PS3 To The Rescue!

I think I’m suffering from FPS Apathy Syndrome.  For the last few months it seems like I have been playing nothing but shooters, starting off with Prey (which was sat on my pile of “started but never finished” games for months) on the 360.  Next up with the superb Resistance: Fall Of Man on PS3 before Bioshock and Halo 3 back on the 360 (with a large dose of Forza 2 inbetween).

No sooner had I finished Halo 3, The Orange Box unlocked and I spent a large chunk of the weekend playing Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and then Portal.  While all of these games are superb in their own right, in fact they are all outstanding titles (with the exception of Prey which was…”solid”), they do tend to blend together after a while.

Whilst playing my way through Halo 3 I couldn’t help thinking just how similar Resistance was with the obligatory vehicle sections, objective missions, et al.  There seems to be an unwritten checklist for FPS titles these days, and they all seem to be very generic and identikit.  Free Radical’s PS3 exclusive Haze is due out before the end of the year, and I’m sure it will be a very good game (this is, after all the developer of the sublime Goldeneye).  But there’s nothing particularly new that I can see from watching the developer interview with David Doak that is on the PlayStation Store right now that will make me want to rush out and buy it.

You can steal your enemies weapon, that’s a decent idea.  The whole pharmaceutical company pumping soldiers full of drugs to alter their perception is also novel, but hardly groundbreaking.  Then you throw in Blacksite: Area 51, the DX10 graphics porn of Crysis and you can’t forget Call of Duty 4.  All of these games will be out before the end of the year, and all with similar themes.

So for the last couple of days I’ve taken solace in the PS3, the console that gets the least gaming use right now, but that all looks set to change.  I downloaded the demo of Ratchet and Clank from the US Store yesterday afternoon, and absolutely loved it.  If you strip away all the colourful graphics what you essentially have is an on-rails style platformer that keeps you pushed down a tight corridor but gives the illusion of free roaming.  But this is just the initial demo level, and the variety of enemies, and excellent weapons (Groove-O-Tron anyone?) plus the humour of the game kept me coming back for repeated plays through.

Even Sally remarked it makes a change to see me playing something…”nicer”!  So Ratchet definitely gets the thumbs up, as does the latest demo for Folklore (which I talked about on Red Rant a while back) and I finally picked up Heavenly Sword at the weekend (check out your local ASDA if you’re after it, they are the cheapest by far).   That’s hardly the most original title in the world, but it’ll keep my going until Ratchett and Uncharted appear in November.

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Category: Videogames