Assassin's Creed

[toblix]

Just continued playing this. I know I'm hard to please but Jesus. I may of course have missed some huge point, but so far this seems to be the simplest game produced in a while. The huge cities are awesome, and the controls sometimes border on perfect, but it seems like what you're supposed to do in the game, the missions... there are like five different types. I was hoping for some Hitmanesque stuff, or at least the ability to "play it cool" and kill the target and then disappear into the crowd. Instead there's a huge fucking chase. It seems to be unavoidable, but I could just be failing at playing.

[DanJW]

Nope, that's what all the reviews said and why so many people were disappointed in the game.

I guess their vaunted "social stealth" was just a marketing buzzword

[Roderick]

Let's hope they're going to expand the concept to include more varied ways of deathdealing in the inevitable sequel. Assassin's Creed may have been flawed, but if there's one thing I love, it's a flawed but hugely ambitious game. AC does a lot of things really well, like the parcours, and the goddamn atmosphere and visual appeal. Wow.

[toblix]

Yeah, visually it's Goddamn incredible. I think the informant missions are awesome too -- walking behind someone, at their speed only slightly faster. Then he freezes and falls to the ground, and the guy who was walking behind him is nowhere to be seen. That's way cooler than the assassinations themselves, at least as far as I've played.

[elmuerte]

if you're talking about escaping in the big missions...

yes, impossible without a long chase...

but most "side missions" are possible without any problems (well, except the missions where you have to destroy a couple of market stands).

Controls on the border of perfect?! I don't agree on that. Altair often refused to do what I want, like... don't fall from a frigging ledge or hold on to some dumb thing while I'm trying to escape.

AC had a very high tediousness factor. For example the "world" I've only visited the world 3 times (in order to reach each city). It was just a boring experience. The parts itself were the same thing over and over again. If you've visited each city once you pretty much saw it all. Well, except for Aachen at some point where you can climb the huge tower of the cathedral. That was kind of interesting (and high).

[toblix]

Yeah, I'm getting the feeling I'm just going to get more and more people to assassinate, the only thing changing per "level" being I have to kill more guys, I have to do more quests before killing each one, aaand that's it.

When I think about how fucking incredibly astonishingly awesome and huge and fucking impressively ridiculous the Assassin's Creed world is (three huge cities, a couple of smaller ones, and all the shit in between), how amazingly sweet and smooth and gorgeous and dusty and realistic and huge it looks, it makes me think. I've always been a sucker for these things. Everything is hand-crafted, there's no city generator in the game that lets me run indefinitely in one direction. The world is GTA San Andreas huge, but still it seems kind of uninteresting. I wonder how the game would've been if they used the same time and resources but chose to make smaller areas with more varied gameplay.

I guess the game I'm sort of wanting this to be is Hitman, where you have a billion different ways to off the guy, and never even have to be close to them, and I get that that's not the game they were making. Given the game mechanics in Assassin's Creed, though, I almost don't see how they could make the assassinations themselves any more interesting. Think about it, Altair can't even pick shit up, which limits the amount of interesting things he can do immensely.

[Nachimir]

I found it like going on a date with a mind blowingly pretty but ultimately very dumb girl. Doesn't matter how good looking it is, can't sustain my interest

I'm astounded by the environments and the character animation, but can't be arsed with the game.

[Scrobbs]

Played the first mission. Got bored.

[Tanukitsune]

I've never played Hitman, so I can't compare, so I don't see why so many complain about the game... Some people made me think it would be the new Superman 64!

It would have been nice if you could simply through a knife at the main target from afar, but they are "big" targets, as in important, and they haven't invented sniper rifles yet, so when you do kill the target, people will notice the suspicious gay carrying a bunch of knives close to him, right?

The most annoying part I found in the game was the informants, who force you go kill some guys without getting caught with a time limit, it's actually fun when you can simply get them with your knives, though...

It's also mildly annoying when you're fleeing and you run up a wall just to find you can't reach the top...

The madmen, beggars and drunks are annoying, but avoidable... It would be even better if you could get rid of them in a more pacifist way though...

[toblix]

I've never played Hitman, so I can't compare, so I don't see why so many complain about the game... Some people made me think it would be the new Superman 64!

What, this?

It would have been nice if you could simply through a knife at the main target from afar, but they are "big" targets, as in important, and they haven't invented sniper rifles yet, so when you do kill the target, people will notice the suspicious gay carrying a bunch of knives close to him, right?

Right. So there should be alternate ways of killing the bad guys, not involving getting noticed at all. I mean, this game is all about not being noticed, silent but deadly, etc. So it makes no sense that you can't do the main killings that way.

The most annoying part I found in the game was the informants, who force you go kill some guys without getting caught with a time limit, it's actually fun when you can simply get them with your knives, though...

I found these killings to be the awesomest, as you get the assassin feeling of having killed someone in a crowd, and nobody notices before you're long gone.

It's also mildly annoying when you're fleeing and you run up a wall just to find you can't reach the top...

I find this happens so seldom it never annoys me. The cities have so many ledges, windows and beams it's incredible.

The madmen, beggars and drunks are annoying, but avoidable... It would be even better if you could get rid of them in a more pacifist way though...

Yeah. I just kill them right away, since there's no penalty other than a temporary loss of "sync".

[Tanukitsune]

Right. So there should be alternate ways of killing the bad guys, not involving getting noticed at all. I mean, this game is all about not being noticed, silent but deadly, etc. So it makes no sense that you can't do the main killings that way.

That is strange, but like I said it's not as easy to kill from a distance without getting noticed in an era or bows and daggers.

It did bother me when I actually tried to do it like that, I was on a ledge where nobody could see me and was targeting the victim, I threw a knife... and it didn't kill him completely...

I found these killings to be the awesomest, as you get the assassin feeling of having killed someone in a crowd, and nobody notices before you're long gone.

But the time limit kills the fun, you have to walk super slow when the eye is red making it hard to do it in time, or do it from the roofs, where it's sometimes hard to tell who is the target...

I find this happens so seldom it never annoys me. The cities have so many ledges, windows and beams it's incredible.

Yes, but when they are shooting arrows at you and it's not a straight path up, it can be a bit difficult... XP

Yeah. I just kill them right away, since there's no penalty other than a temporary loss of "sync".

Doesn't the game punish you more than with that? I've always wandered who starts to throw rocks at me when I try to climb some buildings!

[DanJW]

'Killing without being noticed' doesn't mean sniping. Ideally it would mean poison. Or killing the target in their sleep, or when otherwise alone. That is after all what the Hashishim were famous for (leaving a knife under your pillow and that kind of thing).

After playing various stealth/assassination games, the idea of a public stabbing seems completely devoid of elegance.

You should seriously play Hitman: Blood Money. Awesome game.

[Tanukitsune]

'Killing without being noticed' doesn't mean sniping. Ideally it would mean poison. Or killing the target in their sleep, or when otherwise alone. That is after all what the Hashishim were famous for (leaving a knife under your pillow and that kind of thing).

After playing various stealth/assassination games, the idea of a public stabbing seems completely devoid of elegance.

You should seriously play Hitman: Blood Money. Awesome game.

The Hitman series is on GameTap, so I'll eventually get to it when I get through my unbeaten physical games? Right now I'm just using to play old Sega games and the Grimm games!

[Nappi]

'Killing without being noticed' doesn't mean sniping. Ideally it would mean poison. Or killing the target in their sleep, or when otherwise alone. That is after all what the Hashishim were famous for (leaving a knife under your pillow and that kind of thing).

I thought Hashshashin were essentially famous for their public assassinations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin

They were meticulous in killing the targeted individual, seeking to do so without any additional casualties and innocent loss of life, although they were careful to cultivate their terrifying reputation by slaying their victims in public, often in mosques. Typically, they approached using a disguise. Preferring a small hidden blade or dagger, they rejected poison, bows and other weapons that allowed the attacker to escape and live.

[DanJW]

Ah, fair enough.

Still, more elegance needed in the execution (pun intended).

[toblix]

Regardless, the fact that you execute what may be considered the "bosses" of the game in exactly the same way you'd execute a drunk or a crazy man, only less gracefully, is pretty lame.

With the game being what it is, though, I guess I don't see any obvious ways of making killing more interesting. I think it would be cool to, for example, ally yourself with people and time various types of diversions like attacks or flash crowds say, along some known path the guy'd take, so you'd have to set these up and time them. I dunno, sounds like shit when I describe it here.

[toblix]

Just finished it, and bullets!

Awesome graphics, beautiful cities and shit.

Awesome movement, climbing, jumping etc.

Combat was fun, although it often felt random.

I never believed all the talk I head about it being annoyingly repetitive, but people were right. All the assassinations were one of:

• Run up to the guy and kill him, then run away and hide.
  
• Run up to the guy, chase him around a little, kill him, then run away or hide.
  

After each assassination, there was a cut-scene. They were all completely alike. There were no interesting elements or variations or anything. Not really a satisfying reward.

There were almost no moments where everything in the game came together and did something fantastic. The closest thing is the chases, either chasing the target or being chased by guards: here, the detailed level design, with open plazas, bustling markets, dank alleyways and unexpected blind alleys, together with the climbing and jumping and the fantastic crowds dynamics really made some magic happen. () Other than that, though, there was nothing.

Before assassinating the target, you had to do at least three missions. These were one of:

• Eavesdrop (the easiest): Sit on a bench and press Y. Always the same happens: some boring conversation between two guys.
  
• Interrogate (the less easier): Walk up to a guy and beat him until he speaks. If there are thugs around, wait a bit until there aren't. This is followed by some boring conversation.
  
• Pickpocket (the easy): Walk behind a guy and hold B. If you fail (rare occurence) sit on a bench for ten seconds and try again. Never any variation, never any special sequences or anything.
  
• Informant (the annoying crap which nobody does): Walk around and kill some guys and come back before the runs out.
  

You always had to do three, and you could always choose freely, any three. Naturally, the player would just choose the easiest to get these boring things out of the way.

To find the missions, you had to climb tall structures. This was pretty cool when the structure was interesting, like the cathedral and some churches. You actually had to find a suitable point of entry, and then do some sweet climbing on tiny ledges way above the streets. There were about four of these sweet structures and a million of the boring ones you could just press right trigger, A and up and wait until you reached the top.

Awesome checkpoint frequency. I never had to repeat crap I'd already done. A fight won was never repeated, which rocked.

Awesome skipping of tedious shit like riding between towns, which brings me to the next point:

This game has to be the victim of the most fucked up game design decisions ever: The Kingdom. That vast area was totally unnecessary, uninteresting and even the game never used it! There was a fucking town and a huge encampment and shit and nothing happened there. What the fuck? All that crap must've taken years worth of man hours to create and I think I can safely say that one hundred per cent of the players skipped it whenever possible. Instead of making this useless thing, you could fix so many other issues this game has.

Although this game seems to be about stealthily assassinating guys, it's really a swashbuckling game. There's so much sword fighting, especially towards the end it's ridiculous. Only the frequent checkpoints saved this from becoming too annoying.

What a horrible ending. Suddenly something exciting was happening in the present and then it ends.

Anyway, this game was a huge disappointment, but fun nevertheless. I hope the sequel takes place in another era and drops all the unnecessary shit and follows the rest of my constructive critique.

Also, they could just drop the fucking horseback riding. These guys spent so much work on all the wrong things, I've never seen anything like it.

[elmuerte]

You forgot some other missions:

- break market stands

- flag capturing (this is fun)

- guarding a fellow assassin

[toblix]

You forgot some other missions:

- flag capturing (this is fun)

I thought so to until I realised it would become horribly boring and tedious as the number of unlocated flags decreased.

You forgot some other missions:

- break market stands

- guarding a fellow assassin

What?! I've never even heard of these. They both sound awesome, though. Where do you get these?

[eljay]

I thought so to until I realised it would become horribly boring and tedious as the number of unlocated flags decreased.

I think elmuerte was referring to the "collect 10 (maybe 20) flags for me in a time limit" guys rather than the "collect a bajillion flags in each city" thing.

[toblix]

I think elmuerte was referring to the "collect 10 (maybe 20) flags for me in a time limit" guys rather than the "collect a bajillion flags in each city" thing.

Holy maloney! All these missions seem a thousand times awesomer than the ones I've ever got. I'm so confused! I always made a point of uncovering all the missions before starting, and I'm sure I never spotted a mission that wasn't eavesdrop, pick pocket, interrogate or informant.

Ah, so they're informant quests, then? So the problem was that I got unlucky and got two or three similar quests from them (kill these five guys in three minutes, etc.) in a row, and (naturally) assumed they all gave quests like that. Fucking fucks in a shit. Could you describe the mission types for me? The market stand breaking and guarding sounds awesome!

[toblix]

Fine, don't.

Also, I just downloaded the soundtrack illegally (is there any other way?), and it is truly awesome.

edit:

I just found out:

1. There was nothing illegal about it.
   
2. They haven't release the entire soundtrack. They just put out some of the tracks, the fucking retards.
   

[eljay]

Holy maloney! All these missions seem a thousand times awesomer than the ones I've ever got. I'm so confused! I always made a point of uncovering all the missions before starting, and I'm sure I never spotted a mission that wasn't eavesdrop, pick pocket, interrogate or informant.

Ah, so they're informant quests, then? So the problem was that I got unlucky and got two or three similar quests from them (kill these five guys in three minutes, etc.) in a row, and (naturally) assumed they all gave quests like that. Fucking fucks in a shit. Could you describe the mission types for me? The market stand breaking and guarding sounds awesome!

I did a little digging, these are PC only quests, which explains why I was confused about having never seen a guarding or stand breaking mission even though I did everything...

[elmuerte]

uhm... there is at least 1 market stand destroying in Acre rich district, close to the water on the left.

[toblix]

Sounds awesome. Also, there should be some "throw drunkards off the pier" missions. It's hilarious and has comical value to see the poor guys flailing about, knocking each other into the drink.