Funk of Titans (Xbox ONE)

The Xbox Marketplace has become something of a drain on my wallet lately. There always seems to be about one-hundred 75% off offers going on every month at the moment. That, coupled with the fact that there are two free games per month means that the backlog is building quicker than I can clear it and with some sizeable gaming projects coming up (not to mention ones already under way) it looks like it will only get bigger.

Thankfully Funk of Titans, available at 75% off, provided a break from some of the larger projects and allowed me to rack up a quick 100%.

The premise of the game is basically a bizarre take on Greek mythology. You play as Apollo – a black guy with an Afro who is all about the Funk. Sadly other music types have invaded the realms of the Gods and you must make your way to the disco to show the Titans the true music power and that funk isn’t dead. That’s all well and good... but what type of game is Funk of Titans?

You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a music rhythm game and it is anything but. The genre description merely says Platformer which I suppose is true. As Apollo you have you have traverse through several 2D sidescrolling levels. You automatically move in the direction you are facing and have two abilities; jump and hit. As you jump and hit your way through levels you have to collect gold discs, which represent the Godly funk music, and the occasional Pegasus idol that allows you to play a bonus level riding some kind of Pegasus Hoover thing.

Honestly, it is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever played. And I’ve played Deadly Premonition. Apollo is joined by his father Zeus who is the spitting image of the Matrix’s Morpheus; Hercules who is basically Apollo’s biggest fan; and Athena who is a carbon copy of Aretha Franklin.

When you are not running through levels or talking to your entourage, you must fight grunts in the arena which is essentially the half way point or each of the three worlds. These fights consist of a 60 second quick time event which is nearly impossible to lose. At the end of each level, you have a dance off in the disco against the Titans representing Pop, Rap and Rock and once you basically dance off with them and banish the inferior music, the game is over and you have saved the heavenly realm. Oh year... Spoilers.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 21 Achievements

As stated above it is a really quick game to get through and could probably be done in less than five hours. You have to clear all the worlds completing all levels without dying and collecting all gold discs. You also have to collect the Pegasus idol from each level and this is only possible in some levels if you have purchased certain weapons from the shop. There are three weapons you need to get all the idols but once you have got them, the whole game is plain sailing.

There are two achievements that require a bit of after-game play. As well as completing the levels, Zeus/Morpheus will give you challenges to complete along the way. Chances are you will need to play a few more levels after fully clearing the game to get these and if I’m being really critical, this is a weakness but only because I don’t like having to continue playing when there is nothing new to do.

Also one of the challenges involves having to go quite far riding the Pegasus Hoover and this is really, really annoying because you will ride the Pegasus and beat this distance marker about five times before the challenge comes up and it doesn’t stack. These are my only complaints in what is a really simple game though.

Downloadable Content – N/A

While Funk of Titans is one of the weirdest games I’ve played, it’s certainly not the worst and provided a good few hours of fun. Once you’ve completed it though it doesn’t really offer any kind of replay value and although I didn’t mention this earlier, the music is sinfully infuriating!

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (Xbox ONE)

Due to the fast moving nature of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I wasn’t really that surprised to see another title on the marketplace shortly after the release of Unity and Rogue, however I was surprised it was this close and also surprised at the different nature of gameplay.

Chronicles China is a 2D side-scrolling assassin adventure that follows the story of Shao Jun, the last of the Chinese order of assassins who was trained by none other than the Italian master Ezio Auditore da Firenze. After the destruction of her order at the hands of a Templar Faction known as the Tigers, she goes on a revenge mission, side-scrolling her way through China, killing all Templars that come across her path. Or not, depending on how you play.

The story is encapsulated by cut scenes featuring still images and text summaries before each mission which are totally optional.

The music and graphics are really good and it does feel like Ubisoft put a lot of effort into getting the fine details right and this is also reflected in the gameplay. I came across next to no glitches during my time playing the game and all of the fuck-ups were down to my own ineptitude at playing.

The aim of the game is to get through a variety of different areas getting past guards to assassinate your target. There are three ways you can go about doing this. The easiest way (in my opinion) is to assassinate your way to the target. Killing people without being seen means that you get around the strangely difficult combat and dead people cannot see you. Another way would be to hack and slash your way through the guards but not only does this mean you will die a lot but it also scores the lowest in terms of getting to your goal.

Despite the two ways being the most fun, they are not the way the game wants you to play. The highest scoring way of playing the game involves getting past all the guards without being seen and not killing anyone. You are given four tools to use as distraction tactics to achieve this.

Other than sneaking past guards and killing people, there are a few levels that require you to run through them as fast as possible and you are scored on your time. Thankfully, these levels allow you to kill people without incurring any penalties.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

A good game it may be but is it completable? Well, yes otherwise there wouldn’t be a review. The nature of the game means that there is a set way of getting through it so practice makes perfect in this regard.

There are several cumulative achievements which make it a requirement to play the game in its three different ways. There is an achievement for assassinations and slide assassinations. You have to get past 30 patrols without being seen and without killing anybody and you have to escape alerts after being seen 30 times. The most frustrating of these ones involves getting crossbow guards to shoot each other by using evade to move out of the way when they shoot. You have to do this 50 times. Luckily there is an area in sequence 8 where you can spam this out in about half an hour.

There are two collectible achievements; one for collecting all the animus shards (standard) and another for collecting all chests. There are also three level specific ones for clearing sequence 5 in under 5 minutes, completing the optional objective in sequence 9 and clearing sequence 11 without being seen. This last one is tricky but factors in to the last achievements I will mention.

As I mentioned above, if you go through each level without being seen or killing anyone, and completing all optional objectives, you will get the highest score possible. Of course, there is an achievement for doing every level like this. Despite the fact that video guides exist, this still requires a lot of patience and you can always find better ways of doing some sections.

After completing the game, there is the option, and two achievements, for playing the game through on New Game Plus Mode, however after you do the achievement for getting through the game without being seen, New Game Plus doesn’t offer any additional challenge and it is actually a breeze. You only have to make sure that you get 100 helix kills with the ability only available in New Game Plus and the 100% shouldn’t be too far away.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall it is a very well executed game. It doesn’t have a lot of diversity in controls but this is a good thing in my opinion. Chronicles China has a set game plan and it executes it very well.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

I bought this one a long time ago and really wanted to play it. Rockstar have a habit of creating games I like and I really wanted to dive in but for some reason, I kept putting it off like some kind of massive project that I didn’t want to start.

This was stupid because the game isn’t actually that long and, it terms of quality deliverance, it’s not actually that good either.

You play as Jimmy whatshisface, the new kid at a boarding school after apparently being expelled from every other school he has attended. He immediately makes sort of friends with that guy Gary who you can identify as a twat from the get go. You also meet Russell, the local meathead who is only capable of saying his own name.

The basic story follows Jimmy who, instead of being a bully as per the game title, actually makes friends with all the social groups and kisses all the girls (if you chose to play for the achievements that is.)

As well as following the main storyline, you have to attend classes much like any school. These are basically mini-games that involve you having to do some Math, Science, English, etc, related exercise that makes you reflect on how difficult real school is. Once you’ve done both classes, you have very little time to do anything else before curfew, especially as the town is a minute’s bike ride away. A minute translates to an hour in game and this is one of my big criticisms. It doesn’t feel like you have enough time to do anything because like every other 15 year old, as soon as the clock strikes 2am, you immediately pass out.

The visual graphics are what you would expect of a sandbox game at the time, however the music is proper get-on-your-tits annoying. It’s repetitive, irritating, more annoying and lots of other mean words. The trouble is volume is kind of required for a game with dialogue so you are forced to listen to it. You also give a lot of involuntary verbal taunts when you are roaming and these become very tiring after Jimmy has mugged off someone for the 700^th time.

My biggest bug bear in any game is the control system unless of course it works. Bully doesn’t. I don’t know who came up with the idea but the camera is the right stick and the movement is the left stick and the two sticks don’t interact which means manoeuvring Jimmy to go in the direct you want him to while looking somewhere else is nigh on impossible. Thankfully it wasn’t so horrifically shit that I couldn’t get used to it. If the game is unintentionally difficult to play, that’s a major fail.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 38 Achievements

There is nothing tragically hard about the Bully achievements but some of them are ridiculously monotonous. The most monotonous award goes to either of the distance covered achievements. There is one for the bike, the skateboard and for walking. Whichever one you don’t focus on will be left at the end. Mine was the bike and I was required to just ride around for ages until this unlocked. You have to complete 100km on the Bike which is ridiculous considering how small the sandbox is.

You also have to buy all the in game items of clothing. This costs more money that you get from completing all the missions and errands in the game meaning that you have to grind out the same lawn mowing or paper route mini-games until you have enough money.

Grinding pretty much sums up all of the achievements here. The worst one is the one for picking 50 flowers. You need a flower to kiss a girl. You can only carry ten flowers at a time. You have to kiss ten different girls using flowers before you can pick another ten flowers. Rinse and repeating this process is a pain in the ass. The biggest pain in the ass in the game. By far. There is also a little thing that is extra annoying if you don’t know about it. When you complete the art classes, girls won’t take flowers from you because they already like you. This means you can only give flowers to one boy after this which would make the process all the more annoying to complete.

The last achievement I unlocked was for 100% completion because generally speaking, everything else you have to do is a requirement. There are also lots of hidden requirements which make this achievement a real fuck ass to complete. Thankfully it’s not missable and there is enough help around to get everyone through it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I would say that once I got over the controls, I enjoyed Bully for about two days. It was my sheer bloody-mindedness that got me to the 100% completion and I can foresee no reason for me to revisit the game again.

Monopoly Family Fun Pack (Xbox ONE)

I bought this one following on from Monopoly on Xbox 360 and found it to be a more up to date and colourful version of the previous instalment. The Family Fun Pack also consists of two games; Monopoly Plus and Monopoly Deal. As both were relatively short, I’ve decided to review them together.

There’s not much else to add to my review of Monopoly regarding the gameplay in Monopoly Plus, although it’s worth pointing out the games flow a lot easier in this version and they have removed the Monopoly Man along with his annoying comments and the tendency for the interface to stop working. The board is also more interactive than before. You can roll the dice to a specific strength and when you throw them down, they can also knock over your playing piece, much like in real Monopoly.

Monopoly Deal is an online only version of the game based on the card game of the same name. You have to compete against up to 4 other players to be the first to collect three different sets of properties. There are other cards that you get to try and disrupt the other players using abilities which include stealing their completed sets, forcing them to trade properties and making them pay you, which can lead to getting their properties.

Being an online game, I found the connection times in Monopoly Deal to be pretty poor. It also timed out on me three or four times after giving me a countdown telling me it was my go... but then didn’t let me do anything.

Also the game doesn’t require communication as it’s always versus each other so I don’t understand why I even had the option to listen to some of the idiots out there who are doing other things while playing, like talking to their girlfriend, shouting at their kids, something that seemed like doing the laundry and.... EATING!!!! One thing I’ve learned is that people who eat crisps while playing in a group with their microphone on are the most sinfully annoying people in the world. It’s even more annoying when they try to talk through a mouthful of crisps.

Achievements – 2,000 Points – 30 Achievements

Monopoly Plus is a nice easy run for 1,000 points. There isn’t anything that requires playing over Xbox Live so that immediately rules out the random chance factor of other people which I will come on to later.

The fact that it isn’t online-capable makes getting a few achievements really easy. Winning a 6 player game in local multiplayer becomes a breeze, as well as getting a property for at least 10% less than its original value. It also makes completing two colour sets in one trade easy, which would probably be impossible if playing with real people.

The rest can be obtained by playing with two human controlled players and making the game last long enough to fulfil the criteria. There is one exception to this though.

‘Precocious’ was the last achievement I unlocked and it requires you to collect rent during your first turn. So basically you have to roll a number, land on a property, buy the property and then hope another player rolls the same number as you. It is completely luck based and even having 5 other computer players, I still had to replay at least five times to get it.

Multiplayer

So Monopoly Deal is the other side of the coin where all the achievements have to be earned over Xbox Live. The problem with pretty much all of these achievements is that they require you to go out of your way to get them. This is where the random chance factor comes in to play.

Firstly, you have to get a game with someone. This is fairly difficult even for what was a relatively new title. Then, you have to target an achievement. The first game I played I managed to get two achievements, one for being the first player to get a full set, and another for using a rent card on a full set. After that I had to target achievements.

Random chance allowed me to get ‘Helpful deal’ for completing two sets for me and an opponent by using Forced Deal. I got another for using Deal Breaker to win a game. It continues like this. You have to get specific cards and complete specific actions but this is all for nought if your opponent gets the cards to win the game.

Once you get down to one achievement, you are basically playing to lose in order to have the chance of satisfying the achievement conditions, meaning that for achievement hunters, there is next to no impetus to win a game other than two achievements that require you to win in a certain way.

I finally decided that enough was enough with six achievements to go and asked a friend (ukscoob) to help me out. It still took a while to get them just playing one game and we both had several opportunities to win the match and had to ignore them. Pointless.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So there it is. Nothing really new in Monopoly Plus and a horrible online experience in Monopoly Deal. Not recommended for achievement hunters who don’t like having to play against real people in luck based scenarios.  

Truth or Lies

I bought this one in the vain hope that it would be a fun party game, however I should have realised I was wrong for a number of reasons. Number 1; the game was released in 2010. Siri cannot understand what I say half the time, so how is some backwater Xbox game suppose to differentiate between me lying or telling the truth? Number 2; a quick scan of the internet would have revealed the game’s total shitiness.

There’s not a lot to the game. There are two game modes.

In party play, you get asked a set of generic questions depending on the suitability of players (kids, adults, cats, etc.) and you have to answer them truthfully to beat your opponents. This is surprisingly difficult because no matter how you answer the question, it is completely random whether you will register a truth or a lie. I could see this being particularly problematic for a young audience who don’t know that the game fails to actually register things properly and could lead to several fallings out.

The other mode, Hot Seat, gives the opportunity to be asked specific questions by your friends, however they are more likely to know if you are lying or telling the truth than the game.

There’s not really much else to the game, other than the obvious fact that you need a USB microphone to play it.

The only other annoyance, and it’s quite a big one, is that the narrative in the game feels the need to put in redundant comments based on the fact you registered a truth or a lie after every single fucking question. Just shut the fuck up for fuck’s sake!

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 28 Achievements

It’s a fairly simple game achievements wise. Well, it would be if it was possible to actually lie and register a lie or tell the truth and register the truth. You know, the basic principles the game is built around but hey, we will persevere.

Most of the achievements are easy to get without this issue causing too many headaches or screaming, however there are always exceptions. Anything that requires you to do anything in a row is problematic. Registering three lies in a row was a particularly painful experience but the biggest challenge was trying to register a lie to every question in a Hot Seat round. I had to resort to finding deafeningly horrible sounds on Youtube to get this last achievement and put the game to bed.

A couple of other choice difficulties involved registering the highest scoring lie and highest scoring truth in a single round. Even with a dummy second player, this is still a challenge as you have no control over any of the answers given.

Another tricky one involves having to finish in the same placing for every round of a game. Again, this requires you to be consistent where the game mechanics don’t recognise you which could make getting this achievement a exercise in luck based frustration.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Put simply, it’s a horrible game that won’t give you any value in group play or solo play. The achievements are supposed to be easy but the game mechanics renders unlocking them more based on luck than skill. I can totally recommend not buying it and refusing to download it if it’s offered for free. It’s a total fuck ass.

Assassin's Creed: Rogue

The latest game in the Assassin’s Creed series was released on Xbox 360 while Assassin’s Creed Unity was doing the rounds on the One. Incidentally, Assassin’s Creed Rogue is the better game by far with less bugs, less France and a bigger boat. Well, okay, it has a boat whereas Unity does not.

The story follows the Assassin Shay Cormack, until he realises that Assassins are evil and decides to run away and eventually becomes a Templar. The most tragic thing about Shay though, is not his moral code but the fact that he is supposed to be Irish but, depending on what he is saying, this really does come and go. I’ve never met an Irish Assassin with a worse Irish accent.

Shay is on a quest to stop the assassins from killing innocent people whilst annoying everyone with his accent.  To do this, he essentially travels around the North Atlantic being a pirate. It’s all quite fun and combines the gameplay of Black Flag with... the looks of Black Flag and... okay, basically it’s an extension of Black Flag but Black Flag was pretty good.

The framing story, as will all Assassin’s Creed games involves you having to once again dick around in the offices of Abstergo trying to fix a server crash caused by the Assassins.

It doesn’t look at pretty as Black Flag was for me, probably because I played Black Flag on the One, and the game makes the graphical superiority of the next generation evident when put onto a screen. The sea shanties are back with some new ones and the classics which makes all the aimless sailing more enjoyable.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 46 Achievements

The thing I like most about the achievement list for this game is that they are all offline which technically means you can still finish the game ten years from now if you have a television that a 360 will work on.

Outside of the main game, there isn’t that much else you need go out of your way to do, however the game is big and will take you a long time to cover everything. There are a couple of things I had to grind out though.

You come across enemies known as stalkers at some point during the game. They are basically assassins trying to assassinate your Templar ass. They will attempt to air assassinate you but you can counter this (the first Templar in history to do so) and by doing so 15 times you will get an achievement. There is another one for counter killing 30 stalkers which goes into the same grinding category.

The most grind-tastic achievement is What’s Yours is Mine for looting 20 ship convoys. This is actually quite difficult. You can find the convoys by visiting taverns and getting intel, however the taverns will stop giving out locations after a while which leaves you alone to try and find them yourself. However, they don’t show up on the map very often. A few people figured out you can trigger spawns by fast travelling through a series of locations but I didn’t realise this until after I’d finished the game which meant that this was the last achievement I got and I had to work hard for it.

There are also four achievements for actually using cheats which was new. They aren’t too challenging or time consuming and all they do is have you repeat the same action a certain amount of times, some without dying. Not too tricky if you have a fully upgraded ship and character.

The last one I’ll mention is the one you get for completing all the legendary ship battles. I managed to do three of them but, try as I might, I couldn’t do the last one quickly. Instead of bashing my head against a brick wall for a week, I found out that you can win the battle using the invincibility cheat and unlock the achievement. You don’t get the rewards for completing them by doing it this way though – cheap yes, but effective nonetheless.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It took me around 35 hours to rack up all the achievements but on the whole, it was an enjoyable time. Assassin’s Creed Rogue still offers a similar experience to the first game. There is no reason to change the mechanics, just the location, and Rogue is a welcome addition to the franchise.