A Review: Assassin's Creed (PC)

Similar to what I wrote for my review of sorts for Dead Space, I do not see the point in writing a full review for a seven year old game (as of 2014) that has over 134,000 hits when looking for a review of Assassin's Creed.  Granted the first game search will include the reviews for every game in the Assassin's Creed library due to it's lack of a subtitle or number, but I plod on . . .  Unlike some reviews (on Steam), I never had any issues booting up or playing Assassin's Creed.  The game never crashed spontaneously, the sound never cut out randomly and there was no visible skipping either by the game or by Altaïr.

So Assassin's Creed, the first game in the series of the same name, was released by Ubisoft back in 2007.  Before playing this game, I had played Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles back in February and that was it.  All I knew about the series was that you played as an assassin at various points throughout history. . . assassinating people.  I had no idea about any of the "present" day activities as Desmond or anything about the Animus accessing ancestors memories coded within the DNA of said Desmond.  That was a bit of a shock, although it did not bother me by way of a story telling mechanism.

I was a little surprised at the beginning of the game by the typical use of the Metroid-effect of starting out as Samus does in a fully powered suit only to have something happen that brings you back down to n00b status.  So that happened.  By the time I neared the end of the game, despite having gained all of my equipment back (better sword, throwing daggers, short sword, grasping abilities while falling), I never felt that I was the master assassin that I was supposed to be by that point in the game/story.  I felt that I was a guy who was great at freerunning/parkour and who was decent in a fight against anywhere from three to 15 enemies.

There's only eight here, but you can't see the other umpteen that showed up shortly after plus the couple that I had killed before the picture was taken.  And it's blurry because I done just killed a guard.

Being ganged up on was actually one of the most frustrating aspects of the game for me.  There would be times when I would be shoved by a homeless citizen (who has some sort of mental illness as they are always walking around, gibbering and will seek you out if they spotted you) into a guard and then you are wanted by every visible guard.  There were plenty of times when I would be fighting two or three guards, then a small contingent of four to six would reinforce the main unit and I would just give up as by the time they were all done swinging at me, my life would be down by a good eight to ten hit points.  Especially in the later levels, guards seemed to have gained in their sword fighting ability, multiplied in numbers and their proverbial trigger fingers were whatever is the next step after itching.  

There was one battle in particular that occurred near the end of the game that caused me to stop playing altogether.  Granted each time I would watch a "how-to" video my confidence would again perk up a bit, but then after two-to-three more tries and failing, I would give up.  <Pity>It would seem that each time I would reach a rooftop, I would be pursued by a never ending supply of guards and Templars and rarely would each enemy soldier patiently wait their turn to attack me.</Pity>

The information gathering missions were a lot of fun at first, but that was before the guards became increasingly aware and al lot easier to trigger into their blood frenzy.  The problem being that once the guards become aggressive towards you, any side mission you happened to be on (assassination, pickpocketing, physical interrogation, eavesdropping, racing another assassin or picking up flags on a short route throughout the area), your mission would end then you would have to evade the guards until your "Social Stealth Meter" which lets you know how noticeable you are to the guards goes to yellow which means that you can then hide which will then reset your "SSM" and then you can return to the person who gave you the task in the first place to start it all over again.  Whew.  By the end of the game (the last two stages I played through), I gave up trying to complete every single task and only completed the ones that I had to in order to proceed with the main assassination target for that portion of the storyline.

The one side mission that I always completed was also the one that I had the most fun doing.  Climbing to the top of designated buildings would de-fog a portion of your map in the given district the stage was taking place in.

These portions of the stages were fun because you often had to parkour up to a building then jump to an adjacent building  leading to the tower/building that you had to climb.  There were a couple of specific leap/upper-body-pulls that always made me nervous even though being able to "make it" was guaranteed.  Guaranteed, unless you were already spotted by guards who would then shoot arrows at you (rate of fire was reasonable) or throw rocks if you were not too high already.

Another thing that bothered me about the game was the amount of time it took to exit out.  I understand that the process to quit the game was probably designed to create a sense of immersion for the game, being that because you are playing as Desmond who is viewing an ancestors memories through a machine, and in order to exit the game, you would have to exit the machine first.  That is all well and good in theory, but in practice it creates a series of unnecessary steps that only caused me annoyance.  To give you some idea, in order to exit out of the game, every time, you would have to go through the following steps:

• Pause the game to bring up the menu.
• Select "Exit Animus."
• This exits you out of your memory and back into the present, now controlling Desmond inside the Animus laboratory.
• Pause the game to bring up the menu.
• Select "Exit Game."
• This brings you back to the profile select
• Select existing profile, which for whatever reason only works with the mouse and not the controller.
• Select "Quit Game."
• You are asked if you are sure that you want to exit the game.
• Yes I am sure I want to exit the game.
• Exit game.

In my personal opinion, quitting a game should not take that long.  Maybe going from the pause screen to the quit button and if I'm asked if I want to "Save & Quit" or simply just "Quit," I am perfectly okay with those options.  Then I should be out of the game.  If there was something to do when you are outside of the Animus at times that are not designated by the game, then maybe I could see exiting the machine you are hooked up to, but from what I have seen, there is nothing.  You can walk around the lab and one of two people there continuously ask you to return to the machine so that they can continue with whatever it is that they are having you do.  Maybe this was something that was passed over in beta testing?

While this experience has nearly tainted the Assassin's Creed series for me, I do have the second game on Steam and I feel that after a few months, I will probably give that game a try.  I feel that some redemption might be in order.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Flowing Through the Loins of My Pain

Monthly Update: June 2014

Happy June everyone.  I come to you from the past, specifically Saturday May 31st, 2014, but as you will be reading this on or after June 2nd, 2014, it will all be kosher.  I am join you with Joey Mjölnir Explosion (the cat) patrolling around my feet and a bourbon with Pepsi in my hand.  Well, it was in my hand before I started typing.  And now JME is attempting to eat my pizza on a plate across the room.  

May has been a pretty standard month, except that it hasn't.  Unemployment aside, I have had some time to spend on reading, playing video games and contacting lawyers (more on that after everything has been settled).

I have been playing quite a lot of Elder Scrolls Online and as previously mentioned, I am doing a very good job of playing an MMO like a good introvert: solo.  I might have around 40 hours clocked in the game (just an estimate) and I still have yet to figure out how to use the chat window to talk to other players.  It is not very high on my priority list of things to do in the game.  I frequently have my ass handed to me when I try to take on groups (read 3-4) of enemies whose level is on par with my own.  I have been invited to join three groups and have turned them all down as politely as pressing "X" can be.

One interesting thing I noticed about the ESO is that your character never sleeps.  Time passes in the game, about the same rate as it does in Skyrim, but sleeping and Inns are not a thing.  This first struck me as very odd, but then I quickly realized that that sleeping in an MMO game would be hard to do as everyone, at least in North  America , is on the same server to time jumping in-game would be a bit difficult to manage, quantum physics aside.  So I just imagine that my character hates me while I have him adventuring for five in-game-days straight then sleeps for a couple of weeks when I am not playing.

There is another MMO that I just started a couple of days ago although this one is a MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) in the form of the Dead Island: Epidemic closed beta.  I thought it an interesting idea coming from only having played the first Dead Island which is an FPSRPG.  The drastic transition of formats is like the difference between The Legend of Zeldas top down versus The Adventure of Links top down and side scrolling with levelling RPG elements.  The game actually reminds me a lot of Torchlight, although I have not played Torchlight co-op, so maybe it is nothing like that.  But  in  DI:E, you pick one of four characters with their own set of abilities and go from point A to point B and kill a shit ton of zombies/walkers along the way, usually culmination with a boss battle.  The 40 minutes that I have put in it, I did enjoy.  Maybe more on that later this month.

I am also in process of internally debating how much more aggravation I want to put into Assassin's Creed as I have hit a wall that I do not feel prepared enough to break through.  It seems to be one of those points in the game that you should feel comfortable completing but I think I may have missed a training session or skill set along the way.  I have no Yoda to help me this time.

Lastly, I broke down a couple of days ago and paid (albeit not as much as would have liked, but I am unemployed) for the Humble Weekly Bundle featuring RPG Maker VX Ace and a whole lotta DLC (6 DLC just for VX Ace alone).  As Dr. Potts recently postulated, I too have stories to tell, both in written and video game form; and in D&D module form for that matter!  I also have music to write and creating my own "game" just might be the kick in the tuchas that I need.  With the help/advice from a good many episodes of Extra Credits, I am in the process of writing a story before I get down to the creating part although I plan on tinkering around a bit before the story is finished so that I am aware of the limitations of the program.  A nightmare would be to find out that the program is incapable of doing storywise what I want it to do and I have been down that road before the the authoring tools in Neverwinter Nights.  I am also very tempted to take existing Ravenloft modules and turn those into games, but that might be in the future. 

So in the meantime, I am doing research for my story and hopefully the NSA reads this before looking over my cache and browser history and decides that I am a person of interest.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Whispering the Words You Never Should Have Learned

Full Review: Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (DS)

Well, due to Salty Liver only bringing up Assassin's Creed II a couple of times in the past, this renewed my interest in the Assassin's Creed series.  This lead me to the Wikipedia article which is where I found out / looked up the chronology for the series.  Being the kind of person that I am, I wanted to start the series in the beginning, even though the first Assassin's Creed came out on the PS3 and 360 back in 2007 (2008 for the PC).  The story in Assassin's Creed chronology begins with the DS game that came out in 2008, a year after the initial release.  It should also be noted that AC:AC, the DS game has been ported to Windows Phones, iPhones and Android phones, so a good portion of this review will be relevant for those OS' as well, just not the control schemes.

The nitty-gritty: AC:AC, while a Ubisoft property was developed by Gameloft, a French company who worked a lot with the Prince of Persia reboot series in the early/mid 2000s.  The company now mainly focuses on mobile and portable gaming, so it is not too surprising looking back that they were given the rights to develop this title, especially with their PoP background.

So let's get down to it shall we!

STORY

Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles takes place in 1190, one year before the events in Assassin's Creed.  You mission is to recover "The Chalice," which has been recently acquired by the Templars and it is believed that The Chalice will bring victory to whichever side has it in their possession; so basically it's The Ark in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and instead of events leading up to World War II, it's the Third Crusade.

Knowing from somewhere that the Assassin's Creed series had a rich backstory (how else could it have so many sequels that have spanned centuries?), I was ultimately a  little disappointed with the storyline in this game.  A lot of the missions were something a long the lines of, "Get info from this guy."  So you would go to City A, which we'll call Damascus, by way of fast map travel, followed by a linear (not an issue for me) level where you would traverse a city by way of leaping from building-to-building all the while avoiding spike traps and swinging axe pendulums. . . Yes,  apparently 12th century cities in the Middle East were very well equipped to deal with infiltrators.  So you would find the guy, get the info and then move onto City B, which we'll call Jerusalem.

For most of the game, it felt as if I could be playing any action adventure game.  It didn't overly feel like I was playing an Assassin's Creed game, although being the "first" game in the series that I have played, I guess my opinion is a bit void.  Regardless, the story is not what kept me playing the game, but my desire to play Assassin's Creed.

I thought it interesting that there was very little set up for the organization that you are a part of.  The game felt as if I were to have already played through the first game so why then bother with setting up the character and/or the setting?

GAMEPLAY

You can't tell, but the apple and scroll are moving.

 You basically move between glowing points in the play area, occasionally come across a much desired checkpoint, then follow the glowing dots through some traps/hazards, often times jumping over gaps/water/sticky oil slicks, et cetera to the next checkpoint: occasionally you will fight a bad guy(s) and kill them.  That is the basic gist of the game.

The game itself is played (in regards to the DS version) on the top screen while a city map is pictured on the lower screen.  You also have the option to switch out weapons when they become available.  One of the first things I read about was how the touch screen was going to play a part in the game in a way that game elements were not be used in the first game.  This included pick-pocketing which really excited me.  The other mini game was interrogating people, which consisted of tapping numbers on the back at the correct time and pulling an arm up behind the shoulder blades.

The controls themselves were pretty straight forward for this type of game on the DS.  I will add that playing on the 3DS, I had the option to use either the directional pad or the joystick to move around.  I instinctively chose the joystick and much preferred this option to the directional pad as the joystick simply felt more natural. 

While researching AC:AC, one aspect of that stuck in my mind: that a number of reviewers wished that they could move the camera.  Initially I felt that going into this game as a DS game, I knew that there were going to be limitations compared to either a PS3/360 or PC game.  After a short while playing, I understood the desire to have a controllable camera.  The camera does frequently move, but it only moves along with you and you have no control over where it goes and what it does.  There were also times when Altaïr was obscured by a building or while travelling from left to right, Altaïr would be on the far right, unable to see exactly what was ahead of me.  If anything, a button to recenter the camera would have been nice.

A lot of AC:AC is jumping from one thing to another thing.  Things include buildings, pillars, levitating platforms, rope nets, floating platforms, rafter/support beams.  And at times, you even get to jump over things, such as pits, pits filled with spikes, city streets and cobras; although the cobras could be easily dispatched with your sword.  So basically, knowing where you were going to jump was very important and just about half of the time I could not tell either how far away my target was or if I was jumping onto onto something at my own level or below me.  I cannot tell you how many times I over/under jumped a target, but it happened a lot.

I guarantee that you will see this screen a lot.

Ultimately, my biggest issue with the game was the gameplay.  While traversing a beam that I had to climb upon in order to jump to the following rooftop, I would sometimes let go of the beam and fall (often to my death; see above picture), I would wobble off the beam, although still grasping it or I would jump to my target and either make it (more often than not I would make it if the target were a rooftop) or I would miss it, if I were aiming for another beam.

Fighting also became somewhat tedious.  You start out the game with basic attacks and as the game progresses, you (somehow) learn different button mashing combos (X-X-X, X-X-Y, Y-Y, et cetera) as well as a couple differing ways to block and parry (of which I rarely used as I found them to be ineffective; or I was just doing it wrong, which is also very possible).  The system isn't bad, it's just that by the point where you frequently ran across the stronger Templar Knights [There are five different types of Templar that you fight: un-helmeted grunts, helmeted grunts, Templar Knights (with and without shields) and crossbowmen], I would almost exclusively use the X-X-Y combo to kill them (after four to five hits) as they seemed to block everything else I tried and counter attacks never seemed to work.

GRAPHICS

Keeping in mind that this is a DS game that came out six years ago, I liked the graphics.  They fit in with the setting.  All the enemies and NPCs intermingled without one being brighter than the other also meaning that both groups blended well.

My only gripe with the graphics partially relates to not being able to move the camera.  At times I could not tell where the platform was in relation to where I was jumping and I would frequently dying from a missed jump because I couldn't tell what I was looking at.

Of the few cutscenes in the game, those that bookended the game itself, each looked about alright.  They do not really stand up to the cutscenes/graphics of the PS3/360/PC versions, but nobody should be expecting them to hold up to comparison.  They look good for what they are: DS in-game cutscenes from 2008.

Overall though, I was quite pleased with how the game looked.

SOUND & MUSIC

I was happy with how the music sounded.  Sadly, after going through the credits twice, I was unable to find out who composed the music for this release.  Even a pseudo-broad search of the internet (including IMDb, VGMPF and VGMDb) turned nothing up.  It might have been Jesper Kyd, the composer of a number of the entries in the  Assassin's Creed series, but that is just speculation.

I really enjoyed the sound editing for the game too and as is the case here too, there was no sound editor of any sorts to credit here.  A lot of the sound effects, the background noise of the various cities were all very fitting.  I don't know if I would say that I was impressed, although I will leave it by saying that I was very pleased.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles was a game.  I played that game and completed that game and that game took me 16 hours and 38 minutes from start to finish, most likely because I died very frequently.  Saying that it was a "good" game might just be a little too much credit.  There were times when I enjoyed what it was that I was playing and other times when I was simply frustrated by the gameplay, level design, camera angle, et cetera and had to put the game down.  If you were to look at my statistics for the game, you will see that I would frequently play the game for about half-an-hour before (having to/needing to) putting it down.

It is only mildly tempting to pick the game up again once I complete the first Assassin's Creed, but I most likely won't.  I guess my recommendation would be that if you haven't played any of the games in this series and you have a DS/3DS, don't spend more than $10 as the end result will most likely just leave you upset.  In the end, Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles is a somewhat solid action/adventure game if you don't care about a storyline and can handle/deal with a computer controlled camera and repetitive killing of enemies.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Bewildered On Enchanted Ways