Tag Archives: PS3

LA Noire review

It was just another treacherous night in the big city when I opened the “LA Noire” case. You doubtless saw the headlines—big name publisher picks up well reviewed game from independent studio. There was another story I was interested in, though. According to the police files, there had been accusations of appalling working conditions, and the whole shebang had been deep sixed a few months later in mysterious circumstances. That left me with a few loose ends to tie up.

I sat back and pondered the cocktail I had been handed. A fifth of hidden object puzzle, a generous dash of choose-your-own-adventure, a touch of cover-based shootout, and I could definitely detect a hint of sandbox. It added up to something, but what? There was only one way to find out. I slipped the disc into my PS3.

The graphics hit me first, a one-two combo punch of lush environments mixed with uncanny valley facial animation. The story moved like molasses on a winter’s morning. Yet it wasn’t long before I was hooked, as hooked as the morphine addicts who were turning up dead on the streets of the city of angels. I wandered the lovingly rendered streets from crime scene to crime scene, chasing down perps who were seedier than a parakeet’s breakfast.

It takes a strong stomach to be a detective. When there’s a serial killer beating and slashing his female victims, someone has to kneel over the desecrated corpse and turn it over for clues. I won’t even go into my time working the arson desk; suffice it to say I’ll never look at a rack of ribs the same way again.

Maybe that was the hook, the unflinching attempt at realism. Maybe we all want to be heroes, or maybe I was won over by the delight of there being something different in the world of console adventures. Whatever it was, I’m glad I was there. The story may be more of an interactive movie than is good for it, but entertainment is entertainment as long as your expectations aren’t out of whack.

Would I recommend that you follow in my footsteps? Well, if you’ve got patience and determination, and pay attention to detail, you could do worse. Sure, the path’s as linear as the proverbial straight and narrow, and if you wander off track the illusion of freedom in a living city falls apart faster than a shanty town being hit by a tornado. But hey, those are the breaks. Me, I think it’s worth it for the chance to take part in a car chase in a Tucker Torpedo and a shoot out around the Spruce Goose.

PSN FYI

The new PS3 software update includes a change to the Terms of Service. The new agreement states that you waive the right to ever sue Sony in a class-action lawsuit, then says:

RIGHT TO OPT OUT OF BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER WITHIN 30 DAYS. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THE BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER IN THIS SECTION 15, YOU MUST NOTIFY SNEI IN WRITING WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE DATE THAT YOU ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT. YOUR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION MUST BE MAILED TO 6080 CENTER DRIVE, 10 TH FLOOR, LOS ANGELES, CA 90045, ATTN: LEGAL DEPARTMENT/ARBITRATION AND MUST INCLUDE: (1) YOUR NAME, (2) YOUR ADDRESS, (3) YOUR PSN ACCOUNT NUMBER, IF YOU HAVE ONE, AND (4) A CLEAR STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH ANY SONY ENTITY THROUGH ARBITRATION.

So write a quick note and keep a copy.

Video game fight: inFAMOUS vs [Prototype]

Every now and again, two video games come out at about the same time that tackle pretty much the same subject matter. (Actually, this happens all the time in first person shooters, but by and large I don’t play those.) Such was the case with [Prototype] and inFAMOUS.

Both are M-rated games about becoming a superhero (or supervillain). Both have a protagonist whose origin is initially obscure and whose morality is questionable. Both have a conspiracy theory storyline. Both are third person action-adventure games. And yet, having played inFAMOUS and being more than half way through completing [Prototype], I’m impressed with how different the two games are.

The most noticeable difference is in the first five minutes. InFAMOUS takes a traditional approach, starting things off with a cutscene of a mysterious explosion and some voice-over, then having the protagonist wake up and begin a series of tutorial tasks to introduce the controls.

[Prototype] has no such reserve. Its opening cutscene has the ruined world already in place, relying on the narration to provide a little backstory. Some combat is shown in cutscene, before the player is thrown into the middle of an epic firefight with no real preparation. Panic, mash bGuttons, see what happens. Strange powers make a bloody mess of people and vehicles, as the game leads you through the major combat modes as quickly as possible. Just as you’re starting to think “Hang on, am I not going to find out how this stuff works?” you get another cutscene, and you’re jumped back 18 days of game time to before you had all the powers you were just using. The game then proceeds to tell its story by having you play a series of flashbacks, interspersed by cutscenes set in its present.

I think I can see what the developers of [Prototype] were trying to do. They wanted to see if they could grab players with an action sequence right at the start, give them a preview of what’s to come and a reason to play through the early stages of getting those awesome powers. It’s the same idea Gerry Anderson used at the start of TV shows like Thunderbirds and Space:1999. The problem is that when you’re expected to control the action in preview scenes, you’re less likely to sit back and enjoy them, and more likely to flail around in confusion and near-panic.

The differences continue once the main gameplay has started. In inFAMOUS, movement is based around grinding on electrical cables and metal rails, and jumping from roof to roof. (Developers Sucker Punch were responsible for the PS2 Sly Cooper games, and obviously decided to stick with what they knew.) Motion is largely realistic, if you accept the notion that your character is fueled by electricity rather than killed by it.

[Prototype], on the other hand, goes for ludicrous over-the-top cartoon motion, where the laws of physics aren’t even treated as suggestions. Everything seems unnaturally fast, including the movement of pedestrian bystanders. Eventually you get to scoot to the top of skyscrapers in a few seconds by simply repeatedly jumping upwards, with the vertical walls as purchase.

The differences in combat are also quite extreme. In inFAMOUS you slowly develop your super-powers; they are relatively small in number, and gradually power up. In [Prototype] you quickly get a bewildering array of different attacks, each with its own combination or sequence of buttons. I generally found myself sticking to one of three or so attacks that actually worked reliably and weren’t too fiddly to trigger. It just wasn’t worth remembering all the others.

I found inFAMOUS annoying on rare occasions, mostly when I had to dashacross the map in a short space of time. [Prototype] induced rage far more consistently. Enemy nests and larger enemies require that you pick up large objects like cars, target the enemy with L2, hold down circle to charge your throw, then release circle to actually complete the throw. There are a number of issues with the game that make this frustrating, however:

  • You have to be right on top of something and motionless in order to pick it up. There’s an attack power you eventually get which has the side effect of letting you lasso things while moving, or at some distance–but then you’re stuck with that relatively weak power for combat.
  • If an enemy attacks you while you’re charging your throw, you drop the object and have to start over.
  • The L2 trigger focuses on the closest visible enemy of any kind. In battles where there are huge mutants attacking you, but also random human troops, this is a major annoyance.
  • Monsters generally run straight for you, ignoring minor distractions like tanks.

So in practice, you run across the map to grab the nearest object, and end up facing away from whatever massive mutant you’re trying to kill. You spin around 180 degrees, and half the time discover that the mutant is right there and will leap over and smack you before you can ready a throw, causing you to drop whatever you picked up so you have to start your attack sequence again. On occasions when the mutant is far enough away that it can’t ruin your attack, you hit F2 and the cursor focuses on something entirely harmless that happens to be closer. It’s incredibly frustrating, particularly in the final “boss” battle–which has the added irritation of an arbitrary time limit.

Helicopter combat is frustrating too, because the right stick not only turns your helicopter, it also refocuses the L2 targeting on other objects. So if an enemy copter isn’t quite close enough to your sights for a missile to hit, you start turning, only to find that your missiles are suddenly targeting a different copter that they’re even less likely to hit.

So while inFAMOUS lacks vehicle combat and the range of weapons of [Prototype], it’s a far better game as a result of the added focus and polish. While I finished both games, I completed the last 25% or so of [Prototype] out of sheer bloodymindedness, rather than because I was actually enjoying it.

Both games got sequels. inFAMOUS 2 is already out; [Prototype 2] is due soon, but barring stellar reviews I think I’ll give it a miss.

Headphones, spectacles, headsets and music

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that my trusty full-size headphones were incompatible with my glasses. It wasn’t the fact that they pushed my ears up against the arms of the glasses and made them sore that clued me in, though you might have thought it would have. No, it was when they pushed my glasses sideways enough to push a sore spot onto the side of my nose. I suppose I could wear different glasses, but I really like these.

Anyway, a few weeks before my nose issues, I had bought a new headset for the PlayStation 3. There’s a bit of a story behind that.

The PS3 is weird, in that it has two sound output channels. The game sound is sent out via standard RCA jacks on the rear, as well as via HDMI. The voice chat is almost an entirely seperate system, and its sound is routed either via Bluetooth or USB. The two never mix–unless you have no headset at all, in which case the voice chat audio is mixed into the game audio, but of course you can’t reply.

I’d started off with the Logitech PlayStation 3 Vantage USB Headset. It worked fine for a few months, but when I eventually knocked it from the coffee table one evening it broke. Also, it only handled voice, so the game sound still came through speakers–and was picked up by its mic. That was tolerable with games like Team Fortress 2 where you need to push a button to talk, but didn’t work out so well with games like Burnout where the mic is always active.

For a while, I tried a Bluetooth headset–a cheap old Motorola that takes replaceable AAA cells. The problem was that, like the Logitech, it picked up game sound from the speakers. Not much, because it was also really crap at picking up sound, but it did succeed in convincing me that I didn’t want to try the official PS3 Bluetooth headset. That product may have better sound, but still has the game crosstalk issue. It also has the additional issue of a non-replaceable battery, which means that you have to worry about charging, and eventually end up with a nice piece of e-waste once the battery gains a memory.

I don’t know what Sony were thinking here. The official solution basically doesn’t work, and you can’t use a regular gaming headset or a regular USB headset.

Finally, though, I discovered the Turtle Beach P21, a headset specially designed for the PS3. They’re now replacing it with the Turtle Beach Ear Force PX21 (sic), which adds Xbox 360 compatibility. Since I don’t have an Xbox and never will, that wasn’t an issue for me, so I bought the P21 at clearance price.

The P21 actually solves the PS3 audio problem. You plug in both the RCA jacks and the USB, and an inline amp mixes the two audio streams together. You have separate sliders for the mix levels, too, and there are passthrus on the RCA jacks in case you need to pass the signal on to your TV or amp. Turn the speakers down and rely on the headphones, and you can hear everything–and people can hear your voice too, and only your voice. The only downside is white noise from the crappy badly-shielded inline amplifier, but as soon as you start the actual game you stop noticing it.

But that was a massive digression. The point is, the Turtle Beach headset is circumaural–that is, it has old fashioned full size earcups which go all the way around the outside of your ears.

I hadn’t had a set of headphones like that since the 1970s, and had forgotten what it was like. What it was like: comfortable. Or at least, more comfortable than full size earpads, with my current glasses.

So I decided it was time to swap the trusty 10 year old Sennheiser HD445s for a pair of circumaural headphones. I read a bunch of reviews, and now I’m in another situation I haven’t been in since the 1970s: I have non-Sennheiser headphones. Specifically, a pair of Shure SRH 440 headphones. They’re a slightly cut-down version of the Shure SRH840s favored by studio engineers; fully enclosed, DJ style, designed not to leak sound in or out.

So far I’ve been checking them out using the Mac, with audio routed through an external M-Audio 24 bit D/A. The main thing I notice is the incredibly clarity; they resolve details the Sennheisers didn’t, like the individual guitars on the final track of Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm, a good test for that kind of thing because of Trevor Horn’s exacting production at Sarm West.

Another good test track is “A Mile Long Lump of Lard” from The Orb’s Cydonia album. The Orb are tough for audio systems at the best of times, but this track in particular seems to be a real challenge for audio systems, sounding like a vague formless mush on the car stereo or through cheap earbuds.

Then there’s “Two Days Off” by KiloWatts (MP3 for download here), from the rather awesome album Problem/Solving. Reminds me most of Speedy J; some awesome production work, and I’m surprised he hasn’t received more attention. Apparently he’ll be in Austin at the end of the month, I should probably do the live music thing… Anyhow, it’s a good test of headphones’ ability to resolve a wall of sounds without turning them to pulp. Try it.

Sony goes stupid (again)

Sony has revised the terms of service for the PlayStation Network. The new TOS says:

You may not provide anyone with your name or any other personally identifying information other than your own Online ID

As it happens, I broke the new TOS twice at the weekend without realizing it at the time. I’ve told people in Team Fortress 2 and Burnout Paradise both my name, and the fact that I live in Austin, TX.

I can see a case for prohibiting disclosing someone else’s identity. (Key words being "disclosing" and "someone else’s".) However, if I want to tell people online where I live, I don’t see how that is any of Sony’s business. Furthermore, since my PSN ID is just my name with a random number appended, does that mean I need to change my ID? That’s awkward, as Sony’s system doesn’t let you do so. Perhaps I should send an e-mail to customer support?

PSN FYI

I’ve finally done some online gaming a couple of times, playing GTA IV with a couple of people.

I also have The Orange Box. I bought it mostly for Portal, but I’m amenable to the idea of Team Fortress 2.

At some point I need to find out whether my USB headset works with the PS3.

Console wars

GamePro reports NPD sales data:

Console June sales
Wii 666,700
PS3 405,500
Xbox 360 219,800
PS2 188,800

Of note, these are sales to end users, not number of consoles shipped; Microsoft prefers to cite the latter.

The Wii is now the #1 console in the US by installed base. So it seems as though as predicted, the Xbox 360′s best days could be behind it.

Once Sony got their act together and shipped a bundle with the rumble controller packaged along with the console, sales took off. When the 80GB PS3 with rumble controller replaces the current 40GB package, expect sales to rise again. It won’t take long to erase the lead in installed base Microsoft has.

This week, people are making a big thing about the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is going to be cross-platform, appearing on the 360 as well as the PS3–but only in the US, as nobody in Japan has a 360.

I don’t see the Final Fantasy announcement as all that big of a deal, when you look at all the former Xbox exclusives that are now on the PS3 or will be soon.

  • Saints Row was the Xbox’s supposed GTA-killer, and Saints Row 2 is going to be on PS3.
  • BioShock was the 360′s highest rated game of 2007 on Metacritic. It’s now coming to PS3, with "graphical improvements".
  • Half-Life ‘s developer Valve was always a staunch Microsoft supporter, with Half-Life 2 an Xbox exclusive–but The Orange Box came out for PS3 earlier this year. (I’ve picked up a copy–FPSs aren’t really my thing, but I want to play Portal.)
  • Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion made it onto the PS3.
  • Dead or Alive 4 is being ported, and it’s rumored that the sequel may be PS3 exclusive.
  • Ridge Racer 6 was Xbox 360 only, Ridge Racer 7 switched to PS3 only.
  • Full Auto was Xbox 360 only, Full Auto 2 is on PS3.

So looking at the high profile well-reviewed Xbox exclusives, that leaves Command and Conquer, Project Gotham Racing, Mass Effect, Gears of War, and of course Halo. (Dead Rising is heading to the Wii, along with Beautiful Katamari.) It’s a good job Microsoft bought so many game companies, or they would hardly have any exclusives left at this point.

So the video game industry will avoid Microsoft domination for another generation. I think this is a good thing.

The imminent death of the Xbox 360

When the Xbox 360 came out, it was portrayed as something everyone wanted, the amazing new console that was selling out everywhere. Yet the next week, when I walked into Costco they had a pallet piled high with the things.

When the Wii was launched, it became the console that was really selling out everywhere. But by then, Microsoft had moved on to their new story, that the Xbox 360 was the biggest selling next-gen console.

Except that it isn’t.

If you read the small print on Microsoft’s announced sales figures, you find that they’re not actually lying; but they count a console as sold as soon as it leaves the factory. Sony and Nintendo do the same, but there’s a big difference in how that figure relates to the number of consoles actually sold to gamers.

If you walk into any electronics store, you’ll probably see several dozen Xbox 360s piled up in the main store. You won’t see anything like as many PS3s, and you probably still won’t see a Wii. Think about that. Also, think about the fact that electronics stores don’t actually like to pile expensive items up in the middle of the store inside their boxes; it usually indicates that they’ve got even more piles of the things in storage out back, and have run out of space and are trying desperately to shift them. Have you ever seen a big pile of digital cameras in their boxes in Best Buy? A stack of dozens of Denon receivers in Circuit City? Nope. But you’ve probably seen a big stack of $30 Chinese DVD players on clearance…

Someone has put these observations together with some hard sales data. It turns out that the channel is absolutely bloated with unwanted Xbox 360s. Not only that, the 360 was almost matched for sales by the PS2, except during Halo release month, which is clearly visible as a statistical anomaly. When the release of a single game skews your sales that much, that can’t be a good thing either, can it?

In fact, Xbox 360 sales peaked in 2006. And with the PS3 now having a solid library of good games, I don’t see it improving. Also interesting is the analysis of how the 360 is actually more expensive than the PS3, once you factor in the add-ons to make it equivalent in capability.

It’s Schadenfreude Friday!

Microsoft’s Xbox division has announced their results for Fiscal Year 2006. Highlights:

  • Total loss of $1.2 billion.
  • Operating losses up 183%.
  • Revenues down 10% YTY in Q4 because of “decreased Xbox 360 console sales”; specifically…
  • Sales dropped from 1.8 million units per quarter to just 700,000 units per quarter, YTY.
  • Revenue from sales of games down 28%.

This is awesome news, making it six years of losses to date.

Microsoft say they expect to make a profit in the upcoming year. O RLY? They couldn’t make a profit during a year in which they basically had no competition, so how do they expect to do better now that the Wii is outselling their console by a factor of 3:1 or more and Wii games are already outselling Xbox games? Nintendo makes a profit on every Wii console, while Microsoft has apparently lost money on every Xbox 360 they’ve sold, even after you factor out the huge losses from replacing broken consoles under warranty.

Added to that, the PS3 is going to see its first “must have” games ship towards the end of this year. Grand Theft Auto IV looks incredible, but the Xbox 360 version is apparently in trouble because it’s hard to cram the game onto a DVD. Demos to date have been the Xbox version, but there’s a good chance the PS3 version is going to end up looking significantly better. Then there’s Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Heavenly Sword, the new Indiana Jones game, Killzone 2 (with its 2GB levels), LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and so on.

Basically, Microsoft have already been squeezed out of the low end of the market by the Wii, and the hardcore gamers are likely to start getting more interested in the PS3 soon. I suspect Microsoft has much less chance of turning a profit next year than it did this last year.

Resident Evil 6 will rock, though

This year’s Major League Baseball game, MLB 2K7, is going to be the first one with all-new “next gen” video game graphics on the PlayStation 3. I saw some screenshots, and couldn’t help noticing how creepy the humanoid figures look–the odd postures, the dead lifeless eyes. We’re definitely into uncanny valley territory.

For instance, Freddy Kruger II is just nightmarish. I think he wants to scoop out my brains with that glove and eat them. Meanwhile, this guy is about to open his mouth and howl that I’m not One Of Them. Forget a baseball bat, where’s my shotgun?

Do people want their video games to look like this? Am I out of touch?