Folklore and Why I Started Playing PS3 Again

Recently I have not been playing the giant 500 dollar blu-ray game player I have in my living room. The last time I had used it was around Christmas to watch Superbad on BD. The thing was there was games out that I wanted to play, but I couldn't get over the 60 bucks on ALL of the games that were worth playing, still. Finally this month, I got another game for Valentine's Day: Folklore. It had been on clearance at Target the past few weeks, 30 bucks, and has actually turned out to be a pretty good game.

What makes it pretty good? Well it has already passed the spouse test. I think that the game looked interesting enough in the store for my wife to get it for me was a plus, but now she wants to sit with me and watch while I play. There hasn't been many like that lately (Puzzle Quest XBLA not withstanding). I've also found that it suffers ( in a good way) from the PokeMans syndrome. We have been carefully leveling and capturing the folks in the game, and it's actually fun. The SixaxiS control is kind of a throwaway, but the collection aspect itself is very fun. It's also very pretty. I'm not one to look at the detail in the game, but this one really shines. Some reviewers have cited some problems with the game, but I haven't seen them yet.

One is that it's repetitive. Some of the criques of the game say that while there are two characters, you must play the game with both and the storylines are too similar. I disagree with this, mostly playing as both switching by chapter has been fun, and while the maps are the same, the folks are different and the stories do have two defined points of reference. Keats and Ellen do not expereince the same story. Another critique leveled at the game was that it mixes cut scenes and traditional RPG dialog too much. A petty argument to be sure. There is an interesting somewhat comic book / graphic novel approach to some of the cut scenes which is nice I might have pointed to the bad voice acting rather than this.

All said I think Folklore is well worth 30 dollars and hits a more reasonable price point for some of these early PS3 titles. Despite the complaints from reviews, I think many people looking for a budget minded title on PStriple would like this.