My PS3 has primarily become my demo machine. The paltry 20GB drive on my XBox (not getting the Pro: mistake) is bursting at the seams with DLC, with about 700MB to spare — just enough to download the X-Blades demo. X-Blades appears to be about a scantily-clad, double-sworded, triple-ponytailed Olsen twin who shoots fireballs. X-Blades feels like a fictional game that exists inside a movie — perhaps in a peripheral scene where “gamers” are portrayed, perhaps by someone oily. I’m going to stop writing about X-Blades now.
Assassin’s Creed was one of the first games I bought on the 360 (yes, I bought mine late) primarily because of the incendiary trailer. I played it for a handful of hours, performing the meager handful of mini-missions again and again (and again), until I reached one where a fellow wanted me to run in a large circle, collecting a specified number of banners in a specified number of seconds. In a world that was already copy-and-pasted to hell and back, now this? The developers lost me. Grand Theft Auto never required Niko to drive around the city collecting icons. Some lines shouldn’t be crossed.
That said, Assassin’s Creed is more beautiful than GTA (and most other games) and is proving to be the perfect type of game to play for an hour or three — just until the repetition sets in, at which point it can be set aside for another month.
I also played the Killzone 2 demo today — finally. I like the cover system a lot — not being able to see (mostly) when you’re crouched feels proper. The controls are slightly wacky; the X and Y axis acceleration feels like a strictly gaussian curve - bizarre amounts of acceleration, and too dead in the middle.
But neither of those sentences make for entertaining writing, so how about this: the Helghast bad guys are the most indescribably generic masses of grey-black Video Game Material possible, and they live on the most indescribably generic planet I have ever seen. How is Helghan an alien planet? It looks like the Every Shooter Video Game Planet. Helghan (the demo, anyway) is all piping, concrete, steel, facemasks, dirt, and testosterone.
Also, when shot in the head, the Helghast’s helmet comically pops off into the air, every time. It’s a bizarrely out-of-place moment in what otherwise is a Totally Serious Video Game. I appreciate it, I think.