Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (360) - Initial Impressions
My biggest concern for this game was that Neversoft was going to screw up the gameplay and presentation that that other games in the series had going for them.
Fortunately, neither is true:
- Gameplay is exactly the game, with the only possible exception (after doing a quick GH2 right after Gh3 test) is that there may be more time to see notes before you hit them — but not much. I do think the Star Power indicator is a bit more noticeable (instead of going from grey to blue glowing, the meter “grows” out of the indicator and you don’t have to look too far to see it), though on the opposite side, the resistive wire multiplier indicator is a bit tougher to tell (being the color of the font instead of the bg color of the indicator). I do appreciate the note streak indicator for trying to hit those achievements; the “50 note streak!” announcements the game gives can be distracting the first one or two times, but actually with that note streak indicator, you know what those mean and can safely ignore them later. The boss battle I’ve had (Tom Morello on Medium) is a nice addition to prep you for competitive multiplayer those was a bit too easy. We’ll see how Slash and The Devil go down later.
-I like the presentation a bit more; the menus and the like are the same feel of being a scrapbook-type thing. There’s little animations when you move to each next stages which is a bit nicer than just the tour bus thing. I do like the choreography of the performance a bit more — while its still focused on your guitar character, its aimed more as a music video and cycles around the other members of the band a bit more, without these stuff being distracting to the guitar playing part.
Also, having a lot more masters really helps - the song quality is easily much better than those songs without masters.
Of course, difficulty may be in question and I’ve heard early reports of huge jumps between Medium and Hard– I’m halfway through medium’s set list and yet not to 5-star a performance, so we’ll see how that works out.
posted in guitar-hero-3, initial-impressions, rhythm, xbox-360 | 0 Comments
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is the first installment of the Ratchet and Clank series to be made for the PS3. Developed by Insomniac games, the game continues exactly what the previous titles did: a fun platforming-shooting game that incorporates a variety of odd and exotic weapons. On its own, the game it outstanding, but considering where the series has been before, there’s a few elements that suggest that the number of ideas for new weapons and gadgets may be winding down, and some decisions on the approach to the game design are a bit disappointing to experienced players, though certainly are far from detracting from the overall enjoyment of the game.
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The Orange Box has be stated to be one of the best values in gaming, containing 5 complete games from Valve: Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The advertising of this is definitely not misleading - there’s at least 30 hours of high quality single player gaming and the countless hours of Team Fortress 2 really make this a great package. Mind you, there are some issues with the 360 version compared to the PC mostly in the control schemes for a few games.
Me and My Katamari - the second and last sequel to the breakout hit Katamari Damacy, attempts to deliver the same great game play from that title to the PSP. For the most part, it does this, but the main failing is the lack of the subtly of the control scheme from the PS2 that simply can’t be reproduced on the PSP, causing the control scheme to get in the way of the full enjoyment of the game.
Needless to say, We Love Katamari is a superb sequel to the quirky hit Katamari Damacy, doing exactly what a game sequel should do - give more of exactly the same gameplay style with selected improvements to make the game even more enjoyable.
