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Archive for the ‘Finished Games’ Category

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I started writing this a few weeks ago, when I finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and then sort of stopped. It took me a while to realise I’d just started trying to write a review rather than keeping to what I thought of it.

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Fallout New Vegas

I still can’t decide whether or not Fallout New Vegas was one of the greatest games I have ever played or a soul destroying experience from start to finish.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops

It’s not been a good year for getting games finished. I’ve  started many more than I’ve got to the end of.

I’ve been playing Call of Duty since the first one came out in 2003 and have always had a bit of a tradition of playing through the single player campaign in one sitting. Calling that a tradition is probably overstating it a little, it’s not the equivalent of eating turkey for Christmas, it’s just playing a game.

I think I mentioned before that Call of Duty is a game I’ve invested a lot of time in, in fact most of my time from 2004 to 2005 in fact. There was a group of us that rented a server and hosted our own maps. It’s strange that I’ve never really found anything approaching the online multiplayer experience of the original Call of Duty.

Consequently I think the Call of Duty series has been going down hill for the last seven years.

The latest iteration is not a bad game, it’s fun in its own way. The story hangs together better than most I’ve played recently. Obviously it is just hamming it up, from one set piece to the next chasing some unidentified Russian. I have a feeling that is the set template for most games these days.

It just doesn’t deserve the hype that has been lumped on it and the fact that it will hoover up the Christmas cash can only be a very unhealthy thing from the point of view of a sustainable game industry.

One odd thing I noticed relates to the media nonsense attached to the recent Medal of Honor release. Liam fox calling for Medal of Honor to be banned was quite amusing because it was based on stunning ignorance. Ignorant of how multiplayer games  work but also ignorant that the UK troops he was so concerned about were not even in the game in the first place. Call of Duty on the other hand actively requires you to shoot UK troops. There is some vague context for it but no media outcry.

I am not suggesting this should be banned. That would be stupid.

The campaign leaves you with the same empty feeling inside you get when you watch a Michael Bay film. It looks very pretty but is ultimately vacuous. In itself there isn’t anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t seem to be very good value for money considering how much has been spent on developing it.

Oh, and whilst talking about value for money it is worth mentioning that the bloke who plays JFK does the worst JFK impression I’ve ever heard.

I have given it a bit of time to see whether or not I like the online element before I bothered to write this.

Unfortunately I’ve been spoilt by the genius that is Battlefield Bad Company 2 multiplayer. Whilst BFBC2 encourages team play and tactics, Call of Duty encourages running around like a nutter. It has some beautifully crafted levels but misses the essential gameplay.

So in summary, I think Call of Duty: Black Ops would probably be the greatest thing in the world if you are 10 (though legally not allowed to play it) but falls just short of being anything special.

I reckon it’s worth about £20.

Theoretically the BFBC2 Vietnam expansion pack is imminent and that will hopefully demonstrate how this should have been done. I realise I’m laying a ridiculous level of expectation on something I know virtually nothing about.

[Edit]I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. Call of Duty: Black Ops is also the first game I have completed in 3D.

3D is apparently the future though I’m not overly sure if I’m convinced yet. The first session I played was about five hours and it is fair to say it gave me a cracking head ache.

The effect itself is very good. It’s also subtle to the point that after a few minutes you begin to stop noticing it. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing. I think, probably good.

The one issue I had with the campaign is that 3D was clearly an after thought. With some cut scenes people had their shadows sort of attached to their limbs producing a very weird effect.

For the multiplayer it is effectively useless. You need more time to aim and compensate for distance. Other people don’t, and consequently shoot you dead.

I think it is something that is almost there but not quite yet. [/Edit]

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Another week and another game. I know, it’s mental.

I’ve never really got on with the Battlefield series. I missed the first one, 1942, I didn’t have a PC that could play it. I loved the idea of combining all the elements of combat on foot, tanks and flying all in one large game, but I didn’t get round  to playing it.

I played a lot of Call of Duty: United Offensive. Actually a lot is an understatement. I played it pretty well constantly for well over a year. It was great but didn’t provide what I believed Battlefield promised in a fully integrated…..er… Battlefield.

I gave Battlefield 2 a go as soon as it came out. The odd thing about the Battlefield series is that it always insisted on throwing you straight into multiplayer. This was fine because it is, at heart, a multiplayer game. The problem I found is that everyone else in the world seems to be really bloody good at it.

One of my principles in playing games is that if I don’t at least achieve a basic level of skill quickly, I give up. Life’s short and there are a lot of games out there.

I gave up on Battlefield 2 even though it looked like they’d done a really good job of it.

I didn’t really pay attention to Battlefield 2142 and to be honest it’s really only looking on Wikipedia just now that even reminded me that it even came out.

Battlefield: Bad Company came out around the time of COD4 and consequently I didn’t pay much attention to that either.

This is all going somewhere.

I hadn’t really been inclined to play Bad Company 2 as I couldn’t see what it could do that Modern Warfare hadn’t. I was massively wrong about that.

The Bad Company series, apparently has added in the single player campaign in order to, I assume, make it viable on a console. I think this makes a big difference, it teaches you how to play the game before throwing you in.

Although the single player is essentially a tutorial it weighs in at about the same length of Modern Warfare 2 but is much more thought through. The levels are constructed well. There is a story that vaguely makes sense. There are characters that elicit some sort sympathy. You can even blow up most of the buildings.

What isn’t to like?

I loved everything about the single player campaign and could happily play it again.

This is the point where I would usually say “I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet”; having realised this I thought I might actually play it for a bit and see if it is any good.

It’s very good. Also, unusually, for a game that has been out for a while now, there are a good number of people playing and it isn’t impossible to survive for longer than a few seconds.

I’ve found it very easy to get into and a multiplayer experience which I’ve missed recently.

I don’t think it is much of an exaggeration to say this is the game that modern warfare thought it was going to be.

Go and buy it now.

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Red Dead Redemption

It took four months but I finally got round to finishing another game. It hasn’t taken four months, no, it’s been sunny, I’ve been outside.

Part of the reason for losing interest was the death of my PS3. A motherboard failure meant I lost every game save I’ve ever had and lost all progress with things like Final Fantasy and God of War. This is supposed to be fun so I’m not really motivated to go back and start things again. I probably will, but not at the moment. It did give me an excuse to go and get a new thin PS3. If you’re interested here’s my review. It’s the same as the old one but thinner. There really isn’t much more to say about it.

After a bit of lull in completing things it was good to throw myself into something quite as large as Red Dead Redemption. Although it was always billed as a massive 2010 release it wasn’t something I had my eye on until the last minute. I’ve loved every GTA but something about games set in the “Wild West” doesn’t really interest me.

Having said that, someone did lend me Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood last year. It was very playable and created an inevitable basis for comparison. Red Dead Redemption is much much better. A fantastic open world with some breath taking scenery.

Some elements like riding a horse for miles is tedious but at least they’ve built in a good work around with many different ways to fast travel. I did notice that many reviews mentioned that the diversity of missions is greatly improved from GTA. It isn’t. Just about every mission is based on riding into town and killing everyone. Not really a bad thing.

The story is fairly interesting. It doesn’t pretend to be literature and is compelling in its own way. The developers have tried to mess with the narrative by creating a really final part of the game where you basically do chores. It’s an unusual step and to be honest fairly boring.

I think this will stand out as being technically great but slightly missing something that GTA had.

The multiplayer element does look interesting but I’m not sure how much time I’ll put into it.

So, in summary, it’s fun. You can execute bears.

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Heavy Rain

Bloody hell. That was good.

Which probably sums up in five words why I would never get a job reviewing games.

The idea of Heavy Rain seemed strangely familiar when people started whispering about it. The idea that you’re  basically watching a film that invites you to interact with it by pressing the right button was pretty well the concept of  Dragon’s Lair. Clearly Dragon’s Lair was far from watching a film, more of a cartoon.

Just like Heavy Rain, Dragon’s Lair was talked about in hushed tones back in 1983. I remember seeing it on….. I can’t remember, the telly. It looked beyond anything I could imagine. A proper cartoon that you could actually take part in.

I grew up in Eastbourne which, being by the sea, had quite a few arcades. That meant there was a better than average chance I’d get to play Dragon’s Lair. The odd thing was that when it did turn up, it arrived upstairs in The Enterprise Centre (actually I’m not sure that link is right or it’s even the same place. It looks posher than it did 20 years ago and I thought it was named after a fish). There’d never been an arcade game in there before. They’d definitely never been one that was going to change the world.

I remember hearing a rumour at school that there was one in Eastbourne. I remember going down to have a look at the weekend and it turned out to be true. That’s about as good as it got. Dragon’s Lair was a truly dreadful game. You just smashed a random button for, seemingly, no reason and hoped you didn’t die. Invariably you did die.

So 27 years later I’d assumed that technology was unlikely to have improved much beyond Dragon’s Lair.

As it turn out it has.

Heavy Rain is really good.

Things seem to be looking up in terms of story as well. At last a story that I wanted to take part in and it made sense.

The game itself is far from perfect. Mainly because some of the stuff you take for granted as being cut from a film is a staple  in video games. In a game when you walk from one room to another you bloody well make sure you walk from one room to another. In a film the transition is cut to make sure you don’t lose the pace of the film. I have no idea how you resolve that conflict and make people feel that they’re still in control but I did feel it quite often while playing.

I suppose that really comes down to what the hell this is. It clearly is a game but it’s also straying into the area of more passive entertainment.

I had thought a game that you essentially just influence every now and then would be  a bit of an objective experience. That ‘s just wrong. Some of the action sequences suck you in purely because you don’t know when you’ll get to influence them, whilst simultaneously trying to take in what you’re seeing, digest it and getting ready to press triangle really fast.

It’s interesting that after mentioning moral choices in Mass Effect, they form the basis for how Heavy Rain works. There are decisions in there that I almost agonised over.  They clearly influence how the story develops as having seen adverts on the Telly, everything they’ve shown me is different to my first play through.

If you have spare cash then I heartily recommend Heavy Rain. It’s a game that you won’t regret playing but as soon as you finish it you’ll think “the sequel will be amazing”.

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Aliens vs Predator

When it comes to writing anything that involves Aliens and Predators there is a very long and established custom. It is important to stress how cool Predator was and how Aliens is better than Alien because it has Space Marines in it.  It’s then important to look off wistfully into the ether and contemplate how brilliant it would be if Predators, Aliens and Space Marines could all be combined into one masterpiece. I’m probably not going to mention any of that.

We all know it.

Having said that I am probably one of the few people in the world that thought AVP: Aliens vs Predator wasn’t that bad a film and it taught us how important pyramids are.  I even sat through AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem which wasn’t that good. I haven’t got any real recollection of what happened in it.

I suppose that all points towards me being a bit of a fan of the AVP concept.

The one thing I’ve never done is play the Aliens vs Predator game. It was 1999, I had a Playstation, I didn’t play that sort of thing. I remember it being popular but as I didn’t have a PC that was ever going to play it I just let it pass me by.

I was quite excited by the build up to the newest version of Aliens vs Predator. If the first few attempts have worked out alright and the films had sorted out the importance of pyramids then how could this go wrong?

It’s difficult to say it went wrong. It’s just mind numbingly average.

I can see why they split the game into the Marine, Alien and Predator campaign but this, cynically seems like an excuse to just reuse levels three times. Fair enough if they are good levels but these aren’t. They are very much your standard “future complex” building blocks with a bog standard jungle and some ruins thrown in.

The Marine campaign goes on for, what seems like forever, and it plays like a standard FPS except with Aliens. Aliens which don’t seem the hardy bundles of terror I was expecting. In fact they’re really easy to kill and towards the end you’re just wading through piles of them hoping it ends soon.

The Alien and Predator campaigns are a little bit more interesting but there isn’t a vast difference between the two. The one thing they have in common is the control system being a nightmare. This is especially the case with the Alien where walking on the ceiling becomes a disorientating mess. Though both of these campaigns seem to take minutes to complete in comparison to the Marine section.

Unusually for me I decided to get this on the PC. Mostly this was through laziness as I couldn’t be bothered to go to the shops. I pre-ordered through Steam; actually that indicates I knew I wouldn’t be bothered to go to the shops which demonstrates some foresight. It was only £24 which is about ten quid cheaper than on the PS3. I notice that it’s now £18 on Amazon and it only came out on Friday. I think that points out it isn’t in danger of getting a game of the year award.

I do think there is still some justification that FPS’ work better with a mouse and keyboard. This isn’t a game where I would ever be able to prove this one way or the other. I’m left handed so I have to go through a fairly lengthy process of reconfiguring keys for games on the PC. Aliens vs Predator happily lets you change the keys for the Marine campaign but, seemingly, not for the Alien or Predator campaign. It is quite possible that I just couldn’t find the menu but that in itself is pretty bad and is very lazy programming. So I ended up playing it with a controller.

This is my first game I’ve finished in 2010 that  was  made in 2010.  I hope this isn’t indicative of the quality to expect.

More annoyingly I’ve still got a pile of other better games that I’m still working through. I need to prioritise better.

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Mass Effect

I’ve had a strange relationship with Mass Effect. It was always the game on the Xbox that would possibly sway me away from Sony. This was even before I bought a PS3. Actually this was even before I’d played Mass Effect. I think I just liked the idea of an RPG set in space. I still look back on the Knights of the Old Republic fondly. By far the best game based on Star Wars and one I never got round to finishing. Trying to play it on a PC that clearly wasn’t up to the job was a bad idea.

I was envious of Xbox owners when Mass Effect came out. I was even more envious when they kept banging on about how good it was. Then it was all over the news because it was apparently full of cosmic rape. I was dubious, but you wouldn’t go on telly making that sort of claim unless you’d played it all the way through and were pretty sure of your facts.

It took almost a year for it to come out on the PC and I bought it the day it was released. I did the first two or three missions and got bored (probably three or for hours work). That was back in 2008.

When Mass Effect 2 was announced I got my pre-order in straight away. Clearly the fact that I’d lost interest in the first one hadn’t really sunk in.

Two or three weeks ago I was reading a preview of Mass Effect 2 and I suddenly realised that this was the second part of a trilogy. Not only that but the decisions you make in the first one influence how the second one pans out. I assume the programmers would not have been able to have anticipated my decision to put the first one in the loft.

Worried that I was going to miss out on something I decided to go back and finish off Mass Effect. This involved going up a ladder and finding it. Not an insignificant commitment. I also had to find my save game off a backup hard drive and tease it back into the reinstalled game. Not actually difficult or time consuming but it sounds quite impressive.

I ended up being back in a game I had little or no recollection of. Apparently my last save was July 2008.

You’ll be relieved to hear it all worked out alright. It turned out to be a really really good game.

I had intended to fly through the story as quickly as possible and get on to the sequel. In the end I did get through pretty well every side quest and visited every planet I could. It’s also the first game I’ve played in a while where I can truthfully say I did understand what was going on.

The plot was well thought out and fairly robust. Also lots of little stories that lend themselves very well to making good characters.

It’s strange going back to a game that I would  consider old. Especially one that is held up as defining elements of game play we find quite common these days. Moral choices are all over games these days but, and I might be wrong, Mass Effect was the first to integrate this into the way the story develops. inFamous did quite a good job of this but as it was largely based on jumping around firing electricity out of your hands it didn’t have a stable basis in narrative. Mass Effect does ask  you to make some interesting decisions that do influence the game. Quite often the temptation with these sort of games is to play simplistically as good or evil. The decisions here aren’t that simplistic and found me quite often hovering for a while over two seemingly similar options.

There are a stupid amount of side quests to do but they involve travelling to planets that all look exactly the same and have buildings with identical layouts. Whoever got the contract as the principle property developer in this galaxy did very well for themselves.

Mass Effect also relies way too much on driving a large Big Trak about. One of the weirdest game based driving experiences I’ve had. The thing bounces around in a completely unconvincing way but it is strangely compelling.

So I got it finished and ended up putting much more time than I thought I would into it. I’m pretty sure that everyone in the world that was ever going to play this probably already has so I doubt I’ll influence anyone to give it a go.

I did notice there was no cosmic rape in it.

But i would say old games FTW.

I’m going to try something made in 2010 next.

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Assassin’s Creed 2

The second game of the year finished and we’re just flirting with the end of January. This year has some potential.

Once again, if you’re thinking of buying this then go and read a review by proper reviews. These are just my rambling post finishing thoughts.

If, back in 1982, when I first started playing games, you told me “One day there will come a game that features a fully functioning representation of 15th Century Venice”; I think my first reaction would have been:-

“Why the hell would I want that?”

Back in 1982 I was much more interested in space ships. I’m still very interested in space ships.

It is amazing to see how far things have come in only a few years. It certainly only seems a short time since Grand Theft Auto gave us  a fully realised world to explore. I suppose 9 years is quite along time but it doesn’t seem it.

To see that somebody  has taken this principle and applied it to, what seems an accurate snapshot of history, is a sign of some maturity. To be honest my knowledge of Venice in the 15th Century is negligible/non existent so I have no idea how accurate it is.  It did try and give me a lot of historical information but I didn’t really want learning to get in the way of the killing.

More important than the historical context is the game itself. Assassin’s Creed implements a control system that really gives a feeling of freedom. It’s great fun leaping across roof tops and swooping down from the skies to execute people. I did have some niggling issues to start with where I kept bouncing off walls but it settles down.

Interestingly I’d say Assassin’s Creed is by far the easiest game I’ve ever played. There is little reason to ever die in it and  everything about it holds your hand all the way through. Usually this would grate with me but I still really enjoyed it.

Once again it is another game taken to the end and I’m not completely sure what it was all about. Either there are some serious issues about how much effort people are putting into game narrative or I’ve developed some sort of attention disorder. I wouldn’t discount the latter.

There is always going to have be some sort of moral contortion to get an assassin into a sympathetic protagonist role. I suppose  the execution of your family  might, in some vague way, justify a  decade long roller coaster ride of murder. My approach to game play seemed to involve killing most people I met, particularly street musicians. I like to throw myself into the role.

So, in summary. Really good. Not quite as good as Uncharted 2 but it’s up there.

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Ratchet & Clack: A Crack in Time

Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to record all the games I complete on here so I have some record of the massive amount of time I waste each year in the pursuit of……

What do I actually get out of it? Largely nothing but a sore wrist.

The first thing I managed to finish has been Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time.

I don’t really want to review it. There are much better qualified people than me that can do that sort of thing. Some of them are even paid to do it as some sort of job.

I have noticed when I look back on games I do tend to build a bit of a mythology in my mind about how good they were. This has the disastrous consequence that I play a bad game again.

So what did I think of Ratchet & Clank?

It was quite good.

It’s a shame as I’d been really looking forward to it. Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction was one of the first “proper” games I played on the PS3.

The Pixar quality of the animation was amazing. The characters were genuinely funny and the weapons were ridiculous.

The problem with a Crack in Time is that it just seems like largely the same game. It looks amazing and is easy to play but not really fulfilling.

I can’t really even remember the story now. Something about a clock and a man with a green head.

The one advance in the game was the time related puzzles where you have to make copies of your character to perform different tasks. I realise that makes very little sense when it’s written down like that.

That bit was good.

Well there you go.

Next will be Assassin’s Creed 2 if I finish it.

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