Feedback -- Alan Wake, Call of Duty: Black Ops, And Capcom's Western Trust

Tyri3l

I don't see why everyone gets down on Treyarch it's not as if they get a fair opportunity to showcase their capabilities with hardly any of their releases World at War really being the only time. With COD3 they were rushed and only had an 8-9 month window because Activision wanted the game out for the launch of the PS3 and Wii. Then they got saddled with licensed games like Spider-man and Quantum of Solace, QoS being a MOVIE game. World at War was really their first fair shake where like Infinity Ward they were given 2 years to actually create a backdrop for their Call of Duty AND given the opportunity to really work with the Quake 3/IW3 engine.

Now personally I hated the direction MW2 and unfortunately it looks like Black Ops is shooting for the same over the top action movie bent. That wasn't the only problem I had with MW2 though. I hated how random things became with unavoidable predator strikes and care packages not to mention the exploits that hampered the multiplayer the first several weeks the game was out and then not having enough servers to handle the load. I'm in agreement about Gears as series as well the core concept the world is good and I liked the gameplay for a very long time but the characters are absurd and annoying and honestly Doms narrative in part 2 just felt cheap like they were trying to illicit depression over tragedy and it felt totally out of place because of the decision to portray the cast as a group of bada$$e$. Honestly it made me think of the Republican Space Rangers parody in GTA IV on the TV.

As for paying for PSN I don't mind them developing stand alone services for tighter community or adding a set of paid features such as early access to demos or participation in community game night ladder matches or something but I refuse to pay to play online if that's what they're talking about. UNLESS they can streamline the network/interface to be able to join friends games in progress and not have to accept invites from in the game and in general make getting a match going snappier/faster and less of a headache. PSN in its current form is functional and its way better than whats on the Wii but Sony needs to WAY more aggressive in removing the perception that XBL is better than PSN and the only way to do that is for the XMB to get a lot better.

Where Capcom is concerned I'd like to see them play it more safe and actually dump less cash into new and original IP. I'd rather them release new entries in established IPs. Strider, Power Stone 3, Megaman Legends 3 etc. Thank God we're at least(finally) getting MvC3 and thank God we're getting Rearmed 2. I'm grateful that we got HD Remix, Rearmed and MM9 and 10. I didn't like Dead Rising, Lost Planet, or Dark Void. As for Bionic Commando the swing mechanic and the zip kick were great just everything else about the game sucked but I think Inafune just didn't think Capcom kept a good enough watchful eye over Bionic Commando's development. As for RE5 I enjoyed the gameplay because of the co-op and there being NO co-op games released in the months leading up to or after the release of RE5. I liked it for the fights more than anything the story was passable which is to be expected given how convoluted RE's fiction is.

Anway good episode of Feedback, good topics and good personalities involved in the discussion, as always.