Assassin's Creed

I don't think I trust early reviews, they sell magazines, and who would pan something if they get that early crack at it? They'd be blackballed from ever making money like that again. It does sound pretty cool, though. I dunno if I can fit another 360 game in, though. It's fucking SATURATED right now.

Mass Effect the week after too, right?

The lack of GTA and the overabundance of first person shooters has me craving a more open game, like Assassin's Creed looks to be. Even if it ends up being semi-broken - some of those games can also be quite a bit of fun (see Dead Rising). Those cities do look pretty amazing - if it can play half as good as it can look...

I does make me a bit skeptical when the publisher only hand picks a couple of mags for reviews and makes everybody else hold up till after the game is already out (or the day it comes out, I guess). It seems to possibly show a lack of confidence in the game. You don't see Nintendo bothering to do that with Mario Galaxy, for instance.

The boy wants this bad. My guess is that it's plotless no-depth platform bullshit with pretty graphics.

They say that the thing about it is it's kind of non-platform platform, because you can climb anything and jump from anything to anything, or anything plausible within ordinary logic and physics. I can see the novelty of that, essentially the shininess of new technology, wearing off and winding up being same old shit.

something about the marketing of this game really seems to have rubbed people the wrong way. if the platforming and exploration are at least as good as crackdown i'll be happy.

I'm just bitter cos I thought it was gonna be a Crusades RPG and now I just think it's gonna be a next-gen Prince of Persia.

prince of persia was perfectly pleasant

Positively praiseworthy!

All true, but not the intense in-depth political history spree that I thought for 3 seconds this might be.

Isn't there some kind of omg it's the future!!1 or time-travelling gimmick in this game?

I heard that yeah, that put me off too.

hey will you see the cover of my rag this week

no i won't

this guy thinks he's funny

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6g86OhiMy50

the sci-fi bit people are talking about

hooray, genetic memory!

i don't think i did see the cover yet! i will look for it today... do they have them anywhere near cote-vertu metro? i am in there daily, but i never see a copy... maybe they're behind all of those people giving out jesus magazines that i try to avoid

First 45 minutes or so were up on youtube yesterday (maybe still there?). I didn't watch it, since I'm probably going to pick up the game, but you may want to check it out..

Oh here's the link (still up)...

http://video.google.nl/videosearch?q=The+Beginning+of+Assassin%27s+Creed&so=1

Someone put 45 minutes of gameplay on the Internet?????

What the hell.

I have watched speed runs on youtube about that long. I am sad and lonely.

Hmm... the real reviews are coming in. Eurogamer starts off very positive, but with every paragraph gets a little more negative - eventually claiming Crackdown is more fun (well, I liked Crackdown too, but..)

"a game that starts off brightly, wriggling elusively as you try and grasp what's going on, delighting in the mechanics and beautiful visuals, before sinking into a pattern that, while fairly gratifying, never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive."

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=87432

saw the mirror, good cover! the article on AC is pretty neat too. can't remember writer's name... erik? i didn't like his review of the orange box at all though :(

Gamespot...

"Assassin's Creed will stay with you long after you finish it. Here is one of the most unique gameworlds ever created: beautiful, memorable, and alive. Every crack and crevasse is filled with gorgeous, subtle details, from astounding visual flourishes to overheard cries for help. But it's more than just a world--it's a fun and exciting action game with a ton of stuff to do and places to explore, rounded out with silky-smooth controls and a complex story that will slowly grab you the more you play. Make no mistake: Assassin's Creed is one of the best efforts of the year and a must-own game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners"

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/assassinscreed/review.html?sid=6182795

now I'm completely confused...

When was the last time a big-ticket title got panned by gaming journalism? Doom 4 or whatever it was? That wasn't even a pan.

(tho this game shouldn't be it, it's really good)

Have you picked it up? Impressions?

the little mobile game is kinda fun, at least. Heavy on the prince of persia, tho.

I'm into it so far. It looks incredible, which is becoming less and less of a reason to recommend a game, but it's just a world I want to be in, and can't see myself getting tired of jumping and climbing around in. Which is good 'cause that's most of what you're doing. I love how much it feels at the end of the day like a platformer, just a super next-gen style platformer, in the same way that parkour guys treat cities like a level of Super Mario.

Seems like most of what people are saying is it gets repetitve and the killing isn't nearly as fun as it should be, and I can definitely see that happening. At its worst it feels like a game you're directing rather than playing, which can make for great eyecandy but i'm sure it becomes a drag.

Also what's up with the caveat at the beginning about the game having been made by people of all ethnicities and religious backgrounds? Is it because the good guy's a muslim and most of the bad guys are 3rd-crusaders? Or does the story get crazier? I'm not into some threads that look like they might turn into Dan Brownery in the plotline.

Here's a couple specific questions I have...

When you're gathering intel for an assassination attempt, eavesdropping, etc - as you gather that info does it mark it off on a menu as you collect it, or do you have to remember (write down?) the various info?

What's the game's save system like? Can you save at any time, or just at the end of missions or specific locations?

If it ever gets to the point where you're pursuing the information through your own research, I haven't gotten there yet. So far it tells you who to eavesdrop on, you get information to pursue, and the location of your target shows up on the HUD. I was a little disappointed at how conventional this is, but maybe it gets harder.

And it's an autosave system. The framing device kind of justifies where the saves are in the narrative, and once or twice it's been a little awkward, but in general it's saving as often as you need it to, and you don't need to do much backtracking.

Thanks

So it looks like Ubisoft is threatening SA with a lawsuit again, since somebody reposted some comic on the forums depicting EA/Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond sucking off gamers in order for them to buy the game.

Got this last night and so far I'm enjoying it (just got to the outskirts of Damascus). Very different in feel from the other games out right now - seems to be all about going slow, taking you time and blending in and exploring. The look of the game is amazing, except for some slight v-sync problems and small glitches, which is forgivable when dealing with such a large, detailed, crowded world. There are so many people on the streets - walking around does feel more like your in a living place than any other game I can remember.

So far, the little combat there has been has reminded me of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - which was the worst thing about that game - but fortunately - it seems like you can avoid a lot of the combat here

Every crack and crevasse is filled with gorgeous, subtle details

gansha?

DAAAAANNNNNNN

thank you, urbandictionary.com, for explaining what that meant

I seen a review that makes this look dead sexy again. Is it deep or repetitive, eh?

Every crack and crevasse is deep and filled

I'm only just starting the second (of nine) assassinations, so I can't really speak to the repetitive aspect, but so far I'm really enjoying the game - it's dead different in feel than anything else out there right now, that's for sure. At least to start - it has been really slow - for one thing - and that's something I'm enjoying (that others might not). A lot of the "play" is wandering around looking at things, trying to climb buildings, collecting hidden flags. It's not exactly a stealth game (I think), but you do sort of have to take things slow, blend into the crowd, wait for your moment. In some ways, because the graphics are fairly realistic and detailed - and that the cities feel alive with crowds - some of the gameplay elements seem a little weirder than if the game had a more cartoony look. For instance, to escape from a chase, all you have to do is break the line of sight of the guys hunting you - so far that has been pretty easy to accomplish - and once you've broken their line of site and your wanted meter goes back to normal, you can walk right back past the same people who were hunting you five seconds ago but now they won't recognize you.

So, it's an arty, slow game - the kind of game for people who like exploring, wandering around and collecting stuff - more than straight up action and explosions. At times it reminds me a bit of Shadow of the Colosssus - you're on your horse, wandering around looking for something - and when you get there you collect info on your target by observation - and then you kill it - over and over again.

I meant to mention I came across a pretty weird glitch in this game yesterday - I don't know if it was the game, or my 360 screwing up with loading in streaming stuff - but I was climbing up a ladder in the first little hamlet, when the ladder disappeared from underneath me. I fell to the ground and then a lot of the textures on the side of the house started to disappear - so I walked up for a closer look and got sutck in the wall of the house. Looking through the house (my head was half-way inside) I could see through the whole world - down to water a hundred feet below. Suddendly I couldn't get myself unstuck from the house - thought I was going to have to restart the game - but then managed to drop down through the ground - fell into whiteness for ten or so seconds, then the memory bank re-initalized and I was back at my last save. Most weirdly, then an achievement popped up for getting into one hundred fights in a row without losing one (20 points)! Note: I'd only been in maybe twenty fights at that point - if that (and I'd lost several times, at least).

I bought this today, only to be greeted by a lovely ring of death when I got back home to the Xbox. Lovely. Will Microsoft be able to ship me a new one in time for Guitar Hero on Friday?

No - I hear they've gotten a bit quicker lately - possibly down to two weeks, but I wouldn't count on it. Mine took exactly three.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_8cmPZ7hfE

I played the hell out of this game yesterday and got about a third of the way through, when the difficulty ramps up incredibly all of a sudden and it really turns into a stealth game, rather than basically a sandbox brawler. I'm kind of disappointed that it seems like the exploring part of the game is over, and the fighting mechanic, which is after all basically single-button button-mashing, is not very satisfying when you get to the point where you're fighting thirteen guys at a time.

Also, fuck the cutscenes in this game. They're terribly written, you can't skip them, and the interactivity in them is the worst, most boring shit. "Oh boy, this is the part of this ACTION GAME where I have to walk slowly into my bedroom and lie down and go to sleep!"

However, there is a LOT of fun in this game. I cannot get enough of sneaking up behind archers and throwing them off rooftops. Or, to my shame, shoving beggars into merchant stands.

I was straight up stabbing the fucking beggars until I found out there was an achievement for shoving them.

Is there? What is it? God this game seems so wrongheaded in so many ways. Like I'm playing this game and it charms me and compels me so much because I'm transported to a world so unlike my own... And then I have to spend half my time being hassled, like aggressively, by beggars and lunatics. And you can't even pay them off! It starts off like one of these games where you're moving though a living indifferent city and you have to make moral choices about the things you do... But as far as I'm concerned the game is unplayable unless you spend a lot of time slaughtering beggars and desperate lunatics! Considering how much time they spent with the environment it's inexcusable how little dialogue there is for the ambient characters. "Please, sir! You don't understand! I have nothing!" and she follows you and follows you and you CAN'T EVEN GIVE HER MONEY TO SHUT HER UP. The idea of creating a moral imperative in a game with NPCs is a cool idea but having them be completely fucking unbearable, even if that may be realistic, kind of misses the point.
Are you supposed to find some moral

... rant rant

Shove 25 beggars for "Enemy of the Poor" achievement. Already got it, guess I'll go back to stabbing them.

I've only just done the second assassination and I'm already getting a bit bored. Great looking game though.

My housemate was working through the early stages and it seemed a little boring to me, but I'll give it more of a chance this weekend I think.

It gets WAY HARDER after the third assassination, if that would make it more interesting, Jeff.

I don't know if harder will help - if it's just more of the same stuff - it's already kind of frustrating when trying to sneak up on somebody to have a crazy guy shoving you for no reason. Much more of that and it may induce control smashing.

I was trying to think about what I feel I'm missing here & I've been thinking maybe it's tension. For the second assassination I went to Acre and did all the investigations, climbed all the view points and saved all the citizens - and never once did I feel really threatened or in danger. And all those missions were kind of like marking off items on a shopping list - more of a slightly dull chore than anything else. Even with the assassination (the doctor dude) - I had a hard time getting it to initialize correctly (kept getting shoved), which was frustrating, but not exactly challenging.

Anyhow, I'm not giving up yet - I'm definitely looking forward to making it to Jerusalem and at least walking around there for a while checking out the scene. Now that I have throwing knives too - I'm vaguely curious to see how those work out.

The ending at this point does seem so far away that I'm having a hard time seeing myself playing the game enough to make it there - which bums me out a bit.

Oh - the other thing I was thinking about here was that although they created this amazing looking open world - I haven't been able to find much to do that's fun in it. Unlike say, San Andreas, which may not have looked the best - seemed to give the player a lot more options and a lot more to discover. Sick of the missions, go on a race, rescue people with the fire truck, go gambling, exercise (ha-ha), just drive around listening to music and level-up your skills or whatever, hop on a bike, a sakteboard, go to the shooting range, etc...

Try throwing beggars into scaffoldings or crowded stands!

You're right that once the climbing gets old there's not much to do. And what you were saying is frustrating or irritating gets WAY WORSE in missions where you have to kill a bunch of people without being noticed. All you can really do is knife those guys. And really, for a game that continually scolds you about killing innocents from the very first scene, having a major part of the game be a setup where basically either you kill hundreds of innocents or the game is unplayably annoying... That's really fucking obnoxious.

OK, you've got a HUD? In ancient Damascus?

uh there's a reason for that, kinda

ihttp://images.contactmusic.com/images/reviews2/hud.jpg

oops

http://images.contactmusic.com/images/reviews2/hud.jpg

Just got this this weekend - first game for my new PS3. Amazing.

I'm done with the first three assassinations - and it got a lot harder. Guards are a lot more on guard, things are harder to get to without raising static, etc.

Throwing knives might just be the coolest thing ever, though. I really dug standing on the corner of a house and killing an enemy from above with a throwing knife, and then watching the ensuing crowd gather.

I think you have to enjoy the discipline imposed by the creed - no killing innocents, don't compromise the brotherhood, etc. - to enjoy the game. Its all about doing it just right.

I heard that this is going to be the first in a trilogy - any truth to that?

I also finally bought this game and am incredibly ambivalent about it for ALL of the reasons mentioned above. Really beautiful, immersive, feels nice... but repetitive, obvious w/ its clues as to what to do, and some really irritating things (the beggars don't bug me, but when the lunatics PUNCH you, and that SOMEHOW alerts the guards to the fact that you're an assassin? BULLSHIT). However, I am starting ass'nation four and it is a lot more interesting, in the very least that it is HARD to get up the towers. which is my fave part. getting all of the view points.

I bought a copy of Vladimir Bartol's _Alamut_, which the french canadian design lead has pointed as the inspiration for this game. It's a really good book and I recommend it, written in 1938 as a commentary on Mussolini. The main character is a guy who starts the assassin guild and seems a hodge-podge of Osama bin Laden, Mussolini, and a Bond villain.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8c/Alamut1.jpg/180px-Alamut1.jpg

Also has a nice primer on Islam for westerners, with bits about N.Iran.

Well written, and originally in Slovenia but got translated 3 years ago.

I still haven't gone back to this game after finishing the second assassination :(

you have to slog through one more to get to the magic on the other side of the third kill. it actually becomes, uhh, a video game, then.

currently $38 at Target... is it worth it? The very mixed reviews make it hard to decide.

not played it, but I do know that :

Mixed reviews = try before you buy

Yeah... in my opinion this game is definitely a "borrow from a friend who's bored of it or buy it from him" type game.

or, you know, her

After finishing the first two assassinations I just haven't felt like going back to it. The game is (mostly) great looking, but as a game - I'm just not finding it very compelling. Or not with so many other games I'd rather be playing right now. It's hardly garbage though

Great for making me see out "Alamut", the 1938 novel written by a guy from Slovenia mocking Mussolini

I was planning on waiting for the PC version of this, but even my newly-built shithot system is going to struggle with this. Take a look at the system requirements, they're absurd:

Supported OS: Windows XP / Vista (only)
Processor: Dual core processor 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better recommended)
RAM: 2 GB (3 GB recommended)
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0–compliant video card or DirectX 9.0–compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (512 MB video card recommended) (see supported list)*
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 compliant sound card (5.1 sound card recommended)
DirectX Version: DirectX 10.0 libraries (included on disc)
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM dual-layer drive
Hard Drive Space: 12 GB

At least it's not Vista only, but when I just barely meet the "recommended" requirements for a new game with a system I literally built last week (and indeed don't meet, in terms of RAM), there's something wrong. My bet is that it's an abolute mess and they didn't take time to scale it properly across a broad range of hardware.

Ah well, at least by the time I finally buy a current-gen console it'll be in the bargain bins.

After finishing the first two assassinations I just haven't felt like going back to it. The game is (mostly) great looking, but as a game - I'm just not finding it very compelling. Or not with so many other games I'd rather be playing right now. It's hardly garbage though.

Ha - I was actually @ the same point, but I started playing it again last week and blew through the rest of the game. The assassinations get a little trickier & more interesting (tho I tended to take the bull-in-a-china-shop approach) AND they give you the option to skip all the obnoxious horse riding - you can just jump from one city to another once you reach the transition points, which was one of the reasons I too a prolonged break. And, yes, knife throwing is awesome.

The wonkiness of the "real life" controls was really annoying (as was the guy doing Altair's voice), and a lot of the stuff you guys mention re: shortcomings is spot on - I started shivving the beggars & drunks because they were annoying me (and a controller might have gotten spiked angrily at one point because the attack controls SUCK; I plead the 5th). But my biggest beef: just when the game gets interesting (and all the Templar / Assassin nonsense finally comes to light, in more ways than one), they end the stupid game! Looking forward to a sequel that I hope takes place in the modern-day / future environment, though.

while I agree that a modern-day version of this game would be hell of awesome, it occurred to me that the reason they introduced the recovered-memory gimmick in the first place was to give the game some boundaries - i.e. how else could they have divided the cities up into sections when you're able to climb or run on/over anything?

I still say this game is awesome, though; it is very much the Armageddon of vidya games in that parts of it deserve complete and total respect (the film's mise-en-scene, the game's city design) and other parts - specifically the story - need to be used as props in classes teaching people how to point and laugh at stuff.

also I finally beat this last weekend! (make sure to watch through the credits for an achievement, too.) now I can finally play Galaxy without feeling guilty!

how else could they have divided the cities up into sections when you're able to climb or run on/over anything?

it's kind of funny that all the futuristic pseudo-scientific DNA hoo-ha in this game is somehow more believable than the fact that you're, you know, playing a video game with certain reasonable limits!

it's easier to ask gamers in 2008 to take a bad gibson leap instead of tolerating another world where two foot picket fences block all progress?

ha. but do gamers really have nervous breakdowns when they reach the end of a map?

So, I just started playing this (thanks Gamefly!) and I totally should have bought this game sooner why because it look intersting

This is the first action game to come out in a long, long time that's actually engaged me; I think the last one was... probably PoP:SoT.

It's made by a lot of the same team, I think, right?

Give it a little more time - it seems good at first, but it didn't keep lots engaged past the first couple of missions. How far along are you?

Yep, the story of this thread is lots of wide-eyed swains coming to Assassin's Creed with high hopes and dizzy expectation and then all of them, one by one, getting pissed off at the beggars and lunatics and switching to Guitar Hero. Just so you know, Hi Dere. I'd hate to see you get hurt.

er... the first assassination

oh noes

so despite all the fanboying out there, i should skip this one then?

THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS SO BAD

Fundamentally, anyone who enjoyed this does not enjoy computer games for the same reasons as i do.

Essentially they are looking for busy work for their hands.

no! the plot is mind-breakingly stupid and the game's structure gets repetitive in a hurry, but the actual gameplay (ie the parkour, the ultra-violent rhythm-based combat, the incredibly expansive gameworld) is just sublime. it's probably my favorite non-2D platformer ever. pretty sure super-cheap used copies are all over the place too. do it do it do it!

xpost "busy work for their hands" = EXACTLY what I look for in my video games actually. also, isn't AC like the LEAST busy-handed game ever?

it's just all repetitive, the parkour is button bashing, the fighting is mastered within five minutes, the repetition is repeated forever.

I dig the parkour aspect of it, but it does get really, really repetitive. It was the first game I got for PS3 about 1.5 years ago, and I've not played it much since March of 2008.

ok played this, was mixed in my views until the first "ride the horse to the next spot" thing. bah. do not want.

people really hate riding horses, huh

hahaha yeah after i posted that i looked at the shadow of the colossus thread and was all o_O.

the problem isnt so much the riding of the horse as the kind of unclear "slow down when passing soldiers" nonsense and climbing towers to get the eagle eye for some unknown reason and the dawning realization that despite having put some time into the game i wasnt actually having any fun.

horses s&d
s: epona, sunset riders horse, agro
d: horse armour

s: gun

fuk u all I still love this game (while acknowledging its incredible inanity)

this game looked great but every mission was so so so so so samey, if they added a bit more adventurey puzzle-stuff in there rather than the same 4 tasks over and over then it'd be far better. the early prince of persias (not the recent one) were similar to this but still managed to be ultra-playable and FUN. fingers crossed for the sequel.

man people weren't kidding about the homeless people; on one one hand it sort of looks and feels like the most ambitious video game ever but there is so much stuff that just warrants the designers having "WHY DID YOU THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA" shouted at them up close. The fact that the beggars/menks never hassle anyone but you really fucks the immersion too, like why do lobotomised people have a radar that attracts them to me and no-one else?

Guards in the wilderness being ridiculously twitchy about people on horses is the most annoying thing though; at least the beggars are so annoying there ends up being a kind of warped satisfaction to getting rid of them

Not sure the inexplicably American main character's moody asshole personality really fits for membership of an Ismaili death sect, either

it's a shame they seem to have made their early mistakes on what will probably be the best historical setting, assuming the second one is some flashy woo leonardo's inventions bullshit and the third one is futurezzzz

ok so just as a word of warning the iphone/pod/etc version of this is so fucking annoying and bad - not worth playing for free, srsly.

the flying business looks pretty lame. I'm kind of anticipating the shit out of this tho tbh.

Coming out some time in Nov iirc.

I guess the flying shit is an attempt to break up sameyness

Assassin's Creed 2 comes out next Tuesday?!? The game looks improved, but I doubt I'll have the time for it :(

have you played uncharted yet

Nope :(

I didn't play the first one until this summer, but I enjoyed it despite it being repetitious as all get out. With the changes they've previewed and the renaissance setting it has become my most anticipated fall release. Will be picking it up tomorrow, despite being only like 12% of the way through Dragon Age.

yuh i'm totes picking it up even tho i don't have time for it and I've only recently started fallout3 :(

Here's hoping the crazy npcs aren't as annoying this time as well.

this is reviewing really well

got a fishing mini game?

But the first one reviewed really well too!

all games review very well

Reviewers think giving a good grade to AC will help them score with Jade Raymond

I think I probably will pick this up though. Even if the game ends up being kind of boring or too easy, getting a chance to walk and climb around, exploring those environments is pretty irresistible.

Picked it up on my way home. Just checking mail and such then giving it a try.

Talk about your positive reviews...
http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/212960/assassins-creed-2/

i dont believe shit anymore

anyway:

I think I probably will pick this up though. Even if the game ends up being kind of boring or too easy, getting a chance to walk and climb around, exploring those environments is pretty irresistible.

― Jeff LeVine, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 4:08 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this. venice looks incredible.

anyway, i still think the futuristic framing device of this series is incredibly stupid and it kinda makes me hate it

anyway, i still think the futuristic framing device of this series is incredibly stupid and it kinda makes me hate it

This is basically why I stopped playing the first one.

They start with a chunk of lame framing device before you get to the goods and it is actually worse than the first time round. However, I just did the tutorial and then played about 40 minutes; just messing around, getting viewpoints and the like and it is a HUGE improvement on the AC1. I haven't been accosted once, avoided some thugs and guards by jumping in the river and swimming away, and had to visit a doctor as health doesn't auto-regenerate. Also, I accidentally pick-pocketed a guy because I was using the fast walk button, which is also pick-pocket if you get close to someone. He got mad and I had to fast walk away before he figured out it was me. So far so good. Might even have to play this instead of going back to Dragon's Age, which I really didn't expect.

and had to visit a doctor as health doesn't auto-regenerate

oh rly that will make it significantly less easy?

I think so, especially as it seems guards and thugs hang out near doctor's offices.

A few more hours in and I am loving this game! Kept the free-running from the first and polished every other single thing. That you actually care a little for this guy and his story is such a huge improvement on the prick that was Altair; I want him to succeed, and since you don't start as a gimped version of a badass - you're a kid, learning as you go - the learning of new moves and techniques makes sense. I haven't thought once of putting Dragon's Age back in which really surprised me.

But the first one reviewed really well too!
― Jeff LeVine, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 6:52 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

word of mouth is at least pretty strong w/this one tho :)

I bought it, just too addicted to MW2 to start

did u even get uncharted 2 yet?!

For whatever reason, I can't get excited about Uncharted 2. It just doesn't look like something I want to spend time with. I went back and forth for a while, but...

you are nuts.

I'm with Jeff on Uncharted 2. I like stabbing and punching and general melee better than shooting things. Why I liked Prototype more than Infamous as well.

By the way, I've made it to Venice in AC2 and it just keeps getting better and better. Might be my Game of the Year, especially if it finishes well (the first didn't, so I'm not counting on anything yet).

Better than Arkham Asylum?

I think so; I haven't come across a stage as bad as Croc. Controls aren't quite as perfect, but I rarely have problems (maybe three or four infuriating moments in 10+ hours). I really didn't like the art direction of Arkham Asylum - too many character models looked like He-Man figures.

They're both quite good though; the level of polish and world immersion are really spectacular.

Have you tried Dragon's Age yet? That's the other game I really wanna play. (I've been playing Brutal Legend recently -- very meh.)

I put Dragon's Age on hold for AC2; it's really good, but to be honest it feels a little, "been there, done that." I happen to love what it does so I love it despite the familiarity. Also, my saves all got corrupted and I had to start again after twenty hours. A little too soon to be starting over.

I watched vid's of the Brutal Legend cutscenes. I love the sense of humor but really dislike RTS; nice but no Psychonauts or any of his Lucasarts stuff.

do you still need to hold R1 and the bottom button all the time in AC2?

R1 is still the aggressive stance modifier, so yes, you use it a great deal. If you're holding it all the time than you're doing it wrong.

Started in on this tonight. A strange game to play back-to-back with Call of Duty, as they couldn't feel more different. I'm definitely enjoyed the totally laid back pace (so far), maybe partially just because of that change. To go from such an over the top, hyper-kinetic gameplay, to this calm, understated thing is a real change of pace. An interesting example of the range of experiences currently available in big games. The only turn off so far is some of the facial animation (particularly noticeable with the women characters), it really looks surprising ass. The city atmosphere and pulled back stuff is great though.

Cutscenes all look like ass. Luckily, you don't spend much time watching (as opposed to playing) the game.

Finished this - about 20 hours of trying and 4 hours of dicking around. Definite GotY candidate.

I've been playing through the first Assassin's Creed on and off for the past couple of weeks (onto Memory Block aka Level 6, I think I'm near the end). My kids are getting annoyed with me wanting to systematically get every viewpoint then every Save Citizen before doing the investigations. I'm sure if they knew the word aspie I'd have heard it by now.

still kinda want to play this b/c I love the milieu, but discouraged by how boring everyone makes the game play sound. At least it's cheap now.

I like the throwing knives and the stealth/hidden blade take-downs but the sword fighting gets really old really quickly. You can take on 8 guys at a time doing pretty much nothing but timing the counter-attack button. The free running stuff pretty good but how many thousand year old roofs can you jump between before it feels a bit samey no matter how nice it looks?

I was really enjoying it but I think I've got to a point where I'm doing it for completeness and to see where the stupid modern day 'science' bit of the story goes.

Just finished. It got a bit harder towards the end having to fight multiple bosses, and multiplied cheating big boss - but was essentially just hitting the same buttons over and over. Shitty ending as well. I can't see me going back to it to collect the remaining flags as things. Might pick up the sequel at some point when it's really cheap.

the whole ending sequence of that game is so terrible. the second one is a considerably better game. they really stripped out most of the weaker content from the first one and replaced it with mostly high quality new stuff, and even improved the parts that did work. the only exception is that the sword fighting is still as crappy as ever, but you can at least just avoid it for the most part. there was an interesting interview with the lead developer recently where he admitted that the fighting was sub-par and they wished they had time to change it.

the 2nd one is kinda mind bogglingly full, there's so much stuff to do it's kinda tiring and it's v. historically intricate

really enjoying it but it can be a bit much for extended play

Ugh. I borrowed this from a friend along with his Modern Warfare 2. I played the hell out of MW2, and figured I'd have plenty of time for AC2 before RDR came out. Then my Xbox RROD'd, RDR came out, and I have no idea when I'm gonna get to AC2. Maybe in a few months. :/

you really should put some time aside for this, it's great!

does anyone know if I can view the artworks I've bought?

They are hanging up in the villa - you can click on them and get a bigger view and artist info.

thanks ezs

woah, the assassination of the crazy monk surrounding by archers was wicked good

is it just me or did everyone assassinate every minstrel on sight?

also it's kinda ridiculous that they have this amazing engine, open world, 720p, stable framerate, ai running routines etc but the map screen crawls along at 5fps wtf

i never finished AC2, it gets kind of repetitive. also their DRM bullshit turned me off.

Really enjoying this. I switched off the Italian dialogue when I realized I couldn't hear the jokes from the ambient dialogue.

I'm kinda curious what they'll do for the next historical period: Revolutionary-era France? Dickensian London?

Both of those would be great settings, which is why I'm kind of puzzled that the next one is continuing the adventures of the Italian guy from #2. The "more of the same" approach and the weirdly gratuitous addition of multiplayer was giving me a kind of Bioshock 2 vibe, but from all the stuff about the series' creator leaving Ubisoft it looks like he was the director on Brotherhood too.

you can change the language in this thing? sweet, no more stupid ass accented english, if possible, please.

but i'm enjoying the hell out of this!

gameplay is mostly great, but sometimes i have no idea what's going to happen either in free-run or with the fighting. i really don't understand the framing device (didn't play the first one; how exactly is there a hard drive with this dude from the 15th century's memories on it?) but the 'glyph' puzzle elements are really involving and freaky. i love all the classic conspiracy shit and am lol'ing at how they roped in all this cultural stuff and built all of these famous buildings just for a sandbox parkour game.

it's got a lot of info that's pretty, i dunno, dangerous, ideologically. at least for a video game. i love the notice at the beginning of the game that the developers 'come from many different faith backgrounds' or some dumb thing by way of apology.

yeah the research and history is ridiculously involved and intricate

the best bit about this game is when you scale a tall building and fill in another wee bit of the map: love the way the camera swings round as a snippet of ~evocative~ music plays

the one thing that's a little disappointing to me, for all the ooh-dangerous religious and historical mumbo jumbo, is the absence of islam. no surprise, these days, but come on, you're an ASSASSIN fighting TEMPLARS. and they've just translated that into a rebels vs. the squares fite.

like, "your father... was an assassin." "fuck, what about christmas?"

First one had loads of Muslims iirc

oh, didn't know that!

ok the basilica san marco in venice is legitimately beautiful

took a loooong time to get into but i'm really loving this game now. much more varied and interesting than the first one

but the 'glyph' puzzle elements are really involving and freaky.

these just keep getting cooler and freakier and more demanding, i'm really impressed.

the biggest disappointment to me is the hiding/guard alertness/notoriety system. it really doesn't make much sense as a whole, mainly because the character design is so flashy and fanboyish. sometimes a whole pack of guards will come after you for nothing, most of the time they are content to ignore the opera diva/armed murderer guy climbing up the walls in front of them. should have been much more of a stealth game imo.

the few things i've read about the next one suggests there's some kind of disguise mechanic.

what you're saying about this sounds great, esp. the beauty of the environment. My impression is that the first game had a beautiful environment also, & personally I'm more fascinated by its milieu than by Renaissance Italy (though I'm fascinated by that too). Given that the first game costs like $5 at this point, would it be worth my while to try it out first? Or is the first one such a stinker that it's really not worth any time/money?

no, i'd highly recommend it. the attention to detail and the atmosphere more than make up for some of the flaws in gameplay, which is already pretty strong in itself. i think it deserves its high marks.

I will look into picking this up if someone promises me that you dont spend hours pointlessly riding a horse through the countryside like you did in the first one

one other flaw, now that i think of it: riding a horse feels like the goofiest and most primitive thing ever, after playing RDR. good thing it's a very minor element

lol xp

ok hahaha

there are two 'cities' that are more like small towns with some countryside around them, so a horse can be handy if running gets boring. and there are a couple side-quests that need a horse. that's about it.

gah, been playing AC2 for about 25 hours, doing most of the sidequests and got up to the little water-logged town with the prison, just after the horse ride to the mountains... and i've just loaded up the game only to be told my savegame is corrupt.

i have a problem with my pc in that it BSODs when it reaches a certain temperature, usually after about 25 mins of playing a game and this is undoubtedly what corrupted the savegame. annoyingly AC2 only has one savegame file so this means i'm going to have to start again from the beginning. it's a long shot but does anyone have a savegame from around this area or earlier? or know of a trainer that'll let me skip all the cutscenes and help zoom through the game much quicker than normal?

ah amazing, just found a tmp folder next to my savegame folder which has a bunch of old savegames, crisis averted! while i'm here might as well repeat that this game is absolutely *awesome*

euler, you can get AC2 very cheap these days too

dunno what the sitch is like in paris (??) but in the UK it can be had for £10/12

think I'll go back to playing this tonight, not been on the xbox in a while ~summer~

here are more of my thoughts on this game

- like most conspiracy stories, it gets less fun and less compelling near the end when you find out what the big story really is. if it were me i'd find a way to make it ambiguous and full of contradictory details right to the end. a good global conspiracy should leave you knowing less at the end! more eco, less dan brown.

- i wish there was a "natural language" setting for the game. i set it to italian cos i fuckin hated the accented-english v/o (yes complete with an "it's-a me" gag from your uncle mario (spolier, sorry)). but then all the modern day shit was in italian too. no more kristen bell. come on ubi this is basic.

- neither of the DLCs are all that great. they seem rushed.

stoked to get AC2 then (back in the USA now fwiw, sadly)

condolences

yeah it's less than $15 here now, unbelievable: I thought this was new? old new I guess

really just looking for some massive 100+ hour game with a sense of ~progress~ that isn't a shooter, for 360 rather than for DS (cos I want a bit of a rest for my eyes). This may not be exactly that, but I think it'll do.

Dragon's Age might be a good candidate for that too. Def 100+ hours.

that's right! It seems to have come down in price a lot too...think I'll spring for these two (kinda intrigued by Mass Effect I/II also)

Loved Mass Effect I + II, and in general love the idea of serial videogaming that BioWare seems to be developing.

got the first one, played a couple of hours & it's legit gorgeous & I can't wait to be able to play later tonight, so that's a good sign. I had a hard time pickpocketing & am still not sure what I was doing wrong but I eventually did it.

I'm on the sixth assassination mission now & loving this game (the first one) a lot. Climbing these beautiful buildings is the best. I'm coming to hate the combat, but o/w the repetitiveness of the missions doesn't bother me: this is just a gorgeous playground to climb---I'm totally envious of my character (except for the killing part): to be able to climb like that! & to be able to climb *those* buildings!

if you like that your head will pop when you play the 2nd one

Yeah you're like "St Mark's Basilica! I'm fucking climbing that!"

I climbed the rose window of a Gothic cathedral in Acre I think & it was a "whoooooooo" moment. The Dome of the Rock was pretty amazing too. I'm a sucker for history & yeah, can't wait to get to the second one (b/c I gather the combat won't suck so bad anymore & yeah, those buildings too!).

The second one comes with a database giving you a potted history of each of the buildings & people of note, which is a nice wee distraction.

The combat is better but the entire game still suffers from the repetitiveness (though I enjoy grinding my way around the maps trying to find *everything*).

I've done all the missions so far & it's not felt like a chore until the last few save citizens, because the combat is getting harder but I don't really have anything significant & new in my own repertoire. Or else I'm just getting lazy on hitting the counters on time. Mostly I'm just trying to run from combat now b/c I love climbing so much.

Finished this tonight (the first one), or at least I think I did---the ending was pretty weird & unresolved. But I triggered the game-winning achievement so I guess that's it? Yeah, the combat on this mostly sucked, & the close-quarters combats really sucked. It was mostly just button-mashing & I'd have enjoyed this a lot more w/o it; the climbing was waaaaaaaaaay fun & imho validates the whole game. If there were some way to tie that mechanic to a non-violent game (like some kind of Spider Man game? not really non-violent but more cartoonish & less, er, fatal) I'd have dug this more. Well, the setting is tremendous; I'm going to hold onto the game for now so that I can pop into Acre etc. just to run around; even w/o GTA-like chores to keep me busy it's a wonderful place to linger.

Also I think the story on this was in the end pretty dumb & half-baked. What's the idea of this: did they think it would be more attractive to twelve year olds this way? Or is it cheaper to write a dumb game? It's not even the Animus part that's the dumbest; just the awkward betrayal story within the Crusader world. & the dialogue is terrible. Still, I'm excited to get the sequel some time soon.

I've been playing Assassin's Creed 2--it's pretty sweet. So much better and more polished than the original.

man i hated the first one, but i am loving #2 - pretty amazing job of removing all the suck from the first.

the cgi movie stuff is still pretty lolworthily awful tho - i never understand when the movie stuff is less graphically well done than the game itself.

oh shit was i supposed to give this to you :<

eh i found it for $18 so what the hell

btw peeps that dig this really might want to check out el cheapo game "the saboteur" which i have also been playing quite a bit recently - lots o climbing, but u get gunz and carz and esplosives

I'm totally stoked to get The Saboteur one of these days, b/c I actually know the locale where it takes place pretty well...kinda think my lack of interest in GTAs has been that I don't really know most of their locales very well (never played San Andreas fwiw).

started Fallout 3 last night finally though so I think it'll be a while before I leave that vault, so to speak...

yeah digging this. Only thing that deeply upsets me is that I can't PARKOUR without consequences as in the first game due to health no longer (totally) replenishing when, e.g., I fuck up a big cross-building jump or whatev.

Wait a fucking minute, did this game just make a nintendo joke?! That's fucking awesome

xxpost saboteur is excellent btw, not up to the sheer wow of AC2 but much more out & out fun than most of the big releases of late

yeah I ordered The Saboteur, as it's pretty low-priced now, & I'll keep waiting for AC2 to come further down in price.

Guys, the brotherhood demo is awesome. Anybody else a ps+ member and want to play?

Anybody? Seriously this is fucking great

i've been playing ACII a lot. it's pretty fun, every time i get bored with one aspect of the game they add something new (tired of running around in one city and stabbing people? here's a new city, and you have to ride a chariot past a bunch of guards to get there!). the tombs are especially fun. the fighting is funny though, in theory it's all complicated and has all these different maneuvers you learn to do, in practice I just jam the fight button really fast until everyone's dead.

so nobody else got into the ac brotherhood beta? cuz it's awesome.

Brotherhood beta is online multiplayer, correct? Zero interest. Excited by the single player game though.

it's a totally unique multiplayer. You can't kill your attacker.

Read about it, not interested. I don't do multiplayer unless it's co-op. Adversarial multiplayer not my thing.

Brotherhood gets 10/10 on Eurogamer = o_O

but ACI is the best AAA game I've played on any console (well, KOTOR was pretty great too) & if ACII just improved on that & this improves on that, then I can see it! gotta get ACII soon, the price is certainly getting right. The problem with waiting to get Brotherhood is that if I wait a year or so then multi is gonna be barren = the cost of being a cheap ass.

I wish they had spent more time talking about the 20+ hour single player component. I would have been more excited as ACII was my game of the year. Now I gotta pick this up. At least nothing's been spoiled by my ignorance.

ACII was so much better than the first one which became so repetitive and boring I gave up on it about halfway through.

Looking forward to this one and have just had an email from Amazon saying it's on its way so hopefully will arrive tomorrow

i got ACII having never played ACI and it's really confusing - i'm expected to know how to do everything right away and the story makes no sense..

is this the same game that's advertised on uk tv with the friggin awful strange inappropriate dance music?

So anyone else playing this? I've played about 3 or 4 hours so far and first impressions are that it's even better than AC2. It is more of the same, but in a good way with some interesting tweaks to the gameplay mechanics.

Rome is massive and very well designed and the ability to now ride horses in the cities is awesome. Definitely recommended if you liked the previous one.

I've been playing through AC1, which I have pretty mixed feelings about. All the negative stuff is true- repetitive missions, unpredictable/inconsistent "social stealth" rules (LOOK! A MAN, ON A HORSE, RIDING ABOVE WALKING SPEED! CLEARLY HE IS OF THE ANCIENT BROTHERHOOD OF HASHASHIN!), unlikeable protagonists (Desmond is a whiner and Altair a straight-up dick), but the environments and freerunning are almost enough to justify the game's existence on their own.

I kind of want to rush through to get to the good AC games, but the obsessive completist in me won't let me rest without completing all of the viewpoints, citizen rescues and investigations. Which is nice, because there's a ton of beautiful, meticulously-rendered scenery I'd miss if I did. Who the hell makes a game where you can climb around on the Dome of the Rock and not only makes it totally optional, but easy to miss?

I'm not doing the flags beyond the ones I stumble across, though, because I am not insane.

I gave up on the first one after about 6 hours and have never regretted it.

impressed with brotherhood so far!

the symbol puzzles are really imaginative and creepy, like they were in 2. good job.

Playing "the Saboteur" now and amused by how much AC it mixes in

I bought bro'hood this weekend for the multiplayer (and eurogamer's 10). I have never played an assasins creed game so bought the AC2 for £10 yesterday.

I aim to play 2 then straight into bro. but play the multiplayer from brohood in tandem.

Is this madness?

Has anyone any tips?

skip the DLC on AC2

i'm really liking brohood!! i'm not very far in the story, and in true ocd style i've been grinding out all the side shit.

first impressions

- rome is pretty but a lot of it is ruins. i think this is accurate, for the time? pretty cool climbing around on the colosseum.

- the villains (one group of) in this game look to be some kind of anti-church old gods of rome pagan dudes, but that may be fake since the templars are behind everything. i was impressed with how they used cultural stuff in AC2; and so far the use of old roman locations, artwork, etc, has been really cool and involving too.

- the structure of this one is more "horizontal" than linear, if that makes sense. there are fewer artificial blocks on where you can't go right away, and less emphasis on moving through the story missions to unlock the side stuff. most of the side stuff is there right away, laid out all over the map. there's a ton to do. opening shop locations, buying landmarks, taking down enemy towers (a twist on the 'tower look around' thing) secret hideouts, the hidden symbol puzzles, faction missions, missions of shop owners. i'm not even to the whole 'train more assassins' part. they packed it full.

- the combat works a little better, but builds right off of AC2. you basically can do everything right away, and you kind of have to.

- it looks like a lot more is made out of the modern-day framing device. you are able to leave the past-simulation at any time and walk around the lab, even leave the building. i'm sure there's going to be a lot happening here and there are hints already of twists to the conspiracy story. there's also a bunch of virtual training stuff you can do, for the medal-obsessed.

oh and there's a really long sex cutscene pretty early on :/

1 more thing: there is slightly more horse-riding, which has been slightly improved, and you can ride horses in town. esp after RDR all horses are awful so this is kind of a negative

slightly more horse-riding

nooooooooooooo

only one segment so far where it was part of the action. there are a few spots where you kind of trot along while machiavelli talks to you

one plus side of more horsey shit is that the guards sometimes ride them and it's pretty terrifying! i can't think of a game with sword fighting where you face down a mounted attacker, which i think was kind of big deal at the time.

I have no time for these games anymore. If I wanted to put on a dress and walk around a big crowd groping people i'd go to the Santa Claus parade.

just ordered AC 2 game of the year from the UK; hoping it'll play on my USA 360 (net seems to suggest it will)

should get to Brotherhood by the time it drops in price, by which time sadly the multi'll be dead.

haven't touched the multi. don't know if i want to

you should. it's all i played and it's awesome

really loving the multi, but on the PS3 game matching is plain broken.

however its nice to have a multiplayer game thats got a bit more going on upstairs.

what with the climbing and all, rite

love poisoning a guard and then throwing coins at his feet

lol i'll have to try that

i'm super ocd about this right now

I think I'm nearly finished (just at the end of sequence 11.) I do like the game but it has its issues: the map screen runs at 15fps, it's too easy to decrease your wanted level, and chiefly the boss assassination missions always seem to end up in a massive melee. if the boss does manage to get away he just runs in a loop until you catch up and assassinate him.

there's little need for actual guile when fighting the bosses. in fact, there's little opportunity for it anyway. you can sit and analyse the guard patterns and still be seen w/in seconds. mostly you just weigh in and then mash punch until the guards are dead and the sequence complete

would love for AC to have some of the /sophistication/ of the hitman games when it comes to multiple routes to the finish. would also love a ninja game in the engine, with more sophisticated stealth

yeah the stealth/hiding element is the most game-y and uninvolving.

it would really help if you weren't dressed like a fruitcake. then you wouldn't have to visualize 'blending into a crowd' with some flashy color changing business. it would just look like you're blending into a crowd. just sayin.

that said i'm totally loving this

Just got a used copy this morning. ACII was my game of the year last year so I am very happy to have this in my hands.

(I was talking about ACII just for ref, dunno if those issues have been addressed in AC:B)

naw ACB is basically the same. it's the same engine just with a lot more added to the mission and story elements. about the only thing that's different-different is kill-chaining in combat. that and... more horses.

the more i think baout this game the more i think it needed a disguise mechanic as a core element.

Is this available for PC? I have the first one, found it pretty but a bit repetitive.

not yet i don't think. brotherhood, that is.

AC2 is

I guess I'll pick up AC2, then! Totally bored w/UT now, I've been looking for something new to play for a while....

11 years? ;)

ok the conspiracy puzzle things are just kind of lame this time around. in 2 i thought they were a little too dan brown-y instead of umberto eco-y. in ACB they're more counterpunch dot org-y instead of dan brown-y :/

people have been going at some of the extraneous puzzles in the glyph segments

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/996093-assassins-creed-brotherhood/57218904

spoilers obv, but i was never going to do them and they're all pretty clever

also kinda funny watching gamefaqs dudes go to wiki to find out who kissinger and pinochet are

I got Brotherhood for Christmas, now I have to get my arse into gear and finish AC2. Good couple of hours in today but half of it was fucking around finding random shit without advancing the story.

I was still climbing around Renaissance Italy at 3a.m. :(

Same here, for me AC2 has essentially become a Tuscan Villa refurbishment sim, and when I get really bored, I go and do a story mission.
I think the reason I dont tire of it like other sandbox games is the lack of traffic lights.

After AC2, GTA seems really hemmed in with the grid structure of the roads & no crazy leaps into straw.

Up til 3:45 this morning playing Brotherhood, despite the fact that it was annoying me just as much as it gave me pleasure. There's way too much trial-and-error in the gameplay, and it gets repetitive - not enough innovation between AC2 and this. I'm almost playing it for the story; I kept finding myself longing for a 'skip this level and just gimme the effing cutscene' button.

Are there any more assassin whore nun characters in AC:B?

DETECTED

DESYNCHRONIZED

motherfucker

I will be amazed if they don't make a level out of this for the "present day" part of the next game:

http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=58 (link via Wonkette for some reason)

another one of these. i'm in!

Fuck yeah!

http://i.imgur.com/OAhqA.jpg

can't wait to play as ezio redcorn

dammit, i wanted the french revolution. bigger cities to run about in.

Will he climb trees instead of buildings?

according to these screens, yes he will climb trees.

http://imgur.com/a/3NNkQ

kinda disappointed with this setting I gotta say

dollars to doughnuts they go future style for the next one
surprised there was no french revolution tho

French Revolution, Victorian England, 1920s Chicago, 1940s Los Angeles, the shit writes itself

i've always been impressed with their concepts. not so much the execution (pun!).

Haha wow hadn't seen vigilantcitizen before. It is amazing.

bought assassins creed 1 at gamestop and should've heeded the chubby guy's warning that this game sorta sucks (i told him i hated playing anything w/ even the worst story at any point from the beginning and he countered by telling me i should just watch a let's play.)

thing's i dislike:

- why is there an entire button devoted to blending in w/ monks/scholars? why is that button the "x" button?

- the whole idea of PRESS X TO BLEND IN just jiffs me. i had never watched any gameplay videos or read any reviews so i was really hoping the sneaking aspect of the game would be more subtle. maybe wait in line for groceries? pretend to be talking to someone? pretend to be a street performer? pretend to sell oranges? pull your fucking mysterious and hyperstylized hood down? instead it's "HIDE IN HAYSTACK UNTIL THINGS STOP BEEPING"

- the fact that guards automatically want to kill you just for running a horse is so much bullshit. also, the fact that they're all as equally great as parkour as you are adds less to tense action and more to fact that i'm having a hard time believing this is happening, and more of a hard time that all i have to do is hop into a little hut in order to disappear

- the cut scenes are likely the worst i've ever experienced. the game gives you the most boring angle possible - that is, 23 feet away - but then gives you option you press a button to change those angles based on whether north or south is more flattering. i wasn't even really sure of the intent of this - i think dudes were watching too much CACHE (HIDDEN) before making this and totally engaged w/ the idea of a narrative through a security camera lens.

anyway - thankfully got this used so i can return it in 4 or more days and hopefully find AC2 a better experience.

yikes. i'm thinking about getting into this series, but there's so many games in it now. i'm tempted to just start fresh with the third one but there's so much backstory now? is it a generous consensus that the first one(s) aren't worth going back to play now?

You can skip the first game - it's gameplay isn't as good and the important bits of it's plot get recapped in AC2. Ezio is a way more likeable protagonist that Altair.

First one is cool only for the time period and location; the game play is mostly bullshit and repetitive.

The second is good to great; best locales, hugely improved gameplay.

the third one (ACII: Brotherhood) improves the gameplay even more, but Rome is no Florence/Venice.

the fourth is a fucking travesty, with bullshit first person tetris/portal sections (thankfully optional) and tower-defense crap (one non-optional, other's avoidable through some running around like a nutjob). But it ends the storylines for the featured characters of the first two games which makes it important story-wise. I feel dirty for having finished it though - should have just watched youtubes and read a summary.

In short, ACII and it's first sequel are good to great games. Skip the other two, unless you want to climb around the holy land and Istanbul.

thing #1 gets elided in the future games. you get big context messages on the screen telling you what button you can push to blend in. the different modes of stealth get reduced to "hold x to run, hold r2 and x to run fast".

thing #2 is a constant problem for the series. and combat is so easy that there's little reason not to just go apeshit everywhere.

things #3 and #4 get fixed.

ok, maybe i'll skip ahead to AC2

the thing i don't get is "brotherhood" and "revelations". what are these? i'm assuming AC3 is an actual continuation of the overall plot of the assassins creed story, whereas b'hood and revs something akin to bigger-than-DLC-but-not-big-enough-to-warrant-a-numerical-sequel?

Bro and Rev also continue the plot. They both still focus on Ezio, so I guess that's why they're not named 'AC3' and 'AC4' respectively. AC1 = Altair, AC2 = Ezio, AC3 = Connor.

ftr I didn't bother playing AC1 or AC2:Rev. I just skimmed some LPs and cutscenes of both those games and didn't feel that I missed anything in terms of plot or the overarching story. I'm sure that AC3 will kick off with a loooooooooooooong expositionary monologue from Desmond to fill everyone in.

AC2 is worth it. Bit much on the assassin nun whores, tho.

never enough imo

excited!

though to me nothing in these games has matched the secret image/holy blood holy grail/foucault's pendulum puzzle stuff in AC2, i was so into that

this sounds fun, def thinking about picking up the sequel

my complaints were admittedly sound nitpickey but it's sort of incredible how big a game ruiner they all are. when the cut-scenes are as long as laborious as the ones here it seems almost impossible that they'd make them only worse by giving you the most bizarre camera angles and the ability to move within a 4x4 box - which you end up doing, b/c you're playing a videogame and gamers tend to not take to to non-interactivity lightly.

i remember playing MGS4 and thinking the whole time that kojima was just a wannabe, but fuck it if i'm not realizing how god damn good the guy made the formula with those games. it's funny how the MGS series actually makes you anticipate and want to see the next cutscene, whereas these are absolutely torturous

also, i've now progressed to jerusalem and it looks exactly like the city in which you make your first assassination. i'm not sure whether to blame history or the game devs.

horse-riding past guards i have still yet to figure out. i'm holding down x, just calmly strutting past their post when "KILL HIM!!!" and the entire guard is hellbent after me

Got sucked into a YT rabbit hole with a series of vids where they show the voice-actors for vidja game characters. I never realized how much the AC2 characters were modeled on their voices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1wJv-4ytDw

Just played the original. Wow. By the end of the game I was feeling a bit overloaded with info, but damn they really set up a thick franchise from the get go

There were actually too many assassinations - even for a game with Assassin in the title - but I made it through because as a parkour simulator it was really fun. Seriously I just loved climbing the hell out of buildings

the whole stealth-attack-run-hide cycle got REALLY boring after the first 4 or so jobs, and I realized I wasn't even halfway through the game. It also took me a long time to get a hang of the stealth - i.e. realizing you can just bum rush archers and one-hit kill them or just toss knives at them from a certain distance. I did feel crazy good when I got the "Blade in the Crowd" achievement... on kill #8. Up until then I didn't even think it was possible!

Altair is a annoying character at first, though by the end at least he seems to realize he's a jerk so it's kinda forgivable

i really did enjoy the story/lore - though it was painfully obvious from the start you're gonna be dicked over by your boss, at least they made that journey a little interesting (at least until the targets become obviously really super evil, like the book burner or the guy who performs his own executions). I loved those little talks you had with your victims and the weird "inner angles" glitch cams they had

i do hope they worked a little on those bad far away cutscenes though, where everything is mid-focus and not zoomed in enough as you're waiting for stuff to happen (like every single time you went back to the master!)

pretty excited to check out the rest of this franchise, gradually

I get the feeling they really stepped up the game with having Ezio has the main character instead; a dude who could be charming and yet still learn over the course of his adventures

will be interesting to see how that time period compares to the Crusades. man i just loved staring at the architecture

btw "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" is a fantastic thematic statement one-liner, up there with "A man chooses, a slave obeys" for me

side note: as I also went through it earlier this year, it completely blows my mind that this and Mass Effect came out within a week of each other. it must've been felt like "the next generation IS HERE". going back to read the older posts in this topic.

horse stuff was cool for a second, but thankfully you don't really ever do it again after the first three assassinations and leaving Masayef. i did kind of appreciate it reminding me of Shadow of the Colossus, but yeah, the overworld Kingdom was just a baffling mess.

Throwing knives might just be the coolest thing ever, though. I really dug standing on the corner of a house and killing an enemy from above with a throwing knife, and then watching the ensuing crowd gather.

also totally agree about the beggars/drunks getting really annoying later on, and the assassinations not taking off really until after the first three - up until that point is like a super-long tutorial, similar to GTA games

another thing - you can punch people in the street without attracting guard attention

I still say this game is awesome, though; it is very much the Armageddon of vidya games in that parts of it deserve complete and total respect (the film's mise-en-scene, the game's city design) and other parts - specifically the story - need to be used as props in classes teaching people how to point and laugh at stuff.

i was more into the story, but yeah - the Minority Report/Gamer style sheen over everything from the in-game HUDs and menus to enemies blinking it and out of "data" was just incredibly cool to see, i'm not gonna lie

The wonkiness of the "real life" controls was really annoying (as was the guy doing Altair's voice)

voice acting: hey, Kristen Bell! but anyway, i thought it was totally weird right away that they did the Aladdin thing by having the main character not really have a native accent compared to everybody else

the more i think about it, yes this game did have a ton of weird problems, but the good outweighs the bad certainly imo - problem is that neither the stealth not the GTA-style overworld stuff is particularly well-developed, so if you're not into the core of PoP-esque platforming and exploring it won't hold, but the overall effort in is definitely appreciable

aaand i stopped reading there when ppl started talking about AC II

ac3 commercial is so awful

another day, another drama (in the back)

the AC vita game coming out alongside AC3 takes place in 18th century new orleans. which means i have to play it, which means for the sake of completeness i have to play AC3 which means i finally got around to beating brotherhood and started revelations and jesus fuck why am i like this

revelations ezio has a dope beard tho

is the AC VITA game an exclusive?

looks like it... but how much you wanna bet it gets released in an HD collection on the PS4 or something

vita exclusive, yeah, but i mean whatever everyone has a vita right?

revelations is kind of not very good. i was all psyched to not have to torch any more borgia towers and then the game's all like BYZANTINE TEMPLAR DEN TOWER and also here's a terrible tower defense game. tower tower tower.

new one is fun so far

Out? Really looking forward to this. Is the gameplay any different from before?

yeah, the american revolution setting seems cool... and there's La Fayette, apparently !

I just had a really uncomfortable conversation with Ben Franklin about the joys of screwing older ladies. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

i guess you didnt hear about the hot coffee mod where you and ben tag team dolly madison then

then there's the hot tea mod where you and dolly madison tag team ben franklin

PEGGIN REVOLUTIONARY STYLE

IT'S NOT JUST THE TEETH THAT ARE WOODEN

okay I'll leave this thread now

hahaha

Ah, the joys of a DJP colonial pervathon.

So this got completely panned by AV Club

i am enjoying it! it is weird that two (2!) of my former places of work are locations in the game. I killed a bunch of redcoats in front of one of them, because why not?

also i do not like being forced to fight wolves, especially when the wolves are clearly based on doggies

story is incomprehensible, but game is fun (except for the g-d lockpicking)

i've been messing around with the vita game b/c of the new orleans setting, it's a really good implementation of the whole messy agglomeration of stuff that AC has become. people have been bitching about the length or whatever but games are too long anyway.

as someone who has never played the AC franchise (and generally don't play games of this nature) and liked the Grand Theft Ponies-ness of Red Dead will I enjoy this?

I just arrived in Boston. So far I'm liking it.

The big difference between Red Dead and AC is that AC is much more about hand-to-hand combat, more of a parry-attack sort of game. In Red Dead the combat is mostly gunplay.

Unlike Red Dead, there is a framing device set in the present day. You're tapping into the memories of your ancestors. I didn't like it at first, but it ties together the different stories and time periods well enough.

is the fighting engine similar to batman: arkham?

Yeah, kinda. Although Batman is a little more robust imo

Is it just me or is the AC3 ad campaign the most off putting, jingoistic bullshit ever? And it seems to be getting worse?

I'm enjoying this now but jesus fuck having to wade through eight hours of bullshit before I got to the actual game I expected to be playing when I bought it was tough going.

Especially annoyed by the three hours at the start I spent playing as someone other than the main character purely for the sake of a bullshit lol-gotcha twist. Assassin's Creed: Shyamalan's Curse.

the first few hours of this have been the most tedious shit going. 5 minute cutaway then some sluggish walking around then massive cutaway, credits, cutaway, bit of gameplay and so on. when does it get fun? remember feeling this about 2 and brotherhood and being glad i stuck with it but this one is really trying my patience. sure sure you made a game that looks pretty, stop crowbarring your b-movie director ambitions into it just LET ME PLAY A DAMN GAME

it gets better, but not for like 6 hours.

modern gameplay disease of forgetting to add 'fun', focusing more on making something *important*

There's a pretty cool twist, but no fucking reason for it to take so long to get to it.

I did not *get* the twist. I was confused (never played II or brotherhood) by the <strike>intricate</strike> convoluted plot. The game started getting really good around ~ Episode 5, and I think it's worth it to just slog through until then. But oh man, I love running through the woods and fighting wolves. And it was super fun to snare a beaver. Best parts of Red Dead Redemption combined with Thief II. I <3 this game.

Oh, also I love my mansion filled with indentured servants and magical black guy

Yeah, I think you needed to play a few of those you missed to get the twist. Which you should do, because II & Brotherhood are both quite good. Revelations was pish though.

man first couple hours of this are not impressing me.

so what's the twist, this haytham bro is a templar?

partial turnaround in opinion: best walking-thru-deep-snow movement i've ever seen!

i called that twist didn't i.

yeah i'm kind of into this, dammit! the woodsy stuff is beautiful and the climbing free-run shit is surprisingly well done over rough, organic shapes like rocks and trees (with some annoying exceptions). i do feel like there's slightly less effort put into the detail of boston (compared to the italian cities anyway). these churches all look suspiciously alike. but i have to say i'm interested to see how they work in all the high school history.

but the pacing, jesus christ. who put this together? slow and deliberate and STILL not informative about what you're supposed to do. herky jerky with too many cutscenes. not a good feeling when you're hours into what you know are supposed to be tutorial missions that aren't very tutorial. i swear there's a cutscene were Charming Indian Love Interest says "meet me at the top of the hill and i'll show you", and so you run LIKE 12 YARDS up that hill. into to another cutscene.

I'm about ready to throw this damn disc across the room. Far too often there are automatic fail states, pointless chases and all sorts of non-fun activities. Which is a shame, because just tooling around in this is magnificent.

Also, why do cutscenes fade into other cutscenes? And why have a cutscene go into an interactive segment where the only thing you do is walk approx. 5', listen to a conversation, then walk 5' back, triggering another cut scene? Just show the conversation!

It's frustrating and stupid but I played all the other ones and want to finish it. Grr.

oh. great.

Sorry goole. For every awesome bit, like trudging through snow, or jumping on bears from high in the trees, there's a dodge the gunfire on the battlefield or they saw you so you fail at life moment. I don't remember so many autofails in prior games.

annoying and not wrong:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6516-Assassins-Creed-3

basic verdict: boring, not violent enough. so far i can't argue with that.

i never played the byzantine one. the two italian ones were probably the high water mark, weren't they :/

sadly true. Quite pretty though. Except for everyone's vaseline coated lips.

and glowing glass eyes

Yes - ACII and Brotherhood were great. The third Italian one - Revelations? - had tower defense. Mandatory tower defense (thankfully only one, unless you fucked up).

Glass eyes! good call.

hey, an exciting pig herding minigame!

i want to like this but fuck if the avclub pan wasn't right one. pretty, inexplicably boring, unbelievably remedial mission design, faaaar too many cutscenes (most of which are about 8sec long), and a really nice naval combat addition.

a huge problem narratively is that having all of these side quests and main quests strung out across the environment & in game time across the "sequences" means it's really hard to tell if the revolution is happening or not.

The only part I'm loving is wandering around sewers trying to find all the fast travel points. It reminds me just a tiny bit of the awesome crypt stuff from AC II which, in retrospect, is the best gameplay section of the whole series.

Having to sit through 3-5 8 second cutscenes in a row, broken up only by a 15 second bit where you walk from one place to another, is some bull.

I don't really care for the naval stuff either. It's not badly done, but why is it in my assassination game? This is the first time I'm skipping most of the optional crap. No farmville for me, no stupid sailing, no recruiting people, nothing. None of that is fun at all this time around.

rip ac3, you were no fun at all

well shit, i was going to buy this for my BIL because he really digs the series but is about to have twins so is basically not spending money on anything that isnt cribs or food, but this sounds bad, esp since its still going for $50 used or something

has he played II and Brohood?

i'm still kind of into it because of my residual like of the series myself

yeah i think hes caught up

It is a solid game, but it lacks some magic. Also the main character has the charisma of a log, so you don't really give a shit about what he's doing. I think I might be just grumpy because it's the 5th game and I've put in over 100 hours or something playing this series.

well shit, i was going to buy this for my BIL because he really digs the series but is about to have twins so is basically not spending money on anything that isnt cribs or food, but this sounds bad, esp since its still going for $50 used or something

― Dave Whobeck? (jjjusten), Thursday, December 6, 2012 12:53 PM (15 minutes ago)

worth watching for deals on amazon, I picked it up for $35 new a couple weeks ago. also picked up skyrim & borderlands 2 for $25 each.

the best place to buy cheap games delivered fast is gamefly; free shipping on everything and you don't have to have a rental account to buy with them... just need to put your cc# on file
they have loads of extra copies of hot games to unload after the initial rental rush is over and there's no issue with them undercutting competitors from their perspective so the prices are always surprisingly low.
basically, i wait ten months after a game is released and buy from them these days.
http://www.gamefly.com/Store/
Max Payne 2 for 15, Mass Effect 3 for 15, Arkham City for 18, AC Revelations for 18, Rage for 13, SSX for 13, Uncharted 3 for 18

Thank fuck I'm done! Woohoo!

nadir of this game (so far): a side mission in your home area to "find what happened to woman x". members of your hometown posse of craftspeople are noted on your map. so i just select her and go there. nothing happens. then i notice a 'mission destination' icon denoting a clue that i walked right by, next to where the mission started. this is a winter sequence so it was about a km of trudging through deep snow. mission story of course did not have that woman in the place where i found her at all.

Oh, the nadirs you will find.

i really liked this through and through

good day sir!

this is a winter sequence so it was about a km of trudging through deep snow

freezing your nadirs off

My son wants this for Christmas. I've been slowly falling out of love with them since AC2.

having finished this, my rankings of the series thus far:

AC2 > AC2: Brotherhood >>>>>>>>> AC3 >> AC2: Revelations > AC 1. Honestly, AC 1 is better than Revelations in setting and story but the gameplay wasn't there yet. Heck, it wasn't even close.

done! man it just kept getting worse. really the worst mission design i've seen in a game like ever.

Yep. Love how you're a spectator to both story endings. So satisfying.

any interest in selling your copy goole?

yeah, sure. we'll talk.

I'd sell you my PS3 copy if you want it. It's leaving my house soon one way or another.

need it for 360 unfortunately. thx goole, i'll give you a call/text soon.

Started playing AC:B again.

Also, saw this at the Safeway yesterday and snapped a photo:

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/479963_10151158215191596_784160815_n.jpg

Why, that sigil looks oddly familiar

Playing this a little before giving it to my bil and oh my god, it is just terrible and unfun

It does get fun for a while later on. Just nothing relating to the story is less than tedious.

ship stuff is fun, the off-the-coast templar and pirate treasure missions are like, whoa, this is the game i remember

I hated the ship stuff.

Hated is probably too much. Just didn't want them in my Assassin game, which should stay focused on individual encounters. Same as the Tower Defense bs in Revelations; it was fine for tower defense, but why the fuck is it in this game?

man, you hate everything.

xp

pretty much.

I didn't get very far in this game, but I watched my pal play the ship parts in 3d, and it looked fucking cool

Started playing 3 last night & only got so far as the very first (I guess sort of prologue) assassination and so far there is SO much to be irritated w/ this game -- like all of my AAA game pet peeves at once. Massive, massive exposition in cutscenes peppered with "interactive" stages where all you are doing is listening & pressing up on the L-stick? Such a lack of effort on presentation that if you bump into other actors in the scene you clip through them in the first 5 minutes? A scene where you (the presumably only agile one of the bunch) jump over a crack in the cave floor, only for the camera to spin around the player and you see the three less agile characters walking up behind you, holding giant gear boxes?

I know I'm nitpicking, but COME ON.

I'm not sure I understand any of the examples you use - but this game has to be the most boring thing I've very palyed. I'm still at the rabbit hunting tutorial but I'm tempted to throw the towel.

agreed x2. liked the others a LOT (bar revelations) so was surprised by how utterly tedious and unfun this turned out to be. didn't do v well in the end of year polls either did it?

if you've not already, go for far cry3. not a million miles away in terms of gameplay but a gazillion times more fun and brilliant and addictive and LIKE HOW GAMING IS MEANT TO BE

feel like AC3 was hell-bent on teaching me shit i didn't want to know about. i for one say keep all learning out of games

(not really, some games do it great - stalker with the whole chernobyl thing comes to mind)

another one of these shits eh

http://horrorhomework.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Henry_Rollins_of_Black_Flag.jpg

finally a new ac game

i set it to italian cos i fuckin hated the accented-english v/o (yes complete with an "it's-a me" gag from your uncle mario (spolier, sorry))
― goole, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 12:01 PM

i got to this scene last night and loled. why is everyone cross-eyed in this damn game

http://kwikcrafts.com/Merchant5/graphics/00000001/e35thumb_wiggle-eye.jpg

is the tomb platforming always shitty? i just did one that took me forever to get to the top of only to find out that the developers actually chose to make you have to descend the same way you came. after all that i deserve a shortcut assholes!

I got stuck at a tomb platforming a few months ago and have not played this shit since then !

the vita one, liberation, is really good, the best AC game by some distance.

that inspired me to pick 3 up, it is by no means _good_ but it is better than its reputation. so far at least.

xp which one is that?

xp which one is that?

AC3. up to that point there were some nice stuff though (the ships battles were pretty cool). but I couldn't care less about the trading and all.
not really feeling the fights. and I really found the cities boring. nothing great to climb !

oh wow you manage dto get much further than me then! I think I quit at the ship tutorial

i can't seem to catch thieves either (ac2) so now i'm just like ehhh take-a my money i don't-a care

despite the overblown mess of AC3, I'm still kinda looking forward to the Pirates one

ehhh take-a my money i don't-a care

yeah those bits were hard but doable.

xxp I'm not very far after the ship tutorial !
every now and then I feel like giving it another try...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4pn8nmDllU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SOr4zo7UZc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNJKqeaLMoY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4ftkXal8uM

i finished ac2 last night and was blown away after finding out "the truth" behind it all! are u ready, ok here it is

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/_okIA8iI5Tw/0.jpg

Noassin's Creed

have sales of ac3 been notably lower than 1 and 2? because i loved the first two but couldn't stand the 3rd. hopefully they'll reboot it to re-add the 'fun' next time

Anyone buy the new pirate one? The reviews are saying it's the best since 2, but I'm afraid I have some Ass fatigue.

Ass3 was such a shitshow that the only way I'm picking up Black Flag is when I can get it super-cheap.

Yeah, I hear you. AC3 was a fucking mess.

But pirates!

yeah AC3 burned me forever on this series

I didn't even like 2 that much

I loved 2. And I need a new roam around the world game. But man, AC3 was SO BAD.

any stats on the first day sales of all the ACs, inc the new one? like everyone else, i found 3 such sluggish anti-fun i've pretty much given up on this series.

hilarious that all the reviews (for 3) hover around the 9/10 mark, such venal bullshit. up there with the ridiculous response to la noire

ass creed 3 is really impressively terrible. like, dude sneaking all over the one-story buildings of colonial boston is the dumbest shit i have ever seen. he's literally like 4 feet above the sightline of passers by. in his cloak and shit.

ass creed liberation on the vita was v good tho. much smaller game per hardware restrictions, tighter storytelling, good setting. plot was gibberish but who fucking cares at this point.

I loved 3 but this one is a LOT of sailing. Like hours upon hours so far...

plot was gibberish but who fucking cares at this point.

haha i kinda feel like about that about the franchise at this point. oh great a whole new environment!!!... in which to sprint, climb and button-mash fight exactly like all the previous games

I found 3 as boring and bad as everybody here. gave up on it after a few hours when it was released but I've gone back to it a couple days ago.
it's still as bad but I decided to finish the main story or at least all the battleships parts !
that's a big challenge, I know.

all the side missions, trading, hunting, interactions with people are so uninteresting... and indeed, who had the silly idea to set this in a city with NO high buildings ?? how could this be validated ??
it's basically an AC where climbing and horse riding is useless... even the assassinating part is not so central !

I broke down and picked this up. To my surprise, it's actually quite good. The story is a bit pish, but for the most part (fuck a chase sequence, now and forever), the game play and the world is a joy. Getting in naval battles, tracking down collectables, whaling; so much to do and the systems to do it are actually good. Though AC2 still wins for story and setting this might be the most fun Assassin's Creed game yet.

yeah I am tempted to get this even tho AC3, like for most people, made me swear off thes series forever - the pirate theme is just too tempting. I'm not that keen on the naval battle stuff (didnt do much for me in AC3) but how is the island exploration? Is there anything to acrually explore? That's the part that fascinates me most

huh this is encouraging.

The empty island exploration is a bit meh, but the locations they created to traverse and interact with in the story or side missions are some of their best. The naval combat is entirely revamped and updated, and is both fun and, at times, nail-biting as you weigh another shot or ducking incoming fire. You also board to capture disabled ships, and depending on the size of it may have objectives to complete before capture occurs. As far as systems go, it's definitely the highpoint of the series. Stuff makes much more sense, and your swashbuckling combat style fits the milieu.

like, dude sneaking all over the one-story buildings of colonial boston is the dumbest shit i have ever seen.
― adam, Tuesday, November 5, 2013 12:06 AM

this actually sounds appealing to me lol :-{

finally got to the naval stuff in 3, it owns. kinda psyched to play 4 now if it's even better than this.

man for every fun part of ac3 there's like five stretches of boring ass, janky bullshit. like the entire prison sequence. still looking forward to playing 4 as i am a fucking asshole.

how bizarre, I thought I had posted a message about AC3 but apparently not : I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THE MOTHERFUCKER !
it was sooo painful (with some tiny bits of fun... but mostly despair).
one of the worst games I have ever played, definitely.
not sure I want to give more money to those who have created that nightmare (although the naval combats were mostly fun in AC3)...

Finished 4. It kicked major ass. Still too many "follow that man - oops, you failed!" sections of the story, but everything outside the story was a blast. Now I'm wandering around with a group of thugs killing every guard in Havana. Good times.

oh the follow that man/chase sequences are some of the worst abominations in AC3...

have i posted itt abt how much i love liberation? that game was imo the finest game in the series and is available on pc for like 20 bucks soon so no excuses.

i read the wiki synopsis of 3 b/c i can't force myself to finish it, man, fuck that. the framing narrative in 4 sounds way more entertaining.

but everything outside the story was a blast

lol modern games

AC not for me

have i posted itt abt how much i love liberation? that game was imo the finest game in the series and is available on pc for like 20 bucks soon so no excuses.

― adam, Tuesday, December 10, 2013 11:04 AM

i might be into that, isnt the hd version coming to ps3 too? new orleans seems like a cool setting for it

Is the whole game coming out for PS3? You get a short sequence with her as a free bonus for buying AC4, but I didn't realize the whole thing was being ported.

its a full rerelease i believe

cool!

I'm currently at 70% in Black Flag and, yeah, really enjoyed it so far. I've only played a tiny bit of the first AC, so the whole thing is quite fresh to me. There's been a few too many 'follow this person and don't get caught' missions, but the creeping around, knifing guards in the back stealth stuff never gets old. Mostly I'm just enjoying sailing to desert islands over choppy seas as the crew sings shanties, and pickling fights with big fuck off Spanish galleons loaded with booty.

Am in this. Anyone wanna do multiplayer?

Encountered this odd cross-promotion at a Target tonight:

https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/1505053_10151796430946596_23649933_n.jpg

AC Liberation HD hits on Jan 14/15, apparently

What is James Kidd's accent in AC4?

It's a Manchester accent, if I recall.

I picked up ac3 on a steam sale for 7.50, then the hell with it and bought the goty version for another 7.50.

Ac4 is a blast, but the chase sequences are shit and a particular jungle mission is bugged all to hell. I'm really enjoying the bits where you cut back to Montreal, and the extensive lore of the game is a nice touch.

I've just finished Black Flag, and I am so fucking annoyed. No warning that a particular mission is the last mission in the main quest, then BAM game over, even though I haven't finished the Templar Hunt, or got the Mayan suit, explored that last island... now it would feel artificial to go back and do it, and if I don't (which I won't), all the time I spent chasing those objectives seems a total waste.

Fucking game.

Pro tip - look up the main quest mission names and don't do that last one til you're good and ready.

So in an effort to ward off depression I decided to take "advantage" of my sudden downtime and catch up with all the AC games (I beat 1 when it came out, played 2 a little bit but that was all). Made my way through II, which was great, and the rest of the Ezio Trilogy which was fine despite Revelations being ridiculously uneven.

I'm on sequence 9 or so of ACIII right now and hoo boy this game.

It's glitchy as all get out (side missions especially require a fair amount of leaving and restarting because x, y, or z isn't there that you need to beat them). I'm glad they've made the fighting a little bit more difficult (highland axe guys have put me down far more in this game than anyone else has in all the other ones combined) but it's unbelievably frustrating how few places to hide there are in the cities. Just trying to do their little "liberation" missions or a homestead one of getting papers for the smith alerts the entire british army and you can run around for ~~ages~~ before you find somewhere to hide and nobody is following you. The worst part is with the side missions where you basically have no choice but to alert the guards to your presence is that if you leave the little zone you have to restart the thing all over again. So you have to beat down wave after wave of the soldiers and then hopefully remain under 2 notoriety because you can't walk 10 feet to bribe a crier without yet more people being alerted and yet more running/fighting, all so Big Dave's dumbass apprentice can get his comeuppance and you can craft a nicer barrel or whatever.

Also Connor sucks and the dialogue is so corny and stilted I really appreciated what a smooth bro Ezio could be, even if he did blather on about the damn order or whatever. I'm also not sure why I spent so much time getting that miner and that hunter together so they can have some dumb wedding because I want to build a naval convoy and make some mad cheddar off a bear pelt.

otoh it's a very pretty game and the sea battles are a lot of fun in their limited way. Also I think everyone underestimated how awesome it is go all Hawkeye on some motherfuckers by picking up a rifle, killing someone, dropping it, and picking up *that* dude's rifle to shoot the next one. The entire purpose of this game really is to make me rewatch Last of the Mohicans and Master and Commander, and I guess there are worse things.

III is horrible, but IV redeemed the series in every way.

I got IV for 30 bucks last week so it's sitting there waiting for when I finish III.

nice.

Played IV for an hour or so yesterday, not sure I will want to play much more of it though. The graphics are real nice to look at but the controls kind of suck and I have no idea what is going on. I was in a ship crash and woke up on a beach somewhere, where there was also a lone assassin. He threatened me with his gun, then threw it on the ground and ran away. So I tried looking for the gun for about 10 minutes before I realized it was just part of a cut scene.

So the game says to chase the assassin, and I do. I end up climbing up a rickety tower to see if I can scope him out from above, but no. So I climb back down and walk around, eventually he appears in the distance. As I chase him he alternates between "I'm going to kill you!" and "We can work together!", often within seconds of each other.

Yeah but it gets really awesome

Really digging this game so far

I'm still so angry at III that I can't really bring myself to get IV.
instead I went back to II !
just played a little bit yesterday but walking around (and on the roofs) of renaissance florence is pretty good (especially after the lame boston and NY in III) !
It reminded me of the pleasure I had in I discovering jerusalem, damascus...

http://kotaku.com/leaked-images-reveal-one-of-this-falls-two-assassins-1547111652

These screenshots, sent to me by a source who requested anonymity, show Unity's new assassin roaming around what appears to be Paris. You can see Notre Dame, the Seine River, and other Parisian landmarks, and the shots are very clearly from an early version of the game.

Finally, a French Revolution setting for an AC game. Kinda curious how many Napoleon or Ac3/AC4 character cameos they'll have

ah yes ! I hope I can find my appartment in it !
pretty excited by this. and indeed, if it goes to the Empire era too, that will be awesome.
too bad there will be no eiffel tour to climb though !

as for II, I've played it some more yesterday and so far it's very very cool and so much better than III.
the story is interesting, the hero is nice, the gameplay is not bad.
and it's fun again to run around on the roofs through a great city (haven't succeeded in climbing to the top of the duomo and the campanile yet... but did the leap of faith from the palazzo vecchio, yay !). in III, I was almost never on the roofs and the viewpoints were so not exciting.
I'll see if it gets as repetitive and boring as I or if there are awful mission designs like III...

Played IV again. Pretending To Be A Pirate: The Movie: The Video Game. The cinematography in this is great! Sometimes the wobbly camera looks silly but this is really well done. The voice acting is stellar! I only realized this time around I can actually steer the ship while I'm shooting canons. Incredible.

This would be amazing with a VR helmet. Jumping around jungle lagoons, leaping from coconut treetop to coconut treetop, and you never have to worry about bugs, heat, or dangerous animals.

You automatically knew there was treasure behind the waterfall.

When the meta stuff starts up in IV, I just want to go back to playing that awesome pirate game. I hope this isn't a huge part of this game.

but everything outside the story was a blast

lol modern games

― napgenius (goole), Tuesday, December 10, 2013 11:04 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uh that first meta part was just like someone walked into the room while I was playing an awesome pirate game and stole the computer screen from me then waved it around going "Nyaah nyaaah nyaah!" is there a mod that will let me assassinate these VR clowns? I don't care that I am playing a videogame inside a videogame. Unless this is going to turn into Saints Row IV you can leave that stuff at home.

Please tell me this is a very very small part of this game.

yeah the Animus/Abstergo stuff in the series is really annoying and compeltely pointless - not sure why the developers feel obliged to stick with it.

Paris is burning !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLcjwqXATIM

I was expecting this to follow !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L93-7vRfxNs

Pretty psyched for that but maybe it's because I just read Fatal Purity.

Finally got the mission where I have my own ship and the crew are singing sea shanties and there are all these little islands everywhere to explore. YES THIS IS AWESOME.

Yeah the open world segment here (it feels like this game is made of a few different open world areas) is pretty frickin' amazing and seamless. You can go from sailing the seas and fighting other pirate ships to discovering buried treasure on a secret island without any load screen or load time. I love the controls for the ship, you can sort of put it on cruise control, you can turn it around like a tank, and you can pull it up to an island and just whip it to a stop like you would a car in GTA. But it doesn't look silly, it looks awesome!

The collectible stuff in IV is done extremely well, any time you have to find something out of the way you end up using your crazy acrobatic moves and end up walking across treetops or something cool that you wouldn't otherwise have done.

It's harder (or maybe just more time consuming) to make money as well, which is frustrating when I'm trying to level up the ship but is better than opening up stores and watching money roll in you'll never spend. Making you dive for the elite plans was a good move too.

So this awesome open world, it's going to be available for the rest of the playing time, I suspect? I've been running around doing random missions and I'm wondering if should just chill on those for a minute and progress in the main story so everything is unlocked. Can't wait to do a diving mission...

Just want to comment again the open world looks AMAZING holy crap AAA video games over the past couple of years are giving Hollywood a run for their money. Seems like every 10 minutes or so I catch a view that is postcard pretty, and yes this is my favorite non-Monkey Island pirate game of all time. When you are sailing at travel speed and your boat hits the water and it all splashed up and onto the deck and then washes off..... holy crap it looks amazing. Just, damn.

prob gonna pick this up after i finish dark souls 2

I found my rip of the old Pirates of the Caribbean Disney record I made and it sounds really cool played alongside this game, you can even leave the game music on.

Not gonna lie I try to get the music sheets so I can hear more shanties

Neu goes SUPER well w both the cutscenes and big dramatic open-sea drones.

Both 1 and 2 have water sound sections.

Riding the big waves is the killer app.

I really liked the Abstergo segments in IV. I thought it worked as an interesting framing device for what you were doing, as well as opening up the premise for any other era they wanna hit....as the Unity previews show. I liked the change-up of going from third-person blonde piratey dude actioning around vs first-person vaguely nameless gamedev QA tester.

the sheer buckets of lore in the game were a nice addition.

Dawned on me last night, after digging up treasure from a island that looked a little too familiar, that this game is procedurally generated. The towns are really starting to feel the same too. It's still a great game, but the more that shows through, kind of ruins it a bit for me.

I went back to this at the weekend for the first time in a month or two. My ship's so maxed out on weaponry that I can take out man-o-wars from distance just by raining mortar down on them and come away without a scratch. Kinda spoils the fun. I've still a couple of dives left to complete - I tended to avoid them as they were always so unbearably tense - but that's about it :(
Roll on the French Revolution, but I'll miss the pirating.

I harpooned a few hammerheads last night, which was amazing (as everything in this game is) visually and easy to control. I still can't get over the look of the ocean in this. Just brilliant programming. You really feel the weight of the ship, and the gravity of everything, and the pull of the waves, particularly during rough seas. It looks _exactly_ like real footage. Best water EVER in a videogame.

I'm serious about "Neu! 2". The second track has this crazy minimalist reverbed out snare drum part that goes really well with all the cannons during ship-to-ship battles. And track 03 sounds like a windy spooky Caribbean church.

I haven't touched the story mode on this for a while, just been exploring underwater pirate hideaways filled with sharks and stuff. I just climbed up a really sweet bell tower that was 6 or 7 stories tall.

Just finished 3. Really bad story/acting and glitchy gameplay. In mitigation, easier time with recruits and I liked trading. Sea missions also brilliant.

Really slow to go for 4. I played game thinking that Ezio was such a good character compared to Connor (

Superfluous 'N' or is this common US spelling?) in that there was a bit of movement and growth. Honestly felt that this game was just railroading me between cut scenes. Some of historical notes were interesting as I know/knew very little about that period.

The accents though - they could not find actors capable of accents with their budget?

In terms of 4 though it sounds from this thread they've kept good bits of 3 and chucked the rest.

I don't know, haven't played 3. It feels like an open world pirate action game laid on top of a stealth franchise. It is a LOT of content. You can spend dozens of hours just doing sidequests and fighting ship battles. It's pretty good, it's almost too good, in fact. If they had made a game with half this content, and spent all that extra time perfecting gameplay and little physics issues, it would be a masterpiece.

just bought iv, its taking forever to download

the level of detail in the fauna is absurd

flora, rather, not fauna

Just wait til you get to islands with deer, crocodiles, and tree monkeys.

on ps3 so i guess i'm missing the full experience of the next-gen version

so any interest around here in the forthcoming AC movie?

is it the sequel to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcE8xJkK6t4

Having never played any of these before, I recently picked up the Ezio trilogy and AC3 for cheap. Is there any point whatsoever in getting the first one or should I just plunge into 2?

start with 2

1 is awesome for the visuals of the medieval middle east, though

I just started 2 last night. Played about half an hour, got to Italy.

Kind of weird to have the right trigger be your sprint button.

Does the game restrict jumping early in the game or can I just not find the button to do it?

Medieval Middle East is awesome but I haven't played it since it came out so I imagine the mechanics are fairly ropey considering the series still has issues with them. The one to skip is 3.

Does the game restrict jumping early in the game or can I just not find the button to do it?
― calstars, Friday, April 11, 2014 11:29 AM

iirc holding r1 is sprint/freerun/jump combined but it doesnt come into play until after you beat up that first group of guys. i think theres a 'race to the top' sort of thing where the freerun/jumping/climbing gets introduced

I always heard not to touch 1, but I kinda want to watch the assembled supercut of all the cutscenes on yt

I bought 3 for hella cheap, but I don't know if I want to get into yet after all the time spent in 4 during Dec/Jan. You can only play so much AC before the mechanics grind you down due to repetition, and I want to be fresh for AC:Unity.

4 is nothing special so far, its really no different than 2 barring the ship stuff which i havent delved into yet. and i guess theres hunting which might be cool. but otherwise the mechanics are the same. its still mash the attack button, loot the corpse, fuck chasing that stupid courier who gives a shit, open the chest, watch the cutscene. feels like a ripoff, $60 for a re-skin of a previous game thx ubisoft

its really no different than 2 barring the ship stuff which i havent delved into yet

idk dude this might be something crucial.

Yes you at least need to wait til you get a ship.

Just your hardy crew's enjoyment of bellowing sea chanties as you cut thru the deep blue makes this game a mark well above most.

totally went out of my way to chase down the annoying song sheets to get more shanties

yeah 1 is great for the visuals and feeling of these amazing cities. but it's very repetitive.
same qualities with 2 in firenze and venezia + a much better gameplay. I play it at the moment and so far it's great.
the visuals and feels of a great city are clearly key aspects in these games for me. and one that was lacking in 3 with NYC and boston being totally meh.
haven't played 4 but since there are no big cities in it, there might be a problem (and I like the boat parts in 3 but I dunno, it's just another game to me).

ok maybe i should progress the story more. i've just been hanging around havana collecting all the viewpoints, etc. and slaughtering guards. is there no wanted poster / notoriety mechanic in this game?

There is. Yeah, you should progress the story at least until you have the ship. Havana is meh compared to what you get into.

ok heres a list of my progression

- catch the sage
- desynchronized
- catch the sage
- desynchronized
- catch the sage
- desynchronized
- catch the sage
- desynchronized
- catch the sage
- desynchronized- catch the sage
- desynchronized
- catch the sage
- desynchronizedv
v
v

Might wanna click down that difficulty setting; it's affecting your ability to hold down the ctrl button

i beat a guy at checkers and pet a dog

See, you're doing it

You can also pet a goat

i petted a cat and skinned a lizard

IV is amazing. Have completely ignored story to just pootle about the tropics looting and robbing.

I really like all chests, etc. on map at outset. Also the easy fast travel and activating the locations.

I am not liking how long it takes to get metal!

I also am sick of non-animus bits. They've trimmed the stories in the game, why do I have to spend 30 wandering around on rails NOT GIVING A MONKEYS!

I actually liked the office parts this time. I dug the conceit and thought that wandering about their place in Montreal was a nice way to break up the story.

Plus all the lore was cute

This game is fantastic.

I've unlocked a good few upgrades both for character (templar armour, pistol swords) and the boat (elite hull, elite broadside, etc.) and I'm still on training/intro missions. I only completed sequence to get diving bell. I really like that you can buy the hunting goods for upgrades. I have had

Speaking of which the swimming underwater in this is really bad but at least the goods are easy to find. Do far at least.

The sounds of this game (shanties, etc.) is really good. Accents are all a bit ropey as per.

*I have had four pistols from early on. Great in mêlées.

Holy shit this game... Story is a distraction from the pirate good times but enjoyable none the less. Office parts have improved. The combat is a lot better in this one.

Did anyone else find the underwater levels very stressful?

yeah iv is great. reluctant to try it after 3 but this is superb.

Are you going through story or completing side missions?

Having this thing on hold now for several months already due to not really wanting to deal with this fucking sharks again, I really have to say I miss those moments when you would just climb into the rigging to watch a balearicaribbean sunset, breeze along unnoticed near some big ass manowars fighting each other in a massive storm, casually shoot some howler monkeys with your blowpipe or having your crew sing Lowlands Away for days on end...

Think I've done roughly 80% of the side missions and yet only about 30-50% of the main narrative content for fear of getting beamed back to this dreadful office setting again...

doing all the side stuff too - this game has a really smart way of making collecting emeralds, sea shanties etc seem like the most satisfying thing ever. currently can't be arsed stopping my ship at every tiny island to grab one treasure chest but im sure i will in time. about 25% completion so im at that sweet spot where i've learned all the mechanisms and haven't got bored by any repeat-of-earlier-one missions. love this game, love it

wish i could suss out the ship fighting controls better though. got mortars but damned if i know how to fire em

Then better not learn this imo, once you get mortars and a decent hull it makes naval battles even against the biggies or the strong fortresses almost uninterestingly easy in that it's virtually impossible to actually lose the ship altogether and have to start a new attempt.

Think I've done roughly 80% of the side missions and yet only about 30-50% of the main narrative content for fear of getting beamed back to this dreadful office setting again...

As above, I really don't like those bits but thankfully they are relatively short (even if painful).

Funnily enough the sharks (apart from the first underwater mission) never really bothered me. It was the eels that messed me up the few times I died. Really the oxygen lasts so long that you can sort of wait things out most of the time. I couldn't ever get good at the swimming underwater, I just couldn't really do any kind of controlled swimming up close to chests, etc.

wish i could suss out the ship fighting controls better though. got mortars but damned if i know how to fire em

On XBox it was left bumper and then fire with right trigger. Aim slightly in front of moving target. IMHO it is best to upgrade armour and broadside before mortar. Maybe storage because it only uses wood and you can sell more. Staying south is brilliant for looting goods for trade.

What I found really useful was to upgrade the ship as much as possible (sunken chests for elite, etc.) so I only progressed with story to as far as those being unlocked and then swam for them all. The other handy thing: Capture all forts before going too far in story. That way if you're ever being hunted just sail to them and they will take out the hunters, you collect the metal.

The other advantage is when your ship is upgraded it's much easier to take on the Man O'Wars who have c.a. 1500 Reales as well as goodies for trade so you can take the lazy way out and buy all the equipment needed for armour, etc. upgrades.

I also (being a very bad player generally) found getting Templar Armour to be a huge help but I didn't get any sense that the other armours (except Mayan) made all that much of a difference.

Treasure chests and fragments in outer sea remain unopened/uncollected - life too short in the end when there is zero benefit (I'm not online so all the multiplayer rewards don't do much).

I can't praise the very open world from the beginning highly enough. It's great to level up and be everywhere. Also the assassination contracts were a good mix - ditto the viewpoints.

Royal Convoys cost 200 Reales to find at taverns but are worth between 3000 and 5000 Reales and are simple to hit for quick money.

Forget harpooning. Lots of work for very little. Ditto hunting.

don't you need to hunt to make holsters and pouches ?

You can just buy hunting goods if you want. I prefer to hunt, myself. And rope-dart kill panthers.

The rope-dart came in too late in the game for me to really get used to but I might go back in to give it a go hunting as I never made the connection.

You can buy the hunting goods but they can be expensive therefore if you can harpoon the sea hunting goods those are actually the most expensive and with the upgrades being wood only iirc it shouldn't take long. I say this having had no patience and bought them all rather than actually put the time/effort in.