I beat the first three missions.
The game is, to be quite honest, a mess. It's a total mess. None of the elements ever truly come together and work well enough for them to warrant being in the game, other than the music, which is GODLY. Oh my GOD is it so good. This game better sell well enough, otherwise Sony might think it was fucking Debney's fault.
Anyway, the controls: why? Really, I mean, why? Motion controls are just so imprecise here and it's so annoying. I didn't have any problem getting the dragon go to where I wanted it to go, but I couldn't play sitting down and it was constantly a struggle. It just wasn't natural to control. Regular controls would make the game significantly more enjoyable.
I found the combat system to be just so muddy and confusing. The tutorial system, to begin with, is so broken. This is what happens:
*hmmm, I'm just flying around*
"Oh, a hint!"
*PRESS L1/R1 to...*
And then it vanishes. It was on the screen for maybe two seconds. It's like the controller is violently shaking on the screen, buttons and sticks are flashing, it's tilting, what the hell, I can't see anything, whatever etc etc. Jesus. So I do the tutorials, which, btw, you have to go back to on your own-- and separate game tutorials are like things from StarFox 64 era of game design. Anyway, I got it under control in the air. The lock on was working pretty well for me, though instead of having both L1 and R1 be lock on, I would make L1 lock on and R1 cycle. That's just me.
I could get the 180 to work after some practice, though I feel it's a bit of an unnatural motion as you have to hold it for a second or two. I'm blasting things or whatever, doing my waggles and whoops, etc etc.
And then I hit the ground. Wow. What an absolute disaster. The camera swings around and wigs out like nobody's fucking business, the framerate drops way too often, you just button mash, the dragon has no sense of momentum. It's just a total mess. I hate going on the ground. As soon as you get near the ground the camera swoops overhead and there's like excessive motion blur and whatever. It's a mess.
Graphically I still think the game is very impressive. Sure, the terrain in the future looks a bit like unending feces, but...the fact you can even see that far is totally mindblowing. I am not happy with the framerate.
The objectives are so unclear and annoying I can't even put it into words. Take, for example, the first mission, when Jevon or whoever is yelling OH NO THE MILLS, LOOK AT THE MILLS.
Me: WHAT MILLS WHAT THE FUCK MILLS I CANT SEE SHIT WHAT IS THE ARROW POINTING AT OH GOD THE ARROW JUST DISAPPEARED WHAT AM I LOOKING AT
Game:
*PRESS DOWN TO GO INTO DRA*
Me: FUCK!!!
So using the objective marker mode makes things significantly better, but in the air everything STILL looks too similar, and god forbid the object you are looking for is on a dark red background. Oh god.
I just found myself looping around entirely too frequently to go after objectives I couldn't find. There's way too much stuff going on.
And there's a ton of WTF stuff in the game, like loading the pause screen or the way levels end. It is so amateurish.
Factor 5 is designing a game that would have been absolutely gangbusters in 1997.
I enjoyed it quite a lot. I also enjoyed the mission on the bridge.
