Monday 1 March 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal
Fracture - Casual
Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride
Heavy Rain - Medium

Sadly I ended up finishing the game less than impressed (Especially as I got an error code signing me out of PSN which apparently is affecting lots of 'Fat' PS3s across the country and causing some kind of Trophy problems although I was able to carry on playing).

The 'reveal' of the Origami Killer feels contrived and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the story to date apart from focusing on the most unlikely suspect to keep it from being guessed one supposes.

Most importantly though the gameplay doesn't really develop or deepen. There's nothing more to it than whats gone before in the early hours. The story isn't great and it's full of cliches.. I get that it's supposed to be inspired by Hollywood but it ends up feeling lazy. I fortunately missed out on the love scene and the shower scene but there didn't appear to be anyway to avoid another uncomfortable scene later on.

It wouldn't of been so bad if the story had managed to keep you hooked but several bits are just laughable or plain unlikely. Come the end several things just aren't explained. Most disappointingly though it feels like there's no real challenge. It was a brave decision to not let the player die until the final chapters of the game but unfortunately it leaves little challenge and there's no risk/reward dynamic and thus no reward for playing well.

I didn't feel like my decisions where effecting the story in any meaningful way and the rare ocassions when they did it didn't seem to actually matter. When one character missed a particular item the police arrested him. Took his explanation at face value and let him go on his way.

I will, Playstation willing, have another play through on the hardest difficulty and make different decisions to see how it plays out (there's talk on the EDGE forum of only seeing about 50% of the game per play through but it sounds a bit unlikely to me) but my gut feeling is that it's an experiment failed.

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