- 'Infamous’ narrative repeatedly shoots wide of the mark' - errrr, does a game even need a 'good narrative' for it to be fun? GTA4 says hello, at the time of release websites praised it for it's 'portrayal of the Americain dream'...what, driving from point A to B occasionally killing people, niceish cutscenes followed by 'NICO LETS LOOK AT TEEEETEEEZZZZ'. Ign said it was the videogame equivalent of the Godfather...Jesus... and despite this almost EVERY PUBLICATION PRAISED IT FOR IT'S REALISTSIC STORY...
- 'Though individually overcome with a little suspension of disbelief, the amassed weight of the game’s mistakes has an atrophying power. It makes it hard to invest belief in Empire City beyond a toybox for you to upturn. It renders the already facile moral choices utterly meaningless'.
3. 'At its best, Infamous is an amped-up Crackdown – a game about bounding across a cityscape, discharging your energies however you please' - I don't know how many of you have played crackdown (probably not many), but it was a truely awesome sandbox game. Whats wrong with improving on a design another game creates and ultimately making it more fun and slicker to play. Heck every FPS is just an amped up version of the previous big FPS (or COD4 these days)...
4. 'And such a stumble is perhaps the least of Infamous’ visual problems, which begin with the city itself. Being a ruinous sprawl of crumbling concrete, slums and derelict industry, it was always going to have to work hard for our affection, but it does itself few favours, opting for the most part for a bleak, ashen palette that renders everything flat and dull'...errrr one, a super bombs gone turning the city into an apocalyptic mess with people suffering and dying everywhere...bearing that in mind i'd say it nails the overall visuals (It's not gonna be Katamari Damacy or Flower is it?). Fallout 3's setting is a post nuked america, its visuals aren't exactly screming out at me with vivid pinks and reds, it's supposed to be grey, brown, black...a fucking nukes gone off....
5. fellow courier Zeke is almost instantly annoying rather than a loveable sidekick, and intended romantic interest Trish is a Plasticine-faced harridan who gives you no reason to care for her. Sure, she blames you for the explosion that killed her sister, but the game gives neither Cole, nor the player, any opportunity to defend himself. We can fire electricity from our fingers – just why are we being nagged? Again, everyones entitled to their opinions but come on, I'd like the editors of Edge to come out and say they enjoyed a phonecall from Dwayne mid mission in GTA4, or even remember the names of Nico's various love interests and HOW MUCH THEY CARED FOR ALL OF THEM.
To me there's yet to be an endearing videogame character that I genuinely care about, God knows when there will be...
6. 'Despite the instant ability to fire lightning from his fingers, it takes a curiously long time for Cole to feel really super. Tasering enemies loses its thrill upon repetition' - Now I'm no literary genius, nor am I a videogame journalist...but...IT'S CALLED CHARACTER PROGRESSION, YOU GET BETTER POWERS AND MORE ADEPT AT USING THEM AS THE GAME GOES ON. Imagine playing Fallout 3 and being given all your powers and perks at the beggining just to feel 'badass', half the joy would be lost. Or even in any RPG... If in Final Fantasy XIII you can't cast Firaga/Ultima withing 10 minutes of playing, what, are Edge gonna criticise the game for that? A lowblow if there ever was one
At the end of the day everyones entitled to their opinion, and I do respect that of Edge (at the end they do say its worth playing the game... sorta) But it comes down to several things...should games be reviewed based on the sheer fun of playing it, and HAVING FUN...Or should we always review a game with a view that innovation is the key, If a game doesn't do something utterly groundbreaking of even if it stumbles along the way with its narrative/ colour palate.
Rant over (as you can probably see I'm not the biggest fan of GTA4).
Ah well, all I can say is that 2 hours into inFamous, I've had more fun than I did with the 30 hours I put into GTA4, more fun than playing COD4 single player, more fun than Killzone 2...
Nuff said. [Mittens]
I stopped picking up Edge a long ago, the reviews were always uber harsh, this one sounds fairly typical.
ReplyDeleteI think PSM3 try a LOT harder than most to be as balanced as possible, pretty much all the other offline reviews are shite.
IMHO the folks at both sixthaxis and Attitude are a lot more interesting as it's proper conversational opinion - sometimes almost as edgey as ours!
It is the job of the review to cast an opinion and not sit on the fence, so you can't please all the monkeys all the time. Hey ho, banana anyone?
Nice post Mittens
ReplyDeleteI'm a subscriber to Edge currently, but for the past couple of months I've come ever close to cancelling that subscription.
Whilst I won't accuse them of bias towards any particular console, they do seem to have a bit of a hard-on for certain developers (Bungie, Rockstar & Valve spring to mind).
To be honest I am finding Edge a tedious read these days and get the impression they are being obstinate just for the sake of it.
Also, I am firmly with you in the GTA4 camp; literally did two missions then thought "have I gone back in time?" - essentially it is a (slight) graphical update to a game I was playing 7-odd years ago at Uni (GTA3). It doesn't even have the charm of Vice City.
A goodish multiformat magazine (hardly any competition to be honest) is GamesTm although listening to podcasts (1ups are particularly good) and just listening to the opinions of the various journalists over a few weeks without them being under pressure to give games a review score gives a refreshing perspective.
ReplyDeleteHaving a look back at some old magazine reviews in Edge, they gave MGS4 a 7 criticising it's narrative and not all that much else...
Not a bad score but therein lies the problem, did the narrative, admittedly complex, really detract from the overall game experience? Every cutscene was skippable and most FANS of the story (come on Edge, if you're not following the story by the fourth game the narrative's hardly gonna grab you). To me MGS4 (a fan of the series) minus story was one of, if not the most flawless third person shooters ever. The mechanics were all solid, never frustrating (you get stuck, by a rocket launcher and anhialate everything in your way!), with solid cinematics and some of the PS3s most impressive graphics to date...
But some skippable cutscenes ruined the game that much for Edge...
That's life
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/edge-review-grand-theft-auto-iv?page=0%2C0
ReplyDeleteRead it word for word and soak up the knowledge
pretentious doesn't even begin to describe it...
Filtered through the world-weary eyes of Eastern Bloc immigrant Niko Bellic, the American Dream is all strung-out, sapped dry from the coke-fuelled megalomania of the ’80s, paying in full for the arrogance of its ’90s empire-building – and what little remains is at the mercy of relentless subdivision, as everyone tries to carve off a little piece for themselves. Even the criminal organizations familiar to previous GTAs are at the end of their game: fractious, desperate and doomed. It’s unforgiving stuff – an evisceration of America’s insularity, its gluttony, its petty suburban miseries, its lethargy and artificiality. As funny as GTA IV is, this really is laughter in the dark – brilliantly observed, unnerving and bitter
LETS GO LOOK AT TEETEEEZ NICO, PLAY SOME BOWLING/DARTS/TEETEEEEEEZ.
games(tm) is a great read. i find with reviews it can go one way or the other, take the latest for FUEL for instance, scores swing from 50 (eurogamer) to 80 (OPM) one of the criticims of the game was the map area can be vast and empty.... er.... have those reviewers left the comfort of the outer ringroad and gone out into the countryside of late? there's a fuck of a lot of it out there and it's not all packed with neon titty bars and drive through auto-repair garages, it's the wild open barren country. hell, saying FUEL is barren is like saying the lake district has a few to many lakes!! or going to the beach and moaning because there's nothing but sea and sand dunes! AUGH!
ReplyDeletei *heart* FUEL. if you liked the 'Flatout' series of racers but never played the minigames then you'll like Fuel. it's part racer, part orienteering weekend with vehicles. i'll do a 'proper' review/opinion sometime later. i'm the guy roaming the world on a mud covered Twin Freaks sidecar outfit wearing a skull t-shirt and pilot helmet. good times :)
bit grumpy today as my HDTV is deaded *sniff* RIP TV... i'll have to dig the emergency monitor out.
ps: nice post mittens