The LEGO Movie Videogame

I know, I know, another Lego game. I was suckered into this one thinking it would be quick and easy when I saw that there were only 70 gold bricks. I was sort of right in some respects but very wrong in others. I didn’t pay for this one though, it was brought into my house by a child who was allowed to spend money for the first time. He could have got Skylander’s Trap Team but instead, I had to settle for a Lego game!

There’s not really a lot to say about the actual game. It follows the story of the movie to the letter, including cut scenes taken directly from the movie. The graphics are to be expected from a Lego game. The sound track is just as annoying as it was in the movie.

Gameplay mechanics introduce some new character traits but that is standard of any Lego game. It’s almost a pointless review in that that’s about all I have to say. There weren’t many annoying glitches and the bonus level wasn’t too onerous. Like I said above, there are only 70 gold bricks so compared to ones where there are in excess of 200, you would think it wouldn’t be too much like hard work. I would say it still takes 20 plus hours to complete though and it still suffers from the age old problem in that the levels are long and boring, you have to replay them to get everything and replaying them is a pain in the ass.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 48 Achievements

So what’s difficult about these? The short answer is not a lot. The only real problem I had was figuring out when I needed to use a certain character’s ability to get to the next area and Lego games often have a habit of making what you have to do as clear as mud.

In terms of all the achievements, you get 17 for just playing through the main story. The majority of the others are obtained while striving towards 100%. There are a few that are not which involve you having to do something with certain Lego characters.

There are three annoying achievements, two of which are very similar. There are two sections where you have to perform dance moves to Everything is Awesome which you are scored on depending on when you press the correct corresponding button. In order to get these achievements you have to score ‘Awesome’ for every move and a lot of the time this felt like it was the game’s opinion of what an awesome move was rather than my ability to time button presses correctly.

The other one is one that I regularly complain about. Collect 1,000,000,000 studs. What the fuck is the point in collecting all of this money when you have absolutely nothing to spend it on?? It’s not challenging, it is repetitive and annoying. If the Lego creators are trying to make their games less enjoyable, introducing shit like this is a good way of doing it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s a resounding meh experience. Again, it’s not the worst one I’ve played but not the best. I have Lego Batman 2 on my shelf but I need a long break from Lego games now so won’t be playing that for a while. I haven’t seen the kids play this Lego game for a while now come to think of it, so if it can’t hold the attention of 8 and 10 year olds, it’s clearly lacking something.

Night at the Museum 2

At the moment I am trying to spread out some longer, more difficult games with some quick wins. Night at the Museum 2 falls nicely into the second category. It was another game I was able to complete in the space of a weekend which is always a feel-good moment for achievement hunters.

I was left a little on the back foot with the storyline as I’ve never seen the movie. I enjoyed the first one though so I thought how bad can it be? You basically follow Ben Stiller as he travels around various museums meeting characters from the first movie and some new ones from this adventure. The ultimate goal is to stop Amunrah’s evil twin wax brother from using the tablet to bring other shit to life in order to take over the world or something.

The sound effects and graphics left a lot to be desired if I’m honest. The game was out in 2009 and looks like it wasn’t prepared for the 360 graphics engine – unforgivable nearly 4 years after the console was released.

Gameplay is a tricky one. The mechanics are very simple and you are introduced to all of them in one go at the start. You then have to recollect all the special skills as you travel through the museums. It is very possible to die which in a way, makes the game technically more difficult than Prey, but it is still a fairly troubleless completion. This is good as none of my deaths were actually down to gameplay glitches.

There are a few vehicle sections which were the most frustrating aspect of the game. To be honest I’m not sure why games even bother with obligatory vehicle sections. When most games put them in, they seem to be counterintuitive to the control system already in place. Night at the Museum 2 is no exception to this but they weren’t so bad as to give me nightmares. The only major drama was controlling the Lunar Lander.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 37 Achievements

There really in no drama here. You have to play through the game once and pick up all the collectibles to get 34 of the achievements and the collectibles are not that hard to find. I didn’t even have to use a guide and that says a lot.

One of the remaining three is for bagging all of the other achievements so effectively an auto-unlock. There is another for an optional puzzle in one of the museums and you remember the Lunar Lander I mentioned earlier? Well you have to complete that vehicle section without taking x amount of damage which was only a minor frustration but it still took me an extra attempt to get it – which subsequently unlocked the last achievement for getting all the others.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So that’s it. A simple game with easy achievements. End of. The only problem is the lack of replay value but that’s not really important from a 2009 game that I’m playing in 2015.

Rango

As part of my Gamerscore push, I picked up a few easy games for the cheap. These included Rango which for some reason was imported from China and the case was written in Italian. It didn’t make a lot of sense as the postage was about as much as I paid for the game (not a lot).

I haven’t seen the Rango movie but if it’s anything based on the game, it would be truly bizarre. Rango is a chameleon sheriff is a desert town and the storyline of the game consists of him retelling a story about some strange rocks which have been causing people to disappear. He has a girlfriend called Beans, an iguana, who is also a bit weird but that’s in keeping with the theme of the game.

The whole storyline is a bit strange but then again it is designed for kids so that’s to be expected. However, I do have a criticism of this. The game is for seven plus and I tried this out on the kids around my house and I don’t think that they paid much attention to the storyline. The action on the levels is what keeps them entertained though.

In terms of the visual and sound quality, it has the same issues as all other games of its genre – visually unspectacular with lots of repetitive jingly tunes which drive you mad after about twenty minutes of play time.

The gameplay is actually its main strength which was a big surprise. It is a very clean game with hardly any glitches or gameplay errors. This was fantastic, especially as the game is geared more towards the kids which means they won’t be frustrated when things keep going wrong – something I’m becoming more used to!

Achievements – 46 Achievements – 1,000 Points

The majority of the achievements are story related and a simple playthrough will nail the majority and get you another if you do it in hard mode. Difficulties are stackable as well so no need for multiple playthroughs... for difficulty reasons anyway.

There are a few achievements for gathering Sherriff Stars, the in game currency and another for purchasing all upgrades for Rango. These two things do not tally up at all. I had to spend a lot of time at the end grinding out stars to get the last achievement.

There are a few others where you have to do specific things like killing enemies in a certain way or using the special weapons to kill a certain amount of enemies but these are all relatively straightforward.

And that’s pretty much it. The grind isn’t really that bad considering some others I’ve done recently and the total play time for the 1,000 points is probably around 10 hours max.

Downloadable Content – N/A

It’s most redeeming quality is the fact that it is an easy 1,000 points to add to the pile and not too time consuming. The visual and gameplay quality make it one on the best games I’ve played in the genre however it offers no adult replay value. The kids like it though.

Assassin's Creed II

On to Assassin’s Creed II and introducing one of the greatest Itialians that ever lived – Ezio Auditore di Firenze!

Assassin’s Creed II is essentially Assassin’s Creed in different clothes but as I’ve previously stated, it was great fun so I had no problem with this at all. And also, the developers addressed the biggest problem of the previous game in that Altair’s personality could be likened to that of a piece of wood.

In contrast, Ezio is just as likely to fuck your wife than assassinate you (and will more than likely do both). He also has a decent motive for revenge in that the Templars killed his family versus Altair’s, ‘I’m an assassin so let’s fuck up dem bitchez!’

Visually, it is standardly improved across the board and Ezio’s assassin outfit is a tad more discrete than Altair’s... a tad. He still may as well walk through the streets of Italy with a big Assassin sign above his head and he also suffers from the syndrome of being labelled as such if he moves faster than a seventy year old man.

On to the gameplay and they have expanded on the non-assassin things you can do - you can now build your own hideout! Many people have criticised this, but I found it relatively enjoyable. It gave me a sense of purpose, like I was building my own assassin hideout which was great. Incidentally it is also the location of where Future Desmond and his band of do-gooders are hiding out in the modern world, so it was all very well rounded.

The storyline flows more smoothly here too in that you don’t have to start every mission or sequence from the same location. It was actually like the developers looked at their last game and tried to improve it which makes a great change. That said, it does suffer from the same platforming issues present in the previous game. When faced with the choice between plummeting to his death and jumping to the pretty obvious ledge, Ezio will often pick death. Maybe it has something to do with endless amount of meanlingless sex he has, who knows.

Ezio does have another favourable quality over Altair – water doesn’t kill him. This means that some of the unexplainable, dumbass, jumping decisions described above aren’t the end of the world. They are simply annoying.

Achievements – 50 Achievements – 1,000 Points

The achievements for this can be broken down into a few specific categories. Stuff you need to collect, stuff you need to buy to improve your house and stuff you need to do to various enemies, like killing them and stuff.

It’s all relatively straightforward with the exception of 1 missable achievement which you can only get during one mission, and maybe the feather collection as these do not appear on the map.

Downloadable Content – N/A

In summary it’s an easy 1,000 points and nowhere near as time consuming as the first in the series. I did find myself becoming bored towards the end though after having explored eight different cities across the two games, collecting crap and performing a limited amount of assassinations.

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.