Black Mirror

As part of a sale a while ago I bought four games that are relatively expensive. Black Mirror was most certainly a game that I never would have purchased at full price as it retails at £31.99 which, for a short, linear, point and click adventure game, is massively overpriced and that’s without going in to the game’s issues.

Firstly, the voice acting is terrible. You play as David, a guy who has a clear personality disorder in such that his reactions to things go from sounding like he couldn’t care less about what’s going on to going into fits of over-the-top-rage for no clear reason.

The storyline and gothic look drew me in to purchasing it and while the gothic look and eerie feel is there, the story line was a bit of a let-down in terms of how out there it is. Character relationships are also flitting in that they are underdeveloped and difficult to buy in to.

David isn’t the only one with voice acting issues, he’s just the most prominent. Every other character phones it in at some point. It’s just bad all round in this area, including the character models. They are poorly designed and quite often don’t sync up with the voice acting.

In terms of gameplay, this area is also shoddy. The camera and movement remains fiddly at the best of times, making even the simplest navigation an absolute ballache. Interacting with items and quick time event cutscenes feels like luck most of the time. This is especially galling during the cutscenes because getting the cutscene interactions wrong results in instant death and me being even more annoyed with the game.

And all this is after having to wait an inordinate amount of time for the game to load. This happens most of the time you change scenes which happens a lot.

The puzzles are the best aspect of the game but one of these was designed specifically to infuriate everyone and that’s the key puzzles. You have to rotate parts of a key to fit into a lock and while in real life this would be straight forward, the game is massively pedantic about the positions of the parts of the key. This is the point where I just wanted the game to be over and even resorted to watching a video to solve the last one.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 21 Achievements

Given the problems with the game, the achievements are actually relatively straightforward and just getting through the story, which is obviously difficult based on the above, will get 14 of them.

The other seven are all for doing specific things throughout the game, some notable ones involve having to keep the cursor in a circle when David gets himself wound up after some scary moments. There are a few achievements tied to this extravaganza.

However, the most notable one is one that can be missed for convincing your companion to ride a dumbwaiter down to the basement. Once this is done though, it’s just a case of playing through the game. Due to how horrible the gameplay is, I would recommend just following a guide if you were fool enough to pay money for the game. Like me.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Black Mirror is a terrible game that’s not worth the asking price in any way. It’s clunky, has no replayability, and is generally not fun. The achievements are easy though If you are willing to suffer through it.  

Hero Express

This is another game I bought for contest reasons and I can safely say that it caused my week to feel a lot longer than it should have.

Hero Express is classed as a platformer but I’m not sure it is. You play as a hero fighting against giant monsters like King Kong and Godzilla… though these are Hero Express original monsters and in no way affiliated with the real King Kong or Godzilla.

Only, that’s not really the case. In reality you will be racing a vehicle of strange proportions that appears to be making some sort of delivery, across a geographically themed location collecting coins and gasoline to get to the end goal. There are eleven variants and that’s the entire game.

Each of the themed locations has its own vehicle and own set of currency that’s used to upgrade said vehicle. You cannot use currency from another level to upgrade a different vehicle – much like in real life where you can’t spend dollars in Britain… but who cares about real life when you are racing cartoon cars across horrible terrains.

This brings me on to my next point, it’s actually impossible to complete any of the levels on a first run because the cars are too shit to complete the courses. This doesn’t really matter too much as I’ll cover in the achievement section, but still it would have been nice to have the opportunity at a first pass so I could feel smug.

It’s a game I would class as a frustration raiser as, at times, it was infuriating to play. There was nothing worse than getting that perfect run going, setting a personal best only to hit a rock at slightly the wrong angle and come grinding to a halt. Even when the car was decently upgraded, some of the gasoline pickups were harsh and even a small mistake, or piece of bad luck, could cost you the run.

That said, it’s built this way for a reason. Each run can take up to 4 minutes so it’s not a lot of time and really does push that ‘just one more go’ mentality.

Looks and sound wise, it’s not winning any awards and I can guarantee that playing this game during sociable hours would have driven anyone in earshot mad with the sounds coming from the TV. The gameplay holds attention enough for this not to be an issue for the player but as far as others go, this is what the mute button was invented for.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 26 Achievements

There are three elements to the game. The first is simply completing all the tracks which is fair enough really. This will net 12 achievements, one for each track and another for completing all tracks.

The second part consists of the miscellaneous ones of which there are three. One of these comes through normal gameplay and requires you to be airborne for a cumulative 40 seconds. The other two are for doing 10 backflips and 10 front flips respectively and this appears to only be possible on a few levels. The key is to only attempt one at time and take some time to work out which ramps get you enough height to perform the flips. It’s also important to land properly and sometimes they don’t count if you barely completed the flip.

The last eleven are for upgrading each of the vehicles to level 7 and this is where the game can fuck right off as it awards you more for being shit. Essentially if you get a good run and complete a level ‘early’ then you will have to play the level a lot more to get enough coins to upgrade the vehicle more. Arguably it takes the same amount of time regardless but when you don’t have a secondary goal to aim for, it makes the grind feel longer than it is.

Despite this moan and grind, the game can be completed in less than 8 hours so it only feels like a bad grind and that’s probably because the game becomes very repetitive when you have to race the same course over and over again.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I’ll admit that I did enjoy the first 20 minutes of each level of the game, but after that it got old quickly. The achievement list feels like more of a grind than it actually is due to this and it doesn’t offer much replay value when you’re done with the courses. That said, it’s relatively cheap with an RRP of £4.49 so might be worth the small investment.

Black the Fall

I’m not really sure what the make of this one. I smashed through the game in one sitting, mainly because it was not that fun and I just wanted it to be over. Even after exposing myself to the whole thing without any breaks, I’m still left wondering what the hell it was all about.

In Black the Fall, you play as some kind of escapee running out of a prison away from what I can only describe as thinly veiled communist Russians… or maybe that’s the trick? I’m supposed to think that, but that’s not the case at all and only serves to highlight my own prejudices. Frankly I don’t care, because the game is so boring, it doesn’t deserve to have any subliminal messaging or hidden agendas.

In terms of gameplay, it’s a side-scroller following you as you move right through an array of puzzles and obstacles while trying to avoid being shot or recaptured by the dudes dressed in black and red. There are some decent puzzles along the way but there are also more convoluted ones and some areas that I thought the solution was either down right unfair in terms of how shoddy and untrustworthy the gameplay is, or I just got it wrong and glitched my way to success.

The sound effects and graphics aren’t great and it does have a very depressing feel to the environment which is supported by the music. This is another reason why I just wanted my playthrough to be over – who wants to be depressed when playing games?

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 14 Achievements

Making it through to the end will nab four of the achievements with nine being related to collectibles and one really weird and equally horrible one at the beginning of the game, which I’ll mention first.

There is an exercise bike that’s connected to a machine for the first puzzle but to get the first achievement, you have to ride the bike for around 15 minutes until the machine clicks over 1,000 times. The game is short as it is, so this just feels like a mechanic to drag it out further. The counter on the machine ticks down from 20,000 but I can’t imagine anyone tested it out to see if anything happens if it reaches zero.

The other nine appear to be for finding some random hidden people or things throughout the game. I’m not sure if this meant to add to the story or something but it just felt like more contrived bullshit to me – the horrors of this dystopian, non-sensical world we’ve created.

Downloadable Content – N/A

A short review of a short game with a short achievement list. All I can really say is that it’s not worth it for the price. It’ll set you back £11.99 for the privilege (I bought it on sale). Sure, it’s easy but it’s an uninteresting story with redone gameplay that doesn’t offer the player anything.

Forgotton Anne

Probably the biggest mystery around this game is... is the title a spelling mistake or has it been done deliberately?

Forgotton Anne is unique in many ways but the reason I started playing it was because the achievement scores are all weird numbers like 23 or 66. I needed an achievement not divisible by 5 or 0 for a contest. So I picked it up and start playing. The result?

A pleasant surprise for the most part. Forgotton Anne follows the story of Anne who is living in The Forgotten Lands where all host of objects such as lamps and shoes, come to life. It’s an original story which is a rare thing to find in games these days.

In terms of gameplay it’s a bit hit and miss though. It’s a 2D adventure where you can explore in multiple plans by walking into the background or foreground. You can jump, run and collect a magical element to power certain objects. These parts are essentially puzzle sections where you have to use the magical elements to navigate through certain areas.

The weird part of the game play is the control scheme. It’s a case of forget everything you ever knew about standardised controls. The B button is jump, you have to use to RB button to use enhanced abilities and the way the magical elements interact with the jumping during puzzle sections make the game unnecessarily fiddly at certain points.

Sound wise it’s got an original score built to fit the world it’s created in and it’s gone for a cartoony look which fits with the nature of the game. Essentially, it’s very well-crafted game throughout.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 33 Achievements

Forgotton Anne is essentially a reward in exploration. It’s possible to get through the whole game and only get one achievement – which is for completing the game. Realistically though, you’ll get more than this and two of the others are practically given to you; for performing 100 wing jumps and for taking 1,000 stair steps. Both of these will happen through natural gameplay. You would have to play in a very strange way to not get them.

A lot of the achievements are one-offs where you have to go to x location and have a run-in with x character. Others involve having to play the game a certain way, either for small bits or all the way through. The most notable of these is the Pacifist achievement for getting to the end without killing any Forgotlings (the name given to inhabitants of the The Forgotten Lands). This essentially boils down to performing the right dialogue options throughout the game.

There are a few collectible ones too. You have to get and read all diary notes and pick up all mementos and again, this is where some effort comes in and also some strategic gameplay if trying to do everything in one run. There are two points in the game where you have to perform actions for achievements. One of these involves following a character across rooftops without missing a jump… but you have to miss a jump to get a memento. It feels a bit silly, especially considering the mementos could have been placed anywhere in the game.

There is one more cumulative achievement for sitting in all the chairs throughout the game, it’s a bit weird but again is something that if you don’t know is a goal, you won’t be doing it, which is apt as it’s a secret achievement.

While the game is good, the achievement list doesn’t lend itself to any glory. There is far too much secret rubbish that you won’t just do while playing the game. It’s always nice when an achievement list compliments a game and that’s not the case here. It’s almost like the developers didn’t want achievement hunters to enjoy the game, which might have been possible if the non-linear achievements weren’t all secret.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Forgotton Anne is a good game with an original concept. It’s just a shame that the achievement list isn’t great and pretty much requires a guide to avoid multiple runs. I followed one to make sure I got all the achievements in one run and the only positive of this is that it doesn’t ruin the story.

As mentioned, the control system is a bit weird which means, for me anyway, that it needs to be played without playing anything else in between as I would have to relearn the controls.

The Club

I finally got around to playing the actual game here after starting it last year to get the online achievements out of the way. The result was a resounding meh and here’s why.

The Club is a third person shooter where you can play as up to eight different characters in some weird tournament things which essentially boil down to you running and gunning your way through eight different environments, each one a different shade of brown and grey. A tournament consists of 6 or 7 events where you either have to:

Murder a bunch of dudes and get to an exit.
Murder a bunch of dudes while doing laps round a circuit.
Murder a bunch of dudes and get to an exit within a time limit.
Murder a bunch of dudes until a timer runs out.

So there isn’t a lot to do. Once you complete a tournament, you can play all the events in Single Event mode but this doesn’t add anything, it just allows you to replay the levels you’ve already done.

On top of the lack of gameplay, the gameplay itself is insanely frustrating if you are used to fast paced shooters. Aiming with a gun is painfully slow even if you muck around with the cursor speed in the settings, and because of the severely limited texture and colours, the enemies, who are also brown and grey, blend in to the background which means most levels become a memory game of remembering where dudes appear.

Running and movement is also a massive ballache. I’m not sure where all these characters have come from but they have the turning circle of an articulated lorry and get snagged on pretty much everything in the environment.

With that said, it does do something I like and that’s consider a headshot a lethal thing. Enemies will die if you shoot them in them in face. This may sound novel but most games just crank up the enemy survivability to make the game harder. This one rewards you for accuracy regardless of difficulty. Take a bow.

I don’t quite understand the back story or the announcer with the gravel voice but I don’t think this is an important part of the game. Other than that, the sound is meh too, but doesn’t become overbearing so it avoids being the worst part of the game.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

There are a few categories to break down the achievements into, the biggest one of these being the miscellaneous bullshit you have to do that involves playing in stupid, counterproductive ways. Some of my personal favourites involve having to melee 30 guys in one level – oh, this is another part of the game that’s total shite. To punch enemies, you have to be in the exact right position to hit them. There’s no, ‘oh, you’re really close and facing the enemy and pressed the melee button so therefore you want to hit the enemy and not die.’ You will just punch air, slowly, three or four times before connecting with a hit.

Another one requires you to score the maximum multiplier in a level. This involves killing all enemies and shooting all skullshots in one free flowing combo while not getting shot yourself. Essentially you have to already know where everything is to pull this off. The easiest level for this is the last one on Venice because it only has 10 bad guys.

The other one I’ll mention is for getting all the different kill bonuses in one level. This is a pain as a lot of them are situational. It also requires 5 headshots in a row. Needless to say, this also took a lot of replaying.

The next category is collectibles. I’ve mentioned skullshots and there are a set amount of these in each of the single events. There are also some hidden skullshots in some levels and achievements are tied to shooting all of them. The problem is, there isn’t any real in-game tracking for this so it’s best to do it in one go, one level at a time. Once you get all skullshots in a tournament set, a concept art piece will unlock so there is some tracking but it’s minimal and because of the way I did it, I have no idea if this relates to regular skullshots, hidden skullshots or both.

The last category of single player achievements is for completing all of the tournaments on Insane difficulty. With a couple of guides saying where to stand and fight in the siege and survival levels, this wasn’t so bad with the exception of the first level of the last tournament, which a total pain in the ass. It took me about 15 attempts to get through it and once again it’s another one of those practice makes perfect situations, but this was the only real challenge of the Insane playthrough.

Multiplayer

Again, it’s another one of those games that’s so old now that the multiplayer is totally dead. Thankfully big groups aren’t required for any of the achievements and all of it can done with just two players. Nothing is challenging either and doesn’t require too much faffing about… with one exception.

Apparently Gears of War’s Seriously… achievement didn’t have enough kills on it and The Club had to go one better with their No, Seriously achievement for getting 10,001 kills in multiplayer. There are two problems with this. The first one is that a game such as The Club, which has virtually no critical acclaim, has absolutely no right to poke fun at Gears of War which such an obnoxious achievement. Secondly, earning this achievement takes more time than the rest of the game combined which is just stupid. And the multiplayer is total garbage so no one in their right mind would legitimately play long enough to rack up that many kills.

The Club is a very shallow gaming experience. It’s massively lacking on single player content, has horrible textures and looks lifeless. It’s not aged well and can’t be recommended. If you like your achievements, the No, Seriously achievement is a put off too.