Bulletstorm: Everything Old is New Again...Maybe

Ahhh Bulletstorm, from unknown, to potential sleeper hit to regular guest star on Cliffy B's Twitter feed, the game's momentum just seems to keep growing. My enthusiasm, on the other hand, maxes out at "curious" at best. While the game does seem to have the potential for some serious fun, I have some issues with the "kill with skill" combat system at the core of most of the hype that ranges from serious potential for fun-killing repetitiveness to the fact that it's not as original as the parties involved would like you to think.

The main bullet point amidst this storm is that the game isn't just about killing enemies and moving on, it's about killing them with creative and potentially hilarious combos in order to be awarded the maximum number of points for that kill. More points lead to more power-ups lead to more ways to kill enemies.

In order to do this your character is equipped with an energy whip and a time-slowing kick in addition to it's more traditional FPS arsenal. Have a look at this summarizing video, courtesy of IGN, to see what I mean.

More Bulletstorm Videos

Where I start having issues is that I have yet to ready about anything besides the energy whip and boot appearing in your combo-making arsenal. How many times/ways can you pull an enemy towards you, kick it away then shoot it? Or kick an enemy away then pull it towards you and THEN shoot it? Or...erm just eliminate one of those steps and do that. See my problem? I can see the gameplay being really fun...for an hour or two. After that they better have something in store to shake things up a little or the average player is going to get bored long before the end credits roll.

This actually brings me to my other point, MadWorld. "What? That crazy, over-the-top-violence Wii game?" Yup. For those that missed this one, MadWorld is about killing your enemies with the most violent combos possible. You still get points for just chopping a guy in half, but you get a lot more if you jam a tire down over his head, ram a street sign through his skull and THEN chop him in half. Sound familiar? Have a look. (Warning, don't let the cartoony black-and-white graphics fool you, this game is VERY violent)

More MadWorld Videos

It almost seems like someone at People Can Fly (the people behind the game) played MadWorld and said "Hey, we should do this with guns!" After all, Bulletstorm was originally a 3rd person game. The additional problem here is that MadWorld seemed to run out of ideas for combos by the end, and the game was only about 4 hours long. When such a short play time will never fly (see what I did there?) with gamers on the "hardcore" consoles (360 and PS3) can Bulletstorm avoid running into the same, potentially disastrous shortcoming? It's still pretty early to tell, but without some really creative weapons, lots of environmental kills or something besides the whip and boot I can't honestly say that I'm holding out much hope. Their latest PR stunt was pretty entertaining though...

Beyond Good & Evil HD. It's Not a 2, But I'll Take It.

The good folks over at Joystiq have posted a trailer for the forthcoming LIVE and PSN HD re-release of (sorely underappreciated) cult hit Beyond Good & Evil. Since I played the original on PC, the addition of HD resolutions means little to me, but I can get excited about anything that encourages new gamers to discover this little gem and possibly renew interest in a sequel. Now if only someone could post a release date...

God of War 3 to install only ass-kickingness, not data

(click to Spartan-size)

While the ridiculous debate over whether the unreleased God of War 3 will surpass the current king of console graphics, Uncharted 2, rages on there is one thing that both games will have in common: a lack of mandatory hard drive install.
As stated by Sony Santa Monica director of technology, Christer Ericson, via his twitter account: "God of War 3 does NOT do a HD install. The 5MB listed on box back is for save game only." This should come as a huge relief to those that started up smoking because of Metal Gear Solid 4 or just found themselves bored after the third read through of Devil May Cry 4's backstory.
Whether or not this means that God of War 3 will still manage to be devoid of load times like Uncharted 2 remains to be seen and will likely have to wait until the game's actual release. Of course, it could head in the same direction that this guy took the graphical debate and use screenshots, and even concept art, with almost nothing in common to draw conclusions that have no basis on anything other than what game the author prefers. How would you use screenshots to compare load times? I don't know, how do you compare the graphical detail in the main character's faces when one screenshot isn't close enough to show any detail? Even better, how do you compare the graphical detail in an enemy's hands when one of the screenshots doesn't show the enemy's hands?
Ah the internet, allowing opinion to pass itself off as fact ever since its invention by Al Gore...

And Behind Door #1? It's More RAM! (Applause)

Looks like the Playstation 3 is giving developers a gift: more RAM.
For those of you inexperienced in the world of modern console gaming, they actually have a lot more in common with PC's than you might think, as in: they have their own Operating Systems. Sony's PS3 had an OS guilty of more memory-hogging than any other OS around, eating up around 120MB of RAM for operation. Since the OS is always running in the background (just like Windows) and this RAM usage was spread across both the system and video ram, this was quite the inconvenience for developers that are always trying to squeeze out as much usable RAM as they can. This abundance in OS size is even more apparent when compared to the the Xbox 360's 32MB OS footprint. What? You mean someone makes an operating system even more bloated than one of Microsoft's? GASP!
The reason for this large initial footprint actually lies in the regular firmware updates the PS3 uses to add new features, and yes, that includes the beloved in-game XMB. With Sony have no definitive idea of what the memory requirements would be for the OS since they likewise had no definitive idea for the features of the OS, they essentially put a big "Reserved" sign on several chunks of RAM. The reason being that if player's asked for a new feature but the memory requirements were higher than what was currently allocated to the OS, it would be impossible to implement that feature as raising the ceiling on the Operating System's RAM allotment would break any game that utilized the newly confiscated memory.
As the PS3's life cycle went on, Sony was able to lock down a more efficient use of RAM and the OS footprint was cut down to 96MB. Even further down the road, bringing us to the present, the PS3's OS is down to a slim 50MB, giving an extra 70MB to developers. Before you go getting all excited over new games that will put Uncharted 2 to shame, know that this extra RAM isn't likely to have a very noticeable impact. Since OS memory was saved by making things like in-game music optional, what we'll likely see is more games implementing such features. That or slightly prettier textures or lighting. So this gift is more of a stocking stuffer than something you'd find wrapped under the tree, but it's still better than coal, right? Is it too late/early to be making Christmas analogies?