Hype Thread

[Sauzer]

[gorv]

i guess sauz or i will make a thread sometime soon

it doesnt start for another few months though

[dkhighwind]

I am going to throw out a "Fuck Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood" for the sake of things.

[leokef]

And the latest HD remaster for the PS3 will be...

The more shit they announce for HD makeover, the closer we are to them running out of shit and finally porting Silent Hill and Final Fantasy. That's how I look at it.

[Ace!]

If the price is right, Leo, pick those up. Legend is a fantastic, fluid game and Anniversary isn't half bad either.

[Martin Penwald]

[leokef]

[Ace!]

Do yourself a favor, though, and play through on Easy. That doesn't change any of the actual area layouts, but it does make dudes only take ten hits to kill instead of twenty. Adding more hits just makes the fights fucking irritating instead of fun.

I think Legend's reveal of exposition is one of the best I've seen in years. You have an earpiece, so your team talks to you while you're running around, which works so well that it ruined the cutscene for me.

[Martin Penwald]

[leokef]

That's common to the FEAR series in particular. It works well.

[Ace!]

I haven't played a lot that does that, but what made it work so well in Legends for me was how much I enjoyed the characters, and how their dialog ties in with what you're doing at the time. Your team are two dudes sitting at your house, on the internet. So you run around, being Female Indiana Jones: Gymnast, and they talk to you about what you're looking at, who you're looking for, etc. They also comment on the things that you do as part of the structure. But where a lesser game would make that action a cutscene, this one makes it part of the level design.

The level design is also incredibly solid. Well constructed and well designed. It's linear, but I never felt like I was being lead around by the hand, nor did I ever feel like I was lost without an idea of what to do. It also used the only tolerable quicktime event out there: the buttons you push match the actions. So, for example, instead of pushing a random button to jump in a quicktime event, you push the jump button. That's something so simple, yet so refreshing. It makes the scripted event actually feel like a game event, where your skill helps pull you through.

All of this made the sequel so disappointing, as it seemed to lose every single aspect of what made Legends so much fun. And that's what it is: fun.

[leokef]

Not dissimilar to the first FEAR when you had a guy back at base decoding intel you picked up. Oh! And you also came across answering machines now and then with messages on them. That was a really great touch, too. They didn't always expand on the narrative. Sometimes you just heard people checking up on each other or delivering news of the shit that was going down. It went a long ways toward drawing you in to the experience. I really liked that aspect of the game, and the voice actors hit all the right notes. Then they scaled back the system in FEAR 2, reducing the in-game intel to snippets of text accessible in the menu. You still had comms with your teammates in the field and a general narrator-like individual, Snake Fist. It worked, but not as well as it did in the first game.

Speaking of FEAR, the much-anticipated (at least by me) third installment has It was originally slated for October of last year, then got pushed to March '11. I'm thankful the game is still alive for the moment. I thought it was dead at this point.

[Martin Penwald]

[Ace!]

Yeah, I love it when they do stuff like that. A part of me always imagines that I'd be able to do it without the button commands, even though I know that's not realistic.

[leokef]

Oh, what's this:

Words cannot describe how ridiculous it is that they would give X and XIII a sequel, leaving out the far worthier installment between.