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Penny Arcade: Prelude to a sellout?
rmmst49
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I posted this originally on games, though it was removed since there is already an assassins creed thread going, but this has less to do with assassins creed and more to do with the ramifications of the fallout. I'm trying to explain why i think that for the first time i can remember, penny arcade's halo is in jeopardy of beginning to fade.
My review of assassins creed follows as the basis to my opinions of Penny Arcade's ethics surrounding their promoting this game. I would rather people interested in discussing this would read my review first, but if not, here's my position and plea to Penny Arcade:
To penny arcade, and the reason i registered and wrote this review:
I'm have to question the honesty of your sentiment about this game, and your position in the surrounding brouhaha. While i do believe that for the most part you are true to the supposed, we play and promote what we enjoy playing, period, ethos of the site; in this case i smell a rat. Thats all i'm going to say, since i don't have any hard facts, only speculation, which i won't offer. I will continue to read your site regularly, but your reputation has taken a serious hit in my eyes. Next time your tempted to offer such high praise and to help convince me to eat a deep fried and sugar coated log of excrement, please, just don't. As someone likes to finish what I start, i'm compelled to swallow that shit.
My review of A. C.:
i just finished assassins creed. It took me about a week, and i completed every mission, though i didn't get all the flags.
wow, has any other game had so many elements that make you want to tell all your friends YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO EXPERIENCE THIS!!!! mixed with so much utter video game trash that you have to keep reminding yourself of the good parts to convince yourself to suffer through the indignity inflicted on you by the majority of the game play in this groundbreaking, artful, awe inspiring but ultimately P.O.S. game.
the awesome:
- the story, though I'm a sucker for cheesy sci-fi
- the last 4 seconds of the game before the end credits
- the cities
- exploring the cities
- hidden blade kills
- those extremely rare but o so sweet moments when you can use your hidden blade to get a one hit silent kill on a target, the kind of kill you imagine an assassin would be doing way more often then Altair ever gets a chance to do.
the hideous, the broken, the n64 superman inspired, the utter trash:
the combat - pure broken button mashing. have you played lair? you remember how well the dragon responded to the sixaxis? lair's controls were more satisfying for me than trying to play wrangle this fighting mechanic. You can suggest that Altair do something, and he will respond in kind precisely 6% of the time. As a huge ninja gaiden/tekken/soul caliber/doa fan, fighting in assassins creed made me want to claw my eyeballs from my sockets with a rusty spoon. this game required a fighting mechanic either ninja gaidenish, or something like p.o.p:tsot, which was simple, but didn't get in your way of being able to enjoy the game.
the amount of combat your forced to do - so, 9 targets? right. how many kills does this game force the most benevolent among us into? hundreds, thousands? out of my 20 hours playing this game, i was forced to spend, what, 12 of them fighting? good fighting games over a few seconds of fun, over and over, and we love it. Assassins creed offers a few seconds of feces, and then continues to rub our faces in it, ad naseum.
the fact that your not actually an assassin - if i was an assassin, given a job of such importance that it will bring peace to the known world, the first thing i do when i go to the city of my prey, will surely be to start a fight in the middle of a busy street and fight a dozen or so guards in broad daylight. You are not an assassin. at best, you are a mercenary. it totally breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, and to a large extent ruined my ability to enjoy this game. along those lines, the actual assassinations were largely mishandled. The bulk of this game consists of gathering information to facilitate the killing, with the idea of circumventing the targets security, taking the target in surprise, and getting out. That what i thought the point was while playing the game anyway. Looking back, as much could have been accomplished by walking right up to target in broad daylight, trying to kill him, and then having to fight through every one of his guards You'll have to kill them anyway, the game doesn't accommodate any style of play that won't end with killing every guard in the city. This totally sucks.
the end of game battles - starting with the knights of the round table encounter with the templars, until after the final boss, Altair, supposed master of stealth and the silent kill, fights 12, then 9 then 9 again, all at once in the games final 3 battles. Maybe this would work in ninja gaiden, but here it was just more lazy, uninspired hideous design for this character and story. When you mix the fact that the combat is more dependent on dice rolls than any d&d game ever, you have 2 choices:
1 - play these scenes over and over, as your soul and life force slowly drains from your body, awaiting the moment the gods of chance, statistics and game theory smile upon you and leave you the last man standing, or
2 - button mash until your health goes down, and then run like hell for 3 actual real life minutes while your health builds back up, rinse and repeat until the next cut scene loads. yeah, real satisfying. kill me now.
the current weapon to hidden blade to take out downed enemies switching - the worst part of the fighting. slow, clunky, doesn't work, gets you killed. when you absolutely need it to kill someone, like (wink wink - the girl, and later the man the girl stood in for) it's d&d time again. roll those dice.
here's my score for this game:
game play: 2
everything else: 10
average: 6
bias: -2
bias explanation - i spend approximately 80% more time being tortured by this games terribly game play elements than i spent being wowed by the game world, story, exploration and rare moments of hidden blade bliss. Minus 2 from final score.
FINAL SCORE: 4
I would never suggest this game to anyone but an experienced gamer who has suffered through this kind of crap before, but who didn't let it turn them off of gaming. To the hardcore, play this game for the amazing world, the vistas, and the opportunity to put some more memories on your superman 64 game play horror story shelf. To the newbies: gaming doesn't have to be like this, really! try ratchet, metroid prime or something like ninja gaiden or rygar ps2, then, you may be tempted to pick up a controller again.
My review of assassins creed follows as the basis to my opinions of Penny Arcade's ethics surrounding their promoting this game. I would rather people interested in discussing this would read my review first, but if not, here's my position and plea to Penny Arcade:
To penny arcade, and the reason i registered and wrote this review:
I'm have to question the honesty of your sentiment about this game, and your position in the surrounding brouhaha. While i do believe that for the most part you are true to the supposed, we play and promote what we enjoy playing, period, ethos of the site; in this case i smell a rat. Thats all i'm going to say, since i don't have any hard facts, only speculation, which i won't offer. I will continue to read your site regularly, but your reputation has taken a serious hit in my eyes. Next time your tempted to offer such high praise and to help convince me to eat a deep fried and sugar coated log of excrement, please, just don't. As someone likes to finish what I start, i'm compelled to swallow that shit.
My review of A. C.:
i just finished assassins creed. It took me about a week, and i completed every mission, though i didn't get all the flags.
wow, has any other game had so many elements that make you want to tell all your friends YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO EXPERIENCE THIS!!!! mixed with so much utter video game trash that you have to keep reminding yourself of the good parts to convince yourself to suffer through the indignity inflicted on you by the majority of the game play in this groundbreaking, artful, awe inspiring but ultimately P.O.S. game.
the awesome:
- the story, though I'm a sucker for cheesy sci-fi
- the last 4 seconds of the game before the end credits
- the cities
- exploring the cities
- hidden blade kills
- those extremely rare but o so sweet moments when you can use your hidden blade to get a one hit silent kill on a target, the kind of kill you imagine an assassin would be doing way more often then Altair ever gets a chance to do.
the hideous, the broken, the n64 superman inspired, the utter trash:
the combat - pure broken button mashing. have you played lair? you remember how well the dragon responded to the sixaxis? lair's controls were more satisfying for me than trying to play wrangle this fighting mechanic. You can suggest that Altair do something, and he will respond in kind precisely 6% of the time. As a huge ninja gaiden/tekken/soul caliber/doa fan, fighting in assassins creed made me want to claw my eyeballs from my sockets with a rusty spoon. this game required a fighting mechanic either ninja gaidenish, or something like p.o.p:tsot, which was simple, but didn't get in your way of being able to enjoy the game.
the amount of combat your forced to do - so, 9 targets? right. how many kills does this game force the most benevolent among us into? hundreds, thousands? out of my 20 hours playing this game, i was forced to spend, what, 12 of them fighting? good fighting games over a few seconds of fun, over and over, and we love it. Assassins creed offers a few seconds of feces, and then continues to rub our faces in it, ad naseum.
the fact that your not actually an assassin - if i was an assassin, given a job of such importance that it will bring peace to the known world, the first thing i do when i go to the city of my prey, will surely be to start a fight in the middle of a busy street and fight a dozen or so guards in broad daylight. You are not an assassin. at best, you are a mercenary. it totally breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, and to a large extent ruined my ability to enjoy this game. along those lines, the actual assassinations were largely mishandled. The bulk of this game consists of gathering information to facilitate the killing, with the idea of circumventing the targets security, taking the target in surprise, and getting out. That what i thought the point was while playing the game anyway. Looking back, as much could have been accomplished by walking right up to target in broad daylight, trying to kill him, and then having to fight through every one of his guards You'll have to kill them anyway, the game doesn't accommodate any style of play that won't end with killing every guard in the city. This totally sucks.
the end of game battles - starting with the knights of the round table encounter with the templars, until after the final boss, Altair, supposed master of stealth and the silent kill, fights 12, then 9 then 9 again, all at once in the games final 3 battles. Maybe this would work in ninja gaiden, but here it was just more lazy, uninspired hideous design for this character and story. When you mix the fact that the combat is more dependent on dice rolls than any d&d game ever, you have 2 choices:
1 - play these scenes over and over, as your soul and life force slowly drains from your body, awaiting the moment the gods of chance, statistics and game theory smile upon you and leave you the last man standing, or
2 - button mash until your health goes down, and then run like hell for 3 actual real life minutes while your health builds back up, rinse and repeat until the next cut scene loads. yeah, real satisfying. kill me now.
the current weapon to hidden blade to take out downed enemies switching - the worst part of the fighting. slow, clunky, doesn't work, gets you killed. when you absolutely need it to kill someone, like (wink wink - the girl, and later the man the girl stood in for) it's d&d time again. roll those dice.
here's my score for this game:
game play: 2
everything else: 10
average: 6
bias: -2
bias explanation - i spend approximately 80% more time being tortured by this games terribly game play elements than i spent being wowed by the game world, story, exploration and rare moments of hidden blade bliss. Minus 2 from final score.
FINAL SCORE: 4
I would never suggest this game to anyone but an experienced gamer who has suffered through this kind of crap before, but who didn't let it turn them off of gaming. To the hardcore, play this game for the amazing world, the vistas, and the opportunity to put some more memories on your superman 64 game play horror story shelf. To the newbies: gaming doesn't have to be like this, really! try ratchet, metroid prime or something like ninja gaiden or rygar ps2, then, you may be tempted to pick up a controller again.
rmmst49 on
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