Game reviews

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Game reviews

Assassin’s Creed a worthy adventure…

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Title Assassin’s Creed
Developer Ubisoft
Type Third person Sneaker
Platform(s) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3: Windows sometime in 2008
Kelly Score ™ 92 / 100

I believe it is appropriate to note that I am not a historian before I say anything about Assassin’s Creed. Furthermore, I am not a religious person- I’m an agnostic. These two things together mean that my opinions regarding the religious or historical content of the game Assassin’s Creed should be taken with a grain of salt.

Assassin’s Creed is an open-ended third person sneaker with a strong role playing element. It is single player only, with no multiplayer or online elements other than XBox Live achievements. The main character- the guy you play- is oddly sort of a secondary character within the game itself. You are Desmond Miles, a young guy who finds himself kidnapped and held within a lab at a shadowy pharmaceutical company’s offices. The majority of the game is played through Desmond’s “genetic memories” using a machine called the Animus. You spend your time playing through your recovered memories of an ancestor named Altair: an assassin, Hashshashin, or Fedayeen during the period of the Third Crusade.

The plot involves completing a series of assassinations, partly to restore Altair’s status within his guild, and more importantly to disrupt the plans of the invading Templars. A secondary plot involves discovering why Desmond has been kidnapped and forced to live through his ancestral memories. Something is going on in modern times, something sinister and based on ancient rivalries and power struggles. The story is presented through a series of slightly interactive cut scenes (you can change your point of view and move slightly) with first rate voice acting.

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Game reviews

Crysis: a First Person Shooter as it should be done

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Title Crysis
Developer Crytek
Type First Person Shooter
Platform(s) Windows XP/Vista
Kelly Score ™ 95

I bought Halo 3 on my XBox 360 shortly after it came out. I didn’t expect much from it- and that’s what I got. The Halo franchise is good, but has never really “wow”ed me.

At its root, I’d say the problem is partly a matter of the story as presented in the game coming across as “weak”, and partly the visual perspective the game plays from. I understand the back story behind the games is very detailed and rich…but the game doesn’t convey that well to me. As for the perspective: they seem to consistently do something with Halo that combines to irritate me (“an endless stream of passages, all alike…”) and give me motion sickness. First person plus acres of similar looking views equals nausea for me. Add these considerations to the fact that I made a mistake and played 9/10ths of the game on “easy” before discovering that you have to play on “normal” to get any achievements…the thought of playing the game through again made me put the DVD away.

Along comes Crysis. This game is as “different” as Far Cry was a few years ago, and that’s not too surprising I guess as both games were developed by Crytek. Note that Far Cry 2 was *not* developed by Crytek, so who knows what that will be like.

Moving back to the topic…Crysis has the bog-standard first person shooter plot. A super-soldier is part of a squad tasked with investigating some strange happenings on an island near China. The cause turns out to be some sort of alien invasion- much gunfire ensues. What makes Crysis “better” than the standard fare has more to do with how the story is presented, how the player is allowed to interact with the world, and how natural the whole process feels.

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Game reviews

BioShock

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Title BioShock
Developer 2K Boston / 2K Australia
Type First Person Action RPG
Platform(s) XBox 360, Windows
Kelly Score ™ 95 / 100

It was a great relief on a lot of levels to play BioShock after my rant about checkpoint saves the other day. In addition to being an XBox 360 game (also available on the PC) with unlimited saves, it is probably one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long while.

BioShock has it all: a fantastic and original story, brilliantly realized game mechanics, and stunning use of visuals and audio. The story is set during the post WWII era: your passenger plane plane crashes and you, the only apparent survivor, discover the entrance to a secret oasis…or what might have once been one. Rapture, an entire underwater city founded by a wealthy man with a passing resemblance to Howard Hughes, was founded on principles of moral and scientific freedom. Unfortunately, it seems as if something has gone terribly wrong…

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Game reviews

Playing Fable…

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Title Fable
Developer Lionhead
Type Role playing game
Platform(s) XBox, XBox 360 (emulation mode)
Kelly Score ™ 90 / 100

Lionhead games released a game called “Fable” (note: site uses Flash plugin) a few years ago. I dismissed it because a few folks who liked “goofy/cartoonish” style games thought it was a great thing.

I picked up a discounted XBox version of Fable over the weekend. Not XBox 360, but XBox- it runs under emulation mode in my XBox 360, though. This means that the graphics aren’t great. But after playing the game for (according to it’s in-game stats) a bit over 7 hours, I can say I truly regret not trying it sooner.

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Game reviews

My new life in Oblivion…

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I have spent every spare waking hour of the day lately playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Its an awesome game: if you like deep, open ended single player computer role playing games, then Oblivion is definitely worth a look.

IMAGE: Oblivion package

Oblivion is set in the Empire of Tamriel in the world of Nirn, a world that may be familiar to people who have been playing computer games for a few years as the setting for the Elder Scrolls. The Elder Scrolls series has been around for a while, starting over a decade ago with Elder Scrolls: Arena. The last release in the series before Oblivion was Morrowind in 2002, a role playing game that was lauded for its open ended style, huge size, and depth of backround materials. It also received some knocks for its initial bugs (most of which were fixed in subsequent patches). I personally played Morrowind- it was a very good game, but I found it hard to get engaged- it was, for me, a bit *too* wide open. I couldn’t really find a plotline to hook on to. I played it for weeks, but never finished it, and have no idea to this day what “finishing it” would have looked like. That’s both good and bad- good, because I had weeks of gaming and came no where near completing the game. Bad, because I never really felt like I was “part” of the game’s main plot.

Oblivion seems to have kept all of the good features from Morrowind (open ended, massive game world, incredible depth) and ditched some of the less than positive features (lack of hooks into the main plotline, game ending bugs). Right from the start, Oblivion’s story line is pretty obvious. But you can still veer off into the open country side, read hundreds of books, go off on your own adventuring paths…and, with the help of the quest journal, find your way back to the main plot easily.

WARNING: some spoilers follow
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Game reviews

Doom 3

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I’m playing Doom3 at the moment. Its the most claustrophobic, frightening, heart-rate-increasing game I’ve ever played. I’m far from finished (barely even started), so I’m not yet ready to write a review or form a final opinion. Consider this an “early review”. …

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