Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper

I was intrigued by this game. Advertised with a low level of difficulty I thought, why not give it go? How bad can it be? The answers to these questions are elementary. It is a very bad game which is good reason not to give it go.

Where to start? Story probably. You play as the most infuriatingly arrogant Sherlock Holmes in history whose voice, persona and demeanour and all terrible. Compared to any other reimagination, this Sherlock takes the award in the ‘biggest dickhead’ category. He puts Watson down at every opportunity, is very self-congratulatory over solving the simplest puzzles and is basically a total moron.

The case in the game is that you have to track down the infamous Jack the Ripper, something that Sherlock was never involved in, and this fact is explained away at the end of the game. The storyline involves you having to play through various areas of London and break the law in various ways such as stealing, vandalism and trespassing - none of which matter to a ‘consultant’ such as Sherlock Holmes - to catch the Ripper.

The game is classed as a point-and-click adventure game and has such elements as items that have one specific use, dialogues that have to happen in a certain order and a complete lack of freedom and direction that would otherwise enable you to complete the story in your own way. There are several examples of this through the game, the most notable being this; at one stage you have to move a barrel out of the way of the window. Now, I ‘m not the strongest person in the world but I’ve moved my fair share of heavy objects. This barrel was a reasonable size but like any object of a certain height with a small base, you can apply force to the top of the barrel to topple it out of the way. Sherlock can’t do this because he is too clever. Instead you have to use various bits and pieces scattered around the in-game environment to lever the barrel over – a lot more suspicious that just moving it with your hands.

Visually, it is very poor. I would have expected a lot better to have gone into a game released in 2009, especially one so dialogue driven. There is no effort with character’s facial expressions and you would find more diverse facial reactions in the Oblivion world and that’s saying something.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 40 Achievements

For a game so bland and linear it does offer a lot to do in the way of achievements.... I say that but of the 40 achievements available, 36 of them are main story driven so a simple playthrough leaves only four outstanding. Unlike Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, there is no redundant achievement for completing the game on hard.

All four non-story achievements are missable – none of them are secret and all of them are fairly straight forward. You just need to know when to do them and as it is a linear game, any guide telling you what to do will tell you when you need to perform these actions. The only one that caused me a problem was the Curious achievement which is for looking at all of the items in Sherlock’s apartment. I missed this because I went in with a mindset of just playing through the game. However, a missable achievement that you can replay and get in five minutes isn’t really a problem.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The game was not fun at all. It took a lot longer to play through than I expected and I found myself becoming bored and unconcerned with the outcome of the story, which is a major failure for a story driven game as I do quite often enjoy them.

A quick note on the reality of the story: Jack the Ripper was never caught and Sherlock Holmes was the master detective so combining the two means that the outcome doesn’t quite add up. So how does the game deal with it? Well, of course Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery and uncovers the identity of the killer. But he doesn’t hand him over to the police and instead creates his own brand of vigilante justice. Because, you know, solving crimes for the police is beneath the arrogant son of a bitch.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I’ve never really invested in the Harry Potter series, however when I found out that games were released, I thought, ‘Hello, surely this will be an easy quick 1,000 points?’ I was sort of right, it was easy but it was nowhere near as quick as I thought.

The storyline follows The Order of the Phoenix story only you have to complete various tasks to get students to come to your little party which is the main part of the game. I found it unexplainably annoying that they all refer to Dumbledore’s Army as the DA. I couldn’t help but think of District Attorney every time it was a mentioned and it’s such a common reference that I don’t think it should be used in this way. It’s not confusing. Just stupid.

Visually I thought the game very poor, even by the standards in 2007. It feels like the game was, again, another quick release to market the movie. This is especially apparent with the amount of direct-from-movie cut scenes and the fact that all of the unlockable bonuses are behind the scenes footage from the movie. There may have been more varied bonuses but I have an interest in games, not in the actors behind the Harry Potter franchise, so I didn’t look at anymore after the first two.

Sound effects are normally the best part about movie franchise games and Harry Potter is no exception. The music is very in keeping with the movie which is always good – even if the music is totally fucking annoying, contrived, overdone, etc, etc.

The gameplay... now I’m not sure what I really did throughout the game but it all felt very wishy-washy. Go here, Harry and pick up this thing for me. Now go to class and battle with the horrendous wand controls to mix potions and perform spells. Now fight Malfoy and his followers using your various spells without knowing if they having any effect until you fall down or they do.

Basically the game play is a sack of shit. Most of the game is spent following footsteps to the next location where you have to do something uninteresting that doesn’t mean anything.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 41 Achievements

The game wins point straight away for having no missable achievements. This is good as the whole game is a free roaming environment. There are eight for playing through the game and another for completing it on hard mode.

I was very confused by the concept of hard mode, even more so as a lot of people seemed to think that two playthoughs were required and a lot of people complained that the hard mode achievement didn’t unlock for them. I found a really easy way around this – play the game on hard from the start. Only a masochist would want to play this game through twice a you don’t have to play it through on normal to unlock hard. As the game mostly consists of puzzle solving with set solutions, it isn’t actually that much harder than normal mode anyway.

The other achievements are all collectibles and tasks – basically getting 100% in the game nets you the remaining achievements. A lot of these, such as beating all Gobstones Champions and getting top marks in each of the lessons, are largely luck based due to the intensely poor control system. I came very close to rage controller destruction when trying to get the ‘O’ rating in the charms class. This involves you having to cast the various spells that Harry can learn in quick succession. The problem with this is that it involves having to flick the analogue stick in various ways and the game will not pick up the actions you want to do in a timely manner which was totally fucking annoying especially when you have to do everything really quickly.

In addition to this, you actually have to be really good at chess to beat the chess champions. Fortunately there are a lot of chess simulation programmes on the internet to make this easy.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I did not enjoy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at all. It was touch and go as to whether I would even finish it. My own stubbornness and a late night won through in the end though and I was able to add this to the 100% pile. I’m not sure I’ll play the next one. I have a lot of other games to work through before descending even deeper into masochism.

NHL 2K6

Like Madden NFL 06, I don’t really know much about Ice Hockey and still don’t after playing the game. The general summary appears to be, get the puck in the opponent’s net and almost anything goes relating to how you do it.

As it’s a 2006 (ugly) game with no storyline, I’m just going to do another play-by-play on the achievements.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 5 Achievements

Firstly, all achievements are difficulty specific meaning that you have to perform said action on said difficulty level – or higher. Here we go.

1.       Score on a breakaway (Amateur). I’m not sure what a breakaway is but I’m assuming it is turning defence into attack and scoring. Every goal I scored seemed to be on a breakaway so it’s a fairly straightforward achievement.

2.       Score a goal with defenseman (Pro). Again, fairly straightforward. Simply give it to a man at the back, have him run at the other team and score. Ping!

3.       Score goal when two men down (Pro). The most convoluted part of this one is actually getting the men sent off. I struggled with committing fouls at first but once I worked out the rules - after an internet consultation - this one was also a breeze.

4.       Score in Under 1:00 (All-Star). I think I got lucky with this. I maximised the in game timer but didn’t need to. The first shot I had went in after only twenty in game seconds.

5.       Score on penalty shot (All-Star). This one was a bitch. With the above difficulty in even committing fouls, it was even harder to draw one from an opponent on the highest difficulty level. In the end, I gave up with legitimate means and did it using four controllers. Once I eventually got the penalty shot (I had to find a video of what this looked like) I was shit scared of missing the goal. Thankfully I didn’t and I was able to put NHL06 away forever.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I did enjoy the gameplay. It was very relaxing and carefree once I had gotten used to controls and I would have pursued more of these but, like I said in my Madden review, EA’s tendency to close servers has led to a lot of discontinued achievements so this may be my only taste of NHL gameplay.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Meatballs is advertised as another easy 1,000 points and it did not disappoint. The complete score can be achieved within 8 hours of gameplay.

You play as Flint Lockwood and go around various locations to remove the copious amounts of food produced by his... his... food producing machine with a name I cannot remember. The basic storyline is that you have to get from A to B in all levels. That’s it, there’s not really a lot more to it.

In terms of gameplay it is very simple. You have five different tools at your disposal which can be used to destroy the various foods around the levels. Once again, the game play is very clean with very little problems with glitches or the playable character getting stuck and being unable to continue – a common theme in other games.

Visually it is cartoony and nothing more than I would expect from an animated movie adaptation, however it loses massive points for the sound effects. Flint has a name for each of his tools and certain catchphrases for when he selects them from his inventory. These names and sayings become incredibly annoying really, really quickly and what’s worse is that the kids think they are funny and so will repeat them over and over and over again as well, making me scream bloody murder inside my head.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

As stated earlier, it’s a simple 1,000 points with not a lot of variety. You have to complete the game (a given), destroy all the hydrogenated food pods hidden (I use this term very loosely) throughout the levels and use your weapons in certain ways a certain number of times.

I only had trouble with one level when trying to find the hydrogenated food pods and had to use a video to find it, however the others are generally in plain sight. The levels are very straightforward with few hidden areas.

The main problems came from the weapon based achievements. You only get given a specific set of weapons at the beginning of each level and there are achievements for destroying certain types of foods with certain weapons. However, certain foods only appear in certain levels so you have to replay levels a few times in order to get the required kills. The most notable of these is the achievement for cutting 25 marshmallows. You only have the cutter in maybe two levels where there are marshmallows and you need to get 25 of them. I think I had to replay one level seven times in order to get this.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an easy game that has replay value for kids only; a standard summary for a game that doesn’t break any boundaries in the genre. That said, should a game for kids based on a kid’s film be looking to break boundaries? Probably not, but it does teach kids that sugar is bad and I did feel a little bit sick after being bombarded with all the food!

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

This is the last of Ezio’s games in the series and it sees him travel to Constantinople for some more rooftop adventures... meanwhile future Desmond is trapped in a coma with both Ezio’s and Altair’s memories to get by. There is a lot more to the plot but I won’t ruin it by trying to unravel to twisted mess that involves reliving ancestor’s memories. I also don’t understand why, in order to wake Desmond up, the only way to do so is by living through the said memories.

They have also introduced some weird platforming sections where you have to generate blocks to traverse through first person eighties style blocky environments. I didn’t understand the appeal of this but others must have as there is a DLC focussed solely on this gameplay element, but more on that later.

Visuals and sound are the same as the other Assassin’s Creeds but I did think that Constantinople was a lot more colourful than Rome or the various cities from Assassin’s Creed II. The environments are fun to explore and it was nice to go through a completely new and unique environment.

The gameplay is quite funny in places. The game is set a long time after the events of Brotherhood, and Ezio has noticeably aged. You would think this would be a problem that would affect his ability to climb walls with triple the efficiency of Sean Devlin, however it has not. When Ezio arrives and meets the local assassin (who is also dressed in a really colourful fashion) he is given an extension claw which allows him to jump to the same height as when he was younger!

Age also hasn’t affected his way with the ladies. He meets a woman and begins some kind of weird courtship thing that only Italians can do. The woman is question looks young enough to be at least his daughter. What a legend.

As with all Assassin’s Creed games, they have introduced a new gameplay element – tower defence. And they know it’s shit as they only make you do it once through the storyline of the game. They have also introduced bomb making as a new and completely redundant way of dealing with enemies. I mean, the sheer variety of Ezio’s weapons without adding bombs into the mix was enough – this added extra only makes things more complicated than they have to be. And, as it’s a new feature it is of course built into the storyline to make the fucking things.

Achievements – 69 Achievements – 1,490 Points

With all standard Assassin’s Creed games, you have to use all of the game’s various different bits to get the clean sweep. For Revelations this means that you have to craft the bombs described above and you have to kill a certain amount of enemies with said bombs. In addition, you also have to complete tower defence multiple times to clear the map and there is also one for doing it without using a cannon, which is essentially ‘complete tower defence on hard.’

In addition to the unavoidable storyline achievements, there are also achievements for climbing various monuments quickly. If you don’t know the right path, this could take multiple attempts to do but it’s not too arduous.

There are the standard collection achievements too but these are scaled back in terms of volume. There are 100 animus fragments as part of this and they don’t show up on the map until you have collect 50 of them, so it makes it a semi challenge to find them all, unless you use a guide or map (which I did.)

Multiplayer

Similar to Brotherhood, I had completed all of the offline achievements in 2012 before stepping up to the multiplayer arena this year. In comparison to Brotherhood though, these achievements were a lot less time consuming. You only have to get to level 20 and this was boosted relatively easily. The others all came along with it and it’s the first multiplayer set that hasn’t had me screaming at the TV. I’m amazed that I put it off for so long.

Downloadable Content

There are three different DLC packs for Revelations. Two of them are multiplayer ones. One is an extra characters pack which means that you have to do certain things with each of the characters. This isn’t too troubling and the additional achievements were fairly easy to get in a group.

Another is a set of maps and this was problematic as finding a group with the DLC, or people who were willing to pay for the DLC, was quite tricky. I got there in the end and some of them could be earned solo in the training ground mode. This is also applicable for the above character based achievements.

The last DLC pack is a solo pack called The Lost Archive and as I mentioned earlier, this is just a another version of the first person block placing levels from the main game. It is relatively tricky and there are two of the toughest achievements in the game in this pack. You have to traverse certain areas of the map without dying and I feel like I got quite lucky as I managed to bag these on my second or third attempts.

The Lost Archive was one of the least enjoyable DLC packs I’ve ever played and that is probably because the normal Assassin’s Creed gameplay is enjoyable and I was hoping for a further expansion on that rather than the sections of the game that I put up with.

The multiplayer achievements are the only reason I’ve completed this one so long after the initial release date and I’m glad to see the back of the Assassin’s Creed games and keep up the 100% completion record on these things... Oh wait, now there’s Black Flag to do...

Madden NFL 06

I have to confess, American Football is not my strong suit. I had never watched a game and don’t know who any of the stars are and have even less of a clue regarding the stars and best teams from 2006. After playing the game though... I still don’t really know what’s going on.

There’s not really a lot else to say – it’s a football game – so let’s dive straight into the achievements.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 11 Achievements

Due to low amount of achievements I’ll do a play by play (pardon the pun).

1.       Activate RS Card. All you have to do is click the right stick when you start a franchise.

2.       Score a Touchdown. Pretty self explanatory and I did manage to get this without the help of a guide telling me how to play American Football.

3.       Get a First Down. Having heard downs mentioned in previous conversations with people who actually know what they are, I was still stumped.  However, a little research revealed to me that it is making ten yards down the field. I got this one with the above after running past all the opposition on an easy difficulty level.

4.       Complete an Offline Game. Again, self explanatory. Simply completing a game versus the CPU, regardless of winning, is enough.

5.       Enter History Book. This is the same as number 1 – all you have to do is enter a specific screen in franchise mode and the achievement is yours.

6.       Four Sacks in One Game. This is where they start getting a little less straight forward. I had to mess around with some settings to make this easy. By turning offsides off you can stand next to the Quarterback and take him down as soon as he gets the ball. Do this 4 times and boom, achievement unlocked – at the end of the game you are playing.

7.       Rush for 200 yards. Setting the game to low difficulty and always using plays that hand off to players that run rather than passing will get this is one game. The plays are easy to identify. I used Madden’s advice most of the time and every time there was an opportunity to pass to a Running Back, I took it. Having the difficulty down means that you should be able to run past the opposition again. Make sure to pay attention to the amount of yards covered by the player as the achievement won’t unlock until the game is completed.

8.        Pass for 350 Yards. The same as the above except use passing plays instead of running plays.

9.       Win a Franchise Game. This can be doubled up with Complete an Offline Game. The only reason I didn’t get them at the same time was because I was trying to learn how to play the game first!

10.   Win the Super Bowl. The easiest way to claim American Football’s most coveted prize is to start Franchise Mode and select all the teams as user teams. You can then just simulate to the end of the season – you don’t even have to play the Super Bowl match to unlock the achievement.

11.   Complete 30 Years of Franchise. This achievement is a joke but is also worth 400 of the 1,000 total points available. The only real way to do this is to select a team and simulate the 30 years of franchise. Despite skipping all of these games, it still takes in excess of 4 hours to complete.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I do enjoy learning things from games and I have increased my knowledge of American Football from playing this. However, I didn’t enjoy it and I don’t have the patience to learn an entire new sports game to the point where I would enjoy it. I won’t be playing another American Football game but this is mainly due to the fact that the games are made by EA and they have online achievements which have subsequently been discontinued.

Rango

As part of my Gamerscore push, I picked up a few easy games for the cheap. These included Rango which for some reason was imported from China and the case was written in Italian. It didn’t make a lot of sense as the postage was about as much as I paid for the game (not a lot).

I haven’t seen the Rango movie but if it’s anything based on the game, it would be truly bizarre. Rango is a chameleon sheriff is a desert town and the storyline of the game consists of him retelling a story about some strange rocks which have been causing people to disappear. He has a girlfriend called Beans, an iguana, who is also a bit weird but that’s in keeping with the theme of the game.

The whole storyline is a bit strange but then again it is designed for kids so that’s to be expected. However, I do have a criticism of this. The game is for seven plus and I tried this out on the kids around my house and I don’t think that they paid much attention to the storyline. The action on the levels is what keeps them entertained though.

In terms of the visual and sound quality, it has the same issues as all other games of its genre – visually unspectacular with lots of repetitive jingly tunes which drive you mad after about twenty minutes of play time.

The gameplay is actually its main strength which was a big surprise. It is a very clean game with hardly any glitches or gameplay errors. This was fantastic, especially as the game is geared more towards the kids which means they won’t be frustrated when things keep going wrong – something I’m becoming more used to!

Achievements – 46 Achievements – 1,000 Points

The majority of the achievements are story related and a simple playthrough will nail the majority and get you another if you do it in hard mode. Difficulties are stackable as well so no need for multiple playthroughs... for difficulty reasons anyway.

There are a few achievements for gathering Sherriff Stars, the in game currency and another for purchasing all upgrades for Rango. These two things do not tally up at all. I had to spend a lot of time at the end grinding out stars to get the last achievement.

There are a few others where you have to do specific things like killing enemies in a certain way or using the special weapons to kill a certain amount of enemies but these are all relatively straightforward.

And that’s pretty much it. The grind isn’t really that bad considering some others I’ve done recently and the total play time for the 1,000 points is probably around 10 hours max.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s most redeeming quality is the fact that it is an easy 1,000 points to add to the pile and not too time consuming. The visual and gameplay quality make it one on the best games I’ve played in the genre however it offers no adult replay value. The kids like it though.

The Saboteur

The concept of The Saboteur is a unique one. Set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, you play as Sean Devlin, an Irish Mechanic with a passion for women and dynamite. I never really did understand why an Irish guy was in Nazi occupied Paris but I didn’t get too caught up on it. I also tried not to focus too much on the fact that his career is about fixing stuff while you spent the whole game going around Paris blowing stuff up.

The premise is that Sean, with his sort of adoptive French family, enters a race. During said race, this stereotypical Nazi dude shoots out Sean tyres so that he loses the race. The Nazi guy then kills Sean’s French sort of brother which causes Sean to join the French resistance.

As far as plots go, it’s pretty out there. Sean as a character though, is absolutely hilarious for the majority of the game, especially when he goes on mini swearing fits and calling every German in sight a ’knob-jockey.’ He is, however, really unbalanced. His rage issues and womanising traits make him a great character, but hard to relate to and this is quite important considering we are spending in excess of 60 hours inside the guy’s head.

During the many loading screens throughout the game, we are reminded of Sean’s abilities. As a mechanic, Sean has gained the ability to ‘climb almost every building in Paris.’ While his climbing ability is to be admired, this statement is nowhere near true and led to countless frustrations when trying to climb buildings only to be stopped by either barbed wire or Sean not being able to reach the next ledge. Also, in order to climb to have to repeatedly tap the A button which makes climbing a very bad copy of Assassin’s Creed style gameplay.

Also, I kept getting caught up on the surrounding scenery which became very annoying after the fifth-hundredth time it happened.

While I’m on gameplay mechanics, the disguise function is a pile of garbage. Sean can wear a Nazi uniform to blend in with the Nazis and not be spotted by them. However this only works when you are a certain distance away from them which, in certain circumstances, makes the disguise more of a hindrance than help. For example, In Nazi occupied France, Nazis don’t run. Ever. This means that when you run as Sean i a Nazi outfit, this is suspicious. However, when I blow the fuck out of something, it’s not suspicious at all for the other Nazis to run towards the explosion. Fuckers.

The music is a fifty-fifty for me. At first I enjoyed the added atmosphere it provided, however when you are playing for the points, it’s an awfully long time to be listening to either to plinky-plunky music that adorns the streets of Paris and the five songs that come on the radio. I did download a few versions of ‘Feeling Good’ afterwards though, but they didn’t play the song enough in game to not hate the music.

Achievements – 45 Achievements – 1,000 Points

I didn’t use guides for any of the achievements in the game which probably means there are easier ways or cheaper ways of doing things that playing properly so there are maybe certain ways to earn these easier, so I’ll only focus on the ones that pissed me off.

There are four missable achievements, two for completing the story missions in a certain way and two which relate to a side quest for killing Nazi Generals in a specific way (of which there are a limited amount in the game).

Certain things in this game really shouldn’t be an achievement. There is an achievement for kissing fifty women. While not immediately obvious, if Nazis are chasing you, you can ‘hide’ from them by kissing a woman. This is absolutely crazy especially when there are ten armed Nazis chasing after you and you are dressed exactly the same! However, this is a side point – my point is I had nowhere near enough opportunities to escape from the Nazis near kissable women so I had to spend ten minutes kissing the same woman to get the achievement.

There is also another achievement for ‘Chain Smoker’ where the description is to stand around doing nothing. What this means is that you have to smoke enough cigarettes to get this and to smoke cigarettes, you have to not move. I do not understand the point of a game that awards you for not playing it, especially to the point of smoking 100 cigarettes.

And then there is the completing the ambient freeplay events of which there are... hang on... 1,338 in total which makes the Assassin’s Creed flags look like nothing. This is made even worse by the fact that you have to blow most of this shit up with dynamite or a rocket launcher. This means that the total shit you can blow up in one go is 39 things before you have to go and buy some more explosives assuming you don’t die. Arduous much?

And the last one is the same as the 100,000 credits from Quantum of Solace. You have to spend 75,000 contraband and there is nowhere near enough opportunity to get this during normal play unless you die a lot. Just to clarify, I did die a lot and still didn’t get close to this amount. It was another one I had to grind out at the end which was just another additional frustration.

Downloadable Content – N/A

To sum up, although it may not seem it, it was fun in places and Sean’s conversational skills are something I want to see more of in games. It’s not a groundbreaking sandbox game and if I had to chose between this and Grand Theft Auto, it’s not a contest. Far from perfection, but not the worst thing I’ve played and I did get a sense of achievement from completing all the ambient freeplay stuff. Just don’t ask me to do it again... ever.