just downloaded and played the 3 new demos on Xbox Live - Track n' Field, Eternal Sonata, and Stranglehold. impressions?
Track n' Field
i'm sick of Live Arcade games that give you NO demo time with the game. so i get to experience the dash and the long jump? wtf other events are there? would it have been so hard to let me play a round of each instead of making me do the long jump all 3 times? thankyouverymuch.
oh yeah, the game itself. it's Track n' Field! what more can i say? it's... ok.
Eternal Sonata
downloaded this back a few months ago off my Japanese account, but i was wondering if anything would be different with this version. nope! but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
i've been going back and forth on whether or not to pick this up on launch (or just get it used later), and after playing the demo again i'm placing my preorder very, very soon. lovely game. besides, if i wait i won't be getting it until early next year, as my dance card is full of other games that want to dance for the rest of this year.
Stranglehold
finally got a taste of the game that i *think* was at one point supposed to be a 360 launch title, or at least was supposed to come out well over a year ago originally. is it good? yeah it's good. max payne 2.0. i like the "dive" button, slo-mo is used ALL the time (also pretty cool), tough to run out of ammo for your main guns (makes for lotsa shooting), and DAMN duz stuff asplode everywhere!
that's probably the most impressive thing, the almost fully destructable environment. sure in the quiet moments when you slide on a table and a watermelon EXPLODES next to you as you slide over it don't exactly make sense, but damn it looks cool in the middle of a gun fight.
most unimpressive? the cutscenes. somehow they managed to make the cutscenes look worse than the in-game action. how they did that, i do not know.
has this game moved to my must-buy list? ...no. there's just simply too much else coming out this fall. had it come out LAST fall, or even a few MONTHS ago i would have bought it, especially with that sweet PS3 deal with the blu-ray movie. as it stands now, i'll be looking for this next year used when the drought hits.
- kawitchate
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2 comments:
i just discovered your blog. interesting stuff!
Interesting you mentioned Stranglehold's cut scene's were a let down. I find that ironic that a person like John Woo would let that slide. You being in the gaming industry, do they hire "directors" directing the cut aways? Can someone have a full time career doing that? (i want that job, what do i need to do!??!?)
hey - thank you and welcome.
i wasn't really looking at how the cutscenes were directed, i was more put off by how they looked. the quality of the graphics in the cutscenes was not quite next-gen.
that said, yes the larger game companies sometimes have a "director" to oversee all cutscenes, or they at least have a few cinematic designers that are in charge of them.
how do you get in? a cinematic designer needs to know film (how a shot is composed), how to write and communicate well, how to work as many game editors as they can (Unreal would be a start), have a good portfolio of work... and, sadly, it still boils down to who you know.
- k
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