Payback - Initial Thoughts


Planet_M

Still Fresh
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Nov 23, 2005
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I received the full version of Payback on Friday and thought i'd post a little on my findings.

Firstly the packaging. A single card with the payback logo on the front, against a black background and the instructions squashed on to the back contained in a transparent case with a hook space at the top incase you want to hang your gp2x collection on a shop type rail? A large raised space in the front of the case contains the sd card in it's own case and a replacement gp2x stick cap. If I were to choose one word to describe the packaging i'd go for 'functional'.

After booting I decided to watch the intro movie, once it finished the game dropped back out to the main gp2x menu - good start! I think this bug was present in the demo too, so I guess if i'd bothered to report it it might have been fixed. I started a game in Story mode (there is also a 'challenge' mode (reach a set score as fast as possible) and 'Rampage' mode (no traget score, I've not played but believe you just have to score as much as you can before running out of lives)). The first level is the one present in the demo - so I went straight for the tank mission and completed the level in a 'gold' time (4 minutes, 8 minutes or less is 'gold').

Next I had several short games, since I didn't have enough time to play for more than a few minutes at a time. Each time I played the 2nd level (set in the same city as the first one, although with some modifications and obviously different missions). I was disappointed to find MANY missions that had timers to complete tasks. It had been commented in the demo that the timed tasks tend to be hard, and often the location your looking for isn't easy to spot - they can become VERY frustrating, so seeing so much reliance on them was disappointing for me.

I took to exploring, successfully jumped my car into a football field, fully explored it and the surrounding walls with very little reward. Drove my car out on a ramp and managed to land in a small fenced garden from which I couldn't escape by car or on foot. I had to commit suicide to escape (what would I have done without an explosive weapon?). I did a few more missions, actually quite enjoyed a few of them (the ones without timers). Had a 'collect a briefcase, drop it off and follow the person collecting it' mission, unfortunately the person I had to follow got stuck on the corner of a fence and just kept moonwalking on the spot. After a few minutes I had to shoot him, I hoped the first shot might knock him off the fence, but it didn't - so I shot him a few more times, thus failing another mission. I went down a ramp somewhere which took me into a building, but when I tried to get out, two buses and some cars were wedging themselves into and around the entrance. I couldn't get my car out and couldn't escape on foot, neither could I seem to steel one of the problem vehicles, so it seemed I was stuck. After a few minutes (and a lack of weaponry with which to commit suicide) I gave up and switched off.

Last night I spent about an hour playing, managed to get a pretty decent score (but still hadn't reached the necessary 2 million, I had spent a long time exploring and generally messing around - beating people up, driving crimes, etc). Next I noticed the red battery warning light came on, but guess what? There is no option to save mid-level. Therefore all the progreess I made last night is lost and I need to go through all the same missions again. The gold and silver times are 10-15 minutes, but obviously the nature of this game is that it is open and you should be able to reach the objective score by whichever method you choose, even if that takes two hours. The lack of a mid-level save feature is a HUGE oversight given the well documented power hungry nature of the gp2x, it is very likely this will not be the only time my progress will be lost due to dead batteries. A mid-level save isn't out the question either - i'm sure it only needs to save the current score/player stats and which levels have been attempted (i'm confident that every single car and pedestrian isn't tracked in real time).

The only other additional feature I've noticed is a camera height option, moving the camera out a bit did seem to help a little.

I loved the demo, but the bugs I encountered on the next level and the lack of a save feature make this more frustrating than enjoyable. I hope they intend to release a patch to fix more bugs (i'm certain people will find many more, i've barely scratched the surface really). Most of all I really hope they add a mid-level save feature as a matter of urgency, It's impractical to not have the ability to save at any time when the batteries only last 4-5 hours.
 
Does the full version have the limited number of lives that the demo has? For a game where you can either do the missions or just run around and do crazy stuff (usually resulting in your death), the limited number of lives made the "run around and do crazy stuff" option quite restrictive.
 
Those are all the same bugs I noticed in the demo, I think I will still buy it though, did the cap that came with it have "GP2X" wrote across it?
 
mdinire posted on Dec 10 2006 at 05:10 PM said:
Those are all the same bugs I noticed in the demo, I think I will still buy it though, did the cap that came with it have "GP2X" wrote across it?
Hold your horses for a month or so, I'm sure that if more people will do so, Apex designs will be forced to fix some of those bugs (the one where you're stuck without weaponry to kill yourself could be solved with an easy menu option...) and release fixed games. Unless you'll be able to download patches, but even then it seems rather dodgy, better get it right the first time.

- Alex
 
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Alex. posted on Dec 10 2006 at 10:23 PM said:
mdinire posted on Dec 10 2006 at 05:10 PM said:
Those are all the same bugs I noticed in the demo, I think I will still buy it though, did the cap that came with it have "GP2X" wrote across it?
Hold your horses for a month or so, I'm sure that if more people will do so, Apex designs will be forced to fix some of those bugs (the one where you're stuck without weaponry to kill yourself could be solved with an easy menu option...) and release fixed games. Unless you'll be able to download patches, but even then it seems rather dodgy, better get it right the first time.

- Alex

Yeah I thought that too, but from this thread I assumed that patches were inevitable
 
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Those sound like the kind of problems that should be quite easy to spot after very little play. I'm surprised the beta testers didn't catch any of them.
 
Planet_M posted on Dec 10 2006 at 09:05 PM said:
I took to exploring, successfully jumped my car into a football field, fully explored it and the surrounding walls with very little reward. Drove my car out on a ramp and managed to land in a small fenced garden from which I couldn't escape by car or on foot. I had to commit suicide to escape (what would I have done without an explosive weapon?). I did a few more missions, actually quite enjoyed a few of them (the ones without timers). Had a 'collect a briefcase, drop it off and follow the person collecting it' mission, unfortunately the person I had to follow got stuck on the corner of a fence and just kept moonwalking on the spot. After a few minutes I had to shoot him, I hoped the first shot might knock him off the fence, but it didn't - so I shot him a few more times, thus failing another mission. I went down a ramp somewhere which took me into a building, but when I tried to get out, two buses and some cars were wedging themselves into and around the entrance. I couldn't get my car out and couldn't escape on foot, neither could I seem to steel one of the problem vehicles, so it seemed I was stuck. After a few minutes (and a lack of weaponry with which to commit suicide) I gave up and switched off.

A classic in bad game design.
 
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Yeah, I got stuck in the yard in the demo once... I got out without suiciding though. Can't remember how for the life of me, I'll have to try getting stuck again now ;)
 
Shikaku posted on Dec 10 2006 at 07:34 PM said:
porthose posted on Dec 10 2006 at 08:15 PM said:
A classic in bad game design.

JaqMs posted on Dec 10 2006 at 08:22 PM said:
An untested game on an untested handheld. Go figure.

Same person.
You haven't yet considered the possibility me, 'porthose', JaqMs and the OP of this thread are the same person? Because obviously, only one person worldwide can have any sort of dissatisfaction with a GP2X related product.

An admin (maybe a mod) could confirm if they used the same IP address to post. But if JaqMs actually did make another account to post that, that's pretty pathetic.
 
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On the other hand, constantly complaining about the placement of the headphone jack is just about on the level of registering multiple accounts to complain ;)
 
RECIPE: Instant Flamewar
- 1 Quart Forum
- 1 GP2X Product
- 1 Tbsp Epicenter
- 1/2 Tbsp JaqMs
- 1 Tbsp DaveC
- 2 Moderators
- 15 Angry Ignorant Posters
- 1 Tsp Nutmeg

Stir vigorously.
Serves 1 forum or 40 active members
 
Goddamnit leave my GP2X alone you FREAK! EEEEEK

:rolleyes:

- Alex
 
Epicenter posted on Dec 10 2006 at 10:25 PM said:
RECIPE: Instant Flamewar
- 1 Quart Forum
- 1 GP2X Product
- 1 Tbsp Epicenter
- 1/2 Tbsp JaqMs
- 1 Tbsp DaveC
- 2 Moderators
- 15 Angry Ignorant Posters
- 1 Tsp Nutmeg

Stir vigorously.
Serves 1 forum or 40 active members

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Damn you, Epicenter ... that was really funny :lol:
 
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Back to the topic.

1. How do you find the game's graphic compared to the demo?
2. Is the game always responsive?
3. Do motion and sound go out of sync sometime?
4. Why did you choose to have the game shipped to you instead of downloading it?! Was not there a downloadable copy? If no, then why?! Does this have something to do with protection?

Thank you.
 
slygamer posted on Dec 10 2006 at 10:05 PM said:
Does the full version have the limited number of lives that the demo has?
Yes.

mdinire posted on Dec 10 2006 at 10:10 PM said:
did the cap that came with it have "GP2X" wrote across it?
Yes

Fargo posted on Dec 11 2006 at 05:48 AM said:
1. How do you find the game's graphic compared to the demo?
2. Is the game always responsive?
3. Do motion and sound go out of sync sometime?
4. Why did you choose to have the game shipped to you instead of downloading it?! Was not there a downloadable copy? If no, then why?! Does this have something to do with protection?
1. I haven't compared closely, but they look the same to me (i guess somebody else will spot a heap of difference though)
2. I've not noticed any issues with responsiveness.
3. I haven't noticed any sync problems, but as I said, I've only played for a couple of hours in total.
4. I'm not aware of a download version, but I generally prefer a physical version of games to a download anyway.

Adding your own music isn't a simple as I'd hoped either - you have to save the audio as two raw 44.1khz/16bit RAW wav's (one for left and right channels), then convert them using an included windows only binary (nice choice for a linux based console!), rename them in the correct way then edit the playlist file, but be warned:

Please note that any changes you make to Payback are at your own risk. It has
several anti-piracy measures that may trigger if unexpected changes are made.
 
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