Seriously.  If someone decides to write about the PS3’s controller, it’s always bad.  It’s the punchline to a very tired joke, and one whose purveyors love to repeat given the slightest opportunity.  I have a very different perspective, so I’d like to respond to the top five things I keep hearing about the SIXAXIS.

#1 – The controller is too light
My immediate response to this has always been, “Why should a controller be heavy?”  Damn near everything I use on a daily basis is best when it is as light as possible.  Therefore, if my controller is otherwise durable, functional, and comfortable, I’d never think to fault how much it weighs. Personally, the less I am reminded that I am playing a game, the more I can get into the experience.  A controller with little heft, then, is just another way to help keep my head in that space.

#2 – The analog sticks suck
This particular complaint comes in many forms, from them being too tall or too loose or even too sensitive. Whatever the words used, it all converges on “suck.”

I suppose I can’t argue with too tall, since it’s possible for someone to have incredibly short thumbs, though I suspect this same person would have trouble with the 360’s controller too.  Personally, I enjoy them being a bit further out than the 360’s.  For one thing, it makes third-person games feel better, as pushing a joystick with a little more give to it feels like driving your character forward, rather than the kind of “pulling” sensation I get with a shorter stick.

There’s also the concave/convex issue, with the PS3 and 360 controllers having opposite designs.  Here, it’s not quite such a clear-cut issue to me; both feel well-suited for different things.  I admit that I prefer the 360’s concave design for shooters for the same reason that I don’t like it in third-person games.  The pulling sensation that has a weird physical incongruity with third-person games actually feels right here.  In the end, since both are relatively minor alterations of an otherwise similar steering apparatus, I enjoy making the best use out of both options whenever possible.

Lastly, there’s the issue of how “loose” or “over-sensitive” they seem to some people.  If you’ve never taken a good look at how the sticks are seated or watched how they move, you may not understand why they feel the way they do.  In a change from most or all other controllers (even the Dual Shock 2), which have sticks that just rotate in a socket, here they pivot. The effect is to allow for a greater range of motion within the same space, thus allowing for finer control.  For someone like me, who’s used to the pinpoint precision of a pointing device, having more control over an analog steering device is fantastic.  It’s also true that they’re a little easier to move than the 360’s, so you do have to be gentler.  My response is that this allows for higher-level play, if you’re willing to spend some time getting used to them.

This is actually why I got Mirror’s Edge on PS3 instead of for the 360, or even PC.  It is a game that will ultimately reward finesse, and looks best when the point of view is controlled by an analog stick.  Therefore, my best choice is to go with the PS3.

#3 – The R2/L2 analog buttons are wonky
This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the design to defend.  I can understand people’s problem here.  Really.  And yes, I realize that they were added primarily for, and are utilized best with, racing games.  For everything else, this obviously presents a problem.

Several early PS3 shooters opted to use the R2 and L2 buttons for weapon-use, and most would agree that this never felt quite right.  The problem is something that took developers a while to realize — that the reason shooter fans prefer using the triggers on the 360’s controller is that they actually feel like the trigger on a gun, and not because they happen to be buttons furthest back. R2 and L2 are not triggers, despite being in the right spot for it.  What they are and how they work is a little different.

The expected down-and-slightly-in curve of a regular trigger, where one just pulls down to move through the full range of motion, is not the case here.  There simply isn’t enough room back there to get in that same range with the same motion.  Instead, the SIXAXIS’ shoulder buttons are designed to be squeezed inward, sort of curling up into the main body of the controller.  While this can awkward in a shooter, it actually makes games in other genres work better, provided the functionality is used properly.

Again, it comes down to a question of finesse.  A stubbier shoulder button gives you the ability to hold it more comfortably in a state between fully-depressed and not pressed at all.  While the 360’s controller ultimately has more “give”, which some people will prefer, I feel that the extra give is wasted because the real value with an analog button is in being able to accurately hold an in-between spot.  I came to a conscious realization of just how important this is when I played Grand Theft Auto IV.  Initially, the car physics confounded me, and I was constantly making mistakes where I never would have in the previous games.  When I eventually figured out how to make careful, slight adjustments in the throttle, I felt more in-control than ever.

#4 – The batteries aren’t removable or replaceable
This has always seemed like a complete non-issue to me, and yet it’s still one of the most common complaints I see.  I always thought the ability to charge the controllers with the console using an industry-standard cable was a pretty good deal.  Honestly, I see very little benefit in having separate, swappable batteries.  “Well, don’t you have extra batteries lying around somewhere?”  Actually, I don’t.  What I do have are over two dozen rechargables that I’ve been using for years, all of which are claimed by the random electrical doohickeys I’ve amassed.  One less set of batteries to worry about is a blessing.  As for battery life, I’ve had two controllers since I bought the system in April 2007 and both last at least eight hours on a full charge.  When I’m done playing, I just plug it back in to the system.  Good to go the next time I need it and zero hassle.

#5 – The motion control doesn’t work
The way I see it, this particular issue really has more to do with software rather than hardware.  While I grant that the motion controls were put in at the last minute in an attempt to capitalize on the Wii craze (and provide plausible deniability about the lack of rumble), I still think it’s fair to say that the hardware itself works as it should.

FlOw controls very well, and clearly demonstrates the controller’s ability to pick up a range of very subtle movements.  Other games, like Folklore, utilize it in a more interesting way by providing a visceral and exciting element to gameplay that simply can’t be done otherwise.  Other games have simply transplanted regular controls for motion-sensitive ones, with varying results.  Some people like it enough to never use the traditional controls, and others don’t.  In either case, there’s almost always been a way to turn it off.

The one thing that makes that an “almost” is the PS3-exclusive game Lair.  I haven’t played it, so I can’t comment on how bad the motion control problem is, but that doesn’t change the fact that popular opinion was extremely negative.  It definitely struck a nerve because a patch ended up being released to put analog functionality into the game.  Unfortunately for Factor 5, the damage was already done.  Assuming the controls were truly as bad as described, that’s bad enough.  Let’s just try not to apply this one example to the control scheme as a whole.

Well, that didn’t last long.

This one phrase describes every good feeling I had about Mirror’s Edge.  Over and over, the game was determined to beat every last scrap of enjoyment out of me.  As I played, the feelings of sheer visceral glee I experienced in the first level were replaced by frustration.  Nearly every aspect of the game’s design has fundamental issues that are impossible to overlook.  The levels are obtusely constructed and infuriatingly paced, the combat is awkward and far too difficult for its own good, and the story is incomplete, incomprehensible, and banal.  Perhaps worst of all is that the best things this game does can all be seen in the demo, and you will miss nothing by not seeing the rest.

The biggest problem with this game is how, given its remarkable advances in creating a realistic first-person perspective, it is completely ruined by having some of the most insipid, poorly-designed levels I’ve ever seen.  Each stage beyond the first has numerous areas of brutal difficulty that bring the game to a dead stop.  Whether it be a giant room with no apparent exit filled with a dozen armed guards at a distance or a cramped hallway with a jumping puzzle whose solution is so needlessly complex it takes thirty minutes to get through, you will fail.  And fail.  And fail.  Honestly, the environments are so chock-full of confusing, rigidly-linear paths, I’m surprised anyone playtested this game at all.

Yep, I’m dead again.

I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the broken thinking behind the design than by examining the function of the circle button.  Most of the time, it will snap your view to the current objective in the environment.  Sounds good, except this almost always means tilting your head back far enough to break your spine, and then only to point out a door at the very top of the gigantic room you’re in.  Thanks, game.  How about showing me where to begin climbing, where to go first, instead of where I’ll end up twenty jumps from now?  Better yet, why not take a look at, say, any game from Valve and see how they lead players to their destination using only the environment?  I hear they’re good at that.  But no, instead you’re going to create areas that make absolutely no sense, which require constant and illogical double-backing to get through, and whose only “alternate” paths lead to a cheap death.  Your pathetic where-do-I-go-alizer button is merely the joke of some giggling programmer, thinking of all the times I’ll press it hoping it might actually help me.  Screw you, giggling programmer.

Thinking back, the thing that really drew me in to this game was its aesthetic.  Just from the first trailer, I was entranced with the possibilities of how the developers would take me through this visually distinctive world.  The story trailer whetted my appetite further.  Would I be meeting up with my clients to transport their sensitive information across a vast, detailed city?  Crisscross my way through danger, just in time to deliver my charge?  End up in a web of political intrigue, fighting for the freedom of information?  No, actually.  None of the above.

Duhhhhhhhhhhh…

What we do get is a yawn-inducing murder “mystery”, told entirely between first-person conversations and animated cutscenes.  The in-engine bits work just fine, but the animated portions are startlingly awful, apparently rendered in Flash and whose quality makes Adult Swim cartoons look like classic hand-drawn Disney.  Also, like 99% of videogame stories, Mirror’s Edge commits the carnal sin of beginning in medias res and then promptly forgets to explain anything about who you are or what you’re doing.  This results in the player being expected to fill in the gaps for himself.  Since absolutely nothing of interest happens (apart from the most unlikely and ridiculous “confrontation” I’ve seen in years) why should I bother?  The answer is that I shouldn’t.  And neither should you.

About the only people I think this game will appeal to are masochists and speed-runners, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  The game has a lot of built-in functionality for just that purpose, which I’m sure is already being used by gaming savants to set records I could never come close to beating.  Personally, I can’t stand needless trial-and-error gameplay, especially when it stems from bad game design.  Unfortunately, that’s all Mirror’s Edge is.  So, if you want something to kick your ass, that always makes things as difficult as possible, that outright hates you, you need look no further.  For those of us who prefer to play games, stay far away from Mirror’s Edge.

Wow.  To think that I hadn’t even planned on picking this game up this year.  It wasn’t until a friend of mine (who happens to be a Microsoft employee) messaged me out of the blue offering to pick up a copy for me from the company store that I considered playing it.  At half off regular MSRP, I figured it was a fairly safe bet.  Still, I was thinking that I’d tuck it away at least until I finished Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge and Left 4 Dead and…  well, it was gonna to be a while.

The way it actually turned out was that I was playing Fallout 3 this past Sunday morning, having a grand olde time, and then it crashed on me.  Even though this only amounted to losing about five minutes of progress, it was enough to give me one of those “Yeah… this is why PC gaming is so great” moments.  I got up, stretched myself out, and happened to glance over to where my shiny new copy of Gears of War 2 lay… which swiftly lead to me throwing it on my 360.

My history with this series is, as usual, purely single player.  Having never tried to play with other folks, my experience was free from whatever negativity that experience brought to the table.  As I had it, it was a total blast beginning to end.  I remember being quite surprised that I felt this way;  It was so clearly marketed as the Big Tough Manly Game of the Century, appealing to a demographic completely alien to me.  I mean, I love a good shooter, but a game drenched in machismo isn’t likely to appeal to me.

What Epic delivered turned out to be so much more than that.  Sure, all the testosterone and manliness one could ever want was there, but what I took away from it was a sense of some of the best moment-to-moment gameplay I’d ever seen.  It was visceral, loud, and immensely satisfying.  About the only thing that bothered me was how every so often, they presented a challenge so far above the events before it that it required numerous reloads to get through.  The worst of these was an area filled with snipers who shot exploding arrows that would instantly kill you with a direct hit.  It was the first time I’d felt distinctly held back by using a controller, but since I’d held off so long on playing it the PC version had already come out… so I got that and finished it there instead.  Fast-forward to last Sunday, and as my friend hands me my copy, he’s telling me about how he had to repeat a particular section at the end of Act 1 nearly a dozen times. [Ed: He was playing on the hardest difficulty level initially available, I later discovered] This doesn’t look good.

Next thing I know, I’ve been playing Gears 2 for seven hours, my hands sweaty and crooked like a badly-crimped tree, and I’m on the third chapter of Act 5 (less than an hour from the end) and I couldn’t be happier.  Every single problem I had with the first game is gone.  It feels perfectly balanced, the story is much better (though still a simple summer blockbuster plot), and the variety of gameplay and environments truly brings the game to new heights.  I desperately wanted to have the complete experience in one go, but with my body actively shutting down on me, I decided it was time to turn in.

I finished it the next afternoon and started to get a feel for how the community was receiving the game.  To my surprise, much of the conversation is surrounding the game’s difficulty.  Since my experience was of a perfectly tuned challenge that never frustrated, it was a little bewildering to see so many people saying things that I feel are only true of the first game.  More specifically, I’ve read threads about a confusing boss encounter or endlessly repeating a section where you have to protect X thing, and each thing I remember having no trouble with at all.  Across the entire campaign, I must’ve died less than ten times, and each time it happened it was clearly my fault.  I never once felt punished by an unfair mechanic or screwed over by an unbalanced encounter, and it’s a shame to see a lot of people having that experience.

Thinking back, one of the most prevalent issues I feel many games have is being fundamentally unfair to the player.  What constitutes “unfair” instead of merely “challenging” is different for everyone, but what it boils down to for me is when I screw up, do I feel like it’s my fault?  It is a rare game indeed where I take every failure as a chance to do better rather than something I’m going to have to brute-force through.  Now, I’m sure everyone feels like they’re screwed by crappy game mechanics every so often.  For them, I would imagine playing a game whose interface and control scheme is so tightly integrated that both seem to disappear would be a dream come true.  However, I tend to see something different happen.

The first game I remember consciously noticing how perfect the controls and gameplay were was Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.  This is a game that, in hindsight, is seen by some as forgiving and to the less charitable folks as pathetically easy.  Calling a game “easy” is an accepted form of derision, shorthand for a game whose goals are “possible” enough to actually be finished by most that start it.  All I know is when I’m constantly having a good time and not having to re-do entire pieces of the game (which I consider to be far more detrimental to the experience than the alternative) I consider that to be a resounding success.  And for me, Gears of War 2 is the most recent example of a game made in precisely this way, and yet still supports ramping up the challenge for players who want it.

All these things came together so well during the campaign that it’s no wonder I was kept in front of the TV for so long.  I was never losing momentum, never repeating a section over and over, and never having a needlessly frustrating encounter.  I was just having an amazing ride all the way through and I can’t wait to play more games like this.  I hope more developers seriously look at what makes a game like this work, because this is a prime example of design done right.

I’m just over 20 hours in and, much like when I reached this point in Oblivion, I feel like I’m just getting started.  This is actually a great feeling to me, especially since I was just thinking that I’d love another good free-roaming RPG.  It’s actually the reason I bought Fable II.  It turned out that in addition to all the other things I disliked about that game, the wonky area transitions and long loading times in Fable II killed any sense of continuity in the world.  Fallout 3, then, should be absolutely ideal for me.

I’m pleased to say that in many ways it lives up to be exactly what I want.  Nearly everything I heard about the game is turning out to be just as presented, from the smaller-but-denser world (a welcome design decision) to the incredible range of roleplaying possibilities.  I found myself really enjoy the combat too, all the “just an Oblivion FPS” rhetoric aside.  The VATS targeting is a fantastic idea, the perfect way to get some turn-based gameplay into a very differently-styled game.

With everything working so well, I have to say there is one thing that isn’t going over very smoothly with me.  It centers on how they chose to present the main quest… and really, the issue may lie with the fact that there is a “main quest”.  I find myself asking, “Why is it here?”  I really don’t think it’s necessary, especially the way it’s being done.  If this one particular aspect were removed, I would probably feel more immersed in the world.  As it is, I have to go against my natural roleplaying urges in order to get the full experience.

The central plot is one of urgency, leaving your only home in chaos and being thrust into an unfamiliar wasteland to search for your father.  Its purpose is to give the feeling of being just on the cusp of important events, and to urge you to catch up or else.  This serves the purpose of letting the player know what to do and where to go to reach the game’s conclusion, but I find it counterintuitive to the game’s biggest accomplishments.  To follow it directly to its end is to ignore 90% of a world that hundreds of people have spent years crafting, and because I know that, I’m forced to put the Main Event on hold until I’ve had a chance to see the sights.  I feel further vindicated because my roommate beat the game after playing only about 12 hours to find that (zomg spoilarz) the game has a hard stop after the main quest has been finished.

When I sit down and think about it, there are only certain kinds of games where a “flashing-arrow-to-the-end” actually bothers me.  With Bioshock or Dead Space for example, I love having the ability to see exactly where to go to complete my current objective.  This allows me to, almost paradoxically, explore with complete freedom since I know that getting back on the right track is just a button press away.  Since these games are fundamentally linear experiences (especially when compared to Fallout 3), I don’t mind the game acknowledging that with its own version of a glowing trail on the floor.  If a game isn’t telling me it’s an open world, I don’t have any problem with it not being one.  Since Fallout 3 is, having a rigidly linear path to follow (especially as the main impetus to proceed) doesn’t work anymore.

Honestly, I don’t see why the story wouldn’t work as-is if the main quest were removed entirely.  For example, here was my experience of the very beginning of the game:  Immediately after leaving the vault I was drawn towards a big settlement just a few hundred meters away from Vault 101.  After going around meeting the folks in the town, I spoke to a local shop owner who had what turned out to be a very lengthy quest chain to do.  This one conversation ended up taking me all over the wasteland and actively rewarded me for exploring my surroundings.  Going about these tasks naturally lead me through other populated areas, and thus more people, who had more things to do.  And even further, (though I admit I may be the only person who feels this way) I didn’t need even that.  Wandering around out in the wastes just trying to survive would have been compelling enough.

As I’ve completed more and more quests, I’ve come to realize how I personally would have tried to shape the experience.  If the game had been built on meshing together all the stories and quests into a final event tailored to you, based on how you handled yourself, that would have been totally rad.  Yes, I have heard all the hooplah about the two hundred-whatever endings, but my guess is that it’ll be like a series of on/off switches dependant on whether you did objective X on quest Y and play out like a montage of Where Are They Now? character cameos.  Now of course, I won’t really know until I see it and this is only my guess.  I’m completely open to being very impressed.

The only thing that’s clear is that it’s looking like Pappy’s gonna have to wait a long time for me.

Fable II is an interesting beast.  Understated and cool, it comes across as a confident, wholly personal project from series creator Peter Molyneaux.  His creative style and vision is clear in every part of this game, given free reign to do precisely what he wants, wherever he wants it.  There have been several games this year proudly touted as the jewel of their lead designer’s eye, such as Too Human and Metal Gear Solid 4.  These have always been my favorite sorts of games to play because they are always, at the very least, worth playing through once.

Fable II is something altogether different from the first one, across the board a more polished and focused effort.  The world is bigger, the scale grander, and the pacing tighter.  Everything about the design and style of the game feels right, as though the ideas have been honed to a point through numerous iterations.  The result is a game that has a quiet, relaxed feel.  It’s neither overwrought with style, nor insufferable with pretension.  Many eyes have seen it before mine, and the game has clearly improved because of it.

My first impressions were not quite so favorable, however.  Technical issues were the first things I noticed after the introductory cutscene.  First off, the control feels amazingly stiff.  I liken it more to piloting a Segway than running around as an agile Hero.  Just moving around showcased the game’s oddest issue, that of a constant frame blur I think is intended to mask lower framerates.  In the high-contrast snowy village you explore during the first part of the game, just rotating the camera resulted in a streaky mess.  I also encountered numerous problems with the audio while performing for the random townsfolk; the game simply could not load the voice samples fast enough so the sound effects and eventually even the music cut out completely until I stopped.  These technical problems turned out to be something that I’m able to ignore after a while, but it created a noticeable negative undercurrent to my entire experience.

The game’s advertised hook is in how the world reacts to you and what you do in it.  Superficially, it sells its concept very well, with villagers talking about things you’ve done and bits of the world changing as a direct result of your deeds.  However, trying to see beyond these things reveals little.  Soon, you begin to see that people are easily influenced to do anything you want in minutes, and getting married to an NPC results in a relationship with less depth than a Tamagotchi.  Seeing my personal interactions accounting for very little, especially in gameplay terms, ended up making me feel the least attached to those I was meant to care for most.

For me, the make-or-break with this game was whether I was able to fully invest myself in the world and people I met, and ultimately, I couldn’t.  It’s hard to make believable people in videogames, I know.  As a longtime gamer I’ve learned to do many things to make me more likely to ignore unavoidable shortcomings, but this game seems to think it’s addressing some of them without actually doing so.  The result is that when something happened to my husband, my dog, or even me, I felt mostly unaffected.  This surprised me given the emotional investment I remember feeling by the end of the first game.

The tone of the game is partially to blame, being a switch between whimsical and destitute with barely a transition between them.  The darker themes (and my favorite parts) are explored almost entirely at the end of the game.  It’s a shame that this portion of the game is also the most hastily-assembled.  It’s in such a hurry to get you through the final sequence and into the endgame that for me, it almost played itself.  After the smoke clears, you’re left to finish any lingering quests along with a handful of new ones.  And yet, since I finished maxing out my strength and skill trees just before completing main quest, I don’t feel the need to do more than I have.  The world isn’t going to change anymore, and neither am I.  It’s a fantastic option for completionists, but I’m ready to move on.

Overall, the game is competently made and can be very immersive, but I found the tonal changes and lack of deep characterization to be a serious detriment to my enjoyment.  Thinking back, the first game had higher highs (and admittedly lower lows) that actually resulted in me caring about it more.  Fable’s identity and character were made by doing more with less, and the sequel feels like it’s doing enough with enough.  It’s hardly a bad game, but I’ll always remember the original more fondly.

Objection!

At this point, three cases into the third game in the series, I’m really trying to remember why I decided to invest in the whole series in the first place.  Before I finished the first one, I went out and bought the other three just so my momentum wouldn’t get interrupted.  Halfway through the second one, I found myself feeling like the series had become a chore, and now?  Now it seems that all the things I liked about the first one have somehow lost their impact after repeated uses.  The only thing left that could carry the experience, that being the story, is only really turning out to be a series of silly, juvenile encounters.  Why do I even bother?

The game has one incredibly redeeming feature for someone like me:  It’s almost impossible not to progress.  If you play it slowly and carefully, as I often do, you’ll constantly press forward and keep things moving.  The pace tends to be awfully slow, however — I can tell the writers and designers made it as pick-up-and-play as possible by constantly referring to things you’ve just seen, in case you had to leave at any point and come back a lot later.  There’s an intruiging, almost trance-like state I get into when a game is constantly moving along, doubly so for something that requires very little input from me.  It’s the same sort of thing that keeps Peggle interesting far longer than it should.  Forward momentum is a powerful draw to me, even when I don’t really care where I’m going.

I’ll probably end up finishing all four of them, just to say I have and to not leave another dangling plot thread in my brain.  I’m just wishing the charm and wit that brought me in could have taken me all the way to the end.  And hey, there’s always the series re-vamp Apollo Justice.  Maybe that’ll end up surprising me.

The first thing this demo did right was to load up in delicious 1080i.  To list everything it did right after that would be to list every moment I experienced until the demo ended.  This game is one of the most conceptually ambitious games I’ve ever played, and Dice appears to have done it exactly right.  Those who wish the game were in third person are missing the point of the perspective, and are ignoring everything that has been done to make that perspective work.  The game that we have here would not work any other way.

Being in first person while doing all of these amazing things creates a kind of visceral feel that I’ve never experienced before.  The look of the game to a third party observer is likely that of chaos, or nonsense.  I imagine most people would feel that way if they could see through someone else’s eyes but be unable to control it.  For me, I felt at one with the controls right away and thus the barrier between me and the character was dissolved.

It really makes me think about what a company like Valve has chosen to do with Gordon Freeman.  They claim by never taking your control away and never having him speak, the player is allowed to truly be him since he does nothing to break that belief.  I, however, feel even less like myself when I play a character with no personality.  A non-speaking protagonist doesn’t work, especially when you’re in control of him, because everyone you meet would either have to constantly point out that fact or have awkwardly-written dialogue in place of something you would say.  Immersion isn’t broken by having your character say something; it’s by having them say something stupid.  Strange that Valve, a company staffed with some of the finest writers in the industry, wouldn’t have the confidence that they could write dialogue that most people wouldn’t object to.

Needless to say, I was thrilled that Faith is allowed to speak in Mirror’s Edge, and I can’t wait until this game comes out to see the rest of what it has to offer.

I picked up Fable II last weekend, looking forward to sinking into a charming fantasy world.  I’d been eagerly anticipating it because I really enjoyed the first game.  Its sense of progression was immensely satisfying — just looking at my character reminded me of everywhere I’d been and how much I’d done (and since I was playing The Lost Chapters, that actually amounted to more than six hours of gameplay).  Very few games give me this kind of feeling, and I was eager feel it again.

To preface, here’s the sum total of what I knew about Fable II before picking it up:  You have a dog.  Sold.

At this point I’ve put just shy of ten hours into the game, and I’m finding it less enjoyable than expected.  My issues are with three specific aspects of the game:

The first is the insane level of “motion” blurring.  I don’t really want to call it motion blur, because what I’m talking about is in addition to the regular motion blur.  This kind of blur is like the low refresh rate of an old LCD monitor, or like the PSP’s original screen.  As the camera moves, the image leaves a slight smear, like it’s blurring the frames together.  I’ve seen games use this before (like in Resident Evil: Code Veronica X for the PS2) and it was used to give the impression of a smoother framerate.  I don’t think this should be necessary for games in this generation, and it’s probably not there for that reason, but it gives me the same effect.  For the record, I have a quality (though admittedly old) CRT HDTV, and I’m playing it in 1080i with component cables, and nothing else on the 360 (or anything else, for that matter) looks like this.

The second issue is controlling your character.  Moving him around feels like steering a bowling ball, or say, driving the cars in Grand Theft Auto IV.  After building up speed in one direction, it takes much longer to change direction than I expected, making the controls feel “heavy”.  Looking back, the first game had a similar feel, but your character felt much lighter.  It was bad enough that after playing for an hour, I was worried I wasn’t going to get used to steering myself through the entire game, careening around like I was riding in a go-cart.  Thankfully, I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.  I just don’t understand why I should have had to.

The last issue is with the melee combat.  I remember when Peter Molyneaux previewing the combat for the press, saying that its greatest feature was the one button combat.  I’ve heard people compare it to the style of Assassin’s Creed (whose simple system of “tap the button when your strike connects to follow up with a stronger hit” I loved) but I’d have to disagree with that comparison.  After leveling up your melee skill to get all your moves, I found the rhythm to be really messy.  In order to do your strongest strikes, or “flourishes”, you have to hold the melee button down, wait a short time for it to charge, push the thumbstick in the direction of a bad guy, and then release it to attack.  Trying to use a flourish when you’re in the middle of a mob of thugs can be maddening because you have to stop attacking, press X, hold it, point the stick, and then release to hit one guy.  I’ve found that the only way to make it work for me is to do nothing but flourishes or combos, but never mix the two.  I think they want me to use some variety, but it’s too annoying.

To be honest, none of these are dealbreakers.  The game has a lot going for it, and I’m finding myself encouraged to continue because of those other things.  I’m just amazed that these things either didn’t exist or worked better for me in the first game.  The sequel is supposed to be where they iterate on everything they got right and improve on things they didn’t, right?  I guess I can’t have it all this time.

Now then, it’s back to being a bartender.  My husband wants to move to a new house!

Since my PC is currently unstable (and I’m very disappointed in you, young man) I’m going to have to pick up Fallout 3 for a console.  Strike that, for the Xbox 360.  As soon as someone at Sony gets the 1080i upscaling working universally for the PS3, I’ll come home.  Until then I’m very disappointed in you too, old man.  In the meantime, I thought give my European import copy of Fallout (which I’ve had for years) a spin.

I’ve played Fallout just once, about ten years ago when I found a double jewel case of the first and second games.  All I remember is that I killed a few rats and couldn’t figure out what the hell to do.  Going into it now, I promised myself I’d make an earnest effort to get as far into it as possible.  I’ve got to wait for my paycheck to pick up the third one, so now feels like a good time.

After just a couple hours, I’ve determined that this game is absolutely unforgiving.  Maybe I’ve just gotten too used to games saving checkpoints for me, but I’ve had to re-do large chunks of this game over and over again.  I’m amazed that they would throw you into random situations you can’t possibly survive right off the bat.  This is one aspect of older game design I definitely don’t miss.

For example, I had a random encounter with four giant scorpions five steps out of the vault at the beginning of the game.  At level one, I had absolutely no chance of defeating them and died.  Then, I walked into a town and saw that a guard asked me to lower my weapon.  By the time I was done reading what he said, the entire town had gone hostile to me and I was annihilated.  I tried again, having put my weapon away first, and walked up to a hospital I saw.  There was a doctor inside, and I’d just fought off some scorpions so I thought I’d have him examine me to see if I was poisoned.  He said I was fine and charged me ten bucks just for looking at me.  After some initial incredulity, I buckled and said I’d pay him.  That’s when I found out I was broke, and my punishment was to have his guards execute me.

This game doesn’t mess around.  It’s like playing Ultima VIII all over again.  And I remember liking that game.  Yeesh.

So, I really want to get through this game so I can fully Fallout 3, but it looks like I’m gonna have to wuss out and use a walkthrough the entire way.  Normally, I’m against doing that the first time, but…  ah, hell.  Maybe I should just admit that I suck now and roll out the GameFAQs.  I’ll think about it while I play some more Fable II.  At least that game loves me.  *sniffle*

Hey there, and welcome to the site.  I’m a guy whose day job and lifestyle has created a need for a lot of escapism.  My favorite has always been videogames.  I’ve been playing ever since I realized that my mum’s Commodore 64 had games.  Working up in the PC/console ladder ’till now, I’ve played hundreds across every possible genre.  Everyone always told me I’d grow out of it, but as I matured, so has the medium.  Well, mostly.

Recently, I’ve found myself completely sucked in to the gaming industry, moreso than I ever have before.  Two-thirds of the websites I check every morning are gaming-related, and so are two-thirds of the podcasts I’m subscribed to.  If anyone out there wonders how I can listen to half-a-dozen gaming podcasts in a week, all you have to do is look at the kind of job I have.  Nine hours a day, in a quiet office answering infrequent phone calls.  My ears yearn for sound, and nearly the entire network of 1Up Radio programs keeps them happy all week long.

To that end, I’ve often felt frustrated that listening to podcasts is such a one-way conversation.  And well, of course it is, but I feel like responding so frequently that it’s driven me to create this site.  Here I plan to include my own thoughts about games, as an entertainment venue and as an artform.  I love delving into game design and gameplay structure, so I think many of my writings will be focused in that direction.  I sometimes feel my views aren’t echoed in the popular media, so at least now there will be one place that says what I think! =)

And so, off I go with this nonsense.