9/26 At A Glance:
Currently Playing:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (GF) - working on Fully Loaded and Samurai
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 (GF) - Just hit a groove with this one
Fallout 3 - prepping for Broken Steel with Evil character (Jyk)
Star Wars: TFU - working on combat trophies for Platinum, just got Saber Throw Mastery.
Just played demos for: Brutal Legend (buying it), Zombie Apocalypse (might buy it), and Wolfenstein (already deleted it).
Alright everyone, (and by everyone, so far I mean you, Nat :P ) welcome to the 1st documented BGB Weekend Gaming Session! Generally, I go into the weekend with a gaming goal in mind, whether it be to get a specific trophy or achievement, to do a playthrough, to get a GameFly game as complete as I want to before sending it back, or, occasionally, just for the sake of playing.
Originally, my main goal this weekend was to get the Platinum for Arkham Asylum by hammering away at the last challenge I needed (Sewer Bat Extreme), but, due to a great convergence of luck and skill, I managed to get it Thursday night. Which leaves me with the point I'm about to make.
X-M O: Wolverine, is a really good game for a movie tie-in, which in general I avoid like the plague they almost always are. However, I just want to take this opportunity to say how much I absolutely HATE collection achievements (though this does merit some small explanation). In Wolverine, like in far too many otherwise great games (I'm looking at you, Assassin's Creed), there are achievements for collecting items that, other than the fact they exist, have no bearing on the story or gameplay, and are so numerous as to make finding them all a task only possible by strategy guide or YouTube walkthroughs, and, if you as a player decide to be independent and find as many as you can on your own, you find it easier to start a new playthrough with guide by side than it is to locate the 3 or 4 out of 400 you're missing. Now, there are games that do collectibles right. Either they add or augment elements of the gameplay, come with an XP reward (to be fair, Wolverine does this, but it only helps in the first few levels) or they add additional depth to the story. Let's break it down:
Did it Well:
Bioshock: The taped diaries you find scattered about the sunken metropolis of Rapture add so much to the world and your sense of immersion in it, that finding these snippets of lives gone horribly wrong really becomes it's own reward. Emulated by it's spiritual sibling, Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Batman: Arkham Asylum: At 240 collectibles to find, I originally thought I was going to send B:AA straight to the corner with a pointy hat on. However, the game does a great job of mixing up what you're looking for. Sure, there's meaningless trophies to find, but there's also easter eggs nodding to the Batman universe in the form of the Riddles, as well as some fiendishly clever perspective puzzles. Throw in the Bioshock inspired patient interview tapes and the Chronicles of Arkham, and give a great XP bonus for finding each one, and you're only missing one thing to give the collecting REPLAY value, and that is, the map. It was brilliant of the devs to hide a map in each level showing the location of each of the Riddler's challenges. By no means does it solve the riddle for the player, it simply takes the wandering out of the equation. B:AA is one of the few games I've been able to get full completion on with absolutely NO help from the internet, and that's due mostly to good design.
Did it Poorly:
Assassin's Creed: I love this game. There's not many cooler characters than Altair, so, why IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS STABBY AND AWESOME IS AN ASSASSIN COLLECTING FLAGS! I understand that the dev team wanted players to go all over the rooftops and see the view from the tallest towers. Yes, that's what the time trials were for, thats what the vantage points were for. We even already had the cleverly hidden items, they were called Templars and they fought back (not to mention killing them serves the character and the plot). And there were 60 of them. Add to that 420 flags scattered across a huge game world, and you have a massive undertaking on your hands. Let's hope I'm not the only one who's bitched about this, otherwise I'll be doing it all over again come November. :P
Anyway, it's late, more tomorrow. Game on!
B.
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