PixlBit

                                  

    The first one, on Xbox 360, of a series of History Channel branded games. It's a straight ahead, very linear FPS with authentic locations and narration that made me think I was in a museum looking at maps and old pictures. I think I actually experienced a phantom smell of mustiness watching the introductory cinematics for each battle.

    Visually the game is a lot better looking than I expected. It renders the historic locations really well. Obviously a lot of work went in to make things look right. The weapons are authenticly shown off, sometimes to annoying detail. Like the musket, which takes so long to reload, everyone back then must've gotten shot while reloading it. Also, I don't think you would've been running around with a musket by yourself like you do in this game. I've always seen muskets used in groups of men with the front line shooting, then kneeling to reload while the second line shot etc. No one's running-and-gunning with that thing. Also, many of the rifles throw out a lot of smoke that temporarily blinds you after every shot. That seems annoyingly realistic as well.

     However, there are plenty of other guns to use. I thought it was interesting how every one of them loads differently. One gun reloads through the butt of the rifle, another through a tube set below the barrell, another has your character putting oil in each of the chambers of a pistol before putting bullets in it. Time consuming stuff when you're being shot at and run at with bayonetts. Absolutely infuriating if you're playing this game on Hard difficulty. 

    For achievements, Xbox360achievements.org's guide suggested playing on Hard difficulty. I tried it for the first level and didn't get far. I went to Normal and had the same trouble. So I put it on Easy. I played the whole game in about six hours and got the achievements for getting 75% accuracy on most of the levels. The following day, I started again on Hard and got through the first level but not the second. Then I cruised through all the Union missions on Normal and then slowed way down for the harder Confederate missions, and managed to make it almost to the end, leaving three missions to do next week.

     There are achievements for accuracy in each level which I think is a joke, because none of these weapon were particularlly accurate in their time. No one in the Civil War would've been thinking head-shots except maybe the snipers and even they were probably glad enough to hit their target in the chest. I got to the 75% level on all the missions but 95% is something I'm not going for. It's just too tedious as it's advised to reload a save every time you miss.

   On this second playthrough on Normal, I got the 750 kills achievement, the 50 Knife Kills (which I used my sabre to get instead of the knife), and was following a guide to locate each hidden document or photo in each level before I ran out of time. I was also working on the 100 Pistol Kills which is rather difficult when I'm playing on Normal because unless you get a headshot, it takes at least two or three shots to get a kill. Sometimes I ran out of amo, or I had to switch to a rifle just to get through a level. That'll probably be the last achievement I go for.

    Overall the achievement list is pretty typical of early Xbox 360 games. There are ones for completing each level and for finishing the game on each difficulty above Easy; ones for collectibles; and ones for number of kills with different weapons types. These days developers have gotten a lot more creative with achievements.

   I don't think I'll get a complete 1000 points on this game, but I'll be really satisfied with where I'm at when I finish the game on Normal and get the Pistol Kills achievement.