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Turns out the big three releases this month suck.

Anyway, Chards and I were talking. While RFG was riddled with problems and had really bad missions, it was clearly finished and had a degree of polish (couldn't hide the appalling story but whatever). [P], on the other hand, is chockers with good ideas that are obviously unfinished (like the near-random Web, combat from Hulk, etc) and has even WORSE missions and broken mechanics. inF I can't comment on directly, but it had a 'morality' system that changes nothing but details in dialogue and is arguably more limited (if more detailed) than the others.

So what sucks least? Please, do not comment if you haven't finished at least the two games you're comparing. I'm interested in Flagg's comments, since I believe he's played all three.

Personally, I hated RFG more when I had it, but now that it isn't making me want to murder the mission scripters my attitude had cooled. [P] was great to start, but became complete irredeemable crap later. I honestly have to say that in a magical land where I had to pick one to play, I'd go with RFG, and that's terrible.

Stark we are not all so cool as to know what your abbreviations mean. [P] I assume is Prototype but what the heck is RFG? Or InF?

Why do you assume everyone knows what your abbreviations mean?

Bleh sorry. I didn't want to run into the character limit for titles.

I'm talking about Red Faction, Prototype and inFamous.

Stark wrote:Bleh sorry. I didn't want to run into the character limit for titles.

I'm talking about Red Faction, Prototype and inFamous.

Look at that... they all fit in the title.

Let's be honest; nobody who's played the games in question wouldn't know what they are, and they're the sole target of the thread.

Allow me to not contribute to this thread. You mean these games just came out this month and you've already coughed up the release price for them? That'd be around 180€ here (for PC releases). Seriously, WTF, I couldn't do that with a clear conscience knowing I can wait for a bit and get all three of them for the price of one (Hopefully with a slew of patches to fix issues they might have).

Now that my shock & awe is done with, back to the regularly scheduled thread.

God, try not to say something stupid for a change. But hey, since the thread has been derailed by Oskuro-brand ignorance, there is a thing called a 'return policy' whereby I have in fact paid zero dollars for these games (and scored a stupid RF:G robot lol). So stupid AND wrong! If only you could add 'useless +1 posting'...

Oh wait! The trifecta!

Well, I was gonna postulate at Oskuro about various price tag avoidance strategies, but ya beat me too it.

I haven't played any of them, but in my recent release obtentions are Class of Heroes, Cross Edge, and soon SMT: Devil Survivor... because I'm in RPG Masochist mode.

Can't say I'm disappointed in either so far. Unlike those three, which I was hyped for for about three minutes while the previews buffered, after which I figured they were par-grade "big titles".

Never touched the full game, but I played the demo for inFamous. I'd like to hear if it's any less "on rails" (literally, in some cases) in the full version than what the demo implies. From what I played it didn't seem to really seem to distinguish itself that much from your typical 3d brawler, and I couldn't really figure out how the "morality" mechanic was supposed to work; after a few minutes I went from "blue" (good) to "red" (bad) with no obvious action that indicated it, so it's not really the most straight forward for that part.

I've not played it, but from plot synopses the 'morality' thing apparently only impacts details of events (ie you can choose to be good or evil, but the net result is the same outside of dialogue details). Bioware?

[quote="General Zod"I couldn't really figure out how the "morality" mechanic was supposed to work; after a few minutes I went from "blue" (good) to "red" (bad) with no obvious action that indicated it, so it's not really the most straight forward for that part.[/quote]

I think the demo fucked the morality mechanic so it could force you to try out both ends. It auto changes your status once you accept one of the mission and I don't think it moves your morality at all during either mission. I think the changes are things like when you're good, bombs restrain people rather than...you know, blowing them away.

I enjoy InFamous, I think it's a pretty nifty game. As for if it's on rails or not, I'm not sure, it's not really on rails at all--it does indeed have a plotline you follow, but if you want to just spend time zipping around and blowing people up, you're certainly welcome to do that and generate some XP and karma points from it.

The morality mechanic alters your selection of powers, and the way you're treated in some of the cutscenes. Your girlfriend treats you like crap, the badguys try to tempt you, etc.

In actual play, the Good/Evil choices mostly impact how you finish the quest. There's a quest where you have to shut off these valves, and every time you do, you get sprayed with goop and stumble around helplessly while people shoot at you. On the third valve you have a moral choice option of doing it yourself and getting another blast of tar in the eyeballs, or making a random passerby do it. Later on the badguys set up the goop dispensers on the water supplies of some of the housing blocks, so you have to either zap the machines to overload them or shockwave them at close range and, once more, get gooped. Evil folks get the easier road there too, at the cost of getting chewed out for choosing the less effective, but safer for you, method. And once again when they give you an option to help this jerkass not get clubbed to death by an angry mob--the evil option is simply to continue with your current Important Quest instead of having to stop to help some guy.

So those are acutally enjoyable bits. They're not always very reasonable, but the game is set up to make most of the people in the city hate and distrust you, so being 'good' actually feels like an effort, and it never feels like I need to go out of my way to be evil, it's just a style of play fostered by not really caring about the lives of the NPCs.

As for the rest of it, I spent most of my time doing sidequests, of which there's a lot, and they're generally pretty enjoyable. Each time you beat one a portion of the city falls under your sway, which means enemies have fewer respawn areas in those zones, making them more enjoyable to move through. Usually they're "Go here, kill all these guys on the way" style missions, so it's basically the same as normal play. You get XP for them, and then can use that to buy power upgrades. If you want to just run around the city, you certainly can. Areas not previously cleared by you can be pretty goddamned deadly though, especially if they're part of the blackout area. In parts of the city without power you're much weaker and lose nearly all access to on-the-fly recharges. Unless you're evil, in which case every civilian is a battery.

I felt like the city was big, and the leaping around was fun, and there was enough blasting to do and it was enough fun to do it (and sometimes challenging to do head on with the harder difficulty) so it didn't feel on rails. If all you do is the storyline missions in a row, maybe. But there's a ton more stuff to do than that, and I'm a big fan of slowing down storyline to get as much XP as possible.

By contrast the 'sideline' stuff in Prototype is nigh-useless sideshows that are irrelevant given the way the game shoots XP at you out of a hose.

Red Faction: Guerrilla seems the best out of a so-so bunch, but by also the same developer of RFG, Saints Row 2 seems to be better again and has some of the funner sandbox elements that GTA: IV attempted to drown out with mewling, clinging cousins and girlfriends phoning you up every twenty minutes.

The number of things Saints does right that Red Faction does wrong is really quite amusingly long.

Big Orange wrote:Red Faction: Guerrilla seems the best out of a so-so bunch, but by also the same developer of RFG, Saints Row 2 seems to be better again and has some of the funner sandbox elements that GTA: IV attempted to drown out with mewling, clinging cousins and girlfriends phoning you up every twenty minutes.

Indeed. It turns out that people like to play games to get away from whining family members, associates and friends and just want to blow some shit right up.

Stark wrote:By contrast the 'sideline' stuff in Prototype is nigh-useless sideshows that are irrelevant given the way the game shoots XP at you out of a hose.

About the only sidequests I bother with in Prototype are the military consume events, simply so I can get more Web nodes.

It's pretty sad that the broken stealth (ie, impossible to be detected unless you do something dumb like press punch) means you can trivially get all the military base nodes pretty much straight away (along with maxing out your military skills, which is probably why they slowly raise the limit). It's a shame the web is so random instead of investigative, and there's no way to follow a single narrative thread rather than 'watch 120 student films about men with masks'.

I hope that when the web is completed, there is an option to play back the whole thing in order such that it strings them all together to make sense.

Chardok wrote:I hope that when the web is completed, there is an option to play back the whole thing in order such that it strings them all together to make sense.

Dude, that would suggest the Web was actually finished and feature-complete, instead of being an essentially random 'spawn web guy' system.

Stark wrote:It's a shame the web is so random instead of investigative, and there's no way to follow a single narrative thread rather than 'watch 120 student films about men with masks'.

Yeah, that is a shame. A more polished version of the Web would actually be completely boss; it's a shame that they dropped the ball on giving Alex more of a factfinding bent, which you mentioned in the Official SDN [PROTOTYPE] ThreadTM. I like uncovering the conspiracy, but it is more or less random to find. It's sometimes really cool though, like when I stumbled across a memory with obvious foreshadowing possible hints of a betrayal just before I got betrayed.

Stark wrote:there is a thing called a 'return policy' whereby I have in fact paid zero dollars for these games (and scored a stupid RF:G robot lol).

The fuck? They let you return the games over there? Here, if the case is opened, you have to keep it. Only reason for them to accept a return is if there's some manufacturing error or somesuch. And the do check it out.

In fact, I was expecting someone would blast me for not considering the option of rental, wich might be a better alternative, although my research on the subject around here has not been too successful (I don't think it is entirely legal).

Now, I do apologize for the derailment of the thread (hence my "here comes a non-contribution" comment), but the concept of people spending those amounts of money so casually did sicerely shock me. Or did you expect me to start a whole new thread on the subject?

Anyway, I have apologized and explained the reason for my ignorance of price-avoidance techniques (wouldn't work here). Back to the thread.

Same here Oskuro, only option here if you don't like is to trade in.

LordOskuro wrote: The fuck? They let you return the games over there? Here, if the case is opened, you have to keep it. Only reason for them to accept a return is if there's some manufacturing error or somesuch. And the do check it out.

It is mandated by law in Australia to permit it. Sometimes there is a restocking fee, and other times you only get instore credit but it is damn easy to return almost anything.

As for computer games, "it doesn't run on my system" is as good excuse as any.

LordOskuro wrote:In fact, I was expecting someone would blast me for not considering the option of rental, wich might be a better alternative, although my research on the subject around here has not been too successful (I don't think it is entirely legal).

I don't know how available things are to you in regards to businesses like Gamefly or Blockbuster, but state-side, I can pretty readily just walk down the street and rent a game for a few days for less than it takes to ride the bus to work and back.

Back from derailment, I'm working my way through Prototype right now. I'm kinda sad that the web system is so random, but I'll make do. So far, my experience with the game has been net-positive.