Costume Quest 2 (Xbox ONE)

It’s always nice to play a theme game every now and then, especially around the time the theme is relevant. This was not the case for Costume Quest 2 as I played about it six weeks before Halloween but it was close enough to use this reference.

The story follows the four friends, Reynold, Wren, Lucy and Everett as they wear different costumes to combat the evil, and conveniently named, dentist Dr Orel B. White. Well, in reality, you only play as Wren and Reynold but Lucy and Everett are there too.

Basically Dr Orel travels back in time to stop Halloween from ever taking place. Because Reynold and Wren are kids and like candy, they embark on an epic quest through time to stop him and restore the timeline to its correct state. The plot is a little more in depth than that but that’s the overly complex gist.

Gameplay wise, it’s an RPG with turn based combat. You have several different costumes you can wear which all have different attacks and special abilities. There aren’t random encounters though which means you can avoid battles as much as you want. It’s advisable not to do this though as there are bosses which will require you to be a certain level before you fight them if you want to win.

The battle system itself is very basic. You play for most of the game with three characters; Wren Reynold and a ringer, and each character has their own assigned button to attack. They have one attack and one special attack and that’s all. You can also use Creepy Treat Cards to get special bonuses. You learn different ways to attack throughout the game but it doesn’t get more complicated than that.

When you are not fighting the minions of darkness, you are wandering around the game environment collecting candies and solving basic puzzles. My biggest criticism of the game is how many times my character got stuck on various items in the environment. It was slightly irritating but didn’t happen enough to ruin my day.

The music is in keeping with the Halloween theme but like any RPG, after a while it becomes very grating.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

Everything can be done in one playthrough which can take up to 10 hours so generally it’s a relatively short completion. Most of these will be gained through natural gameplay but there are a few exceptions and one missable achievement.

The first exception, and one I ground out early on, is for using the clown horn 1,000 times. It’s pretty unlikely that you will find 1,000 reasons to use the clown horn, so when I read this I thought I would get it out of the way. Stick on the kettle and hit the B button 980 odd times. All in the name of fun.

Another one that you will probably do but may not is for upgrading three costumes. Upgrading costumes does make the game easier but if you choose not to buy them or don’t save the candy it could be easily overlooked.

The two optional costumes, Wolfman and the Solar System, take some finding and you have to go off the track to get them but it’s not too hard, you just need to know what to do. 

The missable achievement is called Hardcorn Mode and is for playing the whole game with the Candy Corn costume equipped.  You can be forgiven for doing what I did and immediately de-equipping it because Candy Corn can’t attack. It also delays battles because it simply has to pull out a one-liner instead of attacking which is a wee bit annoying. Anyway, I played for five hours before I realised this was even an achievement. My bad.

The last achievement I got was for using all of the Creepy Treat Cards in battle and I had to grind this out after finishing the game. Pretty boring, but again completely my own fault for not preparing by reading ahead.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Costume Quest 2 is fairly straightforward completion that doesn’t take too long. It was also quite enjoyable with a light-hearted story that didn’t take itself too seriously. Definitely a solid seven out of ten, gameplay environment issues aside.

Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes

I know I said I was off Lego Games indefinitely but this one was on my shelf and despite all my previous reviews, somehow I convinced myself that it would be another quick completion. Once again I was wrong but it’s my own stupid fault isn’t it.

 

The story follows Batman and Robin as they pursue the Joker and other villains across Gotham City. Then Superman shows up, gets a blowy from Robin, and makes Batman completely redundant as a hero. As much as I hate Superman – let’s face it, he’s a cheesy bellend – all of his powers mean that you can complete levels really easily when you control him and they are a bit of a struggle (more in terms of getting around than anything else) when you play as Batman.

 

The game play structure is just irritating now. Only certain characters can do certain things and Robin and Batman can wear certain suits to give them certain abilities, which seems to be the unique mechanic the game is built around. Despite being call DC Superheroes, other than Superman, the others only really show up towards the end and you spend most of the game playing as Batman and Robin. Kind of a misleading title.

 

The most shitty aspect of the game, and this will come as a real surprise, is the vehicles. The vehicles handle like winged elephants. This is compounded by the fact that you have to use the vehicles to race through checkpoints. Trying to turn the batwing thing to face in the right direction is such a ballache that any hope of racing through checkpoints quickly evaporates into thin air.

 

Other than the vehicles, there is a freeroaming open world bit where you can fly around as Superman and other characters with flying abilities. Flying them around is the biggest pile of garbage ever. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they learned the system they used here was balls  and rectified it by the time they got round to doing Lego Marvel Super Heroes. Basically, you have to use a direction indicator and hold down a button like an accelerator in a car. This makes collecting gold bricks – probably the main point of the open world – an episode in mind destroying frustration when every time you want to move forward an inch, your character just flies off in a different direction. That’s not even an exaggeration.

 

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 37 Achievements

 

The last achievement I unlocked was getting 100% which is pretty damn good considering all the bullshit Lego games make you go through outside of that requirement. I’ve learnt from my time in the Lego universe and simply saved my studs to buy the stud multipliers first. This essentially eradicates the needless grind for cash to unlock certain characters to do things in free play mode.

 

I know I moan about this every time but having to play boring story levels twice to get everything is stupid. It would be better if when you play in freeplay, you can simply explore the entire level from the get go without having to do all the bits to get to the next section of the level. It would make the ‘second playthrough’ a lot more bearable.

 

Aside from striving to the 100% mark, something which takes a mind numbing 30 hours to do if you are rushing, there are some really stupid customary Lego game achievements. The most notable of this is for climbing to the top of Wayne Tower as a female character on the back of a gorilla.

 

There are also the generic ‘ kill the super villain with the right super hero’ and the now a-typical ‘you can play this game with a friend so we’ve put in an achievement for doing it’ achievements. It’s all very meh by this point.

 

Downloadable Content – N/A

 

It might be that I’m fed up with Lego games but I didn’t enjoy Lego Batman 2. The open world felt more like a grind than an enjoyable exploring experience. It’s a shame really because a lot of work appears to have gone into it but the game play frustrations make it feel rushed before being fully tested. I may give some of the next gen Lego a go and will only revert back to the 360 if I get really stuck for completions.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Xbox ONE)

The only reason I bought this game was because of a pricing error at Tesco that meant I got it just after release for half the price. That said, it wasn’t the best decision I ever made because the game is shit. It is shit for many reasons, most of which I will go into here.

Reason Number 1

Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a fucking twat. Nobody likes an arrogant twat and I know that Peter Parker is a nerd and so having super powers is great, blah, blah, blah. But why do I, as an innocent bystander, have to listen to constant renditions of ‘I’m not just awesome... I’m extra-awesome!’ and of course, ‘That’s why they call me Amazing!’ Just shut the fuck up Spider-Man. You are not the coolest super hero.

Reason Number 2

On several occasions when playing the game, I actually had to turn it off because Spider-Man got stuck on scenery. I did wait for a while for the game to auto-correct, a function that many developers have built in because it’s easier that actually creating a half decent gaming universe, but Activision didn’t even do that. It’s a classic case of ‘Spider-Money.’ Let’s release a game based on a film that kids will go, ‘Hey Mummy, I love Spider-Man can you get me that game?’ Activision are laughing all the way to the bank. At you, Mummy.

Reason Number 3

Activision are twats.

Reason Number 4

Looking at the content of the game, it tries to do far too much and includes about 27 bad guys from the Spider-Man franchise, most of which weren’t in the movie. In fact, Electro only shows up for a boss fight and there are three boss fights in a row towards the end of the game. It’s like they ran out of ideas and just thought, ‘Fuck it, let’s throw in a couple of generic villains from the cartoons.’

Reason Number 5

More on the content, once you get into the open world, you constantly have to complete these mini events in order to show the world you are a good person. If you don’t, then you become notorious and the police come after you. If you don’t do an event, you lose points regardless of whether it’s right in front of you or on the other side of the city. It’s completely ridiculous. You also have loads of collectibles to get, not to mention the main story that’s going on. The worst bit about it is the loading screens and the fact that a news report follows of Spider-Man’s heroic actions or inept failure every time you do one of the fucking things. Talk about dragging it out. Also if you fail to get everyone out of a burning building, world acts like it was Spider-Man’s fault in the first place!

Reason Number 6

The camera is a bag of wank. It never faces in the direction you want and when you have to go into buildings, you may as well just play with your eyes closed. It will honestly make it easier.

Reason Number 7

The combat system is a poor man’s Batman: Arkham Series game. Don’t rip off other games Spider-Man. Just fuck off.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 46 Achievements

After you’ve got over the pain of starting the game, there is the small matter of the 46 achievements to get. They can be broken down into three categories – main story, collectibles and dicking around. To be honest there aren’t a lot of dicking around achievements and only two are potential struggle points.

Both struggle points are secret achievements. The first is for using web strike to destroy an enemy’s body armour. The reason this is stupid is because it’s a secret and also it’s poorly worded. The description says ‘Destroy any armoured enemy using Web-Strike (secret)’ which give the impression you have to defeat the enemy rather than just destroying his armour.

The other secret achievement is for damaging the final boss with fire three times and this is only a piss take because it’s secret.

The main story is fine, the collectibles are also fine but there are also achievements for doing those stupid events a certain amount of times. There are also some difficulty specific achievements for playing through the game on the highest difficulty level. Completing the events and playing on the hardest difficulty do not go hand in hand. You have to do some fire rescue missions where you save people from a burning building. This is the only event that is difficult on the highest difficulty level and instead of trying to push through, I waited until I had completed the game then changed the difficulty to easy and got the last few I needed. But what I don’t understand is how everything else in the game is doable on the hardest difficulty except the fire rescue missions. Talk about imbalance.

The last achievement I unlocked was also a cunt. You have to collect all the various suits that Spider-Man has worn over the course of his comic book career. There are 13 suits to wear and you have to level them all up to the maximum level. The only way to do this is to continue playing for a few hours after you’ve finished the game, repeating the same things over and over and over again until you have all suits to level 8. Or you quit and throw out everything you own that even references Spider-Man. 

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s a horrible game. Don’t play it.

Scene it? Lights, Camera, Action!

So apparently somewhere along the way, I managed to make some friends who wanted to come over and play some games. Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit LIVE! weren’t really cutting it anymore so I  set out in search of a new title. Scene it? Lights, Camera, Action! is a party game to fit the bill.

It was released in 2007 which is probably why I managed to get it for less than £9 including the four game specific controllers. This also left me and my friends at a major disadvantage as most of the movies we had watched and paid attention to were released in the last 8 years.

The game sees you play a series of rounds in different circumstances, or ‘puzzle beds’ if you will. Some of these are fairly straightforward. A few examples include watching a clip and then answering questions, although very rarely do the questions actually relate to the scene you’ve watched and sometimes they don’t even relate to the movie. Another example is Distorted Reality where you have to guess who or what the picture is of despite the fact that it’s impossible to work out quickly unless you already know the answer. Oh yeah, and in all questions you are assessed by how quickly you answer.

That’s my biggest criticism of the game really. Take 3 and Star Trailers are two of the more prominent examples. These rounds have loads of questions which are completely ambiguous until the last few seconds of the round where three of the four possible answers could still be true. This makes a time-based scoring system pointless because you have to answer before you actually know it in order to score high. Unless, of course, you already know the answer but more on that later.

One round which is quite fun, and doesn’t have an ambiguous nature to it, is the one where you have pictures of famous people when they were younger. This is fine because you are presented with all of the information needed at the start and so it’s an even playing field from the get go.

The sound effects in the game are some of the worst ever. There is this voiceover guy who is sinfully annoying and has some of the worst and over-repeated one-liners and quips ever heard.  Plus, he is dick every time you do badly.  The music itself is also very ‘cheap budget Hollywood’ which after five or six games becomes really depressing.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 42 Achievements

So the idea of the game is to answer questions about movies and the idea of the achievements is to basically keep doing this until you make the game redundant as a party game to play with your friends.

There are three achievements for the offline against friends mode (which can also be done with two controllers) for winning a match, winning a round of a match and just playing the game. The rest can be earned by playing by yourself, a process that is uninspiring, boring and frustrating all at the same time.

All the achievements they are pretty straightforward and if you are really stuck, you can pause and use the internet to find the answer. This is all well and good for some rounds but the picture rounds and film clips can be tricky if you don’t know the movie. Again though, and I’ll cover this in the last achievement, you will eventually know all the answers anyway. This covers answering all the questions of certain types and all the round-based achievements.

The only round-based achievement which is a royal pain in the ass is Sequentials. You have to put four films in the order they were released. This is horrible for two reasons. The first reason is that if you don’t know the order, (which is likely) you have to look up four individual bits of information on IMBd. The second irritation is that you also have to get the right film released on the right year which is easier said than done in a world where most films are on their third rerelease by now, even accounting for the 2007 information cut-off.

Another achievement that doesn’t make a lot of sense is the Assistant achievement for answering ten questions within one second. This doesn’t say they have to be answered correctly but they do and once you get to the second round and start losing points for answering incorrectly, this is counterproductive in terms of trying to do well in the game and get the achievement at the same time. Basically, you have to start a game and just hit A for every answer until it pops and completely ignore the fact you will be on zero points at the end of it.

The worst achievement, the last one I earned, and the game breaker for me is the Scholar achievement for answering three (that’s right, three) documentary film questions. ‘Three questions you say? That’s not hard is it.’ Now consider the fact that the game has over 1,800 questions and only 6 of them relate to documentaries. Forget doing this quickly and forget ever wanting to play the game again after you’ve done it. Needle in haystack pretty much sums this one up.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Scene It? Lights, Camera Action! was an enjoyable experience for the first three games but after playing for the Scholar achievement, it removes all enjoyment from it completely. It also means my friends won’t want to play with me when I can answer every question within five seconds.

Civilization Revolution

The story of my completion of Civilization Revolution is a long one. I borrowed the game from a friend back in 2009 and played a few campaigns. I then stopped playing and after having it for about a year my friend unsurprisingly asked for it back. 2011 arrived and along with it came a thirst for achievement hunting after I managed to finish Prototype after renting it for a week. Then, in 2013 I decided to fill the gaps in my collection by purchasing all games I had started after borrowing them but not finished. Thus, Civilization Revolution made its way back into my hands. But I didn’t start playing it again until this year because...reasons.

The basic premise of Civilization games is that you have to build an empire from scratch and compete against other civilizations for dominance. There are sixteen different civilizations to choose from, all of whom have their own subtle differences. There are four different ways to win the game and an achievement for each win type but I’ll get more into that later.

In terms of the gameplay, it’s a bit of weird one. Some might say it’s a thinker’s game with tactics and the like, but I don’t think I’m the most tactically minded individual and I still managed to get across the line with all styles of win. What I’m getting at here is that I don’t see where the enjoyment is. It’s not tactically advanced enough to challenge those who seek it but not quite user friendly enough for the causal gamer. That said, it is one of those games where you start playing and before you know it, three hours have gone by and you haven’t really achieved much.
 
Aside from the normal game mode, there are also scenarios you can play including but not limited to; Beta Centuri mode where you start with all technology unlocked; Lightning Round where you start with three villages and the winning criteria is significantly reduced; and Golden Age where you start with 1,000 gold. There are eight scenarios in total, but these are the ones I played.

The most annoying thing about the game is the advisors and not because of the advice they give you but because every time they talk to you to, they make inaudible baby like noises which are just complete nonsense.  The music while playing is fine which is good considering that games can take in excess of three hours to finish, but going back to the advisors, towards the end of the game, they will – en-masse – update you on how close you are to victory. This is really fucking irritating after they’ve told you exactly the same thing three turns in a row. No wonder games take in excess of three hours with drawn out ‘dialogue’ like this.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

As you can imagine, 50 achievements can turn into an absolute slog. Starting with the simple ones, there are 17 related to winning as the various civilizations – 1 for each civilization and 1 for winning as all civilizations.

There are several you will get just for playing through a game. I unlocked 12 achievements for doing certain in-game things in my first game and that doesn’t include any victory criteria. That said, a few of these situation achievements required me to play a game specifically to target the achievement in question. I found the most tricky of these to be developing a city that has 200 production per turn. This is hard because it’s the only one of these types where you need to build a city in a specific location to get enough production. This also takes ages and I had one game end because I had reached the maximum time allowance before I got city with enough production.

Another miscellaneous one was for winning the game before 1,000AD on King difficulty or higher. The Golden Age scenario mentioned earlier was the one I used to get this. With the early gold supply, you can buy horse units and get ahead of the other civilizations. There is still an element of luck though as the other civilizations could be anywhere. I failed to get this on my first try because one of the cities was right next to the North Pole and I needed ships to reach it.

The last category of achievement is for the various victory conditions. There are 13 in total, 4 for each condition type at any, King and Deity difficulty and 1 for winning under each condition. Beta Centuri makes three of the victories easy as it levels the playing field. However, you cannot get a technology victory here. For that, I needed the Lightning Round scenario. This was also quite luck-based as I had to keep reloading until I got good starting positions to raise enough science before the other civilizations.

The last achievement I unlocked has come under fire from the gaming community for being a deliberate fuck ass. In order to unlock it, you have to get all of Great People to turn up in your games. A lot of people have said that the game is biased against the player because they keep getting the same Great People showing up despite meeting the specific criteria for getting them to appear. I think I may have got quite lucky with this. I tried three times to get all of the Great People to show up in one game but was never successful. Then I went for the specific criteria and just kept restarting the game until I got my last one. I can certainly see why the community have developed such hatred towards it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The only word to describe the game (in terms of achievements) is ‘slog.’ My sheer determination was what got me through in the end. I won’t be playing it again for fun and it will take something very special to get me to play another strategy game for a long time.