Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles

My next game saw me return to the shorter format and the joy of no missable achievements. That’s the only real redeeming quality of Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles though.

This is another game that doesn’t require you to complete it to get all the achievements but after playing for ten minutes, this became more relief rather than disappointment. The game is hard and not because the game itself is difficult. It’s just massively unfair. You start the game with a hand gun and a knife and a small number of bullets, but each zombie takes anywhere from 8 to 14 bullets to put down. There are ‘critical hits’ which do extra damage, but these occur based on RNG so can’t be relied upon to get you out of a pickle.

The character you control also moves ridiculously slowly and saunters about in a very relaxed manner considering they are alone in a house filled with the undead. At first this was funny but after thirty minutes of struggling to move anywhere it becomes horrendously frustrating.

In terms of comparability, it looks and feels like a cheap Resident Evil knock off. The camera is third person and changes perspective as you move through rooms and the directional controls change when the camera does. While I get this, there had to be a better way of implementing it – most of the time when I attempted to change my direction to match the camera, I ended up going back on myself and causing the camera to continually shift.

Looks wise, it’s ugly, dreary, unimaginative and lots of other mean words on the same spectrum. There was a funny bit though when I clicked on one of the paintings in a hallway. This painting had appeared five or six times at this point and I just thought it was lazy game design. However, when I clicked on the painting, it produced the following dialogue: ‘Did they buy these in bulk or something?’ so there was an awareness to the cheap design. This would have been hilarious if the game controls were any good. It did provide me with a light chuckle though.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 12 Achievements

As mentioned above, there isn’t a need to complete the game to get all the achievements. The list is essentially a small grind and the last achievement I unlocked was for killing 200 ‘threats.’ Along with killing things, you also need to luck out and get 50 critical hits, heal yourself 10 times and lastly and probably most annoying, solving 50 puzzles.

Solving puzzles means opening doors that need keys or codes. This means replaying the opening 5 minutes of the game over and over again getting 4 ‘puzzles’ per run and is easily the most grindy-feeling achievement. For the kills and critical hits, you are actually doing something, so it doesn’t feel grindy. I did try to progress further in the game on my several runs through this opening segment, but I couldn’t find the key I needed to progress despite the fact there were only five or so rooms I could go in. Even Google didn’t help me.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles is a quick but boring completion where all the achievements can be earned in under 3 hours. It’s also not a good game that feels under developed. There are another 2 games in the series, which I bought as a collection, but they are a lot further down the to do list and won’t be moving up any time soon.

Meet the Robinsons

The next game on the hit list is a movie tie-in game for a movie I’ve never seen and now having played the game, I most likely never will. I have decided to have a go at putting a walkthrough together for this as I ended up having to do a nearly full second playthrough due to one of the missable achievements that caused me to have a rage blackout. It’s only fair to try and save other gamers from the same fate.

Meet the Robinsons follows the story of Wilbur Robinson whose MO appears to be using a time machine to travel back in time and take pictures of himself with characters from history. The game starts with a prologue in ancient Egypt where you escape from a collapsing temple and effectively alter history. I really had to work hard to swallow the time travel liberties in the game. While I understand it’s a kid’s movie, I don’t see that as a genuine reason to trash the place with a poor time travel premise.

Anyway, the idea of the game is that the timeline gets corrupted when Wilbur goes back in time and as the player, your job is to spend 75% of the game fixing it. The whole story makes very little sense and throw in the time travel issues and it becomes simply terrible.

Gameplay wise, it’s shockingly bad. The control interface is one of the worst I’ve encountered in a long time. What I found to be bizarre was the fact that there is no jump button. Wilbur gets over obstacles by walking into them. This does make level navigation simpler, but I still thought it was a bizarre choice. As you play the game, you pick up various weapons and utilities to use against enemies and these get assigned to the Y, B and X buttons. The aiming function is where the game becomes shit. You can auto-lock on using the LB button but you won’t lock on to anything you want to aim at. You can also do manual aiming by holding down LT and pressing the button that corresponds to the weapon you want to use. I found it hit and miss whether this worked and when it did, it was incredibly fiddly and not user friendly.

In addition to the above, there are three vehicle sections that involve you getting into a giant ball and rolling through a course. The ball handles badly too so at least it’s consistent. These also have course records attached to them and if you beat the record you get some kind of reward. I only did this once on my second playthrough so I’m not sure what the rewards were. The times are essentially doing a perfect run so it makes no sense to have these as you only get one attempt per playthrough and you need to learn the course to do it well. And even then, it’s still luck-based.

Luck sums it up quite nicely when you look at the difficulty of the game. It’s not overly difficult and it feels as though it’s done to account for the sloppy gameplay – and the amount of luck you will need to get through it.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 38 Achievements

Another problem with the game is that there are a lot of collectibles and a lot of sections of the game that cannot be revisited once you’ve cleared them. Due to this, there are 14 missable achievements. Two of these are for scanning 130 objects throughout a playthrough and completing all 16 Havoc puzzles. Neither of these have any trackers so you won’t know if you done them all unless you keep a record of what you’ve done.

This is where I came unstuck as I had missed one of the Havoc puzzles due to some uncharacteristically poor tracking on my part, but lessons learned for the future.

The achievements can be broken down into three categories; mini games, main story and collectibles. Some achievements are tied to each other in that you have to collect VR discs to play against certain characters in the chargeball minigame – a fairly horrendous block-breaker game. Aside from getting all the collectibles to unlock the characters, you then need to play them. You play two games as part of the story – one tutorial which shows you how it works and one against ‘The Champ’ which is an overly long 3-match series. Apparently if you don’t win this match, you can’t rematch him without starting again but I don’t know what happens if you lose.

The rest of the matches can be played in the minigames sub menu once you’ve collected the relevant VR discs. The matches themselves are pretty easy and if you play on the tutorial level, you only have to play one game to get a win.

The other side of the mini-games involves playing a game called Security System which is a shooting gallery. There are two achievements tied to playing this which essentially require you to get 100,000 points. This is also easy. It was the first thing I did in the game and I breezed through it without really knowing what I was doing.

So that just leaves the collectibles. The scans are easy enough – just scan everything and eventually it will unlock. There is some leeway here as there are closer to 150 individual scans throughout the game and you only need 130. While I said there isn’t a tracker, two other items are obtained by scanning 100 and 110 things so you at least will know when you are nearly finished.

The last achievement I’ll talk about is the Havoc puzzles. There are 16 of them in the game and they are 2D puzzles where you navigate to an exit while avoiding ants and rocks and blowing stuff up. The controls here are no better than the main game and when it requires you be fast, you will likely fail several times because of the controls.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Having to play Meet the Robinsons twice was an episode in sheer frustration but I have no one to blame but myself for that. The controls will live in the memory for being a massive failure and the game is generally quite ugly. That said, my second playthrough took less than 6 hours and it’s probably anywhere between 8 to 10 hours to get the full completion. It’s not worth replaying.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The next game on the hit list was one I started back in November last year. I didn’t expect or even clock that this game had an online requirement and it was a four player one to boot. Luckily, despite the fact that hardly anyone had played this game, I managed to find someone looking for people to do this with, so I jumped at the opportunity to get it started and complete the online achievements before diving in to the main game.

The game itself is very middle of the road. The nicest thing to say about it is that it’s competent at what it does. It consists of seven chapters where you play as both Autobots and Decepticons which I thought was an interesting twist. Each transformer has its own set of special abilities with which you use to kill other robots and blast your way through the levels. There are a couple of boss fights to navigate too but not at the end of every level, so it mixes up the action too.

The only exception to the gameplay being competent is the driving sections and thankfully there aren’t many of these. The driving controls are unique to the game which makes no sense in a world where standardised driving controls exist. Why they couldn’t just stick to RT = accelerate, LT = brake and the left stick controls the direction, I have no idea.

Story-wise, it seems to set out a series of fictional (in terms of the movie franchise) events but still features the standard framing of, Megatron beats up Optimus Prime and Optimus comes back and saves the day, as standard. No major characters die, good or evil, so it’s almost like a prequal to the movie in this regard.

The game was released in 2011, right at the height of the gun-metal grey fad so despite this being a transformers game, there is very little bright colour and most scenery and landscape is a depressing mix of brown and grey and something in between. Musically it’s in keeping with the franchise so no real complaints here.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 36 Achievements

The achievement list for the single player element of the game is very straightforward. You can play 96% of the game on easy to get through all the levels and the score achievements are made fantastically easy as soon as you realise that using a melee attack to kill everything multiplies your score up to 30 times - most of the time I finished a level exceeding the score threshold by a million-plus points.

In addition to completing the game and getting the scores, there are a collection of specific achievements that relate to doing things in levels or getting kills with weapons a certain amount of times. None of these are secret and I obtained most of these without the need to replay anything.

The few bits I needed to replay included a section in Chapter V where you race through a canyon as Starscream. There is a 2 minute time limit to complete this section and the only reason I missed it was because there is a gate that I didn’t know how to open on my first run.

Another bit was at the start of Chapter VI which needs to be played on hard for the achievement. You need to clear the first bit of the level without dying and this wasn’t too difficult. I died the first time I tried but the second time I was more careful and breezed through it. This was the last achievement I unlocked.

All the above is made slightly more complicated by the fact that there are 27 collectibles spread throughout the 7 chapters, but these don’t prevent you from getting the score achievements and are all easily obtained with reference to a video guide.

Multiplayer

That just leaves where I started – the multiplayer. It’s essentially a shit game of capture the flag and another unnecessary, unwanted multiplayer addition to a perfectly mediocre single player game but I won’t go on about it as I’ve done that before.

There are four achievements and getting to level 20 is the real work. This is done by exchanging flag captures with another player and believe me, this is only way anyone will earn these achievements in a dead multiplayer environment. The other three are for dying first, using an ability five times and not dying for 60 seconds. So yeah, get to level 20 and all the achievements are yours.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is an average third-person shooter experience that doesn’t do much wrong but doesn’t excel either. It provides a few hours of entertainment and doesn’t outstay its welcome, but you may wonder why you invited it over in the first place. With the multiplayer, it takes about 8 hours to complete.

Backyard Sports: Backyard Football 10

The next American Xbox completion to come through is Backyard Sports: Backyard Football 10 and the first thing I learned when playing this game was that I had not maintained anything I learned about American Football from when I played Madden 08 a few years ago.

Thankfully though, Backyard Sports: Backyard Football 10 is a much quicker completion than Madden as it doesn’t require you to complete 10 years’ worth of the franchise.

The game itself is simple enough to anyone that knows American Football and it quickly came back to me – make the plays, cross your fingers and hope they come off. Someone who understands American Football will tell me I’m wrong though as I’m sure there is some way of getting the plays to consistently go your way.

In terms of the gameplay, it’s a much more dumbed down version of American Football… but the rooster does feature Tom Brady, which I found surprising as all the characters are just referred to by their first names when you are playing.

In terms of looks, it’s intentionally cartoony that appears to be the staple of the series. Sounds wise, the commentary sucks ass. I get that it’s not taking itself seriously but to the level of poo-poo humour is a step too far. Some of the things Chuck comes out with had me cringing. I only played the game for 45 minutes, but this still managed to grate on me.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

After playing for a bit and getting to grips with the game’s limitations and the way it plays and realising how shit I was at it, I looked up the easiest way to get the achievements and the answer was… local multiplayer using two controllers.

There are achievements for tackling, running and throwing and… that’s it. The only tricky thing – for me anyway – was getting it all done in a single game. All the achievements are tied to individual players, so you have to use the same player to throw touchdowns and distance for 300 yards. You have to run for two hundred yards and make 8 tackles with the same player – 3 of which need to be made on the quarter back.

Obviously by using two controllers you can control the plays of your opponent which makes setting up attacking plays easy. You just need to move all player two’s players out of your way and go nuts. The defensive ones are more important as you can select the same play over and over again and repeat sacking the quarter back.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I can see how Backyard Sports: Backyard Football 10 could be considered a charming sports game, but the commentary alone makes it obnoxious. It’s my own fault for playing a game I don’t understand for easy score. It is an easy and quick completion but outside of that, it’s hard to think of nice things to say about it.

Midnight Deluxe

Next on the backlog reducing hitlist is a little number known as Midnight Deluxe, an Xbox One puzzle game that’s sort of like Angry Birds… except without the pigs… or the birds. The idea is that you fling Midnight, the white square thing from the cover, onto platforms, past obstacles an into a hole with light coming out of it. That’s the entire game.

Each level is scored on a 3-star system depending on how many throws it takes you to get Midnight into the hole. For the first few levels the game is endearing and charming but as soon as things become less straightforward, you start to realise how shitty the controls are.

Getting Midnight to go where you want him to go very quickly becomes a continuous cycle of trial and error but not the good kind, if there is a good kind of trial and error. Unless you are willing to draw all over your television screen, working out what you did previously to try something slightly different is next to impossible. This is coupled with the fact that estimating the power behind your throws is really difficult because the power gauge is so small and controlled by how much pressure you put on the right analogue stick – a terrible way of measuring power output.

It looks pretty good though – the levels are beautifully rendered, and they’ve made good use of the contrasting light and dark in the levels. This is the only positive thing to say about the game though.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

In terms of achievements, it’s another haul in less than an hour. The first thing required is getting 3 stars in one level for the achievement – having an achievement for getting 3 stars in all levels would have made this an incredibly hard and frustrating completion. It’s almost like the developers knew how shit their game was to be played when they wrote the achievement list.

There are over 80 levels in the game, but achievements are only tied to the first 40 which is good. While you are getting to level 40, you can also earn achievements for dying in every way possible and interacting with Midnight’s ‘friends.’ There is one very specific achievement for making one of Midnight’s friends smile while completing the level. What happens here is that Midnight’s ‘friend’ drops down a slope to block your exit, so you time your shot to get Midnight into the hole before the way is blocked. To make Midnight’s friend smile, you hit the friend with Midnight. To get the achievement, you need to hit the friend and get Midnight in the hole. It’s more straight forward trial and error but at least it’s clear what you have to do.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Midnight Deluxe is a frustrating puzzle game but thankfully it’s over before it induces any controller destroying rage. Not recommended on the game front but it’s an easy completion in less than an hour and costs £4.99 – but there is more game than achievements so it’s potentially a fair cost.

College Hoops 2K6

A new year has brought a new tact to playing games. With a backlog of games over 300 large, it was high time to start getting some of these off of the list. To do this, I’ve started gaining focus by using a random generator to pick one of my 30 easiest games and just go and complete it – started or not. The other started games will be there when I get around to them. At the same time, I’m keeping up with daily rubbish in Elder Scrolls Online and Destiny 2 in some vein hope that I will complete them some day. I moved a hell of a lot closer to an Elder Scrolls Online completion by obtaining the Emperor achievement with a bunch of guys so that was pretty cool.

You may think, I’m dragging this out and you know what, you’re right. The reason being there isn’t a lot to say about College Hoops 2K6 other than it’s a very American Basketball game.

A while ago, I engaged on a game exchange with one of my American gaming friends where he supplied me with a load of American-only Xbox 360 games in exchange for some European-only ones. The one thing I was missing was an American Xbox to actually play them. Luckily, I had a real-life friend living in Virginia who was able to procure me this item and bring it back across the Atlantic for me.

Annnnd College Hoops 2K6 was the first game to be completed on said Xbox! And I played it for a grand total of 45 minutes. In terms of a game, it’s pretty much the same as the last basketball game I played, except with more American fan-faire. Looks wise, it’s not aged well either and the game interfaces were massively confusing.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 5 Achievements

It’s a really light and quick list which one minor exception. I played one game after adjusting the in-game sliders to make my team awesome and the CPU team terrible and got four achievements for rebounds, points with one player, three pointers and steals.

The only achievement left after that was for getting 6 blocks with one player and the only way to do this quickly was to get two controllers and play a game to make the blocks happen with the same player. Even then it was really difficult to see what was happening and I was relying on the in-game counter rather than seeing the blocks take place.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Playing College Hoops 2K6 was a pretty pointless endeavour in terms of gaming but it’s a quick and easy 1,000 points on the board. If you really want to play a basketball game, it’s best to go with something much more modern.

Resident Evil 6

A while ago, I looked at all the games I owned on the Xbox 360 that could not be played on Xbox One. I was starting to get paranoid about the fact that eventually, service is going to stop for the 360 and therefore any non-Backward Compatible games would be lost to me. In addition, it got me thinking about online achievements that have a reliance on third party servers and therefore this could have a higher risk of discontinued achievements.

This resulted in me starting Resident Evil 6 as it’s both non-BC and has online achievements and my only unstarted game that required more than two players to get all the achievements. Anyway, all of the multiplayer achievements are in the game’s DLC so that will be covered later.

Resident Evil 6 has received some negative criticism over the years and now, having played it the whole way through, I can’t see why. Certainly not to the extent I’ve seen. The game consists of 4 campaigns where you play as Leon (or Helena), Chris (or Piers), Jake (or Sherry) and Ada Wong (by herself). The campaigns are essentially one story, just told from the different view points to give a full impression of what’s going on from all angles. Although by the end, I didn’t feel any more enlightened as to what happened than I did when I finished Leon’s campaign.

A quick note on the game itself. It’s not one of those pick up and play games. Most chapters take around an hour to complete, sometimes longer, and the in-game checkpoints were very unreliable as a ‘stop and turn it off’ reference. I didn’t make this mistake twice though and only sat down to play when I had enough time to complete a chapter.

Gameplay wise, it’s the same style as Resident Evil 5; third-person, over the shoulder view point. What’s quite handy is that you can change shoulders by pressing a button which gives an advantage when sneaking through corridors. The characters, however, handle like shit and they all seem to have the turning circle of a truck. The unhelpful controls become ever more apparent during Chris’ campaign when you are tasked with running away from some giant mutant thing. The whole running and jumping becomes an episode in frustration when the smallest mistake results in instant death.

Thinking back to the criticism the game received, it may have something to do with the fact that it’s not a survival horror that the series is synonymous with. It’s more of a run and gun, especially Chris and Jake’s campaigns. They did make it fair though by creating a bunch of new zombies called Javo that can shoot guns. Weird but whatever.

Looks wise, it sums up the graphical gaming trend of the times as it’s horrible bland, grey and brown all over with the only colour being Ada’s red coat. Musically, it’s your standard Japanese faire made cool for the Westerners. There’s nothing wrong with this and even the menu music in the multiplayer didn’t become boring even after…. A lot of hours.

Achievements – 1,500 Points – 70 Achievements

With a list of 70 achievements, this takes some time, mainly because of what I’ve mentioned above about the chapter completion times. Essentially you are looking at 20 hours just to play through the story. On any difficulty, this will net 21 achievements (all chapters and prologue) and there is one achievement for each difficulty level you complete the game on. There are 4 for Amateur, Normal, Veteran and Professional. Thankfully there isn’t an achievement for completing the game on the apply named No Hope difficulty. On all the lower difficulties, you can unlock skills to give you infinite ammo for all the guns you get. What I did was complete the game on amateur, then complete the last part of every chapter on professional with an infinite ammo shotgun. Combined with maxed out defence and firepower upgrades, it made most bits a breeze.

Aside from completing the levels, there are additional achievements tied to completing certain actions in certain parts of the game. None of these were too difficult once you have played through the game once and know what’s required for each.

In addition to the event-specific achievements, there are two others tied to the in-game collectibles. There are 4 serpent medals in each level of the game, making 80 to collect overall. Some of these are obvious, but others you need a laser-scoped sniper rifle to see, let alone know where they are.

Outside of these, there are several slightly grindy achievements, the worst one being for unlocking all the skills that level up. Essentially, this boils down to running the same sections of chapters over and over again to maximise skill point pick-ups. This is not the most fun you can have with the game.

There is also another achievement for collecting 150 different medals from all the different game modes, however this is made a ton easier with the multiplayer DLC as they are cumulative over all DLC game modes, as well as the campaign.

Unnecessary Multiplayer in Downloadable Content

There are four DLC packs for the game, each one containing a slightly different variation of versus modes and each carrying 5 achievements a piece. I say these are pointless because any mode that requires other people to play with you has a shelf life before people move on to other things and, let’s be honest, Resident Evil wasn’t exactly a franchise crying out for multiplayer.

In terms of achievements, most of them are straight forward and only require two players. The survivors game mode has two that require a third player, but they are both really quick and can be earned simultaneously.

The rest of the 20 DLC achievements don’t require anything complicated however, with just two people, they do take a while. Predator Mode is the quickest as the highest requirement is to get 50 kills. Then it’s Survivors which requires 100 kills. After that it’s probably Onslaught where the big one requires you to chain combos and send enemies to your opponent’s map for them to survive against. The achievement requires you to send 2,000 enemies and even if you do well with stringing together combos, this still takes a while.

The last mode is the longest though. Siege mode requires you to kill 100 BSAA agents and 100 players. This is similar to the Survivors one, only it takes longer because each match consists of 2 rounds and only one where you can get agent and BSAA kills so there is a whole half a match that does nothing towards this achievement. You do have to kill creatures, but this comes miles before the agent kills so it’s almost redundant.

Despite the grindiness of the online component, I enjoyed the main game of Resident Evil 6. Achievements wise, it takes a while but it’s not the worst grind out there and it feels like a rewarding completion once the whole thing is done. It’s certainly not discouraged me from playing the rest of the franchise and the next step looks like Resident Evil 4. The only question is when.

My Brother Rabbit

Back to Artifex Mundi again for something slightly different this time in My Brother Rabbit. It doesn’t follow the traditional Mundi structure in that firstly, there is no dialogue and secondly, the story is told through pictures. The story itself centres around a little girl who is sick and the event of the game take place in her imagination where her ugly toy rabbit goes on an adventure to save her.

The gameplay itself is different too. There is more of a focus on indirect puzzle solving and having to collect lots of the same item to unlock the next steps of the game. Items are either hidden in the background or puzzles need to be solved in order to collect them. There are some that are slightly more advanced than the other games where you are required to pay attention to various elements in the background of the game.

There were three times this happens during the game and the first time you need to move sticks around to make patterns in order to release three items from a sealed chamber. The codes to these are hidden in other scenes but I didn’t realise this managed to unlock the chamber through luck rather than knowing what I was doing. The next one was comprised of a code of five different images, so no amount of guessing was going to open this one. Thankfully though, despite my luck of unlocking the first set of patterns, I started seeing them in the environments so was able to figure this one out as intended.

Graphically, it’s also very different from the standard Artifex Mundi games with a much more child friendly, cartoony look. This seems like a strange choice as the puzzles are certainly not child friendly for the most part. And the rabbit is also more scary than cute.

Musically, it does the same thing as other games where a child is sick and they are struggling to recover… so they make the music as depressing as humanly possible. Thankfully, the gameplay hides this as you will be too involved in the puzzle-findy goodness to pay much attention to the music.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

Being an Artifex Mundi game, it continues the trend of having a large offering of storyline achievements and there are 20 of them here. There are also no true missable achievements either as there is now a chapter select function which allows you to replay chapters. They’ve also removed the expert playthrough requirement too.

From the ones that are not storyline related, these can be obtained simply by clicking on everything there is to click on… okay, not quite but it will work for most of them. Some of the achievements are counter intuitive in this regard. On my first playthrough, I missed three achievements. One related to me not clicking on everything as there are four ducks in the first chapter that require clicking for an achievement. To be fair, these are well hidden, so you almost need to know they are there to click them. It’s not a secret achievement, I’m just stupid and didn’t plan in advance.

However, the other two that I missed, I missed because I had worked out the puzzle solutions and solved the puzzles before using every other option. The first of these is at the end of chapter one where you spray some plant thing with red paint. The nozzle has another eight colours and you need to use them all for the achievement and you can go back after you’ve used the red one.

The other one is in chapter three where this is a weird moose robot (that’s right, moose robot) that you can attach various arms to. You have to attach all three arms to the robot and use them but using two of the arms doesn’t move the game forward and are effectively mistakes. So again, I was punished for using the correct arm first.

The last one I’ll mention, which I was clever enough to research in advance, is for seeing some weird creatures fly away on a paper aeroplane. I’m not entirely sure if this is time based but you need to move between scenes to see them fly away and get the achievement. When I changed screens, I only just saw them, and I don’t know if I would have missed it if I was slower.

Downloadable Content – N/A

My Brother Rabbit is a simple and quick completion however, it again suffers from overpricing. The game retails at £11.99 and is completable in under 3 hours. There is no replayability either as once you’ve seen all the solutions, that’s it.

Pac-Man 256

Another UHH catch up completion here in Pac-Man 256. The game takes the original concept of Pac-Man and has you running up the screen away from a wall of death and against a collection of ghosts coming at you from the other direction. Instead of just power-pellets Pac Man also has a wealth of other power ups to help him, however in order to get these, they need to be unlocked through picking up pellets to ‘level up’ and make them available.

The goal of the game is simply to outscore everyone else. During my brief time playing it, I guarantee that my score performance leaves a lot to be desired and I had to work hard/get lucky to get past a lot of my friend’s scores. I did feel that a good run depended more on luck than any kind of skill for the most part. There would be points where red ghosts, which move as fast as Pac-Man, would surround me from all sides and give me no room for escape. This was the cause of most of my deaths when I had a good run going.

Musically, it applies the traditional Pac-Man theme with a more modern, dance-like twist, in order to be down with the kids. The most annoying thing about it though, is the sound effects. Traditional Pac-Man chomping noises that get progressively louder and more annoying the bigger your chain of pellets gets up to maximum of 256. It’s not so much of a problem when you are playing but anyone else in the room would be driven crazy by it.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

The solutions to some of these achievements have courted some controversy as they make a massive difference to the completion time for the game. More on these later.

The majority of the achievements come easily enough just through playing the game. There are cumulative achievements for eating 2,048 Pac-Dots (regular pellets), scoring a 256 chain of pellets, eating 64 ghosts while being powered by power-pellets and eating 64 pieces of fruit, which show up randomly in the game. There is another achievement for playing a local multiplayer game too.

After this, things get a little more time consuming. Firstly, there are the missions that come up and you need to complete 16 of these. They encompass things like eating ghosts, eating specific types of fruit and killing ghosts using specific types of power up. A lot of these are fully dependent on what the game drops which drags this out a bit.

The next pain-in-the-ass one, and debatably the biggest pain in the ass, is for eating 16 ghosts in one power-pellet chain. You can keep picking up power pellets to keep your ghost-eating powers but again, its up to the game as to whether you get another power pellet to keep your chain going and if you actually get 16 ghosts show up to be eaten in the first place. It took a lot of games of trying for this before I eventually got it and I felt very lucky to have done so.

Now on to the controversy – the power ups. The first one is simple. You need to upgrade a power up to the maximum level and do this you need to collect coins in the game. You get coins randomly on the map, from completing missions and random free gifts from the game. The coins you get do not help you achieve one maximum power up very quickly either.

You also need to unlock all the power ups and get them all to the max level and this is where the time really comes into it. At this point you have two choices. Play the game over and over again for about 20 or so hours… or abuse a glitch with the achievement tracking and cloud saving to get progress towards these achievements, unlocking them in no where near the same amount of time.

Doing this is not in breach of any terms and conditions of services however, some people consider it cheating and were quite rude to those that found out about it. If anything, this highlights how certain individuals chose to be upset by things that don’t affect them – something I found quite ridiculous.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Pac-Man 256 is another arcade reimagining that does exactly what you would expect it to. It’s a repeatable arcade game where you compete with yourself to get better. The achievement list is straightforward, if not a little grindy, and it retails at £3.99 so is great value for money to boot.

Eventide 3: Legacy of Legends

Artifex Mundi games are now quite easy to coast through in terms of the story and game play. There have been so many that Eventide 3 doesn’t offer anything new in terms of game play. The only real addition is the furthering of the story, but again, it only serves as context for the game play.

Eventide 3 suffers from the same stupidity of previous games where items you find have the one specific use despite appearing to be useful for more than one thing… and once they have been used for their defined tasks, they are discarded. Even if the item is a knife which has a multitude of practice uses. This is just par for the course at this point.

The only real issue with the gameplay is that sometimes, the cursor is a little picky in the hidden picture scenes. There were several instances where I thought I had found an item only to be told I was incorrect… then clicking maybe a millimetre to the left triggered the pick-up. Slightly annoying.

The main story focuses around another sassy female protagonist and her brother John. The fern flower from the previous story makes a reappearance and, as with any magical artefact, it attracts the attention of an evil sorcerer. In order to stop him and save your brother, you need to navigate hidden picture scenes and solve mini-games, as well as competing in rune battles with some enemies. There is also the usual double-cross where a character gets you to do something for them before revealing their true evil intentions. Essentially, it’s tried and tested so no real reason to change it.

Graphically, it’s the same as ever and musically it’s in keeping with the style and theme of the game. It doesn’t suffer from any niggles which is good considering it’s a basic structure but there have been music and inventory issues in past games so it’s good these don’t reoccur.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 27 Achievements

With 27 achievements, Eventide 3 follows the new trend of rewarding players with achievements just for playing the game. 11 are earned just for completing the story. There is another one for completing it all on expert as well.

With all the Mundi games there are a massive haul of missable achievements that can be categorised into three areas; puzzles and hints, collectibles, and rune battles/portal travel games. There are the usual ones for completing all the games without using hints and finding objects in pictures within a certain time limit. This one requires you to complete a hidden picture scene in less than 30 seconds and the only real way to do this on a first run is to abuse the fact that the timer stops when the game is paused as you can still see the hidden object puzzle.

Regarding collectibles, there are two sets to pick up and 6 achievements attached to them; pick up one, pick up half and pick up all of each set. This is where I came slightly unstuck as I missed one collectible on my playthrough. Luckily this was near the beginning of the game and I was able to cross it off quickly – and the collectibles carry across playthroughs.

The last set is for the rune battles and portal travel games. You need to win all the rune battles without making any mistakes and complete the portal travels in the same vein. There doesn’t appear to be a time limit for these and both games are spot the difference and pair matching respectively so it’s fairly straightforward.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Eventide 3 follows the tried and tested blueprint from the previous games. It doesn’t try anything risky and provides a casual gaming experience to be enjoyed by all. I managed to get through it in less than 4 hours so it’s not overly long. The only downside is the retail price as these are currently going for £11.99 on the Xbox marketplace. This feels overpriced for the amount of content you get.

Wheels of Aurelia

This is another Ultimate Head to Head (UHH) game that I have to say is one of the most bizarre, and frankly absurd, game concepts I’ve seen for a while. It’s effectively a visual novel game but one where you also drive a terribly handled car down a questionably accurate road.

You follow the story of Leyla, a character whose dialogue options flick between obnoxious, twatish and silent. She is one of the worst characters I’ve ever played as in games and her supporting cast aren’t much better either.

Leyla appears to be some kind of political activist who is against ‘the man’ and demonstrates her being ‘against the man’ by constantly smoking, driving like a reckless dickhead, and having an opinion on everything while appearing not to make any constructive contribution to society while taking whatever liberties she wants. The game was developed by Santa Ragione which is of Italian origin so maybe there’s a translation issue. I don’t know, but it certainly feels like it.

Gameplay wise, there are two functions. Drive the car and select dialogue options. Selecting dialogue options is a massive faff which involves having to press up or down on the D-Pad and read the different options while attempting to drive a car – that’s if you are using the car’s speed up function by pressing the A button. If you don’t press the A button, the car will drive itself – something that the AI is also incredibly bad at. When you are in control of the car, there are also a large number of invisible walls that appear as if from nowhere in the middle of the road. It’s annoying when you are trying to drive without crashing which is key to some of the achievements.

Musically, its fucking horrific. I’m saying this strictly from a ‘having to listen to it over and over again’ point of view. There are sixteen endings in the game and having to suffer through the same three of four clinky-clunky background songs for the whole thing made me wish I had muted it. You don’t even need sound as the dialogue is written and appears on the screen.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

There are 16 achievements for each ending and another two pointless ones for unlocking 10 endings and all the endings. The only painful bit is figuring out some of the bizarre criteria that determines getting certain endings. This comes down to driving at certain speeds, driving without crashing, winning races against dickheads and picking up some other people who needs lifts to certain places, despite the fact you may be going somewhere different.

Looking outside of the endings, there is another achievement for completing the game in less than 15 minutes. This was the first achievement I unlocked, and I don’t recall many endings taking more than 15 minutes to get. In addition, there is another auto-achievement for completing the game for the first time.

In terms of hitchhikers, there are six that need to be picked up for another achievement and this is gained by exploring all routes, which you will have to do anyway if you want all the endings.

There are two very strange achievements that are quite similar and can be earned together. One of for completing the game without making any dialogue choices, effectively remaining silent for the game, and also… for not touching the controller. That’s right, there is an achievement for actively choosing to not play the game.

The last two achievements I unlocked were for getting all of the cars and the reason for this is that not all of the cars are connected to endings so you have to play in different ways towards the same endings to get them all. I know I said two achievement and that’s because there is an achievement for unlocking all other achievements.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Wheels of Aurelia is another one of those games that doesn’t seem to understand what it is to be a game. It is filled with characters that are not likeable and the story itself doesn’t feel like it has any substance – which isn’t surprising considering it can end in 16 different ways. I can’t recommend playing it, but it is an easy and relatively quick completion, albeit one that took me 7 hours. However, I did fall asleep several times while the game was running.

Minit

This is another Ultimate Head to Head game completion and probably one of the few that I’ll manage to complete in a short time frame. The game is like a mini-Zelda styled from the Super Nintendo era. It’s a 2D, black and white, top down adventure game where you pick up a sword that’s cursed and the curse causes you to die every 60 seconds. This adds, what I thought was, a unique twist to the gameplay.

The game then follows a Zelda-like quest where you collect various items to progress. When you die, any items you hold will remain with you, so you can always progress despite the constant looming deaths you face. The story-line sees you visiting locations to try and break the curse. This eventually sees you face off against some kind of sword-based boss. After you beat the boss, you flush the sword down the toilet… which breaks the curse, just like all the legends of old.

I didn’t have any real complaints about the game. It worked exactly as it was supposed to and it was rewarding and fun to play. The music is also a plus as it doesn’t take itself seriously and provides a great and varied backdrop to the 2D adventuring. Wow, that’s a lot of positivity.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 27 Achievements

With a very small window of playing opportunity per life, most of the achievements are based around collectibles. A lot of these will come with main story progression, however some will take you off the beaten track and require you to solve the many bizarre hidden puzzles the game has to offer.

Essentially, this boils down to collecting every item in the game in one playthrough. This will net all but three of the achievements if you get all the little interactions connected to some miscellaneous achievements.

The only three that will likely remain are for completing the game is under 25 runs, completing the game without killing any snakes, unless you managed to not kill any snakes on the first playthrough (which I didn’t), and for completing ‘Second Run’.

Second Run is a new game plus mode that requires you to do the same things but now you only have 40 seconds per life. Despite this new handicap, there is a glitch that makes completing the game in this mode at lot quicker than in normal mode. Instead of playing the game normally, you can just pik up the broken sword you acquire at the beginning of the game and make a run to the toilet and flush it, gaining the bare minimum of other items to get this far. This only works in Second Run and due to the way it works, it’s easier to complete the game in less than 25 runs this way.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall, Minit is a straight forward and enjoyable completion and certainly one of the more fun games I’ve played lately. I can certainly recommend this to anyone who enjoys adventure games.

Spiral Splatter

The next game in the Ultimate Clean Up was Spiral Splatter. It’s a speed-puzzle game where you have to manoeuvre a white ball through a maze and while avoiding various other obstacles to varying degrees of complexity. On paper it looks like a relatively straight forward completion, however the reality is that it’s a frustrating pile of garbage.

The aim of the game is to play through loads of levels gaining three stars in each one. Performance is based on speed and it’s relatively unforgiving in terms of how quick you need to be to get three stars. It’s borderline ridiculous in some instances, however it’s still doable as I managed it without losing a controller. But that’s not the worst part of this escapade. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the controls are the most frustrating, over-sensitive and, I swear, inaccurate in any game I’ve played for a while. That’s combined with the fact death comes at the slightest hint of touching a wall or obstacle – in fact, sometimes if you touch the air around the walls you will die anyway. It’s garbage.

Controls-wise you need to use the analogue stick to steer but there is a speed-up button – one you will need to use to get three stars in some levels, but you won’t want to use it as all it does is speed up the dying process.

What was also great was the monumental amount of menu and level glitches that I faced. One such glitch prevented me from being able to complete the level in question. This just showcases the game’s bad mechanics in such a way as to make you want to throw your controller at the television. I was still, however, able to maintain control. However, never have I shouted more in frustration after the continual game fuck ups.

Musically, I’m not sure what they were trying to do with this one but combined with the constant dying, it just adds a severe layer or depression to an already unintentionally depressing experience.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

You have to wonder about a game that has achievements for dying over and over again and Spiral Splatter has 4 achievements for progressively dying up to 500 times. This is understandable when going near the walls kills you.

There are 11 stages each comprised of 10 levels and achievements are tied to unlocking stages 2 through 11 and another one for completing the game. The only other thing to do is get 3 stars in every level and this is where the frustration really kicks in. Those repeated deaths and split-second losses become insufferable after stage 3 and only gets worse as the levels get more complicated. However, due to the quick levels, your 70 attempts to complete level 5-6 or whatever, will only take around 5 minutes. Over all levels, this does mount up to a few hours though and unless you are super human, you will unlock the 500 deaths way before the end of the game.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Spiral Splatter is probably one of the worst games I’ve played in a while. I can’t think of any redeeming qualities even if you like puzzle games. There are lots of better games out there of the same genre so steer clear.