Assassin's Creed

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.