Get Your Ass Back Into The Game

Anyone can assassinate a templar. Not everyone can do it with style!

After a short romp with Modern Warfare 3(which is definitely an enjoyable experience, for what it is), I’ve been helping Desmond and all his ancestors fight the Templars in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. With 2 sequences to go, the end of their story is rapidly approaching, so I thought it would be a good moment to think back on the series as a whole. Goin down the CoD road Ubisoft has decided to churn out a game once a year, and the results have been somewhat mixed in my eyes. It’s been a great move sales wise, but the jump from iteration to iteration keeps getting smaller and the crossroad is fast approaching where the Creed will either stay in its borderline AAA status or fall off a notch to the nebulous grey middle area where series go to die.

The first Creed, thanks to some awesome marketing, really cemented the IP as one to keep an eye on even though the nuts and bolts of the gameplay didn’t live up to the hype. It was cool how they were able to keep the whole Animus stuff a secret until the game’s release, but the world created strikes me as a prime example of trying to do too much. It’s a cool premise, but gets buried under conspiracies and double crosses involving a bunch of dudes with hard to pronounce names. I appreciate the effort, but in this case, I really thought less could have been more.

I'm like a lock smith....for your mind!

The sandbox assignation gameplay was cool, but felt rather spare with limited ways to really go about offing your targets. When Assassin’s Creed II came along, it felt like this was the game that first should have been. The combat was still shallow and far too easy, but now the environment felt alive, ripe for an assassin to mess some noobs up. Each target had multiple ways to approach and try to dispatch and, while the story didn’t help much, Assassin’s Creed II was just fun to play.

Brotherhood seemed to come out of nowhere all too quickly, but it felt polished enough that it didn’t feel like cash in. The inclusion of recruiting and training your own assassins created the sense that you were really part of and building a faction. Although those individuals didn’t feel like they had a whole lot of personality to add to the mix, it really added a new layer of strategy to the gameplay.

The multiplayer (because everything needs to have multiplayer now apparently) was a cool take on the death match, having players try to sneak around a map in a crowd and off each other. It felt pretty awesome successfully sneaking up to a target and being able to off them without them seeing it coming, but I felt like the novelty died out fairly quickly. From their movements, it was easy to tell a player from an NPC and it really just came down to “do you think this player is after me or not?” I haven’t gotten around to playing the multiplayer in Revelations yet, but from what I have read/heard, it seems like a natural progression but not huge step forward for the component, like everything else in the series. I’ll probably still play it for a few hours before walking away though.

Run, biatch! I still gonna gets ya!

My playthrough of the rest of Revelations has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Even though it’s only been a year since playing Brotherhood, I felt extremely overwhelmed with the controls, each button having about 10000000 functions, depending on the context. There’s just too much to be woven into a sufficient tutorial. There were even a few times when I knew what I had to do (pickpocket, assign a thief to distract a guard, etc.) but had no idea how to do it, being forced to check the interwebz. And I’m an experience player! I can’t even imagine how someone might feel if they’re coming in fresh.

The story has been somewhat purged of the Desmond sections, which is a good thing because they really hurt the flow of the previous games. They’re still there though to tell some back story, now replaced with a weird first person section where you create blocks to advance in this weird computer thinger….yeah. It’s nice getting to hear about Desmond before all this Animus crap started, but feels like a little too late. The guy he appeared to be in the first game just doesn’t seem compatible with the version they’re trying to make now. Same goes for Altair. He was a douche in the first one. Now we’re supposed to think he’s noble?

Assassin's Creed: Douche's Resurgence

Complains aside, once I got passed the control learning curve again, I felt right at home. Fulfilling the condition to get 100% sync has been a bitch sometimes and caused some frustration, but overall, playing is as enjoyable as ever. The storyline with the sultan’s son is a bit of the series staple – a hazy conspiracy involving forgettable characters, but Ezio’s relationship with Sophia and getting the Masayf keys has been good enough to keep me engaged. That, and slowly taken control of the city by taking out dens and building a fortune.

Overall though, if it wasn’t for the knowledge that the ending will be a “revelation” and a conclusion of the Ezio storyline and hopefully shed some light on what happened to that Kristen Bell looking chick at the end of Brotherhood, I think I would be fairly disappointed with Revelations as a whole. The two big additions have been the “tower defense” mechanic which is completely optional (which is good, cause it sucks), and the bombs, which are interesting and helpful, but don’t really change much about how the game is played too much. If Brotherhood was Assassin’s Creed 2.5, Revelations is 2.7. There’s just nothing in it, besides the story, that couldn’t have been dlc.

They're attacking from the rooftops! You idiots!!

Thus, I feel like the series is at a crossroads. At the end of this year, Assassin’s Creed III is already slated for release and all signs point to an American revolution setting. It’s an interesting choice and will definitely provide some opportunities for new game elements, but if it turns into just jumping around with one of those triangular hats, I think I’m out for good.

Assassin’s Creed is a very solid series for this generation but, in my eyes, it’s losing its luster with iterations that take baby steps forward rather than leaps. The core of the game is stealth assassinations and it needs to go back to that element of it, giving the player more options to attack targets with and a more robust combat system that doesn’t feel like an after though. If Revelations has made anything clear, it’s that the formula is getting stale the series needs a kick in the ass to get it going again.

In an increasingly competitive market, Ubisoft needs to remind gamers why the Assassin’s Creed franchise is worth investing in with III. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of gamers out there, like me, will just feel saturated by it and move on.

Drake and the Dragonborn: My Winter Break

Man, can I pull off this afghan or what?

With winter break over and grad classes back in full swing, I will always look back fondly on the winter break of 2011 where I sat down to take a sledgehammer of awesome to my “to-play” pile and pound out the platinums for two Game of the Year nominee’s: Uncharted 3 and Skyrim. Going into it, I knew it was going to take a lot to unseat Portal 2 for my vote and, while all definitely superb games that solidify the video games industry’s curb stomp of quality over the movie biz, one definitely rose to the top.

From everything I heard before going into it, Uncharted 3 was said to tone down the over the top action a bit and hit all the other finer points of the series on the head. From my experience, this certainly was the case. Naughty Dog’s blockbuster did what summer movies want to do but did it better, telling the latest tale of Nathan Drake with some really great set piece moments and the patented humor the series is known for.

Up against some English chick named Marlowe who most likely fell to Sully’s charms back in the day and her sidekick who can apparently get shot in the head and walk away unscathed, Drake and crew race to discover the “Atlantis of the sands,” a city with equal amounts of treasure and fucked-up-shit. Joining the cast is a mate named Cutter, who’s gruff persona balances out the usual cast well. The banter between all of them was definitely my favorite part of the game and stands as a fine example, like the rest of the series, that really great writing can be a leg to stand on for a game. Even if the combat and platforming weren’t refined, I would have trudged through the game simply because I cared about all the characters and needed to know how it all turned out.

Above: Likeable as fuck.

But thankfully this isn’t the case as the game mechanics of Uncharted 3 are just as fine as the earlier installments. After a nice flashback section where you get to play as a young Drake, the man himself alternates between said platforming and gunfight sections as the plot rolls on. There was a bigger emphasis on hand-to-hand combat with the addition of a few strictly fisticuffs areas and, while satisfying, I didn’t feel like they really did much other than provide another wrinkle to the gameplay. It’s fun to smash a tuna on dude’s face, but felt ultimately unnecessary after the third time.

In terms of difficulty, there were definitely some annoying parts to get through in Crushing mode, especially the mini-gun fight on the cruise ship, but overall it’s all pretty manageable. I distinctly remember a much greater  challenge on the other two, but it’s not easy enough to put up a big stink about it. Uncharted is all about the characters, so an easier run didn’t bother me.

Along with a more robust online experience and co-op modes, Uncharted 3 feels like the pinnacle of Drake’s adventures, doing everything the series does, and doing it well. I still think I enjoyed Uncharted 2 more simply for the appreciation of the jump it was over 1(and the clown joke at the end), but 3 is just fine and dandy.

Amazing, but not enough to top Portal 2 in my eyes.

Someone order an extra large slice of awesome?

Then came Skyrim. The beast. With an estimated time to platinum said to be around 100-300 hours, I did it a cool 87 and loved every second of it. I played a little bit of Oblivion back in the day but never really got into it. With Skyrim however, for whatever reason, I was in from the first sword swing and started waking up with my fiancée at 6:30 in the morning when she got ready to go to work just so I could play. While there are some definite technical issues, the scope of what Bethesda created earns it a pass in my book and still feels like one of the most epic adventures of all time.

One of the things I appreciated the most about the game was the flexibility you’re given when creating a character. Rather being stuck with a class, you could explore other play styles without starting from scratch, building up skills with simple use. When the game started off, I was a warrior redguard who rocked a mace in one hand and some magic in the other. Later on, I slowly began to embrace light armor and bow skills, and felt like my character had simply evolved rather than changed “classes.” It’s a design choice to appreciate, especially in a game where there’s so much to do and multiple playthroughs would be a massive time-suck.

And in a time where these is so many other great games to play, it’s downright considerate, I would say.

You can play however you likeeeeeee

Immersion is the word that kept buzzing in my ears as I played, falling into my role as Dragonborn as I helped return the thieves guild to their former glory or got wasted with some dude who turns out to be a daedric god and havd to figure out what I did last night like Nordic version of “The Hangover.” Ever town has its own feel and practically every character has their own story to tell and become involved with. The world feels like the most complete one I ever experienced in a game and that accomplishment in itself is one that can’t be understated.

As it was widely reported though, Skyrim isn’t without its technical issues, especially on the PS3. Along with buggy quests (my poor cousin’s game will simply refuse to load the swindler’s den) and graphical glitches (hilarious backwards flying dragons), there is a tremendous lag issue that has rendered  a lot of players’ games unplayable when they passed the 10mb save file size. I sweated up a storm as my file slowly approached and passed the mark and, while noticeable, it thankfully wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t play. Turning off auto-saves really cut down on the issue and, while I did experience a handful of crashes, my experience wasn’t soiled too badly outside of chugging my way through Whiterun. I’m sure it would have gotten worse the further I played (by the time I got the plat, I probably did maybe half of all the available quests), but my trip through Skyrim was luckily smooth for the most part.

Textures? We don't need no stinkin' textures!

While I definitely get how pissed players must feel who didn’t fare as well as I did, there’s no denying the landmark in gaming Skyrim is. Just from browsing through the mods popping up on the PC front for it, it’s clear that this is a game people will be playing for a long time. And, for a single player experience, that’s certainly an accomplishment. While I loved each and every second of Portal 2, Skyrim is an experience I will never forget and made me feel part of a world like none other before it. That’s why, with a confident knock with my gaming gavel, I declare it as my personal Game of the Year of 2011. The only other game that might have given it a run which I didn’t get to play(yet) was Dark Souls, but looking back at my time with Demon’s Souls, I figure that it will be fun, but the difficulty willy trump the fond memories it will create.

Overall, bravo games industry. 2011 was one for the books in terms of quality. Now bring on 2012!

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh