Submerged (Xbox ONE)

Stupid Xbox Marketplace! Just being there advertising games at discount rates that I can see other people playing... original gaming experience... brilliant. You may as well just automatically take the money out of my account on a monthly basis for all the damn discounts going on out there.

Anyway, Submerged is an independent game which follows the tale of... Sister and Brother? Mother and Son? Two people who are clearly related as they are travelling around what I imagine to be the planet in the future after the polar icecaps have melted and flooded the earth. You play as the Sister/Mother and you must use your tiny sailboat to explore the tops of buildings to find supplies to keep your Son/Brother alive.

It’s a simple concept with two major aspects – sailing around the ocean and climbing buildings. The small world is intricately designed although I did feel that the sailboat could have been a little bit more manoeuvrable. I lost count of the amount of times I got stuck on the scenery.

The music is in keeping with the theme of isolation which is good and bad. It’s quite well documented here that I’m not a fan of music that is depressing but I do appreciate that it is driven by the theme of the game, which makes it good. Thankfully though, the game is so short in its requirements that the music doesn’t become too much of a downer.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

With a low achievement count comes very little that actually needs to be done, especially when you take into account that if you are going to play the game out for the story (and If you are not, what’s the point in playing it?) you will naturally get two of the them anyway.

That said, Submerged does try its best to make you go out of your way, quite literally. There is an achievement for going to the North, South, East and West borders of the map. There’s nothing there and no value in doing so other than the achievement. Another one has you spend a full day and night cycle in the boat which is a very weird one when you consider that Son/Brother is dying and you are meant to be in some kind of rush. In real terms, spending a full day and night cycle in the boat takes about thirty minutes. Obviously though, it feel like a lot longer when there is not a lot to do but sail around.

Another exploration achievement has you reach the highest point in the map, which is a giant crane sort of near the centre of the map. You need to come up here anyway to get some of the collectibles, but the view alone is worth it.

Getting all of the collectibles is the only real challenge in the game and it’s not that challenging. Some of the bits you need to find in the larger areas can be taxing but you have a map which will show you when you’ve got them all. Any of the others can be found using an online map. It’s not the largest game map though so it doesn’t prove too time consuming.

That just leaves one more achievement for using the postcard feature which is probably the easiest one there is. All you have to do is enter the menu, select ‘Make Postcard’ and press the B button.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Submerged provided me with an easy completion but wasn’t very rewarding and also felt a little draining despite its short length. The last achievement I earned was for finishing the game so there was no reason for me to return to it after finishing it. To be completely honest, this is a bit of a shame because I think there is definitely scope to build on what feels like the starting blocks of something. Hopefully Uppercut Games feel the same and we see something else from them soon.

Wolfenstein: The New Order (Xbox ONE)

This is another example of me playing a series out of order but the original Wolfenstein for the 360 is such a fuck ass of a game I won’t be getting to that any time soon. Wolfenstein: The New Order is a solely single player experience which pushed it up my Xbox One ‘to play’ list. A list which is growing faster than I thought it would.

The New Order has a story routed in a twisted version of World War II where the Nazis win and apparently have access to advanced technology with mechanised dogs and giant destructive robots. You play as War Hero B.J Blast... Blashko... Blazkowicz? Is that right? Anyway, you play as B.J. – William to his love interests – as he tries to turn the fight against the Nazis by killing the evil, scary Nazi General Deathshead.

The storyline is well crafted and the set pieces are good, but the one major issue is big boring B.J. himself. Many of the other characters are quite colourful and have a lot of personality but not B.J. He sounds like he is just not bothered a lot of the time and his facial expressions are, well, expressionless. His monologues nearly put me to sleep on several occasions.

Graphically, New Order is one of the prettier games I’ve played and I would go as far as to say it’s almost flawless in its presentation. There were very few instances of me getting caught on scenery or scenery providing my enemies with an unfair advantage. Musically, it is also vey in-keeping with the steam-punk theme and is eerie and epic in equal measure.

The gameplay, I have to say is probably one of the best I have played in a long time, especially in the FPS genre. It feels very fluid and very rarely messed me up. You have a choice of several guns and carry grenades as a secondary back up so it uses a lot of traditional qualities however, they had what I consider a non-standard cover based system. If you stand B.J. facing a wall near a corner and aim your gun, he will naturally lean out to shoot around the corner. I found this to be much more intuitive and seamless than having to press A to enter cover and then press another button to leave cover and it is more in keeping with what you would do in reality.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

There are three categories for the achievements in New Order; collectibles, perks and difficulty playthrough.

Now, as you all know I’m not a fan of forced second playthroughs unless it makes a massive difference to the story or game experience so thank you Bethesda for having the Uber difficulty available from the beginning. I honestly don’t know what it’s like to play a game through on an easy difficulty anymore. New Order however, I found quite forgiving on its toughest level. It certainly didn’t give me more trouble than some of my other completions. That said, there were a few bits which gave me cause to scream.

In one level, I was messing around trying to get a perk upgrade and got shot to shit... right at the same time as I hit a checkpoint. This meant that I had to do the next section of the game with no margin for error. Needless to say I died several times with lots of swear words.

Once the hard playthrough is done, if you were thorough and picked up all the collectibles, you won’t have much left to do. If you were amazing (unlike me) you will most likely have some skill achievements left to unlock. If you are completely like me, you will most likely need to replay most of the levels to get all the collectibles as well. Playing on the lowest difficulty to do this after playing on Uber is like playing with invincibility activated.

Other comments I’ve seen suggest that you only need to complete the last mission on Uber to get this one but that felt really cheap so I didn’t go for it.

I managed to play through the entire campaign without unlocking the first perk for demolition which involves killing two enemies with one grenade. Watching me handle grenades in FPSs is a painful experience. I am about as capable of throwing a well placed grenade as I am at, say, having a baby. That said, this is obviously nowhere near as tough as the grenade achievement in Matt Hazard.

Anyway, so once you’ve completed the game in Uber mode, you will need to complete off the remaining perks and collectibles if you didn’t get them in the first play through and this is very simply done on the easy difficulty level. You can also reload checkpoints to stack kills for the perks which removes the grindy element to anything you have to do which is a major plus point.

There are two missable achievements for making a moral choice but this happens at the beginning of the game so it’s not a multiple playthrough issue. Although that said the multiple choice actually will produce a slightly different gameplay experience, It would only have made a slight difference to the story though which is probably why there isn’t a multiple playthrough achievement requirement.

The last achievement I earned was for solving the fourth enigma code. To solve the enigma codes you need to get a certain set of collectibles and then solve the code in the extras menu. They are basic mathematic problems which you can solve by using the internet... or working it out for yourself.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I thoroughly enjoyed playing New Order despite B.J.’s constant monotone and lack of character. Had that not been an issue for me, it would have turned a very good game into a great one. The next instalment is out now and I will definitely be playing it on this evidence.

Rayman Legends (Xbox ONE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

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

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

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

Multiplayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Downloadable Content – N/A

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

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.

Funk of Titans (Xbox ONE)

The Xbox Marketplace has become something of a drain on my wallet lately. There always seems to be about one-hundred 75% off offers going on every month at the moment. That, coupled with the fact that there are two free games per month means that the backlog is building quicker than I can clear it and with some sizeable gaming projects coming up (not to mention ones already under way) it looks like it will only get bigger.

Thankfully Funk of Titans, available at 75% off, provided a break from some of the larger projects and allowed me to rack up a quick 100%.

The premise of the game is basically a bizarre take on Greek mythology. You play as Apollo – a black guy with an Afro who is all about the Funk. Sadly other music types have invaded the realms of the Gods and you must make your way to the disco to show the Titans the true music power and that funk isn’t dead. That’s all well and good... but what type of game is Funk of Titans?

You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a music rhythm game and it is anything but. The genre description merely says Platformer which I suppose is true. As Apollo you have you have traverse through several 2D sidescrolling levels. You automatically move in the direction you are facing and have two abilities; jump and hit. As you jump and hit your way through levels you have to collect gold discs, which represent the Godly funk music, and the occasional Pegasus idol that allows you to play a bonus level riding some kind of Pegasus Hoover thing.

Honestly, it is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever played. And I’ve played Deadly Premonition. Apollo is joined by his father Zeus who is the spitting image of the Matrix’s Morpheus; Hercules who is basically Apollo’s biggest fan; and Athena who is a carbon copy of Aretha Franklin.

When you are not running through levels or talking to your entourage, you must fight grunts in the arena which is essentially the half way point or each of the three worlds. These fights consist of a 60 second quick time event which is nearly impossible to lose. At the end of each level, you have a dance off in the disco against the Titans representing Pop, Rap and Rock and once you basically dance off with them and banish the inferior music, the game is over and you have saved the heavenly realm. Oh year... Spoilers.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 21 Achievements

As stated above it is a really quick game to get through and could probably be done in less than five hours. You have to clear all the worlds completing all levels without dying and collecting all gold discs. You also have to collect the Pegasus idol from each level and this is only possible in some levels if you have purchased certain weapons from the shop. There are three weapons you need to get all the idols but once you have got them, the whole game is plain sailing.

There are two achievements that require a bit of after-game play. As well as completing the levels, Zeus/Morpheus will give you challenges to complete along the way. Chances are you will need to play a few more levels after fully clearing the game to get these and if I’m being really critical, this is a weakness but only because I don’t like having to continue playing when there is nothing new to do.

Also one of the challenges involves having to go quite far riding the Pegasus Hoover and this is really, really annoying because you will ride the Pegasus and beat this distance marker about five times before the challenge comes up and it doesn’t stack. These are my only complaints in what is a really simple game though.

Downloadable Content – N/A

While Funk of Titans is one of the weirdest games I’ve played, it’s certainly not the worst and provided a good few hours of fun. Once you’ve completed it though it doesn’t really offer any kind of replay value and although I didn’t mention this earlier, the music is sinfully infuriating!

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China (Xbox ONE)

Due to the fast moving nature of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I wasn’t really that surprised to see another title on the marketplace shortly after the release of Unity and Rogue, however I was surprised it was this close and also surprised at the different nature of gameplay.

Chronicles China is a 2D side-scrolling assassin adventure that follows the story of Shao Jun, the last of the Chinese order of assassins who was trained by none other than the Italian master Ezio Auditore da Firenze. After the destruction of her order at the hands of a Templar Faction known as the Tigers, she goes on a revenge mission, side-scrolling her way through China, killing all Templars that come across her path. Or not, depending on how you play.

The story is encapsulated by cut scenes featuring still images and text summaries before each mission which are totally optional.

The music and graphics are really good and it does feel like Ubisoft put a lot of effort into getting the fine details right and this is also reflected in the gameplay. I came across next to no glitches during my time playing the game and all of the fuck-ups were down to my own ineptitude at playing.

The aim of the game is to get through a variety of different areas getting past guards to assassinate your target. There are three ways you can go about doing this. The easiest way (in my opinion) is to assassinate your way to the target. Killing people without being seen means that you get around the strangely difficult combat and dead people cannot see you. Another way would be to hack and slash your way through the guards but not only does this mean you will die a lot but it also scores the lowest in terms of getting to your goal.

Despite the two ways being the most fun, they are not the way the game wants you to play. The highest scoring way of playing the game involves getting past all the guards without being seen and not killing anyone. You are given four tools to use as distraction tactics to achieve this.

Other than sneaking past guards and killing people, there are a few levels that require you to run through them as fast as possible and you are scored on your time. Thankfully, these levels allow you to kill people without incurring any penalties.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

A good game it may be but is it completable? Well, yes otherwise there wouldn’t be a review. The nature of the game means that there is a set way of getting through it so practice makes perfect in this regard.

There are several cumulative achievements which make it a requirement to play the game in its three different ways. There is an achievement for assassinations and slide assassinations. You have to get past 30 patrols without being seen and without killing anybody and you have to escape alerts after being seen 30 times. The most frustrating of these ones involves getting crossbow guards to shoot each other by using evade to move out of the way when they shoot. You have to do this 50 times. Luckily there is an area in sequence 8 where you can spam this out in about half an hour.

There are two collectible achievements; one for collecting all the animus shards (standard) and another for collecting all chests. There are also three level specific ones for clearing sequence 5 in under 5 minutes, completing the optional objective in sequence 9 and clearing sequence 11 without being seen. This last one is tricky but factors in to the last achievements I will mention.

As I mentioned above, if you go through each level without being seen or killing anyone, and completing all optional objectives, you will get the highest score possible. Of course, there is an achievement for doing every level like this. Despite the fact that video guides exist, this still requires a lot of patience and you can always find better ways of doing some sections.

After completing the game, there is the option, and two achievements, for playing the game through on New Game Plus Mode, however after you do the achievement for getting through the game without being seen, New Game Plus doesn’t offer any additional challenge and it is actually a breeze. You only have to make sure that you get 100 helix kills with the ability only available in New Game Plus and the 100% shouldn’t be too far away.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall it is a very well executed game. It doesn’t have a lot of diversity in controls but this is a good thing in my opinion. Chronicles China has a set game plan and it executes it very well.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

I bought this one a long time ago and really wanted to play it. Rockstar have a habit of creating games I like and I really wanted to dive in but for some reason, I kept putting it off like some kind of massive project that I didn’t want to start.

This was stupid because the game isn’t actually that long and, it terms of quality deliverance, it’s not actually that good either.

You play as Jimmy whatshisface, the new kid at a boarding school after apparently being expelled from every other school he has attended. He immediately makes sort of friends with that guy Gary who you can identify as a twat from the get go. You also meet Russell, the local meathead who is only capable of saying his own name.

The basic story follows Jimmy who, instead of being a bully as per the game title, actually makes friends with all the social groups and kisses all the girls (if you chose to play for the achievements that is.)

As well as following the main storyline, you have to attend classes much like any school. These are basically mini-games that involve you having to do some Math, Science, English, etc, related exercise that makes you reflect on how difficult real school is. Once you’ve done both classes, you have very little time to do anything else before curfew, especially as the town is a minute’s bike ride away. A minute translates to an hour in game and this is one of my big criticisms. It doesn’t feel like you have enough time to do anything because like every other 15 year old, as soon as the clock strikes 2am, you immediately pass out.

The visual graphics are what you would expect of a sandbox game at the time, however the music is proper get-on-your-tits annoying. It’s repetitive, irritating, more annoying and lots of other mean words. The trouble is volume is kind of required for a game with dialogue so you are forced to listen to it. You also give a lot of involuntary verbal taunts when you are roaming and these become very tiring after Jimmy has mugged off someone for the 700^th time.

My biggest bug bear in any game is the control system unless of course it works. Bully doesn’t. I don’t know who came up with the idea but the camera is the right stick and the movement is the left stick and the two sticks don’t interact which means manoeuvring Jimmy to go in the direct you want him to while looking somewhere else is nigh on impossible. Thankfully it wasn’t so horrifically shit that I couldn’t get used to it. If the game is unintentionally difficult to play, that’s a major fail.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 38 Achievements

There is nothing tragically hard about the Bully achievements but some of them are ridiculously monotonous. The most monotonous award goes to either of the distance covered achievements. There is one for the bike, the skateboard and for walking. Whichever one you don’t focus on will be left at the end. Mine was the bike and I was required to just ride around for ages until this unlocked. You have to complete 100km on the Bike which is ridiculous considering how small the sandbox is.

You also have to buy all the in game items of clothing. This costs more money that you get from completing all the missions and errands in the game meaning that you have to grind out the same lawn mowing or paper route mini-games until you have enough money.

Grinding pretty much sums up all of the achievements here. The worst one is the one for picking 50 flowers. You need a flower to kiss a girl. You can only carry ten flowers at a time. You have to kiss ten different girls using flowers before you can pick another ten flowers. Rinse and repeating this process is a pain in the ass. The biggest pain in the ass in the game. By far. There is also a little thing that is extra annoying if you don’t know about it. When you complete the art classes, girls won’t take flowers from you because they already like you. This means you can only give flowers to one boy after this which would make the process all the more annoying to complete.

The last achievement I unlocked was for 100% completion because generally speaking, everything else you have to do is a requirement. There are also lots of hidden requirements which make this achievement a real fuck ass to complete. Thankfully it’s not missable and there is enough help around to get everyone through it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I would say that once I got over the controls, I enjoyed Bully for about two days. It was my sheer bloody-mindedness that got me to the 100% completion and I can foresee no reason for me to revisit the game again.