Valve can’t be arsed with it, EA seems to be making a pig’s ear of the port and, just to make matters worse, Xbox LIVE will be getting a demo in about half an hour. Because those seventeen people who haven’t already bought might need more persuasion than all those perfect review scores.
All in all, things are looking pretty grim for the PS3 version. 1UP’s recent preview is particularly cutting, revealing some staggering consistency problems in the game’s framerate, which apparently is only meant to be running at a pathetic 30fps anyway. The blame for this – possibly unfairly – is going to fall on EA’s shoulders. Valve palmed off the PS3 development to an internal EA team at an early stage so that it could concentrate on the more directly compatible 360 version.
The game is supposed to be landing in December, which leaves very little time to finish ironing out all the bugs before final release. I guess we’ve all learned that the PS3 just wasn’t made to support three year old PC gaming technology. Who’d have guessed? The only silver lining in this cloud is that Portal seems to be working fine, which is almost reason enough in itself to buy the 5-in-1 box pack. If Team Fortress 2 has also overcome the technical hurdles then you could probably live without experiencing all of Gordon Freeman’s mute antics and would still be getting some good value for money.
But recent multiplatform successes like Call of Duty 4 and Assassin’s Creed surely mean we shouldn’t have to put up with second rate Xbox 360 hand-me-downs any more. I’d advocate a boycott, but then I’ve bought The Orange Box on PC, meaning I’ve now paid for two copies of Half-Life 2, so I’m very much Valve’s bitch already.
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