Assassin's Creed II: completed!

It took a while, but Sequence 13 was excellent and had me wanting more, so I played through the rest of the game.

After the build up I was disappointed to find that I wasn't able to explore Rome, but instead was constrained to a set tunnel to reach the pope. Assassinating him was easy - skirting along the rafters then diving from above - except of course it wasn't that straightforward. Lots of back and forwards, followed by a fist fight which was rigged so I couldn't best him before he'd finished his dialogue.

Then long cut scenes meeting god(s), credits, fights in the modern day, and a flimsy excuse as to why I can go back and collect anything I may have missed. I may well go back for the feathers, but I'll use a map if I do.

Great game, but with the DLC included it probably went on a tad too long. Had I skipped straight to Rome after the Spaniard had run off, I'd probably have appreciated it more. Having said that, Sequence 13 was excellent and varied, so I'm glad I got to play it ...

Assassin's Creed II: unexpected additional content

It took a long time to become a proper assassin - even though I had killed many people, most of the time deliberately, it wasn't until the end of Sequence 11 that I was admitted into the group, at the top of a Venetian tower.  We all jumped off afterwards.

Venice is a pretty spectacular setting and has been used for a large portion of the game.  I don't think it's entirely geographically accurate - the bridge next to which I proposed to Justine wasn't there, for a start - but you get the same sense of getting lost with canals and paths intersecting constantly.  In real life, it's generally frowned on to jump into the canal and swim across, or climb buildings to jump across the rooftops.

Everything seemed to be building to a climax at the end of Sequence 11.  I found out where to go to meet the Spaniard, and what he was going to be collecting.  I infiltrated the guard house and carried the big important box to meet him.  My compatriots met me and there was a big fight, as you'd expect at the end of the game.

Then the Spaniard ran off.  I'd rescued the Apple of Eden, but hadn't killed the man who provided my motive in the first place.

The game didn't end there.  According to the achievements list and various reviews, there were then two "missing memories" (downloadable content) - Sequences 12 and 13 - which I'd skip over and then I'd finish the game with Sequence 14.  Not so; the game continued with me in Forli trying to infiltrate and defend the town.  I seem to have the DLC already.  I'm sure that I don't have a game of the year edition of the game, but it's possible I suppose that wherever I bought it from gave me the wrong disc ...

Anyway, Forli is defended, and I'm off to start Sequence 13 in Florence.

Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins: story completed

That was pretty short, really - though the fact I get to spend much more time on handheld games always makes them feel shorter. I've finished the story now, which ends with a good link to the Wii U game and Chase being sent abroad. I was concerned that this would mean that I couldn't continue to search the city, but straight after the credits I was back in Lego City.  The game is apparently 30.6% complete, even though I have been mopping up the collectables and activities as I found them.

It's a little too similar to the Wii U game if anything, with the same puzzles and characters. The controls are awfully imprecise and I frequently found myself falling off ledges. Due to this, I don't know if I'll ever get to 100% completion - particularly since the scanner which you use to find hidden items has a pretty poor range and you can't just drive around looking for things because they only appear when they're about ten metres away.

Having said that, I've a ten hour flight to South Africa next week ...

Assassin's Creed II: I have a motive!

Ubisoft release an Assassin's Creed game each year now that they've seen it's a popular series.  It seems as if I'll play through one a year as well, just a few years behind.

Assassin's Creed II continues the story from the first, which meant that the first half hour or so was confusing and empty, given that I couldn't remember the story and didn't pay too much attention to it in the first place.  I could remember that Desmond lies down on a bed and has memories of the past in his DNA, and explores these.  In the first game he was a professional assassin, who had no real motive for killing other than for money.  Travelling through the story of the second game, it's been revealed that the next assassin does have a rather strong motive; after an hour or so of playing, I saw all the male members of my family executed in the town square.  I've already killed the man who let it happen, and am now running around trying to trace who ordered it in the first place.

The controls are better than the first game - the camera's not so wild, though it does still get lost occasionally - and so far missions seem to be more varied.  It's not as comfortable, in that there's no strict rule about which order things should be done in to get the game as complete as possible, but it's therefore less likely to get boring before I get to the end.

I've now completed the first two sequences and have run out of Florence.  My family owns a big house, woo.  I was met by my uncle (who made me laugh with his greeting: "It's-a me, Mario"), who seems to have left things to ruin.  Now to become a proper assassin.

Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins: slow crawling fog

I am once again getting myself very confused by playing two similar games on two systems.  The last time this happened, at least the two games were graphically dissimilar and in different worlds.  This time, I am running around the same city on the 3DS as exists in the Wii U game, and the structure of the game is near identical, to the extent that I cam being frustrated when I find pigs on the 3DS that I can't ride them as I've only gained the farmer costume on the Wii U, and so on.

It takes little away from the game, which is not as amazing as its big brother but is still a notable achievement, but the city does feel a lot emptier and the draw distance - particularly when crossing the bridge - can be awful, disguised by a creeping fog.

I've spent the last half hour running errands on a construction site, in order to facilitate the building of the bridge to the next area.  Moving between areas requires a lengthy loading pause, so it's lucky that the missions are seemingly quite compact and straight-forward.

Thomas Was Alone: completed!

Told you I had nearly finished it.

A few of the puzzles towards the end were a bit tricky, particularly when I was trying to balance two squat blocks on top of a tall thin block, but there was nothing for which I required external help. I was impressed that there were very few repeated puzzles over the 100 levels, and the game finished at pretty much the right time - before it had to introduce too many new gameplay mechanics.

One of the most affecting parts of the game was losing the original cast and being given the grey blocks instead. The narration at this point was a little weak, not expressing the emotion of the change or the bewilderment of the newly introduced blocks in the same way as for previous characters. This was rectified towards the end of the levels where Gray was portrayed as a villain - even though you were controlling both him and all other characters. Seeing each of them in turn eaten by the pixel cloud was daunting (though I can't remember Team Jump's exit).

It's not the most accomplished game ever, but as a story-driven experience it works really well.

Thomas Was Alone: blundering through

I've nearly finished this, but before I do I must comment on how well designed the game is.  Many of the levels can be solved in numerous ways, whether by design or not.  I just completed level 9.7 by carrying the smallest block (Jo) across the green gravity reversing areas using the other two blocks (Sam and Gray), using Jo to keep the others down and not fly up into spikes.  After completing the level I realised that what I should have done is to get Sam to touch the red area, making him act as a trampoline for Jo.  I'm not sure if that would have been any easier.

Forza Horizon: pretty pictures

I found these on my hard drive, created using the in-game photo mode and exported.  I seemed to have saved one at a low resolution and one at really high resolution, in bitmap format - but that's not a good idea on the web, so I've converted it to better file type.

The second picture shows my general finesse at the game.  That's me upside-down.

Nintendo Land: Donkey Kong Crash Course: completed!

While I was away, I finally managed to complete Donkey Kong Crash Course.  Unfortunately, this was on my brother's Wii U, and I completed it by accident, falling onto the finishing line.  The game then implied that there are further stages to go ...

But I completed this stage, at least!

Nintendo Land: being a pikmin

I've been on holiday for the past week with my extended family, and as part of that my brother took along his Wii U.  We played Mario Chase a lot, which (as you'd expect) works best with five players.  We also played Animal Crossing: Sweet Day a fair bit, as everyone finds it hilarious when people are waddling around with massive heads.

On the last day, I played through many levels of Pikmin Adventure with my brother, switching roles every couple of checkpoints.  It works really well as a co-operative game, though at the end of each level you're shown who played better throughout.

Look at my contribution!

The game is very pretty, with an interesting aesthetic of robotic versions of the typical Pikmin enemies.  They have obvious hit points, which you can then throw pikmin onto, including any player-controlled pikmin.

The game predates the flying pikmin of Pikmin 3, but that doesn't mean you don't get airborne.  One annoyance is that even if Olimar and all player pikmin are on a launch pad, Olimar has to call the pikmin to him before the launch pad will launch.

It's good fun throwing player pikmin into random areas.

Pikmin.

Pilotwings: smoother in 60Hz

This is possibly the first time I've found the difference between 50Hz and 60Hz to have a significant impact on a game.  When I tried to play Pilotwings previously, I found that I was constantly fighting with the controls and didn't enjoy it.  Amusingly, I forecast at the time that I'd go back to the game "in a couple of years".

On the Wii U, it's the 60Hz version, and it feels much more responsive.  I still found control of the skydiver quite tricky, as it's difficult to see how to move forwards and keep a good speed, but the rocketpack was much easier to deal with.

My other main complaint previously was the difficulty in judging distances, and in particular how quickly you can descend to land.  I think that this simply requires a lot of practice, but the game doesn't let you repeat just one mission as far as I can see.

It looks like the landing zone is miles away here, but to get there requires a lot of diving and pushing the nose down, which of course then means you're going too fast to land.  I shall have to work out how to do this more consistently.

Super Mario World: the third attempt

I played Super Mario Advance 2, but never got that far - which is surprising.  I played the Wii VC version of the game for a bit, but stopped for some reason after passing Donut Plains.  Now I've upgraded that to the Wii U VC version, I'm going to try to complete a game which many hail as the best of all time, but I've only scratched the surface of.

Yes, I know.  I'm still halfway through NSMBW and NSMBU.  Shh.

Initial impressions aren't great.  The text is really hard to read - had Nintendo never heard of kerning? - and the controls feel a bit imprecise.  This may be because of the travel on the buttons on the Wii gamepad, and the use of the analogue stick.  In any case, after a while the controls weren't an issue.

In this screen, you can see Mario rescuing Yoshi.  Two things to note here: Mario seems to be able to float in mid air, and Yoshi is singularly useless, getting captured around 100 metres from his home.  It hardly seems worth the effort.

I completed the first set of levels pretty quickly, and then got stuck on the first level where you can collect the feather that turns into a cape.  That cost me three lives, because I kept expecting Yoshi to be able to swallow the baseballs lobbed at him.

I finished at the second level in Donut Plains, annoyed with the red dot indicating that there's a secret exit on the first level.  I know how to get to it - you need the green switch palace - but I hate leaving it blinking there.

Ico: show me where we're going

A few years ago, I decided to play the copy of Ico I had bought and never touched.  I didn't get very far, because the game didn't save my progress and I only had limited time.  I resolved to go back one day.

I never went back.  I wanted to, but there were many more shiny games and achievement points and new controllers and clever gameplay ideas and huge maps to explore.  Ico remained a game that I felt was worthy of playing, but never actually got played.  At some point in the last couple of months, the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD pack was given out on PS+, and the games sat on my hard drive, untouched.  Until now.

History almost repeated itself.  I played through the first sections of the game, finding Yorda and rescuing her, then escaping from the dungeon, playing again through the sections I previously completed on the PS2.  I found a new section, and thought I'd take a break there - and almost turned the console off, before remembering that I'd not saved anywhere.  I pushed on, and found the first bench, sitting outside the tower.  I almost ignored that and continued, but decided to experiment with it, only to find that this is what the save point looks like.  So I saved.

It's clear to see that many games have taken influences from Ico.  The exploration aspect crops up in countless 3D adventures now, and guiding another character is a massively effective story mechanic.  I will complete this one day, I must, but at the moment I'm a bit too unfocussed given my multiple Wii U purchases.

My favourite Mega Drive games

From a request on RLLMUK, my favourite ten games for the Mega Drive.

Virtua Racing
Three tracks, one car, minimum of content, £60. Utterly amazing and worth every penny. Magazines warned that it wasn't as good as the arcade game, but that didn't matter - the freedom it gave in terms of being able to steer any way around the circuit and not be shifted to the edge of the screen - it felt like the future.

Sonic 2
I won this in a competition in Mega. Release day came, and I had no Sonic 2. A week later, no Sonic 2. Another week, and I had a letter from the magazine apologising for the delay. I eventually got the game a month and a half after everyone had completed it - and yet I still love it. My favourite Sonic game, just.

Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition
When combined with the six-button pad (which I still feel is the epitome of digital pad design), this is the perfect fighter. I spent hundreds of hours on this; I even got a new Mega Drive (replacing my original Japanese model, as SC2 was region-locked) just to play it.

Aladdin
Far better than the SNES game. The rug ride level has one of the most memorable tunes in any game, and I can still remember where to go to get the genie's heads.

Micro Machines 96
A toss-up between this and MM2, but the courses on this are just a bit better. Amazing with four players.

Shining Force
I'd never played a strategy RPG before this; I've still not played one as good. An involving story, great characters and well-balanced gameplay.

NHL Hockey '93
I didn't play ice hockey. I'd never watched a match. None of my friends ever had either. Why, then, was this game so routinely played whenever we went to each others' houses? You felt so stylish grabbing the puck and slaloming up the pitch before shooting and scoring - later versions may have added four-player but they felt a bit too clunky and heavy.

Toe Jam and Earl
If you play it now, it feels so slow and awkward. How did I ever have the patience to complete it? I did, though, several times over. Special mention must go to level zero, where TJ&E get to bathe in a hot tub.

Quackshot
The Disney platformers were almost all great. I feel this is the best of the bunch, though Castle of Illusion is very close behind.  I don't think of Aladdin as a Disney platformer for some reason; it's a film licence.

The tenth place goes to Road Rash. And Desert Strike. And Populous. And Mega Lo Mania. And Mega Bomberman. And Thunderforce III.  Too many great games!

Oh, and the two-player mode of Lemmings was genius. 

Lego City Undercover: an expanding city

I've now completed 10% of the game, apparently, but I'm not sure what that measures.  There are huge numbers of collectibles and random tasks to carry out in the city, such as finding certain boulders, blowing up silver statues, capturing aliens, and so on. The map is huge and I've not really worked out where things are yet.  There are areas I've not been to and then last night I found out that there's a sewer system as well ...

Some of the sub-missions are quite daft.  I was robbing a bank in order to get into a criminal gang, and one of the tasks I had to perform was to clean the floors.

This was just a little daft, and also rather frustrating as it wasn't obvious what I had to do next - I was running around the inside of the bank worried that the police were going to turn up, when in fact I should have been getting onto the automatic mop.  It controlled like a pig, too.

Wii U Transfer Tool: Nintendo's attention to detail

After backing up my Wii, so that I could restore everything afterwards, I transferred everything over to my new Wii U.  That's my new new Wii U, after the first one was replaced by Nintendo when it developed a fault after two weeks.

In order to transfer everything, you have to download a transfer tool on the Wii, which then packages everything up onto your SD card and transfers the licences to the Wii U.  It looks, on the home screen, a bit like a toaster.

The little pikmin are a sign of things to come.  Before they appear, though, there are some stark warnings.  Some of them are in red so you know they are important.

It's a shame that the Wii's Internet channels haven't survived.

I must get around to redownloading these.  I'm not sure I ever got around to playing escapeVektor.

Updated to make me actually play them, maybe?

Then, more red text and we can start.

Ooh, a big blue pool.  And pikmin.

Pikmin carrying toasters.

Pikmin carrying cardboard downstairs.

Purple pikmin and white pikmin seem to be able to carry the same weight.

Annoying they couldn't make the passageways straight.

No pikmin fell down the pit, as far as I saw.

The percentage counter went up pretty slowly.

I think that will be about 3kB, given how much of it I played.

TurboGRAFX games seem to be based in curving corridors.

That's been 90% for a long time now.

Ah ha, a rocket!

Which closed its door too early!

But luckily they saw little Peter Pikmin had been left behind, and let him on.

And off to the Wii U!

On which I have to do quite a bit of downloading.

And gaming.