PSN - The Last Guy and Faery

So I've been downloading demos from the Playstation Network (PSN). I'm actually involved in testing some rewards program that Playstation has and I want to at least reach the Select level before the beta comes to an end in April. I thought the first tier would be easy to reach, but this has proven untrue. The rewards programs has quests that you can complete for bonus points so I've been doing the "Download Five Demos and Play Them" quest (which you can do three times). Recently I downloaded two games "The Last Guy" and "Faery: something about Avalon". Let's start with The Last Guy.

This is obviously a quirky Japanese title that was quickly ported and brought over to the U.S. It shows in the games execution. The game is about "zombies". Apparently "zombies" have taken over the planet and only one person (you) can lead the survivors to safety. Why the survivors can't lead themselves to safety is beyond me. I also can't figure out why only one guy can run around and find all of these people. Why can't a crack commando team be sent in? The game is pretty enough, it seems to make use of a real world map and slaps some graphics over it. Your guy wanders around finding people inside building or just standing in the road and leads them to a safe spot. If a "zombie" spots you it will chase you and hopefully eat some of the people that are following you. It's all simple gameplay, but it's hard to follow. Your guy is small and it's easy to lose sight of him. The people you rescue are smaller. But the "zombies" are at least a decent size so they can be seen. And I call them "zombies" because I don't consider a giant Malboro-esque plant that looks like it was ripped out of a Final Fantasy game to be a "zombie".

Thankfully the demo only had one level which was easy to beat. There's then a trailer that played, but neither the trailer or the demo influenced me to buy the game. And while I don't consider this blog to be about game reviews I will tell you to stay away from this one. I think the game should have about tricking people into thinking you would lead them safety and in the end you actually lead the people to the "zombies". That sounds like more fun.

I then tried out the game Faery: Legend of Avalon or Rescue of Avalon or the Ravages of Avalon, I tend to forget. The generic title though should give you a heads up that this will be a generic game. A generic RPG of all things too. There's a wasted character creator where you can select your characters attributes for their face. This is always dangerous, especially since I created a female fairy who looked like her face had been punched in but she had the horrible birth defect of giant mouse ears. So I called her Mouse, she was an odd blue/purple color with sea-foam green hair.

Once in game things got worse. First I was confronted by two smaller fairies who had nicer wings then my character. That actually annoyed me. Then I actually got lost on my way to my first objective. What a great way to start off. I like how while my character is in conversation her head kinda jerks around randomly like she's having a micro seizure. And now I have to talk about the flying. Fairies don't walk, they fly. But the character model has almost zero animation when the character flies. It's like a statue is just zooming through the air, it is horrifying to look at. Take some time to animate the character!

So I finally meet Oberon. Oberon is ugly, I have to say that I prefer the look of Oberon from the old Gargoyles cartoon. That will always be my Oberon. Here we're introduced the moral choice system. Or maybe it's just the bad conversation system. Apparently if I say mean things people will love you a little less. So I said mean things to Oberon at every turn. While Oberon no longer loves me as much as he used too, he still sends me on some quest to fix some magic portals. But first I need to find some companions.

I found...... you know what? I didn't care who I found. All I know is that he was being attacked by goblins and he was going to introduce me to combat. I think I'll point out that his character model looks like I could've made it in the character create menu. Not a lot of thought seems to have gone in to your companions then. So I help this guy with the goblins. The combat is basic, basic RPG menu based gameplay. You select attack from a menu and your character attacks. Not exactly original. Once combat was over my patience with this game ran out. I just couldn't bring myself to continue. So I turned off the game, went to the Playstation Store and downloaded demos for Hoard and Tetris. Expect to hear about them at some point in the future. I'll also get back to God of War III.

Should I be concerned that when I was taking items from a chest in Faery it asked me to "Validate" instead of just saying "OK"?