makingmusic476 said:
HappySqurriel said:
| CGI-Quality said:
No. that was NOT my point. My point was just because one game did bad, in an entirely different gen no less, doesn't mean the sequel will follow suit. One big difference between KZ1 and KZ2 is that there's a lot riding on the success of Killzone 2. This wasn't the case with KZ1 in the PS2 days. The PS2 already had LOTS of killer titles and was in the lead so they did not have to work as hard on the title to prove much. In the case of KZ2, however, they have LOTS to live up to including: meeting the 2005 target CGI, making the gameplay far better than it was in the original and becoming one of the definitve titles of the PS3. Now, early reviews and beta testers have already said the game is miles above the original and that is where a lot of the current hype comes from. You already explained why Lair/Haze CANNOT be compared to KZ2 because the early reviews and demos ALL spoke badly of both, hence, it killed their hype!!! I only mentioned budget because Sony has invested FAR more into Killzone 2 than either of those other titles. It's budget however won't guarantee that it will be an awesome game. However, KZ2's hype grows more and more with each review that trickles in coupled with beta testers accounts of their experience. None of these early players of the title have had a bad thing to say about it, that's my point!
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I think there is a little revisionist history going on here ...
The first review for Lair was from Play magazine at 90% followed soon after by Gamedaily at 60% which caused quite a few arguments, and there were generally positive previews being released for Lair several weeks before it was released.
Haze didn't have as good of an initial review (gamedaily gave it a 7/10 which was one of its best scores) but also had generally positive previews several weeks before it was released.
The one thing I would really like people to start paying attention to is that highly anticipated games tend to be very front loaded in terms of critical reception ...
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From 1up.com, posted on May 16, 2007, over three months before release:
#2 -- There is one major worry and it's perhaps a damning one: the Sixaxis controls. At times, the Sixaxis seems fantastic for a game like this -- controlling the dragon's giant swoops seems perfectly suited for motion sensing controls. At others, it feels clunky as all hell. Trying to bash another dragon in close range combat took me out of the experience right away -- I felt like I was fighting the controls. More often than not, I couldn't help but wonder how much more I'd be enjoying the game were I just using standard controls. Now, perhaps the controls will improve with more familiarity, but this is certainly a concern shared by many others who played the game today and in the past.
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Isn't grabbing one bullet point from one preview a fairly excellent example of cherry picking? Why didn't you post the entire preview?
Although the version of Lair shown at a Sony San Diego press event this week was almost no different from the one demonstrated a few weeks earlier, it gave certain editors who weren't at that event a chance to play the most recent version of the game. You know, such as me.
According to Sony, the differences between what was shown before and what was playable yesterday were primarily in terms of optimization -- the framerate had been improved in some areas, some minor bugs had been addressed, and so on. This is really indicative of where Lair, as a whole, is at the moment: it's essentially finished. At this point, the team is pretty much focused on optimizing and polishing for the game's summer release.
Much has already been said about how the game plays, so after spending some hands-on time with the near final five playable levels -- about a third of the game -- I'm left with two main thoughts:
#1 -- Playing Lair, one word really comes to mind: Epic. Seriously, the experience of flying through these stunning, expansive landscapes with tons going on all around you and a fantastic orchestral score playing underneath is really quite something. You've simply not experienced anything like this before -- certainly not on this scale. The lighting and weather effects (lightning and rain were specifically impressive), the draw distance (you can see for miles and miles), the amount of on screen action at times (tons of other dragons flying through the air, ships in the sea, and warriors on the ground), and the ability to simply and seamlessly switch between fighting high in the sky and down on the ground -- this is absolutely a next generation experience.
#2 -- There is one major worry and it's perhaps a damning one: the Sixaxis controls. At times, the Sixaxis seems fantastic for a game like this -- controlling the dragon's giant swoops seems perfectly suited for motion sensing controls. At others, it feels clunky as all hell. Trying to bash another dragon in close range combat took me out of the experience right away -- I felt like I was fighting the controls. More often than not, I couldn't help but wonder how much more I'd be enjoying the game were I just using standard controls. Now, perhaps the controls will improve with more familiarity, but this is certainly a concern shared by many others who played the game today and in the past.
Factor 5 has about a month left to finish tweaking the game. Here's hoping our concerns with the controls are either addressed or alleviated by its release, as a game this epic really deserves to be played.
As you can see it is mostly positive ...
I can't recall a single previewer saying Lair was an unplayable mess because of its controlls, in many/most cases they focused entirely on the positives and said nothing (and those that did comment said something along the lines of "It could be tweaked"), and yet there were constant references to how unplayable Lair was when it came to review time.
Most of the time previews are amazingly soft on games, and it is impossible to determine whether one of their complaints is a minor issue that should/will be fixed by the time the game releases or if it is a major issue that should delay the release of a game. Even then, most games do not get much in the way of negative comments if they are headed for an aggregate review score of over 70%.
