Journey
Genre: Forty years in the desert
Developer: Thatgamecompany
Exit date: 2011
By and large Thatgamecompany – This is one charming Asian Jenov Chen Plus hundreds of thousands of dollars Sony , to which his ideas are implemented. All his games are about the same. In the meditative arcade FL0W You swam along the seabed, ate smaller creatures and hid from larger. With each monster eaten by the monster, your creation has always grown a new organ.
Then he went out Flower. In it, you flew by the wind above the flower fields, helping the buds bloom. In return, each flower always gave you one petal, and by the end of the level, a real petal whirlwind was worn over the fields. Jenova Chen with heroes always occur some noticeable, easily readable visual changes. In FL0W, these were "fins" and "Zhabra", in Flower – petals. And in the new game, Journey , This is a scarf.
At first glance, Journey is practically no different from Flower. Some strange creature in a scarf wanders around the desert, collects runes, they are displayed on a scarf, over time the scarf becomes longer. Another creature can fly. And here the amazing begins: with a reverently waved by the floors of clothes and breaking away from the ground, you seem to shake the runes from the scarf, they fly away from you. When they are not left, you are falling. We have to look for "fuel" by the surroundings or … take the runes from another of the same creature. The fact is that Journey is a cooperative game, you need to go through it together (although there is a single). Find out who your partner is, or the developers will not allow to speak with him. “Do you agree to share your treasures with a stranger so that he can fly?" – That's what Jenov asks in his game. Agree, non -trivial.
In addition, the game is amazingly, piercingly beautiful. It is very difficult to explain this, the design is an impressive concept, but we will still try. The action takes place in the desert. Dunes, dunes, sand … So, in fact, this is a sea. Only from sand. Attraction works like on the seabed. There are fish and algae, and your creature – well, this is a jellyfish. When it flies, the clothes seem to shoot himself air, exactly how Medusa makes when he floats. At the same time, the sand is incomparably decorated, each grain of sand glitters and shimmers, and sometimes a wave passes along the dungeon … And it can be saddened and go on it, like on a surf! In general, even without any purpose (and in Journey, as in Flower, at each level there is a certain task) while in the world of the game, you get a huge aesthetic pleasure.
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The second Journey design principle is a fabric. Your creature is not just wrapped in a scarf. It is a scarf, but inside, under the fabric, it seems, there is nothing. In addition to him, there are many other living scarves in the game, such as a flock of fish (short scarves) that floats behind you everywhere, or algae (long strips of fabric). In this light, the key subtext of the game becomes even more impressive. If you remember, in the Soviet cartoon "mittens" the dog at the last moment was blurred and could not reach the finish. In Journey, you will have to unwind yourself so that completely unfamiliar people can come to the finish line.
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Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Genre: Indianiad
Developer: Naughty Dog
Exit date: November 4, 2011
We don't even know what to say here. Uncharted 3. The main "summer blockbuster" in the world. Call of Duty From the world of adventure action. Naughty Dog (authors JAK and DAXTER And Crash Bandicoot ) as if engaged in acupuncture. They carefully marked the “body” of the player and prick only in the most convex centers of pleasure. Parkour. Shooting with shelters. Stealth. Gorgeous rollers on the engine. And the radiant protagonist! It is impossible to resist.
The theme of the first part was green jungle. The second is snow. And for the third time Nathan Drake goes to conquer the desert. The purpose of the hero’s search is the ancient city in the desert Rub-el-Khali, the mysterious sandy Atlantis. The diary of Lawrence Arabia, who also looked for this city and on whose trace, Drake, also sought to the hero will help the hero, will help the hero.
Compared to the second part of the nominal changes, there are very few, but they are all to the place, and – what is there to hide! – They are all cool. For example, Drake received a new reception in his arsenal of industrial rock climbing – this is a jump back. Now, even hanging your back to the ledge, you can jump and catch on it. Fights will become even more contact (although, it would seem, much more!). We witnessed how Drake deftly loaded the villain boot in the groin, and then hit him with his face against the wall – thanks to the contextual combat system, the beaten enemies are well “interacting” with the environment.
Well, the main feature of the entire series is, of course, cinematography, and here the developers came to the fullest coil. In the second Uncharted, if you remember, there was a scene with a falling house (he fell apart while Drake was inside). With the words “now we have something more abrupt” Naughty Dog roll out an episode with a burning house. It is built on the same principles: the building is burning out while Drake is inside. Every time you jump somewhere, the ledge is sure to fall off, Drake hits a sheaf of sparks in his face, he grabs his hands for some snag, it breaks … In general, it is like it Super Meat Boy , only a prudent (in fact it is not so easy to fall) and about two thousand times more expensive. At the climax, the floor failed under the hero, and in a chic staged perspective, the journalists saw Drake, on one hand hanging on the edge of the fiery abyss ..
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By and large, the Uncharted 3 from the second part differs only by locations and the events taking place on them – the graphics have not changed, the gameplay is also. But scolding the game for this is like saying that in Harrison Ford from the second “Indiana Jones” less muscle mass than in his hero from the first part. In general, writing a single-page material about such a game is somehow uncultural, so we will definitely return to Uncharted 3 in future numbers.
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Infamous 2
Genre: Billion funny kilowatts
Developer: SUCKER PUNCH Productions
Exit date: November 4, 2011
Original infamous I surprised everyone two years ago. Late announced, he seemed to be made in a habit of a clone of the long -expected Prototype. By the way, it may have been so, only SUCKER PUNCH As a result, it was possible to release a more balanced and interesting game.
The protagonist is called Cole Macraf, in the sequel we play for him again. As a result of an explosion of a device called Ray Sphere, Cole turned into a superhero, a kind of god of lightning and electricity.
It is difficult for us to draw any conclusions from the demo version of how much the game has changed compared to the first part. There are a lot of visual changes, but in fact everything is about the same.
The developers "changed" the virtual operator. He reacts very violently for each event in the game, constantly twitches, shows the hero from different angles, and already if he, God forbid, will fall, the camera will make a somersault and crashes next to him.
In combat mechanics, there is only one significant change, and it is in the hands of Cole, sparkles and pricks. This is a sharp fragment of a high -voltage power line that the hero uses as a club. This item perfectly absorbs generated electricity, why beat them with enemies is a pleasure. If you competently fulfill the combo-gleam, Cole will release an amazingly decorated black whirlwind, which will suck in enemies, and then take away in an unknown direction. That is, Cole is now a real thunderer: not only beats with lightning, but also collapses the storm.
You can still let lightning out of your fingers or roll them into the "snowballs" and throw them like grenades. When the coole “sits down”, you need to pump energy from any electric generator nearby (it doesn’t matter, whether it is a machine or a lamppost), but tram wires and mentioned power lines are best suited for this. Like a network, they entangle the city, and Cole deftly moves along them, like a spider. In general, in the Infamous series, a very peculiar sandbox: a neat parkour is combined with a completely uncontrollable genocide of random passers -by, when the street suddenly explodes from one incorrectly abandoned “crumpled” zipper. Nevertheless, the developers are very seriously talking about morality. The crowds will go behind the strong leader. So, if you free the police detachment, they will run after you throughout the mission.
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And of course, choice. The game is made in the spirit of the postmodern comic book, where superheroes behave like pigs, and doing good in this game is completely difficult. So, in the mission shown to us, we were free to decide whether to free the prisoner with minimal losses for the civilian population or simply blow up everything to hell. We, of course, chose the second option.
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Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One
Genre: Platformer with a vacuum cleaner
Developer: Insomniac Games
Exit date: November 4, 2011
Suddenly intriguing turned out to be a new Ratchet & Clank. It’s not that we do not expect anything from this series – on the contrary, under this name for many years, stably excellent arcades come out for many years. That's just All 4 One It is entirely aimed at the so -called sofa gameplay (this is when the game is held in a cooperative sitting next to friends). The main regime is designed for four people, so it is better to forget about gameplay excesses: here to keep all four in the frame – this is the problem. Nevertheless, the game provides wide expanses for improvisation.
To begin with, a little story. Ratchet & Clank is a noble PlayStation series that has already experienced one shift in generations of the prefix. There are two gameplay basics. Firstly, this is a combat platformer where you need to jump and shoot a lot. The second Royal Oak Casino feature is weapons. There are a lot of it, each barrel can be pumped repeatedly, while the guns themselves are completely crazy. The most harmless unit is a hundred -barrel machine gun the size of a time more than its owner. Ordinary “barrels” are ruthlessly fried by small uncontrollable missiles, and from a special, separate barrel (it in the middle), a larger rocket flies out at a certain moment, red. Or here is a "spatial break". It acts exactly in the same way as it is called: the fabric of being breaks, hellish tentacles come out from there and tighten enemies into the mouth of a giant octopus. All in all, Bulletstorm can be strangled with its chain grenade with envy.
Well, in All 4 One, all these tricks must be done four. A variety of characters of the R & C universe are available to choose from, including the Ratchet and the Clanca themselves (anthropomorphic lynx with protruded ears and a chrome robot, respectively) or here the doctor’s quark (it looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger – this is a hefty baby with a protruding to the protruding on meter jaw, dressed in green cocoon).
Four of you and your friends download the levels, fighting monsters, gaining glasses. Gradually, the game begins to give you cooperative tasks. For example, one player should catch a monster in an air trap, and the other to shoot.
Corporate, the most famous trick in the game – a throw "vacuum cleaner". Often there will be abysses on your way, through which you cannot jump over. Remove the “vacuum cleaner” (in fact it is called differently, but it does not change the essence), tightly compact a combat comrade into it, and then shoot them like a catapult. We promise you will like it so much that you will repeat the maneuver and just like that, for no extra reasons.
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Well, the most diamond. The game has an incredible scene of the death of the boss, executed by Hamlet tragedy. A huge fish (the size of a aircraft carrier) with tentacles and a mouth, entirely drooped teeth, attacked the heroes while they climbed the tower. It was necessary to fight with her in the following way: “vacuum cleaner” catch one of the small monsters that frolic on the location – and throw it into the mouth of the monster. The fish swallowed a few creatures … and the last one choked on.
Further events must be seen. The fish coughed for a long time. I beat myself with tentacles in the chest. Put on the back. Coughing again. It did not help. Then – here only Leo Tolstoy will help us, no less – with an expression on his face: “Me! Which everyone loves so!" – I looked at the players for the last time. And she died. If each boss in the game will go into another world as patho, the game will simply be obliged to nominate for the Oscar as excluded by exception.
