PS3 Thread

[dialdfordesi]

I'm liking the fact that some kickass PS1 games are getting the PSN treatment. First FFVII, now Metal Gear Solid...who knows what's next?

[Aetherfukz]

FF7 is in the PSN store? WTF, I have never seen that in the EU store?!

[dialdfordesi]

It came out yesterday for the EU and on June 2 for the North Americans. With awesomeness like this coming out, the whole PSN sharing thing would definitely come in handy.

http://playstation.joystiq.com/2009/06/ ... ope-today/

[War Machine]

Definitely.

By the way, I just got the Bioshock DLC and it's pretty cool, the challenge rooms are very entertaining puzzles. For example, in the first one you have to rescue the Little Sister from the Big Daddy without using any kind of weapon and only the Winter Blast and Target Dummy plasmids (once you find them). You have to open up the level too, most doors are closed from the beginning so you can't solve anything until you find a way around the level as well. The very last challenge room is a little more interesting because you have to fight through a bunch of enemies in 8 different rooms, you have limited resources but get to choose any plasmids and weapons you want to use so it's pretty cool. Definitely worth playing it.

[Aetherfukz]

BTW, Prototype is the best game I've played since Last Remnant (on the PC) probably, and for sure the best superhero-sandbox game out there.

Doesn't get more awesome than jumpkicking an apache out of the air.
Haven't played though the whole story yet, but it is VERY gritty and... welll... murderous. One thing that Infamous did better than Prototype: Giving you the choice to play good or evil, and even the evil side was more egoistical than evil, and it was comprehensible. While most of the time I feel like I'm playing a real bastard in Prototype, munching on every human being there is, sucking out their soul and memories, so I can get new skills and fight my amnesia. That's some fucked up shit, as if killing them brutally wasn't enough.

But overall, Prototype is a much better game than Infamous (even if Infamous looks better) because theres just so much more you can do, so much more moves and upgrades and powers and...

Edit: TL;DR Version

compared to

[War Machine]

Prototype is awfully monotonous once you've played it for a while. After beating each main story mission you get about 4 events (mini-missions) which consist of any of these 5 goals: Consume targets before time runs out, destroy enemy base or hive before time runs out, kill as many enemies as possible with a certain weapon (also with time limit), glide through the air and land as close as you can on the target, and glide and jump through checkpoints as fast as possible (with timer, of course). That's it, you're gonna do any of those 5 goals about 60 times and get a good time on them to get gold, and once you get gold on all the events you unlock platinum, so you gotta do them again and get platinum on them. Yipee.

Controls could be better, the thing is, when you're running through the city as fast as you can to get to the next target in the time limit, it's really annoying that your character keeps trying to grab onto buildings and suddenly change direction just to scale the building when you're just trying to jump off it. Because of nuisances like that where I get stuck on buildings or fall to the street between tall buildings where the only option is jump all the way to the rooftop to get out, I've had moments where I get to the last target in an event when there are still a few seconds left, begin consuming them and then fail the mission because the consume animation doesn't stop the timer.

Another thing is transport, the whole city is unlocked from the beginning, so jumping and gliding through buildings (you feel like Spiderman when you do it) is not fast enough when you have to get from corner to corner on the map. For some reason they decided that the events you unlock after each main mission are the ones that are furthest away from each other, meaning that you waste a shitload of time getting from point to point. And god forbid you fail one of the consume targets or destroy enemy base/hive events, cause you just can't repeat them if you fail, no, you have to fly all the way back to where you started the event. And again, a way to go through the city quickly wouldn't be much of a problem either if 4 out of the 5 different event types available weren't all timed.

In spite of all this, the game is not that bad, fighting is fun and varied, being able to use the soldier's weapons, helicopters and tanks really adds to that (by the way, if you want to do a lot of damage quickly, use a tank, nothing is more destructive than a tank). The Web of Intrigue is also quite interesting, each person that you consume that has knowledge of something related to your situation gives you a small video of what he knows, so hunting them down to fill up the web is a cool way of giving you all the background story, revealing little by little as you go along (there's over a hundred of those people to consume).

What it all comes down to is cohesiveness, the game doesn't feel well put together, more like they were adding things to do as they were coming along without thinking how it would affect other aspects of the gameplay. But even so, it's still fun, I would give the game an 8/10.

[Aetherfukz]

You do have your fair points. I have to admin, I played the shit out of ALL the Spider-Man sandbox games, because I always loved the feeling of striding through a city as its protector, no matter how shitty the game (the first movie spider-man game was pretty aweful, the second one was kinda ok). There was a so-so spider-man game on the wii that let you control his hands with the nunchuck and wiimote. Meaning to shoot a web from your left hand onto a scyscraper for the next big swing, you would "shoot out" your left hand with the nunchuck to spin a line. I usually dislike motion controls on the wii for action games, but that one was awesome.

Anyway, Prototype: The very first upgrades I bought were the movement ones, Glide at the very start. With Glide you can span huge amounts of the city in a few jumps if you start off of a huge building.
Granted the side missions in Infamous might be more story-esque while Prototype doesn't even try to put a little plot into missions like "jump from building to building as fast as you can". But Prototype has replayability in its sidemissions through the medals which unlock new stuff though.

And, what I feel is the biggest difference between those two: I always measure sandbox games with the amount of fun you can have without doing any missions. In Infamous there's basically just getting some hidden items. Or blowing up stuff which doesn't really do anything. What I like most about Prototype is the rather realistic AI of the population and military / infected. You can bait the military to come after you and pull them into a big hive of infected to watch them wipe out each other and mop up the rest. Stuff like that. At least to me the world in Prototype feels much more dynamic beacuse of the population.

You're pretty much spot on with a 8/10 rating though; I'd give it the same, and Infamous something like 7.5/10.

[dialdfordesi]

This insight into infamous and prototype is very useful! Now I have to change my gamefly queue up. On another note, Trash Panic is a fun PSN game. It is kind of like tetris but when you drop the object down, it may break depending on what you smash it on. You get matches and a biodegradable ball thing that help eliminate trash, broken or otherwise, to help keep the trash bin empty. It's a pretty neat puzzle game, and for five bucks, I thought it was well worth it.

[Aetherfukz]

I just finished Valkyria Chronicles. Wow. So incredible satisfying. On all levels.
There's absolutely nothing more I hate in games, or rather fiction in general, than completely, utterly, unsatisfying ends. Like Halo 2? Or Crysis? Or the Berserk anime? (Which though I have to admit induces most people like crack to search for the manga because they just NEED to know what happens next, but I am swerving.)
Valkyria Chronicles is the complete opposite. After the credits it even gives you a shot of each character with a short description of how their life went on after the story. I completely love that. Valkyria Chronicles has a whole lot of loveable characters, and ending that with a fade to black after the last bossfight (like the aforementioned games) would be nothing short of cruel. This was an ending that rewarded you for playing through the game, not one that said basically "ye, thx for playing, be sure to buy our next game if you care".

Oh and of course, it's an awesome game. Completely unique graphics style which is IMHO superior for 3d than celshading for an anime-ish look. And there are not many strategic turn based games for consoles.

Rather sad that the game is apparently not a real seller. I am hoping for a real second game, not just DLCs.

Or to quote gamesradar:

Amazing visuals, a unique combination of strategy and action, an excellent soundtrack, a gripping plot and loads of replay value. Valkyria Chronicles was one of the best reasons to own a PS3 last year, but chances are high that many of you haven’t played it yet. The game was largely ignored in America and, even in Japan, was outsold by older, dumber fare like Nintendogs Chihuahua.

IMHO everyone who has a PS3 and is just remotely interested in such a genre should buy this.

Gonna go start newgame+ now on hard

[dialdfordesi]

I got that game recently and I have to agree. With its 30 dollar price tag it is an absolutely great buy. The game apparently has doubled its sales since launch, which means it is getting the notice it deserves. Definitely a great strategy RPG.

Added bonus: John DiMaggio voice acts in it as a hilarious gay guy that sounds just like Bender.

[Aetherfukz]

I think I'm gonna quit trying to get better at Street Fighter 4 and go back to Soulcalibur 4 (I always rocked with Taki). I played every day this week and it seems there are just awesome players playing online, be it ranked or player matches. And of course the suckers who use no title and no icon, but rock 4000+ battlepoints so you join their ranked match thinking this maybe a player of your level, only to get your ass handed to you ASAP.

I played the shit out of Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the SNES some decade ago, and I really want to love SF4, but the more I play online the more I get the hate to combo system. It feels so completely arbitrary. Ken can do a MP-HP target combo, but Ryu can't. Some characters can chain LK-MK, others can't. I also did the character challenges where you're supposed to learn their combos, but how the fuck should you do the stuff the hard mode wants you to, especially without a fightstick (which costs 100 euros)?

[War Machine]

Not exactly PS3 related, but I found this guy on ebay that sells video game posters and you all have to look at the stuff he sells, top notch for a practically inexistent theme of posters for your wall. Check out his stuff here

And by the way, I am so getting these two posters:

MGS4
Legacy Of Kain: Defiance

[The Herald]

Added bonus: John DiMaggio voice acts in it as a hilarious gay guy that sounds just like Bender.

Man, that guy is in everything I love lately: FFX (Wakka), Futurama (Bender, duh), Starwars: The Clone Wars (Grevious), plus all those random cartoon appearances. Funny to think that Bender and Wakka are the same guy, voice acting is so fun that way. Like Mark Hamill for example, everyone knows him as Luke Skywalker, but now he's the go to guy for bad guys in anime movies like the Miyazaki ones, and also plays the Joker in everything.

This isn't much about PS3 ... well, I have one, but I never play it, isn't that pathetic. I have MGS 4, Folklore, Silent Hill 5, Blacksite Area 51, and Assasin's Creed. I haven't beaten SH5 because it pissed me off, or Folklore because the writing is too small for my little TV so I have to play it on my Dad's bigscreen, which I won't have access to come September. Man, I should really get onto that. I'll steal it back when FF13 comes out, but until then it's my dad's. He's not so into it because we have a funny HD tv that is older and we can't figure out how to hook up the PS3 through the HD.

[dialdfordesi]

Red Faction: Guerilla is sick. It's not necessarily anything new, but the whole "every building is destroyable" theme keeps the game from being too redundant. They have a mode called Wrecking Crew where you compete against other players to see how much destruction you can cause to buildings. Very entertaining.

[Starnum]

I finally got my hands on a copy of Prototype. I haven't started playing it yet, but I'm going to tonight, should be fun.

[Libaax]

Video game stores are sick Infamous and Prototype cost almost as much second hand as the new copies. From 699 kr/$87 as new to 599 kr /$75 as second hand copy.

Infamous sounds more Spiderman sand box fun to me. Prototype sounds like a game that isnt fun when you finish the story.

Infamous demo i got a kick of just playing like i was Spidey. Kicking ass with the cool powers,running around,climbing like Spidey.

[Starnum]

Damn, why do video games cost so much over there where you're at? Wait a minute, why are you spending krones? Where are you, Denmark? That's awesome, what country do you live in again? Man, generally a brand new game is only sixty bucks over here in the states.

Yeah, I thought the Infamous demo was really good. I'm looking forward to playing the game a lot, I just can't get GameFly to send it to me. They always send something else instead, heh. A friend of mine has Prototype though, and he said it was really good. So I loaned him RE5, so that I could finally play it. So at least now I'll be able to get Prototype out of the way. Mostly what I've heard so far is that Prototype has better gameplay, but Infamous looks a little better. I don't know for sure. I'll let you guys know what I think after I play both games.

[Aetherfukz]

Damn, why do video games cost so much over there where you're at? Wait a minute, why are you spending krones? Where are you, Denmark? That's awesome, what country do you live in again? Man, generally a brand new game is only sixty bucks over here in the states.

In Austria and Germany, new games for PS3/360 also cost 70 euros, which converts to (holy crap I just checked that) freaking 99 US dollars. PC games cost 60 euros usually, 85 dollars. The really fucked up thing is if you want to be a smart european, and order your games in the US (thanks sony for region lock free gaming!) you're going to pay 20% VATS (no, not that one from Fallout 3) on top of having to pay quite an amount of shipping cost - so if you're lucky you will save 3-5 euros, if you're unlucky you'll pay more for the game that you would have in the EU.

To be honest, the EU (as in the instituation, not the continent or countries therein) sucks. Before we formed the EU, new games would cost 500 Schillings, which would convert to 36 Euros. (And yeah I know you can't 1:1 convert money from 10 years ago, but still that price hike has almost nothing to do with inflation and everything with corporate greed)

[Starnum]

Damn, that sucks for you guys. I feel for you. Rent before you buy I guess.

[papasith]

are monthly subscriptions to mmorpgs more as well? they are usually about $15 in the US

[Aetherfukz]

are monthly subscriptions to mmorpgs more as well? they are usually about $15 in the US

WoW costs 13 - 16 euros (= 18 - 23 dollar) depending on your subscription type. AoC and War are in pretty much the same price range. Apparently EU is the land of pay more for the same stuff.
Or less stuff as it is with WoW. We cannot post on the US forums, and the US forums are the only forums where Ghostcrawler and all the other Developers interact with players.

[War Machine]

Anyone interested in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Asylum? A demo will come on friday, so we'll get a taste soon, but I'm already thinking about pre-ordering it (a day before release, of course) just for the extra stuff. Although I'm in a bind, Amazon is offering the game for $47.99 (if you use a coupon code), free shipping and the "The Road to Arkham" comic book; but Gamestop is offering an exclusive challenge map where Batman fights Scarecrow's minions. Just look at the picture:



So I don't know if I should save 12 bucks and get a free comic book or pay full price and get the challenge map. Are there any instances where the exclusive DLC gamestop offers never gets sold in the PSN store?

[Aetherfukz]

Woo, there's gonna be a Arkham Asylum demo this week? Sweet, I hope that will come out in the EU too. The videos look very promising, like a truly dark Batman game with lots of ways to kill/incapacitate enemies.

[The Prince]

Woo, there's gonna be a Arkham Asylum demo this week? Sweet, I hope that will come out in the EU too. The videos look very promising, like a truly dark Batman game with lots of ways to kill/incapacitate enemies.

I thought Batman doesn't kill people......

[Aetherfukz]

Marvel VS Capcom 2 is out, but damn I have no money left on my prepaid credit card to buy it this weekend so I have to wait till monday
Loved the game on the dreamcast. And damn Sony for not offering PSN cards and/or the ability to buy stuff via normal EC cards or bank accounts like in the US in europe.