Assassin's Creed

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.