So 6 years after it came out and over three years since I asked if I should play it, having been given it as a gift. I finally started it as I’ve been wanting to play through a few short games before going back into longer ones. As already blogged, I did Force Unleashed II over three days, and started this today. Wow. This game is just so fucking awful. Controls are horrible, and as more than a few people have said, the game makes me feel ill. (and I don’t usually get motion sickness from games). It’s just.. painful and boring. The story is weaksauce even by the low standards of videogames. I don’t even mind the pacifist thing, though I understand that even that becomes more challenging in the late game. But man, the parkour is bad, the game is ultra-linear, you can’t see shit all too often – either because it’s too dark to play in a normally-lit room or because your face is flat against a wall and the head-turn (ie mouselook with a stick) is painfully slow, and the controls are just arse. Press the button to jump and the idiot Faith just lets go of a pipe or whatever. Basically, they work when they feel like it, but they’re far from smooth or refined – and don’t work properly at all far too often. I haven’t even gotten very far into the game. Apparently I’m about 2/3 through the second level (after the prologue) and I have no desire to play through any more of it. Playthrough times quoted on the net give it anything from 5-10 hours, and since my play times for games tends to be on the slow side with plenty of breaks, there’s no way in Hell I’m going to suffer through another 7-8 hours of this crap.

There are some ok ideas here, but the game is very much less than the sum of its parts. I’m not sure if traditional first-person can even work for a parkour game, since you lose almost all of your spatial awareness and have to guess on what’s around you. I know some people enjoyed this game, but then, some people enjoy …well, insert that thing that you hate but other people inexplicably like. Rather than pick on Miley or Britney, I’ll use Meetings. What a fucking waste of time, space and potential.

Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with the disc. I doubt I could even successfully give it away, but maybe that’s the answer? Put it in the box of “take it” software that I keep for my friends when I cull. And hope they don’t read this first…

Verdict: Avoid.

Now I need to find a couple of other short games that are worth my time to play. Like FUII they don’t have to be the greatest games ever, but ideally they have to have a few redeeming features and be a bit of fun. I’m thinking next up might be Heavenly Sword on PS3. I really need to cleanse my palette after this one. If anyone has suggestions for worthwhile short games (preferably on console at the moment), feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. I’m not likely to run out to buy anything that’s not on Steam Sale, but I have a significant backlog with a lot of different stuff in it.