Forza Horizon

This was a case of nearly cocking up a full completion for two completely different reasons. I was very, very lucky to be able to add this to my completion list but more on that in the DLC section. I wasn’t even planning on playing Forza Horizon but then it went on Xbox’s Games with Gold and I’m not one to turn down a free game – unless it’s Battlefield. However, shortly after going on Games with Gold, 2 of the achievements became discontinued due to the leaderboards suffering from connectivity issues. I waited and watched the forums to see if the issue had managed to fix itself and after a couple of weeks, it did. Rather than run the risk of assuming the fix was permanent, I decided to get those done on push on to complete the game.

Forza Horizon is an open world racing game where you are taking part in the Horizon Festival, a racing festival containing lots of different racing events... obviously. The goal is to complete events and rank up to get new wrist bands to enter new events.

That’s pretty much it for story and gameplay but some of the events are a little different. Early on you have to race against a plane but in reality, this boils down to a time trail event. There are also point scoring events but these are limited to the Horizon Outpost events and thank god because they are easily the most difficult things to do in the game.

The music features a typical sound track for the racing genre and based on my Need for Speed review, my feelings on this are clear. It’s the least enjoyable part of the experience and Forza also has the same issue as other racing games in that you seem to hear the same three songs over and over.

Graphically it’s very pretty to look at it but I have to question the point of this. I can understand making the cars look good but adding as much detail to the environment seems pointless when the idea of racing is to look where you are going at all times!

Achievements – 1,500 Points – 70 Achievements

For a racing game, Forza Horizon has a varied achievement list that requires you to do pretty much everything it has to offer. I basically tried to do everything I could from the get go before focussing on events and completing the game. This included driving along every road in the game and collecting all the Horizon signs. The second one actually has a purpose because you get free upgrades for all your cars once you get them all.

Another thing you have to do is win one race on hard but this can also be done on the time trail event, or showcase events. This makes it easier as you have a fixed car so all tuning and car selection issues are done for you and there are no other racers there to fuck you up.

You also have to challenge and beat 10 festival racers. These are guys who are driving around in free roam and as you approach them, you can challenge them to a race. This seemed to take a long time to grind out, the biggest issue being once you’ve raced them, you could be miles away from everyone so you have to get back to the central areas to find new racers.

My favourite achievement (not!) was called May The Forza Be With You and basically requires you to play Forza 3 or Forza 4 to get some content unlocked in Forza Horizon. There is a work around but I couldn’t be bothered with this so I now have Forza 3 awaiting completion on my tag.

Multiplayer

Unfortunately, but to be expected, there are multiplayer achievements here but thankfully, none of them require you to win loads of races. All you have to do is complete 25 races and get to level 25, none of which required a boosting session but it did require me to play with random assholes for a while. I got the one message from someone who thought racing was slamming into me on the first corner, crashing and then losing to me. Such was the rage that I got a semi abusive message from the idiot. But that’s the problem with online gaming – there is no filter on the morons.

Other activities included playing all of the Playground Games events, selling stuff on the storefront, and the one that was nearly the cause of an incomplete game, beating Rival’s times in 10 events. To get this easily, you can race against the same rival over and over again so once someone sets a bad time, you can rinse and repeat.

The last online one I got was for completing 10 free roam challenges which did require a boosting session as it required you to work with others. This actually takes a few hours as some of the events are in-game time sensitive and really long.

Downloadable Content

There are two DLCs and both of them have their own ridiculous challenges, the second of which was the second cause of a completion failure.

The Rally Expansion has two online achievements, one for completing rivals events and one for actually winning 10 stages. I did boost the second one but this was down to the fact that not a lot of people were playing the rally mode.

The other achievements basically require you to complete the Rally event, complete a rally without taking damage, purchasing all of the rally cars and, the hardest achievement in the game, winning a rally stage on hard without a driving line and using manual transmission. I have never really played a game using manual transmission before and this took me over 45 minutes of racing the same 4 minute track over and over again before I managed to unlock it.

The second expansion, the 1,000 Club Expansion Pack, basically adds something to main game where you can earn five medals in every car. You have to earn medals in different manufacturer’s cars for different achievements but the catch is that you require optional DLC to get enough cars from some of these manufacturers and if you don’t have the DLC, you can’t get six of these achievements. And all the DLC is now delisted. This DLC also includes the most time consuming one which requires you to each a medal in 146 different cars.

Now, where I cocked up is that I knew the date the DLC was being delisted and yet forgot to download the additional content... however it appeared that the developer also forgot so I was very lucky that I was able to download the content two days after the delisting date.

Forza Horizon is one of the more fun racing games I’ve played. It seemed to have just the right amount of events that were varied enough before it got tedious and repetitive. Unfortunately it’s now not completable if you haven’t downloaded enough DLC so not one for completionists but the delisting should reduce the cost of the game.

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

I downloaded both of the Ghostly Adventures games as part of another Xbox deal and rather than sit on them for months/years, I decided to give the first one a go. It had a relatively easy achievement list coupled with a friendly child feel and a low estimated completion time (something I will start focusing on more over the coming months) so I thought it wouldn’t take up too much of my time.

I managed to complete the game across three real-life days but my word, it was a slog and here’s why. While the overall completion time is relatively short, the game itself is monumentally repetitive. Most levels are the same and don’t offer a massive variety of gameplay elements.

Ghostly Adventures is a basic platforming game when Pac-Man double jumps and chomps his way through various levels. He can also change into six different forms but most levels are an episode of repetition – follow the path, eat the ghosts, get the fruit. There is a storyline running through the reasons why you have to do what you have to do but it has no bearing on the gameplay in any way. This isn’t really a criticism but more of a point that the story didn’t add anything to the game for me.

In addition to the main game, there are arcade games that unlock as you progress. These do offer some different gameplay elements but not a lot has gone into making them and they feel tacked on.

The most annoying part of the game, however, is the sound effects. The music is ‘plinky-plunky’ and repetitive as with most games of this type, however the most annoying thing is Pac-Man’s voice. He makes Spiderman look modest with how often he refers to himself as ‘awesome’ and this continues throughout the entire game. As there are quite a few levels, which is noticeable when they are all essentially the same, this really began grating me towards the end. Despite what he says, his voice is generally annoying too.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

The achievement list is fairly straight forward if not frustrating. You get 9 achievements for playing the game from start to finish.  There are achievements for killing 100 ghosts in 5 of pac-man’s forms, but not Rubber Pac for some reason, and another for killing 300 scared ghosts. I targeted the scared ghosts when I realised it was an achievement and got that before the end of the game. 4 of the others came with generally playing it but I had to grind out ghost kills as Metal Pac as you only use him three or four times while playing – which is shocking considering the lack of variety in the game.

The arcade levels I mentioned above each carry an achievement for completing all the levels they contain. I found these fairly straightforward and managed to get them all on my first attempt which saved me having to play them repeatedly.

On top of these there are a few other for doing certain things like getting 50 lives in one go and getting Pac-Man’s health up to six, which you do by obtaining cheery pie things and multicoloured slime pick-ups which you get throughout the game. Neither of these needed to grinded out though because the last achievement for collecting an arcade coin from every level requires you to play most of the repetitive levels once more to add to the repetitiveness. That’s a whole lot of repetitive.

Downloadable Content – N/A

As I think I’ve repeatedly mentioned, Ghostly Adventures is quite repetitive but I suppose it is to be expected as it is a kid’s style game. It’s a fairly easy completion on the face of it but I did find it quite boring, especially towards the end.

Driver: San Francisco

I got this one as a Christmas present from my mother, who hardly ever buys me games, back in 2011, I think. I must have been going through a phase because I requested this one and Need for Speed: The Run, I game I completed before I started writing about completions.

Anyway, Driver is another one of those games where I completed the single player a million years ago (hyperbole) and left the multiplayer because I didn’t have a sickness. Well, now the sickness has developed and I went back and put the effort into finishing the multiplayer... by buying another copy of the game, but more on that the later.

The story sees you take control of Detective John Tanner... sort of. Driver is an open world game where in order to streamline the gameplay, John is in a coma and his subconscious is floating around the city taking control of cars in order to catch the guy that put him in the coma in the first place. Yes, it’s that bizarre.

Along the way you will have to do lots of crazy stunts in various cars as you progress through the game. The driving game play is pretty solid to be fair but saying that, they did create an open world and then circumvent any real exploration factors by comatosing the main character – a bit of a bizarre decision.

The music and graphics are acceptable for the type of game. The music is good but gets very repetitive after a while. When I was playing the multiplayer, I kept getting 5 year old flashbacks to having to listen to the same tune over and over again when driving around the city.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

Of the 50 available achievements, 11 are story related but in reality there are loads of other small ones which you will naturally attain. There are only a handful that you have to really work for.

Some of these harder ones involve completing the in-game activities. You need to do 50 of these to get an achievement. You also have to do all 80 dares throughout the game. From what I remember, these aren’t too difficult, just time consuming. Other time consuming and awkward things involve having to purchase all the cars from the garage, switch into vehicles 1,000 times and drive 1,000 miles.

The last achievement I picked up from my single player experience was for collecting all 13 of the movie clip things – shocking considering there are only 13 of them. They are put in really hard to reach places and you have to be pretty inventive to be get them, using car transporters as ramps. Getting the position right was painful though.

There are two other notable achievements. One of them pays tribute to Back to the Future by having you complete challenges in the Delorean. The other wants you to be really stupid and complete a Getaway Activity in a Car Transporter. I can’t even remember how I did this but it pre-dates my use of guides so I must have got lucky as it’s apparently quite difficult to do.

Multiplayer

So the reason this is a late 2016 (still behind on the reviews) completion rather than 2012 is due to the multiplayer that I didn’t even attempt. All of the achievements bar three can be obtained with two players so I went through the painful and repetitive process of grinding out most of these alone.

The three that require other people involved having to play Blitz, Capture the Flag and Carry the Torch and do things a certain amount of times. This is made even more annoying because you have to get to certain multiplayer levels before some of these game types even unlock – this made it even more necessary for the second copy as I had to get to the relevant levels before I could play these games with other people.

The rest of it was just horrible grinding up to level 38 to unlock the Master achievement. In relative terms it didn’t actually take me that long but it was still a shitty task that I’m not proud of completing.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Driver is a solid single player driving experience that I remember as an enjoyable escape for the most part. The multiplayer is unnecessary and considering the age of the game, will now likely be impossible to complete legitimately. If you are a completionist and bothered about legitimate online play, then steer clear. It’s still worth it for the single player though.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

Urgh. When I’m older and I look back over the things I’ve done in the past, this one will probably make me sick. Completing a football game released in 2007 in 2016 is just painful. I made a vow never to play another football game again after FIFA 2012 and will definitely be sticking with that. There are too many good games out there to waste more time on repetitive rubbish like this.

So what does Pro Evolution Soccer Offer? Well, there is League mode, Tournament Mode and Master League. Oh, and naturally the obligatory Xbox Live multiplayer rubbish that goes with every sports game released since 2008. The only real part of this game worth mentioning is the same thing everyone says and that’s Master League but I really didn’t get into it and here’s why.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 38 Achievements

The first thing I’m going to do is complain about the game some more. The in game gallery menu has something that appears to be an achievement tracking system where all the achievements are listed and are called titles. Only it doesn’t fucking work. Upon completing the game, I have all the achievements but two of my ‘titles’ were missing. Oh, and they were for the online things I was supposed to do which means I had to have an internet connection when I did them. So, so stupid.

There are six achievements that aren’t for winning the various leagues in the game but are for beating every single team in the various leagues and for beating all the international teams. The five  club leagues were not a problem but I obviously cocked up at some point when doing the National Teams. As the game struggled to keep up with its own title system, I didn’t really stand a chance that it was going to store a record of which National Teams I had beaten. So I had to play nearly all of them again. It’s a good job I left it about 5 years between attempts otherwise I would have lost my mind.

You also have to win all the cups in the Master League and this is a total fuck ass because it means you have to not win the league. That’s right, because of the way it’s set up, you have to win the game’s equivalent of the Europa League which means you have to finish outside of the top six. It’s so weird deliberately trying to lose and draw matches and getting fucked off when your rivals fail to win leaving you ahead of them.

A lot of the basic achievements require you get certain stats in matches but these only trigger after you have played 100 games. I wouldn’t worry too much about this though as you will reach 500 games or more if you are going for the clean sweep.

So yes, outside of the online the big one is for playing 500 games, scoring 1,000 goals and winning all leagues and cups. The games and goals will come with the leagues and cups but this is where the game really fucked me over. You unlocked special players for winning the leagues and after I won the English League for the first time, I had the special players at my disposal. However, I noticed on my track record that it hadn’t actually given me a time stamp for winning the league. I played through the rest of the leagues and everything else I needed to unlock the achievement, only to find that it didn’t unlock. So I had to play the full English League again. Then, to really add to my issues, it still didn’t unlock. Only when I went into the track record to investigate did it finally give me the fucking thing. Cunts. Cunts!

Multiplayer

And further cunts. These achievements are totally unnecessary. I couldn’t be fucked to do battle with the arbitrary dickheads who still play this online so I took the easy way out, got a second copy and smashed them out in afternoon. Mostly straight forward but the one for scoring a free kick takes some work if you don’t want to be there for hours. What I did was take China, make their goal keeper absolute shit, make their defence really aggressive, get a free kick in a decent position, remove their wall and let Beckham hammer it in. The one thing that is annoying is that if the keeper gets a hand on it, it invalidates the achievement even if the ball goes in. Poor.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I’m glad to see the back of this one. It looks like Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 will be the last Konami football game that will be fully completable too. All newer titles have had their online culled. Even so, I wouldn’t recommend this one to achievement hunters. If you want to play football games, you will and you probably don’t care about achievements anyway.

The Swapper

The Swapper is another really easy completion that costs... well, a little bit more than free if I’m honest. Obviously I was suffering the after effects of an unforgiving completion in Saints Row II, so targeted a few things that were easy and quick. The Swapper fit the bill but it was also quite challenging.

The Swapper is a puzzle game. You are an astronaut and you crash land on a strange moon. You go in search of a way of repairing the spaceship and stumble upon an old research facility. While exploring here you find the Swapper, an experimental device that had the ability to clone you into positions you could not otherwise reach. It is a bit strange in that you control all of the clones and yourself at the same time so that if you walk left, everyone walks left. This is the puzzle element.

The premise of the game is that you need to find all these energy orbs to further explore the facility to try and find your way off the planet. You soon discover that you are not alone... and this is as far as I will go without ruining the story. It’s worth playing and I would recommend it.

I’ve complained about a lot of space games recently where they try to create the atmosphere of isolation by making the music severely depressing and The Swapper is no exception to this rule. It further loses points though due to the graphical issues that the game suffers from. I’m sure it’s meant to be dark in order to add to the atmosphere but there’s dark and there’s ‘so dark, you can’t see fuck all’ which is just stupid when you are expected to find stuff in a semi abandoned space facility.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

It’s another short one this week. The ten achievements each relate to individual computer screens that are hidden throughout the game. When I say hidden, what I mean is that you need to know where they are in order to find them. Some of them are so obscurely hidden that there is no way you would stumble upon them by mistake, or even for want of looking.

Another thing that’s worth pointing out is that The Swapper is another one of those games that, achievement wise, doesn’t care if you finish it or not. There was no end game reward but tellingly, I finished it anyway. Read into that how you will.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The Swapper is short and sweet with some difficult puzzles that will present a real challenge without video solutions. It scores even more points for creating a story that made me want to see it through to conclusion – rare for a puzzle game.

NBA 2K17: The Prelude

The premise for this is absolutely bizarre. We are going to release another annualised Basketball title (one I have absolutely no intention of playing by the way), so let’s have a free to play game that showcases the career mode... or pre-career mode? It makes no sense as a concept but what the hell, we’ll run with it.

So the story (yes there is a story) follows The President, a high school basketball star who makes his way through college to eventually gain a professional career. Along the way he is faced with the standard trials and tribulations of college – school work, friends, distractions, fast food and girls.

So what is there to experience in The Prelude? Well, there are a couple of basketball matches and some stats stuff... but that’s it. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that most of the time you will spend in the game is looking at the unrepresentatively long loading screens between cut-scenes and basketball games. And there are more cut-scenes than games.

If I’m being kind I would say it looks pretty. That’s all I can say though. The Prelude isn’t here to showcase the game’s sound track either. For the short time I was playing, it must have given me same stupid song five or six times. It didn’t help that I’m not a fan of popular music either.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

For completing the ‘experience’ you will get 7 of these achievements. That just leaves 3 achievements that you need to go off the not-so-beaten track to get. You need to play a tutorial game, equip a custom animation and purchase an attribute upgrade. This last one is the only troublesome one in that if you don’t get enough points to get an attribute upgrade, then you will have to use cash money to get it. I was fairly horrendous at playing the game and still had enough points to do this so it shouldn’t be too troublesome.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s a short review but it’s a game short of any mentionable content. It’s not even a real game. It’s a preview of a game. With achievements. A Gamerscore hunter’s dream but nothing more.