I had no intention of buying this game, but after playing the demo that changed. First the game looks so damn good. The water and waterfalls just look flat out stunning. The controls and gameplay felt good. The hand to hand combat is something else. Really nicely done. The gun play felt perfect. The only problem I have with the game is when you get ambushed by a lot of enemies it gets really hard really fast. Because some enemies will shoot at you from a distance, while others will close down on you and fire at you from point blank range. And I would not encourage you to run around just shooting wildly, you'll get you ass dropped fast doing that. Take cover, but be aware, it's not safe to just camp there, you have to keep moving.
Oh also,
The music and sound effects are top notch.
The animations are really well done. Drake dodging bullets as he runs is cool to watch..
ok... so grapics look better than on latest PSN trailers. Yes, better.
Floating is almost gone, still not perfect in demo... but wow at rest of the graphics. I never saw game looking this good (yes, better than RC). My wife asked what movie is it... then she asked if I was supposed to die in the movie (since game is pretty hard, i died few times). You got to be smart and use cover system a lot.
Overall combat is pretty damn good... I dont really play action/adventure games a lot (I hated Oblivion, I know its RPG but still), but I dig this.. controls feel really good, and shooting feels really good.
Pretty damn good overall.
Beat it on normal. Long story short, this is PS3's Gears of War. The only real divergence it has in terms of combat is that you can't switch seamlessly from cover to cover and you can't do the crouch run. On the other hand, you get a far better melee system. I jump punched one guy and it was awesome. Otherwise, the combat is pretty similar. Enemy AI is also good. They duck and cover and try to flank you. I got flanked a couple of times in the demo but it was easy enough to deal with. You get regenerative health as is the norm in these types of games nowaday. Like Gears, you are only allowed to carry four weapons, two of which are your trust pistol and grenades.
The Sixaxis implementation seems okay. Didn't really mess with it much. It only came up when you're tiptoeing across some logs and when you throw grenades. Wasn't much of a problem.
Graphically, the game looks amazing. If you thought R&C was a looker, you've got to see this game in action. There is barely even any tearing in the game and not one framerate drop. The only small instance where I noticed the tearing was when I aimed with my pistol and moved the camera back and forth quickly. Strangely, it only happened that one time and when I repeated the trick, it was normal for the most part..
After playing through it, the graphics are incredible... Someone may not like the "art style", but no one can deny that this might be the most impressive looking game from a technical look of the year on consoles... The lighting is awesome, the textures are great, the blur is actually well done... The animations are second to none, the transitions are believably fluid... I'm actually really impressed how much of a different look and feel the game has by having Nate go into a different "ready" state when in cover rather than the single canned pose other games give, this has quite a few... I only caught it a couple times in my first and only play through, but his flinching is SO fucking awesome... Running to cover watching him duck and bob as you hear the shots wiz by Nate is so damn cool, and gives a real sense of "I'm actually being shot at"...
The shooting is pretty much a la Gears but with a different feel, more of a sense of urgency... You can't just stick your head out there and shoot away... In the second "shoot-out" section, I was flanked so many times... The AI actually threw a grenade to my left to flush me out into a more open section and into it's fellow pirates... And the before mentioned "flinching, ducking, bobbing" along with the animations/poses for taking cover with the pirates chatter and Nate's little self pep-talks really really adds up to this sense of urgency...
The music though, is EPIC... Seriously, if you have a quality HT-rig, you are going to be in heaven... There's few MOVIES out there that have this quality of music, I'm not joking... I already know I'm going to love the soundtrack from what I've heard so far... The guns sound "just right"... The chatter of the pirates is awesome, hearing Nate "pep-talk" himself up for his next shot is such an awesome touch...