Assassin's Creed II

You enter the world of AC II from the start of the game.  It teaches you how to play in a quick and unobtrusive way which is worked elegantly into the plot and it lets you find things out as you go along.  I found the controls easy to use and Ezio's movement around the game world is smooth.

The young Ezio surveys the Florentine cityscape

Speaking of the game world, it is beautifully constructed, substantial and believable.  I found just running across the open space between a city and an outlying village felt like an adventure in which I was taking part.  Sounds and sights change so convincingly throughout the day that there is a tangible sense of the cold air of morning turning into the heat of the afternoon and then the pleasant cool of evening.

Despite all this my most distinct memory is of my own incompetence.  Climbing up the inside of Florence's largest church (I can't remember the name) I fell off so many times that I was cursing and gripping the controller as if I wanted to break it, not for the first time.  And of course I was blaming the game for making me do the same thing over and over again.  On reflection I'm not completely letting the game off.  Of course it has to be challenging, but if I fail in the game surely the most appropriate way to punish me is to prevent me from progressing in the way I would have if I had succeeded, not make me start again from the beginning like an incompetent schoolboy.  I know this is the usual way of doing things but I can think of one game which has done things differently with great success (and I'll be doing an entry about it at some point in the future).

I do not want to take anything away from this game though.  I love so many things about it.  I could spend an hour moving about Florence without achieving anything and without getting bored.  I love it's blacksmiths and thieves and artists and especially it's prostitutes and most of all I am overjoyed about it's swimming which it such a relief after all the drownings of the first game.

I've got several new games for Christmas and so I've not finished AC II yet and will probably write a second entry about it in the future.

Alpha Protocol

Okay, so it owes a lot to Deus Ex!

There is no denying this game's most significant influence but that doesn't make it a bad game.

Once the tutorial part of the game is over (it's woven quite well into the plot) there are groups of missions based in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Italy, Taiwan and then the USA.



Who is the shadowy figure reflected in this image?


Many of the missions (the best ones) involve entering a location and taking out or avoiding the bad guys and probably hacking a computer or opening a safe or killing a significant individual.  In each stage there are other achievements too.

Some missions are simply a case of going to talk to an NPC who has information.  Their opinion of you goes up or down depending on what you say to them.  This is a good change of pace and you get the impression that these conversations make a difference to the outcome of the game.



Data on one of the factions in the game - perhaps it's name is a nod to the game's biggest influence.


If I had wanted to do the whole game by stealth - and it is somewhat implied that this might be possible - it would have been a struggle.  There are boss fights in the game which frustrated me a lot.  The NPC called Brayko was the worst.  He only wore a suit but was made invincible by the repeated taking of cocaine.  After a bit of a snort he approached and cut my armoured guy to ribbons with a knife, then survived repeated volleys of point-blank headshots from an assault rifle before running off to get another nose-full while his goons kept me busy.  I must have been killed fifty times before I finally got the better of him.  If you are planning to play this game then go into Brayko's mansion with the heaviest armour you can afford and all the med-kits you can carry.  You would also do well to turn the music off before you get to this stage.

I had a great time with this game otherwise.  Who wouldn't want to spend a few hours sneaking up behind guys and pressing X to make blood spurt out of their necks? (when you could choose O for a non lethal takedown).

Little Big Planet

I feel as if I should not swear so much while playing such a cute game.

 

When LBP first starts you hear the familiar tones of Stephen Fry doing a voice over to a slightly twee (okay, very twee) introductory film and he is immediately the right man for the job. He also voices all instructional clips and the tutorials in the build your own level or My Moon section.

The game is a platformer with the lively appearance of three dimensional animation. The customisable character you play is a sackboy or sackgirl. I have played through quite a bit of the campaign on single player so far.

My Sackboy

There are several levels for each continent in the world, starting in Europe and moving through Africa, South, Central and North America and then on to Asia which is where I have got to. The levels get progressively harder and at first I did not notice that it was possible to fail to complete a level. I have now been brutally disabused of that happy illusion. Each level is split into numerous sections and if your sackperson is killed four times in any section you have to start again (or give up).

The last level I completed was Sensei’s Lost Castle. I hate to think how many sackboys I was responsible for the deaths of! There are two unbearable facts about dying outright.


i. When you die you know that the difficult bit that killed you was almost certainly close to the end of the level
ii. After you have died about three times you are so aggravated that you proceed to die again, this time at an easy point in the level which you have previously got past with no problems.


When you die it is the world’s fault! it is because of the stupid design of the level! It is because you pressed the button and nothing bloody happened!


You can build your own level in the My Moon section, and publish for others to try. My first attempt is looking a bit underdeveloped so far and there is a lot you have to learn to make a sensible level. There are loads of published ones out there to play which are quite a bit easier than the main game (on the whole) and generally shorter. I’ve played about twenty and only one of those was comparable in length and variety to the levels of the main game but quite a few of the others were interesting and worth playing.


For all my frustrations I have found Little Big Planet a worthwhile place to visit and I will definitely be back.