I've been playing this game for about 8 hours now. Here are my first impressions.
The good:
- It's been stated many times over, but very, very scary atmosphere. There's an elevator sequence about 10 minutes into the game that made me nearly spill coffee all over my desk. Some of the creature designs are just horrific.
- Graphics are excellent, but not envelope-pushing. I'd say a massively enhanced Doom 3 with a touch of Fear. It's the best graphics a console port has to offer. Shadow effects are probably the best implimented I've ever seen and really raise the fear level.
- Game runs like butter on my desktop (expectedly). It also runs perfectly at 1900x1200 highest settings on my FX-7811 (C2D 2.2Ghz, 4GB, 9800M GTS). All in all, not a GPU killer. I have yet to seem any bugs/crashes and the game seems technically polished/optimized.
- Style is amazing. The hovering screens, character suits, guns/tools and interfaces actually look quite feasible and add great vraisemblance. The comparisons with Event Horizon and Alien/Aliens are accurate. Some Blade Runner in there too I think...
- Sound perfectly accompanies the graphics. Cues are really well-placed and monster shreiks are bone-chilling.
- Gameplay is excellent and akin to RE4. Slowness to turn has been bemoaned here, but the speed at which you turn really adds to the clausterphobia -- and it's really not that slow. I've always thought it ridiculous being able to turn on a dime in games: in reality, no one turns at light speed and it takes your head, body and visual awareness time to adjust. Pro tennis players can't move nearly as fast as most game characters can. The implimentation here is more realistic.
The bad:
- As mentioned in the PC reviews and in threads here, keyboard/mouse control is absolutely awful... don't even try it. On the brightside, my 360 controller was recognized immediately. On a side note , I think there will always be games where controller will be vastly superior to mouse/keyboard (Assassin's Creed and GOW comes to mind; most console ports) -- this is one of them.
- Voice acting is great, with the exception of the guy voice the military type who switches between a American and a really half-assed British (Australian?) accent. I just didn't get this at all... I mean, did the voice coach tell the guy to do this? Why didn't they catch it during editing? This really threw me off. It's a pet-peeve of mine when they fudge up otherwise good voice acting like this in games with lazy editing. I call it the "Princess Leah syndrome". Oblivion is a prime example of this.
- You do need to trapse back and forth through the same areas from time to time. Luckily, areas are often subtly changed in lighting and enemies when you return to them.
- Opening doors seems touchy. Maybe it's just me, but it seems you need to be standing in just the right place after activating for them to open.
In summary, a right scary game worth your time and money. I picked up this game, Far Cry 2 and Fable II this week. All excellent pieces. It's going to be a very busy weekend... my g/f is going to be pissed.
The good:
- It's been stated many times over, but very, very scary atmosphere. There's an elevator sequence about 10 minutes into the game that made me nearly spill coffee all over my desk. Some of the creature designs are just horrific.
- Graphics are excellent, but not envelope-pushing. I'd say a massively enhanced Doom 3 with a touch of Fear. It's the best graphics a console port has to offer. Shadow effects are probably the best implimented I've ever seen and really raise the fear level.
- Game runs like butter on my desktop (expectedly). It also runs perfectly at 1900x1200 highest settings on my FX-7811 (C2D 2.2Ghz, 4GB, 9800M GTS). All in all, not a GPU killer. I have yet to seem any bugs/crashes and the game seems technically polished/optimized.
- Style is amazing. The hovering screens, character suits, guns/tools and interfaces actually look quite feasible and add great vraisemblance. The comparisons with Event Horizon and Alien/Aliens are accurate. Some Blade Runner in there too I think...
- Sound perfectly accompanies the graphics. Cues are really well-placed and monster shreiks are bone-chilling.
- Gameplay is excellent and akin to RE4. Slowness to turn has been bemoaned here, but the speed at which you turn really adds to the clausterphobia -- and it's really not that slow. I've always thought it ridiculous being able to turn on a dime in games: in reality, no one turns at light speed and it takes your head, body and visual awareness time to adjust. Pro tennis players can't move nearly as fast as most game characters can. The implimentation here is more realistic.
The bad:
- As mentioned in the PC reviews and in threads here, keyboard/mouse control is absolutely awful... don't even try it. On the brightside, my 360 controller was recognized immediately. On a side note , I think there will always be games where controller will be vastly superior to mouse/keyboard (Assassin's Creed and GOW comes to mind; most console ports) -- this is one of them.
- Voice acting is great, with the exception of the guy voice the military type who switches between a American and a really half-assed British (Australian?) accent. I just didn't get this at all... I mean, did the voice coach tell the guy to do this? Why didn't they catch it during editing? This really threw me off. It's a pet-peeve of mine when they fudge up otherwise good voice acting like this in games with lazy editing. I call it the "Princess Leah syndrome". Oblivion is a prime example of this.
- You do need to trapse back and forth through the same areas from time to time. Luckily, areas are often subtly changed in lighting and enemies when you return to them.
- Opening doors seems touchy. Maybe it's just me, but it seems you need to be standing in just the right place after activating for them to open.
In summary, a right scary game worth your time and money. I picked up this game, Far Cry 2 and Fable II this week. All excellent pieces. It's going to be a very busy weekend... my g/f is going to be pissed.
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