Season's Greetings!

Achievements and trophies are like the doors of a Christmas advent calendar. You open them up as you progress towards your ultimate goal, the end of the game, that double door on the 24^th with the big chocolate behind it.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a visual journey through the trophies and achievements for the games that I’ve completed thus far. These are what have been behind the double doors in my own year-long advent calendar:

1: Bulletstorm

2: Rage

3: Battlefield 3

4: Metal Gear Solid

As Metal Gear Solid has no trophy support here's a reminder of my terrible rating.

5: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

6: Little Big Planet

7: Aliens Vs Predator

8: LA Noire

9: Driver: San Francisco

10: Dead Space 2

11: FIFA 12

As I didn't 'finish' the game, just played a season, there was of course no trophy stating that the game had been completed. So here's a picture of the virtual me that I created to use in the game. 

12: Mass Effect 3

13:Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

14: God of War

15: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

16: SOCOM 4

17: Medal of Honor

Unfortunately I've been a bit too busy enjoying Christmas to get on with the task at hand, so nothing's been completed lately. Hopefully I'll get back on track once the silly season is over.

Happy New Year!

Well that was short, and not particularly sweet.

It only took me about 5 or 6 hours to play through Medal of Honor (<- insert u). It was actually quite lucky that the game was so short, it was pretty irritating at times, and a longer experience would have gone from mildly infuriating to full on annoying.

Come to think of it, the game would have been shorter had I not happened across two game breaking bugs that forced me to restart two missions from the beginning. On one occasion my AI teammates were supposed to open a door so that we could proceed on our merry way, but they just sat in cover and there was no way to advance through the mission. Reset, plus a little swearing. Another time the beardy dude I was on a sniping mission with ploughed headlong through a door without even opening it, Patrick Swayze in Ghost style, and I was left on the other side with no way to progress through to the next area. Reset, plus a whole heap of swearing.

The game was full of bugs like this coupled with bad design choices. Graphical glitches were commonplace, most character’s feet and ankles were submerged a foot beneath whatever it was that they were supposed to be standing on. They’d then pop up to their proper place, before slowly sinking back down to mid-shin. I wasn’t allowed to open doors by myself, I could only do so only when told to. If we needed to hop a small waist high wall I had to wait for each of my squad to do so before I was offered the vault button prompt, lest I go before them and upset the pecking order. At other times I was required to do a ‘buddy boost’ up walls about seven feet high. I was such a rubbish soldier that I had to be pulled up these walls, and then watch on with shame in my heart and tears behind my night vision goggles as my supple and athletic teammates leapt up these same walls without any need for assistance, and certainly no assistance from a withered, feeble little wretch such as the guy as I was playing.

Speaking of which, who exactly was it that was I playing? This was yet another military shooter that throws you around from one faceless, characterless soldier to another. This one’s called Rabbit, this one’s called Douche, this one’s called I don’t fucking know nor rightly care. I knew what my teammates names were though, mainly because they wouldn’t stop running into my line of fire, so much so that I ended up failing several missions for persistent friendly fire.

There were other oddities and annoyances that showed that the game was rushed and lazy. Vehicles exploded without fire. One enemy jeep just jumped up into the air and the doors fell off in an approximation of an explosion. Occasionally grenades that I’d thrown didn’t go off. Sprinting felt like you were running through treacle, probably because my character’s legs were submerged in the earth below, like everyone else’s. You could ask your teammates for ammo, and when near enough to them a prompt would appear on screen. The problem was that this prompt came up whether you needed ammo or not, so every time I went near an ally I’d be like “Oh what’s this message, oh not again, no I don’t want ammo!!!” Why did it have to pop up every time, why couldn’t it do so only when I was low on ammo? Stupid game.

I hadn’t planned to talk about each and every game’s credits after discussing the lengthy credits of SOCOM 4, and I certainly hadn’t intended to look for amusing names in these credits, but CG Coordinator ‘Barry Poon’ certainly deserves a mention. Thankfully the credits ran for only 11 minutes, which was greatly appreciated because they featured one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. I looked it up and it was by Linkin Park. Ugh. Here’s a link for you. It’s really, really bad. You have been warned. 

I think I’ve had my fill of military shooters for a while now. And so I’m going to go from one glitchy, bug filled game to another. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been slowly getting back into Skyrim. I know there’s a lot left for me to do, even with ignoring all side quests, and I still find myself getting distracted, wandering off exploring and collecting, so I’ll have to try to be more disciplined with it, otherwise I'll never finish this pile.

17 down, 33 to go.

If Matrix were here, he'd laugh too.

I’ve not really talked about game credits yet, which is surprising as I’ve sat through 16 different sets of credits in the last three months. I just finished SOCOM 4, and the credits for that game ran for an incredible amount of time, 26 minutes. The audio guys obviously knew that they were running for far too long to be considered appropriate, because after 15 minutes of the game’s main theme they did a five minute old school 8-bit rendition of it, before then switching back to a little six minute reprise of the orchestral version.

They were like the credits from a Ubisoft game, the perpetrators of the lengthiest credits up to this point in my journey, with Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Driver: San Francisco both sporting incredibly chunky offerings.

I wouldn’t mind if there were thrilling things happening in these credits, or at least some pertinent info that was being imparted, but it’s mainly just useless listings. What’s the point in crediting some of these people? How much was the ‘Digital Distribution Manager of the Playstation Store’ really responsible for the game I just played, and honestly, who really gives a shit who that person is anyway?

Best name spotted in the mammoth credits? Edmund Zoo. Not sure what he did exactly, I was too busy cocking one eyebrow and nodding in amused approval as I noted his name.

I should also have noted the names of the people that did the additional voices for the enemies in SOCOM 4, as they featured a plethora of ridiculous accents. Cheesy South African, Cockney, and Aussie accents made it sound like they’d hired a bunch of tough guy actors from Lethal Weapon 2 and EastEnders, along with Bennett off Commando, then just got them drunk and recorded them messing about whilst taking the piss out their own acting.

But, aside from credit complaints and voice acting gripes, I actually didn’t think this one was too bad. Sure, it featured a totally generic, forgettable story, a bunch of barely sketched soldiers blowing stuff up for whatever nonsense reason they were going on about. But some of the missions were quite fun, and it was good to try out a variety of tactics through the directions you could issue to your squad.

I’m not really sure how the experience would have been using a normal controller, but I found that the Move and Sharpshooter combo was pretty enjoyable really. It was hard to calibrate perfectly, it would always end up a little off. It was floaty, and subsequently strayed as you played, but it was solid enough to still be playable. It suffered a little from the third person over-the-shoulder perspective as this sort of light gun game benefits from being in first person. There were also several sneaking levels, which were rather difficult to navigate. Stealth requires tight control and pinpoint movement, something the Sharpshooter doesn’t afford, and it was at its best when you were laying waste to a crowd with a hefty machine gun.

One other drawback was a physical one. I found that holding the gun up for extended periods was far too much effort for someone as lazy as me, so elbows on knees it was. Unfortunately the swiveling movement associated with aiming resulted in red, chafed knees. But I soldiered on, and ultimately it was an enjoyable afternoon spent finishing this one off, despite what my poor old knees had to say about it. I think I’ll save Killzone 3, the other Move compatible game in the pile, for another time when I’m again feeling the need for something different.

I loved the fact that this one was easy to get out of the way quickly, so I’m going with another military shooter that’s probably quite short for my next game, Medal of Honor. 

16 down, 34 to go.