Farpoint

[DisturbedSwan]

Started this yesterday, my first game with the PS Aim Controller. Put in about 2.5 hours so far.

 

I've been pretty blown away by it, as a fan of FPS' it has long been a dream of mine to actually be 'in' an FPS and now I can finally do it. 

 

I remember playing Time Crisis at arcades and thinking that was the pinnacle of shooting-tech but if you'd of told me in 20 years I'd actually be in there, peering over the cover, reloading and popping shots off at enemies I wouldn't of believed you. Farpoint is, a dream come true, but the PS Aim Controller is the true star of the show.

 

The PS Aim Controller is just perfectly designed. It's like they employed some kind of Witchcraft to get the perfect weight and button placement of everything, there's no compromises at all. There's one analog stick on the end of the barrel closest to you, surrounded by the regular DS4 face buttons, then further down is another analog stick in just the right position where your left hand rests on the underside of the controller.

 

There's a D-Pad positioned just above the under-barrel analog stick along with an options/share button but its perfectly spaced so they can't interfere with each other. On the outer side of the under-barrel are the two L2/R2 buttons which are used as the secondary ammo types in Farpoint.

 

Having such a perfect controller in a game designed by the same folks sounds like a recipe made by Gordon Ramsey's loins themselves. But unfortunately, the game doesn't quite live up the Controller.

 

Getting in there, seeing the gun move in your hands and feel its weight, vibration and feel exactly the same in real life is legitimately life changing, its fucking incredible. 

 

As you go on though you notice that the game itself is relatively uninspired. You're on a Mars like planet and everything looks just like you'd expect, very rocky and brown, there's a few nice vistas and alien forna floating around that'll make you go 'woo' but by-and-large its a pretty dull Alien planet to find yourself on.

 

The gunplay is fantastic, being able to close one eye and see down the holographic sight of your assault rifle is amazing. As is the vibration of the controller every time you pull the trigger and reload, the Shotgun has this reload animation where it let's out air as you place more space shells in it and you feel the vibration in the controller, its so rad.

 

The enemies though are as uninspired as the environs. They're all spiders is the easy way to say it, you've got small facehugger-types, bigger burrowing types, big tank types and ones that throw balls at you from a distance. There's also a boss which is a massive spider, so arachnophobes stay away.

 

Just as you're getting bored of the spiders you encounter a new enemy. Its another generic one, you guessed it, robots/drones! 

 

The pacing seems really off too, it never let's up and seems to always have you in some mad firefight, a game like this needs time to breath from time to time but it just never allows you to catch your breath, I have found it quite difficult at times as well.

 

Probably about half way in, I like the game, its a decent - albeit uninspired - FPS but it's the controller which makes it compelling.

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this today, took me about 5 hours.

 

Definitely the most feature-rich, near-AAA quality game I've experienced on PSVR, I guess Batman: AVR had similarly high productions values but that was comparatively linear and short.

 

I completely changed my mind on it, the first half way a good demonstration of how good the PS Aim controller is, but the second half is where the game actually comes into its own. It keeps the spiders and robots, but they largely play second fiddle to a third covenant-esque alien race which is SO much better than anything before it.

 

Hiding behind cover, then peeking out with your alien sniper rifle and popping the head off a distant alien is such an incredible, unique feeling. I mentioned before about by dreams of being 'in' Time Crisis as a kid, and that is exactly how this felt, ducking, peeking and aiming down the scope of my gun, shooting enemies heads off, having to turn and move from cover to cover to avoid being killed, it was just phenomenal. The enemies made it, they actually felt threatening, unique and intelligent compared to the robots and spiders, the environs get way better too, there's still far too many brown rocky levels for my liking but they do mix it up a bit with some more alien structures and futuristic abandoned space stations.

 

Some of the set pieces too are fantastic. There's one bit near the end where you encounter a load of the robots attacking some spiders and vice versa and you have to run through the middle of them whilst all these crazy shit is going on around it, it is a fantastic, heart-stopping moment.

 

What surprised me the most though was the story. I really didn't expect anything at all but it was genuinely well written I thought and went to some places I really didn't expect from such a generic sci-fi setting, Laura Bailey plays one of the abandoned Scientists and is fantastic, as is her colleague and the relationship between them and how it grows is really quite touching.

 

It was way better than it needed to be that's for sure, and with a lot more heart than I expected from another sci-fi shooter. So yeah, I'd say Farpoint with the PS Aim controller is most definitely the 'killer IP' for the system, I'd recommend it far above everything else I've played so far and it's much more of a 'complete' game than pretty much any of the others, there's a Versus and Co-Op mode you can play online too which has quite a few missions/maps but I haven't tried them yet.