PSN: Guest Analysis: A Curmudgeon's Review Of Qore - Episode 04
[Matt Matthews of Curmudgeon Gamer wishes to inform those without Sony's new Qore initiative to just what exactly 'Qore' is. With each episode, he will kindly educate the GamerBytes masses.]
Qore's Wikipedia definition: "A subscription-based interactive online magazine for the PlayStation Network. Currently only available in North America, the service offers high definition videos, interviews and behind the scenes footage pertaining to upcoming and recently released PlayStation games. It also offers exclusive access to game demos and betas."
Bottom line: The new baseline for Qore quality, with room for improvement.
Sony makes its own news with its PlayStation.Blog, and that's a lesson the Qore folks should take to heart. While they're putting together a decent video production, they have shown precious little that's unique and newsworthy. Last month they scored with the demonstration of Baja: Edge of Control running on three PS3 systems on three HD displays. This month they failed to make a single segment that reached that level of uniqueness.
Which isn't to say that this month was a complete failure, but rather a caution that this month's strategy is not necessarily a long-term winning formula. Qore Episode 04 features four top-tier titles due out on the PlayStation 3 in the next three months: LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Prince of Persia, and BioShock. Not a single one of those games is a weak link of the order of last month's NBA 08: The Inside.
Perhaps the most anticipated of these games is LittleBigPlanet, due out in October, which gets two brand new demonstration videos with Qore hostess, Veronica Belmont. If you've seen any LBP videos at all, the game's appeal speaks for itself.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the game – the social networking – was covered too swiftly and could have been the real hook for this episode overall. Episode 04 also comes with a special LBP theme for customizing your PS3's interface, however in practice it has proved too junky and cluttered for regular use.
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, the follow-up to last year's hit, looks great in the demonstrations but the single video segment in Qore comes across as little more than a recut trailer with buzzwords. As Belmont interviews the staff producing the game we repeatedly hear about “deformable terrain,” yet there is no actual demonstration of what this means for the player. If you want to convince people that this truly is a killer feature, then it should be shown – not just a buzzword. That said, the game looks fantastic and the clear explanation of multiplayer options (4-player local splitscreen and 16-player online) was appreciated.
The new Prince of Persia game also looks amazing and this segment succeeds by providing background information that most players probably won't have learned already. Some vague details about the Prince's motivations are given along with a partial explanation of his female partner's origins.
The second of the two video segments is an entertaining interview by Audrey Cleo (not Belmont) with David Wilkinson, director of animation on the new Prince of Persia. Mr. Wilkinson's sidelong look and sheepish grin appear to betray detached amusement at the whole interview process.
When the first words out of his mouth are “because of the power of the PlayStation”, you get the feeling he's actually laughing at himself and the system that's landed him in before a camera talking about his work. Then he lets on that he was actually working until 5AM the night before and you realize how little he probably wants to be there. Even so, Mr. Wilkinson is probably the most real and memorable person we've seen on Qore.
BioShock is coming to the PlayStation 3 in a matter of weeks and the timing of its inclusion in Qore is ideal. Regrettably, it's also a game that you should probably know little about before jumping into, so the single video segment here treads a careful path around the story but does touch upon the moral choices the game permits one to make.
With that said, this segment does not introduce the game very well and at least some time should have been dedicated to explaining, as simply as possible, what the game is and why players should be initially interested (even if the full games provides reasons that are more difficult to explain).
The extra bits this month include an invitation to download a demo of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (which will be available the week of 11 September 2008) and some outtakes from the filming of Qore. The outttakes are fun to watch, again primarily because Belmont turns out to be a very natural and entertaining hostess.
There are also two hidden games this time: last month's Death Orb 3000: The Final Encounter (accessed via R2 on the main menu) and the new shoot 'em up Qore Wars. In keeping with the simplistic nature of these hidden games, Qore Wars has you battling waves of light and heavy flying saucers which occasionally drop bombs on your three basis at the bottom of the screen.
The first few levels are easy, but more frequent bomb drops and more enemy ships quickly make the game more challenging. (If we see the same development track we did with Death Orb, next month's installment will give us Qore Wars with powerups and new enemy types.)
By the time the next Qore arrives, annual subscribers should have begun to reap the benefits of at least two episodes: early access to Motorstorm and SOCOM. As these features begin to bear fruit, Qore becomes a better value proposition.
If the team can put together a killer list of four games for the October issue (as it did in September) and actually offer truly exclusive information or videos (as it did in August), they'll begin to move Qore from an interesting side program for the converted and toward a hook to begin converting the masses.
