continuing economically (or a discussion on videogames)

car companies are doing poorly, like everyone else, but it seems like there are some bright spots. hopefully this means that i can sometime move back to the buckeye state.

but i don't want to talk about that, instead lets talk about killzone 2. overall, the game has gotten great reviews. what i have gleaned from interviews and most of the reviews, you will find that visually killzone2 is considered a great game. story wise, it has some ground to make up, that and some people have been saying that the ps3's controllers are not made for fps. i tend to take all reviews with a grain of salt, positive or negative.

that being said... basically the makers of killzone2 have run into, once again, the halo problem. how do you create depth in an fps? gears of war (1 and 2) certainly didn't do it and it seems like killzone2 might fall short as well. conversely, the halo franchise is so rife with spinoff options that they are even creating a starcraft based game (halo wars, i've played the demo and it is a lot of fun. the controls are terrible for this type of game, but still its fun), a prequel halo3:ODST and who knows what else. while none of the sequels (except maybe Halo 3) is expected to match the success of the first, the game as a whole has been proven to be able to be stretched well beyond its initial release. this is also what made (makes) the final fantasy series so compelling. fairly consistently they are able to create believable worlds with rich back-story that most players don't even scratch and the 'hard core' tend to devour. (hence the ph34r of the franchise going to microsoft) the problem now for other fps developers is that halo has already been there, done that. without a significant leap forward, everything else will be considered cliche.

will killzone2 sell ps3's? will the game itself sell? i, for one, hope so because sony is in it deep and i would hate to have microsoft be the only developer for this type of game. furthermore, i do think that it does look stunning and i hope it is a fun game to play (sad that there is no co-op mode).

why bring this all up? because i have become addicted to my new super sweet game.


peace,
ko