What are you playing at the moment?

[Streeteh]

Not necessarily praising the quality but more the sheer number of voice actors required; keep in mind they had to hire voice actors for loads of languages. Just think how much it would have cost to hire top quality voice actors for every single one. Without the budget they were given i imagine we'd only have had one or two spoken languages with everyone else having to put up with text. The way it is a huge proportion of languages are covered so most get to play without subtitles thus further extending its potential audience.

Also, i'd say the voice acting is far from poor, i'd say at least three of the main characters are actually pretty good. Certainly better than the dudes that do the voices for Snake and Otacon in MGS (forget their names). I can think of only two points where poor voice acting has ruined the immersion for me and they were both very minor characters.

[cheets]

Fifa 10 UT
The Club

Sold Borderlands, Forza 3, GTA LCS and Tiger Wood 2010 for £70

Going to get Mass Effect 2 me thinks

[NokkonWud]

Originally Posted by Streeteh

Also, i'd say the voice acting is far from poor, i'd say at least three of the main characters are actually pretty good. Certainly better than the dudes that do the voices for Snake and Otacon in MGS (forget their names). I can think of only two points where poor voice acting has ruined the immersion for me and they were both very minor characters.

I was perhaps a little mean, not all of it is bad, it's more a mix between the voice acting and the editing of the voice audio that is my problem. Madison and Scott both have good voice work, it's the other two that I really (really!) don't like at all.
My problem with the editing is that all the voice work is so clearly done in a studio, never does it actually sound and feel like they're speaking in the environment they're in, and due to the nature of the game, actually feel very noticeably misplaced.

However, the game does do other stuff very well. Enjoying it muchly so far, though it's not a defining video game as I was hoping, nor a system defining game (though it's certainly another exclusive that adds credence to the PS3 alongside Uncharted), it's definitely something that, as I'm playing, I can totally enjoy for attempting to do something different (and do well.)

Undoubtedly the most impressive element of this game is the graphical quality of many of the environments and all of the main characters (bar Ethan), which are quite simply the best we've seen this generation by quite a distance.

I'd definitely recommend everyone play the game, that's for sure.

[NokkonWud]

Originally Posted by cheets

Fifa 10 UT
The Club

What are your thoughts on this years Ultimate Team? I personally think it's gone backwards in many areas and I'm very, very disappointed. I certainly won't be sticking around, that's a fact.

[NokkonWud]

Originally Posted by Davey_Pitch

Considering virtually every PS3 owner I know is really interested in Heavy Rain, I think it will sell enough to make plenty of noise in the industry, along with the high review scores it's been getting. Whether it'll lead to an increase in narrative-driven games is a completely different thing though. I hope it does, it was an exceptional experience and one I hope to repeat again in different games soon.

Originally Posted by Streeteh

It's also topped the 'top sellers' list on Shopto, again not an accurate representation of the market but it's not a small etailer these days so it goes some way to showing it's actually being noticed. Even Zavvi have a full-site advert for it, the sort of advertising a small developer couldn't afford without massive publisher backing.

I was talking with a group of friends after playing football on Wednesday, they're all pretty big gamers and buy games regularly. I mentioned whether any of them were getting Heavy Rain and only 1 person (excluding myself) from the 7 had heard of it.

As for the scores, I've seen a few numbers, not read any reviews for fear of spoiling, seen quite a number of 70%-ish scores, one from Edge, which put it behind BioShock 2 and Mass Effect 2 just for this month. I do however believe Edge have gotten the 7 score wrong, it should be higher by 1 or maybe even 2, but I'm not really that far into it having just started Chapter 3 (stage 4).

[cheets]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

What are your thoughts on this years Ultimate Team? I personally think it's gone backwards in many areas and I'm very, very disappointed. I certainly won't be sticking around, that's a fact.

Seems the same, getting use to the setup, bidding is better for £4 its worth it.

[Wellington]

Currently playing
PC: FF IX
PC: King Arthur
PSP: Final Fantasy Dissidia

Considering starting up playing Disgara 3 on the PS3

[NokkonWud]

Finished Heavy Rain this morning, definitely an enjoyable game, not the video game defining title that will change the way games will be seen that I was hoping for, but as an experience it was, for the most part, hugely enjoyable.

What was a bit of a shame was that later in the game you're seemingly given less and less variable to do, the majority of which are essentially one available option, which is hidden behind it's control method (of holding a direction or action), when it's really no different to the majority of games utilising a 'press A to open' action, however the usage of Six-Axis actually benefits the game and works incredibly well, so yay, well done Sony.
I also know several people who have openly praised the control method of Heavy Rain (and rightly so, it's nice) but also commented rather negatively on something like Natal and how it could be integrated into games in the future.
Personally this is the kind of thing I'd like to do in Natal.

Too many clumsy things that stop it being a 9/10 out of 10 title in my eyes, but I'd definitely say it's the key title in Sony's Playstation 3 exclusive list. It's just a shame that a game like this, that is intending to change the way games are seen is being limited to the smallest third of the home console market, but it's definitely a killer app on the PS3, so these things happen.

There are some truly excellent chapters in the game, the vast majority of Madison's being the stand-outs for me. A thoroughly enjoyable experience and everyone should play it, that's for sure. The first real issue I've had is that my original thought was realised upon completion, I have no real urge to jump back in and play it again, although I'm sure they thought this to be the case when they announced the Chronicles additions, the first of which, Taxidermist, is really good.

I'd say that it's certainly the best 'new' game I've played this year, whether it'll better Mass Effect 2, God of War 3 or Alan Wake, I'd like to hope so given that it did try something different.

[Belmit]

Finished Bioshock 2. Obviously not as good as the first, and it would have benefitted from being able to revisit the occasional old location now in a more delapidated state... but anyway. MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Good:
- Hacking improved. Doesn't take half as long and you can do it at a distance. That's how you properly improve on a good idea.
- Water animations are spot on. The transition from above water to below water is awesome, especially in the airlocks when they drain and fill.
- Sound. Water dripping on my tin head? Very atmospheric.
- Good weapons. Drill, good. Speargun, good. Rivet gun, good. Launcher... OK. Shotgun and machine gun I could do without. Just too many upgrades available (see plasmids below).
- Traps. On hard difficulty these are a godsend in Teh Epic Battuls.
- Big Sisters. Hard as nails and genuinely difficult to kill. Plus a lot of them in the game appear at random so you have no time to set traps or to recover from the last battle you just won. And that scream scares the bejesus out of me.
- Research. Video camera > static camera and I found that there was a genuine difference in the difficulty of enemies as progression was made, as with the first game. This gives an organic feeling that the protagonist is learning to deal with enemies and spotting their weaknesses, almost subconciously.
- Story is solid but needed more of a twist like the first to really set it off nicely. A lot of buildup and not enough payoff.

Bad:
- Doesn't reference the first quite enough. Plenty of Andrew Ryan stuff but only one Frank Fontaine diary referencing Atlas. The old and new stories needed to be more integrated.
- Too many plasmid upgrades/tonics etc. I found myself becoming a jack of all trades, master of none until right near the end. It would be better if there was a distinct path to what you can and can't have e.g. if you have flame you can't use freeze and vice versa... at the expense of not being able to access specific hidden areas based on your choices.
- Too hard at the start (not a lot of health, can't carry a lot of first aid, little ammo and cash around) and too easy at the end (regularly unable to pick up the abundant ammo as I was constantly full, even with all launcher types, cash maxed out, rarely lost a lot of health or EVE). Without spoiling too much you also get the Bioshock equivalent of an atomic bomb towards the end which really puts the diffculty curve on the downturn.
- Research. Yeah, good and bad. Can't we just have a shoulder button or equivalent that turns the camera on and off? Selecting and starting the camera before you attack each enemy is just abysmally clunky.
- I'm a Big Daddy, yeah? Even on hard, how can a junky with a spanner take half my health off with a well-aimed swipe? This needed balancing better.

Nice continuation but it felt a bit like a Half-life 2 episode, or an Opposing Force. Not quite enough to be brilliant on its own but if it was one part of a story with more to come I would have been happier.

And almost no reference to the previous protagonist and saviour of Rapture except for somewhat indirectly when talking about mind control. Lame.

And I'm spent.

[NokkonWud]

Originally Posted by Belmit

- Research. Yeah, good and bad. Can't we just have a shoulder button or equivalent that turns the camera on and off? Selecting and starting the camera before you attack each enemy is just abysmally clunky.

This is by far the one change I'd have liked. It seemed such an obvious miss from the first game, for it not to be in the second was simply criminal.