The Last Story – The Wii tells one of its last stories.

On Lazulis Island, a nation isolated from the rest of the suffering empire, a diverse band of mercenaries delve into ruins and kill monsters to earn a living. When war finally envelopes the island, the mismatched band get caught up in the action. The premise may be standard fare for a JRPG, but The Last Story still manages to entertain. Its title is also rather apt, as it will most likely be the last ‘big’ title released on the Wii before the launch of the Wii U later this year.

You play as Zael, who is of course the most soft-spoken, angsty and romantic one of the group. He is also lucky enough to be given an ancient power that allows him to pull off some special moves (or ‘cut sick’) on the battlefield. The rest of the characters are about what you’d expect: the stoic, handsome leader, the shy magic-user with an eye patch, the cute bookworm with healing powers and the blonde guy who flirts with all the girls. There is one refreshing character in the perpetually-drunk Syrenne, who manages to be more sleazy than the designated sleaze of the group. She’s a nice break from the doe-eyed anime girls that are the norm in this type of game.

The banter between characters is actually one of the games highlights. In the downtime between combat or story moments you can relax at the local inn, having fully-voiced acted and surprisingly funny conversations with your party. As an added bonus, most of the voice actors do a decent job with the occasionally clumsy script. On the flipside, The Last Story‘s soundtrack is forgettable, although my expectations may have been unfairly raised after the incredible Xenoblade, which has one of the best video game soundtracks in recent years.

Graphically it’s quite impressive as far as Wii games go, which unfortunately means you have to put up with FPS drops when there’s a lot of enemies on the screen. Frankly, the fact that you’re interested in this game probably means you know enough about the Wii to expect this sort of limitation. Textures are very low-res across the board, but the art style and facial animations more than make up for it.

Gameplay is incredibly linear and straightforward. For the first hour or two I kept thinking: “Ok, I’m through the intro, now it’ll let me see the world map and I can go wherever I want”. This moment never comes. You simply go from setpiece to setpiece. Cave – City – Inn – Palace – Cliffs – Ship etc. It’s not a huge problem, but it’s certainly jarring if you’re not expecting it.

At first the combat seems rather overwhelming, it’s all in real time until after an hour or so of gameplay where you’ll unlock the command mode ability. This allows you to pause the fight and instruct your party to use specific abilities. It’s a fun system, if a little easy, and it steadily gains depth as you progress. There’s also a cover system of sorts, which is really bizarre for an RPG. It’s not too integral to the combat however, so if you don’t like the sound of it, don’t worry, its not much of a hindrance. Tutorials pop up whenever a new mechanic is introduced and while there are a lot of them, they never feel intrusive or treat you like a blind monkey.

The Last Story is a worthwhile experience and a fitting way to send off your poor, dusty and neglected Wii. If you feel like having one last fun, simple yet satisfying adventure before you pack it up/sell it for scrap, then you should definitely pull the trigger on this one. On the other hand if you feel like you’ve been playing in HD for too long to go back to the dated graphics of the Wii, then don’t feel like you’re missing out on a classic here.

In closing: buy Xenoblade, buy it now.

3.5 out of 5

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (PC) – It’s in Revelations, people!

Revelations is the uninteresting rooftop after the steep, beautifully-animated ascents of the majestic cathedrals that were AC 2 and Brotherhood. Now that the free-running analogy is out of the way, take a leap of faith and read on.

The steady improvement of the Assassin’s Creed series had to slow down eventually and AC: Revelations is where the buck stops. AC2 was phenomenal, all the potential of the innovative but repetitive first game fully realised. Brotherhood was the unexpectedly enjoyable “AC 2.5” that came out only a year later. And another year after that we had a true franchise on our hands in the form of Revelations, and at last the great leaps in quality came to a halt.

Instead of just refining the already introduced mechanics of previous games, they added a whole lot more, none of them all that fun or creative. These include a bomb-crafting system (it’s the Ottoman Empire after all), a truly out-of-place tower defense mini-game, and the hook-blade, an upgrade to the traditional hidden blade that allows zip line travel and… not much else. Instead of feeling like a fresh way of playing a badass-stabby-old-Italian-bloke, the new features just seem like something to fill out a list on the back of the box.

The titular feature of Brotherhood: recruiting and upgrading your own team of Assassin pupils, in Revelations is something that has lost its flair. In the previous game there was a single Assassin Den; a cool hideout where you could upgrade armour, weapons and show off your collectibles. In Revelations the dens are everywhere and every one of them has its own loading screen. The already mentioned tower defense is a repeatable mission to stop these dens being lost to the enemy, and when you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a hundred times.

One of my favourite things about AC2 was the way they handled the parallel present day storyline of Desmond Miles. This continued in Brotherhood with the team moving to present day Monteriggioni, a nice touch. In Revelations (for plot reasons I won’t go into) this side of the AC story is completely absent. They also ditched all the riddles/puzzle solving from the previous two games, which I loved. We get some brief voice overs from present day, some really odd first-person platforming segments, and we finally see Subject 16 in the flesh, but none of it comes close to the crazy sci-fi aspects of previous entries.

The ‘revelations’ themselves take the form of short sequences where you play as Altair (the hero from the first game) at various points in his life. These sections are supposed to wrap up every single loose thread about Altair and Ezio in preparation for the clean slate of Assassin’s Creed 3. They’re a welcome distraction but once again they feel unnecessary and certainly aren’t as revelatory as one might hope.

Revelations undoubtedly looks good on PC, and of course the art team does a very good job capturing the atmosphere of Ottoman-era Istanbul. But it sure as hell isn’t Venice or Florence or Rome. The same sense of history just isn’t there.

The game is good, not great. At around 25 hours long you’ll get your moneys worth, but its just not as ground-breaking or mind-blowing as its predecessors. Bottom-line: Unless you can’t help yourself and have to play every single entry in this series (like me), I’d wait for a Steam Sale.

3 out of 5