Back again. The holiday was fantastic – I’ll say more about it when I’ve uploaded some pics and have the energy – I thought holidays were supposed to let you recharge your batteries?
Two new games of late: Lego Star Wars 1 and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin – Both excellent in my opinion and a steal from Play.com for £9.99 and £7.99 respectively.
Lego Star Wars consists of Episodes I to III revisited Lego-style. It’s quite an amusing game – seeing little Lego men Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi running about is a thrill, and the lightsabres work alot better than in other Star Wars games. Also in the cutscenes there’s always some silly goings on.
It’s aimed at all ages, although the younger audience would definately love it. For the older collectors among you, Lego Star Wars doesn’t disappoint – almost everything is destructible and spits out Lego ’studs’. Collecting these studs allows you to buy characters and items in Dexter’s cafe. It’s a bit like the cutesy Spyro The Dragon from a few years ago – it’s addictive.
Other Lego items are Force-affected, meaning that the Jedi/Sith characters can manipulate them to create context-sensitive stairways/bridges/vehicles etc. Again, just seeing Lego blocks assemble themselves and combining Force powers with another character is great to see.
I’ve already completed all six chapters of Episode I – I do still have to go back and collect some more studs and pieces of vehicles (The vehicles being gradually built up in the parking lot outside Dexter’s cafe) – but the good thing about Lego Star Wars is that it encourages you to revisit levels.
Everytime you defeat a character they are added to your selectable characters – in the short time I’ve played I’ve already unlocked a whole series of droids – including Droideka’s and an astro-droid – aswell as Darth Maul, Queen Amidala and herself as Padme, young Anakin and Jar Jar Binks.
The last great thing I will mention about this game is the 2-player. At any time a friend can hop in and join the action – something I’ve always wanted since Jedi Power Battles. I like those games where the two-player is sought-after rather than an after-thought, and Lego Star Wars is one of those games.
I’m quite behind the times as there is a second Lego Star Wars game out now focusing on the original three films, but maybe i’ll add it to my Christmas list!
I’ve been itching to play Hitman for awhile. I’d played Hitman 2 before, on loan from Blockbuster video for one night. It was hard then and still is. The original is on PC but it’s the type of game I prefer to play on console so I decided to start with number 2 (There’s already Hitman: Contracts & Hitman: Blood Money after Silent Assassin).
So last night, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity (or three days to be precise) and having played Lego Star Wars for most of the evening, I fired up Hitman 2. The first mission, Anathema, sees you trying to rescue your priest friend Father Vittorio from a Sicillian villa.
You start outside the villa grounds on a hill from where you can use your binoculars to survey the surrounding area. The nice thing about this first mission is that it’s immediately obvious how open ended Hitman 2 is going to be.
To your left there’s a postman walking up the road to deliver flowers – you could steal his clothes and bluff your way in in his stead. To your right a delivery drive is bringing groceries to the kitchen – again you could try to get in that way.
Straight ahead there is a secret door behind some trees – I tried this option and found that a guard comes out to ‘take a leak’ beside the trees. This gives you the perfect opportunity to take him out and sneak in that way.
I have to admit, in theory it seemed easy: hide just beside the door and wait for him to come out. Sneak up on him and use your fibre-wire to garott him, then steal his clothes and head into the villa grounds.
In practice I found it harder as he always felt my presence just as I approached. I read somewhere about tapping the sneak button rather than holding it so maybe this was the reason, or maybe you can attack from further away (I’m too used to Metal Gear Solid’s up close and personal approach). In any case I couldn’t get it to work last night so in the end I put a silenced round in the back of his skull with my 9mm. Hey, if it works…
Once inside I found it easier to creep about the villa and I only had to take out a second guard before I was able to get close enough to the Don himself. After that it’s downstairs to the basement to rescue the priest..but I won’t spoil it for you.
All in all it took me just under 30 minutes!lol I’ve read that you can complete the entire game by firing only one lethal bullet – probably true since 47 carries chloroform – but if I can just make it through the game first of all, then I’ll go back and try to be more humane.
This is only on the ‘normal’ difficulty level – on the upper levels the option to save mid-level disappears and the map no longer shows the enemies – Like the change from previous Metal Gear Solid games to number 3 – so when I finally try those settings it’s going to be tense!
One good thing about the game that I’ve already picked up on is 47’s own moral dilemma about what he’s doing – he gave up his violent past but has been pulled back in suddenly. I hope the rest of the game develops this topic.
Anyway, all’s well for another day – I’ll leave it at that for now.
I’m toying between light-hearted Jedi action or cold-blooded killing…
