The loosing team almost does nothing – they may help running in front of the sniper shooter, so that player doesn’t have to go out of aiming mode. And perhaps helping out by grabbing their team car (or one of the cars that spawns near the base) and drive to the sniperrifle, pick it up and go back to the base, to getting shot by the opposing team member(remember to choose the sniperrifle, so you have it in your hands, or you won’t drop it when dying).

Xzibitionist
Get your team car to level 4 50 times, play Blinged out ride.
One winning team, one loosing team. One player on the team gets the upgrades. The winning team members are gonna drive or walk to the loosing teams base, and starts to kill them, to make them drop 100$ notes to gather for the winning team to upgrade the car. The loosing team are also driving out their team car out from the garage, make some damage on it – DON’T blow it up – and let the winning team blow up the car, to pick up a 200$ note that’s dropped from it. Repeat. The loosing team tries to avoid picking up notes and the winning team doesn’t pink up notes when there’s money enough for a car upgrade (the number of money gathered is turning green).

The player that gets the upgrades drives around in the team car, picks up the chain (if it seems to be time enough before the team has gathered enough money) and drive towards the chop shop when there’s nearly enough money, so the car can be upgraded the second there’s money enough. When reaching level 4, the driver goes to the base where the killings is going on, leaves the car there, take another car and goes to his homebase – if the other players are quick to blow it up, then the lvl 3 car is ready to be picked up at the winning teams homebase. Repeat until the timer runs out, decide if you want to deliver the car at the podium if the timer is below one minute.

If done right and quickly and without too much inteference from random players, the boosted player can get more than 10 upgrades from level 3 to level 4.

Chain Gang
Drop of 500 chains – Play Team Big Ass chains.
All players meet at the drop off point, shooting eachoter. The winning player should be avoided getting shot at. The winning player takes the chains, when having 10, drops them off, and just keeping do that until the winning player gets the achievement – and this is repeated for the other players. The chains gained in regularly Big Ass Chains, will count in as well. Fairly easy to get, and mostly, you will get this while working on the other achievements. It’s unknown if chains gained in Blinged Out Ride counts in as well.

Pimp Killer
Kill the pimp in “protect tha pimp” mode 50 times. Taking turns, or just play competetive, when having the achivement, let other players kill the pimp.
I’ve experienced that is much easier to avoid “outsiders” when playing 8 people together (gangs, 4v4), and with 8 players in the matchmaking, the game starts way faster than with 3v3(6 players in the matchmaking) because the system doesn’t look for more players.


Happy hunting!

What to know
Pretty much, take a watered down version of Left 4 Dead and mash it together with an aerial view version of Need For Speed and you have Zombie Driver. The entire purpose of Zombie Driver is to drive around, pick up survivors and deliver them to the safe house. You’ll face a variety of zombies, like regular zombies, dog zombies and Fat Zombies (which have a striking resemblance to Boomers from L4D). You’ll also have the chance to drive around and pick-up extra cash to use to upgrade your cars between stages.

Gameplay
This game reminds me of a B-list horror movie in both the best and worst ways. In the good way, the game is fun and somewhat different than other games at the moment. The somewhat cheesy plot comes across as comical trying to be serious, which is something I always enjoy. I generally have a hard time not enjoying a game that involves demolishing zombies, and this game initially reached my standards of zombie destruction.

That being said, there is not enough variety in the game. The main difference in the levels is that they are going to get more difficult, often to a frustrating degree. Occasionally, a new type of zombie is thrown in, and that gets annoying because they always seem much harder than they should. The addition of new zombies also does not break up the repetitiveness of the game, leading it to drag on at some points.

Playing with friends
No multiplayer here, so you’re either going solo or trading off with your buddies in this case.

Amusements
Take the time out to actually read what people are saying as well as the mission briefings. These can get pretty entertaining sometimes and bring a little more to the table. Besides that, there isn’t really much more fun thrown into the game (besides all the zombie mashing, that is).

For eyes and ears
Graphically, this game is “meh” at best. The highlight of the graphics is pretty much the cut scenes – non-animated montages of pictures and text plastered all over each other. Granted, improved graphics may have slowed down the game even more than what I ran into, but I personally think it would have been worth the risk. Driving around running over the same zombies repeatedly needs to be beefed up if it wants to be truly awesome.

At first, I thought the audio was pretty good, until I started getting annoyed by the music and the sound effects. The quality of the music/effects is overall up to par, but the rhythm of the music and the same sounds happening anytime ANYTHING happens really starts to get a little irritating.

Gamer goals
The game doesn’t really provide anything comparable to achievements or trophies. All you really have in front of you is a primary objective and a secondary objective. Completing the secondary objective provides you with additional money to spend on your car between stages. Personally, I set out to get all the upgrades for my cars to set an extra bar for myself throughout the game.

Glitches and mistakes
There were two main issues I ran into with the game. The first was that it seemed that every once in a while, the game would essentially bog itself down and crash. I knew this was going to happen about ten seconds ahead of time because the game would trip itself up with lag and jumpy graphics/gameplay. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t resolve this issue.

The second problem I ran into was in the actual map layout of the game. The designers apparently did not want this game to go off without frustration (or at least that’s how it appeared to me). For instance, in one part of the game there is essentially a forest covering a portion of the map. What this led to was me not being able to see where I was driving my car (which turned out to me ramming into a fence several times in a row) and losing a lot of time before I realized there was no way I was making it through to the other side.

Hearts
Unfortunately, this game only gets two hearts for me. While it is generally fun, there’s only so much zombie ramming to be had before the concept gets old. Lately, zombie games have been popping up, which leads them to be held to higher standards. Zombie Driver didn’t quite make it to those standards. The design of the game had a lot of potential, but its glitched gameplay and layout get really frustrating. In addition to that, the game starts to get somewhat repetitive.

[View with PicLens]

Cold Facts
Developers: Ubisoft
Website: Assassins Creed II Official Site
Publishers: Ubisoft
PEGI rating: 18+
This format: Xbox360

What to know
If you’ve played the first Assassin’s Creed game, forget what you know about it. The repetitiveness is gone and has been replaced with an in-depth story with varying fun missions. The assassinations have also been improved upon with players finding they’ll have to be even more sneaky to find a way in.

Short description
Assassin’s Creed 2 is based upon revenge. It is what causes Ezio to become an assassin. His family was betrayed, a tragedy occured because of it and Ezio is set to seek revenge on all that were a part of it. The game takes place from 1476 – 1499 so as players work through the story, they’ll find it’s a long list of names.

Gameplay
As a player of Assassin’s Creed, I found I fell right back in with the controls in no time at all. However, there’s no need to worry about having not played the original as the game presents you with a tutorial as part of the storyline in the very beginning. Ezio is very nice to control with all of his movements feeling quite fluid and natural. The combat system has been improved upon since the original with disarms now part of Ezio’s fighting repertoire. I find this to be the most lethal out of all of the combat moves as you can steal the guard’s weapon and use it on them. This is extremely useful when dealing with more stronger enemies like Brutes.

Ezio has more gadgets to use such as smoke bombs and a poisoned blade, which are useful for causing distractions and speaking of which, the various factions – thieves, courtesans and mercenaries – are also quite useful for this purpose and Ezio can also enlist help from them at any time – for a certain price of course. There are more stealth assassinations to play with since Ezio can now assassinate enemies from the environment. As a result, hay stacks and ledges are no longer safe for guards to stand next to!

There is a new notoriety system in the game whereby doing things considered an offense to the law will add to the meter. When completely filled, Ezio will be wanted by the guards and if they see him, they will give chase. Fortunately doing certain actions like removing posters, bribing heralds and killing witnesses will drop your notorious level and Ezio can go back to being anonymous. This is certainly more favourable than in the original game where galloping past guards on a horse was enough to make them attack. When running from chasing guards, once they lose sight of Ezio, a radius will appear on the map showing where the guards are most likely going search so don’t waste time trying to hide in hay or sit on a bench. The guards are more intelligent this time round.

Playing with friends
There’s no multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed 2, but the game doesn’t need it. In my opinion they would have damaged the game by putting it in just for the sake of it.

Amusements
The entire game was pure fun for me. Ezio’s character adds to the game’s fun level as he’s naturally charismatic as opposed to Altair’s moody and arrogant persona. I definitely enjoyed the addition of a second hidden blade. I found several times I would just walk up to a pair of guards, kill them and walk away quite casually. Diving into the Venice waters as an escape method was also highly enjoyable. I’ve even discovered a bit of a Grand Theft Auto moment in the game where you can hijack a gondola. You don’t even have to go to the bother of removing the operator as just jumping onto the gondola will be enough to knock off the user so you can claim it as yours.

I also definitely enjoyed having the factions since sometimes in the original it was a bit annoying when constantly having to get into a fight with guards to get to a certain area. I know the scholars were there but they walked too slow and were only designed to go to certain areas. The factions walk at Ezio’s speed and go anywhere with him. So now it’s just a case of hiring a faction, distracting the guards and sneaking right past them. It just makes the game more about being an assassin, which is always fun.

For eyes and ears
Graphics: The scenes are incredible and Ubisoft really did a fabulous job at recreating Renaissance Italy. With the day and night element introduced in Assassin’s Creed 2, it really adds to the breathtaking environments. The main characters themselves are designed well, but the standard NPCs are still left looking a bit plain.

Music: The score is just simply amazing. Composed by Jesper Kyd, the music seriously adds to the atmosphere of the game by playing the right songs at the right moment. By walking around Venice, one can hear a tranquil, choir-like angelic theme whereas getting caught up in a fight sequence will treat players to an upbeat, chilling tempo. Last time I checked, all 35 tracks were uploaded onto YouTube so happy hunting!

Gamer goals
Ubisoft introduced their Uplay service for Assassin’s Creed 2 that allows the player to earn credits through playing the game and then spend them on items. One item I believe is up for grabs is the Altair outfit. One doesn’t necessarily have to spend the credits on a certain game; they can be kept for another game.

The achievements/trophies are all fairly standard and it’s quite easy to get the full lot of them as I got the 1000 achievement score in 10 days – and I was taking my time. The achievements/trophies include story related ones, performing certain actions, doing some side missions, upgrading and finding collectibles. There is one missable achievement/trophy called Fly Swatter which is to kick a guard while using the flying machine. This can only be done during a certain mission and there’s no opportunity to do it again except by doing a second playthrough. So crash the flying machine before the end of the sequence to restart if missed.

Collectibles I know are the big taboo thing about Assassin’s Creed after the flags and templars but they really have improved on them and made them useful.

In terms of collectibles they have:
- Subject 16’s videos. There are 20 puzzles to do in which the player is rewarded with a small video clip that obviously shows something important. No spoilers.
- 30 Codexes. They’re a small scroll that get added onto a wall in the villa which when using eagle vision, something else is revealed. This is essential to do to unlock the final mission. The codexes are found in buildings in the cities with four guards at the door. I often just used one of the factions to distract the guards and walked in and took it. I found I just did these as I was running through the area and they’re all marked on the map. Some are also gotten through missions.
- 6 Assassin Tombs. These are physical puzzles in which the player has to figure out how to progress from one room to another. There can be guards along the way. Collecting these rewards the player with Altair’s armour which will also colour Ezio’s clothes black.
- 100 Feathers. These would be the standard collectible. They’re not that bad and again they’re not necessary to do, but the player gets the Auditore cape as a reward. This puts Ezio on permanent notoriety so a fun thing to do if looking for a challenge. The DNA area in the pause menu will inform players about what areas are complete and how many feathers have been collected. They are quite easy to spot when in eagle vision.
- 66 Viewpoints. Not essential to do but it’s handy so the player can see the map.

Glitches and mistakes
I found several times the game would freeze on me. I think I pinpointed it down to the use of the fast transport system when travelling to Tuscany or Romagna. I had no problem going to Florence, Venice or Monteriggioni, which are really the main areas of the game. I also found maybe one or two instances where guards would be stuck in a rooftop.

Hearts
Definitely five hearts for me. I loved Assassin’s Creed despite its flaws but to have a game that completely excels its predecessor is just something amazing. Ubisoft really did listen to the fans and they went back to the drawing board, kept what was good (the handling of the game), got rid of the bad (repetition/flags/templars), added in some extra stuff and came up with a masterpiece.