This was submitted by "Anna" at go-games.org, and is basically advertising on their part, but they put some effort into it and it's somewhat informative, so I'm putting it up despite the fact that they are more than a little complimentary of their own game :)
With the amount of Facebook games released in the past years, one would expect an abundance of stylish, original games that would range in their diversity to fit any niche imaginable. That’s the theory. The practice, as it stands, is that the majority of these games’ names end with a –Ville or –Farm suffix, developed solely to profit on the success of their popular predecessors.
ProStreet is a game with an identity crisis, and I think a lot of people who buy it are going to be either confused or irritated by this. It's also riddled with annoying bugs, though it is largely playable.
While ProStreet gives the initial impression that it's something to do with street racing, it's not. In fact, ProStreet is all about track racing, albeit production cars. In fact, the name sould probably have been ProTrack, suggesting production track racing. The closest equivalent product, and seemingly the inspiration for much of the content of the actual game is Gran Turismo A-Spec. The 'street' element of this game is almost entirely window dressing. The badly designed, and difficult to use menu system attempts to affect a bit of the US ricer/street-racer culture style, and there is an extremely annoying commentator who attempts to inject a little bit of street colour into proceedings, but make no mistake, this game is substantially different from its aging predecessor "Need For Speed: Underground 2", which was about actual street racing. The 'Pro' part, whether it's supposed to mean professional or production, is suitable enough I suppose, but you can forget the street - many of the tracks are not even substantially urban.
Superficially, Heavenly Sword looks a lot like an evolution of the God of War (GoW) series of games, though there is apparently no connection between the Cambridge based developers Ninja Theory (previous Just Add Monsters), the Sony Cambridge site and the Sony Santa Monica site responsible for the GoW series; nevertheless, the resemblance is striking. It would seem that Heavenly Sword started out as a PC based development looking forward to a next gen console, which was originally going to be Xbox 360.
Apart from substituting the angst-ridden, suicidal-homicidal Nariko - with all her Freudian baggage - for the equally angst-ridden suicidal-homicidal Kratos, the rest remains the same: lots of bad guys are on the screen. You kill them and move on to the next one. Sometimes you have to do something to hit a switch, hit buttons as they flash up on the screen, fight a boss or fire a gun, but that's about it. Unlike GoW, despite a fair range of game-play options, somehow the game comes up feeling very limited and flat - possibly because the game is based on a combo system that serves surprisingly little purpose. While the game seems to be based around the combo system, it tends to feel a bit redundant, and instead comes down to timing on the counter button more than anything else.
Assassin's Creed (AC) is in many ways a successor to the Prince of Persia (PoP) series. It brings a sci-fi twist to the story, and perhaps a hint of modern politics, but I wouldn't say that it's more adult than PoP because of this, as in many ways, despite it's fairytale setting, PoP was quite an adult product. I mean by this that it never felt as if the developers of PoP were talking down to their audience, and reassuringly, the same is true of AC.
The basic experience of playing AC is one that tends to initial interest and excitement as the game introduces itself, followed by a period where repeating various tasks in the game begins to become tedious. However, persistence rewards the player with the skill to trivially execute the more repetitive tasks quite quickly, and they cease to represent a chore. It is only in the latter stage that the game begins to show its true form, and remains satisfyingly engaging until the end.
Back at the end of 2004 one of the most awaited games for PC ever was finally released. Delayed for a year due to a security breach and early problems with the Steam download and registration system, its arrival was anticipated by gamers for nearly two years. Half Life 2 made almost as big an impact as the original. Read why in the rest of this article.
You're probably wondering, why review FFX now? It was released back in 2001, and it's now over four years old. Nevertheless, it remains one of the very best RPGs available for the Playstation 2, and is one of the better incarnations of the acclaimed Final Fantasy series. No review site could be complete without a Final Fantasy X review. If by some awful freak of fate you own a Playstation 2 and you haven't played this game yet, it's my job to convince you: play this game, it is amazing. Hopefully, I won't leave any spoilers in the review either.
From the slew of previews it's possible to work out what's happened with DOA4. Not only did this crucial title slip and miss the US launch, but it's still not ready - that doesn't mean they aren't prepared to ship it though...
ProStreet is a game with an identity crisis, and I think a lot of people who buy it are going to be either confused or irritated by this. It's also riddled with annoying bugs, though it is largely playable.
Superficially, Heavenly Sword looks a lot like an evolution of the God of War (GoW) series of games, though there is apparently no connection between the Cambridge based developers Ninja Theory (previous Just Add Monsters), the Sony Cambridge site and the Sony Santa Monica site responsible for the GoW series; nevertheless, the resemblance is striking. It would seem that Heavenly Sword started out as a PC based development looking forward to a next gen console, which was originally going to be Xbox 360.
Apart from substituting the angst-ridden, suicidal-homicidal Nariko - with all her Freudian baggage - for the equally angst-ridden suicidal-homicidal Kratos, the rest remains the same: lots of bad guys are on the screen. You kill them and move on to the next one. Sometimes you have to do something to hit a switch, hit buttons as they flash up on the screen, fight a boss or fire a gun, but that's about it. Unlike GoW, despite a fair range of game-play options, somehow the game comes up feeling very limited and flat - possibly because the game is based on a combo system that serves surprisingly little purpose. While the game seems to be based around the combo system, it tends to feel a bit redundant, and instead comes down to timing on the counter button more than anything else.
Assassin's Creed (AC) is in many ways a successor to the Prince of Persia (PoP) series. It brings a sci-fi twist to the story, and perhaps a hint of modern politics, but I wouldn't say that it's more adult than PoP because of this, as in many ways, despite it's fairytale setting, PoP was quite an adult product. I mean by this that it never felt as if the developers of PoP were talking down to their audience, and reassuringly, the same is true of AC.
