I’m baaaaaack!
Or, HLL is back, I should say. I feel like it’s been weeks since I sat down and wrote one of these things… and that’s probably because it has been. We did have the debut of the Audio Edition last Tuesday, if you recall (I’m sure it’s impossible to forget, as much as you’d probably like to) but HeyLookListen started as a written column, and those will never go away.
Now, will we see more audio editions in the future? Well, I can’t give any specifics at the moment (largely because I don’t know them myself) but I think it’s safe to say that you haven’t heard the last of HLL.
Get it? Heard the last? I’m implying that, y’know… there’ll be more audio editions.
Anyway. Let’s get on with it.
Metroid: Other M Demoed, Dated
Nice. I’ve always been a strange breed of Metroid fan, but a fan nonetheless. I really love Metroid Prime 1+2, but I never did get into 3. I played Super Metroid all the way up to Ridley’s lair, and then for some reason, stopped playing forever. And that’s the extent of my Metroid experience.
We haven’t heard shit about Other M for almost a solid year until now, and it’s looking like a day one purchase for me. The concept intrigued me when it was first unveiled, and after reading through the slew of impressions now floating around the interwebs, I’m all but sold. For once, it looks like Nintendo is doing something very, very different, and that alone is enough to interest me.
For your convenience, I’ve provided links to gushy, fanboyish impressions from IGN (in which Matt Casamassina literally quotes all the dialog from the demo) as well as slightly more objective impressions from Kotaku. Both, however, seem to love the game. Other M has been confirmed for a June 27 release date in North America. Can’t wait.
And who knows, maybe I’ll finish up Prime 3 for posterity’s sake before then.
Mario Galaxy 2 Demoed, Dated
Hey, this headline is the same as the last one… except it’s Mario Galaxy 2 instead of Metroid.
I suppose I could have mentioned the fact that the Nintendo Media Summit just took place. Hence these two announcements. I’ve really never had much interest in Mario games of any kind, but Galaxy 2 is looking pretty sweet. For a Mario game. And that’s my educated opinion, after watching the trailer and not reading these Kotaku impressions I’m about to link you to. For your viewing pleasure, I’ve also provided the newest trailer for the game below.
Oh, and uh… here’s the boxart.
UR MI AY...? Whut? "UR MR GAY" was so much more straightforward.
Final Fantasy XIII is an 18 GB Install on 360
That’s between all three discs, naturally. Ve3tro.com was nice enough to provide exact sizes for all three discs:
- Disc 1: 5.9GB
- Disc 2: 5.8GB
- Disc 3: 6.6GB
18.3 GB in total. Of course, it’s entirely optional to install. And it’s worth noting that the PS3 version sizes in at about 38 GB, so it literally more than twice the size of its 360 counterpart. And it’s all on one disc, too! Oh, the beauty of Blu-Ray.
New Line Optioned Heavy Rain Film
And, in fact, it’s technically still an “option,” as it were. Waaay back in 2006/2007, New Line Cinema (y’know, the people who distributed the Lord of the Rings movies) filed a “Short Form Option” for Quantic Dreams’ Heavy Rain. All this really means is that they have the option to make one, should such a thing be feasible. It has no financial contracts therein. The filing was discovered by internet sleuth Superannuation.
So really, this is nothing at all to get worked up about, just an interesting bit of trivia. And also a reminder that development on Heavy Rain really did start a looong time ago… now that I think about it, I do seem to remember the game being shown off before the PS3 had even been released. It’s been a long time coming.
On that note, I apologize for the complete lack of Heavy Rain-related content on Riddlethos this week. It’s been a little difficult, getting back from 8 days in Toronto and readjusting to normalcy. But I promise to have something written and posted before this week ends. Look for it!
Tags: Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, Hey! Look! Listen!, Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2
I’m so excited for Galaxy 2! First time – excepting Smash Brothers – I’ll have a reason to turn on the Wii in over a year since Excitebots!
The great thing about Matty C is that although he IS a super self-admitted Metroid fanboy, and will go over the top in impressions like those, if he didn’t like the game, he’d be the first one to criticize it.
Great return to HLL!
I saw that picture of Samus, and my first thought was “Wait, isn’t that just Princess Peach gone postal?” Actually, no, that wasn’t my first thought. My first thought was actually “Wait, doesn’t that look like just about every girl Ethos has ever dated?”
YOU KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE
BACKWARDS It’s “YA I M R U”
:O
Just saw that SMG2 trailer for the first time. So hyped! The first is one of my favourites of the past 5 years, and this one looks to actually be more difficult. As long as they don’t make Yoshi REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING like they did in Sunshine.
CHAAAAAZZZZZTASTIC!
As long as you can still punch Yoshi in the back of the head, I’ll be happy!
…What is wrong with Matti?!
…I love it!
@Riddles: I’m a similar type of Metroid fan, and I’ve traditionally liked Team Ninja games, so I’m cautiously optimistic for Other M. It might finally be my motivation to go out and get a Wii if it’s well received. Also, even more reason not to get the 360 version of FFXIII!
Also, I think CC had obviously come down with a case of the brain worms. The only known cure is to amputate his brain. He’ll be fine, though, don’t worry.
Finished Heavy Rain… Using Uncharted 2’s $70 CDN before tax as a basis of comparison, I’m going to say it was about $40-60.
+Pretty game
+Interesting plot (I actually avoided spoilers because I wanted to see for myself.)
-Graphics are inconsistent (Some scenes look very drab and washed out.)
-Facial animation is… lacking
-Voice acting ranges from decent to horrible
-Some clumsiness towards the end with the story
-Questionable localization
-Control scheme not always intuitive
+Easy trophies
?Lives up to the title “QTE, the game”
This is a game that you shouldn’t judge by the first 10 minutes. Or the last ten. The poor voice acting in the beginning almost killed all interest I had in the game, and the ending got a little clumsy, like it did with Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. It’s weird that Fahrenheit probably had more voice actors who sounded American than this one, which has at least three major characters who don’t sound even remotely North American (except for maybe Quebec, and New Brunswick). Casting with a North American present might have helped.
It seems like David Cage is the kind of auteur who’s more concerned with the story and making it epic and grand and exciting and Luc Besson that he forgets about the small stuff, which anyone playing the game with the least bit of interest would have picked up and retained. And it’s the small stuff that breaks the coherence of the story. You get to the end and you think “Sure, I can buy that, but ___ from chapter __ doesn’t make sense.” That being said, it doesn’t fall apart to nearly the same degree as Fahrenheit did.
It’s a little strange that so much work went into the facial models and they’re all very emotive during loading screens and then you hit gameplay and they’re all dead in the face.
I’d pay $60, if not more, had the execution matched the vision. As it is, the technical side of things fell short, and you’d hope in a game whose selling point is its complex narrative, that more care would have been taken to ensure storyline consistency. The replay value is decent, as most of the scenes can be played out in more than one way. And to the game’s credit, you get the ending you earn, well, in most cases.
As a side note, it’s weird how Scott Shelby gets the more interesting scenes in the game which actually offer up some moral choices, instead of the black and white ones the other characters get. You’d think Ethan Mars, as the lead, would get them, but he just gets “tough” choices.
Wow, wall of text.
Speaking of text (and localization), the English subtitles in the Yakuza 3 demo don’t exactly match the Japanese audio. Big shocker, I know. But they made some interesting changes. For example, after the initial fight in the club, one of your associates tells you about guys wearing sunglasses and suits. They also say (in Japanese) that they are foreigners (gaikokujin). Later, when you encounter said goons wearing sunglasses at night, the subtitles read something like “The silent type, eh?” where the Japanese is “Or do you not speak Japanese?”
SEGA Japan, cultural sensitivity slippers = ON. Gentle pad-padding on the wild unknown vastness of North American living room carpeting.
What is WRONG with me?
I don’t mind the Heavy Rain understated facial animation, though it isn’t the most expressive around. A few minor bits of the VA has been painful, but there’s some amazing VA also.
@Andogo – Is it more sad that you wrote all that or that I read all of it?
And yeah, SN, I only saw the opening, but other than some of the kid’s lines, I actually didn’t mind the acting nor the facial animations.
Lauren is 9 Collettes out of 10. I just had to keep on telling myself “It’s okay, she’s just French, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Of course, if I were to base foreign language incompetency on someone, I’d take the snarky way out and say John Furlong. Lauren is a 3/10 by that scale.
Also, I love that Andy has written more about Heavy Rain than Riddles this week!
FOR NOW.