It's 2012, your $60 game should have this.....

I recently started playing a second-hand copy of Singularity (360) that I had bought more than a year ago. Apparently, this first person shooter has a very entertaining narrative and some decent shooting and time manipulation mechanics. I say ‘apparently’ because I’m about an hour a bit in and am almost bored to tears. 

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was that within 5 minutes of playing the game I realized -there are no freaking subtitles! That’s right, no option for subtitles whatsoever! 

These days, I do pretty much all my console gaming late at night when my wife and daughter are asleep and since we live in a condo I can’t have the volume cranked up. Subtitles are key to me enjoying the narrative - I don’t have the volume on mute but when characters speak softly or whisper it helps to have the text on screen at the same time. I’m amazed that I game released in the past 10 years doesn’t have this option.

This got me thinking about a few other annoying things that should be made mandatory in all games.

1) Subtitles

For the reasons I outlined above. Even if you don’t game in a quiet environment it’s sometimes nice to have the text on screen so you can make out what people are saying. And if you’re hearing impaired it’s a no-brainer.

2) Pause-able Cut Scenes

Batman: Arkham City reminded me of this one as I was recently in the middle of some juicy plot exposition when my daughter awoke and started crying. No problem, I just hit pause and go and get her. Wait.....pause does nothing? 

Absolutely ridiculous. Do developers think we play games in a vacuum with no telephone calls, no knocks at the door, no interruptions whatsoever? I wish.

3) Skip-able Cut Scenes

The opposite of #2. Yes, I want to have my cake and eat it too. The cake cost $60!

A lot of times if you’re playing through something the second time you don’t want to sit there twiddling your thumbs.

Fortunately, this is now much more prevalent in games developed in the last few years. Except Zelda Skyward Sword....

4) Save Anywhere

It’s 2012, even in console games I should be able to save anywhere. This is the sole reason I’ve yet to play Persona 4 and host of other Japanese RPGs. Persona 3 is one of my favourite RPGs of all time but I just can’t play a game anymore where you have to play for an extra 20-40 minutes just to get to a save point. I would love to play the sequel but it’s just not feasible. 

I hear that Final Fantasy XIII-2 (whomever names the Final Fantasy games needs a psychiatric evaluation) finally has the ability to save anywhere. Congratulations, Japanese RPG developers! Welcome to 1997! 

Hopefully Atlas adopts this ‘feature’ as well for their next Persona game. 

How about also adding this feature to sports games? Anyone? Bueller? 




In other news, did anyone check out the Binary Domain demo for the 360? It’s being directed by Toshihiro Nagoshi (of Yakuza fame...that’s Yakuza the game series, not the organized crime syndicate) but if it wasn’t I don’t think anyone would give two shits about this title. It just seems like a very mediocre 3rd person shooter with cover-mechanics and an odd trust mechanic. After playing both levels of the demo my opinion hasn’t changed.

But it does have subtitles.......


Lavan
(done being crusty for today, going to go play some Little Racers STREET to cheer me up)