ugachaka :: Jacob was here

I can see why reviewers were harsh to Assassin’s Creed. The game has a few parts where it seems a little broken–hiccups here and there with graphics.

Your master assassin might throw his arms in the air when he dismounts from a horse at odd moments, but at the same time, it has a few amazing elements that make it a great game.

There. I said it. I thought Assassin’s Creed was a great game. Like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, there were distinct moments in the game that made the story electrified and interesting.

Yes, it’s repetitive in some sequences, but if you give the game a chance, it becomes pretty addictive. Assassin’s Creed brought out the achievement junkie, a slightly obsessive compulsive element of my personality, and made me want to collect every single flag and complete every optional mission. I enjoyed the fact that it was repetitive but systematic, and each assassination was different.

That is, I enjoyed every single mission until I got to the final memory–a climactic moment I reached at 2 a.m. one weekend.

Ready to jump into the final conclusion, I selected it and entered the loading screen. There was my familiar assassin, Altair, waiting patiently in a cloud of light. As the 5.1 sound came to a constant hum, and the game was about to load, my Xbox 360 popped a message out of the right side of the screen–Disc Read Error.

What a cruel joke.

Apparently, a circular sequence of slight scratches on the disc that I had ignored were crucial to the disc’s final level but nothing else. I had almost sent the disc back early on, but decided to tough it out since the scratches caused no problems. I was impatient to start my journey as Altair.

I tried cleaning the discs several times–no luck. I finally jumped on the Amazon.com return policy pages to see about returning the disc–no luck. My disc was more than 30 days old and opened since Christmas Day.

My last chance was Ubisoft, the publisher of Assassin’s Creed. Luckily, I found an entry in the knowledge base two weeks ago that showed a disc replacement program. As long as the disc was purchased within 90 days–true–and the disc problems were not caused by any foul play on my part–also true–I would get free disc replacement. Whew! Relief.

It seems like it is going to be a little harder than a swap and replace, but for the moment, my Assassin’s Creed hopes will be at the mercy of Ubisoft customer support. It’s tragic when a gamer is separated from his ending.

Now this might be biased because I have a noticeable shortage of PS3 games on this list, but I also don’t own a PS3.  Maybe that explains it.  I also don’t feel there is anything coming out until 2008 that really catches my fancy enough for me to jump on the PS3 bandwagon–although Little Big Planet might be good enough.Here is the list of blurbs of games I want to play…

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Xbox 360

I was in on the Beta test for the multiplayer portion of this game, and it truly amazed–not to mention what a great thrill it is to see that developers have acknowledged that World War II has ended.  The ability to upgrade weapons and camouflage based upon how much you use each set got me hooked.  I personally enjoyed upgrading the sniper, but I changed directions and spent a few days upgrading my shotgun/demo man because you learn quickly that snipers cannot possibly own at every map of this multiplayer.  Play as a team or lone wolf, but the game gives you a great deal of optional configurations and great graphics.

The game is already racking up some great reviews–and even more great reviews–and trying to keep up with demand for the title.

Super Mario Galaxy – Nintendo Wii

After avoiding Sunshine and not really paying attention to the Paper Mario series, I actually found Super Mario Galaxy pretty interesting–and maybe a tide me over until the new Smash Bros. is released.  I can’t wait to play it in all it’s planet-running glory.  I think the Mario series tends to be some of the best games for any Nintendo system, but the past several have left me not hyped enough to actually purchase them over a game I know will be a crowd pleaser.  I haven’t really gotten excited about a Mario game since Mario 64.  From the looks of it, this one could change my mind about the little red plumber.

Assassin’s Creed – Xbox 360

Free-roaming environment with sandbox gameplay? Interacting with the crowd to be seen or sneak through the shadows?  This game looks great and has the talk to be great as well.  The word on the street is that the game surprises in the first few minutes, which is why the producers are being so hush hush about gameplay elements like all that text swirling around in-game targets.  The imagery in this game looks beautiful, and I think the gameplay will easily match.  I always wanted to be an assassin.

Mass Effect – Xbox 360

We have been hearing about this one for a long time.  The cutscenes leave you trying to imagine how it will all fit together, but to make a long story short, you have to put/hold together a team to save the galaxy.  No matter what the hype is about the sex scenes that may or may not show nudity, I am more interested in the conversation system and the overall plot of this one.  If they pull it off right, this game could be one of the most epic stories ever told in videogame form and make a precedent for the industry.  The launch trailer already shows just how great this game could be as long as the story holds up to scrutiny and the gameplay satisfies.

I know, I know. I am a horrible person. After spending several weeks following all the latest Halo 3 reviews and analyzing them to see what the fanboys, haters and regular Joes were saying about the game, I went and slacked off playing the last few days without giving you my review. If it makes any difference to you, I got three more achievements. No? Nothing? Alright, let’s move along.

I’ll preface my review by saying that I did not start out as a Halo fanboy. I was slow to adopt the Xbox as a valid console being a Nintendo fanboy Gamecube-addict myself. I had friends who moved over to it immediately and claimed it was the best console out there on the market, but I thought it was only catering to the hardcore shooter fans. I played Halo a handful of times and got owned by my friends–pistol masters.

When Halo 3 emerged, I lived in a fraternity house, so there you go. I played a great deal of multiplayer and even ducked into the campaign–gasp–to follow the storyline of the game and become wrapped up in the plight of Master Chief and Cortana. I discoverd a little site called TheHalography.com which I have featured on here several times and fell in love with the Halo universe. Sadly, I don’t think UNSCleric has updated the site since Halo 3 emerged. I never owned a copy of the game myself until I went all next-gen Microsoft and got an Xbox 360 with the release of Gears of War (Note: after my Wii–I still love you Nintendo).

You can call me a fanboy, but keep in mind that I also have a background in other consoles, shooters and gaming experiences not to be a complete mindless zombie.

Now for the review…OMG HALO r0X! L33T! No, I didn’t do that.

The Campaign

When I first popped the game disc into my 360, I went straight into the campaign mode. I loaded up on Heroic–none of that pansy Normal or Easy I had heard was intentionally made easier for the mainstream gamers to get hooked on the story. I could have gone Legendary, but come on, that’s hard.

Yes, the graphics are not the end all of 360s capabilities, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Yes, the campaign seems a little short. Yes, I thought it resembled a lot of what had already been done in Halo and Halo 2. BUT I expected and enjoyed this design choice.

The levels may not be the best looking, but they are deep enough and rich enough to make you stop and look more than once. Besides, if you are glancing around at all the backgrounds, you need to turn up the difficulty and get into the fight! The game definitely offered a great deal of WOW moments as many reviewers have said as well. I thought that these moments were amazing–so amazing that they became water cooler talk at the office for two weeks. The freedom to fight large pitched battles and take on multiple Scarabs with any choice of weapons and tactics is empowering, and one of the highlights of the Halo experience. The new features such as equipment and multiple grenades give you some new tactics, but not enough to throw you off the golden formula that Bungie established in the first installment–grenades, melee and weapons. You definitely need to make heavy use of grenades and melee once you get to Legendary where ammo is more scarce.

Achievements also are well-designed in Halo 3. They are difficult but not impossible or requiring hours of work. The multiplayer ones may take some time and only come once in a blue moon, but the campaign achievements are very reachable and add the replayability.

The only major complaint I have against the campaign is one that Destructoid also shared. After seeing all the Halo 3 commercials and promotions with that great diorama, I expected to see that battle or at least a cutscene. I know that the ad designers had not seen the game when they made those, but I thought that the scene with Master Chief camptured holding a sticky grenade would at least have to be in the plot. Instead, I kept looking for that dare to be great moment where Master Chief would enter into the hearts of the masses. Besides the very end, I didn’t see that.

I felt that the ending was a proper one for this series, but I would have liked some explanation as to the logistics of why this or that ended up here or there. I would be more exact there, but I don’t want to ruin it for people checking out this review prior to finishing–for crying out loud though, man, if you haven’t finished it yet, get on it.

The Multiplayer

The multiplayer I like on Halo 3 more than any first-person shooter multiplayer in some time. I am not sure what makes me enjoy it so much, but for some reason, the timing and intuitive fighting style just seems to catch on and get instantly gratifying.

Saved films and Forge are incredible. Multiplayer freaks will be toying with them and releasing mods to maps for years. I don’t think anything as monumental to multiplayer has been seen since CounterStrike first triumphed with user-created gameplay. Maps have already been shared–Rocket Race and Pirates–that are catching on all around Xbox Live. I have made two or three videos of my best games thus far, and while I hate that there is no rewind, making mix tapes of my own destructive wake might never get old.

The new maps level the playing field a bit by taking away portals and exploitations that some earlier maps had for the advanced players. I really like the large levels with tons of new vehicles–my favorites are the Hornet (human helicopter) and the Brute Chopper (Brute badass motorcycle). Not a lot more is new besides equipment. The vehicles and weapons change, but they don’t give any great new flexibility to the game. It’s Halo 2 with beefed up physics and graphics.

A cool feature that gets overlooked is the armor personalization. By earning achievements in the campaign and collecting skulls, players can unlock different looks or armor–even a Ninja Gaiden throwback helmet–to make their character personalized and give opponents something else to fear besides that gamertag above the soldier running at them.

Conclusion

When taken together, Halo is a very complete game. Changes are well-planned and integrated into the existing formula well. It’s good that Bungie didn’t make any drastic changes; they didn’t need to do anything to what gamers already loved and admired. To keep their hardcore “Halo Nation” fans, they only needed to conclude the story without bursting any bubbles and correct the wrongs of Halo 2 multiplayer with some new weapon and equipment tweaks. To attract the mainstream, they made the lesser modes of the game easy to pick up and promoted the story. For all the hits that Halo takes for having a predictable or unoriginal plot, I still think that the storyline is part of what makes me love the series. Emotion and purpose are built into this final installment in every cutscene. Master Chief doesn’t just take orders but has a bit more personality and individual motive in this one. I was afraid after seeing the ads that he would just be worshiped on the battlefield as the Messiah, but luckily, he is still just the most badass soldier any of the NPCs have ever seen trying to find his way in a crazy alien-infested world. I’d like to know if Bungie knows where his character is going, but maybe at the end of this review I can share a couple of theories.

Halo 3 is an incredible advance in first-person shooters. It doesn’t completely revolutionize gameplay or invent a whole new kind of first-person shooter, but it IS Halo. It uses the same controls, formula and addictive multiplayer that established the Xbox and Bungie on the map. For your money, you probably won’t get a better pure first-person shooter on a console until 2008. Disclaimer: I have never played Half-Life, but I can stil safely say that this looks to be the first-person shooter to beat.

I don’t think the game is perfect. If I had to give it a number, I would say a 9/10. No game deserves a perfect score (in the perfect sense) unless it truly WOWs everyone that plays it and commands attention in the gaming universe. Some outlets use perfect scores simply as recommendations of games they pick as the best this year and worth buying, so they may give it a perfect score because it IS worth buying. In order to get a perfect score from me though, I would have to ask that the campaign hold up to what the commercials built–what I imagined either fairly or unfairly–a battle in which wave upon wave of Brute troops sweep onto a multiplayer-sized arena rather than encounter after encounter built into the linear path. I would have wanted to see the multiplayer really get crazy and differentiate itself with custom fighting upgrades like in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I would have wanted to see some incredibly groundbreaking gameplay feature that I just couldn’t get over for weeks. Hey, a 9 isn’t bad nonetheless.

For a shooter or an action game for that matter, Halo 3 gives you more variety of combat: tank, close quarters and long-range and keeps it interesting, so it is most definitely a must-play, but I think there is still room for improvement. Maybe that’s why they left it a little “ambiguous” in the end.

SPOILER BELOW

As for my predictions, I have two theories on where Master Chief ends up at the end of Legendary ending. No, neither of them is Master Chief vs. the Death Star.

Theory #1: The Covenant was right. Upon firing the Halo at the Ark, the ship was separated in the escape, and while the Arbiter and front of the ship returned to Earth, Master Chief and Cortana were transported to the Forerunners just as the Prophets predicted. The world below is the new home of the Forerunners, and Master Chief will find out who exactly the Forerunners are once and for all.

Theory #2: Master Chief gets transported back to the start of things–Reach, the planet where the Spartans were trained. On Reach is where the Covenant killed most of his Spartan kind, and maybe he will find some sort of solitude or resting place on its surface. I would assume that Reach was “glassed” after the attack, but perhaps there are still some remnants of life for him to find there.

Or maybe he is going to float around in space until a time when the people need him again…how Superman-esque.

Well, now, that is all I could have written about Halo 3. Now I’m heading back to bust some skulls in Lone Wolves…