Crimes and Punishments: Sherlock Holmes (Xbox ONE)

I ummed and arred about getting this one. The last Sherlock game was a raging disappointment in terms of characterisation. By the end of the game, having to listen to Sherlock talk was almost insufferable.

Thankfully Frogware seemed to have taken some kind of feedback (I’m sure it wasn’t mine) on board and the Sherlock present in this game is actually likeable. Sherlock and Watson actually have a relationship that could be considered friendship and there is a respect present that was horribly absent from the last game. It makes the characters far more relatable – in terms of Sherlock not being a cunt and Watson not having to absorb an abhorrent level of abuse that makes any relationship unbelievable.

The games itself is a point and click adventure game with several puzzle aspects thrown in. You take Sherlock through six cases that are stand-alone but also linked in some way. I think I managed to get half way through the first case before resorting to a guide though. Some of the connections you have to make are quite obscure.  I did dip in and out of the guide when I needed to but the game makes that cardinal sin of forcing you to follow the route it wants you take even if you figure out the answer anyway.

That said, the most intriguing and different element of the game is that it allows you to reach the wrong conclusion for the investigations. I found this to be an excellent addition to the game play mechanics as it added a non-linear element.

Another feature of the game play is that Sherlock has developed Spider-Sense which can be toggled on to allow him to... be Sherlock and notice stuff that others have missed. I understand it but it seems a bit strange to have to ‘activate’ Sherlock’s ability to be Sherlock.

Visually it offers more than its predecessors but that’s to be expected from the next generation. The music is in keeping with the time period for the game which is great and I also didn’t notice it as a negative in the background.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

With 25 achievements on offer and no DLC, it’s a relatively straightforward game. 10 of the achievements are related to the main story or completing the main case sequences. Of the remaining 15, there are 2 that you really have to go out of your way to get - getting all possible conclusions and achieving the maximum personality rating.

Finding all possible conclusions is the difficult one. You have to gather all evidence available to identify all of the wrong conclusions too so rushing to the right answer and accidentally pressing the wrong button can result in you needing to replay a case. It is an easy as pressing x instead of a to do this.

The maximum personality one is difficult in its vagueness. You have to pick the same options for all cases to either condemn or absolve the criminals. This isn’t as straight forward as clicking ‘condemn’ or ‘absolve’ at the end of a case as the possible outcomes aren’t that clearly labelled. Again, it’s another one where one miss-click will ruin your progress.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So to sum up it’s an easy and relatively quick completion with a guide but without a guide it would be quite ridiculous to find everything you need. That’s the glory of the game though – it’s as hard as you want to make it for yourself. I would recommend it over the others if anyone wanted to try out a Sherlock Holmes game.

Child of Light (Xbox ONE)

Another one of those discount purchases brought me face to face with the genre that got me seriously into gaming in the first place.

Child of Light is an RPG which follows the story of Aurora, an Austrian Princess who falls into a coma and enters the world of Lemuria which is being consumed by darkness because of some crazy evil queen. That’s all I will say about the story though as it’s the main driver and reason for playing the game.

Looks wise, it’s basically a cartoon fairytale with eerie music that matches your surroundings. It is great for creating the kind of immersion needed for such a story driven game. One more thing I will say about the story is that it goes back to the roots of RPGs where you have to read dialogue rather than it being given to you in over-the-top, unskippable cut scenes. This was a nice change of pace and actually got me to invest more in the characters and story that usual. The other unique thing about the story is that the dialogue is delivered completely in rhyme which must have been quite challenging considering its a twelve to fifteen hour game.

The gameplay consists of semi-random encounter combat where the enemies are visible in the game environment and can be avoided after a certain point in the game. This will be detriment though because when you get to the non-optional boss fights, you will get owned.

Levelling up consists of each individual character having their own skill tree which develops to gain new combat abilities and get better attributes. All characters gain experience from combat so you don’t need to worry about constantly switching party members to gain experience.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 27 Achievements

Only eight of the achievements are earned by following the story but the majority of them can be grabbed on your way to completing the game. The ones that aren’t storyline related are quite easily obtained with a few exceptions. Even the collectible achievements are very forgiving. For example, there are loads of chests scattered throughout the world but you only need to collect thirty of them for the achievement. In addition, you only need to collect 5 stardusts for another collectible achievement.

Completing the side quests is the only real time consuming thing away from the main story and for an RPG, it’s a short game so doing them is almost necessary to get your money’s worth. One of these brings back memories of Zelda as you have to take one item and trade it continuously until you get some gold. In Zelda it was a glass bottle but the principle is the same.

Of the 27 achievements, only two of them pose any real issues. The first of these involves having to interrupt three enemies at the same time. This can be quite frustrating as you have to use an ability that targets all three enemies and it has to hit when all three are in the interruption zone. This is exceptionally annoying if your ability only hits two of the enemies and random chance makes you miss the third one.

The last one I unlocked was the harder collectible achievement for getting all of the confessions. These are pieces of paper that flutter on the wind. There are only sixteen of them but the fact you have to collect all of them required me to do some playing after completing the main story. The world isn’t massive though so this wasn’t too onerous.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Child of Light offers a unique role playing game experience. The dialogue is well delivered and the combat is well structured. On a side note, I’m not sure if this was just many years of RPG experience but I never actually died on my playthrough and seemed to handle the boss fights at the correct level. This is brilliant as there was no need for me to level grind to get the most out of the story. It highlights how short the game is as I managed to get to the end only having fought 100 battles. That shouldn’t take anything away from it though.

Need for Speed Rivals (Xbox ONE)

Not often does a game get so on my tits to have me screaming at the TV but Need for Speed Rivals managed to succeed where lots of other games have failed. I cannot believe the amount of crap that I had to put up with during the game but I’ll get to that later. First, the ridiculous storyline.

You are a racer or a cop in some bizarre area of the USA where there is a snowy mountain, arid plains and seaside resort within 5 miles drive of each other. Why they couldn’t have had multiple locations is a mystery. Ignoring geography for the insane, as a racer you have to... race and avoid getting arrested while some voiceover guy talks about the importance of freedom and that obviously breaking the law is a really good way to show ‘the man’ that he isn’t going to keep you down. This is fair play in a world where you can’t kill anyone but having head on collisions is fine.

As a cop you have to bust the racers. But there’s more to it than that. It seems to be a personal vendetta between the police and the street racers which is probably why the game is called ‘Rivals.’ But it kind of undermines the whole ‘we are going to arrest you for breaking the law’ when even the cops treat it like a rivalry. It’s not like gang rivals where you actively compete with each for fame and acclaim. The cops should be taking out the racers because it’s their job – not to prove a bizarre point.

Basically the premise is wank.

The music is a-typical of the genre in that it portrays all racing types as listening to music that would be more at home in most clubs. Because everyone that drives fast is an 18 to 30 type who saves all their money for the season in Ibiza apparently? The music has revealed a new found hatred of Bastille through that stupid Pompeii song. I’m not sure it’s called singing during the first minute or so. The other issue with the music is that it restarts whenever you do anything and it’s not very good at mixing up its soundtrack meaning you often get the first two minutes of a song, then another one, then back to previous song, then another song, then the first song again, then Bastille five times. You get the drift.

Graphically, it is actually good. The cars look great, the environment looks great. The only issues are what happens in the world.

I’m going to start with the Kinect functionality. Apparently NFS Rivals has a built in voice Kinect capability. Who knew? Also, who knows what the commands are? Apparently there are voice commands (or hand action commands, who knows) that make you: look behind you when turning a corner; change into panoramic view when being chased by several police cars; reduce the in-game quick menu to include completely useless options and my personal favourite, leave an event. I only discovered the Kinect had been my Achilles’ heel when I got booted from an event, restarted and started verbally complaining about how it had made me leave the event. Apparently ‘fuck you, you fucking game’, ‘fuck off’, ‘what the fuck just happened?’ and ‘leave event’ are all voice commands for the same thing. Also, the back of the box, which I’ve only just read today, states that Kinect voice is optional. But the where the fuck was the option to turn this off in the first place!? It certainly wasn’t given to me as an option at the start of the game and definitely wasn’t made clear. I only got around it by physically turning off my Kinect.

The next stuff is all just standard bollocks from a racing game. A couple of standout issues I had was that my racing car, even when cranked up to the maximum strength level, was still made of wafers compared to the other racers. Also, apparently, if I crashed into to a wall and was being reloaded onto the road, more than often than not, the game would face me in the wrong direction. Another thing is that while you are being reloaded onto the road, if you are hit by another car, you still take that damage which is just ridiculously unfair when you can’t do it to NPCs and the fact that you have a wafer car.

Another thing on the general concept of the game – it involves you having to connect to a server to play with other people. This is the default option. Despite this running off of an EA server, there is a host migration which can cause your game to be interrupted quite frequently. You can avoid this issue by playing in a private room and I found this actually made my gameplay experience better... however, it completely counters the point of the game in the first place.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

All that stuff above makes the game fantastically more difficult than it should be, however it is still 90% grind, 10% skill. You basically have to get to level 60 with both racer and cop factions, both of which are sinfully boring after you’ve gone through one set of Speed Walls.

Everything else can be done by playing through the game and you will get them by the time you’ve got to the end of the rest of the achievements with potentially three exceptions. The first of these involves banking 500,000 points in one go. This can be easily be done by replaying an interceptor event near a repair shop once you have high level Electrostatic Field and Shockwave. There are a few events set up like this so it’s not an issue.

The other two involve playing with a friend. You have to win a race against a friend and bust a friend. I had a friend who was kind enough to do this with me but considering that the whole game is built around an online community style of play, it’s surprising that there are only two achievements that require you to play with other players.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I wouldn’t recommend playing this game or starting it now. The back of the box warns: EA may retire online features, online services and downloadable content after 30 days notice posted on www.ea.com/1/service.updates. Considering the age of the game, this could happen soon and it would effectively mean the end of the game in its entirety. 

Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious (Xbox ONE)

To celebrate the 7^th edition in the fast and furious franchise, Forza decided that we needed to have a special edition of Forza Horizon 2. Now, normally I would play the games in order and as Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious technically comes after Forza Horison 2 I’ve had to break some internal rules to do this one.

The storyline follows some random racer dude as Ludacris takes him/her through missions stealing all the cars which, I imagine, are the ones used in the film as the final scene in the game has you drive them on to the plane which I’ve seen in the trailers (sadly, I have not watched the movie yet).

The visuals are actually stunning. It makes Forza 5 look bad in comparison. While, I’m on the subject of Forza 5, that game uses its in game music to blow its own trumpet over how good it is. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was all that and the music just makes it seem really pretentious. It did look good though.

The music is typical of a racing game based on Fast and Furious in that it’s probably more at home in a Need for Speed game. Fortunately, I didn’t play the game long enough for this to become infuriating.

The gameplay itself was fairly simple for an open world racer. You drive around doing missions and the like and finding collectible boards, putting together skill chains... and that’s pretty much it. I honestly didn’t play the game long enough to find any major flaws but maybe that’s a flaw in itself. They have only really released it as an add-on to Forza Horizon 2 and I only racked up 3 hours and 43 minutes of play time. Maybe I will have more to say if I ever complete Forza Horizon 2?

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements.

Again there is not really a lot to say about getting these. Of the 25, 13 are awarded for playing through the main story. The rest involve having to do certain things over time but none that posed any real issues and certainly none that I had to go out of my to work for.

One that I thought would give me trouble was the Chain Reaction achievement for Banking a skill chain in excess of 50,000 points, however I ended up doing this during a mission with a lot of drifting anyway.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Another short review for a short game but I can’t really complain as it is an add-on which I paid, like, no money for.

Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition (Xbox ONE)

This one turned out to be a trip down memory lane that I wasn’t even aware of. I have a vague memory from when I was very young of watching my brothers play this one. I remember watching constant deaths coming from the very first worm thing and then when you get past that, getting killed by the gorilla thing because you jumped on the rope first. I remember the cage as well, but that’s about it.

It was obviously before my time so I did a little research into the original. It was released in 1991 for the Atari and Amiga and the 20^th Anniversary Edition was originally released in 2011. This port for Xbox One made its way into our lives in June 2014 – and on to my completion list as of April 2015.

It is about as true to the original game as possible and I think that’s important for a game from the early nineties. There are too many remakes in this day and age, along with all of the carbon copy games coming out at the moment, and Another World serves as a reminder of what computer games used to be – fucking hard.

Now a lot of people would probably disagree with me there. Another World only has the one difficulty setting after all, but imagine playing this when it was out originally without the aid of the internet to support you - it would have been an absolute ballache. I gave it my best go but it is essentially an unforgiving trial and error game where you have to make your way through various life or death situations.

At one point, you get a gun which can not only shoot enemies but also put up a force field to protect you from the other enemies. Using the shield and shooting enemies is a fine art, especially during one point where you have two dudes shooting at you and you have to erect barrier after barrier while trying to kill them. I think I must have died 792 times and that’s just that one bit.

The pacing of the game is a bit weird but works. For the first three quarters of the game it is quite slow-paced as you solve problems and work your way around taking out aliens one at a time. Then, as if from nowhere, it’s all guns blazing for the finale as you shoot your way through bad guys to get to the end...

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 12 Achievements

Now, due to the modern day helping hands, getting all the achievements is actually not too taxing and according to my post-game statistics, my total play time was an hour and thirty-eight minutes.

I also did fuck all else compared to the rest of the gaming population but I did go for a speed completion rather than a nostalgic playthrough. This became especially prevalent after the 792 deaths mentioned above.

I stress this because the majority of the achievements can be obtained from a standard playthrough. There are no collectibles so it’s just a run from ‘a’ to ‘b’. Due to short nature of the game, it’s hard to class any of them as missable however, there are a few that you have to deviate from the standard course of action to get.

The first one comes right near the beginning when you escape from the cage I’ve mentioned at the beginning. If you hang around, which kind of goes against the whole breaking-out-of-prison thing, a UFO will appear giving you the achievement ‘Secret UFO.’

Another one comes slightly after this where you have to go in the wrong direction in a lift (again, slightly against the whole escaping-from-prison thing) and look out of the window.

The final one comes just before the bit where I continually died. You have to fall to your death from the highest possible height. It is technically missable but if you are anything like you me, you will do this just for shits or out of sheer frustration from dying over and over... and over again.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It was great to play a game I witnessed from my childhood but I probably won’t be playing this one again. The problem with trial and error games, especially ones from the 90s, is that they very rarely have different ways to get past the problems you face.

Unmechanical: Extended Edition (Xbox ONE)

The joys of the Xbox ONE is that there are a lot of new indie games that are being developed and made easily available on the marketplace. Even better is that there is now a requirement for all these games to carry 1,000 points worth of achievements. In a way this is a pain in the ass for me as it means that I have to review everything I play (I’ve sidestepped a lot of Arcade titles although to date I’ve only completed 11 games in the Arcade...).

Anyway, Unmechanical follows the story of a little helicopter robot thing that falls down a hole and has to escape from some kind of weird underground place with other strange robots and stuff. It’s a puzzle game where you have to solve kinetic problems to navigate through various rooms to get to the exit.

The puzzles themselves are clever but not unsolvable to my simple brain. This meant that I actually got a sense of achievement from completing it without having to look up anything on the internet – a rare occurrence.

The environments are intricately designed but it is still clear which items you can use and which items are just background. The music is equally fitting in its eeriness but doesn’t become depressing as the game itself is very short.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 17 Achievements

As far as the achievements go, the majority require you to do something extra in addition to just playing through the storyline and this is another great advantage of the game being so short. If you miss one, it’s not a massive headache to go back and get them.

One such achievement requires you to throw a piece of coal into the air so that it gets some airtime before landing in its target. These are exactly the kind of achievements that add to the gaming experience. You should play through it once to complete it and then play through it again to do all the weird stuff to get the achievements.

There are also alternate endings for the extended episode, and an achievement for each, but again because of the short length of the game, this doesn’t provide any irritation whatsoever.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite all the good things I’ve said, it unfortunately has little replay value as with all puzzle games. Once you’ve solved them, they’re solved and you can’t really forget how they work to make the game a new experience.

I found the game to be some light enjoyment in the wake of many very serious games with no personality. The Xbox ONE marketplace is littered with such gems and I will be looking out for them going forward.

Assassin's Creed Unity (Xbox ONE)

Another chapter in the Assassin’s Creed universe sees us move away from the America and journey across the Atlantic to France. We play as Arno Dorian, a French guy who has a bit of a thing for his prepubescent friend, Elise.

The premise is that Arno is partly responsible for his mentor’s death and thus starts a journey of revenge to avenge the death he is responsible for. As expected, he gets caught up in a battle between Templars and Assassins and ends up joining the Assassins. I would say spoiler alert but it’s not called Templar’s Creed now is it.

Visually I thought the game was very good. The city is very nicely developed and intricately put together and the free-running is much improved from the disaster that is known as Assassin’s Creed III. You cannot climb all buildings though, which is frustrating but a little more realistic that being able to climb every building going.

The sound effects are an issue for me. Unity is a long game to play and after a while all sounds effects become annoying. However, several members of the community have pointed out that Unity is quite broken and I have to say, both the audio and visual components appear to suffer from lack of development. The first half, give or take, is pretty good (hence my comments above) but after that you get audio loop issues, graphical problems and cut scenes not displaying properly at certain points. That said, I didn’t think the issues were half as bad as people made them out to be.

The gameplay, on the whole, was pretty good too. Other than the occasional fuck up with Arno’s ability to behave normally, it was pretty clear sailing. I am basing this on over 60 hours of gameplay so it’s relative, but I will still point out the issues I had with it.

Having to reset my console because the character gets caught on scenery is simply unacceptable. I only had to do it once but there were several other times where it was touch and go. At certain times it was like Arno did not know what to do when he was in certain positions. It seems to be a problem with his programming in that the developers didn’t account for graphical black holes near some of their objects. My Arno got stuck on several occasions and even feel through the floor once (which leads to de-syncing and failing the mission) but this was at least better that having to manually reset because I can’t move.

The main bugbear I have with the actual gameplay is the shooting mechanic. To be blunt, it’s shit. To be more technical, they appear to have tried to make it simple but by doing so, have removed about 80% of its functionality. And I have taken the shooting tutorial, thank you very much.

Achievements – 1,300 Points – 57 Achievements

As with all Assassin’s Creed games, Unity has its own set of over-the-top collectibles. This time it’s chests and cockades for the win. There are so many – 128 Cockades and 294 Chests to be exact. This is not as bad as the first Assassin’s Creed, but still excessive, especially when you factor in that accessing the majority of the chests requires you to play a lock picking game. Also, there is no real reward for getting them all. Your hideout generates more than enough income to make getting all required equipment a breeze.

The other side of the main game achievements involves having to fully level your character and complete all of the co-op missions. I’ll cover the co-op missions in a bit, but for now I want to focus on how much of a ball-ache it was getting all of the other achievements.

Levelling up your Arno is a pain because, aside from all of the main mission sync points you can get, you also have to collect some points which are randomly scattered around the co-op missions. This can be a real pain because they don’t show up on the map, which is all well and good but when you are supposed to be working with other people to achieve a goal, moseying off for your own gain kind of defeats the point. That said, all of the sync points can be gained from starting private co-op missions by yourself, so they built in a way around a set up that was pointless to begin with.

Aside from that, let’s talk about glitched achievements. I cannot accept that now the Xbox One has achievement progress tracking (which I love) and all games are required to have 1,000 Gamerscore, that they would allow a game to fuck up its achievements. However, when trying to get the Know-It-All achievement for completing all training sessions, the achievement did not unlock after I completed them all. There is no argument for me missing one as you get a little tick next to the session you have completed. I looked it up online and found that when Ubisoft attempted to patch out a load of shitty issues from the release, they undid all of the progress gamers had made towards this achievement. This meant I was made to play though all the rubbish I had already done. Not impressed.

The rest of the game is fairly self-explanatory and not too taxing. Even the 100% sync of the main story missions was easier than previous games. One thing that does puzzle me though, is that you are not required to complete all of the side missions to get all achievements. I would have thought a 100% sync achievement would have been a guaranteed requirement.

Multiplayer

I’ve got to hand it to a developer that attempts to make a game’s multiplayer function redundant, especially when they were nearly successful in doing so. Unity has done away with Wolfpack and versus modes and only has the co-op missions and heists. There is an achievement for completing them all and all bar one of them can be done easily in solo play. There are also two achievements that required other players; one for getting 10 sync kills and another for reviving a co-op partner, all of which I managed to do without the assistance of friends (rare for me).

The biggest fuck-up with the multiplayer is that some missions require all four players to leave a certain area for the mission to complete. This poses a real problem as it opens the game up for total fucking pricks who will just stand around in the escape area to prevent the mission from completing. It happened to me on three separate occasions. During one of these occasions, I was actually able to witness a verbal spat between two such clowns and when one of the antagonistic motherfuckers quit out of the mission, the other one left the area. It was one of the most pathetic online displays I’ve seen (but I haven’t played a lot of CoD so that’s probably not saying much.)

Downloadable Content

There is one DLC for Unity and it’s the kind that I like that expands the single player story. As Arno, you visit the town of Franciade, gain a Guillotine Gun and try to uncover some more shit to do with the First Civilisation and stop Napoleon from being a massive dick whilst saving little boys and crying. While I like single player expansions, Dead Kings doesn’t offer anything new other than a new sequence and more collectibles. The DLC does require you to get 100% sync though, which is again strange when the main game doesn’t. Oh, it also comes with another two single player co-op missions to complete.

I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed Unity apparently more than most of the gaming community who still revere it as a buggy piece of crap. I admit that the co-op missions were poor in terms of loading and quality delivery and the story line got lazy towards the end but it’s a solid seven out of ten and I think that’s the best we can expect from the current generation of triple-A titles.

Trivial Pursuit LIVE! (Xbox ONE)

Trivial Pursuit LIVE! is a simply trivia game brought to you by American developers, Ubisoft San Francisco. The most notable aspect of the game, that is annoying from the outset, is the location selection. It always raises my suspicions when a game has an option to select English (UK) and English (USA) from as the first thing you do and in this instance, I was completely right. I always select UK because that’s where I am from so I do not understand why I had an Arts and Literature question come up regarding Archie and Jughead and nothing at all about the Beano or Dandy.

What is the point of having a specific English option if you are not going to have relevant questions? It sure as hell wasn’t for a language choice as I had to listen to the most irritating American* ‘quiz show host’ voice. If I have to hear the words, ‘Needa wedge, wanna wedge, gotta get a wedge,’ ever again I will most likely need mental help (if I don’t already.)

*A quick note that I do not find the American accent generally annoying. I’m sure if it had been a British voice, I would have been irritated by that stupid phrase regardless.

The game consists of either a three or five round game show depending on how much time you have on your hands. There are several different types of round. Quickstarter – a round where there are five questions and each subsequent question is worth double the points of the previous question. All of my friends complained about this. Grab Bag – A round where you have a grid of sixteen answers and only eight of them are correct and it’s completely stupid because as soon as you select a wrong answer you cannot continue even if there are correct answers remaining. Close Call – a round where you have five correct answers and the best answer gets the most points, which is really stupid because the person who is last always goes first. There are also blitz versions of the last two rounds where you all go at the same time rather than taking it in turns. Switchagories – a round where a players gets to select one of two categories and they get double points for getting the answer right. This is a horrible round for many reasons. If I had a choice between History and Arts and Leisure it’s like asking me to chose between wanking with sandpaper and sawing my foot off. What is the point of giving me an advantage for answering a question in two of my worst categories? Oh right, there isn’t one.

The final round gives you two options and a statement and you have to select which of the options the statement applies to. Do this correctly five times (once if you are playing multiplayer with a single controller) and you get a wedge. The winner is the person who gets six wedges. Wedges are awarded for achieving various score landmarks throughout the game up to a maximum of four. You then get a wedge for each final round question session you get right.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 15 Achievements

The achievements are not too hard for this game. The invention of Google makes general knowledge a piece of piss, especially when you can pause the game to look stuff up. However, several people complained about the answers to some of the questions but I’m at an age now where if they are using the internet to look stuff up, the chances are that they looked up the wrong stuff, assumed it was right and just pissed their pants about their own inability to utilise a search function to find the correct information.

There are six different categories for trivial pursuit and an achievement for answering 50 questions correctly in each category. There is one for answering every question correctly throughout the game, which can obviously be a problem if you get Close Call. The easiest way to do this one is to play a four player human multiplayer game as that eliminates the luck element from all rounds and leaves you free to answer away. You can also cover off Greedy Grabber by doing this if you get Grab Bag. Simply answer incorrectly with the three non-you-players leaving you free to try and select all eight correct answers in the grid.

All of the rest can be achieved on your way to winning 25 Gameshows which takes a lot longer that I thought it would, even by just playing three round games. The reason for this is that there is a lot of unskippable bullshit between rounds with stat attacks and updates on who is 1^st, 2^nd 3^rd or 4^th. After. Every. Single. Round. This is never amusing but becomes insufferable after game the 2^nd game you play.

You get this along the way but I thought I would mention some glitches with the Sense of Entitlement achievement. You basically unlock titles as you go along. There is a title for most things like answering all questions in a round correctly, answering 50 science and nature questions correctly, etc. However I managed to unlock the title for 50 questions for Geography but not 30 questions?? It’s clearly glitched and stopped counting correct answers for whatever reason. It didn’t stop me unlock the achievement though thank god.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Trivial Pursuit LIVE! is fun to play with friends but not by yourself. The achievements are a slog more than anything and I won’t be revisiting alone again.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Xbox One)

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is my first Lego game on the Xbox One and my third Xbox One completion. It was hard slog in the end but I’ll cover that in the achievement section.

Super Heroes is a massive step up in terms of Lego games and not just because the last game of the genre I played was the despicable LEGO Indiana Jones 2. The first point of note is that the characters are voiced. I didn’t expect this from a LEGO game and this leads nicely into my next plus point. The game has its own storyline!

In a world when all the super heroes can exist without worrying about breaching any copyrights, they have to team up to fight... all the evil super villains in the Marvel Universe. The overarching evil is that the Silver Surfer has turned up again, bringing with him Galactus, the destroyer of worlds. In a related side-plot Doctor Doom, Magneto and Loki are teaming up to create a weapon to take over the world... with hilarious consequences as always because it’s a Lego game.

The graphical overhaul given to the game is also fantastic. I thought that it looked spectacular compared to anything I had played previously, and it feels like a lot of effort has gone into its development. They have over 115 characters to collect, most of which are intricately designed.

In terms of audio, Super Heroes suffers from the same musical issues as all its predecessors in that the music is good for the first five minutes but it is not built to be repeated for hours at a time.

The gameplay is where all of these games fall down and Super Heroes is no different, although compared to Indiana Jones 2 it felt like heaven. The first noticeable fall down was the new flying mechanic. Characters like Iron Man and The Human Torch have the added ability of flight, however this is incredibly difficult to control. If you are flying in a straight line, you can press A to go up and B to go down, however there is an apparent delay between you pressing B and the character actually moving down so this makes the ring races an absolute nightmare. Also their ability to change direction when moving is almost non-existent which is annoying and also not in keeping with their ‘super’ abilities.

There is also the now standard feature of characters getting stuck on scenery which is now part and parcel of any Lego game.

Additional features include a sandbox New York City (because every game has to have a sandbox of New York City these days) and big Lego characters, some of which can transform into their alter egos. Oh, and Spiderman can transform into Peter Parker as well.

The flying mechanic is my biggest bugbear by a long way though. It terms of gameplay annoyances, I don’t think I have anything else to complain about.

Achievements – 45 Achievements – 1,000 Points

There are no missable or secret achievements! This means, by default, there are no secret missable achievements. There are 15 individual levels which all carry their own achievement and there are also the obligatory ‘do x with y character’ achievements. One of these includes smashing up Loki with Hulk in a similar fashion to the Avengers Assemble movie and another for throwing Wolverine with Colossus which is nothing like X-Men: The Last Stand, but I think it was meant to be.

As part of the now standard achievement to get 100% completion, you have to collect gold bricks by doing mini-missions in the sandbox. Some of these missions are escort missions. I hate escort missions at the best of times but these were some of the worst I have seen. The Lego characters you control can move quite fast in the sandbox but the characters you don’t control can’t keep up with you. This makes the escort missions drawn out, slow and annoying.

To be fair, other than striving for 100% there is nothing too out of the ordinary here. The biggest struggle I had was the sheer size of the game. It is the biggest Lego game by far and collecting all of the Mini Kits, Stan Lee in Perils and Sandbox collectibles took me a very long time. The most frustrating aspect of it was the air races but that was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite how it might come across in the above, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes was actually sort of fun which was really nice compared to my previous Lego experience. The only downside is that if you are going for 100%, it all gets a bit repetitive and I thought the story missions were quite boring and too long, so replaying them for the Minikits was dull. However, it is still one of the best Lego games and worth a play.

Murdered: Soul Suspect (Xbox ONE)

Murdered: Soul Suspect has a unique story. You play as Ronan O’Connor who is immediately shot dead at the beginning of the game. That’s right, immediate protagonist death! Game over.

Only joking – you play the entire game as Ronan’s ghost as you try to catch your own killer. You join forces with the oxymoronic teenager, Joy who is a medium and can see you as you travel through the various areas of Salem trying to find clues to the identity of your killer.

It’s probably because I’m still getting used to the graphical superiority of the Xbox ONE, but I thought the game was really well designed and very pretty. The characters look really well done and their facial expressions pull off their actual moods and dialogue very well.

The sound effects are appropriately eerie for the ghost realm of Salem but they are not overdone like they are in most games of the same genre. There is no solid background music that grinds down your soul which adds the emphasis of when you are actually facing danger. When demons come up, there is a noise that actually made me jump a few times and that is good use of effective sound.

The gameplay elements are mainly investigative with the occasional fighting of demons. You will mainly have to search different locations for clues, some of which required a lot of graft without a guide to help. You get scored based on how well you do which felt like a bit of kick in the face with how obscure some of the clues were to find.

The demon fighting is interesting. In order to kill them, you have to sneak up behind them and complete a quick-time event to execute them. It makes the game very in-keeping with its own genre and doesn’t convert to the ‘kill everything in sight!’ mentality that dominates most modern day releases.

One of your ghost abilities involves being able to possess people to read their thoughts... and also cats. When you possess a cat, you can control it to get to hard to reach places and this is, by far, the coolest feature of the game, especially when you can press ‘Y’ to make the cat meow at a whim.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 48 Achievements

Okay the basic thing to remember before embarking on an achievement quest is that you only have one save per playthrough and there is a point of no return which will make 29 of the achievements impossible to get. The game does warn you of this though so it’s not too much of a problem.

Solving the mystery and completing the game will net you 19 achievements. The other achievements are for getting all of the collectibles. After that, you’re done. The only tricky part about the collectibles is gathering the ghost girl drawings. They are the only ones that don’t show up glowing on the map, however you can sort of locate them by using the strange images scattered throughout the gaming world.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I did enjoy playing the game, however after one playthough it offers no replay value. That’s the main problem with story-based games. There isn’t anything that varies from the linear progression which is same issue as I raised with the CSI series.

That said, I did think it was a very well executed story with an original idea and is definitely worth giving a go.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox ONE)

My very first Xbox One Review. How exciting! I followed on from the completion of Assassin’s Creed III and cracked straight on with this for a few weeks, however the sheer vastness of the game caused me to make it an ongoing project which spread out over the next six months.

The in-game world is huge and beautiful. A lot of effort has gone into the development of the game, especially the first area, which makes sense as it is the first place that people see. However the whole world is fantastic. Characters, locations, sailing, everything.

Anyway, enough praise and on with thereview – in a dramatic Assassin’s Creed U-Turn, we actually go back in time and play as Edward Kenway, Connor’s grandfather. Against the grain for linear progression but okay, we’ll go with it. Now, let’s not forget that the whole Assassin’s Creed world is just a simulation. In the ‘real world,’ Desmond Miles is dead and his body has been shipped to Abstergo Industries where you, a new Abstergo employee, are reliving his memories to create a new computer game based on the life of Edward Kenway. How crazy is that? The framing is that we are working in a computer game developing job to create a game where you play as pirate in the West Indies. Ubisoft just love their framing.

Onto the story within the story, playing as Edward you are a master Assassin with absolutely no assassin training whatsoever. It is actually quite funny. Your ship crashes onto a desert island and it is just you and the actual Assassin, Duncan Walpole, who survive. In typical pirate fashion, Edward kills Duncan, takes his stuff including the hidden blade, years of assassins training and all, and goes to Havana and pretends to be him in a meeting with the Templar.

Unlike all of his predecessors, Edward does not possess a moral compass. He is out only for himself and his pursuit of The Observatory is totally self motivated. I don’t know why he thinks the Observatory will give him untold wealth, but at some point he is told it is valuable so he goes after it with no expenses spared.

He makes lots of friends along the way, gets them killed and also makes more enemies... generally speaking Edward is a horrible person and while this was funny for the first thirty or so hours, it did start to wear thin towards the end.

The sounds effects are good for the most part and again I enjoyed the sea shanties that you can collect and are then sung by your crew when sailing the high seas. This is very good as you will spend a lot of time travelling around in your ship looking for various collectible items.

The gameplay has the standard Assassin’s Creed issues in that the free running isn’t as seamless or easy as I would expect it to be. My Edward continually gets caught on various objects, doesn’t grab hold of ledges when I wanted him to and generally acts like a brain damaged moron from time to time. The worst instances of these were his survival instincts or lack thereof. When I jumped from a tall building in an attempt to land in a haystack, several times I died landing right next to the haystack. There was a similar issue in Assassin’s Creed III and to be fair, it has noticeably improved but it’s still something I would be happy to live without.

Achievements – 1,250 Points – 60 Achievements

As with all Assassin’s Creed games, the achievements are plentiful and varied with loads of stuff to collect and, of course, multiplayer.

There are 19 achievements obtainable for playing through the game but you will also nab a few others including swimming a certain distance, plundering ships and recruiting crew members. I made a habit of collecting everything every time I visited a new location so I had a lot less to do once I had completed the main game.

Two challenging achievements include destroying all the forts and taking care of the Legendary Ships but once you have fully upgraded your ship it shouldn’t be too problematic once you identify the patterns required to take them out.

There are also the generic achievements for killing certain enemies in certain ways and getting chain kills, etcetera, but nothing too painful. The whole single player element is very time consuming though and despite fast travel, sailing around the map is a bitch.

Multiplayer

I really did think we were on to a winner after the sparse achievements on Assassin’s Creed III however, I was very wrong. There are nine multiplayer achievements (including DLC) to get, the most painful of which is getting to level 55. The easiest way to do this is to play one wolfpack multiplayer map every day to take advantage of experience boosts.

Outside of getting to level 55 there are a few small pain-in-the-ass achievements. Playing a match on every game mode was a struggle as everyone has already decided they didn’t want to play the shittier game play modes by the time I got around to playing it.

There are two achievements I used a boosting session for; killing someone using a booby trapped lift which I may have got through luck, and being the highest scoring player in a game of Domination as The Jaguar. In order to do the second one you have to get the opportunity to select the Jaguar which requires you to have the multiplayer DLC. There is a one-in-two chance of doing this if you have four players and you are the leader for one team. Next, you have to be the highest scoring player which means you need to actually be good at this game mode. Both of these scenarios were unlikely for me to pursue. So I didn’t.

Downloadable Content

The extra 250 points consists of two downloadable packs. The first is the MP Characters Pack #1 Blackbeard’s Wrath which has four achievements, the two I mentioned above and another two which can both be obtained in Wolfpack mode once you reach the correct level to use the abilities.

The other is Freedom Cry where you can play as Edward’s one time friend, Adewale as he liberates slaves from plantations. It is essentially the same gameplay style as the main game, only you get to play as someone whose moral compass is pointing in the right direction. And he is badass. He carries a machete as a default weapon and can use a blunderbuss to kill multiple dudes at the same time.

I had a lot of fun with Black Flag even if Edward’s self destructive personality threatened to ruin everything. There is the option of replaying the game on the 360 but I can’t bring myself to play the whole game again. At least not yet, anyway.