The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

Following the last Sherlock Holmes adventure and his fictitious pursuit of Jack the Ripper, we now join him on another quest to solve murders, only this time he has a far less annoying voice. That’s the only real difference though. He is still an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who continuously breaks the law. During the course of his ‘investigation,’ Sherlock Holmes commits a series of crimes including but not limited to; springing a convicted mass murderer from prison; blackmail; arson; countless amounts of vandalism and, my personal favourite, murder. While on a murder investigation.

Still the most intriguing part of the game is Sherlock’s relationship with Watson. He is constantly mugging him off, undermining his intelligence and making him an accessory to his crimes and yet Watson still thinks this is okay, probably because Holmes occasionally refers to him as ‘Mr Dear Watson.’ There is no way any other human being would take the level of abuse subjected by Holmes and still call them ‘friend.’ It is bizarre.

Visually the game is okay but I would have expected a little bit more from a game in 2012. For the most part the sound effects and background music win points for being spot on with the atmosphere of the game and in keeping with the period, however there were a few exceptions to this. In the prison area, the pace of the music is really fast and completely out of context with what you are supposed to be doing. The music is so fast paced that it implies you are in a rush to do what you have to do there which is not the case at all.

Gameplay wise there is only one criticism – some of the puzzles are ridiculously hard to work out what you have to do. I’m not talking about the ones that require you to solve mysteries with the clues you are given but more specific when you have to define chemical compounds at Sherlock’s flat. There are no instructions on how to use the chemistry set and I had to look it up to figure out how it worked.

On the other side of the coin, the environment-based puzzles are really good. They give a great sense of achievement for figuring out what you need to do from the clues provided and most of this involves using your own intuition.

I do think that the character dialogues and interactions with the environment could use some work. I’ll discuss the dialogue in the achievements bit as one of the achievements relates directly to this subject. The environmental interactions feel a bit silly at times. For example, you can choose between third person and first person perspective. The differences are that in third person, your character handles badly, can’t easily interact with the environment and walks like a robot crossed with a brain-damaged rabbit. It’s awful and there is no real need to use it as it seems like the game was designed to be played in first person anyway.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 32 Achievements

Okay so there are 19 unmissable achievements for playing through the main story of the game and three which are completely missable.

One of the missable achievements is for having three separate dialogue conversations to enact Sherlock’s love of blackmail. Although to be fair, one of these conversations is Watson’s, but still. Anyway what I would have liked to have seen from the game would have been a variety of different dialogue options that had a variety of different outcomes. You have three opportunities to blackmail people but they are only there for the achievement and to make Holmes look like an asshole. They have no bearing on any character outcomes or the overall storyline. Basically, it’s one of those areas that had the bare minimum work put into it to allow the game to function.

My complaint from an achievement perspective is that there is scope for variety here which is unused. As well as the 19 out of 32 achievements being story related, the other 10 non-missables are for completing the individual puzzles in the game and the reason they are not storyline related is that there is a feature that allows you to skip the puzzles if you are not able to do them. While there is no conceivable problem with this, it is kind of weird that this story driven game allows you to get its final reward (the ending) without making you complete any of its challenges.

Another one of the missable achievements is for finding one item and fully examining it. This item is in no way connected to the storyline of the game so it begs the question... why only include one achievement of this type? It feels very strange, almost like there was a plan to have a much vaster game experience but it wasn’t completed and the game was forced into an early release.

The last missable one is for completing all of the in-game puzzles that you can skip, missable obviously because of the in-game ability to skip the main content of the game. You have to do this on one playthrough though so it makes sense, seeing as you’ve paid money for it, to actually play the game through properly as there are no conceivable short cuts to unlocking this one.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s another Sherlock game that can gather dust or be sold once completed as there is no replay value to the puzzles and no alternate ending. It feels very rushed and underdone but in its defence, the puzzles are good and offer a sense of satisfaction if completed without aid.

Top Spin 2

After taking a trip down memory lane with Bioshock, I went on a cleanup operation with Top Spin 2. After completing all of the offline achievements, I went back to complete the three multiplayer achievements and add this to the completed pile.

Gameplay wise, the standout comparison to make is to Virtua Tennis. It took me a while to get used to the Top Spin controls but once I did, it was apparent that they were more deliberate and accurately calibrated than that of its direct competitor and it is also a game based more on skill. I used to play it with my friend who was quite experienced with the game and closing the skill gap on him was a real challenge - one I didn’t quite accomplish!

As with all sports games with a low amount of achievements here is a basic run through of what’s on offer:

1. Win first exhibition match – Win a match in Exhibition Mode.

2. Beat all female pro players – Beat all the female players in the game. This can be done in exhibition mode simply by working your way through the characters on the menu.

3. Beat all male pro players - Beat all the male players in the game. This can be done in exhibition mode simply by working your way through the characters on the menu.

4. Win first match in Career Mode – Simply win a match in Career Mode for this achievement.

5. Win first Career tournament – Simply win a tournament in Career Mode for this achievement.

6. Complete first career – Simply finish Career Mode to unlock this achievement. You can simulate the 5 year career but this is not recommended for the following two reasons. 

Missable Achievements

7. Reach #1 World Rank in career – The easiest way to do this and the one below is to make sure that you win the majority of the tournaments on offer. If you build your player character, winning matches should be a breeze for the last three years of the career which should net you more than 1,000 Points and the number 1 rank.

8. End Career with 1,000 points – as above. According to my findings, not a lot of the people that played the game managed to do this but it’s probably because it requires the player to do a lot of the same things. Like play tennis. In a tennis game.

Multiplayer

I can’t really say much about the multiplayer experience because I didn’t have one. Top Spin 2 was released in March 2006. The online community is not existent over eight and a half years after release so my ‘guides’ will reflect this.

9. Win first Ranked Match – to win a ranked match you have to first have a player created character. Ranked Matches cannot be played with the in-game pros which makes sense as everyone would simply play as Federer. After creating your character, you will have two choices. First choice is to find someone else out there who needs the three online achievements. The second is to get a second Xbox360 – these can now be purchased for around £70 (Elite version).

10. Win 25 Ranked Matches – As above.

11. Play 50 Ranked Matches – As above. With a friend you can get both of these in about 2 and a half hours, the key being to forfeit the match at the right time. When I was doing this I forfeited about 20 matches too soon and they didn’t register which meant I had to do them again, which makes me an even bigger loser.

In terms of gameplay, it is probably still the best tennis game out there to date, though I am yet to sample the latest Top Spin or Virtua games. However, with the lack of online activity, it is probably not a recommended buy if you are looking for full completions. However, it is an easy 775 points and cheap if you are not that bothered.

A side note on the two Xboxes method, I am not recommending you go out and buy another console. The only reason I was able to do this was because my original Xbox started churning up discs so I bought an elite as a replacement to the old one. Only do this if you are hell bent on getting full completions – or if you have kids, get them an Xbox 360 and use it for achievement hunts!

Madden NFL 06

I have to confess, American Football is not my strong suit. I had never watched a game and don’t know who any of the stars are and have even less of a clue regarding the stars and best teams from 2006. After playing the game though... I still don’t really know what’s going on.

There’s not really a lot else to say – it’s a football game – so let’s dive straight into the achievements.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 11 Achievements

Due to low amount of achievements I’ll do a play by play (pardon the pun).

1.       Activate RS Card. All you have to do is click the right stick when you start a franchise.

2.       Score a Touchdown. Pretty self explanatory and I did manage to get this without the help of a guide telling me how to play American Football.

3.       Get a First Down. Having heard downs mentioned in previous conversations with people who actually know what they are, I was still stumped.  However, a little research revealed to me that it is making ten yards down the field. I got this one with the above after running past all the opposition on an easy difficulty level.

4.       Complete an Offline Game. Again, self explanatory. Simply completing a game versus the CPU, regardless of winning, is enough.

5.       Enter History Book. This is the same as number 1 – all you have to do is enter a specific screen in franchise mode and the achievement is yours.

6.       Four Sacks in One Game. This is where they start getting a little less straight forward. I had to mess around with some settings to make this easy. By turning offsides off you can stand next to the Quarterback and take him down as soon as he gets the ball. Do this 4 times and boom, achievement unlocked – at the end of the game you are playing.

7.       Rush for 200 yards. Setting the game to low difficulty and always using plays that hand off to players that run rather than passing will get this is one game. The plays are easy to identify. I used Madden’s advice most of the time and every time there was an opportunity to pass to a Running Back, I took it. Having the difficulty down means that you should be able to run past the opposition again. Make sure to pay attention to the amount of yards covered by the player as the achievement won’t unlock until the game is completed.

8.        Pass for 350 Yards. The same as the above except use passing plays instead of running plays.

9.       Win a Franchise Game. This can be doubled up with Complete an Offline Game. The only reason I didn’t get them at the same time was because I was trying to learn how to play the game first!

10.   Win the Super Bowl. The easiest way to claim American Football’s most coveted prize is to start Franchise Mode and select all the teams as user teams. You can then just simulate to the end of the season – you don’t even have to play the Super Bowl match to unlock the achievement.

11.   Complete 30 Years of Franchise. This achievement is a joke but is also worth 400 of the 1,000 total points available. The only real way to do this is to select a team and simulate the 30 years of franchise. Despite skipping all of these games, it still takes in excess of 4 hours to complete.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I do enjoy learning things from games and I have increased my knowledge of American Football from playing this. However, I didn’t enjoy it and I don’t have the patience to learn an entire new sports game to the point where I would enjoy it. I won’t be playing another American Football game but this is mainly due to the fact that the games are made by EA and they have online achievements which have subsequently been discontinued.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Following the two previous catch up reviews, I can now focus on a game I recently finished. I know it seems like OCD gone mad after my earlier review of Assassin’s Creed III but I felt that Ass Creed III was so far removed from this lot that I could weirdly justify reviewing it first.

So anyway, there is one reason and one reason only that Assassin’s Creed III was published before these reviews; I had absolutely no intention of ever completing Brotherhood because of the multiplayer. I don’t understand why a game series I really enjoyed decided to add a multiplayer mode when the single player along was perfectly fine, and I understand even less why people like it so much. More on the multiplayer later though.

I almost didn’t continue with the series such is my disdain for multiplayer and also the way the game was advertised led me to believe that the only function of the game was a multiplayer one and that it had no bearing on the Assassin’s Creed storyline. I can’t remember how I found out this wasn’t true but I sucked it up, purchased the game and actually quite enjoyed the single player experience.

It is essentially a continuation of Assassin’s Creed II only slightly better due t fact it was released a year later. The gameplay elements are the same as its predecessor with two notable differences. The first is that you have a new function to recruit young assassins into your mini club in Rome and send them out across continental Europe to complete missions that are completely unrelated to your main goals. You don’t actually do anything either, other than click on a location and get given a chance of success. If you fail, your recruit dies and you have to hire a new one and start again. It is fairly dull but a good source of money which brings me on to the next change.

Instead of having your own private villa to improve, you now move in to Rome and that apparently means that, as an aside to assassinating people, Ezio has also started work as a building renovator and big businessman in the area. Your goals are to buy up all of the shops in the city and rebuild many derelict buildings including the aqueduct. I haven’t read my history on this but I’m pretty sure that Rome didn’t get renovated by some bizarre rich guy with a white cape and I have to question why on Earth they’ve put this in the game.

In Assassin’s Creed II, city renovation was new and you could say it was fair enough as you were renovating a place you actually lived in. In Rome, you are just rebuilding the city for no real reason. It doesn’t make sense in its own context which is a bizarre area to fall down on.

Also, by this point we are moving away from the stupid ‘stealth’ requirements of the assassin from the previous games such as walking slowly to avoid detection. It seems that Ubisoft have accepted the fact that sometimes people run or ride horses quickly and this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are up to no good. Of course, Ezio still walks around with his giant ‘I’m an assassin’ sign, but he has been in Rome for so long now that the guards probably think he’s an eccentric. Especially when you factor in the fact that he fixed the aqueduct for no other reason that it was a broken. And at great personal expense too.

Achievements – 60 Achievements – 1,250 Points

First off, there are the single player achievements which again are mostly straight forward. There are two missable ones for doing stuff as future Desmond but if you do happen to miss these, it’s not too much trouble to reply until the point where you can get them again.

There are some quite interesting ones involving finding certain items and locations and they actually make the most of the various side stories they have set up, namely that of Subject 16 – but no spoilers here. 

I found the single player mode to be quite entertaining, however completing the game was made a major slog and dragged out for several years due to...

Multiplayer

Earning these achievements was a huge pain in the ass. Firstly, I completed every other aspect of the game years before completing these bits and there are two achievements which were insanely difficult to obtain.  The pick of the bunch for insanity is the Abstergo Employee of the Month achievement. This one requires you to get all of the multiplayer bonuses available, one of which is called extreme variety which you only get if you manage to perform fifteen different bonuses in one match, something that doing in a random match is reserved for those people who, at the time of online popularity, had enough time to play the multiplayer over and over again until they were insanely good at it. And even then, there is a still a massive element of luck to it.

This is Assassin’s Creed’s first venture into multiplayer and you can tell from the Assassin’s Creed III achievements that Ubisoft eventually learned that people don’t like having to complete challenges based on the randomness of other players.

Downloadable Content

There is one downloadable content set with achievements which lets you access an additional sequence where you get to play with all of Leonardo’s inventions. Part of this, involves having to get 100% synchronisation across the DLC, which is actually the most challenging aspect of the game. This is what you want from DLC, something that adds something a little different and an extra challenge – thank God there were no additional multiplayer achievements!

Despite many labelling this as an unnecessary addition to the series, I thought that there was enough content here to justify a full title. I still question the necessity of multiplayer but even if people like it, which apparently they do, there is no reason to have achievements for it. Surely leaderboards and bragging rights is enough for those that enjoy online multiplayer?

Assassin's Creed

Back in my university days, Assassin’s Creed was released and I immediately thought, ‘yes that is exactly my bag baby,’ and went out and bought myself a copy. It was okay, I had learned to survive without food by this point and could spare the forty quid to buy a new release.

Of course this was years ago and I’m writing a retrospective review mainly to get up to date with the recently completed Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

The very first Assassin’s Creed revisits the Crusades where you take on the role of Altair, an assassin who goes about killing Templars because that’s what he is; an assassin that kills Templars. Although, in actual fact you are Desmond Miles, some dude in the future who has been captured by an evil corporation and forced to relive ancestral memories so that the bad guys can find the Apple of Eden, a powerful device that is owned by Altair’s mentor in the twelfth century. Or something like that.

Basically the whole Desmond thing is just there for framing and the main game is jumping about ancient civilisations as Altair.

The first time I rode into Damascus, I think my jaw dropped. At the time, I was amazed. You ride out on top of a hill that overlooks the entire city and you can explore every inch of what you can see. It was beautiful. Modern day consoles will make this look like shit now, but at the time, it was fantastic. I went about exploring and doing side missions and climbing really tall buildings and actually forgot that the reason I was in the city was to kill someone!

This is where the game fails – with the thing that is in the title – assassinations. Despite being called Assassin’s Creed, you spend very little time actually trying to assassinate people and more time doing mini-missions in preparation to the killing. These mini missions are exactly the same, no matter what city you are in, so it feels very lazy in terms of development. That said, it’s kind of balanced with the amount of work that’s gone into developing the scenery and cities, however I’ve always said that you should never sacrifice Gameplay for looks and it feels like that is exactly what the developers have done.

 Achievements – 1,000 Points – 44 Achievements

When I was playing Assassin’s Creed, I was going through a rough time with my Xbox360. It decided that it didn’t like having games inside it and would destroy anything that entered it – much like that movie, Teeth.

My first copy of Assassin’s Creed became unplayable after my Xbox had chewed it up and spat it out. This caused me to send the Xbox off to be fixed which left me without an Xbox for six weeks. This meant it took me a long time to get to the 1,000 point mark due to these unforeseen circumstances and also the fact that there are several collectible achievements in the game which take forever to do.

In my Toy Story 3 review, I mentioned that there was no way of tracking the collectibles. Assassin’s Creed not only has a way of tracking them, it marks them all on your map. You have to kill 60 Templars and collect, wait for it, 420 flags across the different locations. This was at a time when I thought Grand Theft Auto’s 100 hidden packages was excessive.

I think I spent three nights running around collecting flags and kept having the same conversation with my flatmate. ‘What are doing?’ he would ask. ‘Collecting flags.’ I would say. ‘Still?’ he would retort. ‘Yes,’ I would answer. Once I had collected the last flag, I was overwhelmed with a sense of achievement. My flatmate called it a waste of time.

The only real problem with the achievements was the Conversationalist one. In the future framing environment, something I didn’t think I would have to worry about when going for achievements, you have to have all conversations with a girl called Lucy. These are missable and cannot be revisited. I found this out half way through the game and restarted to save a full second playthrough. But I was still very annoyed about it. It added no extra dimension to the game so why they put an achievement in for it, I have no idea.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

Despite the long haul of collecting the flags and repetitiveness of the missions I do have fond memories of playing the game. The scenery is the best part of it and that makes the exploring element much more fun.

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider has been a long standing franchise in the gaming industry. Lara Croft first graced our screens with her oversized cone boobs on the Playstation which is now three generations ago (not including the XboxOne). Longevity. This latest edition takes us through her early years, hence the slogan, ‘A Survivor is Born.’

This latest instalment is dark and gritty, removing much of the female chauvinism from the series and showing Lara’s frail yet strong character develop through a series of ordeals as she tries to save her friends and colleagues... after she directed them to an island and got everyone trapped by the evil wind goddess, Yamatai. She also refers to everyone evil as ‘bastard’ is a rather stereotypical British accent.

I have to say that this aspect - the frailty, not the accent - is really well done.  Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix have teamed up and done to Tomb Raider what Christopher Nolan did to the Batman franchise. Without casting Christian Bale.

The single player campaign is one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had in a while. The platforming element is really well done and was challenging but not stupid. The developers had obviously put a lot of work into it because it was completely glitch free.

Weapons were also great. The shooting system was not overly complex and there was no auto-aim, which meant I was free to determine the biggest threat to my survival and not the game. All weapons could be upgraded as well and I love this kind of stuff. It actually feels like you are building your own custom arsenal rather than scavenging enemy guns.

Aesthetically, the game is beautiful and not detrimental to the game environment. As mentioned above, the platforming is really good and this, in part, due to the amount of effort put in to the environmental development as the scenery doesn’t get in the way of the platforming sections. This has been a major frustration in past games where you try to jump to a ‘ledge’ that is actually just background scenery.

General annoyances, however, come in the form of Lara’s dialogue. She has an insanely bad British accent that makes her more upper class than David Cameron and she is full to bursting with self encouragement one liners, the most common being, ‘You can do this.’ It seems a bit hollow for her to be saying these things after you’ve already done them five hundred times.

To really ram home this point, the first time she kills someone on the island is the first time she kills anyone, so for her to notch up one kill and then not have a problem annihilating any other twat stupid enough to get her way is unbalanced character development, especially when she is saying ‘you can do this’ to herself when faced with a mediocre hill clime.

Achievements – 1,000 Points- 50 Achievements

Right, so how much bollocks is there to do? Fuck loads being the best answer. Aside from completing the story, there are achievements for collectibles, getting a certain amount of kills with various weapons, killing people in various different ways, doing random things, playing online and secret achievements which are missable.

I’m not going to go on another rant about missable achievements but one of these really fucked me off. You have to have every conversation with members of the crew of your ship and this means if you don’t do this as and when they come up, you won’t get the achievement and you will have to play the whole game again. Yes, of course this happened to me, I didn’t know it was a fucking achievement did I?!

Multiplayer

I can’t get enough of multiplayer these days. There are two types of multiplayer achievement. Ones you need to play with people to get and ones you don’t. That’s right, online required, but you don’t need to play with anyone in order to get them.

I thought I was ahead with this at release but it was still challenging to get a game in every game mode when I played it so I joined a boosting session, my first ever in fact! As a group, we worked our way through the achievements that require actual multiplayer in less than two hours.

Now, you don’t need to play online to get the two big ones of unlocking everything and getting to level sixty. You can do this alone by playing Rescue mode. Alternatively you get a friend and blow each other up but I wasn’t willing to subject anyone else to mindless bollocks (despite one offer) so I did it myself, and what a thankless task it was. I actually felt depressed once I’d completed it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I enjoyed the single player very much but for me, Tomb Raider has no place going into the online arena. It works really well as a single player but the multiplayer element is poorly done, undeveloped and not a lot of fun, even in the legitimate matches I managed to find. The whole experience has detracted from me buying the Definitive Edition version of the game. Oh yeah, and the fact it is completely the same game is not a good selling point either.

Gray Matter

Before I gets balls deep into this one, I want to give a brief opinion on point and click adventure games as I seem to be playing a lot of them at the moment (if you count the CSI games). They are obviously very tricky in their own right as many of the classic games, such as The Secret of Monkey Island, have really convoluted ways of getting from start to finish. I can see the unique challenge in this, however I think that point and click adventure games should have a strong storyline as their main selling point.

I don’t think I’m clever by any stretch which is why I had to use a guide for Monkey Island and I’m not ashamed of that at all. I wondered around the dock for about three hours before giving in and being forced to look up the solution. This brings me to my next point for these games – the music has to be good because if you are stupid (like me) and playing properly (not like me) then you are going to be listening to a lot of background music –more on this later.

Anyway, on the matter at hand. Gray Matter, that is!

Gray Matter is a classic style point and click adventure game designed for easy use on a PC. The story follows Sam Everett, an American orphan trying to make her way to London to become a full on magician and member of an exclusive club. Her bike breaks down in Oxford and she wakes up in a strange house with her rabbit Houdini. Seriously.

She later entwines herself with reclusive neurobiologist David Styles with hilarious consequen... I can’t even lie about that, there is nothing hilarious about the game. Like I’ve said above, the main selling point of a point and click adventure game is the story so I won’t go into detail. But I will say this – it’s horribly depressing.

Along those lines, the music is also dreary and depressing. I was playing at around ten o’clock at night, not to subject any other members of my household to having to watch me play it, and I fell asleep twice. The storyline – coupled with the music – is enough to drive anyone to the verge of suicide. If you are going to play this, make sure you put aside an hour of gentle comedy to cheer yourself up after you’re done with a session.

As intricately put together as Gray Matter is, it was mildly disappointing when I discovered that the characters have generic responses similar to the witnesses from CSI: Hard Evidence. You play as David and Sam and at one point, as David, I had just witnessed a traumatic incident. But when I returned to my house afterwards, the housekeeper asked David how he was which he responded to with a quite cheery, ‘Fine thanks!’

He does have a moment of pure quality towards the end of the game. He makes a phone call to get some information and gets given loads of confidential information... so fully lays into the person on the other end of the phone and reduces them to tears!

In other positives, the Oxford depictions are really close to those of real life. They do look a bit dated though and the whole game feels very Americanised. The English speaking characters are clearly Americans and the lack of any kind of vehicles and cobbled paths seems to indicate that America thinks England is stuck in the nineteen-fifties.

In terms of the gameplay, point and click adventure games are best played with a mouse but in a world where we have an analogue stick... sorry, make that two analogue sticks, I don’t understand why I have to hold down the right trigger to be able to click on stuff. Basically, the point and click interface registers a -9 out of 150 in terms of user friendliness and this is the main reason that playing the game was a fucking ball ache.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 41 Achievements

As far as the achievements go, most of them are simply story driven with a few missable ones sprinkled in. It gets it completely right it terms of secret achievements though – all the missable ones are non-secret.

I do have one massive issue with one particular achievement called Fast Play. You get this achievement for completing the game in less than five hours. Now, a game of this type is not designed to be played in less than 5 hours. I’m pretty sure that it can only be done by skipping all the dialogue and by knowing exactly what to do before you do it. This makes playing the game properly completely redundant.

I used to be the kind of person who would aim to get all the achievements in a single playthrough and this can be done with a guide but what’s the point? I took the extra hit and played the game properly once before getting Fast Play but I don’t think a game’s objectives should make the game redundant.

Downloadable Content – N/A

To sum up, it’s not the most straight forward 1,000 points I’ve ever earned and the puzzles are a massive let down in terms of what they offer. It’s a gettable 1,000 points, but not necessarily the most enjoyable. Unless you’re a masochist of course.

Assassin's Creed III

The third numbered game in the series is actually the fifth in the franchise after the super-extended Assassin’s Creed II which followed the career of Ezio the Italian Legend until he is a withered old man swinging around Constantinople on a metal hook.

After the close of Ezio’s story, we are whisked away to a completely unrelated character in the American revolution. I have no idea what the link is between Ezio and Haytham Kenway, but there must be one there as they are all supposedly ancestors of Desmond Miles. They did the same thing with Altair in the first Assassin’s Creed and I would like to see these connections explained at some point!

As for Assassin’s Creed III this is the first instalment where we play as two different characters in Haytham Kenway and his son, Rat’atokene... Connor. Haytham comes from England to America with some kind of key to look for some kind of door and accidentally fathers Connor with a native Indian. The result is; Connor, a half-native American who can speak perfect modern American – complete with the accent – and also in a perfect Native American tongue.

In the modern day as Desmond, we are exploring the memories of Connor to find Haytham’s key that can open a door to save the world from a solar flair. Apparently no one cares about the framing of the story but I thought it was really interesting as to why they bothered to come up with a bizarre backing story in an attempt to make delving into ancestor memories have meaning.

Anyway, the main element the story (within the story) is that Connor is born, becomes a self-righteous prick and goes on a mission to destroy the Templers because he has Daddy issues. His other notable traits are his ability to dictate to the likes of George Washington on how to run a revolution, commanding a sailing ship with no prior experience and leadership and raising a community who love him by allowing people to settle on land that isn’t his and speaking in a monotone which shows no interest in their lives.

As you have probably guessed, I didn’t really care for Connor. I found him to be boring and up his own arse.

Visually however, the game is stunning. You can explore pretty much as far as you can see. The only problem is once you do, you have to come all the way back again. There are very few fast travel points when you are outside of the major cities which means that you have to navigate on foot which was quite time consuming. Oh wait, no they do give you a horse but with all the forests and cliffs littering the landscape, they may as well have given me a hippo with three legs for all the extra efficiency it gave to my travelling ability.

In addition to the main storyline and the obligatory collectibles that almost define Assassin’s Creed, they now have naval missions where you can captain a ship and sail around blowing stuff up. It added an extra element to the gameplay which was quite enjoyable and actually done quite well for the most part.

Achievements – 1,350 Points – 64 Achievements

This was quite the haul of achievements boasting no less than 4 pieces of downloadable content. But more on that later. The majority of the achievements can be gained through playing the main story but there a certain amount for killing dudes in certain ways, including the new cool feature of being able to hang them from a tree.

There were two achievements that really pissed me off. Number one; having to observe all the lazy twats on the homestead not doing any work. This was very unforgiving as a lot of the time they would just be pissing around or doing the same thing they were doing the day before. You have to record all of the fucktards doing three different activities. It would appear that the woodcutters, who are the first to join your homestead, don’t cut down any trees and just smoke pipes, go fishing or play bowls. The achievement was ridiculously tedious and only worth ten points.

Number two; getting 100% on all missions and the only reason I’ve listed this as twatish is because of one naval mission. In order to get 100% sync on this mission you have sink all three ships by firing on their weak points. In order to get the weak points to appear, you have to ram the ships at about two miles per hour or shot them in a very specific place, both of which had inconsistent results. The ships would either sink straight away or the weak would not appear after seven shots in the same place... and the ship would then sink anyway. I think I spent more time on this one mission that all of the other naval missions put together, however this was the only part of the naval missions that could have done with a little more development.

Multiplayer

I’m not a fan of multiplayer achievements and for those of you that can view my gaming history, you can see that I didn’t even bother trying to get the multiplayer achievements on the previous two Assassin’s Creed games.

However, I saw this one through and here’s why. There are two reasons why I don’t like multiplayer achievements. The first one is do with EA and the exact reason why you won’t see a review of FIFA 08 on here. EA decided to close their servers which means it is now impossible to get the online achievements in that game.

The second one is they are a pain in the ass to get if you don’t play the game within its first year of release because everyone stops playing it.

I was very grateful to the online community for sticking with Assassin’s Creed III. This meant I didn’t need to go looking for a boosting session to earn the achievements. Also, the people still playing the game, bar one or two exceptions, still haven’t figured out the best way to play Wolfpack mode which I thought was really funny.

Including the DLC there are only nine online achievements and none of them require a great deal of fucking about. You only have to get to level twenty and there are even a few you can do solo.

Downloadable Content

There are two aspects to the game’s downloadable content. There are four of them; one online and three offline.

The online DLC has clearly only been downloaded by achievement hunters. Could I find a multiplayer game on the additional Wolfpack maps? No. Did I try at every conceivable time of day for a week? Yes. Is that really sad? Yes – I have absolutely no life.

Luckily, I managed to get the achievement which related to the additional maps by myself so no need for too much swearing.

The other three DLCs are totally fucking insane. I don’t understand why there are three separate DLCs for the same fucktarded alternate universe that is The Tyranny of King Washington other than as a major money spinner for Ubisoft. You play in the same three environments from the main game with some extra abilities that make the game easier and the whole episode has no bearing on the main storyline whatsoever. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t played it yet but at the end I had one question on my mind – ‘What the fuck just happened?!’ and not in a good way.

So, to sum up the multiplayer was probably the best bit about the game. The main story was really slow and incredibly frustrating at times. The lack of fast travel points made me stop playing more often than not.

In terms of achievements it is very doable and still accessible and I did get a sense of achievement at the end even if it was related to my ability to stick at the game even though it continuously tried to shit all over itself. Next stop, Assassin’s Creed IV! That will probably be sometime in July.

SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection

This is another game I bought in the hope of earning more quick achievements and I wasn’t disappointed. Also a trip down memory lane was long overdue. I used to love all the old games on this compilation from my younger days. Well, some of them anyway. I hadn’t played a lot of them before as they were before my time. Some are even released before I was born!

The first thing I realised when playing was that games have become a lot easier since the Megadrive days. I swear to God, I was better at these games when I was younger, but if Sonic Generations proved anything it’s that I will never be good at Sonic again, no matter what version of the game I’m playing.

Dying became something of a regular thing throughout these games. Having a limited number of lives before having to start again is something that modern games don’t really do. I can’t think of a modern game which punishes you half as much for being careless. It’s no wonder I found these games so difficult as modern games have dulled my abilities.

I used to walk through Golden Axe without a care, fighting my way through the hordes of enemies and I swear I’ve managed to get to the end of the game before. On the Ultimate collection version however, I can’t even make it through to act 4 without having to use at least 1 continue.

There’s not really a lot else for me to comment on. We all know that the older games are vastly superior and can’t be criticised for looks so let’s dive straight into the...

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 34 Achievements

With a compilation of this size, it was disappointing that there were only 34 achievements. There are quite a few for playing the individual games but not all of them. I was especially disappointed that there weren’t any achievements for completing any of the Phantasy Star games or even any achievements for individually playing them.

One massive improvement from the Megadrive generation is being able to save your progress and reload. This was great because, as I mentioned in the Sonic Generations review, a lot of the games are very much trial and error. This cut potentially hours off both of the Vectorman achievements.

Most of the achievements are hideously unbalanced as well. Why oh why do you have to play the first five to ten minutes of some of the more enjoyable games, yet you have to complete Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine which is not only a horrible game to play but insanely difficult to boot.

Downloadable Content – N/A

On the whole it is an easy set of achievements to gain with the exception of Dr Robonik’s not so fun Bean thing. Some of the others were quite tricky as well such as getting to a certain stage without dying and I think I got lucky during some parts.

However, it was an enjoyable game to play through and certainly has a lot of replay value which is more than can be said for the majority of modern releases.

Sonic Generations

Sonic has received much criticism over the years. His gaming franchise has gone downhill with some poor releases and his popularity on the GameFAQS Character Battle has seen him lose to various inconsequential characters over the years (However, that competition’s integrity went flying out the window when the L-Block from Tetris won the damn thing.)

That said, Sonic Generations is the most fun I’ve had with an Xbox360 Game for a long time.

The premise for the game is that Sonic is having a birthday party when it is crashed by some evil time demon thing. In order to get back to his party, Sonic must destroy the time demon thing, however when the time demon thing destroyed his party, it caused a rip in the space time continuum which enabled two Sonics to exist at the same time! (I’m not going to go into the obvious paradox here.) They combine forces to battle through levels in 2D and 3D to face the enemy and restore the flow of time.

When I played through the levels for the first time, I was reminded about how bad I am at speedy platformers, but this stops being a problem as the all the levels take less than ten minutes to complete, meaning that replying levels isn’t too much of a repetition issue. Also, there are several different ways of getting through a level so finding the fastest way is a challenge in itself.

 The graphics are simple enough but they’ve done exactly what they should have done and kept it simple like the Sonics of old. This also means that there are very few glitches and this might be the first time I don’t complain about glitches ruining my gaming experience.

The in game music I enjoyed, but everyone who was around me while I was playing cried their eyes out about how annoying it was. It is definitely a case of if you’re the one playing then you don’t notice it.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 49 Achievements

It’s nearly a perfect review, however it fails on the achievements front, albeit only slightly. We’re back to my problem with secret achievements that aren’t story related. A few examples include the fact that you have to kill the final boss without taking damage. This achievement is a fuck-ass for two reasons: number one, why is it a secret achievement and how on God’s Green Earth am I expected to be able to know that the game wants me to do this? Number two, it was impossibly difficult to realise when the boss actually hit me.

There were other secret achievements but these were covered by the fact you had to collect all the red things so it wasn’t too much of an issue.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Sonic Generations gets a thumbs up from me. It was an enjoyable game and challenging enough to give me a feeling of satisfaction upon completion. I’m a little disappointed that I have to give it back to my friend.

NCIS

Another game included in the Gamescore push, NCIS offers a similar style of gameplay to CSI, albeit more dumbed down. The story follows the characters from the series in what I can only describe as a light-hearted fight against terrorism in the United States.

Like, CSI you have to play through various investigations which are inherently linked to a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb and kills lots of evil Americans. The characters are the best bit in the game for me but only for the first two episodes. After that, the self congratulatory one liners, of which each character has only one, really begin to destroy any kind of likability they have built up to this point.

The gameplay elements are about as close as ‘click here to solve’ as possible and I thought CSI was quite basic. There are two elements to investigating a crime scene. You have to take pictures of everything. In NCIS, taking a photograph can delve through a wall to obtain bullets, collect forensic evidence from bodies and take moulds of anything that could assist in the investigation. In CSI, you had different tools for all of these things. If real forensic scientists could get their hands on an NCIS camera, it would make their work much for efficient.

In addition to the crime scene investigations, there are also interrogations which are simply laughable. In order to extract more information from witnesses, you have to press A to ask them a further question. The further question is normally, ‘Are you sure about that?’ which then causes the witness to completely change their previous statement under next to no pressure whatsoever.

The worst aspect of the gameplay is the deduction board. After analysing all the evidence, you have to make it work so that the evidence points to a suspect. So instead of working it out from the evidence, the game makes you go through the deduction board to piece it together in exactly the way the game wants you. It takes it way too far as well. You have to combine the evidence by selecting two bits at a time, however if you select the two in the wrong order it won’t let you compare them and asks you to try again. Comparing ‘B’ to ‘A’ is the same as comparing ‘A’ to ‘B’ no matter how you look at it, so fuck off you fucking game.

When you successfully manage to combine the two items in the right order, you then have to pick from four statements picking the correct link. Some of these statements mean exactly the same thing just worded differently, so being punished for picking the wrong one was a amazingly patronising from a game as complex as a ball and cup.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 26 Achievements

There’s not really a lot to say here. There are 26 achievements and I think they are all impossible to miss on one play through of the game. There is no additional challenge and due to the nature of the gameplay, it becomes very irritating having to listen to the characters’ dialogue very quickly.

That said I reckon the whole thing can be wrapped up and tossed aside within three hours so for quick achievement hits, it’s second on the list behind Avatar: TLA: TBE.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So it’s a quick game and easy achievement points for this one but it’s not going to be the cause of a game revolution and is the weakest game in a sparsely populated genre. The characters could have saved it but their underdeveloped personalities and dialogue destroyed what could have been the game’s saving grace.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Fatal Conspiracy

This is a new concept of gaming for me. I tried the CSI games on the recommendation from a friend that they are good to play as a couple. I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve never really watched CSI but you don’t really need to in order to play the game. It’s essentially five episodes which have an overarching storyline and you are basically on a mission to crush Beatrice Salazar’s drug empire.

CSI’s gameplay can be easily compare to the old point and click style adventure games where you have to investigate crime scenes in order find evidence and prove murders. You have a lab in which to analyse the evidence which includes DNA, chemicals, microscopes and computer analysis to name a few.

There are also interrogations where you can use the evidence to force people’s confessions.

And that’s pretty much it. It is a very simple game which can be really frustrating when you can find that last piece of evidence in a scene. However there were several moments that were actually quite funny as result of under development of story and just horrendous gameplay.

Covering the story element first, some of the characters are really under developed. The interrogations could have been a lot better. You gather all the evidence to nail someone with the crime and they will deny it until they are blue in the face. Then you present them with a piece of circumstantial evidence that could be easily thrown out or argued against but instead of expectedly arguing on, the suspect folds instantly like a wet napkin and confesses everything!

What we found most annoying is that we were figuring out what had happened and what we needed to do but then the game would send us patronising emails telling us what we already knew. We had the hints set on low as well so this was exceptionally irritating. We were also thinking of different questions to ask suspects based on the evidence we had collected but didn’t have the option to ask the suspect because we hadn’t complete a prerequisite to another part of the investigation. It was like the game was saying, ‘No you can’t solve this your way. You MUST solve it our way!’

As far as the gameplay goes, the microscope stuff was very, very irritating. We couldn’t get past the first investigation because of the bloody thing no matter how many different combinations we tried.

We were tasked with analysing a piece of evidence under the microscope. The tutorial indicated that we could move the microscope around to look at different bits of the piece of evidence, but in reality this was not the case and you were fixed on the one area.

There are three levels of zoom you can use and you can adjust the focus accordingly but after trying every possible combination, we resorted to looking it up online. Apparently we had to adjust the zoom first and then the focus in that exact order or else it won’t work. We only had this problem for the first microscope bit so I can only imagine that it is an unfixed glitch.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 25 Achievements

There are no missable achievements and I think they are all story related. There are three which may require replaying certain missions but it’s not too time consuming to do so.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So CSI is another achievement farm but it is fun to play with others. The one issue with this type of game is that there is next to no replay value as once you’ve played it through, you know what will happen. Due to the hand-holding nature of the gameplay, there are no alternative routes to the solution which is its biggest let down by far.

Saw

I went on an end of year achievement spree and found a list of ‘easy’ games online. Saw was one of the games I picked up for a quick hit. I’m not a fan of movie/game adaptations and Saw was no exception to the rule. However it did have some good points as well as bad.

The story of the game takes place between the first and second movies and is quite well constructed in that it uses Detective Tapp as the protagonist assuming he didn’t die after being shot at the end of the first movie. Instead, he was saved by the serial killer only to be put into a mental hospital to punish him for his ‘obsession’ with catching said serial killer.

They put quite a lot of work into the story to make it fit with the series as well as work as a standalone. Detective Tapp has to face all of the people whose lives he has destroyed in his quest to catch jigsaw and, with a few notable exceptions, the characterisation in done remarkably well for a movie adaptation.

They have put a big emphasis on lighting as well. You need a light source to get through dark areas and you pick up different light sources throughout the game. One of these light sources is a camera which you can use the flash to light up dark places. This was great in the movie and really added to the ‘jump’ factor when Adam was being hunted by Pigface. However, in the game you cannot see where you have to go before it reverts to total darkness again so it doesn’t work as an adaptation. At one point I had to navigate through a bomb-filled corridor which would have been straight forward with the lighter, but it made me very angry when I switched to the camera just before having to do this bit and without being able to backtrack and switch to the lighter.

The gameplay elements consist of fighting bad guys and solving Saw style puzzles. The puzzle solving element was okay, but there were only five different ones throughout the game so after the first two sections, it became a bit repetitive.

The combat sucks a fat one too. It is unintuitive and the game would be better without it. The last fight is bizarrely flawed in that all you have to do is stand there and grapple with the boss for five minutes before he dies. Most bad guys can be killed in the same way despite their class differences – what is the point of have a ‘berserker’ type character that isn’t berserk and fights in the same way as a regular minion? I would have expected Tapp to have to employ different methods of dealing with different foes but it is all very samey.

In all games there is always a major element designed to piss off all gamers and in Saw, it is the booby traps. You can’t see shotgun trip wires until you’re dead and then you have to go back to the last checkpoint which, in some cases, can involve a lot of backtracking... only for me to forget the trap was there and die again!

Achievements – 1,000 points – 46 Achievements

The achievements in Saw are varied but not exhaustive. For example, there are achievements for getting kills with various weapons but not all the weapons. There is an achievement for finding your first asylum file but not all of them. By adding achievements such as ‘Find all asylum files’ could have added a little reply value.

The non-exhaustive achievements have good and bad points. On the plus side you are not going to be frustrated looking for that last file or trying to find the only weapon you haven’t killed someone with. On the negative side, it felt very unrewarding getting to the end of the game, almost like a hollow victory. This is a real shame because the achievements get everything else spot on.

All the secret achievements are unavoidable and story related. There are two achievements for both endings but you only have to replay the last section to get both of them. It’s almost like the developers have realised they have a repetitive game and don’t punish their gamers by making them play the whole game again.

The only achievement that required me to replay certain levels was stomping five evil dudes to death. This was mainly due to the inconsistency of evil dudes falling over when I was punching them and the horrendous quick-time events required to stomp them to death.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Saw is definitely good for farming the points but is not a great game and isn’t very rewarding for completion. I wouldn’t play it again for fun and it hasn’t changed my opinion towards movie/game adaptations.

Alan Wake

Story 8/10

Most of the points for the story go to its originality. You are Alan Wake, a writer who travels to a lakeside town to rekindle his relationship with his wife and not to do any writing – the opposite of the cliché. However, when she reveals that she set up a typewriter, he goes ape shit and storms out. And then his wife is kidnapped by dark forces and he goes on a quest to save her. With a torch.

During a week of unconsciousness, the dark forces make Alan write a novel which has the power to release them from their prison and destroy the world. And that’s where I gave up trying to understand what was going on and started playing the game.

Picture 6/10

I honestly thought the majority of the scenery and the enemies were quite poor in their appearances in comparison to some of the other games released at the time.

I gave it a six because the developers obviously were looking at lighting at being the key selling feature of the game. For example, when you shine your torch in the face of one of your allies, they will cover their eyes. I thought this was a nice touch.

However, other lighting effects were annoying and did not add to the atmosphere, which I believe was their intention. Some lights blind you for no reason other than to fuck you off. It doesn’t add to the atmosphere and ruins my gameplay experience.

Sound 5/10

The sound effects don’t really pull any punches and don’t go above and beyond trying to be a little mysterious. There were no jumpy bits enhanced by the sound so it was pretty safe and middle of the road. It didn’t stand out as a negative factor though, so that’s a major positive.

Gameplay 4/10

The majority of the game is walking from one place to another shooting bad guys after shining a torch on them. After the second episode, it became very repetitive and I found it a hell of a slog to get through the rest of the game.

The added element of having to shine a light on an evil dude before shooting him is a pain in ass, not scary and simply annoying.

Considering the main element of the gameplay is shooting, I was really surprised that you gain absolutely nothing from headshots and the only way to speed up killing dudes is by using flare guns or flashbang grenades. The game becomes more about hording the good stuff for the tough parts which adds to the boredom even further. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to rename the game Alan Asleep although that is a pretty obvious joke.

Achievements – 1,500 points – 67 achievements

In terms of earning the 67 achievements for this one, it is not too taxing and the biggest problem is falling asleep while playing. The game commits the cardinal sin of making you play through the game twice to get all the achievements. This is due to the Nightmare difficulty not unlocking until you have completed the game on a lesser difficulty first.

I really resent being told by a game that I can’t play it on the hardest difficulty until I’ve proved myself on some lesser one. It’s like the game has some kind of bizarre God complex.

Other than that though, the achievements were varied enough to keep me playing. There was one other one that I must complain about though.

If you are going to have an achievement for making it through a large section of the game without dying – or turning off the console – you absolutely cannot leave any room for glitches. For example, the achievement, Run-On Sentence  for completing The Signal DLC without dying was made to be overly frustrating when I was forced through the graphics and got trapped under a building, unable to continue and having to restart wasting half an hour of my time!

Downloadable Content – Value for money?

I thought that both DLCs were value for money and add to the gaming experience. The second DLC, the Writer adds a bizarre twist to Alan Wake’s world and mixes it up with semi-tricky platforming sections.

The biggest addition to the game is the amount it adds to story though, however it still didn’t reach a final conclusion and it also frames the whole thing as the writer’s internal dilemma – a bizarre spin to put on a computer game.

They add an additional 500 points to the Gamerscore and the costs are very reasonable, especially now that they have abandoned this Microsoft Points system which means you can pay the actual price rather than overpaying for the Microsoft Point packages.

Summary

It is definitely worth getting from an achievement perspective. The game was repetitive but the storyline got me through the first playthrough which was enough to net the majority of the achievements. There is next to no replay factor though, and most of my deaths on the Nightmare difficulty were due to me not paying attention due to increased levels of boredom.