I like the combat when I don't have to deal with archers and gunmen shooting me from off-screen. They also changed the combat in Unity in a way that made it unsatisfying to counter but still had to anyway. Also, they got rid of picking up enemy weapons which I thought added a lot to combat, with the different weapon animations and throwing ability. I like being able to actually equip those weapons, but something about picking up an axe mid-fight and chucking it at a dude was superb. AC2 and Brotherhood were my favorites for combat.
The combat was fine until Unity. Unity combat was the worst. It just turned into a samey chore. Mash the button to drop a smoke bomb because it ignores it a lot, accidentally drop two at once, try to kill as many dudes as you can while it's active and get annoyed by how often he just stands there refusing to hit dudes who are right next to him, pop a medicine, repeat, then search all the bodies hoping to refill your medicine and smoke bombs.
The only one worse was III, which people keep swearing wasn't different from the games around it, but which absolutely made no sense to me; I spent a large number of fights in that leading keystone cop chases around the area waiting for the slow ass regen to give me enough life to actually try and kill a few games. At least Unity brought medicine back.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2015
Yeah well I worked out how 3 work so it was great.
I would take out entire streets worth of dudes in one long unbroken freeflow combat sequence. You could take down any unit at least one way, very quickly, and there were numerous sneaky tricks you could use, like snares in combat or using the rope darts to pull over and then ground stab those super dudes that would rock up with max notoriety (which didn't use up a rope dart).
I used to break up line of fire attempts before they even started, I ended up recognising the pattern of movement that signalled one was forming and would simply charge them or prepare to grab a dude. I recognised the sound cue too (the officer in charge would yell out the order) so I couldn't be caught off guard by one forming out of view.
I actually kind of wished I had to run from dudes near the end, because I got really good with that too. If you held the RB, r1 button down, the one they changed to a status screen in black flag damn them, you got much more precise strafing control and could dance around obstacles while cornering and remove the whole jumping around on random objects thing.
It was the free aim button I think? Yeah it functioned differently when running. Good example those fences with holes you could limbo under. If you just went at them normally most of the time he went over them. If you held R1 down he would go under them, which was significantly faster.
I never needed to use it to run from dudes though because I could kill anyone and anything with anything. I ended up doing yackety sax chases around the city for fun, I'd pop out and murder a couple of dudes in a patrol then sprint off and lose them as fast as possible.
On the other hand, nobody could get away from me.
My kills by the time I was finished with that game was around 4000+
You probably don't want to see what I used to do to those poor suckers once I got all those shaman powers in the king dlc. Connor was already broken and then they let me fly.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Yeah, I think 3 was mostly a tutorial problem. There were several enemy types I simply couldn't figure out how to hurt at all since they were immune to everything I knew how to do. It was a pretty big change from the previous games and didn't even try and explain itself, so unless you're someone who thrives on figuring out complex systems (I am not; it took me two Batman games to stop button mashing) it was pretty frustrating.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2015
It had the worst tutorial for complex combat I've ever seen in a video game outside of various japanese developers who, you know, have never really bothered with that shit.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I liked 3 a lot gameplay-wise, but Boston/NY were the most boring locales yet. The wilderness was actually more fun to explore.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2015
I really liked the environments in the game, but I grew up in a rural area. It was really interesting to see another continents early settlement period.
I even got to fight bears! XD I fought so many bears! It was my main money source, even though beavers are better.
The architecture of the cities was a type my girlfriend quite likes the look of, so I've learned to appreciate it as well via association.
The cities had wonderful npc touches, they interacted with stuff in the streets and each other in a really cool way.
And you could blend with only one person, and when you blended each one had context appropriate natural animations. Like when you blended at a stall you would poke around in the stall as if browsing. If there were a few dudes standing around with crossed arms you would cross your arms and lean back with them as if joining in, or people sitting down on the ground, you sat down with them.
Just don't talk to me about the pacing and mission structure. That was shit on a stick. Locking you out of freeroam for several missions in a row, sudden jumps in and out of the game to the desmond sections. It was so bad.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Yeah, but apart from bugs and performance (and possibly protagonists/writing) people don't really agree on why they are displeased. Some say the series stagnates, others say it moved too far from what it was supposed to be about, citing the ways in which the series obviously *didn't* stagnate.
I absolutely think there's room for improvement, and I enjoy a good critical discussion, but I admit that it gets up my nose when armchair critics pretend, as they often do, that it's crystal clear what the series obviously needs (other than better QA).
Just to add one more disagreement, it's very possible that the QA is fine, it's the schedule that doesn't allow for actually fixing the bugs that QA finds...
But these games are hilariously complex, so who knows what's going on.
Yeah, the logisitcs of an Assasins' Creed game seem to me to be bordering on impossible, and I just don't understand how anyone could work in those projects and not just go mad while the Abyss looks back.
Honestly, I think the biggest problem is their success.
After AC2, their decision to turn it into an annual franchise (mainly because it gave them a guaranteed money-maker, which I'm sure made their shareholders happy) meant that they had to split development between multiple teams.
AFAIK, the AC2 team went straight onto AC3 when it was done, ACB was a separate team, and they seemed to get everyone else in the world to contribute on turning ACR from a 3DS game to a full-console instalment.
I'd personally have been happy with them alternating between AC and another brand, both on two-year release schedules. (I'd have liked them to carry on with the new Prince of Persia story, myself).
So has anyone played AC:C:C? The reviews I've seen are all pretty ho-hum but I feel like many times the big review sites put their interns or lower tier reviewers on DLC games. Or in the case of Gamespot, Kevin VanOrd reviewed it, and he hates everything.
Did you like Mark of the Ninja? It's very similar.
Look forward to reloading checkpoints a lot. (I thought I liked Mark of the Ninja, then reloaded the same checkpoint 35 times in level 2 and somehow never played more.)
Checkpoints often placed oddly.
There's also some funky/unclear level design; stuff you can actually hang off of that isn't marked like you can. I completely couldn't figure out how the fuck I was supposed to get to the third option objective in the second level.
If you like this kind of game, though, you could do worse.
It's basically a less-good Mark of the Ninja with a bad, why-did-they-even-bother-with-it story.
While occasionally confusing, I love the game's use of depth. It's hard to describe. The gameplay is 2D, but very often the player needs to move towards or away from the screen. Sometimes is simply running along a platform into the background, but in other situations its more nuanced, like hanging off of ledges from the lengthwise portion, rather than just the very ends like you would normally expect in a 2D game.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
That sounds pretty intriguing. What system is this on?
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
It isn't considered Unity DLC, no. AC Chronicles is a new sub-series. They've already got 3 games in the series including China. The second one is set in India. And the third one is going to be set in Russia - I believe during Peter the Great's rule. Each one is priced at 10 bucks, and my understanding is that they're all supposed to come out in very quick succession. All 3 are already all made.
Unfortunately, what that means is that there won't be much chance that India and Russia get improvements based on the critical feedback of China, because India and Russia are both already complete.
Finally beat ACC:China. It took a while to get into (Mark of the Ninja was the same way) since these stealth games can feel slow and tedious at times, but by the end I was digging it. The early levels are a bit simple and boring, but the game adds new mechanics frequently so the later levels are more interesting and challenging. It also mixes things up with a couple fun "escape" levels which are focused on platforming rather than stealth.
The label is probably thrown about for far too many games, but ACC:Chine is a truly "2.5D" game. The quasi-3D level design and encounter structure is the game's standout feature and is what sets it apart from the very similar Mark of the Ninja.
That said, I'm not sure if I'll want to pick up the following two games. I think I got my fill with this.
Halfway through the third level I just said fuck it and started killing dudes if it seemed hard to sneak past. It's way more fun if I don't try and force myself to shadow gold.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2015
Mark of the ninja went from slow and tedious to ridiculously fast and agile once you achieved a measure of mastery of the systems and abilities and were familiar with the levels.
Does this do the same?
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
New AC game reveal is streaming on IGN right now. Assassins Creed Syndicate is the title. My coworker is watching it, and it looks kinda sweet. Grappling hook, revolver pistols and top hats!
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
Just watched the reveal stream. Might Syndicate be the first truely good Assassin's Creed game? I mean Black Flag was a great Pirate game, but just another Assassin's Creed game besides that, which I never liked at its core.
The rope launcher frees the developers to create more organic and believable environments, and removes the most boring part of the AC franchise, climbing onto rooftops. Vehicles make all games better, if done right - and those carriages sure looked like great fun to plow through busy Victorian London streets. Maybe they'll finally get the Batman combat to be actually good, instead of it feeling akward and arcane. Stealth on command is also something the franchise direly needed since forever.
So yeah, I guess this is going to be another Ubisoft laundry list of shit to do, and after watching the reveal, I have high hopes that it's going to be a good, or even great one. Bring it!
P.S. something about punching women in the teeth with brass knuckles feels wrong, though I guess that's the times we live in. Equality in regards. Eat my fist - milady.
P.P.S. Evee is most definitely the protagonist of the next AC game, and Jacob bites it in the end of AC : Syndicate. Obviously.
P.P.P.S. I'm super disappointed that it wasn't a live reveal event. I was prepared for things to be on fire. For Mister Cafeeine type of awkward shennanigans. Oh well, I'll get my yearly fix at E3.
P.P.P.P.S. I so hoped that the protagonist will be a cockney-speaking son of a whore with a pock-marked crooked-nosed potato face. He's just another pretty boy though. The upside. His sister is banging.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
P.P.S. Evee is most definitely the protagonist of the next AC game, and Jacob bites it in the end of AC : Syndicate. Obviously.
Seeing how resistant ubisoft is to putting a female at the head of a mainline AC game, I'm guessing she either dies at the end of the first act or at the end. That or she turns traitor and becomes a villian.
The most I think we could hope for is she gets her own bit of DLC or some small spin off game like Chronicles or Liberation.
P.P.S. Evee is most definitely the protagonist of the next AC game, and Jacob bites it in the end of AC : Syndicate. Obviously.
I doubt it.
Seeing how resistant ubisoft is to putting a female at the head of a mainline AC game, I'm guessing she either dies at the end of the first act or at the end. That or she turns traitor and becomes a villian.
The most I think we could hope for is she gets her own bit of DLC or some small spin off game like Chronicles or Liberation.
I think it's conspicuous that the protagonist has an equal right out of the gate. I think they'll build her character over the course of the game, make us feel for her, and her eventual loss of her brother. We get to know Jacob as well as she does, and when the game takes him away from us, we'll feel like she feels - eager to avenge our brother. In doing so, Ubisoft puts us already in Evee's shoes, and so, we will be more likely to accept her in the next game. It's likely even that Jacob will die in the penultimate act of Syndicate, and we'll be playing Evee in the final act already.
PR-wise, the twist of switching from a male protagonist to a female one, either in the final act of Syndicate, or from this iteration to the next, is probably something Ubisoft wants to do. The times have changed anyways. Strong female protagonists do exceedingly well in young adult novels and movies like Hunger Games and whatnot. I think Ubisoft is aware of that sea change, and is willing to take the risk now.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt given their track record.
Game industry is abit behind the curve in regards to the recent rise of female protagonists in film and in comic books. Especially the bigger publishers like Ubisoft.
I'm guessing her presence there is meant to placate the fans who have been vocal about wanting a lady hero without alienating the bro crowd they're afraid they'll lose. I'm not expectly much from it myself.
I had to dig around a lot to write a piece on Syndicate today. It was difficult for a while to find confirmation that Evie is playable other than a Kotaku rumor from an anonymous source, but Gamespot and The Guardian have now both confirmed it. Looks like both outlets were at the same press event, and that Ubi is resisting saying much about Evie at this point because they're going to talk more about her later in the summer. Soooo E3. Or maybe Gamescom because it's Ubisoft. Quebec is in charge of this one, though, so probably E3.
Anyway, Evie is playable, and thus will probably not die. I like that they're doing siblings instead of lovers, sounds like more fun.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
I had to dig around a lot to write a piece on Syndicate today. It was difficult for a while to find confirmation that Evie is playable other than a Kotaku rumor from an anonymous source, but Gamespot and The Guardian have now both confirmed it. Looks like both outlets were at the same press event, and that Ubi is resisting saying much about Evie at this point because they're going to talk more about her later in the summer. Soooo E3. Or maybe Gamescom because it's Ubisoft. Quebec is in charge of this one, though, so probably E3.
Anyway, Evie is playable, and thus will probably not die. I like that they're doing siblings instead of lovers, sounds like more fun.
She could still die easily, especially if you only play her in a few small missions here and there.
If the rumor pans out, Jakob is who you'll be playing as 75% of the game.
I had to dig around a lot to write a piece on Syndicate today. It was difficult for a while to find confirmation that Evie is playable other than a Kotaku rumor from an anonymous source, but Gamespot and The Guardian have now both confirmed it. Looks like both outlets were at the same press event, and that Ubi is resisting saying much about Evie at this point because they're going to talk more about her later in the summer. Soooo E3. Or maybe Gamescom because it's Ubisoft. Quebec is in charge of this one, though, so probably E3.
Anyway, Evie is playable, and thus will probably not die. I like that they're doing siblings instead of lovers, sounds like more fun.
She could still die easily, especially if you only play her in a few small missions here and there.
If the rumor pans out, Jakob is who you'll be playing as 75% of the game.
The Guardian and Gamespot articles, by people who actually heard a presentation from the devs, seem to think it was more even. Unlike the Kotaku rumour, the Guardian piece says some missions will be locked to one protagonist, but that you'll have a choice of protagonists on many missions.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Posts
Depends on the game speak for yourself thanks
I like the combat. The writing varies
The only one worse was III, which people keep swearing wasn't different from the games around it, but which absolutely made no sense to me; I spent a large number of fights in that leading keystone cop chases around the area waiting for the slow ass regen to give me enough life to actually try and kill a few games. At least Unity brought medicine back.
I would take out entire streets worth of dudes in one long unbroken freeflow combat sequence. You could take down any unit at least one way, very quickly, and there were numerous sneaky tricks you could use, like snares in combat or using the rope darts to pull over and then ground stab those super dudes that would rock up with max notoriety (which didn't use up a rope dart).
I used to break up line of fire attempts before they even started, I ended up recognising the pattern of movement that signalled one was forming and would simply charge them or prepare to grab a dude. I recognised the sound cue too (the officer in charge would yell out the order) so I couldn't be caught off guard by one forming out of view.
I actually kind of wished I had to run from dudes near the end, because I got really good with that too. If you held the RB, r1 button down, the one they changed to a status screen in black flag damn them, you got much more precise strafing control and could dance around obstacles while cornering and remove the whole jumping around on random objects thing.
It was the free aim button I think? Yeah it functioned differently when running. Good example those fences with holes you could limbo under. If you just went at them normally most of the time he went over them. If you held R1 down he would go under them, which was significantly faster.
I never needed to use it to run from dudes though because I could kill anyone and anything with anything. I ended up doing yackety sax chases around the city for fun, I'd pop out and murder a couple of dudes in a patrol then sprint off and lose them as fast as possible.
On the other hand, nobody could get away from me.
My kills by the time I was finished with that game was around 4000+
You probably don't want to see what I used to do to those poor suckers once I got all those shaman powers in the king dlc. Connor was already broken and then they let me fly.
I even got to fight bears! XD I fought so many bears! It was my main money source, even though beavers are better.
The architecture of the cities was a type my girlfriend quite likes the look of, so I've learned to appreciate it as well via association.
The cities had wonderful npc touches, they interacted with stuff in the streets and each other in a really cool way.
And you could blend with only one person, and when you blended each one had context appropriate natural animations. Like when you blended at a stall you would poke around in the stall as if browsing. If there were a few dudes standing around with crossed arms you would cross your arms and lean back with them as if joining in, or people sitting down on the ground, you sat down with them.
Just don't talk to me about the pacing and mission structure. That was shit on a stick. Locking you out of freeroam for several missions in a row, sudden jumps in and out of the game to the desmond sections. It was so bad.
Yeah, the logisitcs of an Assasins' Creed game seem to me to be bordering on impossible, and I just don't understand how anyone could work in those projects and not just go mad while the Abyss looks back.
After AC2, their decision to turn it into an annual franchise (mainly because it gave them a guaranteed money-maker, which I'm sure made their shareholders happy) meant that they had to split development between multiple teams.
AFAIK, the AC2 team went straight onto AC3 when it was done, ACB was a separate team, and they seemed to get everyone else in the world to contribute on turning ACR from a 3DS game to a full-console instalment.
I'd personally have been happy with them alternating between AC and another brand, both on two-year release schedules. (I'd have liked them to carry on with the new Prince of Persia story, myself).
Look forward to reloading checkpoints a lot. (I thought I liked Mark of the Ninja, then reloaded the same checkpoint 35 times in level 2 and somehow never played more.)
Checkpoints often placed oddly.
There's also some funky/unclear level design; stuff you can actually hang off of that isn't marked like you can. I completely couldn't figure out how the fuck I was supposed to get to the third option objective in the second level.
If you like this kind of game, though, you could do worse.
While occasionally confusing, I love the game's use of depth. It's hard to describe. The gameplay is 2D, but very often the player needs to move towards or away from the screen. Sometimes is simply running along a platform into the background, but in other situations its more nuanced, like hanging off of ledges from the lengthwise portion, rather than just the very ends like you would normally expect in a 2D game.
Same as Unity. Not sure if they're billing it as Unity DLC or a separate game (since they did both for different systems on Freedom Cry).
Unfortunately, what that means is that there won't be much chance that India and Russia get improvements based on the critical feedback of China, because India and Russia are both already complete.
The label is probably thrown about for far too many games, but ACC:Chine is a truly "2.5D" game. The quasi-3D level design and encounter structure is the game's standout feature and is what sets it apart from the very similar Mark of the Ninja.
That said, I'm not sure if I'll want to pick up the following two games. I think I got my fill with this.
Does this do the same?
The rope launcher frees the developers to create more organic and believable environments, and removes the most boring part of the AC franchise, climbing onto rooftops. Vehicles make all games better, if done right - and those carriages sure looked like great fun to plow through busy Victorian London streets. Maybe they'll finally get the Batman combat to be actually good, instead of it feeling akward and arcane. Stealth on command is also something the franchise direly needed since forever.
So yeah, I guess this is going to be another Ubisoft laundry list of shit to do, and after watching the reveal, I have high hopes that it's going to be a good, or even great one. Bring it!
P.S. something about punching women in the teeth with brass knuckles feels wrong, though I guess that's the times we live in. Equality in regards. Eat my fist - milady.
P.P.S. Evee is most definitely the protagonist of the next AC game, and Jacob bites it in the end of AC : Syndicate. Obviously.
P.P.P.S. I'm super disappointed that it wasn't a live reveal event. I was prepared for things to be on fire. For Mister Cafeeine type of awkward shennanigans. Oh well, I'll get my yearly fix at E3.
P.P.P.P.S. I so hoped that the protagonist will be a cockney-speaking son of a whore with a pock-marked crooked-nosed potato face. He's just another pretty boy though. The upside. His sister is banging.
The most I think we could hope for is she gets her own bit of DLC or some small spin off game like Chronicles or Liberation.
I think it's conspicuous that the protagonist has an equal right out of the gate. I think they'll build her character over the course of the game, make us feel for her, and her eventual loss of her brother. We get to know Jacob as well as she does, and when the game takes him away from us, we'll feel like she feels - eager to avenge our brother. In doing so, Ubisoft puts us already in Evee's shoes, and so, we will be more likely to accept her in the next game. It's likely even that Jacob will die in the penultimate act of Syndicate, and we'll be playing Evee in the final act already.
PR-wise, the twist of switching from a male protagonist to a female one, either in the final act of Syndicate, or from this iteration to the next, is probably something Ubisoft wants to do. The times have changed anyways. Strong female protagonists do exceedingly well in young adult novels and movies like Hunger Games and whatnot. I think Ubisoft is aware of that sea change, and is willing to take the risk now.
Game industry is abit behind the curve in regards to the recent rise of female protagonists in film and in comic books. Especially the bigger publishers like Ubisoft.
I'm guessing her presence there is meant to placate the fans who have been vocal about wanting a lady hero without alienating the bro crowd they're afraid they'll lose. I'm not expectly much from it myself.
Anyway, Evie is playable, and thus will probably not die. I like that they're doing siblings instead of lovers, sounds like more fun.
If the rumor pans out, Jakob is who you'll be playing as 75% of the game.
Curious about how they'll do the weapons.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
The Guardian and Gamespot articles, by people who actually heard a presentation from the devs, seem to think it was more even. Unlike the Kotaku rumour, the Guardian piece says some missions will be locked to one protagonist, but that you'll have a choice of protagonists on many missions.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Well... this will be nested spoilers.
In
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!