Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 / Multi | Developer: Ubisoft

Pop or feed the disc into your machine, allow it to install, get the huge (over one gig) patch to fix all the things that should’ve been fixed before it was released, sign in or skip the Ubisoft registration and you’ll finally be ready to play Black Flag, a prequel to the previous game, Ass Creed III (2012). It takes the seafaring aspect of III and expands it, giving you full access to your very own upgradable pirate ship and a huge ocean environment in which to jolly and roger around in.

Navigating is as simple as turning the bow of your ship in the direction you want to go and instructing the crew to drop sails. There are occasional hazards and enemy fleets to contend with, but unlike, for example, TLoZ: Wind Waker (2003), the actual journeying from place to place isn't dull. You can pick up flotsam and jetsam, go whaling (nasty, nasty business), engage other ships in combat and even have the crew sing sea shanties to fill the silence. The shanties are excellent.

Once you've discovered a location and synced with it by climbing to specific high points you can fast travel there at any time without having to set sail. Fast travel comes in very handy for side-quests and gathering collectables: Animus fragments, maps, buried treasure, hunting, crafting, upgrading (self and ship) and collecting sea shanty pages are some of what the world offers. The menus are packed with additional info relating to all aspects of the gameworld, from actual historical records of people and locations to transcribed song lyrics.

The story is better than anything Desmond ever had. As Edward Kenway you'll make friends, lose friends and even bury a few. I loved how they deepened the layers of interaction through him. You’re an Abstergo employee playing around inside the genetic memories of someone else who, at one time, is a pirate masquerading as an Assassin who’s masquerading as a Templar. Bravo, team.

The modern day sections of the game are more colourful than usual, but are still generally crap in comparison to the Animus adventures. Searching for sticky notes is a pain in the ass and playing a variation of Frogger to hack a computer is stupid.

The music has always been one of the best things about the series. In that it excels again, this time courtesy of Brian Tyler. It's been in my head for weeks.

I'd rather not end this review on a downer, but Ubisoft leave me little choice because in order to access small but crucial parts of the game—parts that are on the actual disc when you buy it, not DLC—players are required to create an account with their UPlay division. If you want to acquire all ship adornments and completely fill your inventory in the one player game then you need that UPlay account. Consequently, my AC IV inventory remains incomplete.

4 teeth of Neptune out of 5

Serious Sam - The first Encounter

Genre: FPS | Players: 1-4 | Developer: Croteam

Note: the version reviewed here is the classic PC version, not the HD remake of 2009.

The best way to describe Serious Sam is to say that it is to Quake likes what Duke Nukem was to doom likes: It's his unhinged, degenerate cousin. the one that hops naked on the table at the wedding of your sister. and starts to write his name on the tablecloth with his piss. 

Only he does it with a perfect gothic font, in  ancient Latin, and his piss smells like Channel N°5. this is what Serious Sam amounts to. The game is stupid, linear, doesn't require much strategy (only in how you're going to handle the inhuman mass of enemy he's throwing at you, sometimes up to more than a hundred at a time.), it's obnoxious and quite impossible to take seriously. 

But it's fun, the controls are as good as it was possible back then, and on top of that, for a game of that time, it was beautiful. forget gloomy corridors, even if there are some, you'll spend a lot of time in a gorgeous, colorful recreation of ancient Egypt. At the time, Serious Sam was a breath of fresh air between the corridors of Unreal, Return to castle Wolfenstein or Quake 3. 

All in all Serious Sam is nothing new, but a damned good and well made nothing new. 

Similar games (some are more serious *wink wink*): Serious Sam the Second encounter, Soldier of Fortune, Duke Nukem 3D, Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast.

4 YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAWW!!!!! out of 5.

Buyer's guide : PC/PALM OS/Xbox/Xbox 360. FPS on Console are Heresy.

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (2008)

Genre: Tactical FPS | Players:1-2 | Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Vegas 2 puts players in the character of Bishop; A veteran Rainbow commander who is pulled from teaching at the academy to help deal with the terrorists attacking Las Vegas. Players actually customize Bishop themselves for both multi and single player. Not just to look cool, but playing gains XP which unlocks new equipment with different ratings for armor and mobility affecting how durable you are and how fast you can move.

The campaign runs both before, concurrently and after the events of the first game, but the action is mostly the same, even with the same teammates. The AI though is much improved. No longer do they get in each others way and now move more tactically when moving to objectives. They also now have their own inventory unlike the 1st game where players were incentivized to use them because they had an infinite supply of explosives and such. You can now also direct not just their location, but also their fire and the new environments are much more open making the endless clearing of rooms much less repetitive as well as new enemies with new weapons(fuck you shield assholes). As good as the AI has become, Cooperative Multiplayer  is still the most exciting for me. Unlocking new equipment actually forced me into trying new weapons and strategies which I appreciated. Otherwise I would just always use a submachine gun and a sniper rifle. Always.

Everything is better, but the same making this more expansion then sequel. Bishop is a much more fun character, better customization, and better tactical stats that actually affect gameplay make this a much more engaging playthrough than the first.

Buyer's Guide:
Available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC

4 Obvious Red shirts and traitors out of 5

Rainbow Six: Vegas (2006)

Genre: FPS, Tactical Shooter | Players: 1-2 | Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Logan Keller is on his first mission as team leader of a Rainbow Six team in Mexico to find a terrorist leader. Things go awry and his two team members are captured, but before he can launch a rescue, he is brought back to help deal with an attack by terrorists in Las Vegas. He joins up with a new squad as team leader to clean up the city and find out what the terrorists objectives are.

Players control Logan directly in a first person view and can order his team around with various commands mostly just by pointing where you want them to go. This being a tactical shooter, it focuses heavily on team tactics and remaining in cover which makes the camera zoom out slightly to a 3rd person view. If you just go in guns blazing like any other FPS, you WILL die pretty instantaneously. There is regenerating health, but it is very limited. Sustained fire will kill you in less than a second. Your teammates are a bit more durable, but they are not invincible. You can get through a good chunk of the single player just ordering your team to clear every single room, but pretty much every encounter has multiple viewpoints from which players can support the team. Using different weapons with different properties is useful, but not entirely necessary. They are still mostly interchangeable unless you try to snipe with a shotgun like an idiot. The main thing is to know when to use silencers. Though there is almost no reason to take them off. You lose some power with it on but not enough to outweigh the advantage stealth can give you.

While certainly more tactical than most other shooters, R6: Vegas is certainly less so than its predecessors. Not bad per se, but it is certainly streamlined. Overcoming a gaggle of enemies quickly and efficiently is the point and can be satisfying. The varied architecture of the various environments makes the possibilities of  encounters like puzzles. It can be hampered somewhat by your teams limited AI that sometimes act like morons. Co-op multiplayer was a better option. Overall a mostly satisfying experience.

Buyer's Guide:
Available on PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and a different version also called R6: Vegas for PSP.

3½ Breach and clear out of 5

Burnout CRASH! (2011)

Genre: Wreck Your Shit  |  Players: One  |  Developer: Criterion Games

CRASH! is a digital-only title available from PSN, XBL and the Apple store. It has none of the arcade racing elements traditionally associated with the Burnout series. Instead, it takes the Crash Mode, simplifies the visuals and gives it a top down perspective similar to early GTA games. Unlike GTA, however, the active playing area is very small. There’s a brief run-up to the crash zone, but 99.9% of the time you’ll be in a small, self-contained area with one or two intersections and some destructible buildings. Yes, they’re destructible, and in some levels you’re encouraged to do so if you want to hit the high scoring multipliers.

The main objective is to cause as much damage as possible in the allotted time, damage which is then converted into a cash value. Fulfil enough criteria for each level, which includes hitting set targets of cash, and you can move onto the next intersection to do the same thing all over again but with increased difficulty.

Meet specific targets and you can unlock new vehicles. More than just a cosmetic change, they add a further strategic element by having different ratios of Power (damage) to After-touch (ability to control direction of your own vehicle during the post-crash chaos). Some intersections can be beaten with any vehicle, but not all objectives are so easily obtainable - some will require a specific set of wheels.

Special events can be triggered that do massive amounts of damage to the environment, but you'll have to earn them first. They're usually worth the effort.

It’s an enjoyable waste of time that players can drop in and of quickly, but will likely only have lasting appeal to high score junkies who love to cause chaos on busy digital roads. I'm not one for setting and subsequently working my ass off to beat a personal best, so once I'd beaten it I was done with it. For £2.00 (in a PSN sale) it was worth it, though I'd not like to have paid much more than that.

2½ Spandau Ballets out of 5

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992)

Genre: Action, Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Nintendo EAD

A Link to the Past is the game that moved the Zelda franchise beyond the blind experimentation of the original and the mindless back and forth of its sequel. The upgrades in graphics and gameplay work in unison to finally crystalize what became the series’ keystones: exploration and puzzle-solving. It’s presented from a top-down perspective, like the first game, but secrets are marked clearly in both the overworld and dungeons. Emphasis is instead often placed on finding alternate entrances once one has been tantalized and stymied by what lies behind the easily visible ones. Also, navigating complex cave systems in order to mine them of all their treasures. Dungeons are composed of visually distinct wings and floors and maps make a return. Puzzles that span multiple floors replace exhaustive marches to elevators.

This is also the game that introduces the basic framework of the series: three dungeon items, Master Sword, more dungeon items, light arrows, Ganon(dorf). Though, the arrows are still silver, here. While it may have appeared in other games prior, for me LttP is the origin of the mechanic whereby one moves between two worlds in order to solve puzzles and progress. This went on to appear in Silent Hill Origins and the Constantine licensed game.

The second part of the game takes place primarily in the Dark World where you must retrieve nameless maidens from each of the dungeons before rescuing Zelda and scaling Ganon’s Tower. A Link Between Worlds replaces these maidens with a new generation of sages who are actually given dialogue and interactions with Link prior to them being kidnapped. This is the one true weakness of LttP, in my opinion. There’s a serviceable amount of lore on display, but there is virtually nothing in the way of character and story. I'm content with the level present in the 3D Zelda games, so I don't need MUCH, but I need SOME. Look, I don’t need or want story in Mega Man games, so you have my empathy and respect, even if I don’t have yours in this particular case.

If all you're looking for is solid 2D gameplay, though, you won't find much better on the SNES, or anywhere else, really.

Buyer’s Guide: Originally an SNES game, it’s also available on Game Boy Advance, the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles, and the SNES mini. The viewable area is somewhat cropped on GBA, however, so I’d recommend not seeking out that version unless it’s truly your only viable option. Several altered versions of the game were broadcast on Satellaview, but just wiki that yourself or check out Clan of the Grey Wolf’s retrospective if you’re curious from a historical perspective.

3 Catfishes 4x weak to Grass out of 5

Fahrenheit 451 (1984)

Genre: Text Input / Strategy  |  Players: 1  |  Developers: Byron Preiss Video Productions, Inc / Trillium Corp.

Some games are too damn hard. It makes conquering them all the sweeter, but sometimes the elevated difficulty is in place simply to give the illusion of longevity. Fahrenheit 451 is difficult for a different reason. It's a text-based adventure/strategy game that puts you in the shoes of someone from Ray Bradbury’s novel (1953) of the same name. Now an established member of the underground, returned to the city five years after the novel's end, you must circumvent the book-burning populace as you try to set right past wrongs.

Being set after the novel means if you've not read it prior to playing then you'll have a portion of it spoiled for you, so a reading is advised. I'd encourage every fan of sci-fi to read the actual book regardless of whether or not they’ll ever play the game because it's a classic of the genre. If you need more convincing I've a review of the novel HERE on a sister site that's free of plot spoilers.

In-game you’ll be reading text (ironic, isn't it?) and responding by typing instructions, such as ‘S’ when you want to go South. However, the instructions must be VERY specific. If it tells you there’s an item in front of you, e.g. a lighter, what do you instruct the game to do? Lift lighter? Pick up lighter? Take lighter? Obtain lighter? No; after an agonisingly high number of tries I discovered that ‘Get lighter’ is the one that works. That’s an early and easy example. It gets more gruelling as you get deeper into the game. Every puzzle halts progress until you eliminate all other logical options before stumbling upon the accepted one. (I'm guessing such actions were explained in the game's inlay or manual, but it's now 30+ years after it was released and I don't have the luxury of owning such a thing.)

That's infuriating enough, but speaking to people is pure hell. The game needs to know that you aren't issuing a simple command, so dialogue must be set within quotation marks. So far so good; it's 1984 after all. But unless you tell people exactly what they want to hear then you might as well be talking to a wall, while repeatedly being wrong is like banging your head against one.

YES or NO responses are fine, but you need to also use literary quotations at opportune times, which means you'll have to have found them and recorded them verbatim. It's an interesting mechanic and very in keeping with how the fictional society is split, but it's a pain in the ass in a practical sense.

Bradbury fans will of course be curious to try it for themselves, but be prepared to reach levels of frustration that you may not have hitherto known existed.

2 burned eyes out of 5