What next? R&C, HS or Creed?

DeVore

In the flat here we have sucked the marrow of Skate until that bone is dry to the core and are looking around for the next obesession. We've got Resistance, Ridge Racer and are going to buy CoD4 (even though I have an aversion to FPS on consoles).

So, it comes down to Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank or Assassin's Creed... (The orange box will almost certainly be a purchase even though we all have it on our pc's )

What else should be in our consideration for next titles?

DeV.

NotorietyH

I'm going to say Haze, though it's a FPS, I have faith that it'll be a pretty interesting one and of course Uncharted is definitely worth considering. Me, my next purchase is Rock Band, importing it from the States, I've never been so hyped for a game, ever, I'm just itching to play it (well I hope that's what it is, otherwise I have crabs.)

stevenmu

The US store has a demo up for Uncharted, that's worth a look, I think it's out in the next week or so.

LookingFor

Uncharted is out Dec 7 I think. Judging by the demo it looks like a must-have. Singstar will be out the same day.

Ratchet is great, very enjoyable. AC will hopefully be great, great concept, I hope the execution is there.

Haze might be worth a look, maybe. Lego Star Wars, perhaps? Kayne & Lynch? Guitar Hero III (or Rockband)?

These are the games I'm keeping an eye on, pending reviews..

steviec

I would say Assassin's Creed, based on what I've read. But it's not out yet so it may not be all I'm expecting. Looks amazing though and does a lot of genuinely new things with the gameplay so I think it will be a must have.

Of R&C and Heavenly Sword, I prefer Heavenly Sword because its got a brilliant story and great dialogue, plus the Kai levels are awesome. The fighting's not quite so good though and it is also short.

Ratchet and Clank on the other hand is a safe bet. I've been playing it all weekend and don't think I'm anywhere near the end, and it's been utter quality throughout. It really doesn't do anything new though or push any boundaries, it just takes your standard combat heavy platformer and polishes it to a shine, which is why I'd probably put it behind the other two even though it's a very very good game.

NotorietyH

LookingFor wrote: »

Guitar Hero III (or Rockband)?

I got Guitar Hero III last week and was seriously underwhelmed by it. Rock Band all the way for me.

neversoft seriously dropped the ball with it for me. The hard difficultly level is closer to the expert difficulty level of GH2, the note charts seem a bit all over the place. Basically they've sucked all the fun out of it and it's become a sort of button masher. You feel less involved in the songs and it's feels more like a game. The battle mode is stupid too.

Basically if you're the type of Guitar Hero player who loves trying to five-star every song and play it purely for the challenge, then it's pretty good. If yer like me and mainly play it for the fun, it's not so great. I got it last wednesday and played maybe 2 songs on Friday and about the same on Saturday, didn't play it all yesterday. I was getting it mainly to use as the controller for the bass for Rock Band anyway.

The online mode is a bit of a joke too, I've had to spend about 20 minutes trying to log into a game in Quick (ironically titled I'm assuming) play, you have to make 20-30 attempts before you can join a game.

Graphics-wise it's not great either, the drummer look horrendous.

overall it's okay, but I really got the impression it was rushed out just so it could be out before Rock Band.

Burning Eclipse

NotorietyH wrote: »

I got Guitar Hero III last week and was seriously underwhelmed by it. Rock Band all the way for me.

neversoft seriously dropped the ball with it for me. The hard difficultly level is closer to the expert difficulty level of GH2, the note charts seem a bit all over the place. Basically they've sucked all the fun out of it and it's become a sort of button masher. You feel less involved in the songs and it's feels more like a game. The battle mode is stupid too.

Basically if you're the type of Guitar Hero player who loves trying to five-star every song and play it purely for the challenge, then it's pretty good. If yer like me and mainly play it for the fun, it's not so great. I got it last wednesday and played maybe 2 songs on Friday and about the same on Saturday, didn't play it all yesterday. I was getting it mainly to use as the controller for the bass for Rock Band anyway.

The online mode is a bit of a joke too, I've had to spend about 20 minutes trying to log into a game in Quick (ironically titled I'm assuming) play, you have to make 20-30 attempts before you can join a game.

Graphics-wise it's not great either, the drummer look horrendous.

overall it's okay, but I really got the impression it was rushed out just so it could be out before Rock Band.

Would you have changed nothing and had them criticised for that?? Also, aside from some aesthetic value, Rockband is pretty weak graphics wise too.

I disagree with the comment about sucking all the fun out of it. Easy and Medium are easier than ever and why shouldn't a game seek to challenge you on Hard and Expert difficulties?

Finally, congratulations on forming an opinion of a game based on playing 4 songs! Good going!:rolleyes:

NotorietyH

Burning Eclipse wrote: »

Would you have changed nothing and had them criticised for that??

Well they did change pretty much nothing, except put in a crappy battle mode and bad note charts. Rock Band add the Band World Tour mode, and of course the other instruments, so at least they're pushing the concept further, not throwing in Boss Battles, just for the sake of it. I mean three boss bottles out of eight tiers isn't exactly being fully commited to the concept.

Also, aside from some aesthetic value, Rockband is pretty weak graphics wise too.

It's not Heavenly Sword or Uncharted, but graphically and in terms of presentation, it's better than Guitar Hero III, the drummer in GHIII looks like a robot. You just have to look at the latest videos on rockband.com to see Rock Band is superior.

I disagree with the comment about sucking all the fun out of it. Easy and Medium are easier than ever and why shouldn't a game seek to challenge you on Hard and Expert difficulties?

I don't mind a game being challenging, but I'm saying it can be fun and challenging at the same time. I don't find it fun to be randomly trying to mash the fret button to keep up with a ridiculously hard solo like Raining Blood or a bizarre combination of three not chords. Hard in GHII had a nice balance between the two, Expert was too challenging for me, so I stuck with Hard, and still found it tough but fun for the most part. In GHIII by the time I got to the end of the sixth tier it was becoming such a slog and I was getting no enjoyment out of it whatsoever, the same feeling as I got once I got to the later expert stages in GHII. I've no problem with the game being extra challenging, but that's what Expert is for. Medium is far too easy, because I like playing with the five buttons as opposed to the four. It just seems to me anyway, that Neversoft messed up the balancing between the difficulties. I mean there's some occassions where they throw in an extra note, where one doesn't exist, just to make the song harder, that's absolutely ridiculous, to be playing a note and no sound comes out.

Finally, congratulations on forming an opinion of a game based on playing 4 songs! Good going!:rolleyes:

Sorry if I phrased it wrong, but I only played four songs over the weekend. I played it for 5 or 6 hours on Wednesday night unlocking all the songs and almost completing the Hard setlist. Had a couple of games online and then played for maybe another hour or two on Thursday. That's when I formed my opinion. It just feels like they tried to make it more into a video game, I mean boss battles?!? It's not freakin' Sonic. To be balanced though, there are a few songs that I enjoyed playing, Paint it Black, The Seeker, Reptilla, and a few others. The neew guitar controller is great, really solid, feels nice.I downloaded the Foo Fighters pack hoping another few songs that I knew would get my enthusiasm for the game up a notch but alas the bizarre note chart struck again.

I'm not saying it's an atrocious game. I'm saying it's alright, my least favourite Guitar Hero of the series and I'm looking forward to Rock Band more, because that's more focused on fun rather than being a test of mental endurance. Also in terms of myself, I prefer Rock Band's setlist because I've never been much of a metalhead. But if you rather Guitar Hero III, more power to ya, it's just not what I was looking for in a Guitar Hero game. Plus Rock Band has drums and TIMMAAH!

Actually speaking of Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld, I think the two 'fun' bonus tracks clearly show the different approachs to both games, Guitar Hero III has Dragonforce with a song that is nigh on impossible to complete without hours and hours of practice, which seems to be their philosophy on some of the later songs, whereas Rock Band has Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld from South Park, which is just fun!

WellyJ

Get Assassins creed,

Its amazing, you won't be disappointed.

Dakeyras

I'll be going with assassins creed and mostly likely haze when it comes out. Playing through COD4 at the moment, thoroughly enjoyable though my only disappointment with it is there's no split screen co-op campaign. The co-op campaign on resistance with a mate was a hell of a lot of fun.

Also very tempted by uncharted and R&C, both demos were very good. It's a nice change to have to decide between a bunch of great games

DeVore

yes, unfortunately at 60-75 euro each, you DO have to choose. There are three of us here which means we can split the costs but if you played it alone, I dunno how many could afford it.

In the end, I picked up a copy of Lego Star Wars simply because its huge value for money in terms of hours of entertainment! I think Creed will win out though... we played the HS demo and it looks awesome but a lot of reviews I've seen of it said it was a flawed diamond basically...

DeV.

projectmayhem

if you're done with skate trade it in, you get about €40 from xtra-vision and about €30-35 from game. just finished a session with r&c and i'm loving it. i don't normally enjoy that type of game, but this is fantastic. brings back memories of my first time playing mario on the SNES or crash on the PS1.

once i finish this i'll trade it in for creed. probably next week. i also have to get crysis, and UT3 next week, and i have gears PC to finish. god it's an expensive month

DeVore

We have just unlocked everything with Skate but its been a big hit here with all of us and I think its a keeper. Resistance was good but it seems like a one time thing. I can see us trading that in first.

I'll see if we can't figure out how to view the demos we have uploaded to the Skate website (EA's online stuff is really unnecessaraily complex).

DeV.

LookingFor

Online reviews for Assassin's Creed are showing up - a bit disappointing sofar, 7s from 1up and Eurogamer. It got a much better score from GameInformer magazine (95), but if most other reviews start leaning toward 6 and 7, I might delay picking this up for a while Apparently the common complaint is that the game gets very repetitive. Even the GameInformer review mentions this, but I guess it seemed not to bother them as much.

steviec

The reviews are a little dodgy alright.

Think I'll still pick up Assassin's Creed though because it automatically gets bonus points for not featuring guns in my book, and considering Eurogamer's main complaint was that it's like Crackdown but not quite as good, that's not such a bad complaint since Crackdown is the best game on the 360 IMO

LookingFor

IGN's given AC a 7.5 . I expected it to be in 8 territory to be honest, even after the other reviews.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/834/834770p1.html

If you play Assassin's Creed for an hour, you will probably think it's a fantastic game. But as Assassin's progresses, its dual storylines and repetitive quests begin to grow tiresome. There are so many great individual elements, but they are lost among the myriad of poor decisions from Ubisoft Montreal. Wasting the big twist on the first five minutes of gameplay is a tremendous mistake, but not nearly as damaging as the ill-conceived assassination investigation quests, which get old fast. The exploration aspects of Assassin's Creed and the combat are both plusses in my book. But those two elements are only a small part of the whole. And most everything else in Assassin's Creed is mediocre.

They also pose the question if AC is the most disappointing next gen game yet

Zapp Brannigan

Get R&C. AC is supposed to get boring, Haze looks ridiculously bad, Heavenly Sword looks pretty but it ends way too soon.

NotorietyH

Zapp Brannigan wrote: »

Haze looks ridiculously bad,

We must be looking a two different games then. I think Haze is looking good and I'm looking forward to it, if it's as remotely playable as the Timesplitters games were I'm sold, and I'm guessing the multiplayer is going to be great, I'm holding out hope that it's the first FPS on the PS3 that supports split-screen online seeing as Timesplitters: Future Perfect did on PS2, they've at least confirmed that there's going to be a bots option for offline multiplayer, which is good in my book, I can't understand why no other game I have for the PS3 has that option.

I agree with you though in terms of R&C, finished last night, absolutely fantastic game.

Vorrtexx

I'm looking forward to Haze also. FRD make pretty good games and alot of the people involved made Goldeneye on the N64. COOP online is what makes this title interesting for me. The offline bots sound cool too as it'd be nice to practice offline or if the game sells bad and nobody is online to play against

aaf

NotorietyH wrote: »

I agree with you though in terms of R&C, finished last night, absolutely fantastic game.

:eek:Christ, that was fast! Did you stay up for a few days straight playing it?

bigslick

was looking at getting R&C and Creed as well as Kane and Lynch. but reviews that are coming out are suggesting that kane and lynch and creed aint what they were hyped to be.

which is a shame as was really looking forward to them. think might still get kane but wait on creed.
what you guys think?

NotorietyH

aaf wrote: »

:eek:Christ, that was fast! Did you stay up for a few days straight playing it?

I played it for about 5 hours on Friday night, then played it all day Saturday, bought Call of Duty 4 Saturday night, so that kinda took over on Sunday, and then finished R&C on Monday night in about another 3 hours. The two hours later I was finished Call of Duty, my eyes still hurt

whitetrash

NotorietyH wrote: »

my eyes still hurt

Hehe, I'm about the same. Got R&C and COD both on Friday. Played a bit of COD that night, but from Saturday played R&C straight through, then back to COD to finish that. Both games very hard to put down.

I was going to get mario and assassin's this friday, but going on recent reviews I'm having 2nd thoughts about assassin's. I've already played through crackdown once without having to play through a worse version, it's too bad, I was really looking forward to it. They really know how to cut a trailer, even if they can't make a great game :P

AtomicHorror

Gamespot's review of Assassin's Creed is a lot more reassuring than IGN. IGN also made some comment about a weaker frame rate on the PS3 version... Gamespot says PS3 version has a better framerate. All the reviews I've seen fall between 7.5 at the low end and 9.5 at the high end. On balance, I reckon I'll buy it. A big decision considering how poor I am!

whitetrash

One of the guys running penny arcade posted up about his opinions on the game and where he thinks the 7-ish scores are coming from. He's just about convinced me to get it after all...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/14 Scroll down to the 2nd post

AtomicHorror

Interesting. I like a game that I can take my time with, so I'm thinking this will be fun for me.