I think it's problematic when we allow outliers like GTA5 become the "standard" by which all open world games are judged. That title basically had unlimited time and unlimited money to do anything and everything they wanted. It's unreasonable to expect every other open world game to live up to that. Great games like Red Faction: Guerrilla, Far Cry 2 and Arkham City can't really hold up to that comparison, so I'm not sure why we expect Infamous: Second Son to.
Different games can be "open world" for different reasons. Not everything can, or should, try to be everything to all people. Had Infamous been a linear game would anyone be complaining? What is it that makes a third person game that's set outside that makes people think great combat, fun traversal and a 12 hour narrative with high replayability isn't enough?
Yeah, sure, but even smaller games like say the Yakuza series with all its story linearity give a decent sense of an open world merely by offering lots of different kinds of things to do as the player sees fit.
If you don't mind me asking, why are you replaying this game if you don't like it? When I dislike a game, I sell it and never play it again. You're giving it another go though. I just find that peculiar.
I want to see what the bad Karma choices do to the story. Plus, I'm in between games at the moment and playing on Easy doesn't take very long if you don't do side stuff.
Those aren't serious questions. They're angry foot stampings from a child incapable of separating his own insecurity from his brand loyalty to a particular console system.
84 reviews on Metacritic. Of the 84, one registers as a perceived negative. Before I even scrolled to the bottom, I would have bet anything that it would be Quarter to three. Well, I wasn't disappointed. This is truly the "Armond White" of contrarian reviews at its very best.
You know, I used to despise Armond White. But he's not "that" bad anymore, and certainly not on the level of the idiocy that we witness here. Armond would never post reviews with a slew of inaccuracies and lazily written paragraphs that show a gross misunderstanding of nearly every mechanic involved in the subject (ie; Tombitch's reviews of Halo 4 / Banished, and Brandolt's review of Infamous: Second Son). Armond, whilst truly a royal shit in his bad days, has a respect for his craft. These idiots don't. Anyone who's paying attention can see the people here literally treat this like a joke and can't even comprehend most of what they're reviewing, let alone review it critically with a fair analysis and write up. I must say though, I really appreciate and understand the comparison between QTT and Mr. White.
Sites like this die out, they always do, it won't be long before they run off to go troll another sub section of entertainment. Thankfully, with enough bad press, mockery and cross reference to actual professionals in the industry we can ensure they won't be putting this "job" on their resume anytime soon.
"Here, hire me! I'm a widely hated, criticized editor who completely is out of touch with the general populace and prides himself on playing the obnoxious devils advocate that nearly everyone hates!" - Quarter To Three
And the fact they actually engage with people in the comments (often laughing at their own ignorance, calling people fanboys and in general acting like shitheads) taints their reputation and credibility further. At least take your beatings like men and shut the fuck up, at the very least it's the smallest amount of effort required to salvage what broken and nearly insignificant dignity you have left.
Kind of like your review of banished? You gave it a 20% out of 100%. The average rating for it is 85% out of 100%. You are the absolute epitome of an incessantly foot stomping child who's incapable of separating his own stupidity from what would normally be a objective and fair process of review. Your "look at me, look at me" reeks of insecurity as well. Come'on Tom, go on and call everyone "Halo fanboys" like it somehow validates your court jester routine.
Brand loyalty would apply to someone who's taking a widely criticized, collectively hated product and insisting the 'mass' of editors has a bias or that some conspiracy exists. What these people, and nearly every person is doing who criticizes you for your Banished / Halo reviews is literally the exact opposite. They are criticizing YOU for leaving the mainstream and showing what is virtually indistinguishable from fanboyism and stupidity.
If you really acknowledge that people should go elsewhere for normal reviews and insist that you're somehow immune to these criticisms because you can link your laughable review system (that strangely echoes something I'd see during a "Men on Film" skit) then perhaps you should be the first in line to pull your reviews from Metacritic and Gamerankings as you clearly, clearly admit they don't belong.
Just to add to this. The have been many, many XBOX titles get perfect scores. Yet, the highest score a PS3 or PS4 game has gotten would be a 3. Just too obvious to be coincidental.
So you're deleting comments now Tom? Not only other peoples comments, but your own comments as well!
You threw a huge tantrum last night, insulted tons of people, said some of the most laughable and pathetic things I've "ever" heard a supposed professional editor come out in public and say and when you saw people were responding to you negatively you chickened out and deleted EVERYONE'S comments?
You are the epitome of a little bitch.
Keep blocking accounts and deleting comments if you think it'll protect you. Proxies / guest accounts are a wonderful thing, aren't they?
I'll post it again so people can read:
Poor Tom. I'd rather be the angry "little" man....It sits in comfortable opposition to the colossal stack of douche that prides himself on pissing people off and playing devils advocate in some pathetic attempt to gain attention. Clearly you prefer the latter.
You're officially rustled Tom, it's cute. But all that said, I still have to give you some minor amount of credit....At least you've graduated from the typical "fanboy" insults and sacked up to calling people dumbasses and insinuating they are young wee' little lads. Albeit, I'd assume that's most likely projection as it's based on nothing evident outside of your desperate grasping at straws. At least my insults have validity and evidence to back them up. Calling someone young or little is pandering and hopeful at best, but, it's still a hard earned inch further from your typical territory of what most people would consider third grade recess rhetoric. Hopefully by your next comment you'll be calling us fuck shovels or shit wagons. Maybe something more colorful like a beaten trollop who's wit is rivaled by a puddle after a poor rain.
Stay rustled Tom, it's a good look for you, maybe if we can get all of your angst out in this comment section the next review you write won't have to be some sacrificial lamb for your little fits of anger.
Your a clown... and not convincing anyone. If you're so bent out of shape over this, why hang around? You could go stew over this someplace else... preferably were no one can hear you bitch and cry. No one wants to hear that.
Yakuza has lots of activities, but very little mobility and relatively simple combat. It's just a difference of goals and emphasis. And, excepting outliers like GTA, that's just the natural order of things.
For me this is a pretty average game. It does a lot of the things that I really enjoy in games abut takes a few steps back in some key areas. I really like the powers and the effect that they have on locomotion, but at the same time, aside from the convenience they added to getting up buildings quickly, none of them were as fun as what the earlier games did. There was a flow that I would get in with the power line skating and jump thrusting that made getting around the city an absolute blast. While these powers have their moments, unfortunately none of them come close to being as satisfying as electricity was.
I also really enjoyed the writing. At first I thought that Delsin was going to be just the most obnoxious piece of deuce around, but they managed to really make him endearing, relatable and thoroughly likable. The rapport between Delsin and Reggie was well done and gave a strong sense of history.
I can't say enough about the visuals. Everything is entirely convincing and cohesive within the world. Materials actually look like they are supposed to and the lighting it really impressive, but more importantly than just being technically sound, there is a style and flair that pushes the presentation over the top. A particular favorite of mine is all the neon art work from when you are trying to figure out Fetch is.
Unfortunately for all this good stuff, the game is still only average. I am the kind of person who is compelled to clear a map. If a game gives me a map with icon for everything I can do, I will systematically work it until it is done, as soon as I can. Normally this isn't an issue, but here it presents two problems. First, the side stuff isn't bad but none of it stands out. There isn't any of the things that I particularly enjoy doing (luckily none of them take more than 30 seconds or so). More importantly though, is I feel like it broke the feeling of progression. I spent a bunch of time collecting blast shards early on, so that every time I got a new power, I already had the shards to level it up to max. So I went from being super weak for a long time to being incredibly powerful over the next hour and a half or so.
Lastly, I want to mention the "Paper Trail" side missions. This is turning out to be one of my favorite parts of the game so far. If you haven't done them, basically you start a mission and at a certain point you send your progress to a website to solve some puzzles, and then pick up from there back in the game. The puzzles are a little obtuse at first but once you piece together the logic behind them, they aren't especially difficult. Aside from the puzzles though, the websites do a good deal of world building and is generally pretty entertaining. It is all fairly simple stuff, but as the first really interesting bit of second screen gaming, it gives me hope that there will be a few developers who will manage to come up with some brilliant stuff for this gimmicky tech.
You're* a clown. If you're going to insult someone at least try and do it properly. Your review below is also riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
