Did the GameShark people and the Giant Bomb people see the same Deus Ex? Because now I’m very, very, very confused. This might be the biggest gulf between impressions that I’ve ever heard between two organizations that didn’t involve Adam Sessler (who tends to…let’s say oversell games that he likes).
I haven’t had a chance to hear either GameShark’s or GiantBomb’s opinions on Deus Ex. Who thought it sucked and who liked it?
Also, I’m really curious about what you’re referring to with Sessler.
Gameshark said it was great, GiantBomb was saying that general impressions were bad and apparently they have preview code. I was wondering about this also giving that almost didn’t read any thing from E3 almost all my on information came from podcasts and some videos. More in-depth preview are probably coming in next month so I hope gameshark guys are right.
Giant Bomb was very down on Deus Ex. They thought that it looked old and dated and boring. For a minute I thought they were talking about DN4 when I was listening to them discuss it. At GameShark, everybody is calling it one of the best games they’ve seen at the show.
And Sessler has a history with me of over-praising things. Like L.A. Noire. Which, if you go by what he had to say about it, is the greatest achievement in the history of video games. If you believe him, you’re going to be disappointed - it’s just a magnificent motion capture technology on top of a good script to an average adventure game awkwardly bolted on to a GTA game that’s so disconnected from the core that they might as well be separate titles (which is how I’m playing them - the only time I do open world stuff is when I’m in free roam, because if I do stupid things like run over pedestrians or scrape another guy’s car it can get tallied up at my end of case review). He seems to me to be one of those guys where everything he’s doing right now that he’s into is totally the greatest thing ever, because I can remember him doing the same thing with Limbo last year, and I’ve got non-specific memories before that. If you listen to the GameShark podcast that addressed L.A. Noire without spoiling it back-to-back with the Feedback where he talked about it (as I accidentally did) it’s like they’re arguing with one another. For that reason, whenever other outlets disagree with Sessler’s ridiculous and hyperbolic praise or condemnation, I just chalk it up to his brains freezing on account of inadequate insulation or something. Giant Bomb and GameShark, on the other hand, don’t strike me as being nearly as hyperbolic when they talk about stuff, which is why the whole Deus Ex disconnect has me so puzzled.
Since I was the guy giving it the highest praise on JtS, I’ll chime in here. I’ll preface this by noting that if GB has preview code they’re in a better position than I’m in to judge how the game looks so far. I had a 20-minute, crafted demo. (Although it’s worth pointing out RPS has preview code too and last time I checked in on their site, pre-E3, they loved it.)
In terms of the E3 demo, here’s what I was looking for from Human Revolution: Variability. Can I build Jensen to tackle problems the way I want to do it, where I’m not doing the Mass Effect thing of taking one path from point A to point B? That was exactly the aspect of the game Square emphasized in their E3 demo, so I was very, very happy about that. What I saw wasn’t boring because the player was constantly making decisions about how to proceed in getting to their objective. I also liked the augmentations we saw; they weren’t mind-blowing or anything, but they had… utility. I could care less if the game looks dated, although I thought it looked fine.
I’m not a GB podcast regular listener (pretty much TMA and GWJ for me), but I’ll check out the show where they talk DX as I’d like to hear specifically what turned them off about the E3 demo. Can someone point to the specific episode?
They have a pretty consoley/arcadey bent already. Games like that just aren’t going to hit as strongly with them.
Otagan
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As is evidenced whenever they try to talk about PC games. It saddens me that I enjoy so much of the rest of their material but most of their PC discussion falls flat on its face.
And now I’m listening to the fourth episode of RolePlayers’ Realm.
So pretty much all of 1Up - The Second Generation works at Gamepro now? Like, every single person? Well - maybe not the sound guy, because the sound on this podcast routinely sucks, but all the editorial.
Lake
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One example is the day three episode starting around 1:44:05. Jeff Gerstmann says he is getting an Alpha Protocol vibe from it.
Quaro
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I’ve seen hours and hours of the leaked preview, and I’m somewhere in the middle. I like what I’ve seen of the gameplay but the world and characters feel a bit two dimensional compared to other good games or to the original.
I actually think Alpha Protocol bests it in those respects – interesting and complicated characters, lots of dialog and game tidbits in email and whatnot that did a good job implying that the rest of the word exists and wasn’t entirely about you. And lots of awesome, dynamic!, handlers that stayed with you adding flavor as you went about your mission. Doing a mission with Sie or Heck vs another handler was quite the experience. DX feels a little… gamey in the worldbuilding. Overhear a conversation or read a magazine, and it’s generally about augmentation. And your handler uses your infolink like a cellphone, calling once in awhile, and doesn’t have as much character as any of the AP handlers did even in the first mission zone.
The stealth gameplay looks great though. The one kinda weird thing is that there’s no noisemaker aug? It is a little goofy for a badass agent to be spending so much time throwing cardboard boxes…
My favorite parts are the missions where everyone isn’t even necessarily hostile. Search for videos of the police station, in particular, and you can see there are tons of options. You can play it completely straight and simply talk your way in there and walk to your destination, chatting up a bunch of officers on the way. Blackmail your way in with manipulative social augs. Sneak in through an entrance you need an aug to get to stay stealthy. Go in terminator style. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP_AFPp6lEs Chat your way in but then discreetly drag of policeman after policeman into a closet so that you can hack all their computers uninterrupted.
Still getting through the mammoth E3 Bombcast episodes. I’m almost completely through the Day 1 podcast that featured David Jaffe. Despite his frequent statements that he is not in fact an asshole, I think Jaffe came off as a bit of an asshole. It might just be that the guy is unwaveringly intense, but he rubs me the wrong way. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy listening to him on podcasts. He’s a breath of fresh air compared to the on message PR robots you often see and hear.
I thought it said a lot about Jaffe when he absolutely had to know that someone was “in charge” over at Naughty Dog and Double Fine. He just could not accept that a game dev team could be communal without the need for an explicit pyramid structure, where those at the bottom bow down to the guy at the top. I bet he’s an absolute nightmare to work for.
Something else that caught my attention was that he still has strong feelings about Greg Mueller’s review of Calling All Cars at Gamespot. You might recall that back in 2007 there was a helluva dust up surrounding Jaffe’s reaction to the review and he apparently hasn’t let it go. I was pretty disappointed that Jeff Gerstmann didn’t do more to defend Mueller’s review. Re-reading it today, it seems completely fair. Certainly nothing to have an aneurysm about or to still be pissed about FOUR YEARS later. Gerstmann pointing out that Mueller no longer works at Gamespot and is now employed at GameTap, seemed to be at least tacit agreement with Jaffe that Mueller’s review was unfair, or worse, that Mueller wasn’t very good at his job. That a pretty huge asshole move in my eyes on the part of Jeff Gerstmann. I’d love to hear him clear that up on the next Bombcast.
If you’re expecting maturity and passive acceptance of valid criticism from David Jaffe, I think you might be asking too much of the man. I’ve got his blog in my feeds and…yeah. He can occasionally say a smart thing or two, but he’s got his own particular bends and angles that you just have to accept. I’m kind of rooting for the next Twisted Metal to be good, not because I particularly want to play it (how many years and I still haven’t even started a second game on my PS3 on account of my backlog and my craziness?) but because I don’t want to listen to him bitch and complain like Kevin Smith if nobody likes it.
I don’t expect anything more than I got from Jaffe, which was an entertaining podcast, even if I think the guy is a bit of a dick. It’s strange how self aware he seems to be about his assholish tendencies while still being apparently powerless to change. I can understand a game designer taking criticism personally, but blowing up over what seemed to me to be a pretty fair review is beyond what I’d consider reasonable. It’s downright crazy to still be pissed enough about it to bring it up on an E3 Bombcast four years later.
Y’know … Considering …
Is that where you were going?
My favorite Jaffe bit was when he went from saying that he now understands the value that programmers and artists bring to video games as an art to IMMEDIATELY knocking Battlefield 3 as completely unimportant because graphics and art don’t matter.
The guy is clearly waaaaay into himself. His view on game development was clearly (at least to me) a top down model, where all of the peons existed simply to serve and produce his grand designs. He made some noise about appreciating collaboration and suggestions from said peons, but I don’t buy that for a minute. I have a strong feeling that development under Jaffe is a totalitarian regime.
He’s not entirely off. He looks at his job like a typical film director looks at his job. He comes to a project with a specific vision and everybody works together to make that vision happen. They might be able to pitch some input as to how that vision might be improved, but the ultimate steward is always the director (theoretically speaking). What Jaffe was baffled about was how games can happen at all without such a central director saying yea or nay to every potential design decision - basically, he didn’t know who the steward of the vision was in a scenario where there was no director.
I’m not really trying to say that Jaffe is wrong necessarily, though I still get the impression he’d be a complete nightmare to work for. It was just telling to me that he couldn’t conceive of the kind of collaborative process that the Naughty Dog and Double Fine guys were talking about. It was like they were trying to tell him about seeing colors with their ears or something.
Wow, that … wasn’t where I was going.
I’m not sure what we just did there - let’s avoid it going forwards.
