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6 Responses to “Christmas Eve T-364” 

1. 1 Simon  Dec 27th, 2003 at 12:22 am

   I’m really enjoying PoP tbh. I had concerns before I got it about the controls, though the review I read in PC Zone (who I trust the reviews of) said it took a while to get used to but then it was a work of genius. Having been sure I had read something else about the controls I asked someone who had bought it and they said it was alright. I am forced to agree that the controls can be downright frustrating, though with changing camera angles I can’t see how a joypad would help either, unless analog thumb pads make a difference? *shrugs* The problem is the camera can’t look from behind you if you have your back to a wall (or similar based on orientation). So it doesn’t always respond to your movement. Sometimes it will behave erratically, so you give it a twist and suddenly you are facing the opposite direction. Also there are a few scenes where you have a fixed camera.
   I, however, wouldn’t get on with the system andrew describes. I think about the scene as I see it, and I haven’t once pressed a direction and had the character behave differently to how I expect, except in the sistuation when the camera changes automatically anyway.
   But, I am currently 70% of the way through (the save game screen gives you a %age rating as to how far you have come) and I am greatly enjoying it. As irritating as the camera is there really aren’t many situations where you mess up because of it. Most of the tricky parts of the game involve various jumps and acrobatic feats which are for the most part ‘automatic’. Ok, you have to remember to hold certain buttons or release certain buttons, and sometimes press a button to do something special, but these are not complicated. When you are running up or along walls you only need to keep the RMB held to maintain it, or release if you want to stop, or press jump if you wish to bounce from wall to wall. Rope and pole swinging is again a case of using the RMB to swing and jump to launch in the direction you are facing. Timing, planning and observation are the challenges of this game really. Get to the right place, time your jumping and thats the job done. There are times when you need to navigate traps by the less elaborate ‘horizontal’ methods, but only a few times does the camera really give you a lot of trouble performing this. By far the most frequent cause of camera mishaps is during combat. You are fighting someone to your left, see and opportunity to leap over someone to your right, but end up rolling into a strike from the former top of your screen as the camera rotates, and you can never quite judge where the camera will be after you have used the dagger on a fallen foe. That being said, combat is generally a simplistic affair and once again timing, planning and observation are the things being tested. See an opening take it, see a bad guy warm up a strike block or dodge, mix up your attacks between foes so that you can floor 3 at the same time and destroy them safely. Oh, and careful use of your sand powers will make things a bit easier. Simple but fun, and so far a few more formidable opponents to make it interesting and rewarding.

   My advice Andrew, give it some time. Afterall, you already have the game. I played the demo for Deus Ex 2 and I was not impressed, the forums were full of complaints, and full of people saying “Don’t judge the game by the demo” “Don’t believe reviews” “play it yourself and you will see.” Who wants to spend ?35 on a bad game? Isn’t the point of the demo to sell the game? I think it must be rare for there to be bad demos for good games…good demos for bad games? I am sure many examples exist. As I said though, you already have it, so you might as well play it. There is enough to enjoy. The only excuse really would be if you had other games to play. For me, I don’t, and I think at this time if it isn’t KOTOR (which I will get a some time) and HL2 isn’t out, you will probably be pushed to find anything worthy (although I am told Call of Duty is good, do I really want to play a ww2 game?)

2. 2 Edward  Dec 27th, 2003 at 12:55 pm

   I was just intrigued by your (Simon’s) last comment about ww2 games: have you played return to castle wolfenstein?
   It has to be the best truely team-based shoot-em-up multiplayer game. Very classy game but requires a super fast connection. (My 600K cable modem wasn’t fast enough! That was all down to pings I think)

3. 3 Edward  Dec 27th, 2003 at 1:05 pm

   Link to buy it — only a tenner!
   http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00012CTQK/ref=sr_aps_videogames_1_1/202-7317037-9019025

4. 4 Simon  Dec 27th, 2003 at 7:32 pm

   Actually I have Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Thats the free complete multiplayer version. Very generous of them to give that away, but I haven’t played it because I can’t be arsed with it. I just don’t really like ww2 campaigns. Same with games and films, there are a few I like, but I can’t usually be arsed with them often and most of them don’t appeal at all.

   BTW, it took me 11hrs30mins for my final solution to PoP. Ofcourse, I am not sure if rewinded time is included in that, certainly reloads aren’t, and retries probably aren’t either. So thats 15hrs+ over two days. Completed it in the early hours of this morning. I just completed it again this afternoon. Final solution time 6hrs. Actual play time was just under 7 hours. The lift battle took me several attempts even though I knew what to expect. I must have played that 10 times in my first run!

   So, you could say its a short game, but I enjoyed it a lot. Now the challenge is to beat it faster
   Controls aren’t as annoying the second time through!

5. 5 Andrew  Dec 28th, 2003 at 12:26 pm

   don’t console controllers have those mini joystick things?

   I’ll carry on playing for a bit, it’s possible I’ll get used to it. It’s just that as a PC game it’s a step backwards, as you have far less fine-control. It tries to make up for a lack of responsiveness by pretty animations. Which works. It’s just that when you play Max Payne you can suddenly fine-tine your every action and movement, and you remember exactly why it is you have a PC rather than a console.

   PoP could have been a superb multi-platform game, but I suppose there’s far less reason to cater for PC gamers than console gamers, as the latter make up some vast percentage of the market.

6. 6 Simon  Dec 28th, 2003 at 5:55 pm

   Yeah, those mini joysticks are called thumb pads, I believe I mentioned them I am still not sure they would help though. It would still involve performing actions relative to whatever camera angle you happen to be given and I am not sure it would be better to control the camera with. The game is probably better played with a joypad though, and certainly without dual analog you won’t be able to control the camera without taking your hand off the pad to fiddle with your mouse.
   I think iirc that the secret to Max Payne was that the mouse turned not just the view but Max as well. In this way, the controls were both relative to the screen and relative to the character. Ofcourse, this makes it slightly less of a third person game I suppose. Not that thats a bad thing. However PoP is supposed to be a platform(ish) game and I feel that the free camera or a cinematic camera makes watching the acrobatics more enjoyable. Yes you lose some fine control, but the material I have read regarding this and my own playing experience suggests that they loosened the games requirement for pixel precision. So, the controls aren’t going to be the death of you in that regard, but perhaps you prefered the precision? Thats your choice and much respect to you, I never finished the original PoP. Damned timer. I was too hesitant. You just got past a load of nasties and now you need to perform 3 precision jumps, evade a spike pit and get through a couple of those damn choppers. Not wanting to have to replay the level indefinately I would take my time getting each part perfect and as a result always ran out of time. Ofcourse, there are some parts in sand of time needing precision. One or two of the jumps/wall runs are on the upper limits of your range, so starting them off too early will kill you. But, in a stroke of genius they have given you the sands of time, meaning you can approach the deadliest traps with the fastest closing doorway with a certain amount of gusto, knowing you can rewind and fix your mistakes as you go. So perhaps they could have fixed the precision. Anyway, as I have said, more emphasis is on timing precision now than position precision, so there is still challenge, perhaps not as much but you can race your best times. Hmm, that gives me an idea…what if someone made a multiplayer mod. A race. You would see your opponents ‘ghost’ (if you were behind anyway ;)) and you have to complete a certain segment first.

   The thing to remember is that the mouse is the finest point+click controller available, short of touch screen, but that wouldn’t be much fun in an fps. So, RTS games are sorted, and so are fps. However, when I use a mouse I am either thinking of desktop point and click, or first person point and click. Third person camera control is not the same, as you rotate about some point, not the camera itself.

   Regardless of the merits of multiplatform games it does appear that less dedicated PC games are being made. Now I don’t mean this as a consoles are dragging down our games comment. PC hardware is more powerful on paper, true. PC games should look better, true. Do PC games look better? At the moment I would not be able to say. Some of the better looking games of recent times have also been on XBOX and looked good. Also, I do not believe that console games are ‘low quality’ in either the sense of intelligent games nor generally superb games. I have seen numerous comments on the Ion Storm Deus Ex 2 forums full of PC bias or Xbox bias. This comment about fewer PC only games was made. The first reply backing it up said that PC games were better than console games. The first console reply claimed PC gamers were arrogant snobs or similar. The first is unfounded, and to the second I would say “And does your XBOX not have dedicated games? What about the PS2?”. The so-called flagship games of any platform are usually among the best and are usually dedicated to a single platform.
   So, what am I getting at? Well I will ask you to think back to your best film/book/gaming experience and I will suggest that the following feeling was among your thoughts, that you became entangled in the following illusion. This being the feeling that whatever film, book or game you were watching/reading/playing had been designed with you in mind. That someone had sat down and said “What would {insert name here} like?” Clearly this does not happen, but perhaps for all of us there is a unique perfect entertainment experience. Any form of entertainment which gets close to this will be among your personal favourites, and these should feel like they were designed for you. I propose that the narrower the market an entertainment medium is aimed at the more likely it is to produce this feeling in a member of that market. This is not always the case, but the probability lies in this direction. So, it is my belief that a game made solely for my platform of preference will be more likely to achieve the necessary illusion to invoke that personal gaming experience.

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