Roderick

Assassin's Creed: Mohawk

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(responding to general stuff from a few pages back)

AC games would be inherently less interesting without all the goofy, sci-fi stuff. The 'memories you're reliving' thing is an absurdly good way to frame a video game story, because it gives a context for all the gamey things that need to happen in an open-world game.

It's a nod to the artificiality of the environment you're in, and it allows the story to jump forward months or years even if you've gone from one mission to the next in 5 minutes of player time. I've never liked the passage of time in games like Red Dead or GTA, it just feels weird and disjointed. AC takes that feeling and runs with it rather than trying to hide it.

Plus, you get fail states that actually make sense in the narrative rather than derailing it completely. I don't have a lot to say about the actual plotting of the story other than 'it's fun', but the conceit is unmatched in a big, mass market game.

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Review Summations:

It's good that they've ditched overly wrought stuff from Revelations, there's a lot more open world stuff to do, they've tried to ditch just using the same gameplay like climbing away from bad situations over and over again, trying to replace that with more horizontal running away, and they've once again changed all the meta/extra game stuff around. As in, having a boat and a town thing to build rather than more tower defense or etc.

But apparently they've not made up for the change from vertical to horizontal gameplay in terms of mechanics, as you'll get stuck trying to climb up stuff or hide in stuff far too often when you just want to keep running away. They've also screwed over the social stealth stuff, which just doesn't work anymore. Oh, and of course there's even MORE silly assed twists and turns to the already ludicrous story, but we could easily guess that already. For example, halfway through the game Desmond Miles PUTS ON a mask to reveal that he is secretly Deadmau5, and the entire video game story about the end of the world is a prelude to his new music video which will be revealed on December 23rd, when Assassin's Creed 3 transforms from an open world action/adventure game into a Kinect only DJ/Dance co-op game, which is actually his new music video.

So, good ambition gets caught by not having mechanics polished enough to support it. Still sounds worth a try at some point, but probably not right away and at $60. Also I don't have Kinect yet.

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:) for a brief second i seriously thought you was slapping us with some major story spoilers

I'm guessing they've mechanically blank slated this game, so they can slowly add more each yearly expansion to AC3 much like they did with AC2

i felt there was to much tacked on shit in AC revelations, the bomb making was the worst and a complete waste of time

good old loveflim, posting me AC3 today... it's going to have to wait though, i still have to rescue earth from the alien scourge in xcom

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Really cut scene heavy, just let me play the damn game!

And bad tutorials.twice during little tutorial segments i've reloaded from the last checkpoint as i felt i'd hit a bug in the game. But i hadn't, it was just a really poorly implemented tutorial

One locks you in position and asks you to shoot at a barrel, so i spend 5mins pointing my gun at a cart full of barrels pressing shoot with nothing happening, until i release you have to be pointing at the one singular barrel lying on the ground.... I'm not the only one

And the other was parrying (little bit spoilery if you intend to play it)

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(responding to general stuff from a few pages back)

AC games would be inherently less interesting without all the goofy, sci-fi stuff. The 'memories you're reliving' thing is an absurdly good way to frame a video game story, because it gives a context for all the gamey things that need to happen in an open-world game.

It's a nod to the artificiality of the environment you're in, and it allows the story to jump forward months or years even if you've gone from one mission to the next in 5 minutes of player time. I've never liked the passage of time in games like Red Dead or GTA, it just feels weird and disjointed. AC takes that feeling and runs with it rather than trying to hide it.

Plus, you get fail states that actually make sense in the narrative rather than derailing it completely. I don't have a lot to say about the actual plotting of the story other than 'it's fun', but the conceit is unmatched in a big, mass market game.

I only played bits of 1/2, finished brotherhood. But all the future/scifi bits completely pulled me out of the game, and anytime a desmond section came up I was desperately wanting a skip option, because I gave none of the fucks about that stuff.

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I think the Assassin's Creed series would benefit from not being a connected storyline. They'd have a lot more freedom to just create some really interesting environments without having to justify it.

But I mean to be FAIR... they do a pretty good job of making interesting games, despite that. I really like Assassin's Creed. U:

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I just don't see why there needs to be a context for fail states in the explicit narrative. Players have never had a problem with that before. And if that truly is needed, every game should be bookmarked with Desmond bits.

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I just don't see why there needs to be a context for fail states in the explicit narrative. Players have never had a problem with that before. And if that truly is needed, every game should be bookmarked with Desmond bits.

Yea, I mean don't mind when it's fairly clever, like the already mentioned Sands of Time method. Otherwise, I don't really care.

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Really cut scene heavy, just let me play the damn game!

And bad tutorials.twice during little tutorial segments i've reloaded from the last checkpoint as i felt i'd hit a bug in the game. But i hadn't, it was just a really poorly implemented tutorial

One locks you in position and asks you to shoot at a barrel, so i spend 5mins pointing my gun at a cart full of barrels pressing shoot with nothing happening, until i release you have to be pointing at the one singular barrel lying on the ground.... I'm not the only one

And the other was parrying (little bit spoilery if you intend to play it)

Aww man, how are they still doing this every game?

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This game hasn't grabbed me at all. i think when halo 4 turns up i'll put this on the back burner

i've played quite a few hours and the game is doing a lot of hand holding, i'm guessing later the game will open up and i'll have more freedom. But right now i'm just forced into doing tutorial/mission after tutorial/mission. With lots of cut scenes that spit you out in random locations which is really disorientating (i swear the old games didn't do this). One had you complete a stealth mission where getting spotted is a fail state, cut scene, spat out in the middle of a war zone already engaged in a fight with 10 people

The body count in this game thus far is fucking ridiculous

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This game hasn't grabbed me at all. i think when halo 4 turns up i'll put this on the back burner

i've played quite a few hours and the game is doing a lot of hand holding, i'm guessing later the game will open up and i'll have more freedom. But right now i'm just forced into doing tutorial/mission after tutorial/mission. With lots of cut scenes that spit you out in random locations which is really disorientating (i swear the old games didn't do this). One had you complete a stealth mission where getting spotted is a fail state, cut scene, spat out in the middle of a war zone already engaged in a fight with 10 people

The body count in this game thus far is fucking ridiculous

Well... Fuck. I was wondering whether to buy this.

The optimistic side of my brain is trying to gang up with my illogical little lizard brain and come to the conclusion that since you want Halo 4 and I don't that obviously we'll disagree on AC3 as well. But I'm not buying it, I know your tricks brain! I enjoyed Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 for what they were, and yet always wanted them to be the better game it always seemed they could be. So far it doesn't seem like AC3 fits the bill. Anyone else play this?

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So the game sold 3.5 million copies in its first week. That is pretty goddamn substantial. I hope it turns up being a positive experience for people because I like the idea they had for the setting and if people think positively of it, it's more likely to be used again.

Of course it'll eventually be bastardized by I'll take the good I can from it.

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I just put the game up on Craigslist... Wasn't enjoying myself at all.

Like others have mentioned, it's super handholdy/scripted. It feels like the game sacrifices fun mechanics for the sake of flashy action.

Like, tree-climbing looks cool, but it's not very interesting. Most of the time, the layout of the trees/branches will lead you on a single path from Tree A to Tree B to Tree C. Occasionally the path will branch, but for the most part, trees are very narrow routes that don't offer you many options.

They try to make the combat more like Arkham, but the animations are so long and unpredictable that it's impossible to get into a rhythm. I never know when to time my next button press because I don't know when the animation will finish.

I was hoping Connor's story would offer an escape from the hokey sci-fi stuff, but they're more interwoven than ever.

I think the hunting QTEs might be the thing that annoys me the most. Fighting wolves, bears, and other predators would've been a nice change of pace. It could've posed a different kind of challenge and made the wilderness feel much more dangerous, with bears charging you, wolves fighting as a pack, cougars pouncing from the bushes... But nope. All predator attacks are just two-button QTEs. Wolves still roam in packs, but that just means you'll be executing 5 QTEs in a row instead of 1. It's just lazy game design.

When hunting animals early in the game, the hidden blade animation will play before you get the hidden blade. I guess they just didn't have time to create a new animation for a relatively small part of the game (~3-5 hours?).

Also, bugs abound. I've fallen through the world, gotten stuck on geometry, and when I last played, all the graphics suddenly disappeared except the HUD. I could still control Connor and hear NPCs moving around, but the screen was just white. I reloaded a checkpoint, still blank. I restarted the mission, STILL blank. This stuff is inexcusable.

Overall, AC3 is just really disappointing. It feels like they cut a lot of corners to get this thing out the door (tree climbing, QTEs, out of place animations, bugs...).

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I've played through each game in the main Assassin's Creed 2 main trilogy ( :shifty:), but I'm still unsure whether or not to buy this game. I was willing to forgive many many little things in the previous games, simply because exploring all the beautiful cities (especially in Assassin's Creed 2) was so much fun. I'm much less interested in Assassin's Creed: Wilderness, though. I was afraid that the drastic change of setting would not work without a fundamental change in gameplay mechanics, or else it simply would not be fun. The way you traverse the treetops or fight predators, as described by other barry, for example, sounds pretty dumb.

I guess I will still buy this at some point. Probably not for Christmas, though.

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I clearly have a special interest in this <_< but out of curiosity, have any fellow Thumbs been far enough to unlock the naval missions?

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I really liked the traversal and exploration aspects of this game, it's really just the execution of certain missions that bothered me. Sometimes I felt like I was totally screwed in naval missions and only eventually won them if I got lucky. Or I would only win a chase mission if I caught a ledge just right and managed to stay JUST within range of the target (forget getting full sync optional objectives). So I guess between the story and exploration, I ended up liking the game but those moments of frustration made it inferior to stuff like 2 and Brotherhood as those seemed far more polished.

I'd still be very interested to see a version of this where they could strip out some of the well-worn mechanics (getting tired of smoke bombs, throwing money, poison darts) and tell a more focused story (just about done liberating districts) that isn't so much about being the king of Assassins. They might be able to pull it off in a near future version of the game where they integrate active camouflage or Mission Impossible-type disguises and have you really being a covert agent while still capturing the parkour and traversal that I love about AC.

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So why didn't we play Haytham, the character with, well, actual character, throughout the game? That is the only true failing of AC3 to me, is Conor.

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@Orv -

Yeah, I'm convinced that an AC game that actually stars a Templar would be far more interesting narratively, even if you play second fiddle to an Assassin who eventually kicks your ass.

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I suggest spoilering that, JonCole, that particular plot twist really surprised me and I'd hate to see it ruined for others.

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Didn't even realize that I was being spoilery, sorry about that. To complete the thought -

I didn't mean that I want the game to be Haytham the whole time, but rather a Templar in some other time period who provides the uncanny mirror experience to being an Assassin. It could even be a situation where you're ultimately thwarted, I just think the perspective would be interesting and could get them to really mess with their narrative formula.

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I've been very disappointed in general that the Assassins and Templars have been portrayed in such black-and-white tones. Playing the first one through, I had hopes that the series would switch between hunter and hunted through the centuries, based on the moral equivalency preached by your master, but it ends up that he just says that because he's secretly a bad guy and all Templars are bad guys and kill them all and don't worry about their blood on your hands because we're the good guys blah blah alien progenitor punch the pope.

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