Would love to hear your opinion on Starhawk and Downpour!
Starhawk is very polished. Looks great, though requires you to use an overscan feature to fill out the tv display as they've clearly opted for some weird resolution in game. It very smooth, lag free, and the controller mechanics are extremely tight.
My biggest problem with Warhawk was a lack of single player. I much prefer to game solo, ad then breakout with occasional multiplayer, rather than be multiplayer only.
Its just a very well crafted job all round. Anyone into third person shooters, with easily accessible strategy elements will love it.
Just hard to fault a game so well crafted at what it is..
Again however not long into it (couple of hours) so I'm sure things will crop up that may bug me, but so far so good.
Silent Hill Downpour : well to say I was reluctant to pick this up was an understatement. I love silent hill games of the past, but with the rather insipid HD collection recently released with shocking quality on PS3, and rather lacklustre reviews of his title, I had pretty much decided to pass on it.
Hated Silent Hill : homecoming too.
But something still tempted me and finally I gave in and I'm glad to say I rather like it for the most part.
Yes my biggest concern given video gameplay trailers was the combat and that still is the games worst aspect. It's just shockingly bad, and something hard to forgive given modern successes with horror combat such as Alan Wake. Heck even homecoming had better fighting mechanics. For the most part I just try to avoid combat and run away - just to avoid the shoddiness, but sometimes a badly swiping at thin air fight with a monster is inevitable, and it breaks the connection to the Silent Hill world the game otherwise gets right.
That being said I like the one thing this game manages to get right, and that's the atmosphere. The fog is back, the reliance on darkness and tension to create a feeling of being out of control of your own destiny, that your just a puppet in Silent Hills playground.
Now I'm only a couple of hours in, so my opinion could change, repetition could set in and such, but so far so good.
I'm also playing in Stereoscopic 3D. The framerate does take a bit of a knock in 3D but there is no screen tearing or visual sacrifices other than that, and the 3D in the game really does give the game another level of atmosphere. I played briefly without 3D to see the difference and although faster framerate, the screen tearing was pretty evident and the world just didn't elude the same creepiness. If you have access to 3D I'd definitely recommend this game be played in it.
Talking of which, didn't Sony say first party titles going forward would all support 3D and yet there is no support for it in Starhawk ? Strange !