A brief word about Rocky and Bullwinkle. Just like Commanders: Attack of the Genos shamelessly aped Intelligent Systems’ Advance Wars, Rocky and Bullwinkle attempts to emulate Nintendo’s WarioWare game mechanic. And again, just like Commanders, it doesn’t quite succeed.

Yes, it’s a collection of microgames that you interact with by a limited set of button presses. Yes, there’s plenty of them with unlockable rewards as you progress. Yes, the games are all based around a set of (vaguely) familiar characters. No, it’s nowhere near as fun.

In WarioWare the microgames came at you at speed, with simple instructions that instantly summed up what you had to do. In Rocky and Bullwinkle the games are often just a little too long. The instructions are vague and you’re never completely sure whether you need to alternate button presses, hit them in time with some event or just mash them repeatedly. Whereas in WarioWare the control scheme was limited to a couple of buttons, in Rocky and Bullwinkle it changes constantly between different buttons for no apparent reason other than to fake variety. The choice of buttons are interesting. I can’t think of any part of the Xbox’s gamepad that is less fun to button mash on than the two triggers. It’s noisy, it’s awkward and it’s damn right painful after a few games.

I will still go back and play Rocky and Bullwinkle a few more times. I’ve yet to try the Vision Camera support and it’s possible that that control method may make things more enjoyable, or at least a little more unique.

Enough about the XBLA title of the week, where did the other points come from? Well first of all I completed Assassin’s Creed. After all the reviews and comments I’d heard about the game I kept expecting to hit the boredom point but I never did. I can completely understand why people think it’s repetitive because, well, it is repetitive. However, I just played one assassination level each evening. By doing that the game was split up into nice little episodes and every session the experience felt fresh. I’m not at all sure how I feel about the end sections of the game. I had no problem with the fighting mechanics but even that was a little too much combat and felt completely at odds with the rest of the title.

The other game finished this week was the epic Lost Odyssey. I really enjoyed that game despite the JRPG quirks that I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries. It’s a great, emotional story with not too much of the cutesy, sugary, annoying juvenile elements that often creep into Japanese games (the ones that are worsened by bad translation). Although I never grew to love the characters, in the way for example that I liked the ones in Knights of the Old Republic, I at least grew very fond of them. Take out the random monster encounters, the long combat intro sequence and add more save points (key Japanese RPG elements, I know!) and it would have been a perfect title. I look forward to a sequel and also I’m hoping for a swift translation and release of the recent DLC that went online for our Japanese cousins.

Now I know it received a lot of mixed reviews but there is a lot to like about this game. The graphics are absolutely stunning. What an amazing imagining of the Holy Land during the Crusades. The atmosphere is incredible. You get a real thrill walking through a crowded market place or leaping across the rooftops. The whole idea of exploring your ancestor’s genetic memory is intriguing and I love the “holodeck-style” glitches and barriers that blink into the historical game world.

I also really like the combat and control system. I haven’t experienced many instances where my character has done something other than what I have intended him to do.

One of the complaints about the game was the lack of variety in the missions. I’m a couple of assassinations in so I’ve not really noticed that yet. At the moment I’m enjoying finding the different viewpoints and completing all of the investigations. Maybe the repetition will become more of an issue further down the line. At the moment it’s nice to know what to do and how to do it.

One thing that is annoying me, though, is that there doesn’t appear to be a subtitles option. I tend to play games late at night, with the sound down quite low and regularly turn the captions on so I don’ miss important dialogue. I’m also a very quick reader so, in games like Mass Effect, I can move through the conversations a lot faster by looking at the text rather than listening. The lack of subtitles in Assassin’s Creed seems to be a major oversight (especially for hearing impaired gamers). Maybe there is an option I haven’t yet found to turn them on? You’d think that Microsoft would insist that all games came with a captions option in order to be certified.