Valiant Hearts: The Great War (Xbox ONE)

Games with Gold on Xbox has caused my game collection to swell at an uncontrollable level now that they are offering four games a month across both platforms. It’s got to the stage where I’m actually glad to see a game I already have come up just so I know I won’t be adding to my collection. Who turns down free games?

Valiant Hearts: the Great War is a good one to come up though as it is a relatively quick and painless completion – gaming wise anyway.

Valiant Hearts is a fictional recreation of the lives of several different people during World War I. World War I wasn’t the most happy time period to live through and Valiant Hearts accurately captures this in a very emotive story driven game. I did have to spread it out over a few days though because it was far too depressing to plough through in one sitting. Not only the story has this effect but also, the music fully supports the theme as well. I’m not saying it’s bad. In fact, it is very good that the game is so emotive.

Gameplay wise, it’s another 2D sidescroller (which I seem to playing a lot of at the moment – really get the most of the power in my Xbox One!) mixed with puzzle solving. It’s generally non-combat which is great considering it’s a war time game, a real change from the norm. You do occasionally have to bonk people on the head though.

In terms of controls it is very nearly flawless. There was only part I got stuck on when I had to line up this gun thing with an explosive to destroy a door. For some reason I simply could not get the gun to line up with what I needed to destroy. It was the only time the controls were an issue for me though.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 20 Achievements

Playing through the main story will get you nine achievements. There are another four for collecting the surprisingly tricky to find collectibles scattered throughout the game world. That leaves seven achievements for doing a load of random stuff which is also secret for the most part.

There is one for petting the dog who will no doubt win the ‘gaming animal of the year’ award and this is probably one of the easiest achievements in gaming history. The dog is seriously the best part of the game. I developed a more emotive attachment to the dog than any of the main characters so it was nice to see an achievement surrounding him.

There are certain sections of the game where you have to escape from the Germans in a car. For these sections the game switches from side scrolling to downward scrolling as you race away from your enemies. There is an achievement for completing any one of these sections without taking any damage. I managed this on a single playthrough but if you don’t, there is no need to panic as the game offers loadable checkpoints at the beginning of each chapter.

Of the other five only one was problematic. One of the characters is a nurse and you have to complete quick-time events to bandage up people who have been hurt during the fighting. In my opinion, the hardest achievement in the game is for completing the hardest Quicktime event at the end of the game. It took me several attempts to get this right.

The last achievement I unlocked was for collecting all the historical items and as I said at the beginning, some of these were really well hidden. Thankfully the game offers chapter select to pick up the ones you missed.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I enjoyed Valiant Hearts despite its depressing nature. It was nice to play a war game where I wasn’t required to blow off the heads of enemies for ten hours. Hopefully Ubisoft will work on more games like this in the future. 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

This is actually my second journey through a Prince of Persia title on the Xbox 360. I completed the original release of the game before my reviews started and if my retrospective Assassin’s Creed reviews are anything to go by, it’s probably not worth revisiting. To be honest, I’m not even sure The Forgotten Sands will get a worthwhile review. I was recently sick and kept in bed for a few days and one of those days was used to complete this game in its entirety.

The Forgotten Sands was released at a similar time to the movie tie-in (which is named after the original Xbox release, Sands of Time, also known as ‘The Good One’) starring Jake Gylenhaal, so it’s no surprise that the Persian Prince you play as looks eerily similar to the guy in the movie posters.

The game itself follows the story of two brothers. There is ‘Brother who Doesn’t Listen’ and ‘Brother you Play as’. As with any Prince of Persia game, Sand is evil and ‘Brother who Doesn’t Listen’ releases evil sand to try and defend the kingdom. Naturally this backfires and evil sand kills everyone and turns ‘Brother who Doesn’t Listen’ power mad. It’s then up to ‘Brother you Play as’ to save the day. With hilarious consequences. But not really.

The story arch is basically ripped and taken from any other game in history where there are bad guys and good guys and to be honest it looks very tired. On the subject of looking tired the graphics use the standard grey/faded yellow filter which is also old and unoriginal but then again, I suppose it is a sand themed game. The same can also be said for the music. It uses what I swear is the same score from the previous game, maybe with a slight unnoticeable twist.

The gameplay is very questionable, especially when it comes to the controls. Generally speaking, Prince of Persia games have two main things you have to do. Number 1; climb stuff. Number 2; kill stuff. I have no problem with the kill stuff mechanics which worked fine but the climb stuff mechanics can fuck right off.

In order to traverse the environment, you have the ability to rewind time if you fuck up. If you have never played any other platformer, including previous Prince of Persia games, you will most likely be fine. However if you have played any other platformers, the controls in Forgotten Sands will make no sense. There is no jump button so you have to wall run up and across walls using the right trigger and, my memory is a little foggy, but I’m pretty sure the directional controls don’t actually do anything when you are free running and despite playing the game for several hours in row, I could not disengage my brain from the using the A button to try and jump in a given direction. This led to many deaths and in certain places, game over because I ran out of rewind power. I’m all for being original but don’t fuck with basic platforming principles. The controls appear to be different for the sake it, not because it makes sense.

Achievements - 1,000 Points – 40 Achievements

As I said, I finished this one in a day so there was no major challenges on offer, however there were some fiddly bits. The main issue with the game and its achievements is that there are no reloadable checkpoints and there are missable achievements because of this. Basically if you dive in and just go through the story then you will have to do multiple playthroughs. The joys of being ill was that I had time to read up on what I had to do before I started playing.

There are three bits which are missable. One is for collecting all of the sarcophagai scattered throughout the game. Some of these were quite hard to find and I had to use my rewind time ability a lot due to the shitty controls I mentioned earlier. The other two are for getting through both boss sections without taking damage. The one at the end of the game isn’t so much of an issue because you can reload this over and over again and continually finish the game, however the one in the middle I was glad to know about because I had to reload five or six times or purpose before I got the jumping pattern right. That’s right, this one is based on knowing what’s going to happen before it happens so it’s basically trial and error rather than skill which makes the whole not having reloadable checkpoints thing ridiculous.

Now, there is an argument that I perhaps shouldn’t have looked these things up before I started playing but the game is so sinfully boring that I couldn’t have faced another playthrough so I’m glad I did.

Aside from the missable achievements, there are quite a few for killing enemies in a lot of different ways. All of these can be obtained easily enough in the Enemy Tides Challenge with perhaps the exception of killing 50 enemies in a row without taking damage and definitely the exception of killing 20 enemies by kicking them off ledges. Again, these are two things you will need to know about before starting the game to avoid a second playthrough. The 50 enemies without taking damage can apparently be spammed at a point in the game where loads of bugs come flying out of the ground. I didn’t know about this though so actually killed 50 sand skeletons the hard way.

After completing the main story, the only thing I had left to do was complete the Enemy Tides challenge and get all my abilities. The Enemy Tides challenge is easy enough. You just have to fight through waves of enemies. The game records your best time for doing so.

After doing all of the above, I was annoyingly really far away from getting all the abilities. I had to rerun the Enemy Tides challenge 5 or 6 times to grind out the rest of the experience for the abilities I needed to buy. Judging by my excitement from the Saint’s Row the Third review about having a time balance with the achievements you can probably tell that this didn’t endear me towards the game.

And that was me done. Or so I thought. I had one secret achievement left that I didn’t know about. Like I said at the beginning I wasn’t one for multiple playthoughs but I was a little confused because the game had a difficulty level and there was no achievement for completing it on hard so I just went for it on easy to make my life... easier. In hindsight this was a mistake because the last achievement is for starting the game on normal but lowering it to easy once you have died. Incidentally, this was the one thing I didn’t look up before I started!

Downloadable Content – N/A

This game was a resounding ‘meh’ for me. I was glad to get it done it a day because any further play time would have been depressing. There is one more title in the Prince of Persia collection for playing the classic arcade version but I don’t think I’ll be touching that one for a while.

Saints Row: The Third

After the heavy shit that was Call of Duty 2 I fancied a bit of rest and relaxation or in other words a completely crazy gaming experience that couldn’t be further from reality. Saints Row: The Third delivers this with aplomb.

Now, I’m not one to play games out of order normally and this is no exception. I just simply haven’t finished the other Saints Rows because they have multiplayer elements that I have not done. Also, Saints Row: The Third was lucky to even make it into the console to start with. As you may have seen, companies that discontinue content that disable achievements are not getting on my Christmas list any time soon. However, Volition and Deep Silver have gone a ways to repairing some of the damage.

There in an achievement called Jumped In which became unobtainable when THQ when under back in 2013. Their website went offline and this was required to get the achievement. Deep Silver spent the best part of a year trying to apply a fix and they finally did it in September 2015. This was the catalyst that made me play the game.

On to the game itself, you play as the leader of the 3^rd Street Saints who looks...exactly how you want him or her to look. I spent the best part of my play time as a girl but more on that later. The story follows the standard story arch of ‘fall from grace.’ The Saints have everything. Then they lose it all because some other crime syndicate tries to take you out. Saint’s Row main stay, Johnny Gat (who looks completely different) gets taken out at the start and the rest of the game is basically about avenging him.

Lots of wacky shit happens along the way which is all in the name of fun... but after a while it starts to wear a little thin. Everything is over the top stupid to the point where the main character can be on TV talking about robbing and murdering like it’s cool and something to aspire to. I’m all for humour, and the first ten hours is pretty funny, but after that it goes too far in what it’s trying to do.

The same can be said of the soundtrack and unfortunately, Grand Theft Auto, has the edge here. There doesn’t appear to be very much in terms of variety either and it’s all very underwhelming and disappointing. It does have the edge over Sleeping Dogs though, as at least the Saints Row radio stations actually play different songs instead of glitching out and playing the same bit over and over.

The gameplay is the main area of excellence. It’s very fluid with combat and driving and they link together well. I don’t recall having any issues with navigation, however the game does suffer from the age old problem of sandboxes where lampposts are made of paper and trees will totally wreck your car.

As you play, you can improve your character with abilities and you can actually do this to the point where you can’t die or run out ammo. I’m not sure how I feel about this as it’s a reward for playing the game but it also removes any challenge from it. I was grateful for this towards the end though, especially when things got totally fucking ridiculous.

Achievements – 1,300 Points – 80 Achievements

There’s nothing I like more than a load of easy achievements that provide fun and variety to obtain. That’s what Saint’s Row the Third offers and it’s also very balanced. There is an achievement for playing for 30 hours and it’s possible to get all of the achievements in roughly this amount of time. No overplaying, no underplaying. This includes the DLC missions as well but more on that later.

The base game has the very standard 50 achievement haul. There are achievements for completing the main story, getting all the collectibles and completing all of the activities spread across the map. The activities are normally the hardest part of the Saints Row single player experience but these seem to have been dumbed down a bit. The hardest one I found was the trailblazing activity which involves racing through checkpoints while on fire (standard) but even the trickier course only took me three attempts once I got used to the direction I needed to go in.

A lot of the achievements rely on you having to get lots of money, for example upgrading all of your weapons, upgrading your stronghold, pimping out vehicles and the like.

Another one of the more bizarre achievements is for playing 2 hours as a male and 2 as a female. Obviously, when I started the game I created a male character and as soon as I realised there was an achievement for playing as both sexes, I went and got a sex change from the plastic surgeon and played the rest of the game as a woman. This also comes with its own issues because there is a limit to how many times I can hear the phrase, ‘I’m always on when it counts.’ Knowing exactly what this is referring to.

There is only really one missable achievement at the end of the first act as there is a multiple choice and an achievement for each option. A strategic save before can allow you to replay the mission to get the alternate achievement but considering it’s earliness in the game, there isn’t a huge time cost for missing it.

The last achievement I unlocked was for completing all the challenges which is a total ballache in reality. One of the challenges is for taking 50 hostages and to do this you need to steal a car with a passenger in it. You have to search the roads looking for these vehicles and 50 is very excessive and repetitive. Another is for destroying 30 Emus which are pieces of shit cars that are also few and far between. I got this one done by grabbing one and storing it in my garage and then continuously blowing it up – boring but the quickest way of doing it.

Downloadable Content

There are three different DLC extensions to the game and in my opinion only one of them is worth getting. I mentioned earlier that after you have played through the game, it starts to feel really silly. The DLCs take this to the next level as well.

Gangsta’s in Space I can only assume is a joke. The Saint’s as gang members gaining celebrity in itself is a ridiculous concept, but to actually have you play out a movie based on the Saints finding an alien and trying to do... something? I don’t know. It was so stupid I stopped paying attention.

 

The Trouble with Clones was equally as dumb. Some idiot supposedly creates a clone of Johnny Gat and you have to track him down and save him or something? Whilst drinking Saint’s Flow, the Saint’s Row custom energy drink. Bizarre and over the top so I didn’t find it at all funny.

 The only one worth playing is Genkibowl VII as it offers some semi-sensible fun, in Saint’s Row terms anyway. You basically have to play through variable instances of Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax from the main game which just so happened to be one of the most fun parts.

So to sum up, Saint’s Row the Third offers 30 hours of play time of which about 15 to 20 will actually be enjoyable. If you are going for all achievements, the DLC will feel a like a poor addition. On the whole, I would say it is a solid seven out of ten and the average gamer will get to the end of the story before get bored/fucked off with the characters.

Call of Duty 2

For years now, my friends have been playing Call of Duty online and raving about how cool it is to play war in a fake environment, competing against arbitrary dickheads who hate losing. A quick search of the internet will reveal montages of rage quitters, screamers, and pathetic losers who will threaten to come beat you up for being better at a game than them. As per previous reviews, my sheer will to avoid said dickheads means I will more than likely never play an online Call of Duty title. This made Call of Duty 2 appear to be the only viable COD game for me to play.

Call of Duty 2 is the first Xbox 360 release of the series. It doesn’t have any online achievements, thus no need for me to play it online. During the campaign, you play as various soldiers of Russian, British and, of course, American descent as you re-enact some of the battles spanning World War II.

The thing I liked most about the game play is that a head shot actually counts as a fatal wound for your enemies even on the hardest difficulty. Gone are the heads of the future which can take 50 plus bullets without so much as a flinch from the enemy and I absolutely love it.

However, that said, and I will probably be criticised for saying this, the aiming mechanic is shit. I am playing a game, I don’t want a real re-enactment of World War II where my guns are shit because it’s World War II and the only way to fire an accurate shot is to get a sniper rifle or be close enough to the enemy to poke him in the eye.

There is not really much to the game outside of killing enemy soldiers and advancing to the next checkpoint. Sometimes you have to defend certain buildings when you are getting attacked from all directions and there are a few vehicle sections where you have to ride along defending the vehicle from enemies. These are some of the most frustrating bits of the game. There is also a separate tank level where you actually drive a tank but this was thankfully quite easy.

It’s an early game so the graphics aren’t breathtaking and the in-game environments are the tragic brown-grey that symbolise the era’s attempts at realism. Also I did find myself getting caught on every piece of the environment going which is painfully irritating in the middle of a gunfight. I don’t enjoy being a sitting duck in the slightest.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

As with many early releases, the game didn’t really play around too much with the achievement system which makes this section of the review relatively easy to write. There is no variety, no collectibles or no get x amount of headshots. You simply have to complete every mission. On the hardest difficulty.

I’m not going to pretend to be good at shooters. Far from it. If my job was to pick up downed allies and hold a control zone, fine. But killing loads of dudes is not my strong suit. Thankfully Call of Duty 2 recognises this your AI companions/cannon fodder, of which there is nearly always an unlimited amount, can do most of the killing and dying for you.

That said, the game is still an unforgiving bitch to complete on the hardest difficulty and I must have died at least seven-million times. Generally the checkpoints are forgiving enough but sometimes the game is just ridiculous. In most areas, there is a finite amount of enemies but sometimes, and on one level in particular, I had an enemy spawn in behind me and then instantly kill me from point blank range, stemming choruses of ‘fuck off, you fucking game.’

Downloadable Content – N/A

Eventually I bludgeoned my way through although my sense of perseverance took a serious hammering. Call of Duty 2 has not inspired me to step into the franchise. I may give another title another go in the future but it won’t be for several years I think.