Assassin's Creed

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?