JaseC said:
I'm beginning to think the effect was intended to be in the game, but was erroneously removed from the v1.00 build.
Yeah I don't see motion blur either.
Just completed the game btw and felt it was fantastic, motion blur or not. Those saying they weren't as impressed as with U2 had me worried but U3 visuals eventually floored me just like the U2 did back in the days. No "been there, seen that" feeling at all. The lighting especially is amazing, as well as the god ray effects.
As for the "too many set pieces" I personally felt they were perfectly integrated with the action and a big improvement over those of UC2. I went through chapters 13, 14, and 15 without breathing basically and chapter 20 was miles better than a similar one in U2. I was genuinely excited during those sequences. Dare I say I felt as amazed as Harrison Ford was in those Japanese U3 promotional videos.
If there is one thing they should definitely improve on is the animations. The animations per se are amazing of course, but the way Drake moves around feels so floaty and there are quite a few hard transitions that totally break the smoothness they are going after. Hard to put into words but I don't like for example how jumping trajectory feels "rigid". I have been playing infamous FoB just before U3 and the difference is staggering. Cole interacts with the environment in a much better, smoother, realistic way than Drake.
This is further exposed during the CQ combat, where animations badly transition between one another. Compare it to its obvious inspiration (Batman AA/AC): it's night and day in terms of smoothness. That said I liked the new CQ combat system quite a bit on a "gameplay" level. It merges with shooting quite well and improves the tactical depth of the whole thing quite a lot, along with the new throw-back- grenade mechanic. This last bit really adds a total new layer of tactical thinking to the firefights. Quite a few times I was intentionally avoiding to kill grenade throwing enemies as the provided grenades to throw back at the armored guys.
What else? Hmm... a few cheap deaths here and there, but other than that nothing serious to complain about besides the lack of Move support (which I firmly believe would have done wonders to the combat based on my experience with the similarly structured combat/camera system of inFamous FoB). Oh, and the puzzles were quite good this time around.