Sunday 27 April 2008

Oops - Part 2

Another week, another blog post. This resolution to post more often really isn't going well.

In my defence, though, it's been busy: work has seen me staying late the last two nights of the week, I was at football on Tuesday. The rest of my evenings have been taken up by rampaging all over Cyrodil or talking on the phone with the lovely Beth.

I've also had a little dip into Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 on PS3, which I also got for my birthday.

Oddly, though, there's a few areas where the PS3 version isn't as good as the PSP title which, if I'm not mistaken, is based on the engine used for the PS2 version of the game. For a start, the replies are horrid: they've tried to replicate the shaky, can't-keep-up-with-the-ball camerawork of football on TV but gone way overboard. It makes actually watching the ball impossible - I've tried to watch a goal going in but, in the entire reply, haven't been granted even the slightest glimpse of the ball. Crucial tackles that have resulted in bookings are given replays, too, but the camera is too far zoomed in to let me see the actual incident. All this is done with a horrendous frame-rate that makes it look wobbly and distinctly last-gen.

Still, the core mechanics are superb - it's Pro Evo, after all, and it plays a fantastic game of football; it always has. The benefit of the PS3, with its USB ports and hard drives, is instantly obvious. There's no more Berkshire Blues playing West London Whites - Reading v Fulham for those poor people who play FIFA - when I can go online, download an option file and suddenly have every name, kit, badge, stadium and tournament named correctly, every recent transfer added and every face tweaked to make players look even more real.

I read a recent interview with Seabass, the creator, who said that the next version of Pro Evo will be the real next-gen game, which makes sense - there's always a period of transition from one game to the next, so I'm expecting world-defining, life-eating things from Pro Evo 2009.

Talking of world-defining, life-eating games, Grand Theft Auto IV is released to a baying public, worldwide, on Tuesday. I've heard that GAME aren't guaranteeing that you'd get a copy if you pre-ordered after April 7h and, in a report inThe Sunday Times, that ALL initial stock has already been sold.

Then again, this is the same newspaper that today called Nintendo's casual console the 'Sony Wii'.

Nevertheless, I'll still be going out at lunchtime on Tuesday to hunt a copy. If I get my hands on one, I'll try to post before the week is out. Can't promise anything, though, with Liberty City and Cyrodil to occupy me.

Who needs the real world, eh?

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