A Quick Update

Hey! It's been a while, I've been very busy these past few weeks. Updownright is going great thank you for asking. I feel like the time has come to reboot this blog in a way. Obviously I wont be posting on it as much as I used to but I'll see if I can get a post out every so often.

However, I actually created the Ewan Rants blog on Wordpress, just in case I ever wanted to move my blog over. I'll mull that decision over and get back to you on that one.

Game Review #33 - 007 Quantum of Solace

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (I think)

Well, we've finished our strategy games month, I need a break from strategy games, so why not play a mindless, movie tie in shooter that may or may not be any good.

I played a lot of this game when I was a child, so my judgement may be shrouded by nostalgic memories of doing things in this game, like shooting generic bad guys, shooting a bloke in the head with a nail gun and a bunch of quick time events.

Storyline wise, it sort of hap-haphazardly follows the plot of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, with a few original missions thrown in too. It's confusing but I the missions sort of link up when they're explained in cutscenes that I skipped because I've already seen both films and I don't really feel like having that experience ruined by some half arsed cutscenes.

Obviously the main part of a first person shooter is the shooting which is done by guns, So what type of weaponary is available to us? Well, Bond can carry up to three weapons at a time, always starting the mission with his P99. The weapon variety, while small, is nice, it's not overwhelming, but at the same time it's not underwhelming, they got it just right.

Equipment wise, you get grenades, that's it. No watch that sprays toxic gas, no telephone shoe, the invisible car is permanently invisible and there is no signs of a tuxedo jetpack I'm afraid. But that's alright, Bond took a much more serious tone when it re-booted so there's a lot less quirky gadgets available to Bond and they're more serious now.

Something that struck me as rather odd was the fact that when I went to look for the logo of the game, there wasn't one. Not one that I could find anyway, maybe it's because we should forget about this game. But we shouldn't forget about this game, it's quite enjoyable if I'm honest. Yeah, the controls can be clunky, the quick time events are infuriating and the shooting can be boring, but there is some fun you can kick out of this game.

Achievement wise, this game can get you an easy few hundred gamerscore for an easy, relaxing play-through of the game, multiplayer achievements are now almost impossible to get because the one person that plays the multiplayer has hacked everything, probably.

A mildly fun game that's worth playing through, for fun and for achievements,

007 Quantum of Solace gets a 6/10

*This is probably going to be the last post in a while, sorry everyone, updownright.com is my new home, does not mean that this blog is dead though*

Game Review #32 - Civilization V - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Steam
Store Page
Price I Paid: £9.99

What can I honestly say about this game that hasn't been said already? I could tell you the usual stuff about how this game is considered a masterpiece because of how well it was made, how enjoyable it is and how this is possibly the best strategy game of all time. But that would be boring, so what I'm going to do, is lie to you for the first paragraph of a review and tell you how good this game is.

So obviously, yes, this game is good, the DLC is better and the Steam Workshop adds so much to the game that it's just extraordinary. I have a few mods installed, mainly to replace a few leaders with people who should've been in the game. That was my problem, while most countries have their obvious leader such as France and America, there are some countries that just make you question why they didn't put someone else in their place, like Germany and Russia. Yes it would've been controversial to put Hitler and Stalin into the game but it probably would've been a lot better with them as leaders as they're more recognisable.

Tech Tree's are amazingly detailed and it requires a lot of strategy to do efficiently. You could just zoom all the way along to "Future Tech" click the final Tech and let the game just progress you through everything all at once but that is in no way the most efficient thing to do, it would indefinitely hinder your progress.

Unit wise, you start with a warrior and settler unit, with resources around you for your workers to, work on when you have them. Over time, you unlock new units and buildings for your cities to develop and make, with each building giving your city a nice boost and the units being varied enough to keep the battles fresh. Another thing you can build are basically Wonders of the World, the Pyramids of Egypt, Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge and so on, which give your city/civilization a huge boost in certain things, for example money, food or population.

Multiplayer wise, that's where the game falls over itself a bit, the multiplayer isn't bad it's just not done well enough compared to the single player mode of the game. Turns can take a while to process, however they give you certain types of turn movements to choose from, you can make everyone take their turn all at once or one at a time. Mulitplayer is only really fun if you have a few days and a few friends who have a lot of spare time on their hands because Civilization V games can take literal days to finish.

Each civilization has a different unit specific to their civilization, such as Panzer tanks for Germany. Much alike Halo Wars with the specific commander having specific units that do a bit more damage than the original unit. Still nice to see so many damned units in a game.

But wait, there's more! You can trade with other civilizations, make friendships, research agreements, even denounce/declare war on them. It's extremely in depth and it needed to be to make the AI feel like they were more than enemies, they aren't too useful combat wise if you do partner up with someone, they'll usually just not help or by the time they get there you've already disposed of the enemy units.

So with all that in mind, it's obvious that the game is good, albeit a bit rugged on the AI frontier and Gandhi, while a war monger-er in this game, can easily be defeated with this giant pile of nukes I have, and I don't think elephants can withstand nukes.

Civilization V gets a 9/10

Game Reviews #31 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: £8

Much alike "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified", this is another game in the XCOM series. Unlike "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified", this game isn't a pile of shit. This game is extremely, extremely,  fun to play.

It's a tactical strategy game made by our friends at 2K Games, who, now that I think about it, are a pretty dominant force in the gaming industry, they own a lot of amazing franchises, I'll have to talk about this in another blog post. On with the review.

XCOM isn't like most strategy games on console, Enemy Unknown works pretty well on console, it's not clunky, laggy and it doesn't have any of the usual problems that most console strategy games have, mainly the controls. The game does a very good job of making sure the bulk of the content is accessible to all players from an early stage, with enough strategy and challenge mixed in to make sure the player doesn't just blitz through the game at rocket speed. It's a lovely balance that I wish more games had.

So how does one go gallivanting around, killing our extra terrestrial invaders? Well, you (initially) have a squad of four troops to deploy onto the field and fight the aliens, however, here's the kicker, once a squad member dies, they're dead for good. It gives you a real feeling of "OK, I need to be careful here" and what makes it worse is that you can name these loveable lemmings to give yourself a personal attachment to them. I usually name my squad members with names from my real life friends or celebrities, it seems like the only two you can really do.

Of course, if you're going to beat the aliens then you'll need to get better equipment, tech and so on, which is where the research comes in. Every time you finish a mission, you might bring the alien bodies and tech back with you for research to begin, giving you the advantage in your next bout of combat.

You eventually get alien weaponary and if you bought Enemy Within/DLC then you can eventually use bloody robots to fight off the aliens, I have Enemy Within on PC, but for whatever reason I didn't enjoy it as much on PC as I did on console.

Oh yeah, there's a multiplayer in this game as well, uhm, so that's a thing. It's alright I guess, what can you expect? They're basically quick firefights, a 1v1 match of tactical strength, however you can play as the aliens which is pretty fun.

If you haven't played this game yet then do yourself a favour and go out and buy a copy of it.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown gets a 9/10

Game Reviews #30 - Supreme Commander 2 - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

This ones for you, if you're reading this said person, you know who you are. You finally get to find out what I think of your beloved franchise.

And what did I think?

Yeah, it's alright I guess. It's not my cup of tea strategy game wise but I did enjoy parts of the game. It was all very menu-y, something usually seen in PC games, every button apparently opened another menu for one or two different things. If you want to build a shield generator then you need to click on the APC and then hit Y twice, Y do that. That was a great pun, but you see what I mean? They made the selection menu so small there has to be multiple ones, or maybe it's just a branch of something.

Graphically wise it reminds me a lot of Halo Wars, which is fitting seeing as though I reviewed that last week. What is it with strategy games liking the colour blue so much? Halo Wars, Supreme Commander, Civilization V, XCOM, the list goes on, use a different colour for gods sake. That should be a feature on the back of some boxes of new strategy games "now featuring different colours". I would buy that.

So what units do we have? Lots to do unit wise actually, multiple ways to upgrade your units, but if you're like me and have little to no idea of what you're doing then you're gonna build 40 Rock Units, upgrade them fully and then pretend to attack while your other two friends nuke the enemy, still got me 35G but that's not the point.

Yeah, I gave the multiplayer a go, was actually quite fun, the games at a minimum go on for a half hour or so, which isn't a bad thing but when 20 Minutes of that time can be spent with the rush defence on, which means that you can't attack or anything, then it can get boring when you've finished building everything.

Unfortunately I didn't give much of the campaign a good look through, I'm still playing it through actually and so far it's been pretty good, more or less the same each time, build units, blow up enemy, repeat x amount of times until objective y is complete.

To a new player, this game might seem very alienating and much more complex than other strategy games on the console, but it can be an enjoyable experience once you learn more about the game.

Supreme Commander 2 gets a 7/10

Updownright

What's he going on about? Well, this is only going to be a short post, because I've actually secured myself a job at updownright.com which means that, obviously, I'll be posting a bit less on here. Game reviews are weekly, that wont change, however you might not get as many Ewan Rants and so on, as they're going to be on updownright.

Thanks for the past two years etc etc, go view my posts on updownright.com, two posts a week on there.

Five games I like that nobody else does

We all have those games. You know what I mean, a game that you thought was amazing and you go and tell all your friends about it, only to find out that apparently the game was worse than series nine of Scrubs. Here's five games I thought were great, only to find out that major critic websites like Metacritic didn't agree with me. I'm looking at games that were either critically panned or hated by fans globally. A game can get good reviews and be hated by fans and vice versa.

The Simpsons Road Rage - GameBoy Advance/GameCube



When I first got this game on my Gameboy I loved it. I enjoyed every second I had with it, then about a week before I started collecting I traded it in for store credit at a now closed down game store so I could get a Nintendo 64. But as fate would have it, a lot of the games I traded in were liquidated to an even better games store nearby, so I bought back a bulk of my games, including this one. Now the GameCube version was even more hated, getting mostly negative reviews overall, which surprised me, you can see my review of the game for my further thoughts but wow, didn't expect it to completely flop in professional reviews.

It's a quirky, fun, fast paced game that I can definitely recommend playing through.

007 Quantum of Solace - Xbox 360



Every single person I've asked about this game have responded with one of two things, either "What games that?" or just general laughter at my expense. Yeah it's a movie tie in and the game got favourable reviews but apparently people didn't like it. I'm not sure why they didn't like it though, the game, obviously while being a movie tie in, was a really enjoyable game if you like mindless FPS games, which I apparently do.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard



But Ewan, how could you like such a terrible game? Well, it's an odd one this one, I didn't like it for the shooting that's for sure. Yeah, I see why people don't like this game but at the same time the story is one of the best parts of the games and it's worth playing through this game to see all the story envelop. It has Neil Patrick Harris as a voice actor too, along with Will Arnett and even Olivia Hack. There's also some really easy achievements in this game, I mean, 60G for watching the credits? I'll take that.

Destroy All Humans Game Series



Literally the entire series has been attacked by critics and my friends, and I have no idea why. It's some mindless fun, especially the second game of the series. A whole four "Destroy all Humans!" games were made, with the final game being released on the 360. Then Pandemic shut down, then THQ shut down, so the rights to this franchise are somewhere out there, we can only hope for another one of these in the series.

Some really creative ideas were thrown around in that game, especially mind control, the variety of weapons and slaughtering cows.

Fable III



So apparently this game (while well received by most critics) was hated by most people. I'm not too sure why, every time I go play this game and ask a friend they usually laugh in my face and say it's a bad game. But is it really? I absolutely loved the whole game and the voice cast was just star studded, Simon Pegg, Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and John Cleese which is just amazing.

And there you have it. Five games that I like that apparently everyone else hates, according to Google searches, IMDb and my friends.

Mini Reviews #6 - The Walking Dead: Road to Survival

Platform: iOS/Android
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

So this just randomly popped up in my Twitter feed of all places and it looked moderately okay so I thought I'd download it and play it for a few minutes.

Two days later and I'm completely engulfed in this game, and I'm not even sure how. It honestly isn't even that good, but once I started playing I couldn't stop, I've let it control my life so far, no way out of this one. There's actually a hell of a lot of things to do in the game, which is surprising, there's a campaign, raiding, special missions, town upgrades, it's taken the best bits of a load of games and hastily stapled them together.

Now as far as a "Mature Role-Playing Game" goes this game is far from it. There's actually some spelling errors dotted around the games story.

But of course, being a freemium game it's going to have it's fair share of "Buy this because it's good value" premium currency. Surprisingly there is a lack of items you can purchase straight through the premium currency, say I wanted to buy the character "Hershel" I'd have to get lucky in opening a pack of Elite Characters. It adds more of a reward to getting a good character which is great.

Funnily enough this game has actually made me want to start watching the TV Show, I saw the first five minutes of "Fear the Walking Dead" and the first episode of "The Walking Dead" but it never hooked me, but thanks to this game I'm going to go watch it.

Campaign wise, I'm onto, I guess you could call it Chapter 9, the part in the softball field or something, stage 2, not where I'm leaving it though, I'm planning on finishing the game, because it is surprisingly good.

Of course with all freemium games things take time to build, you have to wait for certain things to replenish etc, which is a real shame because I'd be playing a lot and then be told I have to stop because I ran out of gas cans.

Also, other than gaining resources, there doesn't seem to be a point to upgrading your town, so hopefully they'll do something about that in a future update.

Like it or not, there's another good Walking Dead game out there, it's on iOS and Android and you should indefinitely download it.

The Walking Dead: Road to Survival gets a 7/10

Games You Haven't Played #5

Another re-boot to an arguably original topic I used to cover, here's three more games you haven't played.

Dark Void



I bought this game about a year ago now, I got halfway through it and then stopped playing it, I have no idea why I stopped, it's a really enjoyable game, with an alright campaign, it has jetpacks and guns, how can you resist it?

Phantasy Star Universe



A very nostalgic game for me for whatever reason, I used to play the demo of this game all the time, and I recently found it in a game store for only £2, while the multiplayer is offline, apparently you can download something on the marketplace which turns it back on which is just amazing, well worth giving this a playthrough.

Over the Hedge



A movie tie in game again, this is honestly a pretty decent game, the movie was also alright, you can probably pick this up cheaply on GameCube which is the console I have it for.

So there's three more games that you've probably never played or heard of, enjoy.

Game Reviews #29 - Halo Wars - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (I think)

Halo isn't primarily a strategy game, it's an FPS, but when they announced this everyone went mad. A strategy Halo game? Who thought that was a good idea? Whoever did is a genius because this game is great!

The campaign of this game revolves around Sergeant Forge and his merry gang of UNSC troops going off and starting the fight that Master Chief eventually finishes. As this is a strategy game expect base building and such and such. There's quite a few units in this game that aren't really seen that often in the other games, like the Engineers, Flamethrower Squads and Wolverines. The game takes place before the original Halo so it's a prequel sort of thing.

Gameplay wise, you begin with a certain number of resources and a base ready for you to build upon. You need a variety of things to build certain units, for example you need a generator to make Spartans, so it's nicely balanced in a way that you can either rush to get your special unit or take it slowly like I do, build up a squad of scorpions/wraiths and then just obliterate the enemy bases before they have time to take off their coat and settle in.

One thing this game offered is the ability to play as the UNSC and the Covenant which is fantastic, you can play as Sergeant Forge, Captain Cutter and Anders for the UNSC. For the Covenant we have the Prophet of Regret, the Arbiter and just a regular old Brute Chieftain. Now you're probably wondering if there's any benefit to play each character. There is, each character gets their own unique unit, for example, if you choose to play as Captain Cutter you get to use ODST drop pods and as the Prophet of Regret you get Elite Honour Guards.

The variety of different military units in this game is kind of underwhelming, there's a total of eight to nine units for each character, with one unit being allowed an upgrade to the unique unit for said leader, like Sergeant Forge having Scorpions, which are upgraded to his special unit.

Another thing this game offered was multiplayer! 3v3 multiplayer against random people around the world, sounds great in concept, it was kinda cool to play it but it's better played with friends against difficult AI if I'm being honest.

Achievement wise, this game has a hell of a lot, all the campaign missions offer an achievement for the regular completion of a mission and a unique objective, such as flicking switches in a certain order or killing a certain number of enemies on a certain level. I still need to go back and pick up the remaining achievements but I have the majority of it.

Even though it's an RTS game on a console, it's a really fun game that I can't recommend playing enough.

Halo Wars gets a 9/10

Game Reviews #28 - Crash Tag Team Racing

Platform: Nintendo GameCube

Store Page

Price I Paid: Free! (I think)

Crash Tag Team Racing, one of my all time favourite games and arguably the best racing games of all time, featuring Crash Bandicoot and a whole host of old and new characters. Anyways, a bit of backstory to this game, Von Clutch has an amusement park but all of his power crystals were stolen, so it's up to Crash and everyone else to find them, whoever finds them all wins the theme park as a prize for helping him get the power crystals back, including the one in his stomach. New character wise, we can play as Von Clutch and Passedina, a rat who's trying to win the park for Von Clutch. A very noble job, but as you're Crash Bandicoot they can both go to hell and we're gonna win the theme park, even though we haven't really got the paper work to do so.

The game blends platforming and racing very well. You run around a hub based world and go through the racetracks, racing for power crystals. Coming in first place will win you three crystals, second place will get you two crystals and third place will win you one crystal. You can also find multiple crystals in the hub world surrounding you. Each mini "level" has three races to do, outfits and collectables to find, including the crystals, minigames and car parts for Crash.

Each character has three cars that you can unlock in a variety of ways, such as bringing someone a power crystal, giving them a certain amount of Wumpa coins or just fetching something from the hub worlds like an engine or costume for them. Surprisingly enough, characters usually have one or two unique costumes, such as N-Gin getting a...nurses outfit and Crash getting an Indiana Jones themed outfit. The cars are also really fun to drive around, with the characters getting three cars each too.

The most unique mechanic of this game is the racing. You can merge with different cars by hitting the Y button, which makes you and the driver of that car a two man TAG team, see what I did there? One person drives the car and one person man's a turret that can blow up other opponents. That's all good isn't it? Not really, opponents don't merge with other cars on the easiest difficulty which is a really big shame as this is where the game gets insanely fun.

There's also a stunt type minigame where you do flips and stunts to get the most points. That was actually really fun, with a nice selection of stunt arenas to do flips in. There's also a battle mode where you're paired up with someone and see who can kill the most people in a given amount of time.

Hell, there's more! Death animations are done by the hundreds, yeah they get old quickly but there's a unique death cutscene for everything, shot out of a cannon, falling in water, eaten by a yeti, punching a chicken...the list goes on. The powerups for the racing is pretty much everything you'd expect, missiles, chickens, piano's and cows. You can throw the piano's and cows though so that's nice. One thing I must say, the tracks are great, lots of hidden paths that you can take to give you an advantage in a race while there are lots of obstacles, for example Neptune's trident could blow up your car on the way around the track.

I need to make special mention of the music, mainly the menu theme. It brings back a lot of memories from my childhood, racing around as Nina or N-Gin, finally finishing the game 100%. Good times. I haven't got a bad word to say about the game.

Crash Tag Team Racing gets a 10/10

Ewan Rants: Early Access Games

Something that's been pretty common these past few years are games that are announced as "Early Access". This means that the game is for sale, however they're either in Alpha/Beta or an unfinished stage of development. So what do I think I don't hear you ask?



I think it's a load of arse. If you're going to release a game then make sure it's playable at least, which most of these games are so fair enough, but some of these games have been in early access for years or have been abandoned by their developers. You're buying an unfinished game, with that money you could get a finished game. It's just a way of the developer to get money.

But it's good that the developers are getting money right? I mean, if they don't get money then they wont be able to work harder on the game, in turn releasing worse content. So most game developers are extremely dependant on the public buying their games before they're in a remotely playable stage. Take a look at DayZ, I bought that game standalone a few weeks after it came out, mainly because I wanted to see what it was like.

I sank a good 30 hours into that game and it's fine. Is it going to be the next big game that sells millions? Maybe. Is it in a playable state right now or last time I checked? No.

That's the problem with early access, you're buying a broken game that you're hoping gets fixed. Believe me, you do see some right piles of shit in early access and know that they will never leave that state any time soon. I'm not saying all of them are bad, I mean, DayZ, Besiege and PolyBridge are all in early access and are going somewhere.

All I'm saying is it's a risk to buy something you don't know is going to get released unless you want to support the developer, I bought DayZ because yes, £20 will help the developer but I actually wanted to see what the game was like, it's fine for the current stage it's in, it's nowhere near finished and in a playable state for me though. I don't find I'm keen on having zombies glitch through the walls and floor.

Another thing, have you seen the prices on some of these early access games? Bloody hell, you're making us pay full retail value for an alpha stage game. Seriously? It's absurd that people will pay this much money for a game that may or may not actually get finished. I mean, Universe Sandbox 2? Why do we need a second one, and for £18.99 at that! That's absurdly expensive! Who'd buy a game that expensive in early access?

Mind, it does look kinda good...

Game Reviews #27 - The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Platform: Steam
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (TremorGames)

Apologies on the lateness of the review, I was on holiday, back to normal now though.

Remember that really good XCOM reboot? Y'know, Enemy Unknown, it was another fantastic game made by 2K Games and they successfully rebooted the series, if I'd known that this was gonna be the outcome of a reboot then I would have told everyone not to reboot the fantastically tactical Enemy Unknown. We've went from a tactically bliss game to a third person, cover based shooter with those tactical mechanics blended in with what could have been a fairly decent game. When I say fairly decent, I don't mean the next game for the generations, we shall not worship it's godliness.

2K did their best with this game, I'll give them that. It's hard to give "teh aliens r here" a good storyline and it's rarely been done correctly, come to think of it, the only decent alien game at all is a movie tie in, being the magnificent Alien Isolation. So what's the game's biggest problem? That's difficult to pinpoint but I'll give it a go.

From a graphical standpoint, the game is nothing special, they're not bad, but they're not good either. Same goes for the shooting, it's very difficult to cock up shooting in a third person shooter, this game didn't but it gets so bloody boring it's tedious and monotonous. To combat this, the game tried to incorporate the tactical advantages of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it kind of works in this game and I see what they were going for but it was not executed well or properly at all. It was a nice idea, but there was definitely a way of making it easier to use and more user friendly.

It would be better if the AI wasn't so atrociously awful. You have to babysit them every step of the way as if they're two fully formed, US Military babies. It gets frustrating very fast and takes away from what little atmosphere the game has. Which is a shame because the things the game gets right, it gets them right. For example, when using the tactical-esq view, while it could be better, it works. Makes the AI function for a bit, allowing you to flank an enemy or ambush them. All the aliens look great, regular and classic aliens, the thin men and all the other ones.

It was a very bold move to make a game like this, it didn't pay off but I think it's worth trying it out for yourself to see what they did right and what they did wrong. If you want to play a really good game like The Bureau then play Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. That was fun and did the tactical stuff well in a first person shooter.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified gets a 5/10

Game Reviews #26 - Rare Replay

Platform: Xbox One
Store Page
Price I Paid: £18

Woah! I'm reviewing a game that's recently came out! What in the world! Yeah, I bought the Rare Replay pack, how could I pass up on 30 Rareware games and for so cheap? Instead of reviewing each game individually I thought I'd just go over the package as a whole, that's not to say that I wont be going over some of the games individually in the future. So what've we got here? Well, it's a collection of 30 Rareware titles from the past 30 Years, we've got the classics like Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Jetpac, Killer Instinct and all that good stuff. Unfortunately absent is Goldeneye and the Donkey Kong series because of licensing issues but that's understandable and we'll forgive them.

All the games are very good control wise, not really anything I found blatantly bad about the games controls. Jet Force Gemini was given a new control scheme but since I haven't played the original version of the game so I didn't see the difference in controls when I played it. There's a lot of games on here that I was extremely excited to play, others I'd never heard of and others I just didn't want to play because they were either bad or uninteresting, such as anything Rare made after 2002.

Some of the titles like Banjo Kazooie are actually apart of the Xbox Compatibility Program thing so you have to install those games before you can play them, while some games are just apart of the Rare Replay disc. This honestly isn't that much of a problem, just takes up more hard drive space, and it means once I've finished some of those games I can un-install them.

So what's new graphically wise? Nothing, I don't think. I didn't notice any differences, there's probably been a few touch ups here and there but that's about it, nothing I've noticed. Some of the older games have some lovely borders around them of the game you're playing.

Something that was promised for the game is that there would be 10,000G worth of achievements. Many people have cried out that this is a lie. It is not. You have the 360 Games there which still have their achievements, there's 4,000G on the Rare Replay disc and the rest of the gamerscore is for the 360 ports. That's pretty naff but that's the way it is, still, for achievement hunters like myself it'll be a lot of fun.

Something new is the "Rare Revealed" section which allows you to view interviews, music, concept art and so on, you can unlock all this stuff by completing milestones, which are unlocked by doing certain things in the games. Every time you complete a milestone, you get a stamp and an achievement. Every game's first milestone was to play it, by which it means launch the game until the achievement pops and then exit back out, so that was nice.

I'm not sure what the milestones are leading up to, so far it's just unlocking Grant Kirkhope interviews, which is nice. (For those of you who don't know, Grant Kirkhope was the musical genius that made the soundtracks for Banjo Kazooie/Tooie, the Viva Piñata games, Perfect Dark and Cityville 2.)

Another new thing is the addition of "Snapshots" which are little challenges in each game, there's achievements linked to these, but if you aren't the best at old arcade games (like myself) then you may have some trouble with getting some of these snapshots accomplished. The games that are 360 standalone have some really cheap milestones, basically stating "Get X amount of Gamerscore" and that's all. Still, it's another incentive to get achievements, not that I needed one.

There is one small problem though. Jet Force Gemini,  as of now, has a glitched achievement that will wipe your save data COMPLETELY, so until they fix it, steer clear of Jet Force Gemini.

It's great that Rareware have finally released something that isn't a Kinect game, albeit a re-release of some of their classic titles. If you can, then get this collection pack, there really isn't a reason not to buy this. Hell, they'll probably add more titles as DLC in the coming months or years. This is literally the best game collection I own.

Rare Replay gets a 10/10

The Gamerscore Run - Week 3 - Mini Update

So I was reading through some posts on TrueAchievements and most people who aim to get achievements have a lot of games, unlike me where I've got maybe four or five for each console. I do have a lot of games, so let's stick a load of games that I'll play through for achievements down there, because I have actually gotten some achievements today.

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 645G/4500G
Rare Replay - 530G/1000G
Titanfall - 180G/1400G

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel - 40G/1000G
Banjo Kazooie - 20G/200G
Banjo Tooie - 0G/200G
Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts - 30G/1000G 
Call of Duty 3 - 100G/1000G
Dead Island - 95G/1000G
Lego Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 - 75G/1000G
Minecraft - 410G/1000G
The Lego Movie Videogame - 690G/1000G

I'll just stick the games I've gotten achievements in in bold, it's easier for me to do that. I've got a lot more games to play through now at least, gives me a lot more variety too.

Gamerscore needed to go even:

8503G

The number's went down a little bit so that's a first

The Gamerscore Run - Week 3 - Progress

Finally I'm at a point where I can buckle up and start powering through some games and like last week, I've mixed it up a little because I've gotten new games and so on. My interest drifts quite a lot so expect a shuffle every now and then. Thanks to backwards compatibility, I can play some 360 games on my Xbox One, so those games have been stuck under the "Xbox One" portion.

Ewan's Gamerscore - 42, 480
Joseph's Gamerscore - 51, 5108

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Rare Replay - 515G/4000G - (29 Achievements worth 515G) - 14% Complete
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 645G/1000G
Titanfall - 180G/1000G
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
Banjo Kazooie - 20G/200G (2 Achievements worth 20G) - 17% Complete

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

007 Quantom of Solace - 300G/1000G
Bulletstorm - 30G/1000G
Lego Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 - 75G/1000G (3 Achievements worth 75G) - 8% Complete

Gamerscore needed to go even:

8628G

It's went up again, but don't worry, I've got Rare Replay and Master Chief Collection to play through which is just easy gamerscore left and right. Maybe I should break his hands or something.

Ewan Rants: Sequels and Prequels

Where would we be without sequels? Probably in a better place to be frank, a lot of sequels nowadays are unneeded and clearly unwanted, but what about those sequels we do want and enjoy?



A game series that instantly pops to mind is the Call of Duty series, they're released every year around September/November time to cash in on the holiday rush, because who doesn't like a shit story, millions upon millions of 8 year olds will line up and buy it on launch day. Every year. If you've read my review for Advanced Warfare you'll know I absolutely loved that game because the campaign was really good, but before that Call of Duty had lost it's footing and it looks like Black Ops III is going to continue that tradition.

But do we honestly need more Call of Duty sequels? No, to be quite honest, most games do just fine without a sequel once a year, look at Grand Theft Auto, it'll be a very long time before we get a sequel to GTA V, but obviously it isn't as easy to make as Call of Duty. No, all you have to do is point at a country, scream "THEY'RE THE BAD GUYS" and away you go. It's ridiculous, nobody needs this many games, we're at about 20 or so Call of Duty games and it's only been around for 12 years or so.

Look at Beyond Good and Evil for example, an outstanding game that, by the looks of it isn't getting a sequel. I would happily trade all the Call of Duty games for a trailer to a sequel for that game, let alone the release of it.

Then we have the games that actually require a sequel to make sense but wont be getting one in the next few centuries, see Half Life 3 for that one, or even Commander Keen. Most sequels and prequels are just blatant cash grabs that weren't needed. We'd thought we'd seen the end of Gears of War, but unfortunately that isn't the case as now we have Judgement, a HD remake for the Xbox One and most probably another instalment. We thought we'd finally buried the Medal of Honour series, but then that came back and made itself look like the stupidest shooter we've seen in a very long time.

Prequels are even worse, it's basically a developers way of saying "We made a great series and now it's ended, but it's popular and it'll make money, prequel time!" The Halo franchise has seen it's fair share of sequels or games that don't include Master Chief, like Halo Wars and Halo: Reach, however the difference is that those games are good, unlike the prequels to Five Night's at Freddy's, or sequels or whatever the hell they were. Nobody knows, nobody cares.

Of course, it's nice to see that when a sequel to a beloved series is bad the developers pay the price. Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts and Duke Nukem Forever showed us that even the most beloved series are not safe from cash grabbing.

Wait, they're making a sequel to Just Cause 2?

Game Reviews #25 - Wolfenstein: The New Order

Platform: Xbox One
Store Page
Price I Paid: £20

Wolfenstein got a reboot! So is Doom! Anyone up for a Fantasy World Dizzy reboot? No...alright then, we'll settle for the Wolfenstein reboot. Now, before we begin, I should point out I played the game on ÜBER mode for the first few missions until I learnt that you just have to play the last mission to unlock the difficulty achievements. Which is good because the game is hard, a nice change from the mindless tat I usually play.

So yes, the game is challenging, with skill trees sort of things involved, you do different tasks to unlock a perk from the skill tree, which also unlocks you an achievement. For example, you can unlock a demolition perk by killing two enemies with one grenade, which unlocks a perk and 20G. Lots of good perks to unlock, but you can't put certain points into certain things, which isn't that big of a deal when most of the challenges are simplistic enough for everyone to accomplish. Especially with the promise of Gamerscore it made me want to go after all perks.

The guns in the game are, to be honest, a bit lacking, there's a couple guns, nothing extraordinary, you have the usual stuff, knife, pistol, machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle, tesla grenade and laser cutter. All have a good variety to them and ammo can be found everywhere, while at the same time you'll find that it can be very scarce and you'll be forced to use all the weapons at some point in your playthrough. Some weapons have upgrades, such as the pistol allowing you to use a silencer and the laser cutter being upgraded to a machine gun.

Graphically speaking, yeah, it's nice, I like the games graphics. Blazkowicz isn't a bland character, he isn't the dashing, charming and funny character we want, that role is delegated to Fergus Reid (if you picked him which you should have done). I don't know about Wyatt, I haven't played through his campaign yet, but from what I've gathered he isn't as funny as Reid and isn't as good as him either.

Missions can be finished in a variety of ways, well, not really. Stealth or guns blazing. Usually goes the same way, try and be stealthy by taking out the officers, accidentally miss your shot or takedown and end up slaughtering an entire legion of German troops. The game does include a nice variety of soldiers, from regular ones, officers, mecha death robots, dogs and bigger mecha death robots! Each with a varying difficulty of defeating, soldiers being the easiest, mecha death robots being the hardest.

My only complaint with the game is for the choice you make at the start of the game, I was expecting more choices like that, but I was disappointed when I found out that that was basically the only major choice in the game. A neat little thing is the Nightmares, allowing you to play through classic Wolfenstein levels from the original game, which was really fun.

Well, I do have another complaint. The London Nautica Robot. I never want to play that mission again, you could not force me to play that mission, even if you paid me, gave me things or said it was for 20,000G. I refuse to ever play that mission again, it was SO annoying, you'll see what I mean when you get this game.

Also, if you're a completionist of games like me, you'll be wanting the UBER Difficulty achievement, this doesn't mean you have to play through the whole game on the hardest difficulty, just the last mission, which I learnt the hard way, I haven't gotten the achievement yet, but I will do sooner or later because the last mission is literal bullet hell.

Overall, Wolfenstein is very fun, I'm glad to see a reboot has gone so well, especially for such a well respected series.

Wolfenstein: The New Order gets a 9/10

The Seven Games that WONT be compatible with Xbox One

I'm in the beta programme for all the new Xbox features, which means I get to play 360 games on my Xbox One before you, hah! But I haven't had it accepted yet, takes up to 48 hours to verify the code. What I began to wonder was what games are literally impossible or just sure as hell wont be compatible with the Xbox one.

THESE AREN'T FACTS, THESE ARE MY PREDICTIONS AND OPINIONS. ALSO ONLY GAMES I'VE PLAYED. THESE AREN'T IN ANY PARTICULAR ORDER EITHER BUT I'M TRYING TO MAKE THIS SENTENCE A TINY, LITTLE BIT LONGER SO IT FITS ONTO THE END OF THE PAGE. SO, HOW'S YOUR DAY GOING? AH THAT'S GREAT.

Guitar Hero/Rockband/DJ Hero



Yeah, all of them. None of them will be compatible, maybe Legends of Rock at a stretch, but there is no way of making the guitar controllers, drums and so on compatible with the Xbox One. I'm also gonna use this as a place to say that other games similar to this like Rockband and DJ Hero will not be compatible because of the controllers they use. Although with the new Guitar Hero and Rockband games coming out soon, we'll just have to wait and see.

Halo 3/Halo 4



I'm just thinking logically here, why would Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 be compatible with the Xbox One if it's already on there in the Halo MCC pack thing. Same goes for Halo 4 and ODST, maybe Reach and Halo Wars in the near future? C'mon, who doesn't want Reach and Halo Wars?

All the 360 Kinect Games (Thank God)



All the Kinect games. Yeah, that's right, in an article Phil Spencer explained that it'd be too difficult to put the Kinect games onto the Xbox One, so we wont be able to play all those poor games, which is a shame...

Prototype 1/Prototype 2



With the recent release of Prototype 1 and 2 on the Xbox One I really doubt that they'll make it backwards compatible, that wouldn't be profitable now would it? So you might have to keep on using your 360's to play this game series without spending a little extra cash on yet another digital game remake.

L.A. Noire



But wait! This is one of the greatest detective games and arguably one of the best games I've ever played! Why wouldn't it be compatible? Well, it has three discs, in the same article, Spencer said that it would be a struggle to make games with more than one disc compatible, so that means some of my other favourite games like Rage might not make the transaction as smoothly or at all to the Xbox One.

You're in the Movies



Here's one that very few of you will have heard of, this game was bundled with the Xbox Live Vision Camera when it was released and this game honestly wasn't too bad, it was Xbox's answer to the Playstation 2 EyeToy games. Personally, I liked it, it did a good job of showing off what the Vision Camera could do, of course, I doubt your Xbox 360's vision camera is gonna work for this game on the Xbox One, so we'll be having this game skipped out on.

Any game released on both Xbox One and Xbox 360



Battlefield 4, Destiny, Advanced Warfare and so on, they have physical and digital releases on both Xbox One and Xbox 360. If you're wanting people to buy Xbox One games (which Microsoft should want) then they probably wont make some of these compatible, especially considering many of them have an install disc on them.

So, give a probable goodbye to Kinect games, games with more than one disc, Guitar Hero's, games that have been remade, You're in the Movies and any game already on the Xbox One. At least we'll have Perfect Dark Zero...

Game Reviews #24 - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - Call of Duty Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (Probably, I hope so...)

The final week of Call of Duty month! We've reviewed some excellent games, this one is not so excellent.

I remember when this game was announced, a sequel to arguably the best Call of Duty Game there was! Angry little shits could sit online all day and screech down their microphone about how they got five Nukes in one game, as much as you try to explain to them that it is in fact impossible. So, the game came out, I waited a couple months for the hype to die down and got it as a Christmas/birthday gift like I do with all the Call of Duty games.

I was, at first, impressed with the game. But like most Call of Duty games their lack of good campaign is very apparent. You play as Roach and the other guy, can't remember his name, he was naff. Then you play as Soap who you played as in the first game, trying to bring back the good old days are we?

Gameplay wise, it's pretty alright I guess, of course the game functions like it should and everything, it's a triple A title, all the Call of Duties get good reception and this was no exception to that rule. Everything works, the occasional texture clip but that's all to be honest. Guns and stuff, nice variety, lots of ways to customise them both on single player and multi player, still doesn't add any fun to this game.

I want to make special mention of the graphics, they're good, but not as good as World at War. The previous Call of Duty had limbs flying everywhere, the only other Call of Duty to do that or have similar physics was Call of Duty 3 and I'm not sure why they got rid of that.

While the game is fine and works, I don't like it personally, however I can see why people would enjoy it and I don't want to allow my opinion to fully cloud your judgement of this half arsed game.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 gets a 7/10

The Gamerscore Run - Week 2 - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Week 2, I'm not tired yet, my wrists are literally killing me thanks to Guitar Hero but I'm almost finished with that game thank God. It said I had to go back through and play all songs again to perfection, I looked and there's 100G attatched to it but that means playing a lot of songs all over again, probably multiple times. The only other benefit to doing that would be bragging rights. Bragging rights on a Guitar hero game can only be achieved through Karaoke on Bohemian Rhapsody, as my friends unfortunately know. Only achievements that I could really get on Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock now are hitting X amount of notes. Still, overall I can get another 340G out of it, just a matter of finding the time to sit down and play Megadeath over and over until I get 2000 Stars.

As for the other games I've got to play through, I haven't started on them yet. I played a bit of Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (which I'm planning to 100% complete, along with all the LEGO games) I got part way through Chapter 3 of General Grevious' campaign. Mind, I did find one interesting thing about that game, Telltale Games developed it.

Ewan's Gamerscore - 41,755
Joseph's Gamerscore - 49,558

Games I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 645G/1000G (1 Achievement for 10G) 18% Complete
Titanfall - 180G/1000G
Wolfenstein: The New Order - 390G/1000G

Games I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

007: Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (No DLC)
Bulletstorm - 30G/1000G
Bully: Scholarship Edition - 110G/1000G
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 340G/1000G (6 Achievements for 150G) 32% Complete
Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars - 100G/1000G
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 - 15G/1000G

Gamerscore needed to go even:

7833G

It's went up by a few hundred gamerscore...that's not good...

Game Reviews #23 - Call of Duty 2 - Call of Duty Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

Call of Duty 2! The second game in the Call of Duty franchise I think, because they did that thing with Big Red One, but I'm playing the re-release on the 360. The story of this game followed three campaigns, the Russians, English and American campaigns all offer a wide variety of levels, weapons, characters and objectives to complete. Each mission has a different objective, connect the wire to a radio, destroy flak turrets or storm D-Day. I must say that the D-Day campaign for the Americans was fantastic, you storm the beaches and then get pushed back to a trench and then American troops just spawn in everywhere with tanks and jeeps.

Graphical wise, it was a previous gen game but made a little prettier for the Xbox 360, so nothing really that special. The Germans all look like bits of play-doh modelled into vaguely looking Wehrmacht troops. Guns and stuff have a large variety, you've got the English weapons, German weapons, American weapons, Russian weapons and probably some form of alien weapon.

In all Call of Duty game fashions, there is multiplayer. It's good. People still play it which is fantastic, but we've come a long way from Call of Duty 2 multiplayer, some better aspects in future instalments, some worse and they could learn a thing or two from Call of Duty 2.

One example of the future getting it right is customisable classes, with a variety of guns and weaponry to aid you in combat, fully customizable in any way you could possibly think of, attachments, camo's and that's about it.

I will give it credit for making a good Call of Duty storyline with memorable characters such as Captain Price and the guy who'll shoot you in the face during the tutorial if you aren't careful. The tutorial was actually pretty well made now that I think about it, shows you how to shoot and throw potatoes and then whisks you away into a mission where it actually gives some pretty good advice such as "Always keep your gun fully reloaded" and "Don't actually throw potatoes instead of grenades."

With all of that in mind Call of Duty 2 gets a 8/10

The Gamerscore Run - Week 1 - Day 1 Update

Okay, like I previously stated in the updated version of yesterdays post, the Xbox 360 games were a bit naff when I said I'd just go through alphabetically. So what I've done is I've copy/pasted my list of 360 games into a random picker thingy, which will assign me five physical games to play through, I'll do the same for digital copies of games, but only three of those. So, instead of the games I said I'd play, I'll be playing:

Bulletstorm
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Lego Star Wars III
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014

That seems better, much more random, I'll keep Quantom of Solace, Kingdom and World for Keflings though, I wouldn't mind plaything through them. So, here's the new list:

Game's I'm Playing Through on Xbox 360

Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G (38% Completion)
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G (58% Completion)
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (75% Completion - Without DLC)
Bulletstorm - 30G/1000G (4% Completion)
Bully: Scholarship Edition - 110G/1000G (13% Completion)
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 190G/1000G (20% Completion)
Lego Star Wars III - 100G/1000G (20% Completion)
Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 - 15G/1000G (6% Completion)

Quantum of Solace should be easy, need to finish the campaign, will then run back through and get the optional mission achievements/mobile phones and cameras. Kingdom for Keflings is just a matter of time, same for World of Keflings. Bulletstorm, haven't played much of it yet, I did enjoy it though. Bully, that's a completely different story. I think I'm gonna have to do multiple playthroughs of the game to get all the achievements on that, it's manageable but time consuming. Guitar Hero games are always difficult, will get as many as I can. Lego games are extremely easy to 100% complete and I'd love to 100% complete them all. As for the football game, might get my brother to do it for me.

No achievements yet though...

The Gamerscore Run - Week 1 - The Rundown

I don't know if this'll turn into anything, but I'll give it a go. I like playing a lot of games, specifically on Xbox 360 and Xbox One, over time, I've been getting more and more achievements, it's a lot of fun and I enjoy myself. However, my good friend Joseph, has overtaken me by an excessive amount, I don't have the motivation to collect achievements anymore while he does. So, this is my way of getting myself motivated and hopefully, pass Joseph's gamerscore in 7 or so weeks.

Each week, I'll post an update to the blog to show the difference in achievements and how much each of us have collected over the week. We might even get a word or two from him every now and then. I gave this a go on TrueAchievements but I never found balancing two blogs was the best idea, so I'm gonna post my progress on here. The layout of how it's all gonna work out is down below.

Ewan's Gamerscore - 41,605G
Joseph's Gamerscore - 49,183G

That'll give you the current standings of the week, I'll also put a + next to the gamerscore and how much gamerscore it has increased by, if any. in that week.

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox One

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 30G/1000G
Wolfenstein The New Order - 390G/1000G
Titanfall - 180G/1400G
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 635G/4500G

Game's I'm Playing Through - Xbox 360

007 Quantum of Solace - 300G/1000G
2014 Fifa World Cup Brazil - 40G/1000G
A Kingdom for Keflings - 80G/200G
A World of Keflings - 135G/200G (No DLC)

So as you can see, I've picked four games for each of my consoles, I'll probably play whatever I get for Xbox One and alphabetically for Xbox 360. As for Joseph, who cares what he's playing? He has more gamerscore than me and he plays whatever he wants whenever.

***NOTE***

The games I've picked up top, I'm gonna add more to the list of 360 games, you can probably tell I was going in alphabetical order, honestly isn't the best idea, especially when I'd get to play only Call of Duty, so I'll probably use a random number thingy and just pick 8 games at random. That might work.

Gamerscore needed to go even:

7578G

So, we're just over 7,500G away from getting even with Joseph, which will make the job a lot harder, considering I used to be ahead way back when.

We'll see where we are next week, I'm not looking to complete the games though, I'm only a God, not a miracle work.

Game Reviews #20 - Little Inferno

Platform: Steam
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (TremorGames)

Burn. All. The. Things. Yes, Little Inferno! I picked this up off of TremorGames because I saw NerdCubed play it and noticed that you could burn photos, along with a variety of items. I like burning things, so why not, seems like a perfect little game for me. Honestly, I would have been happy just burning things but Little Inferno wanted to offer more.

So they put a story into the game, while I don't put stories on my review as to not spoil them, I think I should touch on how this story goes. Everyone has fireplaces, you have to burn things to make a load of warmth inside as the outside is cold and bad and everything awful. But how does one get things to burn in the fireplace and keep oneself warm?

Catalogues, you buy items with coins you get off of burning things and spiders, which allow you to buy something out of the catalogue, when you've bought all items on one page of the catalogue, a new catalogue is opened with more expensive items. Sounds great, until you have to wait for the items to burn them. Some items nearer to the end take a few minutes to appear in your inventory, it's ridiculous! You can speed the process up with tokens, but that's like adding a microtransactional system to your game without actually letting people buy useful items. It's best to just open the web browser up on Steam and read this while you wait.

The waiting time in this game reminds me of the Simpsons Tapped Out. A cool game if it weren't made by EA. The time it takes to build certain things in that game is purely ridiculous, eventually taking a day and a half to finish a building, but don't worry, you can spend an exuberant amount of money on donuts, which is their token "premium currency".

The burning animations for each item are superb. Setting fire to corn will make it pop, setting fire to the Tiki heads and they'll spew fire out of their mouth. It's great to see that so much work has gone into the animations and how unique each item is. I'm a big fan of the art style of this game, probably why I played all the way through to the end I suppose.

The game wont take long to beat, 2 hours at the most, just keep burning your things, make your way through all the catalogues and so on. Keep the hug token.

A cool idea that was executed fairly well, however the microtransaction-esq method of tickets to speed up items that take minutes to appear may turn some people away from this game.

Little Inferno gets a 7/10

Is It Worth Watching: Futurama

I just started binge watching a load of shows all at once, so why not make some use out of all my watching of three seasons a day and make a blog post about it. I've got a load of TV Shows and movies to watch through, so why not. We'll kick things off with Futurama. Now I must admit, I'm a lot better at game reviews than I am with TV show and movie reviews, however as time goes on it'll get better and we'll enjoy it all the more. This is a TV show with 7 seasons, so instead of analysing the show as a whole, I thought I'd analyse each season individually.

Season 1 - 13 Episodes

Season 1 gave us such classic episodes such as I, Roomate, Space Pilot 3000 and My Three Suns. This season does a great job of introducing us to our main characters which consists of Phillip J. Fry, Turanga Leela, Bender, Professor Farnsworth, Amy Wong, Hermes Conrad and everyone's favourite Dr. Zoidberg. The first season definitely has a strong lineup of episodes with no horrendously awful episodes to be seen.

Best Episode: Fry and the Slurm Factory

Basically mocking "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" this episode is full of laughs, music and introduced the fan favourite "Slurms McKenzie".

Worst Episode: A Fishful of Dollars

The whole episode consists of Fry looking for Anchovies, then sticking them on a pizza because anchovies died out, definitely not the strongest episode in the series, but still has it's fair few laughs even if the plot is a little fishy.

Season 2 - 19 Episodes

Season 2 was 6 episodes longer than the first season, which is always nice. The more Futurama the better, this season did a fantastic job of making us love our main characters even more than we already did. It even introduced some new, recurring characters that have been our favourites ever since, most notably President Nixon and Robot Santa.

Best Episode: How Herme's Requisitioned his Groove Back/The Cryonic Woman

I didn't honestly know which episode to pick for this one, I like "How Herme's Requisitioned his Groove Back" because it showed us some depth to one of the other Planet Express members, who at this point hadn't had a large story arch like this one. I also picked "The Cryonic Woman" because it show's what happens when Fry's ex-girlfriend comes to the future and how their relationship has an affect on the rest of the Planet Express crew.

Worst Episode: The Honking

Honestly, the reason for me not liking this episode is because it's that overdone. We've seen the original piece of work being Werewolf transformations and car related shenanigans in all manner of shows, movies, books and such. Futurama really didn't hit the nail on the head with this one either, which is a shame because it could've been done fairly well.

Season 3 - 21 Episodes

Season 3, it made us laugh, cry and get emotionally attached to a plant that Fry was trying to find. It gave us a lot more information about Fry's past, Bender gets a boost in plot points and it also gave us plot points to revolve around Farnsworth's and Herme's kids...

Best Episode: Roswell That Ends Well

This episode was great because it was one of the episodes to show how the Planet Express crew have had accidental impacts on history, being sent back to Roswell, Zoidberg is captured and is deemed an alien while everyone else has to fix the ship, also some very interesting things happen to Fry...

Worst Episode: Amazon Women in the Mood

Bleh, this episode is strange. In it, Zapp, Kiff, Amy and Leela all end up on some island where there's women who only want "snu-snu", Bender and Fry are there, then there's a giant computer? I don't know, this episode was really messy in turn.

Season 4 - 18 Episodes

The one with the dead dog. This series is probably the most critically acclaimed amongst fans and for good reason, a plethora of good episodes to choose from. The characters are given some great backstory's and episodes as well which is always good.

Best Episode: Jurassic Bark/Three Hundred Big Boys

Well, that was expected really wasn't it? Seymour and all that, it made me cry and was certainly one of the best episodes just for the ending scene alone. Three Hundred Big Boys is an interesting one, everyone get's $300. Fry buys 100 coffee's, it is amazingly funny seeing how Fry slowly turns into a maniacal freak solely devoted to coffee.

Worst Episode: Bend Her

Bender becomes a woman. I, I don't think I need to say anything else.

This is the first time the show got cancelled, but don't worry, we still have 3 more seasons to go through.

Season 5 - 4 Movies

When Futurama was initially cancelled, Cartoon Network bought the rights to it and put the episodes on their Adult Swim channel, which boosted sails by, a lot. When the contract ran out, FOX bought back Futurama and they started to make new episodes of the show, to boot up the series again, they made 4 movies, split into 4 episodes each time. I watched all four of these in a day. So, unlike the previous four, I don't want to spilt these into Best Episode/Worst Episode, or even best movie for that matter.

Why? Because they were all equally as boring, I'm not saying they were bad, but I think this is when I realised that Futurama was not gonna be the same as the previous four seasons. Don't get me wrong, the movies were funny, but they just weren't as good as what had previously been delivered. I think the one I liked the most was Bender's Big Score, it was funny, made the whole storyline confusingly awkward, yet believable. 

The worst one, Into The Wild Green Yonder was just boring. That's really all I have to say on the matter, it was boring. However if you like cool music, then watch Bender's Game, the credit sequence has some great music. That leaves the other one, the Beast with a Billion Backs, that was OK, I've seen it before quite a lot so it was boring to watch it again, however funny it was.

Season 6 - 26 Episodes

So this is the series reboot after the four movies, that's all I've really got to say about that. This series is OK, not the best start up to the reboot of a show that got cancelled but it'll do.

Best Episode: Attack of the Killer App

I'm not sure why I liked this episode so much, maybe it's because of the mad craze that we call Twitter, this episode took the mick and turned everyone into mindless zombies that bought new phones, just like Apple have done. It also features the infamous "Shut up and take my money" gif.

Worst Episode: The Duh-Vinci Code

So Leonardo da Vinci's secret invention was found in his old beard. We're off to a great start aren't we? Then all of Leonardo's inventions fit together to make a spaceship and they fly off to his home planet...I'm pretty sure somebody got fired over this episode, I'm hoping so...

Season 7 - 26 Episodes

The last season of Futurama was extremely disappointing, there was a plethora of poor quality episodes that just had a stupid idea to revolve around or they just weren't funny.

Best Episode: Murder on the Planet Express/Stench and Stenchibility/Meanwhile

Murder on the Planet Express was actually really cool, left Bender and Fry cold blooded killers when an evil space alien that can shapeshift comes aboard the ship and starts eating everyone when they're on a team building exercise. I definitely enjoyed Stench and Stenchibility as well, it gave Zoidberg a nice plot point that, actually was pretty well delivered. Meanwhile was the final episode in the series, so it had to be good, which it was, so I'm not going to even thing about spoiling that one.

Worst Episode: The Rest of Season 7

Yeah, I didn't have any strong feelings for the rest of the episodes, they're not worth talking about to be honest, the Zoidberg eating money at the casino episode was pretty good but other than that, nothing worth it.

But it all comes down to one question doesn't it?

Is it worth watching?

Yep.