Win some, lose some
Beat Ratchet & Clank over the weekend. It's a great game, I really like their blend between shooter and platformer and they do a pretty good job at pacing. Their story isn't great, and as much as their box says "like a Pixar movie", they really fail at delivering humor. The story does have its moments, but the fact that I can't even think of any examples is pretty indicative of how good they really were. I think they may have been assuming that everyone playing had played their previous installments, and were coming into the game with additional information. They never put a lot of effort into character development,(and I know, it's a game, but they're the one with the Pixar comparisons ON THEIR BOX, and I know that the quote is speaking more to the visuals than the story, but Pixar comes with some strong connotations for me...), so a lot of the moments that depend on me caring about the characters fall flat.
Asa designer I get a little nitpicky about games, and for the most part I was really happy with R&C, rarely thinking that they did anything wrong, mostly just seeing what I thought were missed opportunities.
One thing that did stand out as wrong, broken, and awful in this otherwise fantastic game, was the sixaxis controls. I know some tech guys over in the Sony labs were thinking that they came up with something that was pretty sweet, but they were wrong. I imagine the story goes a little like this:
Exec: Shit, we're getting sued by those Immersion guys,we've got to take the feedback motors out of our controllers so we don't have to give them more moneys. Lab dude! Come up with something cool that can replace it so the kids don't whine!
Lab Guy: Um, motion controls? My buddy at Nintendo says they're working on something like that and it's freaking awesome!
Exec: Sounds good, chief. Now, you can't change the controller in ANY WAY in order to facilitate that, and if players have to hold the controller in a completely unnatural way in order to play anything that those wacky devs come up with I would really sleep better at night.
Lab Guy: I think I can pull that off! I also have a great idea to make the analog shoulder buttons really uncomfortable and practically useless!
Exec: Yes, I read your proposal. That shows initiative. Let's skip any usability testing and skip straight to production!
It's freaking useless. The Insomniac guys are GOOD. If they can't make anything decent out of the motion controls I fear for the future.(Before I left my previous company we were exploring different schemes that used the motion controls as well, no good came of it.) There is no genius that will come from these things, as they do with the Wii controllers, never will I gather an entire family around to enjoy the fun inherent in a sixaxis controller, NEVER. All anyone does is basically simulate tilting a plate around and abstracting that to flying, or minigames like the old, tilt-y Labyrinth game with the marble, which is one of R&C's primary uses of the controls. When Igot to one of these things I groaned. A nasty, glass-covered speedbump of anti-fun in an otherwise bitchin' game.
I'll probably casually play through again to try to get the uber-weapon and max out all of the others, the weapons are really great fun to play with. Check it out if you have a PS3 and $65 laying around. Just do yourself a favor and turn off the tilt controls, it's an option in the pause menu and they'll give you a dialog that'll do the same thing if you fail enough times on the labyrinth minigame. (Strangely though, when I clicked the button that said, "Yes, lord in heaven, please turn off this awfulness", it wouldn't take it, basically locking itself up in denial until I hit, "No, please continue to beat me about the head with your awful technology decisions that no one on earth can make awesome."