Video Game Reviews, Video Game News & Wacky Views

To help promote the release of the upcoming game Assassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft have been creating a short movie. The first part of the movie has now been released onto YouTube.

The movie is titled Assassin’s Creed 2: Lineage and it follows the events that take place before the story of Assassin’s Creed 2. You follow the life of Assassin Giovanni Auditore, the father of Ezio, the character you play as in Assassin’s Creed 2.

Along with the 15 minute clip also comes this description:

“When the Duke of Milan is brutally murdered, the Assassin Giovanni Auditore is dispatched to investigate. The answers he uncovers implicate Italy’s most powerful families reaching all the way back to the Vatican itself. As Giovanni draws closer to the truth, he becomes hunted himself. He must expose the conspirators before he joins their ever growing list of victims.”

My final racing game of the year for the Xbox 360 arrived this week and it has certainly proved to be the best one of the year so far.

The game shocked me slightly when it first arrived, mainly because it arrived on Tuesday when the game wasn’t released until Friday. The second thing that shocked me was that it came with two discs, one being an install disc.

I’m not sure if this is common practice on Forza games, as this is the first one that I’ve bought, but it certainly came as a surprise for me. As for the content of the second disc, when you load up the first disc you are made aware that the second disc contains bonus vehicles and tracks that you wouldn’t be able to play until you installed the content. Fortunately, I just about had enough space left on my 360 hard drive to be able to install the content.

Audi R8, the face of Forza 3

The first thing of the game that impressed me was the interface. The game has a very clean look to it and doesn’t over-complicate the menu system. This is quite a change from other racing games such as Dirt 2 which have a very interactive menu screen, I would personally say a change for the better.

On the gameplay side of things, it’s absolutely brilliant. The way the cars drive is so different to other racing games I’ve played this year. The cars seems more solid to the ground and you don’t lose total control when going round corners, like you do in Need For Speed: Shift.

It’s not just the way the cars drive that make this game better than others, it’s also the added features. Just like the majority of racing games that are released these days, they allow you to having driving assists, one being automatic breaking. This feature in Need For Speed: Shift is not too impressive, it always seems to break too early which means it lets you speed up and then has to slow you back down again before the corner. In Forza 3, when the car starts to break, it really does leave it to the last possible second which means that you have no chance of speeding up. Not only does this make your lap times better, but it also doesn’t make your car bounce into the corners.

The career mode in Forza 3 is quite different. You get to choose 1 of 3 different ‘week-day events’ which take place across one week or two, each time you complete one week-day event, you get to choose a new one. After you’ve completed your first week-day event, you get to start at the weekend events which are the seasonal events.

Taking top spot in each race wins you a couple of things, credits and experience points. For winning each event you get credits and then completing a series of events wins you some bonus credits. The point of these credits is so that you can save up and buy upgrades and even new cars from the garage feature. The experience points help you to level up. There are two different levelling systems, the first one is your actual driver level, which takes longer to level up. When you level up your driver skill, you tend to get given a brand new car. The second level system is an individual car level. As this level rises you get discounts on parts for that certain car. This seems slightly pointless to me because it doesn’t take long to level up which means that you move onto a faster car.

The graphics really are that good!

The range of cars that the game comes with is quite impressive. Overall there are 400+ cars to choose from which is quite a lot more than Need For Speed: Shift. Although this 400+ isn’t as impressive as Gran Turismo’s 800+, it’s still pretty good.

The graphics of this game is one of it’s high points. Each car is in extremely high detail and looks so impressive, no wonder they need two discs really. The only downside to the graphics would be the environment outside of the track, by that I mean trees and spectators. Although this isn’t massively important as you don’t concentrate on the trees, it would have been nice to see some improvement. Nevertheless, this is still the most visually stunning racing game you’ll find on the Xbox 360.

As with other racing games, this game comes with an online multiplayer. Although there is nothing special about the mutliplayer races, that have included some nifty sharing features. The first feature is an online auction house which allows you to buy and sell cars to and from anyone in the world. The second feature allows you to buy and sell your car designs. Both make great additions to the online content of this game.

Summary

The stunning graphics, massive range of tracks, and almost endless choice of cars makes this one of the best racing games I’ve played on the Xbox 360. Forza 3 has really done a great job of bringing realistic racing to your front room.

If you’re trying to choose between Need For Speed: Shift and Forza 3, I’d definitely go with Forza any day of the week.

Good Points = Amazing graphics, huge choice of cars and tracks, very realistic driving style, great online features for sharing cars.

Bad Points = Environment graphics could be improved.

I give this game a 9/10.

I looked at Operation Flashpoint a few times before the release, but I was wary as to whether it would stand up against other FPS games. After hearing a number of people saying how good it really was, I chose to buy it. It’s obviously a big hit with gamers considering the first 2 shops I went to had sold out, been some time since that had happened.

The story of the game takes place on an island just off the coast of Japan in the near future. The Russians actually own the island, however, it is contested territory between the owners and China. Sparks start to fly on the island when there is a huge oil deposit discovered and China tries to claim it as their own. The Russians call in aid from America, and this is where you come in. You play as a soldier in the American Army and you have been tasked with re-taking the island from the Chinese invaders.

Although there aren’t a huge amount of missions, having 11 in total, you will get quite alot of time out of the single player campaign. The reason why is because the game is pretty damn hard. Changing the difficulty of the game doesn’t make a huge amount of difference, each difficulty simply changes the amount of information you get on your HUD and it doesn’t affect the capabilities and strength of your enemies.

The main reason why this game is so difficult is because it’s very, very realistic. One shot to any part of your body will either take you down, kill you, or make you bleed out. The bleed out part isn’t too bad as you have ‘field dressing’ which will stop you from bleeding and your immediate injuries, however, depending on where you were shot will depend if it effects your game. For example, if you had been shot in the leg, you will no longer be able to sprint, it’s that realistic.

Don’t get me wrong, the realism is great, it comes as a surprise to see an FPS game this realistic and without the ability to make it any easier.

The range of weapons are reasonable, there are the normal snipers, auto-snipers, machine guns and pistols, nothing special. But what is good is the amount you can carry. When you load each mission, you will get a healthy amount of weapons which consists of a pistol, a knife, a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, C4 explosives, field dressings and finally, grenades. Basically everything you would want during a battle.

The knife is a little pointless really because, again comes the realistic element, it takes quite a while to get your weapons out. So you would really already have to have the knife out before you plan to use it. This is slightly annoying, I would have rather had a knife like in Call of Duty 4 where you can just press the right analog stick and you lash out.

Just like pretty much all other FPS games, this one comes with a multiplayer. One advantage this game has in multiplayer terms is that you can play through the entire campaign with either random people, or your Xbox Live buddies. Me and Ryanogs have given it a try a few times, and you’d think as there are more non-computer players, it would be easier, but it’s not.

Shame it wasn't as good looking as the concepts

In the single-player campaign, if you die, you simply return to the last checkpoint. However, when playing through the multiplayer, if all the players die, you have to restart the entire mission. This does get slightly tiresome after a few attempts at the same mission.

The graphics of the game are a little disappointing. Everything seems to be a little big rigid and the environment doesn’t give as much freedom as I would have hoped for. Maybe it’s game likes Gran Turismo 5, which have fantastic graphics, and Far Cry 2, which gives the gamer a massive amount of control over the environment, that give us over the top expectations. Despite that, I still think that the graphics and environment don’t even match up to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Considering that game was released a couple of years ago, Operation Flashpoint does seem a little disappointing in graphic terms.

Summary

There is not a huge amount of excitement within the campaign of this game. Fortunately, the realism of the game and the advantages of the multiplayer do help it quite a bit. The disappointment in the graphics don’t really bring the game down that much, they are still reasonable, but I would have expected more.

Although the multiplayer is very good, overall, I don’t think the game can get out of the shadow of Call of Duty 4. Once the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I think this game will disappear into the realms of the dusty shelf. However, until then, I will continue to enjoy it.

Good Points = The realistic element brings something very new to an FPS, the multiplayer is fun.

Bad Points = Graphics could be better, co-op games are annoying if you die.

I give this game a 7/10.

Blizzard has announced some changes to the World of Warcraft game that a number of players won’t be best pleased with. They have announced that as of November 11th, all World of Warcraft players will be required to sign up and access World of Warcraft via the Battle.net service.

I first encountered the Battle.net accounts several months ago when I was installing Warcraft 3 for the first time. I found the service to be really useful as you can buy old games, as well as being able to download the latest patches for all of the games, all in one central location with just one password.

Blizzard have been planning to roll out the requirement of having a Battle.net account for a while. One reason why they are doing this is  because it joins all your games together on that one account and allows you to re-download them at any location, all you have to do is login to your account, pretty awesome feature if you ask me.

To ensure that all of the 11 million WoW players sign up for a Battle.net account, after November 11th, if you don’t login through the Battle.net account, you won’t be able to get your fix of the highly popular game.

Blizzard are offering compensation for having to signup for the account. If you are a current WoW player and need to sign up for the account, you will receive a free in-game penguin pet, hardly something you’d want but it’s better than nothing, although many players would just prefer some in-game money considering almost 11 million players will be getting the pet. As for new players, after November 11th, to sign up for your WoW account, you’ll have to do it via the Battle.net service.

Earlier this year at E3, Microsoft announced some great new features that would be coming to the Xbox 360 later this year. The first few features were released earlier this year back in August, of which included the games on demand service plus the addition of the avatar marketplace.

Well now, about two months after that update, the next one has finally been announced, and it’s the one I’ve been looking forward to.

The upcoming update will bring both Facebook and Twitter to the Xbox 360 dashboard, allowing you to tweet, update your statuses, plus, some new features that will allow you to share your gaming profile with your friends via the social networking sites.

Although this latest dashboard hasn’t really been officially announced, if you head over to the UK Xbox Live site, you’ll find a new image showing the brand new features. If you look slightly closer at these images, at the bottom of both it says “Coming soon. Service launches 17th November 2009“, that sounds like a pretty good sign to me.

Unfortunately for Xbox Live Silver members, the Facebook and Twitter features won’t be accessible. This means that if you really want to use them, you’ll have to pay the fee for Xbox Live Gold membership.

Currently, due to the update not being officially announced, it’s unknown whether any other features will be included in this update, suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft come out with.