The Great Playthrough: Game 41 - Halo 3

I look a bit strange in this photo..
Oh well!

Halo 3
Released on: Xbox 360
Played on: Xbox 360
Release date: 2007

Aaah. Halo 3. Long considered one of the best games for the Xbox 360 - the "killer app" for the console at launch if you will.

("Killer App" does sound a little like a dodgy straight-to-DVD horror movie where a phone app kills people one at a time, possibly while playing voice clips of common YouTube comedy videos while it does so... hey wait! That's a great idea! © Michael Braunton 2013! No stealing that idea - that's mine!)

As you should all know (assuming you've read the earlier posts of my playthrough, particularly this one) I have a chequered history with First Person Shooters, often finding them tedious and unimpressive.

Straight off the bat though, there is one accusation you cannot level at Halo 3 - and that is unimpressive. Graphically it is beautiful, and it really shows the power of a current generation console - at launch this must have been a jaw-dropping moment (I don't remember - I only bought an Xbox 360 about 2 years ago!) However, it's not all good news...

I really don't want to bang on about not enjoying FPS's since Doom came out, and I was willing to put those thoughts aside in an attempt to really try and get into this game. I've tried several times since I bought it, and have never made it past the second mission - and I wanted to get into it. So I sat down, with no distractions, and fired it up.

And five minutes later I was bored.

I know this may be heresy to those of you out there who are Halo fans - and indeed, those of you out there who are Xbox fans, and I had to think long and hard to figure out what my issues with the game were.

Is it the controls? No, they are almost perfect controls (which is why almost every Xbox FPS ever has followed suit)

The Game Mechanics? Nope. Again, they work very well - at no point did I have trouble moving, shooting, opening doors etc...

The Story then? The story? Well it's a bit of a mish-mash of Sci-fi rubbish (but I normally like Sci-fi rubbish - I'm a big fan of the TV show "Sliders"!) and it definitely hurts that it is the third chapter in a story where I have absolutely no idea what is going on because I haven't played the first two, and it does just drop you into the story with no explanation whatsoever, but that doesn't harm it too much. (Apart from the stupid, epilepsy-inducing "visions")

No - my biggest problem with it is that it just doesn't seem to connect. The opening level is a jungle scenario, where you run around and shoot lots of aliens. (See, you can tell I couldn't work out any of the plot!) And I have no problem with that. But there seems to be no danger to yourself at all. Thanks to Master Chief's recharging shields, there's no moment like in Goldeneye where you are sneaking quietly along a corridor, screen blood red, almost dead, tension ramped up high.... Nope. In Halo, you can simply hide behind a rock for ten seconds and your health is back to normal.

Therefore, my method of play simply became "Walk towards enemies shooting randomly. When they've shot you a lot, run around/hide behind a rock until your shields are better. Repeat." And that just got very boring very quickly.

That's not my only problem with the game - my other issues may seem like minor niggles but they all distracted me from the game itself.

The guns - There is no way of telling whether a gun you have picked up is good or bad. And yeah, I know that's the sort of thing that you should learn as the game continues, but it seemed like whatever gun I picked up (bar some kind of rocket launcher) took the same amount of hits to kill the alien in front of me. So why bother?

The navigation. This was a problem in the opening jungle level, as lots of caves look like solid cliffs from not very far away, so you occasionally have no idea where you are supposed to be going. It continued to be a problem in the second level, as people would tell me to go somewhere, and then I wouldn't know where it was. Also, I'd end up running up and down a corridor twenty times just looking for where the hell I was supposed to go next.

The way that missions are briefed. I know this sounds pettier than Tom Petty and a six year old girl in a squabble over a tea-towel (and I apologise for that metaphor, but I'm tired!), but I like to know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing in a mission, and that does not equal simply having a one-liner such as "Johnson's gone down, go and find him" announced over the radio, as it gets mixed in with all the background noise, and half the time I wasn't sure what the hell I was supposed to be doing.

And yes, I remember having fun playing it in multi-player round several friends houses (one of the reasons I bought the game), but this playthrough just highlighted the disappointment of the single player campaign for me.

So, in conclusion, it's a very impressive game - both visually and in regards level size/game mechanics, but I was so bored that I turned it off after about 40 minutes. Sorry.

*Ducks head to escape from bombardment of abuse coming my way*

Rating: 5/10
Time Played: About 40 minutes
Would I play it again? Maybe for multi-player. Not likely to play single player again though.

Next Time - Another game with the number 3 in it...

The Great Playthrough - BONUS ROUND!

So, this gaming blog is a bit different from the rest of the playthrough blogs - it doesn't obey any of the rules! "But why, Brawny?" I hear you ask. Well, because this blog is going to review three games that weren't on the original list, and consequentially do not have numbers - because they are the games I got for Christmas!

All three of these are games that I've been wanting for a while, and they are all current generation games (assuming that we are still counting the Wii as current generation - although the Wii U is out now, so I guess I should be setting it back as last generation now.. but sod it) so without further ado (and in no particular order), let's get on with it!

Resident Evil 4

Released on: Nintendo Gamecube, PC, PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, Mobile, iPhone, iPad

Played on: Nintendo Wii

Release date: 2005

You heard my thoughts on the original Resident Evil earlier in this playthrough, and the 5th instalment was one of the first games Neety and I bought for the Xbox 360 and we had a lot of fun playing together. Resi 4 is always cited as one of the greatest games ever, and I was interested to see how good it was in comparison with how good everyone says that it is. 

Short answer? It's great. The Wii controls introduced for this port work really well, and the game is very well balanced and designed. 

The plot? Well, it's a traditional Resident Evil mish-mash of virus's, evil beings and zombies. WRONG. These are not zombies, they are apparently infected people, not zombies. 

*Mumbles* I don't know what the bloody difference is mind you... *finishes mumbling* 

There are women in distress, (well, women is a loose term. Let's just say that there is one jug-eared blond annoyance in distress) and you run around shooting zombies infected villagers, using up all your limited ammo before coming face-to-face with a mutated boss who has extra limbs and metal claws, and you only have three handgun bullets left, and the only other ammo you have is the rifle ammo, which is particularly useless because you didn't buy a rifle from Rapey Clive when you had the chance!

(Just to clarify, Rapey Clive is the name that Neety gave to the creepy merchant who always greets you in a disturbingly growling voice and then flings open his coat as if he was going to flash you)

However, in spite of a few minor moments of frustration, it's a very well-balanced and addictive game - as proven by the fact that I have so far spent 12+ hours on it, finishing the main game and unlocking the side story etc, and I still want to play more. My biggest bugbear of the game? The proliferation of "Press X to not die" quicktime events. Although, with this being the Wii, it's more a case of "Waggle the Wii-mote inappropriately to not die", which does lead to entertaining (if slightly rude) comments from Neety. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Time Played: 12+ hours so far....

Would I play it again: Hell yeah!

In comparison with Pestilent Weevils the fourth (aka Resident Evil 4), the next game is an almost complete opposite. Whereas Resi 4 is an "adult" game, with a strangely muted colour scheme, the next game I'm going to discuss feels like someone has smacked you around the face with a four foot long cartoon fish! It's...

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing
Released on: Xbox360, PS3, PC
Played on: Xbox 360
Release date: 2010

I love this game. I've had the one-race demo on my Xbox for months and have played it far more than any man should ever play a single demo. I've mentioned before (most recently in my previous post) my love for Outrun and other colourful, unrealistic, arcade racers - and this game represents all of that to me.  It's like someone crashed Outrun into Mario Kart, and this is the result.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the most in-depth of games, but it is ridiculously addictive (It's like the video game version of candy-coated, caffeine-infused smack) and even as someone who usually prefers advancing in the game to obtaining high scores, it really does have that "one-more-try" factor (which is helped by the number of achievements available - at this rate, it might become the first Xbox game that I ever complete every achievement on!)

Now I know what you're all thinking:

"I know who Sonic is. And Tails. And Knuckles. But who are the rest of these drivers. Are they really all-stars?"

To which I would respond: "Does it matter?"

Some of the characters are reasonably well known if you have knowledge of SEGA history or retro games in general - Alex Kidd, Beat, AiAi etc... but some are, I grant you, pretty obscure. But who cares when the game is this much fun?

Plus, you get to run over zombies, sorry, creatures on the House of the Dead, sorry, Curien Mansion tracks. (They can't call them zombies as it is a game for all ages, and they can't call it House of the Dead because firstly that could bump the rating up as well, but secondly, House of the Dead is banned in Germany and they didn't want this banned too!). And who doesn't enjoy hitting zombies creatures with a car???

The driving mechanics of the game are great, and the physics are rock solid (except for the fact that on some of the more outrageous tracks, gravity seems not to exist...) and the music is a selection of Sonic/Sega tunes and is therefore brilliantly annoying and catchy all at once. Plus, in a change from a certain racer I reviewed recently, this has plenty to do in single player - grand prix's and a full on mission mode as well!

Rating: 9/10
Time played: About 6 hours so far
Would I play it again? I'm loading it right now...

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Released on: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, PS2, Nintendo DS
Played on: Xbox 360
Release date: 2008

Like Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, I've had the demo of this on the Xbox for a good long while, so it was nice to pop in the full game and settle down to some satisfying destruction of everything you see.

However, straight off, I hit a slight roadblock. The opening level disappointed me slightly, and I'm still not sure as to why. It should have been amazing because of the following 2 points..

1) You play as Darth Vader. And who doesn't love that!
2) It's a different way to do the opening of the story, rather than all being cinematic cut-scenes which I am always glad to see.

But it just feels... slow. Lacking in pace, if you will. And a big part of that is that Vader does not run. I understand why, it is to make him seem confident, and imposing... but it just makes the level feel tedious. (Plus, you are slicing your way through Wookies, and I like wookies damnit!)

After that, though, the game definitely picks up. You play as Darth Vaders hitherto unmentioned apprentice, Starkiller, and you rush through environments destroying Stormtroopers and rebels alike! It's almost as if Starkiller is the opposite of a smart bomb. You send him in if you want to destroy absolutely everything, including people, spaceships, planets...

The game is great fun, not particularly intellectually stimulating, but fun nonetheless. It does have a few flaws - the camera is a little erratic, control of force powers can be a little bit hit and miss, and I have not yet fully embraced the RPG-lite style powers upgrade system... but I'm sure I will.

This section is shorter than the other two as this is the game I have played least so far... but I am enjoying it at the moment!

Rating: 7.5/10
Time Played: About 2 - 3 hours so far..
Would I play it again? Of course

Next time - back to the playthrough!

The Great Playthrough: Game 21 - Half-Life 2

Back to the current generation now, with Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2
Released on: PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3, Mac OSX
Played on: Xbox 360
Release date: 2004 (although the Xbox 360 version was 2007)


Occasionally, I find a game where I'm not sure my playthrough rules are fair to the game - and Half-Life 2 is one of them. As I'm sure many of you are aware, this is one of those games that everyone who was a gamer played and loved when it came out.

Except me.

At the time, the only current generation console I had was a Wii, and the idea of my PC playing anything more technically complicated than Doom 2 was just ridiculous. So the Half-Life saga passed me by. Until I discovered Portal.

Portal is a puzzle game by the makers of Half-Life (Valve) and using the same FPS engine. I LOVED Portal (and later on in this playthrough, you will see just how much) and consequentially I was ecstatic when I was given The Orange Box for my birthday last year. The Orange box (for those of you who don't know) was a packaging of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 for consoles.

Now that I've finished explaining the convoluted history of why I own this game in the first place (which I appreciate was confusing, thank you for sticking with me there), now I'll explain my opening paragraph again. As per the rules I set out for this playthrough, every game gets played for an hour (approx). The problem with this? Half-Life 2 is a very plot-centric game, and for the first half-hour of the game, where you simply walk your character around (in a very linear fashion as all doors are locked to you except the ones you need to go through), occasionally running away from people, and talking to NPCs, it didn't really grab me.... It didn't even really feel like I was playing a game! It certainly didn't feel like fun.

Part of the problem is that I have never played Half-Life (the original) and don't have any clue what the plot of that game was - and Half-Life 2 seems to just drop you straight into the plot, so I did feel a touch confused.

Also (and this is more a criticism of myself than the game), I'm a big fan of humour in game plots - and there's not a lot of that evident in the opening of the game. It's rather serious, and the feel of this blog is likely to reflect that, as I've got nothing in particular to joke about. Therefore I may, at some point during the remainder of this blog, insert a silly word or two in order to make you giggle.

Once I got into the game, after half an hour or so, and I became armed and could start to defend myself, then I did have some fun. It's a good game, and I can see why it gained so much acclaim. But honestly? It still didn't grip me a lot. I found it very hard (and I'm not excluding the idea that maybe I'm just really bad at the game) and while that's not necessarily a bad thing in a game - I do like a challenge - the very fact that I was noticing how hard it was tells me that I wasn't engrossed in the game.

*SILLY WORD KLAXON*

Penis.

*BACK TO BLOG*

And, to be honest, that's that. It doesn't matter that the controls are good, the graphics very serviceable, and the atmosphere genuinely well-crafted. If a game doesn't grip me, I'm not going to keep playing it, and that's what has happened here. Sure, I might give it another go in the near future, and not having to start over from the very beginning again may improve my opinion of it. But for now? It's going back on the shelf.

Also, just to clarify, I'm not visiting Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in this playthrough, as they are extensions of this game, and I found this one confusing enough as I didn't really know what was going on!

Rating: 6/10
Time Played: 1 hour
Would I play it again?: Maybe - but not for a while...


Time to go back to one of my favourite consoles and one of my favourite characters next - Donkey Kong Country on the SNES!

The Great Playthrough: Game 20 - Soulcalibur II

We have reached a milestone here - 20 games down (and still more than a hundred to go - so I should probably stop going on about milestones and get on with it..)

Soulcalibur II

Released on: Nintendo Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox

Played on: Nintendo Wii

Release date: 2003

I have a confession to make. When I bought this game, I did so for one primary reason - and that reason is shown on the cover art above. Link. 

I have confessed many times already on this blog that I am a Nintendo fanboy - and indeed I reviewed a Zelda game just two games ago. (Four Swords, in case you'd forgotten!) which I didn't rate very highly - however Link is a character I've always enjoyed playing as, and therefore when I saw this in a second-hand shop a few years ago, I had to have it. Also, the secondary reason was that it is part of the Soul Blade/SoulCalibur series, and I have Soul Blade on PS1 and I'd always enjoyed it.

It'd been a long time since I played this game, so I was quite excited when I popped this into the Wii to play. And do you know what? It didn't disappoint - at least to start with. I happily selected Link, and had a crack at the arcade mode. And then, 20 minutes later, I had completed the Arcade mode.

Yes, I know that there are loads of modes, and there are different difficulty settings to be found within the options menu, but even so, I would have hoped that I would have taken longer than 20 minutes to complete the Arcade mode - that time also included a couple of minutes of pausing the game and reading the manual to check the controls. Nevertheless, once I had finished that, I decided to have a go at the Weapon Master Mode, which looked to be a mission-style mode designed for single players. And that's what I spent the next 40 minutes on. And in the interest of fair play, I didn't play as Link. I played as the weird tall blond Final Fantasy Look-a-like who's name has slipped from my mind. 

So, what's the single player "mission" mode of a fighting game like? Well, as you would expect from this type of game, it's a set of fights strung together. But, in a fun twist, some of the rounds have you attempting to defeat multiple enemies one after the other, or a round where you have to knock someone out of the ring to win etc.... It's good fun. It also has some (almost entirely pointless) RPG style elements where you level up and earn money - although I'm not quite sure why. (There is a shop where you can buy weapons and stuff, although I didn't discover this until two minutes before I finished playing, so I didn't have a very good look around.)

The biggest problem with this Weapon Master Mode is that it tries to tell you a story, which is fine, but it does it in text, on screen, that you can skip through. This was all written in such a dull manner that I quickly stopped reading it at all, and consequentially I didn't have a clue what was supposed to be happening. (Not that plot particularly matters in Fighting games, but it would have been nice to have the option.) The other thing - and this is a particularly petty complaint, but there you go - is that in the mission mode, some of the opponents seem to have had their names changed.

But only on the introduction screen and the bottom of the main screen.

For example, Cervantes is listed as Alfred: King of the Pirates. I don't know why, and frankly, it just seems like a strange localisation issue - which doesn't seem to affect the Arcade version. It's almost as if they gave the localisation work on the Weapon Master Mode to the work experience kid, told him he had to do it in 12 hours flat, and left a bottle of vodka in the room with him. I expect these suspicions to be confirmed if later characters are called such things as "Yaymorebooze" and "Youremybestmate: I love you!"

So, overall? Good game, people, good game. Not great, but still reasonably entertaining.

Rating: 7/10
Time played: 1 Hour 5 Minutes
Would I play it again: Sure - when I fancy a quick bit of fighting-time, it'll be one of the games that I choose.


Next time: Half-Life 2 on Xbox 360...

The Great Playthrough: Game 19 - Sonic Generations

Another day, another game...

Sonic Generations

Released on: Xbox 360, PS3, PC (and 3DS, although it's apparently an entirely different game)

Played on: Xbox 360

Release Date: 2011

In general, there are two types of reaction whenever a new Sonic game is announced. There are the people who say, "It's all been downhill since Sonic 2, why would you bother? Modern Sonic games are rubbish", and there are those who say, "It could be good - it certainly won't be any worse than Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)".

DISCLAIMER


I do not own and have never played Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (aka the game where Sonic has a human love interest. Yes, that's right...) so I do not know if it is as bad as everyone says it is. However, the fact that Sega delisted the game from Microsoft's Xbox Live Games on Demand service in order to "increase the value of the brand" I think says a lot... (If you feel I'm being unfair on the game, or just have a copy of it that you no longer want, please feel free to loan/donate the game to me, as it is the only main Sonic game I've never played, and I am morbidly interested in how bad/entertaining it may be...)


END OF DISCLAIMER. BACK TO THE BLOGGING.


Sonic Generations does a lot of things right, and on the whole I would probably rank it as the best current generation Sonic game. Mostly, it has to be said because of the 2D Sonic levels.

Yes, that's right - there's 2D Sonic levels in this game! Sadly there are 3D levels too, but they are actually rather entertaining in their own right. But while the game is good, and I happily played it for this blog even though I only got it for my birthday last year and played it to death (alternating with Arkham City of course. Sonic and Batman, now there's a crimefighting team - the Black and the Blue!) the whole game does reek of missed opportunities - and I noticed that more this time.

The theory behind the game is that the two Sonics (The Modern, green-eyed, skinny version who cannot help but talk with a 90's attitude and the Classic, chubby, silent and yet so much more timeless version) are running through past levels in order to... defeat an evil being.. who turns out to be Robotnik (or Eggman, depending on which version of Sonic you are)... and then it turns out it isn't his fault.... and then it is.... oh who cares. You don't play Sonic games for the plot, any more than you read Twilight for it's mastery of the English language. You play Sonic games to run fast and jump on things. And this game gives you that.

But not enough of it.

There are 9 zones in this game (and six boss battles) - and you get one 2D act and one 3D act of each. Which sounds like a lot, but just left me wanting more. Also, where they've picked levels from old Sonic games, I think it's very telling that the best zone is still Green Hill Zone, and by the time you get to the "Modern-era" stages (Crisis City from Sonic 06, Rooftop Rush from Sonic Unleashed, Planet Wisp from Sonic Colours) they just seem dull and sort of miserable (or overly complicated in the sense of Planet Wisp) in comparison with the earlier ones.

So you have a game that starts off well, but alternates between dull and confusing in the last third - and the less said about the Boss Battles the better. I am very aware that the wonder of 2D sonic boss battles is long gone, but these strange 3D monstrosities with lots of QTE events (or "Press X to not Die" sequences as they are referred to in our house) are just dull. And frustrating.

I could keep writing about this for ages, because it's a game that's really split my opinion. I have a lot of fun when I play it, and was excited about coming back to it for the playthrough - but as I played through I was reminded of all the minor niggles that bugged me last time. So, in order to prevent this blog entry from being 20,000 words long, I'm just going to a couple of lists of good and bad bits.

Good Bits: Nice long levels, fast and furious fun, some proper 2D platforming action, the music, revisiting Green Hill Zone, some of the 3D Sonic setpieces are still spectacular (particularly the Truck from City Escape (Sonic Adventure 2))

Bad Bits: Only one act of each Sonic-type for nine zones, rubbish Boss Battles, some slightly dodgy 3D camera (although it's much better than all the other 3D sonic games), no Casino Night Zone, the bloody "helpful" Chao who decides to give you helpful information throughout the game, important information like "If you hit something, then you will lose all of the rings you are carrying." OI, SEGA! THIS IS A SONIC GAME MADE FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY. THE VAST MAJORITY OF US HAVE PLAYED A SONIC GAME BEFORE STOP EXPLAINING DETAILS THAT HAVEN'T CHANGED IN THE LAST 20 YEARS OF GAMEPLAY!

I could go on, but I know what you're wondering - you're thinking "What about the score then Brawny? If it's fun but frustrating, then surely we'd be looking at a 5 or 6 out of ten?" Well no. It's gonna be better than that. Because (as you all know) I love Sonic games. And I don't care if it's a biased review, it's my review.

Rating: 8/10
Time played: 1 hour 10 mins
Would I play it again?: Of course I will!


Next time we step back in time one console generation, and change genre once again. It's Soulcalibur 2 on the Gamecube...