The thing about the PS3 version of Portal 2...

Most places on the internet are focusing on two aspects of the Portal 2 release on PS3. The first is that Steam is now on PS3 and you can link your Steam and Playstation accounts - allowing you to play with and/or against your PC brethren if the game so allows. The second is that the PS3 version comes with a code for a free PC or Mac version on Steam, allowing you to enjoy the game on two/three platforms.

These are nice features to be sure, especially having a good/working friends list and community on the free-to-use Playstation Network that brings it in line (and possibly surpasses) with the 360 Gold accounts. But there are two other consequences that are far more important for me.

The first is that I will always have Portal 2. It is my game and i control when i play it (dependent on technology working) as opposed to being tied to Steam and the Steam DRM. This is an important aspect for me in being able to appreciate the longevity of the games i purchase - as the recent DA:O debacle has shown. If more publishers do this then i'll be a very happy, though poor, gamer as it presents the best of both worlds (the DRM and non-DRM) to my enjoyment and the publishers' pockets. Of course, being the pessimistic person i am, i doubt that publishers will see it this way and instead would see it as them losing a PC sale... which they would never have made in the first place.....

The second consequence is that Steam is DRM and a community and a matchmaking system. The recent hack of the PS3 has pretty much left it open to anything and everything. If i were a publisher i'd be worried about releasing games on the PS3 because of this and their likely propensity to be pirated more easily now. However, tying a game to Steam and introducing a free PC/Mac copy with a code included in the box hits two targets that the industry is trying to hit: gamers buying new and gamers buying used. This is appealing to the "buy-new" gamers because, hey, i get two copies of the game.... i can play with my PC friends or using my friends on Steam AND i get all the other features of Steam too. This increases the number of gamers who are willing to pay full or near-full price on these titles.... including myself; the person who hasn't bought a full price DRM game for a long time. Presumably, the PS3 game itself isn't locked to the account and so can be resold, if you wanted to, which is still really cool. (If that's not true then we get an addition to point two which is it stops reselling altogether.)

This appeals to the industry with regards to used sales because they don't have to make extra content to hold back (aka The Dragon Age/Mass Effect content that you need to register with their stupid networks to get working from the disc).... they can charge people money to enable the game on Steam by buying a new code.

I think this is an interesting direction for the industry and holds a lot of promise and, for once, my pessimistic granite stone heart has a pulse of optimism. Lets see what the industry does going forward, shall we?

Musings on Mass Effect 3....

Now, this may be obvious to some people who've not been on a media-blackout of ME3 but i've been playing through ME2 and it dawned on me that this whole time they're setting up the third game to be a standard Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven style story.

::Spoilers ahead!!::

So, i've met Liara, i've met Wrex and also Ashley (i got rid of stupid Kaiidan in my ME1 playthrough).... These people are "saved" for the third game through me not being able to recruit them. What ALSO struck me was that other choices i made in the first game, and presumably this one, will coalesce into a saving grace in the third. It was actually the brief little salute from the Rachni Queen in ME2 that put me on this line of thinking.... and all of a sudden i realised that Bioware are essentially making "Battle Beyond the Stars: Mass Effect Edition".

While i'm having some fun with ME2.... it's not all that i thought was in the promise given from ME1..... Now, seeing that ME3 is a "round-up and save them" quest in the making, i can see why they've gone the route that they have.... though i don't really understand why they essentially have used the same formula in ME2 just with a different focus... It's more like "Guns of the Magnificent Seven" than "The Magnificent Seven".

HD offerings... part deux!

And on to Warrior Within.

This game fares better than The Sands of Time mainly because it's newer and had both PC and Xbox versions out of the gate. Unfortunately, this game also suffers from the half-assedness of TSoT HD version, however, luckily there are no problems with balancing issues for the sound!! Prosit!!

On the other hand, the game is blatantly just upscaled. There are no new textures and even the menus and menu fonts are pixelated due to the stretch to an HD resolution. It's pretty pathetic to see the textures on the characters (apart from the prince) being so blocky and low-resolution. I'm also realising now that TSoT version on this Blu-ray is probably cribbed from the PC version and any improvement in texture and resolution i was seeing was from that version (which i didn't play).

I'm guessing that Two Thrones will tell a similar tale and to be honest it's quite dissapointing. There's nothing new or extra for this release, and the poor implementation of this HD/3D version means that none of these games have been treated with the respect they deserve or respect for the customer at the price at which they've been released. Myself and Tboon talked about HD re-releases not long ago on the podcast and one of the things that came up as a positive was allowing new fans to come to the series and experience good games. I'm not sure, if i didn't have nostalgia to help me along, that i'd want to play or buy these games that look so much worse than anything current gen in just a less-muddy resolution.

This is not the way to do an HD update.

However, there are some franchises i would love to see in an HD offering. I would love to see Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics revive and release their Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series. I loved those games back in the day and would love to see Soul reaver 1, 2 and Defiance and possibly also the two Blood Omen games in one package on the PS3.

HD offerings...

I'm a big fan of the Prince of Persia series and, having been given some vouchers for my birthday, I decided to get the Prince of Persia Trilogy HD collection on PS3. If this is the way that companies re-hash old classics to make them into HD offerings then i won't be buying any more.

The Sands of Time:

First off, it's a lazy port. Seriously, the sound during cutscenes is so quiet that you struggle to hear it and the voices aren't tied to the "voices volume" but instead to the music volume, meaning that you can't improve the situation because if you manually crank up the volume on the TV set, the music drowns out all the important dialogue regardless.

Secondly, the "HD textures" are pretty limited. Most of the environment has been updated texture-wise but the textures on the character models of the prince and Farah are poorly done. Whenever the prince opens his mouth and i see a bright red, flat surface in there it pulls me right out of any immersion i might have had. Similarly, when i see the inside of Farah's eye sockets for whatever reason (i'm assuming that there's some conflict with the way the port renders on the PS3) i'm wondering why i'm not playing this on my Gamecube where these weren't issues. Flat, monochrome textures should have no place in an HD update, this isn't the N64 we're talking about here....

Finally, if they're going to do an HD update of a classic game, at least make SOME effort. Remake the character models in higher poly-counts - as long as you keep the same dimensions you can just tie them into the same animations. It would be nice if they also didn't mess up the sound levels in the game as well... Yeah, it would be nice to be able to appreciate these classics as i once did.

As it stands, i really can't recommend anyone buy any HD classic remakes unless they hear good things about them.... I'm really disappointed in the quality of this release.

::Addendum::

Well, having played through three hours of this classic game, i'm starting to appreciate how much the sound and conversation in games (and specifically this one) makes a huge difference in how much enjoyment you get out of th experience. Whoever did this port to the PS3 HD version really messed up the sound. The talking is too quiet so you miss half to three quarters of the conversations and quips; removing character and character development between the two protagonists.... The effects noises are completely out of whack with the rest of the game world, with knocks and plods from the nearby enemies overwhelming other sounds. Specifically, directional sound is broken, i find, as when you run around, things that Farah says are lost in the background noise compared to the originals.

The worst part is that the only tools the user has to balance these things are pretty useless. Reducing the music level also reduces in-cutscene dialogue (as i mentioned above)... so you need that high.... but leaving that high means that you can't hear the talking.... so you need that option set to high as well.... but, ideally higher than the music.... but then you can't hear the talking during the cutscenes..... and then there's the sound effects which are quiet as well.... except for those enemy noises when you're not in combat.

It's probably the most frustrating sound-balancing/design that i've ever encountered in a game..... and doubly so because it was perfect in the PS2 and GC versions of this game.

More complaining?

Well, i was going to write up some more saddening thoughts about Dragon Age 2 but, really, the fine professional writers over at RPS have done that so well, that i figured i should just point to their article and do away with my own diatribe.

Visit it here.

The only difference between his viewpoint and mine is that, i actually quite like the game, despite the complete and total creative mess it is. I like the exploration and running around whacking things (it's an action RPG at normal difficulty) and the mindlessness of the whole enterprise. It fills that hole that i've been looking at in my gaming experiences for a while.

One thing i would like to mention is that he is spot on about the lack of ability to roleplay in this game. Having the choice between goody-two-shoes, flippantly unfunnily rude and evil "i'll cut your eyes out and gut you" is not good. The only time you get to exercise any sort of interesting dialogue trickery is when you have an appropriate squadmate present to intervene on your behalf. No more jedi mind tricks or verbal trickery at high intelligence or wisdom levels.

One thing the RPS article doesn't mention is how the stats system is now pointless. There is no reason to have "strength, dexterity, magic, cunning, willpower and constitution" because each class only really utilises two of them and, if you don't put your points into those two attributes when you get them, you end up with a nerfed character who either can't wield a good enough weapon or can't wear the right armour for your level.

I don't necessarily mind that they've done it this way, but for gods' sake, take out the attributes if they're essentially meaningless. Instead make armour and weapons dependent on your skill and class choices. Let's face it, there's no reason why a fighter (who was in the army) would be unable to wear a piece of plate mail that is level 1 or level 20.... the weight should be the same (or even lighter for the higher level and better quality item). So just do away with the increased, Dragonball Z-esque, strength requirements and instead tie them to skills you purchase with points or to the level of the character. Especially if my putting points into the "dodge" skill makes me unable to wield a weapon for a few levels because i'm always playing catch up DPS...

The illusion of choice in the game is pretty claustrophobic and means that the game is pretty shallow.... sorry, i meant 'streamlined'.