(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.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Friday, 15 July 2011
Batman: Arkham asylum
(July 15th - xxxxx 2011)
CoolNicely 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.
Sunday, 12 June 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 14 January 2011
Assassins Creed II
(January - 2011)
Cool
Climbing dynamic is good. It's unrealistically fast, but it's a game. I don't want realistically tedious anyway.
The leaps of faith are excellent. Entirely unrealistic and fabulous.
When you make a jumping mistake, the game is usually very forgiving although you'll lose health (sometimes 'die') and be inconvenienced - normally nothing less than deserved.
Eagle vision is a great concept.
The game has some nice solutions for the standard "Why can't I go there?", "Why didn't I die?", "Why am I so good at fighting/acrobatics/climbing?" issues.
Hidden-blade-through-the-mouth assassinations. Messy!
In the catacombs when chasing the guard: as he runs, bits of scenery fall away making it harder for you to follow, but...those bits of scenery fall in to places which were previously difficult to navigate, making it easier if you have to do it again. Very good!
Uncool
It's too easy to leap into space because you're trying to do something slightly wrong. Thus, you lose health (or die?) for something that you'd never mean to do in real life. I assume, like supposedly in real life, I'll learn from my mistakes.
The courtisan ladies seem to be able to take an infinite hiding whereas the guards are beaten unconscious in only 5 or 10 hits.
Cut scenes seem built from game play elements. I like this, but sometimes the placement of the characters has them (or bits of them) occupying the same space as you (or bits of you).
Some 'can't climb here' places are a bit inconsistent. In other situations you feel you'd make the next hand hold. Maybe it's dynamic. Perhaps you could make the next hand hold if your momentum was greater.
Wanted posters where the citizens will never see them. These Romans are crazy!
You can steal from people in an instant when you walk into them, but it takes you three seconds to loot a dead body.
In the catacombs when chasing the guard: You can't select the throwing knives. I understand that it would ruin that section of the game, since you have to end up where he's going, but still...find a reason for not being able to use throwing knives, don't just disallow it.
If I kill a pickpocket, I sometimes can't take his money. Maybe he doesn't have any. I don't understand the pickpockets anyway. They are annoying and, so far, pointless, except worth a bit of money.
I seem to be worse at climbing and free-running when chasing a pick pocket. I would like to assume that's because my focus is more on the target than the scenery. I hope it's not a parameter of the game that you're made worse at it. I won't be able to prove that.
Quotes (as best remembered)
Mum: "You need an outlet"
Ezio: "I have outlets"
Mum: "I don't mean vaginas!"
Cool
Climbing dynamic is good. It's unrealistically fast, but it's a game. I don't want realistically tedious anyway.
The leaps of faith are excellent. Entirely unrealistic and fabulous.
When you make a jumping mistake, the game is usually very forgiving although you'll lose health (sometimes 'die') and be inconvenienced - normally nothing less than deserved.
Eagle vision is a great concept.
The game has some nice solutions for the standard "Why can't I go there?", "Why didn't I die?", "Why am I so good at fighting/acrobatics/climbing?" issues.
Hidden-blade-through-the-mouth assassinations. Messy!
In the catacombs when chasing the guard: as he runs, bits of scenery fall away making it harder for you to follow, but...those bits of scenery fall in to places which were previously difficult to navigate, making it easier if you have to do it again. Very good!
Uncool
It's too easy to leap into space because you're trying to do something slightly wrong. Thus, you lose health (or die?) for something that you'd never mean to do in real life. I assume, like supposedly in real life, I'll learn from my mistakes.
The courtisan ladies seem to be able to take an infinite hiding whereas the guards are beaten unconscious in only 5 or 10 hits.
Cut scenes seem built from game play elements. I like this, but sometimes the placement of the characters has them (or bits of them) occupying the same space as you (or bits of you).
Some 'can't climb here' places are a bit inconsistent. In other situations you feel you'd make the next hand hold. Maybe it's dynamic. Perhaps you could make the next hand hold if your momentum was greater.
Wanted posters where the citizens will never see them. These Romans are crazy!
You can steal from people in an instant when you walk into them, but it takes you three seconds to loot a dead body.
In the catacombs when chasing the guard: You can't select the throwing knives. I understand that it would ruin that section of the game, since you have to end up where he's going, but still...find a reason for not being able to use throwing knives, don't just disallow it.
If I kill a pickpocket, I sometimes can't take his money. Maybe he doesn't have any. I don't understand the pickpockets anyway. They are annoying and, so far, pointless, except worth a bit of money.
I seem to be worse at climbing and free-running when chasing a pick pocket. I would like to assume that's because my focus is more on the target than the scenery. I hope it's not a parameter of the game that you're made worse at it. I won't be able to prove that.
Quotes (as best remembered)
Mum: "You need an outlet"
Ezio: "I have outlets"
Mum: "I don't mean vaginas!"
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