Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh if only I had an PS3... completely miss these sort of game on Xbox.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/28/the-u ... railer-to/

Apologies, but the video isn't Yowtyowb.

Not as good as Noby Noby Boy.

8/10 anyway.

I've been playing it and it's very nice so far.

Can't see the video.

What the frig is this?

I linked the youtuber, here, yonks ago.

viewtopic.php?style=19&f=3&t=8604&p=672843&hilit=Swan#p672843

Looks weird.

I don't have a PS3 though.

I was interested, and then they denied me being able to buy it due to not being a PSN plus member, and then I lost interest.

It's been available to non PS+ members since 25 October.

It's a story only Mimi would write: a king wants everything to be clean and pristine so paints the world white. His subjects complain that they keep bumping into stuff so he decides to paint shadows on them.

There's more to it than that but it's a nicely told children's story.

I wanted something sinister, which would have suited the black/white thing to a tea, but this'll have to do.

I've played a bit more of this now.

In fact, I've almost finished the short four chapters. Tonight it will fall and I'll probably have enjoyed myself, but not quite as much as I want to.

The first chapter is like the YouTube video I liked earlier. You throw black paint and splatter the white 3D canvass revealing where to go. There's a pond, a courtyard, a town and some other stuff which doesn't last long. You stumble amount and fumble your way forward before turning around and looking at what you've created. It's quite a good trick. There little to interact with though and there's few moving objects or creatures. In fact, the frog in the video is the only one I remember.

Then you get shadows on all the objects and the black paint thing is over.

It tries another trick: what if you fired a blob of water instead? So you get a load of water based puzzles, as you rotate wheels, fill up stuff and make stuff float.

Then come the vines. They're attracted to water and follow your blobs of water everywhere. You can climb up the vines so you creates ladders over walls, under bridges and everywhere inbetween. This was the best bit for me. Moving the vines around and rendering walls into bushes as you roam about the Spanish-looking castle ramparts.

Finally, I've gone somewhere else in the dead of night firing black paint into the darkness, so you have to illuminate flowers.

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, I'm bored of writing about it really, because whereas the atmosphere is lovely and reminded me of ICO there's no real motivation pressing you on. ICO had this creepy story whereas this is about a boy who's chasing a swan. There's hints that the story is supposed to reflect the personalities of the boys parents... or some shit. I just couldn't care because it's not grasping me. It's more like a fun box of toys to play with. And it is fun when it works: one section has you building blocks in 3D whilst in an artists paperwork. It's groovy and I bet some folk on here would really enjoy how creative that is, but it needs that something that spurs you on.

It's lovely, it really is, but that's all. It's just missing one thing to make it all worthwhile.

Like what Journey had.

That was an ace game wonnit?

Journey was indeed excellent. Playing with randoms at its finest, and indeed the only time Ive acceptedva friend request from a random

Finished then. Too short, too waif, not enough of that special something that could have catapulted it into the stratosphere.

Good things: the music is bloody lovely, the art styling is gorgeous, the graphics overal are very nice (what's there anyway), the story is twee, the voice acting is, I can't stress this enough, absolutely perfect. Really. Perfect. Who ever did the voice of the storybook woman was spot on - tone, pitch, delivery, everything was right. Same with the guy who is the king. Spot on.

I can't help feel that it wasn't worth a tenner though. I enjoyed it but it needed a little bit more.

6/10

Now, if they'd have gone for something spooky and sinister I reckon they could have nailed it. It could have been a corking Halloween release. Ah well. They'll probably go on to do something ace after this.