Friday, February 26, 2010

Left Standing in Heavy Rain

Gil just finished his first play through of Heavy Rain and it was fucking intense. There was attempted rape, epic 
fights, dismemberment, children in danger, LOTS of death, electrocution and urination. 

Heavy Rain is like a movie, those choose your own adventure books, and point and click games combined together into one giant quick time event. Sounds weird but it works. Really well. 


The story is very engaging. You grow attached to the characters and truly concerned for their well being. The plot twists were completely unexpected, even for Gil and I who predict almost everything correctly. We had dozens of "What the hell?" moments. The controls are rather intuitive; Gil says they correspond well to the motions the characters are doing on the screen. There were a few times the controls wouldn't work, but nothing major. There were three times Gil meant to do one thing and messed up and got the opposite reaction that he was wanted. The first time it was funny, the other two not so much.

Graphically it's not bad. The load screens between the chapters are especially pretty. The animations during these times are also very nice, very subtle. The animations during the rest of the game are good overall, but the dialogue animation a pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it's nice, other times kinda disturbing. The textures are nice through out, but it's funny to see them load every once and a while when a chapter starts.

Gil's first run left him with 55% completion, and as a type this out he is trying to get trophy where you get to the end with everyone alive and then fail in the last chapter. And I've got to tell you it is hard to watch these people you have been helping fail, either by not getting to help or by death. It's really sad. 

We can't wait to find out all the other endings, however sad and crazy they may be.        

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Left Side Thinks You All Should Shut the Hell Up!

So. The trailer for Sonic 4 is out. And all we have to say is Fuck Yeah!!

The teaser trailer shows us everything we had wanted from a Sonic game. It's side scrolling classic Sonic.

 The thing that makes me want everyone to shut the hell up, is the amount of bitching coming from the fans. OMG! Sonic looks like crap with green eyes! Why isn't he a 2D sprite? He's so skinny! He doesn't even look like a hedgehog anymore. Shut the hell up!

Does having green eyes make him look all that different? When was the last time you saw a major title that's been in pixel sprites? Why does it matter that he lost some weight? He runs a lot, seems to me he would get skinnier. HE NEVER LOOKED LIKE A FUCKING HEDGEHOG!

The only thing that needs work, as far as us animation students are concerned, is the run cycle. It looks a little slow. That will probably be fixed before the game is released. 

The saddest part about all the bitching is that it's going to discourage SEGA from continuing on this Path of Awesome. 

But, we here at Observations from the Other Side of the Couch are very excited about Sonic 4. Way to go SEGA.