Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and (PS3 exclusive) Journey are two highly rated indie games, both of which I found a little bland. They're both quite hard to describe too, which doesn't help me out any here. Brothers has the interesting mechanic of controlling both the titular brothers at the same time (one for each control stick) and revolves around puzzle solving; the puzzles are pretty easy though. In Journey, you play a floaty figure in a cape travelling through a desert. I'm not really sure what it's about. No-one is.
Heavy Rain is another disappointing PS3 exclusive. It sells itself as "interactive drama" as choices you make and paths you take affect the rest of the game. The theory is about as interesting as the game gets though; it looks a bit weird (as games often do when they try for realism) and the controls are very awkward. It's also quite badly paced, with many of the segments being little more than plodding sections of wandering around doing not much. It's not terrible, just not very good. Mediocre probably sums it up best.
Crysis 3 I've already mentioned in the worst multiplayer list. It's a futuristic first person shooter, which gives you the power of invisibility and really high jumping via some suit or other of alien technology. The levels are slightly more open than most fps, and the invisibility offers more stealth options than most similar games. So far, so good. Sadly, the game handles quite weirdly when shooting (it feels a bit like Aliens: Colonial Marines), the levels are pretty boring and the final boss battle is very annoying.
Fallout 3 is a very highly rated open world rpg shooter (first person or third person, you get to choose!). I found it very boring, and not half as good as the excellent Borderlands 2. Maybe I'm just a bit sick of post-apocalyptic landscapes, but I found the world of the game quite tedious and uninteresting. I also didn't care for how it handled in first person mode (third person was slightly better though). Borderlands 2 had personality, a sense of humour and a fairly unique (cell shaded) art style on top of a similar premise to this. This game didn't really have anything of note. Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much the same, but with a slightly less boring landscape.
Payday 2 is another game I got "free" via the PS Plus subscription. It's a fps where the aim is to rob banks and stuff (and get a payday, yay!). I think it's designed to work best as a co-op game for four players. I did a few missions on my own with three AI players with me. It was pretty boring. I don't really see how it would be much better with three other human players. I might be wrong but I'm not gonna bother finding out.
Finally we get to Pro Evolution Soccer 2013. I've been playing PES games since the PS1 and was always a big fan of them; I've had pretty much every game in the series on some console or other since then. I had PES 2012 on the Wii but didn't like it much. This game was only slightly better, but still not that good. The passing mechanics have been improved from that game (they couldn't really get much worse), but the worst thing about the game is how slow it is. Gone are the days of quick, one-touch passing moves, this game plods along at a pedestrian pace. Maybe the pitches are too big (or bigger than they used to be?) I don't know, but the ball certainly doesn't ping around like it used to in the good ole days. And unlike in the PS1/PS2 days you don't get the option to speed up the game either (at least not that I could find) to compensate for this. I've also got PES 2014 (via PS plus) but haven't played it yet. Someone I know who had it said it was terrible and took it back to the shop after about two days.
Heavy Rain is another disappointing PS3 exclusive. It sells itself as "interactive drama" as choices you make and paths you take affect the rest of the game. The theory is about as interesting as the game gets though; it looks a bit weird (as games often do when they try for realism) and the controls are very awkward. It's also quite badly paced, with many of the segments being little more than plodding sections of wandering around doing not much. It's not terrible, just not very good. Mediocre probably sums it up best.
Crysis 3 I've already mentioned in the worst multiplayer list. It's a futuristic first person shooter, which gives you the power of invisibility and really high jumping via some suit or other of alien technology. The levels are slightly more open than most fps, and the invisibility offers more stealth options than most similar games. So far, so good. Sadly, the game handles quite weirdly when shooting (it feels a bit like Aliens: Colonial Marines), the levels are pretty boring and the final boss battle is very annoying.
Fallout 3 is a very highly rated open world rpg shooter (first person or third person, you get to choose!). I found it very boring, and not half as good as the excellent Borderlands 2. Maybe I'm just a bit sick of post-apocalyptic landscapes, but I found the world of the game quite tedious and uninteresting. I also didn't care for how it handled in first person mode (third person was slightly better though). Borderlands 2 had personality, a sense of humour and a fairly unique (cell shaded) art style on top of a similar premise to this. This game didn't really have anything of note. Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much the same, but with a slightly less boring landscape.
Payday 2 is another game I got "free" via the PS Plus subscription. It's a fps where the aim is to rob banks and stuff (and get a payday, yay!). I think it's designed to work best as a co-op game for four players. I did a few missions on my own with three AI players with me. It was pretty boring. I don't really see how it would be much better with three other human players. I might be wrong but I'm not gonna bother finding out.
Finally we get to Pro Evolution Soccer 2013. I've been playing PES games since the PS1 and was always a big fan of them; I've had pretty much every game in the series on some console or other since then. I had PES 2012 on the Wii but didn't like it much. This game was only slightly better, but still not that good. The passing mechanics have been improved from that game (they couldn't really get much worse), but the worst thing about the game is how slow it is. Gone are the days of quick, one-touch passing moves, this game plods along at a pedestrian pace. Maybe the pitches are too big (or bigger than they used to be?) I don't know, but the ball certainly doesn't ping around like it used to in the good ole days. And unlike in the PS1/PS2 days you don't get the option to speed up the game either (at least not that I could find) to compensate for this. I've also got PES 2014 (via PS plus) but haven't played it yet. Someone I know who had it said it was terrible and took it back to the shop after about two days.
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