Our Week in Games – Week 28

Our Week in Games – Week 28

Did a new console get announced this week or was I just imagining it? Yes indeed, Sony did announce the PS4 this week at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York (E-C-DUB anyone?). I’ve got some brief thoughts on that after the break.

Meanwhile, we were planning on reviewing Aliens: Colonial Marines this week but our review copy was heavily scratched when it got to Jordan so that is on hold for the time being. Regardless, this is Our Week in Games.

Chris

It has been an awfully busy few weeks at work which has greatly limited by gaming time recently. I have had a quick blast with the demo for Death Inc. which I will talk about a little bit more soon and I had a chat with the two Kyle’s from Tomorrow Corporation about Little Inferno.

So the PlayStation 4 reveal seems to have gone down fairly well so far without really setting the world on fire. But there isn’t much that anyone can do with the current consoles to really push gaming forward, things like the updated version of the Eye and the touchpad on the new DualShock are fun, and the streaming with Gaikai is certainly going to be good. However, I think it is the internals that are going to drive the PlayStation 4 forward, it is much more in-tune with the basic innards of a PC and doesn’t feature the complicated Cell technology of the PlayStation 3. It is also going to have 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. At the end of the day, if the games are good, then I can foresee the new console being a success, and hopefully Sony do open the machine up to more indie developers. Pricing and release timing in the UK will also have a big impact on how it is perceived and received here in Britain. Cautiously optimistic for now, but not expecting miracles.

Nick

playstation-4-controller

I’ve never particularly been much of a console gamer, so the great PS4 announcement didn’t particularly drive me into a frenzy of crazy dancing. Whilst Watch_Dogs did look interesting, it’s a title I’ll be most likely be picking up for the PC instead, especially after Ubisoft confirmed the gameplay on show was from the PC version, not the PS4.

The presentation also left me with one major disappointment. Once again, consumers are being told that more polygons will mean better games, as if somehow shoveling another thousand pixels on screen will result in a revelatory experience that will change your life forever. Fahrenheit & Heavy Rain creator David Cage insisted that a real emotional connection with games was impossible before the PS4’s bucketload of polygons came along, flying in the face of pretty much everything he’s ever said about his previous titles.

Emotional connection and immersion has nothing to do with the number of pixels on screen. More cores does not mean more gameplay, and I’ve played enough adventure games to know there’s an amazing amount of emotional connection you can get out of sometimes microscopic resolutions.

That aside, it’s nice the consoles are finally taking a step forward. The 360 and PS3 have been long in the tooth for a very long time now, but I’m still left feeling that high development costs will mean we won’t be seeing anything particularly original on either console for a very long time to come.

Oh, my week in games? Mainly Hotline Miami, so stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, die, restart, stab, die, die, restart, stab, shoot, die.

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