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Tag Archive: Xbox One
A story better left untold
Once a series reaches a certain point, it becomes more and more difficult to keep things fresh. This problem only becomes compounded the more frequently new chapters are released, so a yearly franchise like Assassin’s Creed is definitely a prime example of something that’s begun to fatigue the gaming community.
I had hopes, though, that the latest entry in the franchise, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, might jump-start my excitement again for the never-ending Templar-versus-Brotherhood conflict—even if it only comes six months after the one-two punch of Unity and Rogue last fall. A new developer, a new protagonist, and a new take on the series’ definitive gameplay were all things that even a tired fan could look forward to.
ACC: China follows a female Assassin named Shao Jun in the early 16th century during the Ming Dynasty. She’s the last of the Chinese Brotherhood, who were all but wiped out by a powerful group of eunuchs called the Tigers. In reality, the Tigers are Templars, and with the rest of the Brotherhood eliminated, they now control the Ming emperor like a puppet.
Driven by vengeance, Shao Jun returns home against almost insurmountable odds—but armed with special training from Assassin’s Creed II protagonist Ezio Auditore. She knows that her mission may be nearly impossible to accomplish, but the only way to free China and start her branch of the Brotherhood anew will be to eliminate the Tigers one by one.
The most striking thing that ACC: China has going for it—and immediately helps differentiate it from other games in the series—is the fact that Ubisoft and developer Climax Studios have shifted from the 3D open world we’re used to with the Assassin’s Creed franchise and instead made a more arcade-like 2.5D side-scrolling platformer. Besides the shift in viewpoint, ACC: China also touts a novel art style where every brandish of Shao Jun’s sword or stealthy elimination from the shadows is punctuated by a flourish of red-and-black watercolors, giving the game a sense of a painting come to life. It’s definitely a far throw from the more realistic-looking adventures in the main series, and I found it served as a much-needed twist on what we normally get in an Assassin’s Creed game.
The level layout is also meticulously crafted to take advantage of the protagonist’s nimble nature. Even considering the fact that this is a 2.5D game, Shao Jun still has a stunning amount of freedom to parkour, with multiple paths often available to reach each level’s end point. Finding different routes through the foreground and background—and switching perspectives as Shao Jun shimmies around the edges to another side of a building—gives the level design depth that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Most surprisingly, though, the stealth gameplay for which Assassin’s Creed is known lends itself well to the shift in perspective. Shao Jun still hides in haystacks, crowds of people, and shadowy alcoves to strike at her unsuspecting foes as they pass by. The 2.5D viewpoint, combined with each guard’s “cone of awareness” that allow you to see where their focus is at a given time, makes it easier to plan a path and memorize patrols. Of course, the guards aren’t the smartest ever programmed in an Assassin’s Creed game, either, so luring them to their doom is relatively easy with the assistance of firecrackers, whistles, and special noise-emitting darts.
Playing stealthily is heavily encouraged here for two different reasons. The first is the game’s arcade-based scoring system that rewards clean play, with the highest possible score only achievable by working through checkpoints unseen and without eliminating a single opponent. The second reason? The combat sucks.
For as many cool weapons as Shao Jun has—her hidden toe blade, rope dart, and Jian sword—any direct confrontation against more than one foe almost guarantees certain doom. The 2.5D aspect proves to be flawed here, since it makes it incredibly easy for enemies to surround and overwhelm Shao Jin. This gives her a frail quality unbefitting an Assassin, and it’s easily my least favorite part of the gameplay. Even her counter, the only way to defend herself against an attack in combat, is unintuitive—it requires pushing the analog stick toward the attack instead of away, as one’s instincts would dictate. But why bother with any directional input at all here?
Since combat isn’t really a viable option, ACC: China has a very one-dimensional feel. A first playthrough shouldn’t take more than six hours, but you can’t help but start to become bored by it all around the halfway point. No matter how pretty the game may look, enemy variety is minimal, and the stealth patterns quickly become evident.
I might’ve been able to forgive monotonous gameplay if there were at least an interesting story to tell. Unfortunately, ACC: China falls completely flat here, too. Ever since Shao Jun debuted in the animated short Assassin’s Creed: Embers, fans have clamored for more of her. With nothing more than a thin revenge plotline to push her forward, however, Shao Jun’s time to shine feels wasted, and it does very little to expand the Assassin’s Creed universe in China. Her backstory is told through a few meager paragraphs that you find in collectible form, and the game’s cutscenes do her no favors either, only giving a brief explanation for why she’s assassinating her next target.
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China has a beautiful art style and distinct viewpoint compared to the other titles that share the Assassin’s Creed brand. The stealth works, but it also serves as too much of the gameplay’s focus. The combat and the story—or lack thereof—are both gaping holes that can’t be ignored, keeping the game from reaching its full potential. The one hope is that perhaps India and Russia, the next two games in this spin-off series, can remedy some of the mistakes seen here while building on what China does well.
| Developer: Climax Studios • Publisher: Ubisoft • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 04.21.15 | |
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6.0
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Assassins Creed Chronicles: China offers some solid building blocks for this spin-off series, including beautiful art and decent stealth gameplay. The poor combat and sad attempt at storytelling, however, both leave far too much to be desired.
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| The Good | A colorful art style that really helps the world come alive. |
| The Bad | The gameplay gets very repetitive very quickly. |
| The Ugly | Shao Jun seems like such an intriguing Assassin, but it feels like her story is wasted here. |
| Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Ubisoft for the benefit of this review. | |
Not a Flawless Victory
Growing up, whenever the subject of fighting games arose among my group of friends, everyone found themselves in one of two camps: Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. I readily admit I was in the MK camp (kamp?). The franchise seemed to put a larger emphasis on the story, which appealed to me, and of course, there was the blood and gore—and the controversy over that element would eventually lead to the formation of the ESRB.
Now, with the 10th main game in the series upon us—and as someone who’s been playing the series fanatically since the early days—it’s interesting to see that Mortal Kombat X is, in many ways, attempting to get back to basics when it comes to what the franchise has always been about.
The first aspect of this is MKX’s Story mode, which takes place primarily 25 years after the events of the previous game. Shao Khan is dead, and Outworld has been thrown into turmoil courtesy of a civil war between two of his lieutenants who’ve made claims to the throne—the ramifications of which are starting to spill over into Earthrealm. Meanwhile, minions of an old enemy, the fallen Elder God Shinnok, are moving in the shadows in an attempt to bring their imprisoned master back.
Whenever NetherRealm discussed MKX, the plotline was one of the key points of emphasis. We were told it would be an epic tale that brought kombatants old and new together against an unforeseen threat. But considering that it was a point of focus for the team and that MK9 provided a strong foundation to build on, I can’t help but see MKX’s Story mode as anything short of disappointing. Part of my frustration comes from the fact that NetherRealm touted a nonlinear story here, but MKX plays out the same way Injustice:Gods Among Us and MK9 did. It’s nothing new.
The nonlinear aspects simply come from flashbacks seen far too frequently that are meant to drive the main storyline forward in a singular fashion. They’re there to fill in the blanks, add missing backstory, and make desperate attempts at character development—necessitated by the drastic leap forward in time between games. If you lose a fight, whether in the past or the present, you still need to beat it if you want to move forward and see the next cutscene (or use a cheap “skip fight” token that can be earned in the Krypt, MK’s interactive way of unlocking extra in-game content via ‘Koins’ earned by playing the game).
The saddest part of MKX’s Story mode, though, might be the glimmers of greatness the game tantalizingly teases. Plenty of interesting subplots are hinted at throughout—like how character relationships between old fighters and new have evolved in 25 years, especially those with familial ties. There’s also Outworld’s civil war, which could’ve been more deeply explored and fleshed out, given how central a role it was supposed to play. Instead, it feels like Story mode tries to cram in too many ancillary tales that, while interesting, are never properly explored. And considering that MKX is 25 percent shorter in terms of chapters than MK9, I was left wanting more in the worst way.
On the flip side of that, admittedly, you can also get too much of a good thing. The game ships with 24 fighters, only a couple less than MK9, but each one has three variations that offer different abilities. For example, Kenshi’s three variations are essentially the moves he debuted with in Deadly Alliance, those he used in MK9, and a brand-new set for MKX that allows him to manifest the spirits that possess his enchanted blade and use them offensively. Personally, I found it too much trouble to learn all the variations for each fighter. Once I found one I liked, I’d simply ignore the other two.
The entire process of experimenting with the variations is frustrating in and of itself—I think people who are into fighting games want to figure out who their “main” is as quickly as possible, so giving them 72 options just feels like overkill. I’d rather have 10 more playable characters and none of the variations than to have all these degrees of gradation.
At the very least, the fighters who do show up—16 of which we’ve seen in previous MK games, along with eight new faces—all feel truly distinct, even if their own internal variations don’t. While a few elements seem lifted from Injustice, such as Ferra/Torr’s Bane-like charge attacks or Kung Jin somewhat resembling like Green Arrow, the returning characters feel like I expected (in a good way), while the debuting fighters all bring something new to the table.
The combination of Ferra/Torr, which sees the diminutive Ferra riding atop the hulking brute Torr’s shoulders as part of an odd symbiotic relationship, has amazing range when Torr swings Ferra around like a club. I also loved playing as Cassie Cage, because she’s such a smooth blend of her parents, MK icons Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage. She quickly became one of my favorites—not just for her fighting, but also her one-liners.
Takeda feels the most distinct of all the new characters in terms of gameplay with his whip attacks and arsenal of different weapons. Both Erron Black and Kung Jin took some getting used to, but they’ve got some absolutely punishing combos once you begin to master them. Kotal Kahn is your typical slow, powerful brawler, but his sun beam that heals him but hurts opponents makes for interesting zoning strategy in battle. Jacqui didn’t really move my needle either way, since she felt like just a faster Jax, and the insect-like D’Vorah was a fighter I just couldn’t get a handle on no matter how hard I tried.
When I finally figured out what variations worked best for me, what characters I wanted to stick with, and who I’d be comfortable competing with online, I found that perhaps the most important part of a fighting game—the actual fighting—was better than ever. The combos flow smoothly, and no character feels too overpowered. Some moves are tweaked from previous versions, like slowing down Sub-Zero’s ice ball and Scorpion’s spear, but only in the interest of preventing spamming. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to adapt to the changes, which makes me think they’re all for the better.
For as good as the combat is, though, the post-fight action might be even better. Fatalities are easier than ever to pull off—and, at this point, it’s almost comical how gory they’ve gotten. Of course, it’s still immensely satisfying to make someone’s head explode with Raiden, rip apart someone’s spine with Sub-Zero, or absolutely eviscerate them with new characters like Ferra/Torr.
What surprised me more, however, was how great it feels to pull off the returning Brutalities. While they’re not as bloody, Brutalities are sometimes more difficult because they need to be executed as the last move of the final round—and some of the conditions are as brutal as the punishment one could end up delivering with the moves. So, suffocating someone with Reptile, kneecapping them with Erron Black, or punching them in the face until their neck breaks with Kung Lao is sometimes even cooler. The game even includes stage-oriented Brutalities.
But that’s not all that will make you want to keep fighting until the wee hours of the morning. A new feature in the form of the Living Towers and an old one in the Krypt provide a tremendous amount of additional content. The Living Towers are three ladders that provide fresh battles with new stipulations every hour, day, and week, constantly pushing you to test your skills in different ways.
The Krypt, meanwhile, has been transformed from a glorified gallery into almost an adventure game within itself as you explore a graveyard, caves, a mausoleum, and more from a first-person perspective, with more of the world unlocking as you find iconic Mortal Kombat weapons—Scorpion’s spear or Kung Lao’s hat, for instance. There’s even random quicktime events that have you wrestling with threats that can pop out of nowhere now and that reward you with more Koins if you succeed. In the Krypt, you’ll find concept art, Test Your Luck modifiers, and more Fatalities and Brutalities for each character, but after unlocking nearly 100 tombs in the Krypt, I do wish there were a few more interesting things to find.
Mortal Kombat X feels, in many ways, like one step forward and two steps back. I can’t get over the lack of depth when it came to Story mode, and the fighter variations aren’t as interesting as I’d hoped. However, once I finally found my favorites, the actual fighting still felt great. And with the Living Towers promising to keep the game perpetually fresh, I found there’s still plenty here to keep me coming back for more in the future.
| Developer: NetherRealm Studios • Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 04.14.15 | |
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7.5
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When it comes to the gameplay, Mortal Kombat X is a solid fighting game, but a small roster and shoddy story hold it back from being a complete experience.
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| The Good | The combat feels smoother than ever, and the Living Towers keep the game fresh long after Story mode is over. |
| The Bad | The narrative has a ton of interesting subplots—but not enough time for any of them to breathe or properly come to fruition. |
| The Ugly | You fight against three fan-favorite characters in Story mode, but they’re not a playable part of the roster. I smell a second “Kombat Pack” already around the corner. |
| Mortal Kombat X is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, with versions for Xbox 360 and PS3 coming later. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the benefit of this review. | |
Don’t rage against the dying of the light—just let it happen
I was a fan of the original Dead Island. I didn’t think it was the end-all, be-all of zombie games—and the open-world undead action-adventure has come so far in such a short time—but I thought developer Techland had laid a wonderful foundation of gameplay mechanics, and I was excited to see what they’d do next. Then they gave us Dead Island: Riptide, practically a carbon copy of their first game that did little to further the gameplay or lore of the world. It left a sour taste in the mouths of many, myself included.
The announcement of Dying Light gave me hope that maybe Techland had merely hit a sophomore slump with this genre and that a new franchise would be just what they needed to get back on track. Dying Light would offer the developer a fresh start, with a new open world to craft, new characters to explore, and new gameplay mechanics to tinker with. Unfortunately, it just serves as the latest failure to enthrall the zombie-enthused masses.
Techland’s biggest blunder comes with the story. Dying Light stars Kyle Crane, possibly the most incompetent special forces agent in the history of video games. In the opening cutscene alone, Kyle botches his insertion into Harran (the fictional city that serves as the setting of this latest zombie outbreak), gets himself infected, and allows the guy who saved him to be killed. As the game progresses, Kyle’s stupidity begins to feel like a running joke, more sad than funny (I mean, I think I murmur more intelligent things in my sleep than this guy said over the course of the entire game).
Kyle is only the start of the story’s problems, unfortunately. Dying Light is full of one-note characters like the primary antagonist, Rais, a man reminiscent of a cheesy B-movie villain who kills hapless henchman on a whim and angrily pontificates about order versus chaos. There’s also the strong independent woman/potential love interest, Jade, who’s pretty and nice to you—and, therefore, you must care about her and her plights.
At times, though, Dying Light does seem to stumble onto some potential emotional gravitas. On more than one occasion, Kyle’s ineptitude gets friends killed, usually as a result of unwittingly leading Rais’ men to where survivors are hiding out. Despite Techland dragging me around by the nose like Curly in a Three Stooges short, I still grew to care about some of these survivors. Techland mercilessly stomped on those moments by quickly moving into prolonged action sequences, however, instead of allowing me to feel the full weight of their deaths.
Whereas the story completely failed in its endeavor to entertain me, at least Dying Light’s gameplay remains as a bastion of sorts from the loophole-laden cutscenes and dialogue that haphazardly forces the story forward. Take the day/night cycle, for example. During the day, the zombies, while still hostile, are far more manageable than at night, where the horde has larger numbers, moves faster, react more intelligently, hit stronger, and several new types of purely nocturnal zombies come out—some of which can deliver one-hit kills.
Daring to go out at night in these worsened conditions rewards the player with double experience—and even an XP bonus if you survive until sunrise. This provides an enjoyable risk/reward system, and adds some much-needed tension to the story’s scripted nighttime sequences.
The best part of Dying Light’s gameplay, though, is its world-traversal system. I’m hesitant to refer to it as “parkour,” because you’re rarely ever truly parkouring—and even if you are, because of the first-person camera, you really can’t tell. But being able to actively climb on almost anything in the world, grabbing onto nearly every ledge, and quickly conquering the world’s verticality is an invigorating feeling.
The parkour makes traversing Harran more enjoyable, and it also gives you the option to run away from a fight if the zombies ever become too much to handle—you simply scramble up the nearest scaffolding or building façade. This helps keep the repetitive hack-n-slash melee action seen in the game—also an issue in Dead Island—feeling a bit more fresh.
Not everything borrowed from Dead Island becomes less humdrum here, however. Dying Light uses a similar crafting and weapon degradation system, encouraging you to tediously look through or lockpick nearly every crate you find. Sidequests are also the same—unexciting fetch quests I’ve become far too accustomed to at this point. Some, infuriatingly, require multiple stops before you get the little bit of cash, XP, or item the questgiver will award you. Plus, the two distinctive areas of Harran don’t change or improve if you complete these quests. They just feel like a cheap way to lengthen the experience dramatically, since there seem to be about three sidequests to every story objective.
I did appreciate how different Harran’s two areas felt—they even forced me to change how I played. The game begins in the Slums, and about 60 percent of the story takes place here. The Slums have a decidedly Middle Eastern flavor to them, and although the area isn’t as graphically vivid as I’d like, the world feels crafted to take advantage of the traversal gameplay with plenty of ledges and easily crossable gaps between shacks.
Old Town, meanwhile, is the exact opposite, with grandiose buildings and towers that have a Western European feel. Bright colors and exotic signs are everywhere, and the area’s not nearly as scarred by the outbreak as the Slums. Old Town offers much wider streets, however, making it more difficult to traverse safely across the rooftops without the aid of a zipline. I found the differences between the two areas enjoyable, even if I’d rather play in the Slums.
Like with most of Techland’s work, I see the potential in Dying Light. But it comes across as yet another project where the developer can’t seem to get out of their own way. The parkour and risk/reward systems of the day/night cycle are nice aspects, but whether it’s in the writing or the game design, Dying Light tries too often to offer something for everyone—and instead offers nothing of real note to anyone because it never digs past the surface of its characters or mechanics.
Maybe one day, Techland will be able to put it all together and make that grand zombie epic they’ve been dreaming about. Given Dying Light’s boring, repetitive quests and complete mess of a story, though, we should just let it quietly fade to black.
| Developer: Techland • Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 01.27.15 | |
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6.0
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The parkour and risk/reward of the day/night cycle are nice features, but they aren’t enough to overcome the abysmal writing or the boring, repetitive fetch quests that unnecessarily bloat this game.
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| The Good | Risk/reward system of the day/night cycle; parkour is surprisingly competent. |
| The Bad | Abysmal writing; the entire game is one long monotonous fetch quest. |
| The Ugly | We’re starting to scrape the bottom of the zombie-naming barrel with descriptions such as “Biters” and “Volatiles.” |
| Dying Light is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the benefit of this review. | |
Just the two of us
When I first saw Kalimba at last year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, it was still called Project Totem, but what started out as a quirky side project meant to entertain guests at the Press Play holiday party a few years back quickly intrigued me with its potential as a full-blown puzzle-platformer.
I’ve always had a penchant for this genre, with friends from college still referring to me as an idiot savant when it comes to effortlessly working my way through any number of twisting, trap-filled corridors. But Kalimba is novel in that you’re never controlling just one protagonist, but two—and the duo must work together in myriad ways in order to progress.
On the surface, even with the duality twist, the game seems simple enough. You find yourself on a tropical island named Kalimba, which has been protected for generations by the magic of a totem pole. An evil shaman appears one day, however, and shatters the monument, looking to cloak the island in his unique brand of dark magic. The totem pole’s guardian realizes that she can control remnants of the old pole, two pieces at a time, in the hopes of building a bigger, more elaborate magical ward. Taking control of these pieces is where players step in. With guidance from an aloof talking pink bear named Hoebear, players must work their way through 24 levels, collecting intricate wooden carvings on the way to sealing the dark shaman away forever.
The most impressive thing about Kalimba is how smoothly the difficulty scales. You start off with minimal obstacles to demonstrate how the two characters work in unison, but the action ramps up. You’ll begin by just pressing the A button to jump, but you’ll eventually swap your characters back and forth, acquire special amulets that let one of your totems walk on the ceiling or change their size, and even obtain the power of limited flight.
Even with all these new mechanics building on top of each other as the game progressed, I never felt the challenge was too much to handle. That’s partly because some levels include themed minigames based around your new powers, which give you the chance to perfect your new skills before continuing on. Not once did I feel frustrated by a puzzle—instead, I welcomed each new one with glee, and even the handful of times I had to resort to trial-and-error, the checkpoint system was generous enough that I never found myself having to replay huge sections to get back to where I’d initially gotten stuck.
The levels also feel distinct enough that there’s never any sort of repetition. Each puzzle is carefully crafted to push you to explore new ways to use the increasing range of your abilities—and this makes each successful solution all the more satisfying.
What’s more, the simple-yet-colorful art design ensures there aren’t any unnecessary distractions to take you away from the task at hand—which I appreciated, since the puzzles only get more intricate in the game’s limited local co-op mode. While this option only consists of eight levels, having four totems bouncing around the screen (with each player controlling two) requires some intense teamwork and concentration.
These level designs also succeed because of the tight controls. It wouldn’t be much of a puzzle-platformer if they stunk, but there’s a precision here that veterans of the genre can appreciate. All the jumps (particularly in the later levels, once it becomes ingrained how far your little totem avatars can go) are spaced out just perfectly, and the obstacles are set up just right so that you can make some impressive runs through each course as you start to master them.
Kalimba’s primary fault is its length—or lack thereof. Between co-op and single-player, the game offers 32 levels in total. Yes, some of the charm in a game like this lies in mastering the levels, collecting every item, or performing a speedrun courtesy of an always-running clock, but it shouldn’t take players more than three hours to get through that initial playthrough, and then it’s diminishing returns after that.
Some extra options do enhance the replayability—like “Old Skool” mode, which places you at the start at the first level with three lives, and from there, you must get through the whole game in one sitting. But again, I can’t imagine Kalimba continually drawing players back again and again, because once you solve the puzzles, it’s much easier to replicate your results the second and third time through.
When a game leaves you simply asking for more, though, it’s hard to be too disappointed. What Kalimba lacks in substance, it more than makes up for in style. With inventive puzzles, tight controls, and colorful worlds, there’s more than enough to keep those twitch reflexes sharp, and Kalimba should prove to be plenty of fun for gamers looking to put their puzzle-platforming skills to the test.
| Developer: Press Play • Publisher: Microsoft • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 12.17.14 | |
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9.0
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I only wish Kalimba were a bit longer, because its inventive puzzles, charming art style, and tight controls equal a winning combination for this quaint puzzle-platformer.
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| The Good | Inventive, fun twist on the puzzle-platformer; the challenge steadily ramps up; excellent co-op mode. |
| The Bad | A very short experience. |
| The Ugly | Hoebear making fun of me for Achievement hunting. That hurts, dude. |
| Kalimba is a Xbox One exclusive. Review code was provided by Microsoft for the benefit of this review. | |
If you’re like me, you love a great multiplayer experience—but so many experiences are just the same modes reworked over and over again, to the point where you just end up playing Team Deathmatch because it’s so familiar, and it’s the one mode that developers can’t seem to screw up, no matter how hard they try. The folks at Turtle Rock—the developers who brought us the original Left 4 Dead—are trying something a little different with their next gaming foray, though. Evolve is introducing asymmetrical multiplayer via a 4-on-1 concept, where the four are hunters and the one is their prey. That prey, however, is a monstrous behemoth of unbelievable size and strength.
The potential for mayhem should be obvious, since you and your crew can mix and match among the game’s four classes, or you can decide to ruin someone’s night by being a particularly brutal and unforgiving creature. A multiplayer-only game can sometimes get tiresome quickly, however, especially if there isn’t an offline mode to balance things out.
Multiplayer-focused games also often live or die depending upon who you’ll have at your side (or facing off against you across the battlefield). If you play with your friends, not everyone will be available every time you get a hankering to go online, and sometimes some of the people you have to deal with while playing can make it more exhausting than fun, even if you’re the lone monster in this case.
So, I was particularly intrigued when I had the chance to go hands-on for the first time with Evolve, offline and solo. If you don’t have a group of friends to team up with (or against, in the case of the monster), you can still jump into one of the game’s maps and get your hunting fix.
In order to see the full potential benefits of playing Evolve alone, I jumped into the recently announced Evacuation campaign mode (a series of five random games that determine the fate of the game’s planet, Shear). Playing this mode offline allowed me to test out strategies with unfamiliar characters and maps, as well as get a taste of some of the 800,000 supposed variations in which Evacuation could play out. I switched characters between each chapter, and playing against the computer allowed me to level up different loadouts for different situations, a particularly useful ability considering that each stage of Evacuation’s campaign changes objectives. One stage could be the straightforward Hunt—the long-publicized standard 4-versus-1 deathmatch—while the next could be Nest—where the monster’s trying to protect six eggs scattered around the field from the hunters—or any of the other modes in the game.
Despite the addition of being able to go solo, Evolve is still heavily multiplayer focused. Evacuation, along with the game’s other modes, is still more enjoyable when playing with or against friends—after a few rounds, the enemy AI definitely seems to lack the tenacity, randomness, or organization you can get from a seasoned team of humans. Allowing people who might not run with a dedicated multiplayer crew to still experience the world is a nice option, though, whether you’re the monster picking off AI hunters or a hunter working with an AI team against an AI monster.
My introduction to playing Evolve alone served a second purpose beyond its reveal, however. I also got to go hands-on for the first time with a third monster: the Wraith. If Goliath is the “fighter” archetype of monsters and takes elements from Godzilla, and Kraken is the “wizard” inspired by Cthulhu, then Wraith is described as the “rogue/assassin,” taking its visual inspiration from mermaids and harpies. Wraith doesn’t have a lot of health or armor, but it’s easily the fastest and stealthiest of the monsters.
Taking advantage of these attributes, to a degree, are the monster’s four powers. Its Decoy maneuver does exactly as it says, dropping a clone of Wraith onto the battlefield. This turns the player invisible, perfect for making a quick escape when overwhelmed or great for prepping an ambush from behind as hunters unknowingly unload into your doppelganger. The decoy can also dish out damage on its own—making it all the more believable—but the second you attack as the real Wraith, the decoy dissipates, preventing any unfair double-monster scenarios.
Another of Wraith’s powers is Supernova, which triples its attack speed and strength as long as you remain in an area-of-effect circle that appears during the buff. Supernova is great for when you finally want to go on the offensive or focus on picking off lone hunters.
What I worry about when it comes to Wraith, however, are its other two abilities. I played probably a dozen games as this newest monster in my hands-on time, and I found myself relying a lot on Supernova and Decoy to perform hit-and-run-style tactics that just decimated my enemies (both human and AI). Throughout all of my domination, however, I struggled to find use for Wraith’s two additional powers: Warp Blast and Abduction.
Warp Blast sends Wraith shooting forward a short distance, culminating in a contained explosion (though the creature is literally blowing up part of itself to accomplish this, it doesn’t actually get hurt). The explosion, if it hits, does a good amount of damage—but considering that speed is Wraith’s strength, Warp Blast seemed to leave me vulnerable for longer than I’d like as I waited for the move to finish.
Its final power, Abduction, sounds cool and might work better in tandem with other powers than by itself, but I never really found a time to use it to my full advantage. Abduction has Wraith fly forward a great distance, and if it bumps into a hunter, it teleports the both of them back to the spot where the ability was activated. While it can help break up tight packs of hunters, given Wraith’s poor attack power, it might really only be effective after having already activated Supernova.
Wraith does provide a nice change of pace from Kraken and Goliath. I just wonder if she won’t end up getting a bit of a balance update down the line—and if I’ll find more usefulness in her full array of abilities once other players have shown off how to better use them.
Spelunking in the sand
When you have as much history as Tomb Raider, it’s always a big risk to deviate from the gameplay that’s defined the series and helped it last as long as it has. But four years ago, that’s just what Crystal Dynamics did when they decided to take Lara Croft out of the third-person action-adventure world and introduce her fans to some old-school, twin-stick-shooter gameplay.
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light ended up being a huge success as an ancillary adventure, smoothly blending the puzzle-solving from the main series with top-down shooting and co-op. So, it’s no surprise that while we wait for Lara’s next big action-adventure, Crystal Dynamics decided to revisit their spin-off and give it a sequel.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris starts off with our titular heroine doing what she does best: discovering relics and ruins. Lara’s searching for the Temple of Osiris in Egypt—a long-lost pyramid dedicated to the Egyptian god of the dead. She’s not alone, however, as she’s racing against Carter Bell, a young upstart in the field of archeology. Edging out Lara, Bell grabs Osiris’ fabled staff upon entering the tomb, ignoring Lara’s pleas for caution, and unknowingly breaking the magical seals holding back Set, the Egyptian god of war who murdered Osiris. With the help of the seals’ guardians—Osiris’ wife Isis, and their son Horus—Lara and Carter must drive Set back and prevent darkness from consuming the world by piecing together the remains of Osiris—just like Isis did thousands of years ago, according to legend.
Temple of Osiris will immediately feel familiar to fans of Guardian of Light. Just like before, the camera is locked far overhead at a three-quarters angle, and in terms of gameplay, Lara solves puzzles with her grappling hook and shoots bad guys using her guns and grenades.
One immediate difference you’ll notice with Temple of Osiris, though, is how much larger and more detailed the world is. Exploration stems from a massive hub area, and Lara will be able to investigate a dozen tombs themed after key members of Osiris’s court, like his silversmith, architect, or ferryman, each holding a piece of the god’s form. The tombs are meticulously detailed, and the dynamic lighting effects are truly impressive, considering how far away the camera sits from the action.
Besides the story-related ruins, though, the game also includes five challenge tombs that will push your puzzle-solving skills and a half dozen massive bosses that include corrupted Egyptian gods that have thrown in with Set, like Khepri, god of the sunrise, and Sobek, god of the Nile.
There’s also a customization system this time around. In Guardian of Light, gems were merely present as a way to increase your high score. Now, these precious stones have another purpose beyond points, since they allow Lara to unlock scattered treasure chests that bestow her with rings and amulets, which can augment her abilities. The more gems you have to spend on a chest, the more likely you’ll receive an item that will give Lara multiple positive benefits.
The puzzles in Temple of Osiris are far more involved this time around as well. Some remain simple timing puzzles, while others require Lara to actually change the seasons and put into effect a day-night cycle in order to open up different paths in the world. The game also includes a variety of puzzles that require nimble platforming, and Lara will need to use the Staff of Osiris to move columns or reflect light around darkened rooms.
The most impressive thing about the puzzles, however, might be how they change in co-op. You’re more than able to beat Temple of Osiris by yourself, as Lara will take the Staff of Osiris and be outfitted with all the abilities needed to overcome the challenges of the tombs. But if you play co-op, only the Egyptian characters, Isis and Horus, can use the Staff, and only Lara or Carter Bell can use the grappling hook, changing the dynamic of many puzzles and requiring teamwork to advance through the story.
Speaking of co-op, one big change we see is that now with the introduction of all these characters, up to four players can come together locally or online, instead of only two as in Guardian of Light. I couldn’t find any co-op games in the wild due to the limited number of players with their hands on the game before launch, so I can’t speak to the matchmaking, but I was able to gather the EGM Crew together, and two of us were playing locally, joined by two others via online. The game ran smoothly from a technical standpoint, but I felt that four players didn’t really add more to the gameplay than two did. If anything, it only made things more hectic, since we kept getting in each other’s way. The only times we were able to come together was against bosses—which, disappointingly, don’t scale with the extra players. With four guns firing away, the combat sections of the game were vanilla at best and a breeze to overcome.
The minimal differences between Lara versus Carter and Isis versus Horus were also disappointing—it felt like there were two unique characters and two clones who not only felt unneeded in co-op, but also unneeded in the story. The entire experience would’ve been better off had just Lara and Isis teamed up, and the game would’ve flowed more smoothly both in terms of co-op and the loose story that ties this arcade-style endeavor together.
Temple of Osiris builds on the foundation of what Guardian of Light started, giving us more levels, more puzzles, and more detail in the world that Lara has to explore. Unfortunately, it also gives us more co-op, and the game would’ve been better balanced with just two-player co-op again. Despite this, Temple of Osiris is still a fun, worthwhile adventure that shows why Lara Croft is such a great character, no matter the camera angle.
| Developer: Crystal Dynamics • Publisher: Square Enix • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 12.09.14 | |
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7.5
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Another fun twin-stick-shooter romp for Lara Croft, Temple of Osiris finds a way to go bigger and better in most regards, but four-player co-op was just too much on my TV screen—this one would’ve been better off with only two main characters instead of four.
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| The Good | Lots of interesting puzzles that dynamically change in co-op; solid twin-stick action. |
| The Bad | Locked camera can be a nuisance. 4-player co-op is more of a detriment than a boon. |
| The Ugly | Our news editor, Chris Holzworth, trolling the rest of the EGM Crew during 4-player co-op. |
| Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Square Enix for the benefit of this review. | |
Holy Lego Bat-Trilogy!
Batman, as a character, has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember. Growing up, I had Batman bedsheets, a Batman lunchbox, and I’d watch the syndicated reruns of the 1960s Batman during dinner with my mom and go absolutely bonkers each episode, shouting out each onomatopoeia as it flashed on screen with joyful enthusiasm. So, it was with a near-equal childlike glee when I found out that Adam West and the ‘60s TV show would be getting a pretty fair-sized tribute in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. Working one of my all-time favorite TV shows into a series that’s already established itself as a great jaunt for Bat-fans of all ages? Sign me up!
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham picks up right where the last game in the series left off. After his failed team-up with the Joker in Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes, Lex Luthor is still trying to become President of the United States, but he knows he’ll have to knock off the Justice League if he has any hopes of following through with the misdeeds he’d have to commit to get there. Enlisting the aid of other DC villains to his cause like the Joker again as well as Cheetah, Firefly, Killer Croc, and Solomon Grundy, Luthor sneaks into the Hall of Justice—and, from there, teleports his team of rogues to the Justice League’s orbital space station, the Watchtower.
Unbeknownst to the heroes and villains as they clash high above the Earth, though, is that a new villain, Brainiac, an android obsessed with collecting slices of various civilizations and preserving them in his personal macabre museum, has been up to mischief of his own. He’s gathering the seven spectrums of light in order to power up his shrink ray, and he plans to make Earth doll-sized and add it to his species-preserving collection. Only through the heroes and villains coming together to tackle Brainiac as a team—and visiting the homeworlds of each Lantern Corps—does Earth have a hope of surviving the unstoppable android.
What TT Games is able to accomplish here with this, their third Lego Batman, is nothing short of impressive. Sure, the gameplay’s mostly the same as it ever was: Go around smashing pieces of Lego bricks around the world to open up new pathways, collect a variety of items, or rebuild them into something useful to take on the bad guys. Along the way, you collect “studs,” the series’ form of in-game currency, to unlock extra characters and other goodies.
But the scale of this Lego Batman compared to the previous entries is what blew me away. There may only be 15 story levels, the same number as all other Lego games, but each one’s far larger and more intricate than before. What’s more, they offer myriad new puzzles that really put you to the test in Free Play mode if you want to 100-percent the game.
And the story itself is yet again one that Bat-fans of all ages will appreciate. It starts off pretty slow, not really hitting its stride until about the seventh level, but it’s chock-full of the simple-but-enjoyable slapstick humor we’ve come to expect from the Lego series of games. It also stays very true to the source material, so you’ll be hard pressed not to relish the twists and turns of this latest adventure.
Besides the story, though, the game also offers nearly another 15 levels just to run around in and find a variety of DC or Lego themed collectibles. Whether it’s the Legion of Doom headquarters, the Moon, or each and every homeworld for each respective Lantern Corps, you’ll be blown away by just how much you can explore—and how much detail went into each area. From the lava rivers of Ysmault to the emerald fields of Oa, or the exotic forests of Odym to the prisons of Nok, Free Play mode will suck up your time as you undertake sidequests and hunt for the 250 gold bricks scattered about the DC Universe.
There’s also a special post-credits level. Not only can you rescue Adam West 30 times in the game (much like you had to with Stan Lee in Lego Marvel), but you can play as him, too. The post-credits level is a tribute to the 1960s Batman, with Adam West as the narrator. You can (briefly) drive the ‘60s Batmobile and then take on the Joker—redesigned to look like Cesar Romero. He even has a little Lego mustache poking through his white facepaint. It’s an epic showdown worthy of the Batusi!
Beyond all the extra story content, there are also 150 different characters to collect and play with. You’ll find variations on the main characters, like Batman of Zur-En-Arrh and lesser-known villains like Music Meister—even the reality-altering fifth-dimension inhabitants Bat-Mite and Mister Mxyzptlk. If they were ever a part of DC lore, chances are they might be here. Beyond Adam West, a few other random celebrities make an appearance, like Smodcast host and legendary Bat-fan Kevin Smith, the Looney Tunes’ version of the Green Lantern, the Green Loontern (Daffy Duck dressed as Green Lantern), and Conan O’Brien. With the first two, I can at least see some loose connection to the DC Universe, but have no idea why Conan was there, and he proved to be extremely annoying while serving as the guide for many of the hub worlds. He’d often repeat himself to the point where I almost muted the TV when he was around.
But, as the narrator of the 1960s Batman TV Show used to say at the start of each second episode of the two-part stories: The worst is yet to come. For as much as TT Games was able to cram into Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, there are a lot more technical issues than normal. You’ll see framerate drops on almost every other level, and they often crop up at the worst times. I can’t remember experiencing this with a Lego game before, so it was really jarring for the issues to pop up as often as it did here. It’s also still a little mind-boggling that TT Games hasn’t instituted online co-op into their games yet. I understand that local co-op probably works better for a game like this, given its chaotic nature, but I think offering players the option would be nice.
The camera also remains a greater threat than anything the Legion of Doom could hope to throw at you: quest-givers hidden away behind the scenery, your hero falling off an edge because the field of view doesn’t follow them into a blind corner, or just trying to keep all the action onscreen as you take projectile damage from enemies you can’t even see.
The technical shortcomings don’t sabotage the overall package, though. With dozens of hours of post-story content to keep players coming back for more, plenty of new worlds ready to explore, and a story that somehow finds a way to entertainingly tie it all together, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham remains as reliable and enjoyable for fans as Bat-Shark repellent.
| Developer: TT Games • Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 11.11.14 | |
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8.5
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Despite some technical shortcomings, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham does a fine job of continuing to build on what the series has established while also hitting all the right notes to keep pleasing Bat-fans of all ages.
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| The Good | Massive universe to explore. ADAM WEST! |
| The Bad | Camera is a nuisance more than ever; surprising amount of framerate drops. |
| The Ugly | Just how much I know about a TV show that originally aired 20 years before I was born. |
| Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, OS X, iOS, Wii U, 3DS, and PS Vita. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Warner Bros. for the benefit of this review. | |
The past repeats itself
It’s a little hard to believe, what with all the releases the series has seen, but Assassin’s Creed Unity marks the first time that an entry in Ubisoft’s history-based action-adventure franchise has been developed solely for a new generation of consoles since, well, the very first game. The original Assassin’s Creed was full of great ideas and really showed the potential of what the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation could offer developers and players alike, but it had some rough edges and poorly implemented early concepts, many of which wouldn’t be realized until its sequel, Assassin’s Creed II.
The hope this time around was that Unity would allow Assassin’s Creed to make a splash on new-gen without having to deal with the growing pains usually associated with a shift in technology—that it could introduce new ideas without the bumps and bruises seen when the series first launched. Unfortunately, Unity’s ideas are as much of a mixed bag as the 2007 original: Some are great, some are bad, and some are just poorly implemented.
Continuing the thread started in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Abstergo—the megacorporation at the heart of the series—has begun mass-producing the equivalent of a set-top box Animus they call “Helix”, allowing everyone at home to now enjoy a variety of Assassin adventures filtered through their rose-colored glasses. When you start playing, though, your box is hacked by the actual Assassins, and they ask you to help them by playing through the French Revolution in 18th-century Paris. So, you’re basically playing a videogame where you play a person playing a videogame. So meta, Ubisoft. Also, very boring. Here, though, you take over as Arno Dorian, a young lad whose father dies under mysterious circumstances and is adopted by the Grandmaster of the Templars.
You watch as Arno grows up and then begins a love affair with his adopted sister, Elisé, always in the dark to his adopted father’s affairs. When the Grandmaster is murdered, however, Arno comes across the Assassin Order—which, unbeknownst to him, puts our hero at odds with his love, who’s been trained in the Templar ways all this time. What follows then is easily one of the most gripping stories to date in the Assassin’s Creed universe: Arno’s tale is filled with romance, intrigue, mystery, and lots of action. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Arno might have to duke it out with Black Flag’s Edward Kenway and Assassins Creed II’s Ezio Auditore on my all-time favorite Assassins list because of his robust character growth over the course of the game.
Sadly, all the other players in Arno’s story—except maybe Elisé—fall completely flat in terms of their development. Characters who are important to the canon of Assassin’s Creed like Napoleon Bonaparte (he wields an Apple of Eden at one point in his life), critical figures in the French Revolution like Maximilien de Robespierre (commonly believed to be one of the architects to blame for the Reign of Terror), and even Arno’s mentor, Pierre Bellec, along with many others, are underutilized and barely serve as little more than footnotes in the development of our protagonist. This was disappointing, considering how many great supporting characters we’ve had in previous games like Leonardo da Vinci, the Borgias, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Blackbeard, and Black Bart. I wanted Arno to pal around with Napoleon. I wanted him to learn more from Bellec. And I wanted him to have some banter with Robespierre. I got none of this.
And since I mentioned the real world, I think now’s a great time to bring up the most startling thing about Unity’s story: the complete removal of that aspect from the game. Not once do you leave Arno and Helix and move about in reality. Instead, you get a handful of voiceovers from your random Assassin hacker telling you what to do and why to do it.
These sequences, which were a welcome respite in previous games, are now replaced by “server bridge” scenarios where Abstergo IT security tries to track you in the primary French Revolution scenario—so, in order to protect you, the hidden Assassin jacks you out of 18th-century Paris and into one of three other time periods. Once you complete a traversal challenge, you go back to the French Revolution, but if you want to revisit these other time periods, you’ll be welcomed back by minigames in which you have to collect inconsequential data clusters that award you 10, 20, or 50 points. This is by far the worst thing Unity attempts to add to the series—it feels like a pointless excuse to give players a chance to climb the Eiffel Tower during World War II or see familiar Templar designs in medieval times.
But there’s more to Assassin’s Creed than just the story. Ubisoft loves to point out their three “pillars of gameplay” (combat, stealth, and navigation), and they’ve said that they set out early in Unity’s development to address each one and hopefully improve upon it for new-gen—but they were only successful in some regards.
The first major tweak comes with the combat, which feels like a change we didn’t know we needed until it happened. It’s much more difficult now, since the overpowered counter button has been removed in place of the more finesse-oriented parry maneuver. Shades of the Batman: Arkham games bleed through here—your enemy’s lifebar will light up above their head when they’re about to attack, which allows you time to prepare your parry. If your timing’s right, your opponent will now be left wide open for a follow-up attack. If you’re surrounded, however, you may have several opponents try to attack at the same time—and Arno’s far more human than Ezio or Edward and will fall to enemy blades if he finds himself surrounded by more than three foes in most cases. The days of piling up dozens of enemy bodies in the streets are over, but walking away from an encounter alive is surprisingly more satisfying now.
Another huge improvement comes in the form of the stealth elements, particularly during assassination missions. This was a huge focus for the development team, because fans have been clamoring for more emphasis on this for years—and part of the success of this change comes about due to the aforementioned combat becoming more difficult. Sneaking around enemy fortresses and encampments is now a must if you want to survive.
The assassination missions are also more open-ended, and the game tells you before you even start your attempt how many entrances exist and how many opportunities you’ll have for special assassinations (my favorite was on a guillotine stage) before letting you loose to overcome the seemingly impossible odds however you choose. Optional mission objectives, such as paying off a maid to open up a particular window or retrieving a monk’s lost keys to open up a church’s back door, are also present and allow for more possible strategies when tackling your task, but they’re by no means mandatory. I had so much fun with these that I wish there’d been more—or even an extra mode just dedicated to assassinating different targets again and again.
As welcome as these improvements are when it comes to two of the three gameplay pillars, however, there’s one that falls flat on its face: the new parkour system. I put more than 35 hours into Unity, and I still never felt like I got the full hang of it. In the original Assassin’s Creed, you held the RT and A buttons (or R2 and X on the PS3) to climb around. Later on in the series, the trigger button alone handled this duty, and the series did away with the grip that became known as the “Creed claw,” since you’d spend most of the game holding those buttons. Unfortunately, in Unity, the developers have gotten away from the one-button concept in favor of a ridiculous four-button system. You still hold the right trigger to run, but if you want to run up, you need to hold A (or X on the PS4) in conjunction with the trigger. If you want to run down or climb over low walls, you hold B and the trigger (or Circle on the PS4) instead. If you want to climb into windows of a certain altitude, you hold both triggers.
Honestly, it becomes a real pain in the neck after a while, because it never feels as intuitive as the one-button system. At one point, I spent 30 seconds dancing around the four corners of a window I was trying to sneak into—before I remembered that I needed to press the left trigger, too. And there’s nothing like falling into a crowd of angry soldiers because you slipped and pressed B instead of A. It felt like I was fighting the controls the entire time, and even when I thought I was doing it right, Arno felt floaty and not nearly as controllable as he should’ve been.
To Ubisoft’s credit, the “controlled descent” feature, which allows you to slide down high walls or quickly get down from towers with RT and B (R2 and Circle on the PS4), is a welcome addition. But I don’t understand why the developers couldn’t just keep the one-trigger system and then add that controlled-descent mechanic on top of it.
And this seems to be Assassin’s Creed Unity in a nutshell. For every good feature or two that Ubisoft Montreal implemented here, they did something else that made me question what they were thinking.
Another example of elation and disappointment comes during the side missions, where you’ve got a cornucopia of tasks that vary greatly in scope and objective. I loved some of them, such as the Café Théâtre’s missions. The Café Théâtre is a small bistro in Paris under Assassin ownership and serves as Arno’s home base, much like Monteriggioni did for Ezio. It also affords the game an excuse to reintroduce an economy system like that seen in Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood. Having a constant flow of currency (and being able to increase that flow via special missions and unlocking other clubs around Paris) is a huge boon and also makes the customization far less daunting, since you’re more able to easily afford the pricier, more powerful items over time. The customization and upgrade system are also surprisingly well balanced, and I never felt like I lacked the necessary skills to complete an assassination.
The co-op missions are also a healthy change for the series and provide some really interesting side stories, along with the single-player-driven Paris Story missions that add both color and context to the time period, as well as the Assassin-Templar war. My only wish is that co-op could’ve somehow been worked into the main campaign. Also, since these missions—much like the game itself—are so narrative-centric, many of them lack the replayability you might expect.
But for every great Club or Paris Story mission, there are the disappointing Murder Mysteries and Nostradamus Enigmas. In the Murder Mysteries, Arno must help the bumbling police force solve various crimes around Paris using his Eagle Vision—but these segments are beyond simple. While you’re awarded with a rare item upon the completion of each case, these mysteries often require far too much running around Paris to solve a crime that you could easily piece together after only a few telling clues—or, if you’re really lazy, you can just Google the answer, since many are based on real-life events.
The Nostradamus Enigmas, meanwhile, are supposed to be the spiritual successors to the Glyph puzzles of Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood or the hacking puzzles from the real world in Black Flag. Instead, cryptic riddles point you to landmarks around Paris, where you scour the building in time-sensitive Eagle Vision and look for weird drawings. There’s no thinking involved—just more tiresome legwork.
Even in terms of the look and feel of Paris, you can find things that’ll leave you scratching your head. The city does feel more alive than any previous Assassin’s Creed setting, with gorgeous graphics and animation helping highlight the scores of NPCs crammed onscreen. But it also brings about the potential for several hysterical glitches, like people snapping into place like a movie extra late for the “action” call trying desperately to get their spot, or some getting constantly stuck on random pieces of furniture in houses or boxes in the market. The vibe is also rather bland, with most of the districts taking on similar, monotonous tones that just start to wear you down after some time. The game does briefly take an aside in Versailles, but even then I found myself longing for the cities and landscapes from previous games.
For the first time in a long time, in fact, an Assassin’s Creed game felt like a bit of a grind. Arno’s story, the new combat, the return to stealth, and the economy and customization were all high points. But the implementation and addition of many other ideas fell short of the quality I expect from this franchise. I can’t help but think that even with a four-year development cycle, this game needed some more time to polish and flesh out the concepts. It’s kind of funny how a franchise built around reliving history is reliving some of its own now, though—so, at the very least, I’m still looking forward to its sequel when, hopefully, they finally get a lot of this stuff right.
| Developer: Ubisoft Montreal • Publisher: Ubisoft • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 11.11.14 | |
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6.5
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Unity follows in the original Assassin’s Creed’s footsteps in many ways as the first game in the series developed exclusively for the new generation of consoles. And, much like its ancestor, for every good thing Unity does, it adds something else that just leaves you scratching your head—giving the whole experience a hit-or-miss feel that we haven’t seen from the series in a long time.
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| The Good | A strong main narrative; combat and stealth are much improved. |
| The Bad | Fighting the parkour system the entire game; side missions are hit-or-miss. |
| The Ugly | All those French people…and almost no French accents. |
| Assassin’s Creed Unity is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Ubisoft for the benefit of this review. | |
Composer of the cosmos
When you think about the library of Kinect games for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, it’s a rather sad state of affairs. One developer, however, has consistently put their peripheral expertise to good use and taken advantage of what’s otherwise been a disappointing piece of hardware. Of course, I’m speaking about Harmonix.
Dance Central provided the group fun of Rock Band—but without the expensive plastic-toy inputs. Wanting to continue this trend but offer fans a bit of changeup from their bootyshake-prompting staple, they teamed up with Disney to explore the classic combination of animation and music: Fantasia.
Fantasia: Music Evolved is one of those few Kinect games that you can actually play comfortably from your favorite chair, because it only requires your arms. You play as Yen Sid’s—the wizard from Fantasia whose name is conveniently “Disney” spelled backward—newest apprentice, and must prove you’re worthy of wearing his magic hat in the hopes of responsibly conducting the cosmos with your rhythm-infused fingertips. As your mastery improves, new worlds full of music and sound will come alive as you play 33 classical and contemporary songs, along with unique minigames, like beatboxing with talking vegetables or harmonizing with a yeti, to add your own special tracks to each world.
Along the way, you’ll also encounter Yen Sid’s former apprentice, Scout. This is where Music Evolved differs from most other Harmonix titles, since it actually provides a story. Once you’ve grasped the gameplay basics, Scout will come along and accidentally unleash “The Noise,” a cacophony of offbeat, ear-splitting rhythms that you must vanquish from the game’s 10 worlds by playing through the soundtrack and unlocking a pair of remixes for each song. Some remixes, for example, might see a classical piece from Dvorak and give it the old 8-bit treatment or take a contemporary artist like CeeLo Green and give “Forget You” a dubstep drubbing.
This is where I found a bit of fault with Music Evolved, however. With only 33 songs at launch (more coming via DLC, of course) you can blow through the whole thing pretty quickly—and disappointingly, for a $60 title. In order to force a second playthrough, though, you can’t unlock the second remix for each song, and therefore can’t 100-percent the game unless you play each song again after beating the story mode.
While it was still fun, I felt limited by not being able to just unlock each remix and minigame on my first run and hated having to go back and play many songs that I didn’t particularly care for a second or third time seemingly just to push the game from a three-hour experience to a six-hour endeavor.
Also, 33 songs isn’t a lot at all, but I was also disappointed by the fact that a game with the word “Disney”—a company known for its fantastic cinematic music—didn’t use any iconic songs from their films to flesh out the soundtrack. One could argue that the original Fantasia only used classical compositions, and the couple of original pieces that composer Inon Zur (best known for contributing to game soundtracks such as Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, and Soul Calibur V) adds are great, but then why do we have to deal with Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj? I’d much rather have had any number of songs from The Lion King, Aladdin, Mary Poppins, Cinderella, or The Jungle Book to really hammer home the Disney feel and flesh out what quickly feels like a paltry playlist.
That said—and musical tastes aside—I couldn’t deny how much fun I had during the short time Music Evolved lasted. Each of the game’s worlds is beautifully designed in regards to the cartoonish art style, and being able to interact with each one in weird, wonderful ways filled me with a surprising, childlike glee. The Kinect picked up my motions rather seamlessly, even in my tiny living space, and as I swept my arms around and saw the bright flashes of light and color onscreen, I felt like I was indeed moving the heavens to music like Mickey back in the 1940 film. Unlike Mickey, though, it’s much harder to fail in Music Evolved, and I found myself racking up huge multipliers and nailing at least 80 percent of the moves in every given song. There’s also no option to bump up the difficulty—songs are simply rated on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the hardest.
Beyond the core gameplay, though, the minigames might the brightest star in your orchestral sky. An assortment of different situations actually task you to think a little with pattern recognition and even require hopping about your living room as you charge up musical solar panels or realign the displaced pieces of a voice synthesizer. These elements aren’t limited to outside the songs, either. Five different games called “Composition Spells,” which also play an integral part to Scout’s story, allow you to mix notes while in the middle of playing a song and add a track unique to that particular playthrough.
With the ability to record game clips, you can also upload your best or most original performances to the Music Evolved YouTube channel, providing an interesting social wrinkle to what, by nature, is probably one of the least social of Harmonix’s games to date. There’s a local multiplayer component to Music Evolved, but it’s only for two people, and it can be a bit hard to track whose cues are whose when various swipes, punches, and traces start filling the screen.
Fantasia: Music Evolved may not be the deepest game, but it’s definitely a memorable one. It blends Harmonix’s ability to utilize music in interesting, dynamic ways with Disney’s uncanny knack to make most anyone feel like a kid provides a fun—albeit short—romp that once again provides that rare good Kinect experience.
| Developer: Harmonix • Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 10.21.14 | |
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7.5
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Waving your arms in front of your TV like you’re conducting some kind of cosmic orchestra is a surprising amount of fun, but the lack of content leaves the experience feeling a bit bare.
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| The Good | Simple, fun gameplay; looking around Yen Sid’s workshop; Inon Zur’s original compositions. |
| The Bad | Lack of songs on disc, repeat playthroughs required to unlock all songs/remixes. |
| The Ugly | Harmonix is still the only developer who knows how to make a fun Kinect game. |
| Fantasia: Music Evolved is available on Xbox One and Xbox 360. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Harmonix for the benefit of this review. | |
RayCarsilloWrites.com 