Need for Speed has had a great comeback over the last few years, and Most Wanted seems to have topped it. Being a remake of 2005’s excellent Most Wanted, this version is a whole new beast. The streamlined menus, AutoLog, the massive amount of real-world cars, and the huge world to drive in are something to get excited about.
My favorite feature has to be the new navigation menu. Being able to select races, customize your car, and jump to various cards with just the D-pad is great. There’s not even a need for a map. Select the race you want, and it will put the GPS line on your mini-map. Want to drive a different car? 3 D-pad clicks, and you’re there. This just seems nearly revolutionary for the racing genre, as they have been plagued with nasty menus for years. Outside of the menu are excellent racing moments and various types of races to do.
Sprints, circuits, fastest speed, and losing the cops the fastest are just a few types of races in Most Wanted. The whole goal is to find all the jump areas where cars are hidden throughout the entire world. Win first in each race for each car, and you will win part upgrades to make your car faster and better to drive. Some parts are better for certain areas, like offroad, but will slow you down on the asphalt. There are also various parts to help the cops, like re-inflating tires if you hit a spike strip or a stronger chassis for ramming through roadblocks. Like previous Need for Speed games (and any criterion racer), you can take down vehicles for more points to work your way to the number one most wanted.
A fun feature here (and it threw me for a loop) was having to take down a most wanted car to win their car. Sure, you can beat them in a race, but what about taking them down? It adds a greater challenge, but if you miss them, you can always summon the car back via the navigation menu. It’s not hard to work your way up to the top if you try to get first in every race. Even after you beat the most wanted vehicle, you can earn parts and find every hidden vehicle in the city.
If that’s not enough, try the AutoLog recommended objectives or try to find and hit every billboard in the game. There’s a lot to do in this game, and even though it can feel repetitive after a while, there’s just a great sense of accomplishment from getting first in every race. Let’s talk about graphics. Most Wanted is one of the best-looking games on the Vita. The sense of speed is great, and the controls are amazing. It doesn’t look like the game took much of a hit from being downgraded graphically, but it was hand-tailored to the system. The game even sounds great, and I spent hours just racing around, completing races without ever getting bored. Is there anything bad about Most Wanted? Mainly how repetitive the races can get overall, but the variety of cars keeps this played down a bit. Crashing every 5 seconds can get annoying, but that’s expected. Most Wanted is a must-have racer for any system you can own it on.
Final Fantasy X was a game in the series that really shifted things around. It broke some common JRPG rules and was a bit all over the place. This was the first JRPG I had ever beaten as a kid, and it was the first Final Fantasy I ever finished. I have a lot of fond memories of this game, and the HD Remaster brought a lot of those back.
The core game hasn’t really been touched, but US gamers will finally get a taste of the tougher international version, which adds an expert sphere grid and Dark Aeons, which are the toughest enemies in the game (some have millions of HP). Outside of the game, the game is still the same, with great characters that are memorable and beautiful locales. The story is a bit confusing at first, but very original, if not very deep. You play as Tidus, who is a young man sent forward in time hundreds of years into the future. His original home is now a sacred ruin, and a giant being called Sin is destroying humanity. Every 10 years, this sin comes back, and the calm ends. Another summoner must go on a pilgrimage to gather all the Aeons and take down Sin for another 10-year Calm. Your goal is to put a stop to this cycle. You gather your crew along the way to level up and put an end to all this nonsense.
Before you jump into this game, you must have a mindset from when the PS2 first launched. This game was fantastic back in the day and still holds up well. Most JRPG gamers will be thrown off by the Sphere Grid. There is no traditional leveling up where you gain levels. Instead, you acquire AP and get sphere points, which allow you to freely upgrade various attributes and skills for each character. The expert sphere grid allows you to use keys to go off your path and learn other abilities from other characters. This is a lot of fun and gives you total freedom over your character.
Outside of the sphere grid is the obvious combat. Yes, there are random battles, and some areas are so bad that you hit one every 2–3 seconds—literally. A maximum of three characters can battle at once with the freedom to swap out. It’s the usual JRPG turn-based battle system, but there are overdrives that are crucial to winning boss fights. Characters learn new drives as they battle. Aeons are also essential, but only Yuna can send them in. They are large, heavy hitters that will take away massive damage and can also be overdriven, which is probably the #1 technique for winning tougher boss fights. Like any other JRPG, learning enemies’ weaknesses and battling with magic is a must. Some bosses nearly turn into puzzles where you must cast Reflect on them so their healing spell bounces off of them onto you. Some bosses will cast status ailments that can cripple your entire party. If you don’t grind a bit and stay ahead of the game, you will struggle.
Outside of battle, there are the Cloister of Trials, which are a huge pain and aren’t fun at all. These are puzzles in which you place various spheres to unlock doors. Another huge pain is the Blitzball mini-game. This isn’t fun at all and requires math to actually play. It’s stiff, shallow, and just plain boring. I hated it as a kid, and I hate it even now that I know math better. It’s all nearly luck-based and a roll of the dice. You have almost no control over characters.
FFX is also full of pre-final boss content, but there are a lot of requirements to get this stuff. Ultimate weapons are a must-have to do more than the 9,999 HP damage limit. However, they require you to be in certain areas, acquire certain other items, or even get through harder areas that require getting through other areas just to get to that area. Sounds confusing? It is. I spent a good 15 hours just trying to figure all this out and could get only one optional Aeon (Yojimbo). Anima is another optional Aeon but requires getting through a tough boss with the three weakest characters (Tidus, Rikku, and Wakka) and then getting all the destruction spheres in every trial. It’s a huge pain, requires a lot of running around and backtracking, and can make you frustrated. You can also monster hunt, but this requires training a Chocobo (which is tough as nails to get through), and then capturing the toughest monsters in the game easily requires ultimate weapons, which require more backtracking. It’s a frustrating mess but also somehow extremely satisfying once you do it.
With the main game out of the way, let’s talk about visuals. The HD upgrade isn’t exactly what you think. Most of the game has been remodeled, and all the main characters are completely redone; however, many monsters and NPCs just had a few passes of texture filtering, and that’s it. It really looks ugly in spots, but it’s not so bad if you’ve played the game before. I just wish the Japanese voice track was on here since the English voice acting is so terrible and embarrassing to listen to.
Note: Shame on you, James Arnold Taylor, for your terrible voice acting in Tidus. You’ve done better! Like Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank, Gabriel Logan from the PSP Syphon Filters, and even Marty McFly from the Back to the Future adventure games!
The long-awaited Infinite expansion set in Rapture is out and about. I honestly didn’t know what to really expect from this other than more questions and fan service from Rapture. The story started out very similarly to BioShock 1, where you are riding down the bathysphere into Rapture. It brought back a lot of great memories, and I was happy to see the beautiful Elizabeth throughout the whole chapter. What I wasn’t happy about was the length, the gameplay, and the lack of anything memorable.
You feel more like one level from a full game. The one level that is really just action is more than the story. It doesn’t pick up at all until the last 2 minutes of the ending, which is both shocking and expected and gives us more questions than answers. The same infinite guns are back, but with only one new power, and that is Old Man Winter. It is not much different from the freeze power in BioShock 1. It can freeze running water to make a bridge, and that’s about it. I ran around closing vents to draw Sally out (the girl who Booker must get back) and not much else. The ammo is extremely scarce, so you will be scrounging for it more than at any other moment in previous BioShock games. You also don’t get the full arsenal in Infinite, and nothing much else has changed gameplay-wise.
The setting is fantastic, however. The underwater city is memorable, and it’s great to be back before it went to crap from the previous games. We are seeing the calm before the storm here. The Little Sister program is starting, and so are the new Plasmids. It’s very interesting to see how things are happening when everything is prosperous and fun in the underwater utopia. Another great addition is the return of Sander Cohen, who is probably the most insane person in Rapture. This section is memorable but dies out quickly with more boring shooting and getting lost in hallways.
Outside of the interesting ending, there’s not much else. This was a real disappointment because of how long everyone waited. The gamer who just played Infinite and moved on shouldn’t even bother. This DLC is mainly for hardcore fans who actually want the ending in Episode Three rather than the tidbits from each episode.
Thief has been one of those franchises that has been on the back burner of gamers’ minds for over a decade. Like Deus Ex, Duke Nukem, and various other decade-long franchises, Thief went through its own development hell. The end product isn’t exactly something that’s worth waiting ten years for, but it’s a fun game with fantastic visuals and some great stealth gameplay.
I will come right out and say this: the story is almost complete garbage. It’s a discombobulated mess of disjointed segments strewn together in eight chapters of gameplay. You play as a master thief, Garret, who is trying to get his friend Erin back, whom he let down during a big heist. You need to get a hold of some powerful people to answer some questions and find a mysterious stone. There is some anarchy and revolution thrown in, as well as some sort of plague called The Gloom. I honestly don’t know why any of this is happening or why Erin has a power called the Primal. It’s a huge mess, and nothing is ever explained. That’s too bad for a game, as cinematic as it is, that can’t tell a decent story. At least the gameplay is fun, and that’s why most people are here.
The stealth gameplay consists of sneaking and hiding in the shadows, like in previous Thief games. Garret isn’t really about killing enemies, so you just knock them out with your famous Blackjack. You can kill enemies by using arrows, but it takes away from your level score. Like in past Thief games, arrows are your whole arsenal. Water arrows can put out fires, giving off light; rope arrows can help you swing to a new area to get around guards; poppy arrows can stun enemies; and blast arrows can take out a group of people or cause a distraction. Your arrows are a playground for anything you want them to be to your heart’s content.
Like in previous Thief games, you can take multiple paths to get around guards completely undetected or by taking them out one at a time. Some of the paths are hard to find, and some just lead to the treasure. Picking locks and finding loot to gain gold are very important if you want to stay stocked up on arrows. Sometimes it’s not worth getting caught just for a piece that’s worth 10 gold. Sometimes animals are guarding a piece, or there are too many guards or lights to get around. Thankfully, vertical play is quick thanks to your claw, which lets you climb taller areas.
An odd addition to the series is weird creepy horror segments straight out of Amnesia. You can’t kill these things; you can only sneak around them. Sure, they were creepy, but why? It felt out of place. Also out of place are the awkward boss “fights” that just feel loose and sloppy—maybe even shoehorned in. The flow of the game is also off quite a bit, with side missions taking you to weird areas of town and not really being worth anything. I honestly felt the whole world was limited to just side missions when it could have been a whole larger open world.
Outside of all that, there’s not much else to the game. It doesn’t feel like the ultimate revolutionary stealth game like the first two games felt. The AI is dumb most of the time, and the game can be beaten in less than 8 hours, even if you try to gather all the loot. With side missions, you may extend to 20 hours, but just barely. The graphics are just fantastic, with advanced DirectX 11 effects and a great art style that feels like Thief; there aren’t even any memorable characters in the game—Garret included. What we have is a fun weekend rental and nothing more.
To the Moon is a 2D, 16-bit adventure game that follows two scientists who are fulfilling a dying man’s last wish. They use a strange computer to go into his memories to find the link that will allow him to go to the moon. To the Moon has a heartwarming story with a beautiful, sweeping musical score, but lacks any type of real gameplay.
The game is broken up into three acts, and during the first two, you are walking around John’s memories and have to find five memory links to unlock the shield surrounding time-jumping mementos. As you go further into John’s past, you find out why he doesn’t know why he wants to go to the moon. There is some memory block, and you have to find out what it is and remove it. Finding these memory links only takes a few seconds because you just click on the few items in the small area. Once you remove the shield, you play a little puzzle game, then move on to the next memory. This all just seems like an excuse to add gameplay to an otherwise visual-only adventure.
Through Act 2, you get to interact with two different mini-games, which are Whac-a-Mole and a zombie shooting section, and each is uninspired and pretty lame. The visuals are, like I said, 16-bit and pretty average. There’s nothing special here, visual-wise, and don’t even expect voice acting. The second-best thing about the story is the sweeping musical score. This score is beautiful and one of the best ones I have ever heard. I really wish that this game could have been more, but I understand most indie developers have small budgets.
Overall, To the Moon has a story that will tug at your heartstrings, as well as the music, but the gameplay feels like an excuse to extend the 1-hour story to barely four hours. If the gameplay was a little more engaging, I wouldn’t complain about it so much, but as it is, stay for the story and you will be entertained.
The Halo series is probably one of the most repetitive and unchanging series I have ever played. The first three were pretty good, and Reach and ODST made me fall asleep. With Bungie out of the picture and 343 Industries in the captain’s chair, I figured Halo may have some great new changes. I was half right. The single-player campaign is pretty fun and is as tough as nails. The new weapons are awesome to shoot, and there are new enemies for once that are different. The story is convoluted and confusing, but hardcore fans may be able to follow it okay.
The mechanics are pretty much the same as in previous Halo games. There are no iron sights; the game is fast-paced with high jumping and fast sprinting. There’s still no cover system, which is a shame, and the game is damn hard. I felt the story was a bit random, and the environments felt the same way. One minute I’m shooting the same tired Covenant, then these machines type aliens, then mutated Covenant, then regular Covenant. There were some vehicle sections, and I was riding a giant vehicle. The game just felt all over the place, but it was fun, at least.
The story is really confusing and never makes much sense. Something about Cortana being infected and a giant being called the Didact trying to destroy everything. It’s nothing fancy or sophisticated, but you can’t expect much from an FPS. At least the game just feels tighter, a bit heavier, and less floaty than other Halos. I felt the weapons had weight to them, and the sheer variety had me switching them up all the time for different situations. I did find that there were repetitive scenarios throughout the whole game, like jumping into stations to hit a button at the top and running back down to get to the next one. This scenario repeated often throughout the whole game and felt archaic and overly simple.
While the structured campaign felt old and tired, multiplayer is still the best part of Halo. The constantly updated match types make you come back for more all the time. The game feels faster-paced and just more fluid and balanced than any previous Halo game. Customization is deep for your avatar; there are many levels to climb, and the unlocks are sweet and rewarding. After you beat the Halo campaign just once, I doubt you will ever go back because of how forgettable and repetitive it feels. I honestly think at this point, Halo should just continue as a multiplayer-only game and maybe jump on board with PC.
The few little tweaks here and there help the game become more balanced overall. The lack of dual-wielding makes the game feel more raw and “hardcore.” The various adjustments in damage from each weapon and the increased damage for melee attacks are nice. I also love how great the game looks. This is the best-looking Xbox 360 game out, and the voice acting and animations are so lifelike. However, the Xbox 360 doesn’t have the same processing power as the PS3, so you won’t see The Last of Us-quality textures and lighting effects. There are some ugly textures in Halo 4, and they really show sometimes. Surprisingly, there weren’t any slowdowns or glitches that plagued other Halo games.
Overall, Halo 4 is a great final opus for the 360, but it isn’t the revolutionary new Halo like everyone thought. The campaign is repetitive, extremely difficult, and confusing; the story is so-so, but the multiplayer is where the meat of the game is.
Amnesia is probably one of the scariest games ever made. I’m talking about The Dark Descent. It made you fear every sound and corner due to the fact that you couldn’t fight enemies. The atmosphere was so scary and haunting, not to mention the extremely scary monsters. A Machine for Pigs gets picked up by a new developer, The Chinese Room, of Dear Esther fame. While it’s still scary and haunting, it doesn’t make you fear every second like the first game did.
Honestly, the story is confusing and makes no sense. It’s a garbled mess, and all I got out of it was that there was a machine that processed pigs for mass consumption in 1899. You play as a man named Mandus who is trying to find his two boys who went down into the depths of this machine. That’s pretty much all I got out of it. What this machine is doing is creating man-pigs that are trying to “cleanse” the town of people for the coming 20th century. The ending sucked, and the game is overall just really short and anticlimactic.
A lot of features were stripped from The Dark Descent. You no longer use tinderboxes to light areas, and you don’t need oil for your lamp. You just run around with a lantern, flipping switches, and solving extremely basic puzzles. The Dark Descent had you really scratching your head, but A Machine for Pigs doesn’t even try to challenge you. In fact, there aren’t even that many monster encounters. Sure, when you reach them, they are scary and intense, but the first 2/3 of the game is uneventful. As you get to the last few chapters, it’s mostly story and nothing else. The whole feeling of progress from The Dark Descent is absent here, which makes no sense. A Machine for Pigs felt more like a barely interactive story than a game.
Towards the end of the game, it just feels disjointed and unbalanced. You bounce around from level to level, and nothing feels connected. Many times, in the beginning, I wandered around, not knowing where to go or what to do. The game just lacks guidance or real direction and can’t be felt from the very first level.
That doesn’t mean the game is bad. It’s not nearly as good or memorable as The Dark Descent should be. The graphics are really dated, despite the nice art style that is carried over from The Dark Descent. A Machine for Pigs feels like an average indie horror game with a story that can’t be followed. Fans of the original will be highly disappointed, but newcomers should just skip this and play the first game.
Remember Me is a brand new IP from Capcom. I always welcome new IPs because you never know when you’re going to get the next Assassin’s Creed. Once I started to remember me, I instantly fell in love with it. The art style is fantastic, the story is engaging, and the characters are memorable. This will be a game I talk about for years to come—at least the story anyway.
You are Nilin, a memory hunter fighting against M3morize. M3morize is a corporation that invented technology to let you forget any memory you want and gain memories. As you can tell, this leads to civil war because everyone eventually becomes Leapers, who are completely corrupted and bereft of memories. It turns out that there is some sort of new world order to wipe out everyone’s memories and make them all mindless soldiers. That’s the gist of it, and if I say any more, I will give too much away. The story is fascinating and really plays well with the art style and atmosphere.
The problem with new IPs is that the developers concentrate on just one aspect of the game, and the rest gets left behind. This is apparent in Assassin’s Creed 1 after playing AC3. You can see the difference. Remember Me has an amazing story and characters, but the gameplay is just lacking; it just feels useless and unnecessary. The tools you have to play don’t really mean anything in this game, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The first thing is the combat system. While it’s unique, it is very limited and actually holds the player back. Nilin has four different combos she can do over the course of the game. You fill these combos with two different attack buttons called presses. These presses can increase your health, decrease S-Pressen cooldown timers, give you more powerful attacks, and cause a chain reaction. This seems really interesting—gaining health during combat? It’s more frustrating and limited than you think. With just four combo chains, you have to memorize all four of them and also remember what presses are in each one. I had one as a focused cool-down combo, then one for health, and the third was for power. The further in the combo the pressen, the bigger the effect. With just four combos, combat gets really repetitive and super boring; it just never picks up.
Once you unlock S-Pressens, things get a tad bit interesting, but only during boss fights. These are powers that can let you attack really fast, stun everyone, place a bomb, and even turn invisible and get a one-hit-kill on an enemy. You can use two different ones on robot enemies that will attack you. These S-Pressens are key to winning tougher battles later in the game. That’s all there is to combat, and it is so limiting and repetitive. I actually only kept going because of the story.
Another part of the game that is never fully developed are the puzzles. There are only four in the entire game. These allow you to remix people’s memories to make them think something happened in a different way. You watch a cutscene and then rewind it, looking for glitches that can change the scene. You have to set off the right glitches to change the memory. The problem is that there are no multiple outcomes. You just keep retrying until you get it right; there’s no fun in that. If I mess with someone’s memory, let me decide how it goes. I also wish there were more of them. There are also memory puzzles that you interact with in the world. They are usually really easy, and the answer is given to you after just a minute. I hate how these things were so underdeveloped; they are great concepts. There are a couple of move-the-stuff puzzles using your arm’s special powers, but I felt these were useless. You unlock a gun-type thing that can blast enemies and move things. Why do I need to unlock this throughout the game? Honestly, the moving and blasting open doors just felt like pointless filler.
Lastly, the exploration is very linear. The controls respond well, but the best part is just viewing everything. You get taken from the slums to the richest areas of the city. The journey is fascinating and breathtaking. Remember Me feels like a mix of Mirror’s Edge, Steven Spielberg’s A.I., and Blade Runner. I ate it up, and the characters are very memorable. I just wish it had better gameplay to complement it.
After you finish the game, you will be talking about the amazing story for a while. While none of these mechanics are bad, they are just underdeveloped and feel like they need more work. The combat is interesting but very limited and repetitive; the same five enemies repeat often; and the puzzles are underdeveloped. I hope Remember Me comes back because I love Nilin and her journey through this breathtaking world, which just gives us better tools to explore it.
Well, here it is folks. Probably one of the most anticipated games of all time. It’s breaking records everywhere. It has made over $1 billion already, it was the UK’s best-selling game of all time, and the list goes on. Why is such a “real” game-like GTA 5 so popular? Usually sequels and series are dead at their fifth iteration, so what makes GTA 5 so special? Love and care. Rockstar loves their franchise so much, they have put 5 years into GTA 5 to make it what it is, which is nearly perfect. There is so much freaking detail in this game that I could go on forever describing it all. So let’s start with the story.
You play as three characters this time around which is a first for GTA 5. Trevor, Michael, and Franklin are your average Joes trying to get rich quick. The game starts out differently than any other GTA. You aren’t starting out just outside of a car; this time Rockstar got a little cinematic on us. You’re in the middle of a bank heist in a small town. You end up fighting your way out, and the story fast-forwards 10 years. Right from the start, you get introduced to Michael, then Franklin, and Trevor later on. Each character is very well fleshed out, and you end up getting attached to all of them in the game. Of course, the other half of the great characters are people you get your missions from, and this doesn’t change here. While there aren’t as many characters as in past games, they are better designed and original. You end up going through the trials and tribulations of these three men as they get caught up in the mafia, street gangs, the government, and millionaires. Basically, Michael is trying to make amends with his family on the side while Trevor is trying to find out what he really wants—Franklin just wants to get out of the hood.
The largest problem with GTA has finally been addressed: the terrible shooting mechanics. GTA IV tried to fix this, but it felt too sticky and too clunky. GTA 5 is finally more refined and feels like a third-person shooter should. You can snap into cover, aim with precision, and do all that great shooter stuff. You can even change the reticle if you want; honestly, GTA 5 gives you more options on a console than any other game I can remember. While we’re in combat, you can finally customize your guns for the first time in a GTA. Add suppressors, scopes, extended mags, flashlights, new paint, etc. It’s not Call of Duty deep, but it’s a huge step up for GTA. However, the combat is still tough as nails. You will die in a few hits if you aren’t careful, and I restarted many missions a lot because of how hard the game is.
Secondly, the vehicles still control like you’re driving on syrup. You will spin out a lot and easily lose control. At least the cars look updated and are actually knock-offs of real cars. The Banshee looks like the Dodge Viper, and there’s a car in here that’s called the Coil. Figure out what that one’s based on. They look good, and you can customize them as well! Yes! It’s a lot deeper than you think. There are different levels of upgrades, and they make a huge difference in how they perform. Some missions even require upgraded cars. Car-wise, the game still shines and doesn’t disappoint.
While we’re talking about cars and combat, they all tie into missions, just like in previous games. Honestly, GTA 5 feels so polished and refined and is a perfect GTA game. The missions are a huge step up because you get to choose how they play out this time around. There are large heists that you need to perform, and you can pick your accomplices and choose two different routes to go. They are usually sneaking and going through the front, guns blazing. It’s a lot of fun, and you really feel like you earned your cash in the game. During some missions, you can switch between the three characters on the fly for an advantage. This adds a whole new layer to combat in GTA. The missions are much more varied than previous games and are just so much fun; honestly, I haven’t had this much fun in a sandbox game in a long time. You get rated after each mission, and there are side objectives to complete for gold stars.
Outside of those story missions are side missions called Strangers and Freaks. You meet weird people that you help out, and these characters are both funny and strange. On top of that, you have random encounters where you help people on the fly as you pass them. It really helps bring the world to life. While we’re on that subject, GTA 5 is one of the most surreal game worlds ever created. Los Santos is huge, and I mean just huge. There are whole mountain ranges, huge areas of the ocean, and San Andreas, as well as Los Santos itself, to explore. Even the ocean looks so real thanks to the great water physics and underwater effects. Scuba diving is a brand new option here, and yes, there are underwater missions. However, Rockstar took all this to a whole new level when it came to detail. You can hunt in the mountains, and the scenery gradually changes as you move around the world. It’s just so awesome that it’s hard to believe that this is all out of someone’s imagination.
Your cell phone, for example, is an expansion of the one in GTA IV. You can buy stocks and bonds online, buy vehicles to get delivered to your garage, and buy boats, planes, and various other things on the phone. You can now order a cab, and most messages are done through text and email. It helps bring GTA to the present and feels that way. The amount of detail in both the characters, world, graphics, and gameplay is just phenomenal. From the turbulence in aircraft to the way boats bounce off waves, GTA 5 has an unparalleled level of detail that is rarely seen in any entertainment medium.
At the end of your first day, you won’t want to put the controller down. With over 100 missions, GTA 5 is full of things to do and places to explore. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin are great characters, and everyone will have their favorites. Despite the ultra-violence, cursing, and nudity in the game, GTA 5 is gritty and raw, as it should be. Rockstar is one of the only companies that has the guts to show everyone their vision without being afraid of political backlash. I’m sure GTA 5 will have plenty of that (thankfully, Jack Thompson will be absent for this one). GTA 5 is one of the best games I have played in a long time, and I can’t find much wrong with it. Honestly, it’s just typical stuff like frame rate slowdown, some ugly textures, the online component being missing at launch, and a few bugs and glitches here and there, but other than that, the game is almost perfect.
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. This is a saying heard throughout Assassin’s Creed, and it really sticks with you. So does the thick plot that has come to take the game industry by storm, as well as one of the greatest game characters of all time: Altair. The plot is actually weird at first because it’s a sci-fi story. You are actually Desmond Miles, captured by modern-world Templars. They stick you in an animus and use your DNA to access your ancestor’s memories to find the Piece of Eden, which can be used to control people’s minds. That one ancestor is Altair, set during the crusades. The second story is of Altair, who ends up losing his rank and status among the Assassin Brotherhood by failing a mission due to his eagerness and stupidity. Your master, Al Mualim, sends on special missions to assassinate key leaders throughout the holy land (Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus) to keep them from taking the Piece of Eden and using it to win the war.
As you can see, the plot is very interesting, with a lot of twists. How is the game, though? You have a huge open world that is full of side missions and hundreds of buildings to climb. Assassin’s Creed has a parkour climbing system as well as a puppeteering system. You control each of Altair’s limbs in two different states. The “socially acceptable” state allows you to use eagle vision, which can show enemies and key targets. You can gently push people away from you, and this is key because if you’re running around the city knocking people over, the guards will come after you, and towards the end of the game, everyone is highly suspicious of you, and just a few people knocked over will have the entire guard on your tail. The third thing is obviously combated, but if you hold down the run button, you start climbing buildings, grabbing people to toss them, and jumping around.
Assassin’s Creedreally tried to introduce crowd psychology into the game, and it works here but does feel limited. If you climb buildings, people will react by stopping, staring, and saying things accordingly. If you use ladders, people don’t mind so much. While using rooftops is faster and keeps you away from most guards, you must watch out for guards on rooftops who will shoot you with arrows if you don’t get down, kill them, or move away quickly. The climbing works well enough, but there are some control issues, clipping issues, and other issues with the camera. When Altair is facing a different way than the camera, he will jump in his direction instead of the way you’re telling him to. Also, if you run around a pole or near a crate, he’ll start climbing it instead of just jumping over or going around. This can get downright frustrating when you are running away from a dozen guards and trying to find a hiding spot.
The game also introduces anonymity via a symbol near your health bar, which stays white when no one suspects you but will turn yellow when you are watched and flash red when guards are on you. When it does this, get away quickly or kill whoever is watching you. Don’t just kill out in the open, or people will run around screaming and calling guards. Get away from dead bodies quickly because guards will come by and try to find out who killed them, or citizens will give you away. If you are caught, you need to kill all guards after you or hide. To do this, you must break their line of sight, and the symbol will flash yellow. When it does find a hiding spot quickly, it turns red again. You can hide on benches between people, on stacks of hay, in groups of monks praying, or on draped boxes on rooftops. Stay there for a few seconds, and you will be anonymous again. You can avoid all this chaos by just jogging, staying calm, not flailing around and jumping around like a monkey in crowded areas, etc.
This whole crowd system is really something else and works well, but it feels repetitive and predictable because of the recycled sayings and animations, and it always happens the same way. The combat is the same way because, while you can gain new abilities, it feels like a counter-festival. You can attack with a sword or short sword and throw daggers, but most guards always block, so you just stand there with the block button held down and wait for someone to attack and then counter, which is usually an instant kill. This gets repetitive, and the combat isn’t as deep as it could be since combos are limited and animations are repeated often. It does control well and feels smooth, so I guess that’s better than broken.
The most repetitive thing and the game’s biggest flaw are the constantly repeated missions that repeat dozens and dozens of times. You can save citizens, do some time-trial flag gathering missions, escort missions, assassination missions (probably the most fun), interrogation, eavesdropping, pickpocketing, and climbing tall buildings to find viewpoints to put more missions on your map in that area. Sure, they are fun at first, but after you have saved the 30th citizen or climbed the 50th building, it gets old, and you just want it to end. Some more mission diversity would have been nice.
While it’s cool to be an assassin, sneaking up behind a guard and shoving a punch dagger in his gut and then running away while he falls to the ground without anyone suspecting otherwise is satisfying, and you must look good doing it too. Assassin’s Creed looks amazing, even today, and the PC version sports DirectX 10 graphics with some slightly higher resolution textures. The game looks a lot better than console versions and is well worth another play-through just for that alone. While the graphics are amazing technically and artistically, the game feels very Middle Eastern, with a great soundtrack to support that and voice acting, and the whole game feels true to its time. The architecture is great, as are the clothing, lifestyles, and jobs people do in the game, but it all kind of looks the same with a lot of grays, browns, and whites.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed is an amazing experience with a story you will talk about long after you finish the game, great crowd simulation, and the true feeling of being an assassin. If there was some more mission diversity, visual diversity, and smoother controls, the game would be perfect. This is a game you cannot miss, and every gaming fan should play it.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !