Vidzone

Yesterday the Vidzone service launched on PS3. It’s a competent music video service but it could definitely do with some improvement. I'm not going to completely shit on Vidzone as I'm sure it will improve over time and refine things but I'm just going to outline a few things that disappointed me with my first use.

First off, the time it takes to start up the application is too long and moves the service from being a way to just quickly watch videos to an arduous process waiting for the service to load and finding the videos you want to watch.

The UI as it stands now is not great and makes navigation difficult and too time consuming. It’s visually nice to look at and appealing but the functionality isn't great. The search takes too long to use and the keyboard system is terrible, it would have been better to use the PS3 keyboard to enter information. Simple things like a “more from this artist” option or a better recommendation system would make it more fun to use and more useful.

All of the videos play in 4:3 so even if the video was filmed in widescreen it will play in a letterbox within the 4:3 box so sometimes you can be left with a video playing in the middle of your screen with huge amounts of unused space surrounding it. The quality of the videos aren't mind-blowing either but when you consider the fact that all of these videos have to be instantly streamable it makes sense. It would be nice to have some sort of HD stream option though if your internet connection can handle it. It kind of reduces the need to use the service altogether if the videos don't look great in fullscreen mode.

The homepage when you first open Vidzone is where I see the most potential and exciting features. I like the idea of new playlists and features showing up on the homepage whenever you open it. For instance there is a a playlist for Kasabian’s hits on the front page and one for music from the 80’s. If they keep doing things like this and update it regularly to make it more like an on demand music channel I will probably visit often to see what's new and leave it playing in the background.

Apart from that there’s nothing that would make me want to chose Vidzone over watching music videos on YouTube using the built in internet browser especially when the videos are around the same quality and it’s arguably faster to not Vidzone. That said, I look forward to seeing how the service can evolve and improve over time.

“Last Year’s Model”

This is easily one of the best game trailers I have seen come out of E3.

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Video Games | Uncharted 2: Among Thieves | E3 09: Snow Barrens Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Save me Elika

Prince of Persia is too easy. I’ve heard this statement made many times on various podcasts and forums but I strongly disagree with this common view. Prince of Persia was made with accessibility in mind and the experience is much better because of it.

One of the complaints I always hear is "You Can't Die". You can die; you just aren’t seeing a death animation and a game over screen. Getting saved by Elika is just another form of the game over screen without reloading and replaying large sections over and over and making the game way more frustrating than it has to be. It also allows the player to experiment and attempt crazy jumps and things that you would be apprehensive about trying if there was a serious threat of death. However, I do agree that there could be some kind of death penalty for failing in combat though but the regenerative health for bosses is a good enough disadvantage for the player. Without a serious punishment for dying there isn’t a sense of danger or urgency while fighting. The less serious penalty for failing in combat is just a longer battle, which can end up being annoying when a battle goes on way longer than you have the patience for. The main draw for me was the exploration and the story (yes, i really enjoyed the POP story) and if this was a way for less skilled gamers to get the chance to experience all that and still have a good time, so be it.

The Bourne Conspiracy

The main gameplay of The Bourne Conspiracy can be split into two different mechanics, there’s the hand to hand combat which plays out like a basic 2D fighter and the 3rd person shooting. There’s also a driving section that goes on for way too long and isn’t very fun. Overall The Bourne Conspiracy isn’t a bad game though, while nothing about it stands out as revolutionary it does what it does competently.

There were a few design choices that tainted the overall experience for me though. The fact that you have to manually pull out your gun to shoot enemies is odd when games like Uncharted seamlessly move from combat to flatforming without a need to manually initiate combat. After playing the Wanted demo I can appreciate how important it is to be able to easily move between cover points and helped me realise that the cover system in The Bourne Conspiracy isn’t very good. Moving into cover can be too finicky and I often found myself left in the line of fire trying to get into cover. Some kind of quick move from one cover point to another like in Wanted would have been helpful rather than leaving cover to slowly lumber/ uncontrollably sprint to another cover point. The shooting doesn’t do anything special but it works well. The game relies heavily on QTE’s in cutscenes and during fights but I didn’t really have a problem with it but that could be because I don’t have a problem with QTE’s in general.

I found the hand to hand combat sections the most interesting and some of the most memorable moments came from the epic boss battle fights. The combat looks good with cool enviromental takedowns but gets repetitive because you don’t unlock any extra combos over the course of the game. You could argue that it makes sense because the game takes place over different time periods so you wouldn’t become progressively stronger but it would be nice if combat was more rewarding and got progressively more interesting. The fighting is fun but the lack of moves and variety makes it get old quickly.

Overall I would say that The Bourne Conspiracy is worth a rental at least, it won’t do anything that will blow your socks off but the production values are high and it’s a fun experience that’s worth playing.