Bits and Pieces 5.

Leading Platform:

More and more development teams are using the PlayStation 3 console as the lead platform to develop their multiplatform games. And it's beginning to show in a major way. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow's 360 version apparently has framerate issues, clipping and tearing from what I've read, not to mention that the game is on two DVDs, forcing players to constantly swap the discs in and out of the console whenever they want to visit previous stages again. Vanquish is another game that was deved on the PS3 first, and it looks absolutely stunning on the PlayStation 3. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is another game where the visuals alone have benefited greatly from being deved on the PS3 first. The details are much more beautiful to look at than the previous game and it really stands out as something to be experienced. Which is saying a lot since I was quite fond of the first game.

More and more dev teams are taking the cues established from first and second party developers that make the exclusive PS3 games and applying those cues to their multiplat games. A lot of the environments in Castlevania have that same radiance about them that appeared in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

Hellraper

Dimension Films/The Weinstein Company will do anything and everything to shit all over the Hellraiser franchise and mythology just to be able to keep the rights to making the films. They did it with the last round of films, Deader and Hellworld, and they're doing it again with Revelations -- which doesn't even have Doug Bradley in it as the Lead Cenobite. This keeps them the rights to the film so they can continue to develop a remake of the original picture, which apparently has a new direction: they want to tween it up.

Yeah, you read that right. They want to take a concept of extreme sado-masochism with flayed flesh, nails in the head, swollen heads with baboon smiles, and skinned folks walking around and tween it up to appeal to the new teenage audience that devours things like Twilight and the like.

I can see it now. A young girl that feels all alone in this bleak and terrible world plays with a random Rubik's cube and unleashes a priest from hell that is HAWT and glitters in the sunlight.

Certainly brings a different definition to the phrase, "No tears, child. It's a waste of good suffering."

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DEMOS

The Force Unleashed II demo is pretty awesome. It lacks the newness and HOLY SHIT factor of the original's demo, but it looks much prettier and controls a lot better. And that's coming from someone who didn't have an issue with the controls in the original game.

Sonic 4 is the same Sonic the Hedgehog I remember from the Sega Genesis days. Just polygonal now instead of handdrawn sprites.

Dead Space: Ignition is a weird little creature I had to put down.

Upcoming Stuff

There will be more content to read soon. Write ups for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, RED, and some other stuff here and there. Maybe some books, too, as I'm currently working on ten different books simultaneously. A few of them are short story collections, so maybe I'll break those down and go story by story. My write ups are not reviews, they'll be me writing about what I did and did not enjoy about the material, what I took from it, and how I thought it could be improved -- if it can be improved. A written version of how I talk about this crap to people out in the real world. So to speak.