Read more at Wall Street Journal
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Read more at Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Insomiac's first outing with EA is FUSE. What the heck is it? Does it play any better than the Resistance titles it was responsible for?
Well, first you gotta understand that this is a third person shooter (TPS). It moves more slowly than a FPS and yes, you will swing the view around uncontrollably if you suffered from Tourette Syndrome but that's another matter. And this is the first consideration you should make when taking up a TPS rather than a FTS.
I am not a big fan of TPS, though the extra animated sequences make it look more fun when you butcher your enemies but besides this, it doesn't quite have the chops to deliver the intensity of action found on a FPS.
So how does FUSE measure up in this? It's not bad but not terribly good. For one, there are so many shades of borrowed ideas you'd find here. The four player action is nice, the skill tree is similar to the one found on Borderlands 2, and the storyline sounds like an action B-grade movie from the 1980s.
Working up a Sweat
If you own a treadmill or been to the Gym working out, you'd know how tiring it becomes when you only work on one machine at a time.That said, the Campaign gameplay in FUSE is not much of a work out if you compared it to the other shooters. Everything is there for you and yes, it doesn't take long to figure out what to do and where to do it. This is nice if you are a brain dead zombie and not very challenging if all you ever had to do was to kill everyone in sight and put out a fire.
But the levels are not in the park variety either. As a four player mission, your job is to ensure everyone makes it thru all the levels intact and if one of your team mates got killed, you have to restart. This means that every time a player is in bleeding out mode, you cannot trust the other character AI to rescue his or her ass. It would have been much easier if there was only two or one character on screen at any one time instead of four but the power that be decided that the story was best told from a four player perspective.
You can of course choose any of the four characters to play even mid way during a campaign. That flexibility is a plus but not the weaponry.
Have you Seen my Ammo Pouch?
You weapon choices are limited. Machine pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol and semi-auto sub machine gun. The unique choices are meant for different characters, and this range from a Fuse action crossbow to some whacked out shield gun. Ammo is limited on all weapons. Run out of bullets on one, you'd be asked to switch weapons. Bummer. And ammo pouches are only found after you have killed an enemy, which is also limited to prevent you from being too trigger happy.
I would have preferred an option to carry any three weapons instead of being fixated on just three categories, one super weapon, one secondary weapon and a side arm. You can't switch your sidearm for a shotgun, which can only be swapped out with a secondary weapon type only.
Each badass has an armour meter. So it takes more shots to kill one if you used an inferior weapon. I found that a well placed shot in the head normally does the trick but that's hard to do with sub machine guns. For this, the pistol does its job best since you have more ammo for that. If you don't like the humble pistolero....well too bad. This self defeatist policy on weapons is probably the biggest flaw in the game so go figure. The game has two options of play, Campaign and Echelon, the latter being a Horde mode. This is where you will get strut your stuff after completing your campaign and though is fun, it has to be said that it is way better if you had four online players on screen.
Conclusion
I didn't like the two player co-op view. Instead of using a landscape view it gives you a tight portrait view—which makes shooting more difficult. When enemy fire hits you, the first thing to do is to hit them back but you have to swing around a lot more just to see where it is coming from due to the restricted view.
The limited weapon choices is probably the biggest downside for the game and the only redeeming feature here is the horde mode, which gives it more playability in the long run if you are saddle with a partner at home or online.
Beyond this, I can't really say it has the chops to be that one game you'd play on your own, over and over again.
FUSE on PS3
rating
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Is there any hope left for Lucas Arts? Probably not. After Disney acquired the whole Lucas group, this Licensed Pinball gaming titled from Zen Pinball will probably be the last you'd see, unless of course it was signed much earlier with a slew of would be Pinball titles.
Now Pinball is a tricky thing to master, the virtual controls on every mobile device is different, and thanks to sensitivity of the touch device, it feels different too. For this I must add that playing pinball on a Android tablet is pretty visual, you don't get to feel your way through the game but instead rely on it visually to track you ball angle. This is bad and is where the game suffers the most problem.
The controls are difficult to master and there are just too many side pockets to shoot because it is spaced poorly. You could be shooting the right most side pocket but your timing and visual control only allows you to hit this with less precision or miss altogether. And the speed of the ball differs with the type of device used. I noticed a lag when it ran on ICS enabled devices but it played smoother with Jellybean devices.
For your info, this Pinball game is NOT a faithful reproduction of the actual Star Wars Pinball table from the 80s and 90s, so it is completely virtual. The nice virtual touches include animated characters from Star Wars coming round to mess with you and at times, these form a kind of a distraction, which is fun for some and downright annoying for others.
The good part of the game, hmmmm let's see. There are plenty of scoring options. Yup, no dull moments here as you rake in the big ones from some precise shooting. My main beef is still with the table design.
Romance of the Three Episodes
How was there no thought to the multitude of scoring possibilities? Well, the folks at Zen saw it fit to squeeze all THREE original episodes of the story into ONE table. So for one moment, you'd be given a scoring system based on scenes from ANY three movies. The fun part is that you won't have a dull moment as you constantly chase after the scores. The bad part is that the scoring will evolve into a sub scene of the movie and that's where you have to battle your way through the challenges.
The soundbites are nice, along with the original music and animation but personally I think it is a little over the top. As much as I love the soundbites from each movie scene, I feel that too much attention has been paid to making it more eye candy. The layout of the table could habe been better along with the design. I would quite happily pay for a pinball that focuses on ONE movie at a time instead of all three. After all, I am a Star Wars Generation kid. But as much as I love the characters, I wish the game will would have been simpler in scope and virtue.
For example, there is a Jedi Training challenge where you try to block the laser fire from a training drone. This is completely virtual and unnecessary. Zen folks have a bad habit of putting that sort of eye candy as part of the gameplay to the disappointment of die-hard Jedi Pinball players.
Conclusion
So is this game worth your time? I suppose it is in some ways but the verdict is still open. For me, the bewildering array of scoring options makes it a confusing table, the layout isn't one of the most creative. I am not a fan of the layout even though the game is relatively playable for those who are desperate to get a pinball fix.
It plays worst on the tiny screens of the iPhone as the tiny and narrow real estate just doesn't quite allow your thumbs to move the paddles. It plays best on Android tablets and phones with a wider screen without a doubt.
Zen Star Wars Pinball on Andriod
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Blizzard has announced that Diablo 3 will be roosting within the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 come this September.
Although the Playstation 4 is expected to get a version of the PC game, Blizzard were not forthcoming on a demonic invocation on the Xbox One.
Gamers will be glad to know that the absurd ‘always online’ feature will not be featured in the console versions and that all the ‘major content and updates’ will immediately be available. Apparently, Blizzard also said that the Infernal Helm will be made a pre-order bonus.
Check out the Playstation 4 trailer.
Requiem For The Devil
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Wikipad shrunken Android based handheld is scheduled for a worldwide launch this summer, which will first be released on the 11th June, 2013.
The 7-inch device offers a 1280x800 IPS display, a 1.4 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of on-board flash memory. It will run Android Jellybean 4.1 and hopefully include a side order of potato chips which goes well together.
Gamers will be able to download games from Tegrazone, Playstation Mobile and Google Play.
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