Assassin's Creed

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.