Trine
Before I wrote this post, I decided to do something I hadn’t done yet with Trine - which is to go check out it’s Meta Critic score and surprisingly it did great and at the time of writing this has an 82 with generally favorable reviews.
Fellow gamer, let me tell you, do not pay twenty dollars for Trine. Save your Playstation Network money in your wallet for something else.
In case you’re wondering what Trine is, let me explain. It was meant to be this beautiful medieval platforming game where you co-operatively played with one or two other players. You all have different powers and use them to help each other manipulate the level and pass through it. It’s quite cool, and the gameplay videos I watched before purchasing the game sealed the deal with me.
However, my girlfriend and I have been playing the game and it is so buggy, so unplayable at times, and so absolutely frustrating that it’s the first game I’d consider attempting to get at least a partial refund from Sony for. That is, of course, impossible, and I’m stuck with the purchase. Why can’t you return games if they’re shit by the way? You can return almost anything else if something is wrong with it, and I’m positive that something is wrong with Trine.
Now, what if all those fancy pants Meta Critic reviewers are right and Trine is awesome and I’m really terrible at video games. Sometimes I do wonder.
We have seen boxes fall through solid floors, enemies jump on our heads and send us flying into a bottomless pit, a stupid ass fucking Knight that can’t swim, and a game that doesn’t regenerate objects that may have been destroyed or lost if you die and respawn, and even worse, a game that actually has a menu that fucking freezes up and requires multiple button presses to escape form. It is the worst game I’ve played in some time.
The platforming and combat components are terrible and EXP is given out with fucking phials of green potion instead of automatically assigned to whoever made the kill, and the only enemies in the game are skeletons, big skeletons, fat skeletons, and un-balanced swarms of bats which will ruin you especially if you’re the wizard and have no physical attack whatsoever.
Jumping in the game is awful, and I assure you that the platforming of the ancient Mario Bros. is substantially tighter than this train wreck of a game.
Such potential Nobilis, what the fuck were you thinking? Did you play your own game, and also what copy did you send to the press, and what copy did Sony release on the PSN?
- Kyle
Four Things You May Not Know About The Last Guardian
1. While Trico was the working title, it’s also the name of the of the Erne or sea eagle creature that you see in the trailer.
2. Visually, The Last Guardian is going to be stunning. In fact Ueda claims that the physics engine can render each of Trico’s feathers individually based on in game wind.
3. Trico can mean a few things, including prisoner, baby bird, and combination of bird and cat. The prisoner meaning most likely foreshadows some story elements.
4. As a player, you never control Trico, but instead you can guide him. You can even feed him and remove arrows from his body. The creature itself does not behave like a pet, but instead has natural animal tendencies such as straying ahead and getting distracted.
Trico, of course also wants to protect the boy, but such things will really begin to be questioned one game debuts when the player begins to wonder who is protecting who.
Noby Noby Boy Reaches Mars, And I’m Only Moderately Excited
No one really thought it was going to happen but after they starting doubling Noby Noby Boy lengths during their Lucky Week, Girl grew to some amazing lengths and has finally landed on Mars.
While it’s cool that Noby Noby Boy players are collectively reaching other planets together, how long can this replayability last? I mean Noby Noby Boy can only be so much fun given the game’s current rules and simply playing on a new planet with no gameplay enhancements really can’t be all that enticing and in fact seems really gimmicky to me.
If only more incentive existed to get Girl to other planets, besides getting Girl to other planets.*
news of girl reaching mars via gamesetwatch.
* I find Noby Noby Boy to be an exciting value, and I truly do think that a $5 game getting more free content updates than a $60 game is incredibly impressive and commendable.
Space Invaders Extreme Coming to the Playstation Network
Yes!
One of my favorite games on the DS will be coming to the PSN! I really hope they keep the multiplayer.
home
So I played Home and it was frustrating, disastrous and downright embarrassing for me to endure. I’m not the biggest fan of alternate egos and second life games in the first place, but if one of them is to be exceptionally terrible then it would have to be Playstation Home.
Perhaps the reason it took Sony so long to release Home is because they had no direction with the project and have only recently released it because of pressure from PS3 owners.
While the new Xbox avatars are creepy, ugly, and blatant ripoffs of Miis, at least the new Xbox Experience seems to be getting a lot of praise. Users still have to pay for Xbox Live, but at least it’s better than something terrible for free.
Trash. Absolute trash.
the psn holiday sale
Starting this weekend and through next week; Sony has slashed prices on five select PSN games. The games which normally sold from $9.99 to $14.99 will be sold for $4.99!
The five games are The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, echochrome (PS3), Novastrike, and Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3.
I can say without any doubts that PixelJunk Eden is an awesome and original multiplayer platforming game with a lot of replayability, so it’s definitely a good deal. I’ve also played the demos of The Last Guy and echochrome and my first impressions of those games left me smiling; so I’m definitely thinking about picking up The Last Guy.
The sale ends on December 4th, so hop to it.
national geographic presents: africa
National Geographic has picked up SCE’s African photography/expedition game and it’s expected to be released next month for the PS3.
The game’s premise reminds me of a less wacky Pokémon Snap, but it should still be really cool as the graphics are great, and with the moderate success of other simple wildlife exploration games such as Endless Ocean; it only makes sense for National Geographic to start publishing such games.
It seems games like Africa could have sold well when edutainment was the thing to do, but I think a large niche for this type of thing is starting to form and an exclusive title like this couldn’t hurt Sony in courting the casual crowd.
Black Friday PS3 Controller Deal
Be sure to hit up Radioshack on Black Friday if you need a new DualShock 3 controller as they’ll be selling them for $29.99.
That’s half off!
Awesome!
Image Importing Is In LittleBigPlanet
The above image is from Media Molecule’s Flickr account. While Sony says that image importing won’t be coming anytime soon, it seems that Media Molecule already had the feature finished for the game.
Hopefully the release of this photo will prompt Sony to allow MM to release the patch, but we’ll see.
- via Tawkn
littlebigproblems
What happens when you put too much faith and excitement into a game? You run the risk of being disappointed and while I’ve been having an absolute blast with LittleBigPlanet, some glaring issues have been warding me away from it for the time being.
1.) The strain of the servers is terrible. My girlfriend and I did not play online once yesterday.
2.) The lag in create mode because the game continually tries to connect to the internet makes the game feel like it’s still in beta and in fact the lag is almost unbearable.
3.) It would appear that currently only one player can have the Kratos/Medusa/Minotaur costumes and stickers, meaning that the second player or a guest cannot use the costumes.
I know that all of the above issues are going to be ironed out over the course of the next week or so but it’s extremely disappointing when they could’ve been ironed out before the game was released. Especially since they delayed the game a whole week!
I really don’t want to pay money to play on the Playstation Network, and Sony can’t back down from their claim but they better be spending more money and time making the free alternative better than other services.