Posts by PaulH

  • Ghost Recon Future Soldier

    I finished this over the weekend, so i guess I'll sum up my thoughts on it

    The good:

    - SP was pretty long, took about an hour a mission, 12 missions

    - I liked the tactical elements to it, the cloaking and the drones and the target elimination system

    - MP seems quite fun, not played it very much yet though

    - Good that you can do it in co-op, though not tried yet

    - Each mission seemed quite distinctive in terms of visual style and setting, which helped break it all up quite nicely

    The bad:

    - Visuals were pretty inconsistent (no offence 3Dnj!). In some places they looked quite nice (I think the lighting was generally quite well done) however in others they were pretty bad, there was a forest level at the end on which I encountered a section of rock bank which looked like it had a photo stuck on it and the floor below it was covered in stretched textures, how does this happen in a modern game? I know it was delayed but I didn't think the team had been that pushed for time, or am I wrong?

    - Character animations in cut-scenes were a bit bad. There was one where a character got shot and suddenly his normal face changed into a dead face, was quite funny though

    - Some AI issues, on one mission two of my team-mates got stuck whilst crawling under some collapsed debris, I had to quit out and restart just to get them back. Also in some areas I'd sneak around the enemies and proceed through the level, however my team-mates seemed to think an area couldn't be passed until it had no enemies left in it

    - As mentioned before, not clear which bits you are supposed to be tactical/ghosty on and which you can't possibly be. I don't think I found one mission you can be 100% ninja on, there's a bit on each where the game forces combat on you

    - I did a great run on a prison level, snuck around with no alerts and only had to take out 6 guards, yet I only got a 70% ghost rating? I assume this is because the rating system awards bonus points based on successful silent kills, yet this is flawed obviously as there are multiple ways to approach a situation stealthily.

    - The game does take control away from you sometimes. In the on-rails shooting bits you only have a set FOV, so if an enemy is just to one side of that FOV you can't shoot him, which is odd

    - Didn't find any real use for flashbangs, smoke or normal grenades or the EMP on the drone. Seemed easy enough just to use your team-mates to take people down and if you got alerted you just shoot everyone

    Seems like I have a lot more bad points, but I'd still give it a 7 or 8 overall, with SP, co-op, guerilla mode and MP there's a lot of content packed in so it's worth playing I think

  • Ghost Recon Future Soldier

    I don't think they did, though some of it will be down to personal preference. There is a bit of COD mixed into it, a few on rails sections, things like that which won't appeal to some. Also i've only played the two missions but it does seem like the game isn't content with you being super stealthy all the way through them, on both there's been points where I've had no choice but to become Rambo, the game kinda forces it on you. The first point of the first mission this happened - after I spent a while in the menus customizing my weapon for silence and range, I headed into mission 1 expecting to be some kind of ninja assassin. The first group of bad guys I encountered I sat near to and waited for their patrols to split up so I could take them out one by one, but it never happened. The only choice I had was to pop out from my hiding place and start spraying bullets at them, alerting them in the process. These are minor concerns as far as I'm concerned, but some may not agree

  • Ghost Recon Future Soldier

    Really enjoying this so far, playing through it on elite and just got 100% ghost rating on mission 2 It's like the old school ghost recon games, quite tactical which I like, you don't get to play this way in many games nowadays (seems with this and Splinter Cell Ubisoft pretty much have that genre covered). There's also some pretty cool gadgets like the cloak and the weapon customization screen is nicely done, so yeah it's good, going to play some more tomorrow

  • Max Payne 3

    Tried the MP, it's ok but nothing too special even though some reviews highlighted it as the standout feature. I find third person online shooters a bit awkward in general anyway, the fact that you have to press left or right on the d-pad before approaching a corner to shift your view to one side of your character is off-putting. The whole so-mo thing works ok online (supposed to make you go slow mo when anyone is aiming at you with it activated) but occasionally you'll go into slow mo whilst behind a wall as someone on the other side of the level has triggered it and happens to be facing in your direction. Spawning next to enemies is also commonplace and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining what perks/bonuses you have and what they do. Also they hide away their more novel game modes and keep them locked until you have at least 100 kills, meaning until then you have to play regular old TDM and DM, bit strange that.

    So yeah, get it for the SP mainly is my advice

  • Games you just finished - 2012

    [Blocked Image: http://www.ps3news.com/images/video-i-am-alive-to-hit-playstation-network-on-april-4-2012-30306-1.jpg]

    Surprised by how much I enjoyed this, it's a bit rough around the edges in terms of graphics, animations etc and some of the design decisions are a bit strange but there's some good ideas in there and the general tone and mood of the game is bang on. Fending people off by pointing a gun at them that you know isn't loaded, and them calling your bluff on it is pretty cool. It's not very long though and there's a bit of backtracking involved, also the bits in the dense dust/fog are a bit annoying mainly as you don't know where you are half the time (and the map isn't very helpful). Overall though I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different for 5 hours or so

  • Max Payne 3

    Finished it yesterday and whilst i did really enjoy it, there were a few things that stood out for me. Firstly, reviews criticized it for being too long which is ridiculous as it's about a 9 hour game without rushing, I could've played more. Anyway

    - When you pick up a sniper rifle or anything scoped, the analogue sticks get swapped around. This is crazy and quite disorientating, no idea why they did this, I tended to avoid anything scoped after I learnt this

    - Is a bit annoying how Max puts his main weapon away in every cutscene so afterwards you are left just with a pistol and have to swap back

    - You can't move between points of cover without Max standing up and getting shot at

    - Sadly enough I like getting achievements in my 360 games, however Max Payne annoyed me as to get all of them you effectively have to play the entire game through 4 times over to unlock and complete various difficulty modes and the new york minute mode and do it all in hardcore. This is stupid and there's no way I'm going to do it regardless of how much I enjoyed my first play through, I hate it when developers use achievements to force players to over-play every part of their game instead of offering some amusing side challenges that can be achieved on one play through (two max).

    Overall though as i said, very much enjoyed it, haven't tried MP yet either

  • Max Payne 3

    This game is everything I hoped it would be, a few chapters in and really enjoying it so far, possibly the 'coolest' game I've played for a while...the slow motion kill cams where you can slow time down even further while you continue to riddle the enemy full of bullets is awesome

  • [CE\Max] Ford Explorer (Jurassic Park)

    The Jurassic park env stuff for this scene is just the electric fence (that keeps the t-rex in) and the track that the car runs along, i'm just going to place those with the car and some foliage in CE3, it's not really a JP environment scene though, it's just a scene for the car. After that's done the environmental stuff I want to move onto probably won't be Jurassic Park related though, I've not decided what it'll be yet.

    In the process of unwrapping and texturing this car and putting the scene together now, will probably take a while but will update when I'm further along with it

  • Battlefield 3

    Can anyone confirm that on 360 the patch eliminates issues with people sniping with super accurate USAS/Frag round combinations? Haven't really played it since they started doing that but am thinking about getting back into it for the new map pack