I can only find his head for now. I'll call you back when I find the rest of him.

Observations


Seems to be a combination of various Batman genres. The Riddler appears very camp 60s TV version, the architecture is very Tim Burton, the Joker is very DC. Nice mix I think.

inFAMOUS

(June - June 2011)

Cool

Climbing dynamic totally unrealistic, but effective - well, I am a super hero I suppose.
Can't die falling from height - and for a reasonable reason.
Telephones ring when you blast them (and car alarms, etc)
Baddies don't know you're there until their attention is drawn to you.
Some missions can only be done by bad you - do you want to be bad for completion's sake? Might yet have to be. (postscript: Aha...maybe not. Might need to play this twice.)
Nice mixture of stealth, puzzle, and sheer violence missions.
In the park on island 1, there's a row of kind of market stalls. When shots hit nearby, the stacked cans move independently like a shooting gallery.
Excellent delivery of intoxicated scenes.
When you arc restrain the baddies, passers by come and taunt them and spit on them. Nice!
Bonus points for incorporating electrical jargon.
Thunder drop puts nearby fires out. (postscript: Only localised wood fires on the ground.) 

Not cool

You can't do what you can do until you know you can do it, including jumping and crouching. (For special abilities, that's fine...but standard human stuff?)
I also suspect that things aren't there until you find out they are there to be found. Like the bomb shards - I haven't corroborated whether they're there before I knew about them, but since they came from the bomb, they should be. Hidden packages too - are they there before we found out about them? Doubt it, since it would ruin some missions.
Some distinctly climbable structures are not climbable (yet) presumably because it would be inconvenient for me to climb it (yet) - might just be oversight.
I 'induction grind'ed a whole circuit of island 1's metro and got nothing for it. Surely that's what trophies are for? Making pointless things like that pointful?
Can't occupy turrets or pick up guns. Why would you want to? - I want to.
Can't drive around. Why would you want to? - I want to.
Argh...a million points off  for inconsistency. I already climbed the prison to get on the roof once, and couldn't get up the same way the second time. In the process of getting up there the second time, I jumped through a wall and found myself in the prison entrance. Then I climbed up the way I assume I was meant to climb up the first time, and got in through the back. Having found my check point, it then led me back on myself where there were three Garbagemen who couldn't possibly have been there, because I'd just been there. Then when trying to proceed to the next check point, I can't grab and climb chains which I've been able to do pretty much throughout.

Amsuing

I managed to arc restrain a baddie to the metro rails. I stood there to see what would become of him when a train came along (disappointing), and a split second later I got hit and killed by a train on the opposite track. Karma rules even in a plague ridden bomb site.
As you become more of a celebrity, people start hanging pictures of you around the city - they actually do. I see them around but never see them being hung (that's maybe a little too much to ask for).
So the police asked me to capture 4 baddies alive, and I did....but has any one come to collect them?! I mean, I know the police are busy what with electrical mass destruction and mutant super baddies, but really...I've been stood here ten minutes now.
Aldan: "I'll kill all of you!....tear you from limb to limb!"

Observations

The sound of you running sounds a bit like distant gunfire - I keep stopping to hear where it's coming from, and it stops with me.
The parachute from a cargo drop that you have to protect lies partly under some standard scenery pallets.
Names on gravestones. There is at least one amusing one, but others could well be the production team's tributes to lost ones.
Static thrusters sometimes sound like distant conduits.
If there's such a lack of engineers in the city, who keeps fixing the petrol stations and gun turrets I destroy and rooftop antennae that I knock over? Eh?
OOooh...thought it was a bug, but it wasn't. Watch out for things that sound like other things. (Unless it's your running sounding like distant gunfire or your static thrusters sounding like distant conduits)

Bugs?

Some camera angles lose the building structure, making it invisible and confusing.
On one mission (trying to get over the bridge), I saw civilians betting shot 'through' the cargo containers. When I stood there, I wasn't shot.
Running forward through an arch in 'sewers 2' made me run backwards into the kill-o-slime . It happened maybe 4 times - so often, that I started thinking it was part of the game and started devising a strategy. Then one time I could just run through it. (postscript: ha...kill-o-slime is water! Of course Electricman has issues with being in water) - This happened way too often. It's like the game loses track of which way Cole is facing, and your controls send him the wrong way. It's way annoying when you're in battle or trying to do some of the complex climbs.
Cars driving on streets above tunnels cast shadows on the ground in the tunnel. Weak.
A rather amusing, repeatable situation. Next to the fortified entrance to the tunnel to the second island is a gun turret at ground level. When I was there, a police man kept coming to stand next to it, pointing his gun at nothing, almost as though he was holding the gun of the turret. If you get in his face and push him backwards or sideways, you get an amusing Stretch Armstrong effect until he eventually falls over.

Crash count:
1) Running across a road chasing the electrical signature of a kidnapee
2) Receiving a call from Moya while destroying a truck turret.
...only 2, in fairly quick succession, so I assumed it was going to happen a lot. Two crashes in total is really not so bad. Two too many, but I've had far worse.