Bioware conventions
There will be a pre-main quest where your companion dies immediately.
You will encounter a mentor who is later killed.
You will find a warrior to offest any weaknesses in your main character, as the game is designed to be played as a warrior. No balance for other characters.
You will encounter an evil love interest who only likes you more when sacrificing little girls to demons or torturing puppies. No moral scale or motivation to be ‘evil’ for some reason.
You will encounter a good love interest who requires you to be nice to everyone and go on a ton of sidequests.
You will start quest that turns out to be more complicated than initially seems and you have to do a further quest to complete. You can never go ask someone for help who is able to give it there and then.
Although main quest is time sensitive there still plenty of time to spend days wandering the countryside and helping kittens stuck in trees.
Each of your party’s character’s motivations only extend to the couple of hours that it takes to do their side-quest.

Game Problems
Useless AI instructions.
After 10 hours of play I feel like I’ve played for 2 and watched for 8.
Forced into areas so small that enemies close you down in less than 3 seconds so can’t be a ranged character. Most enemies don’t even show up until you’re upon them/load area.
Areas are highlighted that are not important “yet”.
Auto-save is not smart enough to save in each new area you enter. No reason not to save on the fly every area change and can lead to huge frustrations when you’ve done non-quest specific tasks for a while and then are randomly killed by bandits.
The D20 mechanics it’s grown up on are archaic for modern video game RPGs. Randomly missing in a fight means the character would not have lasted this long anyway.

4 Wheel Thunder

4×4 Evolution

Bangai-O

Code Veronica

Blue Stinger (this was almost certainly rubbish)

Burning Justice Academy 2

Caesars Palace 2000

Carrier

ChuChu Rocket!

Crazy Taxi

D2 (I never played it and appreciate that it was totally different to D on PS1 but I’m putting it in anyway)

Dance Dance Revolution

Daytona USA 2001

Dead or Alive 2

Dino Crisis (poor man’s Resident Evil)

Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm (Pretty sure this was god awful as well)

Evil Dead: Hail to the King

F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa (This was brilliant and ridiculously hard)

Fighting Vipers 2 (I’m not sure if I played it or not :s)

Grandia II (still no Grandia I)

Headhunter (This was the nuts)

Hidden & Dangerous (this was hard as chuff too)

The House of the Dead 2

Hydro Thunder (quality)

Ikaruga (get it on XBLA)

Jet Grind Radio (awesome!)

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (this got me into the series)

Maken X (forgot about this too. Made me feel sick. Forefather to red steel?)

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (another one to get on XBLA, though they’ve given you all characters from the start)

MDK2 (don’t think I ever managed to complete it)

Metropolis Street Racer (yessssssss!!!)

Mortal Kombat Gold

Mr. Driller (great!)

NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC

The Next Tetris: Online Edition (maybe rose-tinted but I think this was actually the only decent… no, wait, I’m thinking of the N64 version)

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (David Bowie, I never got it)

Phantasy Star Online (a glimpse at things to come)

Power Stone (was decent)

Quake III Arena (played this a lot)

Re-Volt (ha ha, brilliant)

Rez (XBLA it up)

Samba de Amigo (Damn! This was brilliant)

Sega Bass Fishing (Strangely addictive)

Shadow Man (Can’t remember if I got this on N64 or Dreamcast)

Shenmue

Shenmue II (Almost crying they’re not bringin out part 3. Literally have tears in my eyes)

Silver (this was decent actually)

Skies of Arcadia (Brilliant)

Slave Zero (pretty sure this was shit)

Sonic Adventure (never ‘got’ it)

Soulcalibur (brilliant)

Spawn: In the Demon’s Hand (loved this)

Starlancer (brilliant)

Stupid Invaders (oh, totally forgot about this)

Super Magnetic Neo (I owned this, it was shit)

Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage (pretty sure thsi was shit)

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (quality)

Toy Commander (pretty guff I think)

TrickStyle (oh yeah)

Virtua Tennis

Wetrix Plus

Ah, memories.

Almost anything that’s online/ranked. I don’t say this just because I let my Live! Gold membership slip, but because it’s too reliant on the skills of others and is subject to boosting.

Things that just require you playing loads. Gears of War Seriously achievement, where you had to get 10,000 kills for example.

Playing through a specific way/ replay to get an achievement. Mass Effect with certain characters, HL2 Defiant, Bioshock Good/Bad. This simply shows people how you played the game, not that you’re any good at it.

Anything that requires you to scour every last inch of a game. Lost Odyssey Seeds.

Things that are just luck. Virtua Fighter items.

Completing a game on easy.

Completing the game as player 2. Gears of War Dom, Guitar Hero 3 Bass.

Things that are just fucking ridiculous

Guitar Hero in general. 20 gold stars on expert, button masher, buy a guitar already, 5 star every expert song, 5 star all co-op expert etc, etc.

Anything that requires you to beat everyone else in the world. Burnout Revenge Celebrity status, DOA 4 SS ranking, PGR 3 tournament qualifier (I imagine this’ll be a bone of contention and some may say they’re the only true achievements on the Xbox).

Beating everything the game has to offer 1,000 times. Virtua fighter arcade clearances.

Things that seem ridiculous but aren’t.

Hexic. Grand Pearl poobah, there’s a system. I can’t do it though.

Things that should work but don’t (usually).

Complete a game on the hardest setting not unlocking lower difficulty achievements too. Conflict Denied Ops.

Missing something and having to play the whole game again to get it. Assassin’s Creed, Conversationalist.

Getting achievements just for completing the game unavoidably. Fight Night 3 (at least King Kong tried).

Other annoyances

Not being able to delete a game from my gamercard. Let MS keep the details but I don’t want my 0 score from a shitty demo I downloaded cluttering up my gamercard. 

What achievements should be.

You vs. the game – Take the best the programmer has to throw at you and beaten it.

Progress chart – I can put up with completed stage 4 etc.

So, this is the start of my new blogging regime. It was hasty and not fully developed, but this is my opinion on achievements and you’re free to disagree. In the future I may make a list of the best and worst achievements or develop my ideas on what achievements should be further but for now I’ve written about something that bothers me and expressed myself. I encourage all bloggers to do the same.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After contacting Twilight Creations about their intentions to create a XBLA game version of Zombies!!!, the creator, Todd A. Breitenstein, replied saying that very project was in the works.

I informed Joystiq, who later caught up with Todd A. Breitenstein at comic-con and they made a post about it with a little credit coming back to me at the end.

Linkage.

Portal on the other hand is a lot of fun. I know it uses the same engine, it just seems better.

At the moment there are too many good games and not enough time to play them and there’s no sign of the glut of games stopping before Christmas either.

I’ve always loved fighting games, the thought of being an ass kicking mofo certainly has an appeal and never owning a PS2 until late into it’s life DOA 3 was a great love on the original Xbox (as it was pretty much the only fighting game). Going slightly further back Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast was the first fighting game I took the time to get good with and my Mitsurugi was quite formidable, even if I do say so myself.

The Dreamcast also came with the gems SFIII and Marvel vs Capcom 2, both of which saw a lot of play. Since getting a Xbox 360 it has allowed me to travel back to the time when I never had a SNES and my cousin paid £60 for a copy of SFII; I believe he paid a similar price for Killer Instinct and *lols ahead* Rise of The Robots. To be fair he did learn polymetamorphic titanium alloy from it, so £60 well spent I say.

DOA4 was beaten a long time ago and although SFII gets dusted off every month or so, when I try to defeat the game without losing a round, the Xbox 360 has been rather dry on the beat ‘em up front, arcade aside, which was a great disappointment. One series I’ve never liked though is the Virtua Fighter games. So Virtua Fighter 5 was not an instant purchase for me, however ten minutes with the demo meant I bought on the weekend it came out.

Virtua Fighter 5 looks amazing and plays great. Since my last experience on the Dreamcast with Virtua Fighter 3:TB the series seems to have come on imeasurably. My recollections of the game were that it was inaccessible, slow and ugly. Now, if you pick the right character, it’s fun even when mashing buttons, lightning quick and one of the best looking games on the Xbox.

I’ll state right now that probably the only reason I’ve enjoyed it as much as I have is because I picked Jacky Bryant as my first character. While selecting who to go I just looked at the styles of martial art and as Jacky is a Jeet Kun Do expert I knew roughly what sort of moves I would have at my disposal. Not because I too have mastered Jeet Kun Do, but I’ve watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies and although Jann Lee wasn’t my favourite character in the DOA series, he was quite easy to play with.

Arcade mode is much as you’d expect. 17 different characters to choose from each with a distinct fighting styled doing battle with 5 or 6 varying opponents of increasing difficulty until you get to the boss who hands you your ass. The difference here is you only get one shot at her but you don’t need to defeat her to complete the arcade mode, unlike another game I could mention where you have to beat the cheating boss, suck on it Jelly Kasumi!

I’ve always found that after defeating the arcade there’s little else left to entertain the solo player but Sega have addressed this here with their Quest mode. In Quest mode you travel round virtual arcades playing other virtual characters, compete to win prizes and tournaments and customise your character. It’s an excellent addition that has seen my waste quite a few hours to reach Warrior level (two grades above 10th Dan). One slight complaint is my record currently stands at 156 -6, with my first loss only coming in the later stages of a tournament and only now are the fights starting to be a challenge as opposed to earlier where I was playing against a virtual punch bag. To be fair I could have upped the difficulty but I would like to have seen the computer characters throw more than one punch per round whilst I worked my way up to around 4th Dan.

Eventually though all the opponents in the arcades (several hundred) will be beaten and yellow star of defeat will be beside every opponents name. The Xbox version doesn’t let the fun stop there though, online means that you’re always guaranteed* to find a fresh fight just a moment away and even on my rubbish 2Mb connection there’s no noticable lag or forced slowdown a-la DOA4.

The variety of opponents, the difference and depth of each character means that you’re unlikely to ever need another fighter until the next gen of beat-em-ups arrives, although I’ll still be keeping an eye out for the new Tekken and Soul Calibur. This game is a real example of what the Xbox is capable of and a damn fine game to boot.

Metacritic score – 91

*Guarantee expires 1979, terms and conditions apply, see press for details.

I played through the game on the normal difficulty and it was moderately challenging without ever becoming a chore. In fact I think it’s one of the best balanced games out there. It never punishes you overly for being bad at the game, but it’s certainly much more rewarding for doing well.

I was quite immersed in the game, though there seemed to be a lot of people for an abandoned city. Saying that however, they were necessary to keep me on my toes and it’d be like complaining that the animals spoke in a Disney movie. Games must be approached with a certain level of disbelief and Bioshock never pushed the realms of possibility too far.

Credit for my immersion must go to the excellent story writers and artists who have created a believable world, as well as the developers and programmers for making the game fun to play and never letting the controls get in the way of the story. That said, my biggest problem with the game was that I never used the guns as it wasn’t quite balanced for console gaming, quite a big problem for a FPS.

I imagine that this game would be an entirely different experience with a mouse and keyboard as it’s just slightly too fiddly to aim with the cross hair given. Die-hard PC gamers berate console shooters, such as Halo, for being too easy with their generous auto-aim function. As a console gamer and having played many hours of Halo I rarely feel as if the game is shooting people in the head for me. Bioshock would have benefitted immensely for a slight degree of lock-on when aiming at a splicer.

The problem was not enough to detract from the fun as the more powerful opponents, the Big Daddy’s, provide a more than ample target and with Resident Evil style ammo scarcity throughout the first half of the game, collecting power-ups for the wrench was equally rewarding.

The weapons themselves were finely balanced to provide a challenge, with limited capacity and long reload times, often forcing the player to switch plasmids and weapons to take down an enemy. The other half of the weapons, the plasmids, provide a unique and refreshing secondary weapon and skill set for a FPS and although I played through using the bare minimum (I never fired a swarm of bees) it should allow players a certain amount of replay value, especially when they release more in the form of downloadable content.

The pacing never forced me to backtrack greatly, a staple of console shooters (well, Halo) to pad out the length and the story moved forward as goals were completed. The moral choices offered, whilst not amounting to what was promised, still made the first decision to harvest or save a little sister more than just good/bad or powerful/weak. Indeed a few times throughout the game the little sister’s actions were remarkably creepy, forcing the player to think about what they were doing. The story was well above the average FPS with a twist that becomes so obvious on a second play round you wonder how you missed it the first time and the achievements are finely balanced between gameplay and exploration.

I’m not going to finished with an out of ten score for this review but just say that it is a great game that is well worth a couple of play-throughs and a stand out title for the xbox360.

Metacritic score – 96