None… again…

Next week however, we’re getting The Saboteur, and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, thats something to look forward too at least.

I’ll probably get back into Demon’s Souls, and Dragon Age this week, see if I can make some headway.

The original Assassin’s Creed was a good game, but it suffered from repetitive gameplay, and some downright awful missions for an open world style game that depends on a good variety.  The hype has indicated that this would not be the case this time around, but I went in with quite a bit of skepticism.

For those new to the Assassin’s Creed series, the story is actually a Sci-Fi tale, where you play a present day Desmond, reliving the lives of his ancestors by way of a device called the Animus. In the sequel Desmond’s journey in the past is one of revenge, one spanning 30 years (or there abouts) of the life of Ezio, a young Italian turned assassin. Ezio’s story is decent as you track down those who have earned your vengeance. Not a terribly unique story, nor is it very fleshed out, it was simply kill target A who tells you about target B, and so on. It is entertaining enough to drive you through however. Ezio’s story is clearly fictional but its characters are based on real people which gives a certain level of believability to it, and it’s nice when you run into familiar names and whatnot. On the other hand, Desmond’s story and how it all ties together wasn’t very compelling to me, and I’m generally into that sort of sci-fi type of thing.

There is a LOT of Italian in the English dialog, you’d be wise to enable the subtitles right away if you’re playing in English. To be fair all of the Italian used in the dialog is mostly just flavor text and not specifically part of the story, so you can play with the subtitles off and not miss anything important and it really does add to the immersion of the experience. What you do miss out on is the opportunity to learn some naughty Italian phrases.

The environments are huge and it is very clear that a lot of time and care was spent building them, the flow navigating them is pretty fun too once you get used to looking for key features (such as chimneys and extended planks to hop to) and lets you get around fairly quickly, but its no Spiderman 2, which is the pinnacle of open world travel IMO. With the exception of the landmark structures that are unique and beautifully crafted (and from what I understand close resemblances of their real life counterparts), I found much of the world to look the same, and I think because of the color palette they used, dull, so I never really had a strong sense of where I was in the world without pulling up my map, unless I was near one of afore mentioned landmarks. The climb patterns on many of the buildings were very similar if not identical, especially when you are nearing the end of the game. I can understand that reusing the building assets is necessary, but I had hoped that at least when it came to the view points that they’d be somewhat unique, even if it was just a change in how you climb it.

It’s worth mentioning as well Ezio has some pretty sweet looking armor, and there are several different colors you can dye them to suit your style or just to change the pace a bit. It was a nice touch, ubi didn’t really have to do that since the armor changes pretty frequently anyway.

The gameplay held up for the duration just about, at the end of my first play through I was pretty much bored and had had enough of it.  The combat was alright nothing outstanding, though some of the animations were well done, and some of them are really cool to see, trying out each weapon to see them all was definitely worth while. It implements the same sort of counter system that was in the first one, and you learn through the plot and can pay to learn different dodge/evade skills as well as different weapon attacks so you usually have something new to play with as you progress but it’s certainly not necessary. The same 2 button attack will get you through hordes of enemies all the way through the game. Platforming puzzles were fun even though there is only one route, finding that route wasn’t always obvious which made it significantly more fun than say the platforming in Uncharted 2 which was very direct.

Ubi made good on the notion of getting rid of the mission types that weren’t fun, that’s right! no more assassin bench-sitting! (although you can whenever as an evasive maneuver and need to on rare occasions, it’s not as bad as it was) Theres enough plot missions to keep you going for a good 20 hours and although it was fairly repetitive in the end, it did sneak up on me a little. Theres enough side quests to keep you entertained if you’re not feeling the next plot mission at the moment.

They’ve also introduced an economic system. Not only do you get cash (florins) for completing quests, you can also make your own by pick pocketing pedestrians, or by taking down messengers and/or other pick pockets. On top of that, you can invest your florin into improving your villa, or rather, your uncle Mario’s villa (yes they included “Its-a me Mario” in the dialog very funny cause I didn’t see it coming at all). By investing in shops and other amenities like a bank, or a brothel, (…) you will increase your villa’s population and increase your tax income, as well as earn discounts from the shops. Every 20 mins of gameplay your taxes are thrown into a chest back at Mario’s house, the chest has a limit to how much money it can hold that scales with the tax income, it works out that you have to go back every hour to clean it out or you stop accumulating.

There are too many collectibles in this game, but best out of all of them are the glyphs, which basically open up puzzles that reward short video clips. Some interesting back (or fore, depending on how you look at it) story is told in the puzzles themselves about the history to present day of the Templars and Assassin’s, as well as unlocking a very cool ‘origin’ type story. If you’re going after any of the collectibles, I strongly recommend these. Apart from that there are 6 statuettes for cash, paintings that you can purchase from art vendors in the different cities, and 100 feathers… which for you trophy/achievement hunters is going to be an annoyance since its’ directly tied to three of them. Finally 6 assassin’s seals that unlock Altair’s armor, the seals are obtained from assassin’s tombs throughout the game, and represent some of the coolest game play sections of the game, solid platforming puzzles, and/or combat zones. If you’re doing these I’d recommend spacing them out as opposed to going right after them because they’re excellent when you need a break from the main story line.

From what I understand my decision to play this on PS3 really hurt me here, as the 360 version is being reported as the superior version. There were noticeable frame rate issues, screen tearing, and it seemed like the draw-in distance was far too short in general because of all the pop-in I experienced, all of which I understand are fine in the 360 version. On top of that there were 4-5 instances while I was progressing through the story (about 22-25 hrs of game play) that the PS3 would freeze requiring hard reboot of the system. Furthermore, I learned while trophy hunting (there is a trophy for killing 10 baddies w/o getting hit) that I can replicate the crash on demand by throwing down a smoke bomb in a crowd of people and performing a couple double executions, there seems to be many reports of this on the forums and my own attempts to contact Ubi support has been far less than rewarding with regards to acknowledging that there is even a problem.

In any case, the game is decent and if you’re a fan of the first one this game is simply more and better you’ll have a great time, I found this game to be pretty generic in the end and a fairly forgettable experience in the sea of good games that have come out recently despite the amazing world that they’ve built and set it in. I’m extremely disappointed to say that I would have a hard time recommending this game to anyone as a must play title this year.

Unfortunately… there is nothing of interest this week. I guess that means I’ll be spending some time with some games that need a little more attention. I’ve still got some trophies to collect in Assassin’s Creed 2, and Uncharted 2, maybe I’ll pick up Dragon Age again see how that works, and definitely some Demon’s Souls.

Enjoy your week off gamers.