Games Inbox: Video game story length, Sonic The Hedgehog horror, and PlayStation VR 2

I’m not sure Mr B is really getting the argument with regards to Red Dead Redemption II. People aren’t complaining that it’s too long because it’s passed some arbitrary milestone but because the story is a bloated mess that goes on forever and to no additional purpose. If it had been shorter it would’ve been more enjoyable. And that would hardly have affected the overall runtime anyway, if you add on all the open world stuff you do on the side.

Some games are clearly too long for the amount of ideas and/or story they have, with Alien Isolation being another obvious example. It’s not providing value for money by being longer it’s making the overall experience worse.

And besides, if value for money is your primary concern just wait until whatever game it is is three months old and you can pick it up for next to nothing anyway (admittedly doesn’t work with Rockstar games, but then value for money wasn’t the problem there).

There shouldn’t be any minimum or maximum length for a game but instead it should be exactly as long as it needs to be for the amount of gameplay variety and story it has to tell. That’s why a two-hour indie game can be the perfect length and so can a 100-hour Japanese role-playing game.
Ashton Marley

I honestly thought everyone was exaggerating about the Sonic movie before I saw the trailer, even after having seen the leaked images and knowing they look really bad. But oh my goddess, what hellspawn is this?! Just remember everyone, if you make a mistake at work and are feeling low, just remember that somehow that design for Sonic somehow got approved for a $90 million movie and was approved by dozens of people. Just incredible.

The sad thing is a lot of the other stuff seems fine. Jim Carrey is clearly perfectly cast and his car thing and the robot drones all look very reminiscent of the movies. The voice for Sonic is fine and although I’d never really thought of it like that, doing super speed scenes like Quicksilver out of X-Men does make sense. I even liked the cat joke… if it wasn’t being delivered by a CGI monstrosity that may have scarred my psyche for life.

The difference between this and Pokémon seems like night and day, so you gotta appreciate keeping that ‘90s rivalry going for the ultimate nostalgia boost.
Onibee

I’m not sure what version the reader was playing but I disagree that Twilight Princess is a better or more modern seeming game than Ocarina Of Time, especially if you’re talking about the 3DS version. That’s an excellent remake if you ask me, changing only enough to account for the new format and passage of time.

Although it is surprising to me that Nintendo doesn’t do more remakes. We occasionally get a Zelda game but never any Mario ones. I’d much rather see a slightly updated version of Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch than most of the other recent ports and Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine would be amazing with a bit of a brush up.

I’d even like to see 2.5D versions of the old game, or 2D versions with cel-shaded graphics or something. There’s lots of things you can do but recently Nintendo hasn’t even re-released the original versions let alone anything else. I know they’ve got a lot on their plate but you’d think that’d be a relatively simple project they could just set a team on permanently.
Onibee

The news that PlayStation VR will be compatible with PlayStation 5 was notable to me. Hopefully Sony won’t insist all PSVR games remain compatible with PlayStation 4 and we see some PlayStation 5-only PSVR games. The extra horsepower of PlayStation 5 could give PSVR a significant second lease of life, as I expect it will be a few years in to the PlayStation 5 life before we see PSVR 2, if at all.

I’m really looking forward to trying No Mans’s Sky VR. I bought the game at release, played it for 25 hours but never went back. It did have a hypnotic chill like quality to it, in large part due to the fantastic music. which I enjoyed. Patched up and fully in VR I think it has a lot of a potential to be something not just extremely enjoyable but, unlike a lot of VR games that seem to want to dropkick your senses, also a relaxing game.
Simundo Jones

GC: Although it’s undoubtedly good news we’d welcome a PlayStation VR 2. The hardware resolution is not something the PlayStation 5 can do anything about and it could really do with being higher, even if nothing else changes.

Thought I would add in my 2 cents in to the Labo VR. I tried Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and it’s impressive that it works. The thing it does highlight though is the low-tech visuals. Playing the game without VR I didn’t notice the visuals, only on one occasion did I take notice of the low tech visuals and that was in Lake Hylia on one of the islands.

The game also became very difficult to control as Link would go off some other direction. Not sure if anyone had this issue and that was feeling nauseous. I really could have thrown up.
Alek Kazam
PS: I really wish I could unseen the Sonic movie trailer.

GC: Remember you’re playing the game at a lower resolution than normal and with the screen much closer. It’s likely the VR mode also downscales the visual detail too, to keep up the frame rate – since it essentially has to generate the same game twice. Frankly, we’re amazed it works at all.

So, this actually came out on 1st April so I was hesitant to believe it, but it might actually be true?

It’d be great if so, as I recall spending hundreds of hours on R-Type Final, unlocking all craft, and I felt it was a great swan song for the series, and this would be a great comeback.
Lucratcia (PSN ID)

GC: Unbelievably, it is true. New developer Granzella is made up of a number of ex-Irem staff and this is an officially licensed sequel. It does depend on a crowdfunding campaign due to start this month though.

The funny thing about these Half-Life VR rumours is that they are actually quite believable. The only reason we don’t believe them is there’s been so many false rumours and vague hints from Valve over the years that it just seems like you’d be an idiot to believe it now.

But I believe. Or at least I believe there’s a good chance. Epic Games setting up their own rival store might end up being the one thing that reminds Valve they’re a game developer again.
Cookie

Put quite a few hours into Days Gone so far, enough to open up three of the survivor camps, and… I’m enjoying it? It’s not the greatest thing ever. It’s not original and it doesn’t have amazing action, but it does everything pretty well and I think we forget how rare that is really. Personally I think the reviews are probably fair and most of the outrage over them is the usual binary Internet thought process were everything has to be either the best thing ever or the worst – no in-between.

I will say it is odd how little the hordes have to do with anything though. I just did a story mission where we just went to have a look at one and it’s amazingly impressive how many zombies (sorry, not sorry, freakers) there on screen. But that’s all we did, just watch them. Knowing I won’t be able to fight them for a dozen or more hours is really weird and I can’t see the logic in it, as it’s obviously not a technical limitations.

I will be playing on through to the end though and don’t regret my purchase. It’s clearly not game of the year material or anything close to that, and nowhere near as good as God Of War or Marvel’s Spider-Man, but it’s good honest fun. As long as you know what you’re getting in for I think there’s nothing wrong with that.
Jack White

I literally cannot believe what my eyes are showing me with the Sonic trailer. Why have they made it look like he’s a guy in a (bad) costume? Is this some modern day equivalent of business scam from The Producers? Do Sega want it to fail?
Paulie

This guy has mocked up a new version of Sonic in what looks like minutes, based on when the trailer came out. So why is it 100% better than the actual film! The whole movie is already in so bad it’s good territory.
Wackamole

Left is original screenshot. Right is my rework to make #Sonic more stylized. pic.twitter.com/IhXeAZYlQI

— Edward Pun (@EdwardPun1) April 30, 2019

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Purple Ranger, who asks what is the best PlayStation exclusive ever?

With Days Gone receiving mixed reviews but strong sales we want to know what you think is the best exclusive released on any PlayStation console, from 1 to 4 and including the portables. Anything is eligible as long as it was a PlayStation console exclusive at some point – it doesn’t matter if Sony themselves published it or not.

Why do you like the game so much and do you feel it was important to the success of the host console? Did it make any special use of the console’s unique features and how did it compare to other exclusives of the same period? (We’ll be running similar Hot Topics on Microsoft and Nintendo games in the future.)

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk