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?