Games I otherwise would never have played!! (plus one)

Tuesday, November 30, 2004 »

For some magical reason I received the Sony Winter 2004 demo disc in the mail yesterday. I just got a chance to try it out, so here are some impressions (in the order I tried them).

• ATV Offroad Fury 3 - Mediocre ATV racing game. I'm not familiar with this series, but I thought it was unusual that this game included the ever-popular aerial stunts, activated by pushing arbitrary button combinations while driving. I guess it's for people who just aren't excited enough by boring old offroad racing.
• Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War - Previews for this game looked pretty slick, although I discovered that all the pretty plane and landscape graphics don't mean much when you're actually flying around and all you see is your HUD and the horizon, and the basic acquire-and-shoot gameplay didn't captivate. Also, the controls were a bit confusing at first. Has it been that long since I've played a console flight sim?
• Area-51 - Trying to develop proficiency with console FPS controls, part 1. Just an unremarkable shooter. The best part was when millions of facehugger-type aliens appeared and all I had was a pistol to fend them off. But it didn't matter much anyway since I was still struggling with the controls. Also where is DAVID DUCHOVNY?? I haven't been this disappointed with a Duchovny no-show in a mediocre FPS demo since, say, XIII!
• Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal - It took me a while to figure out that basically you're just supposed to use your gun on everything because the melee weapon is pretty useless. An interesting 3D platformer with good level variety.
• Jak 3 - Had I been in the mood for more 3D platforming, I probably would have played this next.
• Killzone - Trying to develop proficiency with console FPS controls, part 2. Very realistic-looking, sort-of-squad-based FPS. Entertaining, but the demo level consisted of long stretches of empty corridors interrupted by bunches of enemy soldiers suddenly pouring out of a door five feet ahead and immdiately opening fire. Seems like poor level pacing.
• Star Wars: Battlefront - Part 3. Saying this game is like Battlefield 1942 with Star Wars characters and scenarios doesn't quite convey how much of a carbon copy it is. This is a weird model for LucasArts to use, because 1) Battlefield is pretty boring, and 2) The only time it's really fun is when you have a lot of real people on a team to replace the horrible AI, which is difficult to accomplish on a console. Then again, maybe there are a ton of players shooting stuff up online. I don't know.
• Silent Hill 4: The Room - I didn't play this one either, mainly because I was afraid that the demo would contain more gameplay than I actually made it through when I sat down with the actual game. How embarrassing.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - If this is the same ~500MB demo that was available on the PC a month or so ago, I'm glad I didn't waste the bandwidth. The reason being: The gameplay in this demo is extremely disappointing. It centers entirely on combat, which had some issues in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The new freeform combat system is designed to alleviate a little of the monotony, but the tutorials in the demo provide no explanation of how it's supposed to work. At the end of the demo you fight a one-on-one duel with Ubisoft's answer to every female Mortal Kombat character ever, and the repetitiveness and juggling problems from Sands of Time are still there. Hopefully the final game will offer a little more insight into how the combat's supposed to work, as well as some puzzles, which were a highlight of Sands of Time and were conspicuously absent from the demo.