Samurai Warriors 2

This was a basic war of attrition to complete but first, the origins of purchase. In the wide world of the gaming community, I ended up playing with someone who lives pretty much down the road from me. We gave each other’s collection a once over and organised a game exchange – ones he wanted for ones he wanted to get rid of that I didn’t have. Samurai Warriors 2 was one of the games I acquired during the exchange and I must say it was totally... not worth it.

Samurai Warriors 2 sees you take control of several characters in Japan during the Sengoku period. Several is a bit of an understatement – there are a lot and all but two have their own story modes.

The game is a hack and slash extravaganza where your playable character basically has the power to singlehandedly end armies at a whim no matter who you play as. I have to say that after you’ve done three or four story modes, the gameplay becomes super repetitive and difficult to stay awake for. During the missions, there is a little more than just surviving and killing. You get given objectives to complete but it basically boils down to getting to the end and killing the leader. There are a few missions that were a pain though as they require you to keep all of your characters alive and relying on AI to show survival instinct is like relying on butter not to melt in an oven.

The story modes themselves are not drastically different and they see you doing the same things over and over and over again to get to the end of missions. It’s probably one of the most repetitive bland games I’ve played in a while.

Aside from story modes, there is a survival mode which sees you climb an infinite tower with differing floors which, again, aren’t that different.  There is also a Japanese version of monopoly called Sugoroku that you can play but this seemed very biased towards the AI opponents and relied almost solely on luck to actually win.

Achievements – 1,250 Points – 29 Achievements

The time needed to unlock all of the achievements is excessive, especially if you make the DLC cock up as I did but I’ll get on to that later.

From the main game, you have to complete 16 individual story modes to unlock 17 achievements if you haven’t downloaded the DLC. As I’ve insinuated above, completing four story modes is trying and 16 made me want to cry by the end.

For another achievement, you have to complete Survival mode is a certain way and get to the 35^th floor. It’s a slight change of pace so will probably feel a lot quicker than completing all of the story modes mentioned above.

There is another achievement for winning the game of Sugoroku I mentioned about and this was almost as bad as the story mode repetitions. The game is so unbelievably biased towards the AI that you will hardly ever land where you need to. If you are reading this looking for advice, collect all the flags and buy all the land, cross your fingers and pray that the AI fuck each other over.

Downloadable Content

The Xtreme Legends DLC takes the prize for being one of the most consistently overpriced pieces of game expansion ever. It doesn’t offer a lot of extra material either. It gives you another five story modes to complete – woopie. And it also gives you another mode called Mercenary Mode which is basically another protracted story mode and you have to complete 100 smaller missions to get a further two achievements... but only if you use strategic saves.

The worst part of the DLC however is the fact that two of the main game achievements are made effortless by downloading it. However, what isn’t mentioned is that doing so will double the amount of time required to complete the story missions as you then have to do ALL of them rather than just the 16 related to the achievements. There are 32 characters in the main game so you can imagine my anger levels.

Samurai Warriors 2 is a very, very repetitive game if you are going for a completion and on top of that, it’s not very rewarding. I’m definitely done with the hack and slash genre as I’m not sure what was worse; this or Ninety Nine Nights.

Eternal Sonata

A friend of mine mentioned Eternal Sonata in one of our many gaming chats because someone he worked with claimed it was the most inspiring game he had ever played. Looking for a reason to start a specific game is normally the hardest part of actually playing a game for me, so I took this random conversation as inspiration of my own to get cracking with a backlog title from 2007.

I have to say that the selling point was completely over-egged and I’m still not 100% sure what the game was about. The alternative title for the game is Torasuti Beru: Shopan no Yume which translates to Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream, and while the second part is referenced through the entire game, I do not recall a bell appearing anywhere, Trusty or otherwise.

Anyway in some attempt to summarise the plot, Frederic Chopin, the famous composer, is on his death bed in the real world and is supposedly dreaming. The game takes place in this dream world and you initially follow a girl named Polka, a 14-year-old who can kill dangerous monsters with an umbrella. Later you mean Allegretto and Beat. I don’t have much of a problem with Allegretto. He is a 16 year old with a sword and an attitude reminiscent of many JRPG’s but Beat is an 8 year old armed with a gun. Seriously, what the fuck?! How irresponsible is that.

Firstly, as this is supposed to be Chopin’s dream, it doesn’t make much sense that we spend time with other characters away from him, which happens throughout the game. I can see that this has been done to drive the so called plot so not a massive issue – especially as I didn’t developed a liking for any of the characters. Chopin especially raised bile in my throat.

My other criticism of the characters in general is that they don’t half come out with some shit. Polka’s mother talks to her when she is like 5 and basically describes the world as being a pit of despair – is that something you really want to tell your 5 year old daughter? Allegretto also comes out with some shit about the darkness in the hearts of men which would be fine... if he wasn’t a 16 year old.

So my problem with the plot is that the characters are ridiculous and unrelatable and the story doesn’t seem to have any point to it. It is also interspersed with history lessons about Chopin’s life leading up his death which was weird and it really broke any kind of flow the game could develop and destroyed the escapism factor.

There was one character I did like called Claves but this was short lived. I thought she was a tasty piece of animated ass but shortly after she is introduced, she goes on a never ending monologue by which point I just wanted her to shut the fuck up.

Anyway, there is a game here at the end of the day and, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a JRPG with a turn-based battle system. There are no random encounters and battles can be avoided by running around the monsters on the field. This is of course a bad idea though, because you will need to level up in order to fight the bosses.

The battle system involves 6 party levels which get progressively more complex as you progress through the game. It basically boils down to you having 4 or 5 seconds to deal as much damage to the enemies as you can and then they have a turn going at you. It’s not overly complicated and you don’t have to spend ages setting up a decent team. Once you get the three best characters with a combination of offensive and healing abilities, all battles become fairly straight forward even late in the game.

A side note on the music; I didn’t notice so much but when other people were around when I was playing, they commented on how sinfully irritating it was. It’s all too high-pitched to be considered nice background music which is all RPG music should be.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 22 Achievements

Eternal Sonata is a slog to put it mildly. In order to get all 22 achievements, you are going to have to complete two 25 hour-plus playthroughs – normal and then Encore Mode. Following the game’s story will net you twelve of them and full praise if you manage to stick it out and get this far.

Like all RPG’s there is the optional ultimate dungeon and while Enchanted Arms didn’t make you do theirs, there are 5 achievements for playing through the optional dungeon in Eternal Sonata and then completing the game.

Now, there are 5 others for playing through the game a second time but hilariously enough you don’t actually have to complete the game again so I have no idea if there is a better ending and as per my earlier comments, I couldn’t care less. 3 of the 5 achievements relate to quest strands that, for some unknown reason, can only be completed in Encore Mode and these are simple enough.

That just leaves two collectible achievements and these are where the challenge comes in. I say challenge, like there is any way anyone is going to spend the time searching for all of these hidden items and add another 25 plus hours to a playthrough. No, by challenge, what I actually mean is planning. You have to collect 32 score pieces, some of which can only be collected in Encore Mode, and 21 EZI items which you need the aforementioned score pieces to get.

Score pieces carry over playthoughs but EZI items don’t so there’s no point getting EZIs on the first playthough. Also, there is no in game numbering system for the score pieces so you have to keep track of these manually and if you don’t, it makes 100% completion a much more arduous task.

Downloadable Content – N/A

As you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Eternal Sonata but I think it may be because I missed the point. I think it is meant to be some of the old ‘games as art’ situation and while some games pull this off, I felt Eternal Sonata falls short. In addition, towards the end I got the feeling that the game was actually patronising me for wasting my time playing it and also told me what I need to do in life to be a good person. I can accept these kind of comments from other living humans when I’ve done bad things but these imagined JRPG characters can go fuck themselves.

Beyond Eyes (Xbox ONE)

This game popped up on a friend feed and looked like a really easy quick completion. Destiny is going nowhere fast mainly due to my apathy of not wanting to find other people to play with and Borderlands has only recently been completed so I thought I would treat myself to an easy 1,000 points. I was right on the easy but it came at a price.

Beyond Eyes follows the story of Rae, a ten year old girl who was blinded by fireworks. After the accident, she is visited by a cat called Nani (not the former Manchester United footballer) on a semi-regular basis. One day Nani stops showing up so it’s up to the blind ten year old to find out what happened to the cat... HANG ON, WHAT! A ten year old blind girl is allowed to go wandering off by herself because a cat that isn’t even hers stops showing up? Rae has got bigger issues than a missing stray. She has the most fucked up careless parents in the world.

Anyway, poor parenting aside, the gameplay sees you exploring the world as a blind girl does – using sounds to determine her surroundings. The more you explore the world, the more colour comes into it and more of your surroundings are revealed. You come across many things in the world which are only identified as you get close to them. It’s kind of effective as a gameplay mechanic however, some of the levels are really hard to explore... given the fact that Rae is blind. Chapter 5 is the most frustrating because the colour covers itself over after you have explored it making it nigh on impossible to work out which way you are meant to be going.

The sound effects are there to drive the game but given the fact that Rae is blind and it’s supposedly all you have, the music causes the game to become quite depressing before you finish it, despite its short length.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

With only 10 achievements I would have thought this was a quick one but the way I played meant that the first achievement I unlocked was for completing the story. The majority of the achievements are secret and involve having to do something in certain chapters with only two exceptions.

The first one that was a pain was finding everything’s true identity. It’s a pain because it’s quite easy to miss things in a game where the main character is blind and it does become time consuming exploring everywhere because Rae moves at about 0.05 miles per hour. The last thing I found was the dog, which carries its own achievement, and the reason was this was that I had to take the blind girl directly towards a dangerous unidentified snarling beast... only to find it’s a nice doggy. Bullshit. Why would I want the blind girl to have her face ripped off by a dog? For an achievement called Bravery of course!

The last one that was a semi-pain in the ass was finding all of the Nani experiences (and no, these are not experiences found on a football field). These relate to Rae’s apparent ability to sense where her cat friend has been previously and some of these are off the beaten track. This doesn’t really make any sense because you are following Nani so why would you need to look out of the way of the main path?

Downloadable Content – N/A

In summary, Beyond Eyes offers a short and unenjoyable gaming experience that doesn’t make any sense in terms of parental care or the real world. It becomes depressing after about an hour and is even more depressing come the end of the game. Zero replay value and in terms of content it’s not worth paying more than £10 for.

Civilization Revolution

The story of my completion of Civilization Revolution is a long one. I borrowed the game from a friend back in 2009 and played a few campaigns. I then stopped playing and after having it for about a year my friend unsurprisingly asked for it back. 2011 arrived and along with it came a thirst for achievement hunting after I managed to finish Prototype after renting it for a week. Then, in 2013 I decided to fill the gaps in my collection by purchasing all games I had started after borrowing them but not finished. Thus, Civilization Revolution made its way back into my hands. But I didn’t start playing it again until this year because...reasons.

The basic premise of Civilization games is that you have to build an empire from scratch and compete against other civilizations for dominance. There are sixteen different civilizations to choose from, all of whom have their own subtle differences. There are four different ways to win the game and an achievement for each win type but I’ll get more into that later.

In terms of the gameplay, it’s a bit of weird one. Some might say it’s a thinker’s game with tactics and the like, but I don’t think I’m the most tactically minded individual and I still managed to get across the line with all styles of win. What I’m getting at here is that I don’t see where the enjoyment is. It’s not tactically advanced enough to challenge those who seek it but not quite user friendly enough for the causal gamer. That said, it is one of those games where you start playing and before you know it, three hours have gone by and you haven’t really achieved much.
 
Aside from the normal game mode, there are also scenarios you can play including but not limited to; Beta Centuri mode where you start with all technology unlocked; Lightning Round where you start with three villages and the winning criteria is significantly reduced; and Golden Age where you start with 1,000 gold. There are eight scenarios in total, but these are the ones I played.

The most annoying thing about the game is the advisors and not because of the advice they give you but because every time they talk to you to, they make inaudible baby like noises which are just complete nonsense.  The music while playing is fine which is good considering that games can take in excess of three hours to finish, but going back to the advisors, towards the end of the game, they will – en-masse – update you on how close you are to victory. This is really fucking irritating after they’ve told you exactly the same thing three turns in a row. No wonder games take in excess of three hours with drawn out ‘dialogue’ like this.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

As you can imagine, 50 achievements can turn into an absolute slog. Starting with the simple ones, there are 17 related to winning as the various civilizations – 1 for each civilization and 1 for winning as all civilizations.

There are several you will get just for playing through a game. I unlocked 12 achievements for doing certain in-game things in my first game and that doesn’t include any victory criteria. That said, a few of these situation achievements required me to play a game specifically to target the achievement in question. I found the most tricky of these to be developing a city that has 200 production per turn. This is hard because it’s the only one of these types where you need to build a city in a specific location to get enough production. This also takes ages and I had one game end because I had reached the maximum time allowance before I got city with enough production.

Another miscellaneous one was for winning the game before 1,000AD on King difficulty or higher. The Golden Age scenario mentioned earlier was the one I used to get this. With the early gold supply, you can buy horse units and get ahead of the other civilizations. There is still an element of luck though as the other civilizations could be anywhere. I failed to get this on my first try because one of the cities was right next to the North Pole and I needed ships to reach it.

The last category of achievement is for the various victory conditions. There are 13 in total, 4 for each condition type at any, King and Deity difficulty and 1 for winning under each condition. Beta Centuri makes three of the victories easy as it levels the playing field. However, you cannot get a technology victory here. For that, I needed the Lightning Round scenario. This was also quite luck-based as I had to keep reloading until I got good starting positions to raise enough science before the other civilizations.

The last achievement I unlocked has come under fire from the gaming community for being a deliberate fuck ass. In order to unlock it, you have to get all of Great People to turn up in your games. A lot of people have said that the game is biased against the player because they keep getting the same Great People showing up despite meeting the specific criteria for getting them to appear. I think I may have got quite lucky with this. I tried three times to get all of the Great People to show up in one game but was never successful. Then I went for the specific criteria and just kept restarting the game until I got my last one. I can certainly see why the community have developed such hatred towards it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The only word to describe the game (in terms of achievements) is ‘slog.’ My sheer determination was what got me through in the end. I won’t be playing it again for fun and it will take something very special to get me to play another strategy game for a long time.

Rayman Legends (Xbox ONE)

Many games have taught me lessons over the course of my gaming lifetime. Rule number is to avoid anything associated with EA and if you are ever in a situation where this is unavoidable (Mass Effect for example) make sure you finish it within eight months of release to avoid them screwing you in the ass.

Rayman Legends taught me never to let anyone play on my profile and to password protect my profile in case they log on when I’m not there and unlock a random achievement forcing my massive OCD to kick in and make me finish the game.

Rayman Legends involves Rayman (and his friends once you unlocked them) going into various paintings to rescue Teensies, some kind of weird blue creatures. You also have to beat the dark creatures who were responsible for imprisoning them. The levels are in 2D sidescrolling format but despite this, finding all the Teensies on one run through can be quite challenging.

Aside from the main levels, there are also bonus levels that require you to race through as quickly as possible, either killing enemies or being chased by a wall of fire. These are some of the more challenging aspects of the game and take a lot of practice to get right.

The cartoony graphics are in keeping with the fun nature of the game and to be fair to it, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. When you are racing through a castle jumping and sliding in rhythm to Black Betty, it can’t really get any better can it?

There are two other aspects to the game outside of the main painting levels. The first of these is a multiplayer mini-game called Kung Foot where you have to kick and punch a ball into an opponent’s net . The other consists of daily and weekly challenges which see you compete against the entire Rayman community for trophies. You unlock these as you play for a total of 4 challenges, two dailies and two weeklies.

A point on the music. Pushing for 100% completion of this one will have you listening to the in game music over and over again... however, I never started finding it irritating which is very strange because any other game that has over 70 hours of gameplay would have me spitting in fits of rage and reaching for the mute button.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

This takes a long time to 100% and will have you doing the challenges long after completing the main game. Most of the achievements can be encapsulated by striving for 100% completion of the main game objectives. This involves unlocking all the Barbarian Princesses, saving all the Teensies and reaching the Lum target in each level.

The hardest part of this is completing the invasion paintings. These are basically timed events and reaching the Lum targets in some of them is a real challenge. It does feel genuinely rewarding for getting through these as most of time I was within a second of failing when I finally succeeded.

Kung Foot has one achievement associated with it for winning one game. This can be done in local co-op so if you have two controllers it’s a real easy one.

Multiplayer

Now, I’ve categorised the challenges as multiplayer because despite you playing alone, you will need to have friends on your list to get some of the achievements and you have to beat a large portion of the community to get the others.

There are several types of challenges that you will be given. Some involve collecting as many Lums as possible without dying or getting as far as you can in some levels without dying. Others involve you having to get to a certain point as quickly as possible or collecting a set amount of Lums as quickly as possible.

Looking to the achievements themselves, you have to win a gold, silver and bronze cup from a challenge which is easy enough to do once. You also have to beat 30 of your friends’ times. However, if you have one friend on your list and they set a rubbish score on a challenge, you can simply replay the challenge over and over until you beat that same score thirty times. I’m not sure if this was the intention though but I haven’t seen any patches to change it while I was playing the game.

Now, after you have done all this you will most likely have two achievements left. One is for gathering 1 million Lums and the other is for reaching the final level of awesomeness. If you are going for the full 100%, you will get the Lums whilst striving towards awesomeness so I’ll focus on the last one.

Assuming you haven’t done any challenges after playing the main game and getting all the trophies there, you will need somewhere in the region of 1,800 points to reach the final level. You get points for winning cups which, after you have completed the game, are only available from the challenges. You get 1 point for bronze, 5 points for silver, 10 points for gold and a whopping 50 points for a diamond cup. As you can probably work out, this will take a while to do and that’s even before breaking down the percentages for obtaining the cups.

The top 90% of people who complete challenges on that day will earn a bronze. The top 50% will get silver; the top 20% gold and the top 1% will be awarded with the elusive diamond trophy. Even if you are amazingly awesome and get 14 diamonds for the daily challenges and 2 for the weekly ones that still only means 1,200 points for a week. That means you can complete the game in 1 and a half weeks if you are ridiculously good. I managed to get a really impressive one diamond trophy during my entire time playing the game which means I really suck. The more realistic goal is to aim for golds and even if you manage to get all golds, it will still take nearly three months to get the points required for the achievement. It took me 155 days to complete the entire game so I’m not quite at ‘all gold’ standard!

Downloadable Content – N/A

Rayman Legends was actually quite fun despite the fact I was railroaded into playing it. The challenges are one hell of a grind but they are at least varied which means you will more often than not have something different to do on it every day. I won’t be playing another Rayman game for a while now though – I’ve had more than my fair share!