This sort of set me up for something of a straight forward completion as the game was a lot better than expected – not good by any means, but also not a broken unplayable mess as advertised.
The story follows Brave, a Shaman/Warrior, who is recalling the tale of his battle with the Wendigo, a being of immense power that looks like some kind of hell demon. The Wendigo has destroyed Brave’s village and performed some kind of mind control over the other villagers and it’s up to Brave to retrieve Spirit Dancer’s amulet and save the day.
In terms of gameplay, it really does suck. It’s a basic platformer with a terrible jump mechanic. Jumping comprises the majority of the game so I can see why people gave it a lot of stick. There are lots of instant-death floating platform sections but while the jumping is a bit shit, the checkpoints are really forgiving so it’s not the end of the world.
The combat sucks too. As you progress through the game, you are given a tomahawk and a bow. The tomahawk is fine as you just run at enemies and hit them but using the bow is just an episode in sheer frustration. There is an aiming mechanic but I couldn’t work out if there was a way to switch targets and Brave seems only to be able to aim in one direction so if your target strafes you, Brave will not be pointing his bow at any enemy that is likely to attack you.
There are also vehicle/animal sections where you take control of animals and have to run through checkpoints. This seems to be in the game because it was released at the height of obligatory vehicle sections no matter what kind of game it was. I’m just grateful that there wasn’t an underwater level.
In terms of general errors, I did fall through the game floor once which was terribly annoying, however the same thing happened to me when playing Agents of Mayhem so it shows that games appear to have made little progress in this regard.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 14 Achievements
It’s a small list and can be broken down into three categories. The first are the main story ones and for getting to end, you will get 8 out of 14 achievements.
The next ones are for completing some of the vehicle sections without getting damaged or missing checkpoints. The first of these is for piloting a canoe down a river without taking damage. This is actually quite easy as there is no time limit and you can just go slow and avoid all the obstacles. The second is for flying an eagle through all checkpoints without missing any. This is a bit harder as there is a timer attached to it but I didn’t have any issues.
The last lot are the most frustrating and they are for picking up all the hidden collectibles of which there are 48. I followed a guide for these but they are still problematic and here’s why. The levels are so nondescript that finding directional landmarks to use is really difficult. There is no compass function either so ‘go north’ is useless and unhelpful too.
In order to get the collectibles, you have to do one of two things; either call a bird to drop one or follow a trail of footprints. Some of the birds are impossible to see and there is no way anyone would just stumble upon them, even if you were looking. The footprints thing is also a royal pain in the ass as you have to find one, then find another but it can be in any direction. This doesn’t make logical sense because the footprints point in certain directions (because they are footprints) and it’s a game so why make it so convoluted?
Downloadable Content – N/A
I didn’t have lot of fun with Brave: A Warrior’s Tale but it was nowhere near as bad as some of the reviews made out, which probably made the experience a lot more bearable. It takes around 8 to 10 hours to complete with the collectibles so it’s relatively short but I can’t recommend playing it.
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