So apparently, the PlayStation Move has an internal lithium-ion battery, just like the regular control pad. I wonder if anyone has told Sony that that isn’t as useful as it thinks it is. It’s bad enough when the power runs out in my Dualshock 3, but at least I can sort of play with it plugged in. The Move on the other hand? There is no way you play that while it’s charging, unless the cable is particularly long, which seems unlikely. Also, if the regular pads are anything to go off, you can only charge the Move when the PS3 is on.
Sony’s internal batteries are actually more inconvenient, rather than less. I imagine Sony intended this is a sales feature, that you’ll never need to buy batteries for the PS3 controllers, and while I appreciate the thought, batteries are cheap. I can a dozen of them for next to nothing and that will keep me going for months. This is a minor nitpick, but it’;s just another reason that my PS3 is not my go-to system.
The biggest news this week has been the trouble between Activision and Infinity Ward. People have been fired, lawsuits have been brought and it’s generally just an ugly mess. But one of the commonest things I’ve heard is that this is some nefarious scheme on Activision’s part, orchestrated by the Grand High Wizard Bobby Kotick.
I’m a bit late getting to this, but the last Bulletin was about graphics, and how limited technology will be beneficial for storytelling.
But before long we will reach a point where graphics simply cannot get any better with the current hardware, and developers and publishers will have to find new ways to impress us. At that point, we’ll hopefully begin to see some lateral movement by developers in terms of visuals, as standing out from the crowd will no longer be a case of how realistic your graphics are, but more a function of your art design as a whole.
This weeks’ Bulletin is about making better use of a game’s setting;
“How about a tactical FPS depicting a yearlong conflict between the Blue Suns and the Blood Pack, or a Hitman-style game where you play a Drell assassin? Even a turn based strategy where you set up new human colonies is feasible – and potentially quite exciting, if you think back to Eden Prime and Feros – and all because BioWare took the time to build an interesting world.“
I just grabbed the frankly enormous Heavy Rain demo from PSN and honestly? My feelings about it are mixed. My very first impression was that it’s a very good looking game, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise, all the screen shots and trailers have been simply gorgeous, if a little uncanny valley inducing.
Having now played the demo, I have two main criticisms; firstly, for a game so forward in its thinking, it is curiously backward in it’s design. Fixed camera angles and a movement system that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 1996, gives the game an unwelcome retro feel. It game has a walk button for heaven’s sake, and I can’t really figure out why. The left stick is only used for movement, so having to press R2 every time you want to actually move seems superfluous. It’s the same kind of system as the ‘3D’ movement of PS1 games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, a movement system we haven’t used in years. It feels clunky and awkward and it’s going to take some getting used it.
My other complaint is that the game is incredibly fiddly. I knew there would be Quick Time Events, and they’re much less intrusive than Heavy Rain’s spiritual predecessor Fahrenheit, but there sure is a hell of a lot of them. For example, in the second section of the demo, you have the chance to climb a muddy hillside. The climb is split into three sections, each with about six different button presses, which is one thing, but there’s also a bunch of a button presses you need to do to get back down. Want to open a car door? Make a quarter circle from 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock; and don’t get me started on the fight scene in the first chapter.
However, this complaints aside, Heavy Rain is still a game I’m likely to pick up. The idea of hunting down a serial killer form a variety of viewpoints really interests me, just like it did when Fahrenheit did it. Hopefully it won’t go weird like in the same way.
Another week, another Bulletin. In a complete 180 from last weeks, this is about when games don’t do enough:
“It’s a truism that there is no drama without conflict, and in a medium where the storyteller does not have total control over the experience the simplest form of conflict is to provide the player with an antagonist to fight and let them get on with it. It’s a tried and tested formula that’s been around for decades, and while it gets constant refinement, it remains fundamentally unchanged.”
