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Assassins Creed 4 – Completed

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The past few years, Assassin Creed games have been Christmas gaming for me & this year AC4 did not disappoint with a swash buckling pirate adventure. It is the Journey of Edward Kenway from a man leaving England looking to make riches whatever the damage he may cause to eventually finding a purpose & a meaning to his life.

I did not enjoy the ship battles in AC3 but in this game they have been redesigned & you have full control of your Jackdaw. All the weapons are available with easy access from he mortar, fire barrels & heavy shot. Once you have damaged an enemy ship enough you get the option to board which then involves you killing a certain number of the enemy crew & other small tasks depending on the ship. The option to repair your Jackdaw after a boarding is an easy way to avoid your ship getting destroyed when taking on a fleet.
























There are so many side quests in the game from Assassin contracts, Mayan puzzles, Treasure Maps, Underwater wrecks, Kenway's Fleet mini game & much much more that you can very easily get distracted from the main quest. I managed to complete most of these with only a few shipwrecks left to explore, on the world map you can also collect animus fragments & chests but these don't really reward you much in the game & I had begin to tire of the 'gotta collect them all' gameplay.

Playing the game on the PS4 with all it's hardware prowess really made the experience that much more enjoyable & the share ability allowed me to take screenshots & create videos with ease.























The Ubisoft formula (main quest will added pointless filler collectibles) being applied to almost all of their releases like the AC, Far Cry & upcoming Watch_Dogs is getting very predictable but where do excel is in the main quest & relevant storyline which is why I expect that next Christmas I will be playing the next assassin creed game in the series.

LA Noire: completed!

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I had only a few missions to complete in that game, it turns out, all of which involved hunting down various corrupt officials and getting them to talk.



I think that shooting him in the leg was probably a bit excessive, but as I said previously the game has taken control of my character's actions in order to progress the story.  This has just got worse as the game's progressed - it's not longer merely Phelps being over-zealous in questioning; it's now Kelso shooting people during cutscenes.

Still, at least I get to drive between these and watch people being shifty.



The endgame saw me exploring a creepy dilapidated house, in which a madman had been holed up.  The game carefully told you that he was mad several times, before showing him folding origami cranes over and over again.  Finding these in the house was quite a shock.





The final missions turned into a run-and-gun cover shooter, with the madman seemingly able to convince dozens of men to lay down their lives just to keep me away from him.  Naturally, that didn't work, but it was pretty tense, running around the sewer systems and popping out to shoot people.  It felt pretty familiar in some ways, reminding me of gameplay in Red Dead Redemption.

I finally found the flamethrower man, who turned out to be someone that Phelps and Kelso had served with.  Funny that all the main characters turned out to be linked in some way, given the size of the city the game's set in.


And then the end of the game sees Rockstar killing off the main character again, but this time I have little sympathy left for him - even after he helped to save everyone else.


After the credits, you can go back and play in free roam mode, which means that you no longer need to worry about how much damage you cause when driving.  I enjoyed that, and ended up with some amusing accidents.


Overall, a great game, but the story was crowbarred in a little, which spoilt the interactivity somewhat.  I hope a sequel could improve on that.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 (3DS): COMPLETED!

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PREVIOUSLY ON LUIGI’S MANSION 2!

Our hero had recovered all but one of the Dark Moon fragments, and had located the final piece – inside a giant portal on the roof of the final mansion. After defeating wave after wave of ghosts as they were ejected from the portal, he was sucked into the purple swirly and was confronted with a boss – several suits of armour followed by one massive suit of armour, who was impossible to defeat. Was this the end of our hero’s adventure? Will the Dark Moon ever be stitched back together? Just how many pairs of pants has Luigi gone through anyway?

AND NOW: THE CONCLUSION!

The giant suit of armour was actually really easy. I just needed to be careful and bide my time. After that, was the real final boss fight with King Boo (which isn’t really a spoiler as it’s obvious he’s the final boss before you even get to the end of the first mansion), which was alarmingly simple. Probably the easiest boss fight in the entire game, in fact, in part due to the many, many hearts thrown at you in the “side scrolling” sections of the battle.

And that’s it! Dark Moon restored, and the valley saved. For now.

Scribblenauts Unlimited (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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I’ve been waiting for ages for this. 15 months, in fact. After being delayed from the Wii U launch to early 2013, it was then pulled hours after going on sale in the UK for reasons that have never been officially announced. Some people managed to get it in that time, but the rest of us had to wait. And wait. Heck, the follow-up is out soon, it’s been that long.

But finally, it turned up. And, like with Rayman Legends, Zavvi conveniently forgot to charge me.

It’s excellent. I know it’s “just” more Scribblenauts, but it does so much. Firstly, it gets rid of the “rope and a helicopter solves everything” issue from the first game (and to a lesser extent, the second game), but secondly it’s huge. Yes, I know I’ve completed it already, but I’ve only actually done 60 Starites. There are… oooh… 120? More? I don’t know. And many of those are each made up from 10 Starite Shards, so there’s several hundred actual puzzles left to do.

There’s a lot of comedy in the game. Lots of games, films and memes are referenced sideways, in the characters, puzzle names, or actions you have to take to complete a puzzle. Sometimes you create your own comedic moments when things don’t quite go right. Take the screenshot as an example – I accidentally made a “bad hat” (rather than a “bandit hat” – oh yeah, there’s a million adjectives now) which picked up an axe and went on a murdering spree. Awesome.

3D Sonic the Hedgehog (3DS): COMPLETED!

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Um, yeah. So I now own 12 (different) copies of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. And that doesn’t even include the Master System and Game Gear versions – just the Megadrive one, and it’s ports. This is the only one in 3D though.

OK, so it’s not “as 3D” as 3D Space Harrier. This is a gentler, more incidental 3D, with all the layers of fore- and background parallax now on their own 3D plane. You know what? It looks fantastic. Sure, it doesn’t add anything to actually playing the game, but it feels like this was always how Sonic was supposed to be. Gorgeous.

And I’ve completed it. It isn’t hard, and I’ve played it enough times so I’d like to think I wouldn’t find it even slightly tricky, which I didn’t. In fact, I completed it with 27 lives (never losing any) and all 6 Chaos Emeralds collected by the time I finished Spring Yard Zone. Hello ladies.