Speaking of which, when the hell did the standard price for big games become $60? I was curious if Just Cause 3 had any sort of pre-release discount (expecting to see it discounted from $50 to maybe $45 or so, if anything), and was shocked to see that Steam had the base price at $60. Assuming it was a weird mistake or some sort of crappy "we've priced the game higher than usual so the 'sale' isn't really a sale" kind of garbage, I popped on over to Gamestop.com, and was shocked that all the console games were $60 new. Is that the new standard price?
I can see that. I didn't mind it for the walking around, but there were many times in tense action sections where the character simply wouldn't do what I wanted him to do.
Thing is, though, I kind of like what they were going for. I've noticed that ever since the shift to 3d, there's been a lot less focus on how a character moves, and a lot of the characters "feel" the same. For example, I'm sure you could take a lot of the classic 2d games, replace their characters with a square or a generic sprite, and you could probably still guess which one was which. Mega Man, Mario, Sonic, etc all have a very different feeling of mass and inertia when moving around. A lot of 3d games have gone the FPS route in just having your character being a moving cursor. Sure, GTAIV didn't really get it right, but at least it felt different.
Ugh, I had forgotten about that. It didn't happen every time, but yeah, it happened enough when I was in cover that it was definitely annoying. Many times I'd be dragging my mouse around repeatedly in my attempts to plead my case to the game to allow me to aim to the left.
I didn't notice any of that, to be honest. As long as I crouched, I was able to pull off even headshots with a pistol at a decent range.
What system did you play the game on? I never saw some of those (or they weren't egregious enough to bother me). For me, firing was always hold-right-click-then-left-click, regardless of on-foot or in a vehicle, and I never noticed any delay with the phone. Of course, I hardly ever used the phone.
Completely agreed on the food vendor stuff, although I'd always call the applicable "gun van" friend for armor refills instead of going to the stores.
That only serves to remind me of something else that was a huge step back: money. In San Andreas, money actually served a purpose. There was tons of property to buy, and I even ran up on a wall when the game requires you to buy the airfield to progress in th story. I didn't have anywhere near enough, so I actually had a purpose to do some of the side stuff. In GTAIV, there's nothing to buy but guns, armor, and hot dogs. I had well over $50k by the end of Gay Tony, despite constantly topping off all my ammo supplies.
The character control never really struck me as sublime in SR3, just "standard". Mouselook to look, WASD to move, no feeling of weight to the character or the vehicles.
Having played through Just Cause 2, GTAIV, Saints Row 3, and Red Faction Guerrilla more or less in a row, it's kind of amazing how each one has some things that it gets really right, and some things that it just completely drops the ball on. One thing that bugs me about all of them and sandbox games in general is the weird disconnect between the freedom you have outside of missions, and how much the games lead you around by the nose in missions. As much as Saints Row has the wacky "hey, do anything you want" feel, the missions are a ridiculously linear series of objectives. Go here, kill this guy, get in this particular vehicle, etc. Of course, Saints Row also had the problem of a severe lack of challenge when it came to some of the non-mission activities. At first I figured that clearing out the various clusters of gang members would present some nice little setpiece shootouts, but then I realized that from the moment you get access to the penthouse (maybe 15 minutes into the game) you have access to an unlimited supply of free VTOL jets with unlimited lasers and missiles, completely negating any challenge.
Just Cause skirts with this a bit, too, and I'm worried that JC3 will tread more towards that direction. Still, Rico's fairly fragile, and your limited supply of ammo does leave some challenge in the game.
