Games are not like movies. We can’t just blast through it in the space of two hours. We have to put a lot of time and effort into playing a game through its entirety. I am not complaining: usually the games are worth it. However, it can be annoying when a few hours into a game, we realise that we are not going to enjoy the rest of the game, even more frustrating when we had high hopes for it. Below are three games that didn’t quite live up to the standards the public were expecting. Feel free to add any games I might have missed.
3 – BLOODSTONE
In all honesty, I quite like this game to an extent. It is the kind of Bond game I have wanted to play, since Nightfire and Agent Under Fire, rather than the games following the actual film and remakes of Goldeneye (it was never going to work, was it?) Bloodstone however is back to the gritty Bond that I like. Its own storyline, the familiar face of Daniel Craig and some great game play. The fighting controls are great and the action is so fast-paced that at times you kind of feel like Bond. At the end of the day, all I wanted from this game was to be Bond for a couple of hours.
Because when you are Bond… fuck cover!
The game closed with minimal flaws: a little predictable and there were some annoyingly difficult moments. I put the controller down, momentarily pleased at my conquest and then a thought hit me: that would be the last time I would ever play that game. There is no additional features to it. Sure, I can try and do the game at its hardest difficulty or shoot some fruit bowls, but other than that, the game is over. I had got so used to games that have hours and hours of sub-objectives that I was not used to a game actually being over. Maybe for the next game, Bond should randomly turn to buying property, like Ezio in Assassin’s Creed.
2 – TOMB RAIDER: UNDERWORLD
When Tomb Raider: Legends came out, I was over the moon. Lara Croft was back and she was cool again. I also enjoyed the Anniversary game and looked forward to Underworld, a game that would provide all of the answers brought up in Legends. The game started good, the first level was fantastic, but my expectations were so high, the game didn’t quite meet them.
The story was good: it brought elements from Anniversary and wove together a pretty good plot. However, despite writers telling you different, the story isn’t everything: the game play still needs to be great. What annoyed me the most was that the game scrapped things that worked perfectly fine in the previous two: the quick tap sequences, for instance. The final fight was also… well, cut-scenes, triggered by a bit of jumping. After some great Tomb Raider games, I just felt that Underworld closed the Keeley Hawes trilogy badly.
1 – ASSASSIN’S CREED: REVELATIONS
I like Assassin’s Creed. I don’t like Revelations.
Why? Well, for one, we had only just completed Brotherhood. There was little to no demand for another game so soon, especially when it was pretty much identical to Brotherhood, with a few changes in plot and location. As soon as the introduction is over, the game falls back on original territory, something that, up to now, Assassin’s Creed has avoided.
I’ve run out of ideas. Just throw a game of Tower Defence in there!
It only forwarded the story a tiny amount. It is pretty much a spin-off or a prequel. Its main focus is on Altair and Desmond’s past: Ezio just kind of provides the action. It also kind of ruined Altair. The writers obviously heard that the fans wanted a return from Altair (fair enough, he was an awesome character), and they provided. What we didn’t want was to play Altair as an old man, who couldn’t even run or jump, two features important to a game about a free-running assassin. The game just fell from problem to problem.
The real shame is that I kind off don’t want to buy Assassin’s Creed 3 now. My love for the series has been kind of tarnished and another hit could make me drop the games altogether. Xbox and PS3 games are expensive and you can’t really afford to spend money on a bad one. Maybe some people could leave a comment below if the game is worth buying. (I can delete comments, so no spoilers please!)
Oracle of Film 
Assassin’s Creed 3 is better than Revelations, but probably not as good as Brotherhood. There were things I really enjoyed about it. In fact the side quests/missions seemed to occupy a lot of my time. It does use the 100% sync mechanism as the previous games where you had to complete the memory in a certain way, but some of them were quite difficult and frustrating. There is also a bit of stuff that happens after you complete the main story that adds a bit of extra story. I bought the DC, but haven’t played it yet so I can’t judge that at all.
The storyline was interesting, but there is something kind of missing. Running through Colonial America just doesn’t compare to Renaissance Italy.