It seems that starting off with an apology is the standard greeting for all of my blog/website entries and I won’t break the trend here so; sorry for not updating for an absolute age. There are a variety of excuses I purport that include; work, wife being pregnant, work, my computer carrying the new website design dying (hard drive fried), family stuff, alien abduction, and so on and so forth.
Fortunately/Unfortunately, not a great deal has been going on in the soccer-gaming world except for the FIFA Online Beta and the Ultimate Team add-on for FIFA 10. I managed to score a spot in the beta for the former and found myself quite impressed. Unfortunately, I haven’t been playing the PC iterations of the last few FIFA games so I can’t compare the gameplay but I still found it surprisingly deep and a lot of fun. The stats laden manager-mode at the heart of the online game is right up my alley and I’m looking forward to the third phase of the beta.
I haven’t yet downloaded the Ultimate Team add-on for FIFA 10 yet because much of my recent console gaming time has been with non-sports games.
Speaking of non-sports games, when I haven’t been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on the360, I’ve been blown away by Heavy Rain on the PS3. I know it’s only April but both Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 are easily contenders for my game of the year already. You’ve probably read reviews galore about Heavy Rain and while I readily acknowledge it’s not a game that’s going to grab everyone I found myself utterly enthralled by its grim, gritty, dark world. Developers Quantic Dream did a masterful job of characterization and I loved the way the game manipulates the player both emotionally. It’s in the realm of emotion that the game really sets itself apart from the pack for me. Other games have made me feel emotion like the thrill of scoring a last minute winner in a football game or the connection to your crew that you feel in Mass Effect 2. However, Heavy Rain was the first game to instil a sense of dread and fear in me. In fact, at times the game generated such a genuine sense of unease that I had to stop playing – and it didn’t do it with Gieger-esque monsters, cheap scares, or gore either.
What also helps the game is that the multitude of various branches in the story lends a real sense of permanence to your actions; if you screw up and let a character die then that’s it – they’re done. This also means that a lot of gamers will have had very different story experiences through finishing the game.
Heavy Rain isn’t perfect – I really wish Quantic Dream had hired an all American/Anglophone cast and there’s a twist at the end that seems a bit outlandish (though not as bad as the batshit crazy supernatural twists at the end of Quantic Dream’s previous game – Farenheit). However, for what it does well and does uniquely, Heavy Rain deserves special recognition.
Lavan Chandran
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