I thought there was a thread here for it but I couldn't find it so I'm making a new one.
Just played the advance demo for God of War: Ascension owners.
I have to say that I'm really impressed with the presentation. Naughty Dog knows how to build atmosphere.
I was not a huge fan of the Uncharted games. They were fun, throwaway one time experiences for me. So I am not a 'fan' of their products, per se.
The demo seems to take place somewhere in the middle of the game, but because there is only a brief cutscene leading into the action, I don't know where it occurs.
It's basically the main character, the girl and another woman named Tess navigating their way through a very small portion of a ruined city. You navigate through the interiors of some precariously leaning buildings, there's a bit of platforming and at the end a scrum against some infected types. Sadly, there were no survivor humans to deal with so I guess we'll have to wait for the real game to get that.
The first thing I noticed about the demo was the sheer texture of the environment. Naughty Dog went to almost insane levels of detail making this seem like a real place. If this isn't pushing the PS3's spec to its limit, I am astonished to think of what this machine is capable of. And we're not talking about sparse environments with a few empty buildings here and there. These places look old and dead, monumental artifacts signifying an age of unparalleled hubris.
Even as I observe mother nature climb up the sides of the buildings, slowly reclaiming with outstretched fingers of vine and grass what man once took from her, I am gripped with a melancholy stemming from sorrow for mankind's ignorance and overinflated self worth. All of these temples to commerce and greed haunted by the mutated remnants of a populace that had the gall to believe they could ever hold on to it.
This is the essence of dystopian post-apocalyptica. This is what makes survival horror work so well. Not gameplay. Not technique. Emotion. Playing this demo reminded me of my first impressions of Resident Evil. If that game was Dawn of the Dead gone interactive, this game is The Road. A bleak, hopeless slog from one dead end existence to another, the humans surviving for the exact same reason the mutants do: because they must.
As for the controls themselves, they are a combination of cover based shooter mechanics, stealth gameplay and even a little bit of Left 4 Dead's healing system where you are vulnerable while a timer must complete before you finish dressing your wounds. There is a crafting system for augmenting existing items and creating other ones, and melee weapons seem to have different degrees of durability, from wooden 2X4s to, of course, lead pipes. You can duck and sprint as needed. There is a flashlight to provide illumination in darker areas, and whenever you want to switch weapons or craft, you must stop in real time and spend the time either pulling a different gun out of your pack or hold down a button until the timer completes on predetermined formulas. There are various files to gather and learn clues from, a la Resident Evil, as well. You occasionally have to climb or drop, all the while never really sure of what's waiting above or below or around any corner, although enemies grunt and gasp nearby to alert you to their presence.
The enemies aggro either sight or sound, and once they're on you they're very difficult to deal with. They attack wildly and take quite a few bullets to stop. Shootouts are probably best reserved for conflicts with other people, as the mutants are completely amped up and shrug off most gun shots. Sometimes you will have to stalk your prey and stealth kill them, and this is recommended whenever possible so as to save on resources and avoid being swarmed. It's all very intense and pulse pounding at times. When enemies attack you, one button QTEs are required to counter their strikes, fend them off and open them up to melee thrashing. I am not a fan of the QTEs, but it doesn't wreck the experience for me.
The responsiveness is about what you'd expect for a survival horror game. It feels like Silent Hll in a lot of ways, but it's more refined than the simple control system of that game. Enemies react to your attacks and you react to theirs in very realistic ways that can sometimes make control an issue, but this was always one of the key elements that made Resident Evil work so well for me. It doesn't feel limited like RE or Silent Hill, however. It's clear that the character is no Nathan Drake, and this helps to make him and the people he's protecting feel more vulnerable. This is effective because it raises the stakes and the tension appropriately.
The demo is very short, totaling maybe 15 minutes on a competent playthrough. By no means will you really get a sense of what this game's completely about just from this. But as a first look, it's definitely promising. It looks as though this one may live up to the hype. I especially am happy that the focus seems to be on a single player experience, which is the right way to go.
The survival aspects-resource gathering and the vulnerability/generally weak stamina of the human characters, are things that make this far more than a cinematic experience. Do not expect super heroics here. If you don't fight smart, you will die fast.
My only real fear for the game is that it will eventually veer towards the predictable 'girl is in peril and you have to rescue her from danger' plot device. Not because I find it objectionable, but because it seems like an easy trap for Naughty Dog to fall into. The narrative must avoid this in order to stay out of 'drek' territory. The game also has to avoid ending the same way Telltale's excellent 'The Walking Dead' turned out. As awesome as that story was, it was done already, and recently.
I am really hoping there will be a mode where you play as the young girl and experience the story from her point of view. She is a strong, intelligent and capable character and I'd really like for Naughty Dog to go where 2K didn't with Bioshock: Infinite.
Things are looking up from where I stand as far as this game goes.
