A while back I picked the first two AssCreed games up on a Steam sale but I found the first one frustrating as it felt like every few minutes of play was being interrupted by a cutscene and gave up because I was spending more time watching the screen rather than playing the game.
So does AC2 (or the rest of AC1 for that matter) get better or is it still lots of cutscenes with a little bit of play scattered among them?
AC2 is way better. Not that there’s a lack of cutscenes, but there’s a lot more GAME there. Lots to do, lots of side objectives, cool assassinations to complete. Definitely a way better game.
It’s after AC2 that things go tits up, IMHO. The game bogs down story-wise. Just too much convoluted nonsense. The gameplay doesn’t really evolve and you quickly realize that mission after mission plays out the same.
I ended up playing AC1 and AC2 to completion, but could never get past the first 5 hours or so of any other AssGrabber’s Creed game. 
That being said, I’m looking forward to Unity 
God, I hate getting into these discussions. The things I notice are never the things everyone else seems to be completely up in arms about. Like, my biggest problem with Guitar Hero was the sheer limitation of the type of “rock” it was allowed to have, and for the the first freaking year it seemed that all anyone wanted to talk about was This Isn’t A Real Guitar and This Doesn’t Teach You Real Guitar and This Is An Insult To Anyone Who Plays Real Guitar.
Still, I did play nearly all of the AC games (note: Ixnay the cute nicknames. We at the SDMB don’t consider that clever or funny, we just find it annoying.), and while I’m not up to elaborate descriptions right now, I can at least offer a quick synopses of how the games feel (which I kinda suppose is what you’re going for).
Oh, before I begin: This is an intensely story-, plot-, and background-driven franchises. There will be a great deal of exposition. That is just how these types of games are. If you want nothing but mindless, rapid-fire action with no cutscenes, go play a puzzle game. (Can’t recommend any, unfortunately; I was never good at those things.)
1: From least worst to worst-worst…
3. “I stand before you to deliver a warning! That the accursed English King will take his accursed army and accursedly conquer everything, curse him! Praise be to Salah-al-din for taking a praiseworthy stand against the vile infidels! And curse the foul invaders! And praise those who are willing to get slaughtered fighting the good fight! No, it is not a tragedy! Curse the English king! Praise Salah-al-din! Curse! Praise! Curse! Pr…for the last time, it is not a tragedy! God help me, call it a tragedy one more time and I’ll break your jaw!”
2. “I beg of you! Just a few coins, please! Please! I’m poor and sick and hungry! I beg of you! No, please don’t leave! Just a few coins, please! Pleeeease! I beg of you! Jusssst a feewww coinnsss, pleeeeeeaassse! I beg of you! I beg of you! I BEG OF YOU! I BEG OF YOU! I BEG OF YOU! I BEG OF YOU!”
2: Wow. Just about everyone gushed about how wonderful this is…and guess what, they’re right! Improved combat, a much more compelling story than the first game, all kinds of activities, plenty of control over your destiny, a truly powerful hero, beautiful scenery…and the irritations are about 1/1000th as bad as in the first game and occasionally even funny. Bonus points for me being able to get all the trophies (a true rarity, let me tell you). One of the best PS3 games ever.
Brotherhood: This one is great as well. Turning Rome from an impoverished wreck to a rich, beautiful metropolis was one of my most satisfying tasks as a gamer, as was assembling my band of followers and building them up into human slaughterhouses. Leonardo’s war machines and the new tools are awesome, and the horses and tunnel system made getting around a snap. Oh, and singlehandedly butchering an army of pitiful troops at the bridge was a definitive crowning moment of awesome (for me and Ezio). The only drawbacks, and they were small ones, were that it’s just too hard to get 100% in everything (especially those insane 8-minute challenges) and a few of the trophies are just a tad ridiculous.
Revelations: Step backward. It was good, Ezio was the man as always, and the hookblade was a fun toy. Overall, though, it was way too ponderous. Having to constantly keep the Templars in check before they rampaged over your liberated cities, the sheer number of bomb types (most of which were almost completely useless), always having to keep notoriety down, how much everything cost, and a number of tasks which were no fun at all to complete (if I ever try to pull of a “mousetrap” again, it will be too damn soon). I thought the story made perfect sense and was plenty compelling (also like the little side story with Christina Vespucci), but I don’t feel any compulsion to play this again. And that execrable first-person jumping game can die in a fire.
3: This gets maligned a lot. Don’t really see why. It looked like UbiSoft was trying to both seriously trim down the game and introduce some new personality types, and they succeeded on both counts. Haytham and Connor were both excellent protagonists for their own reasons, and this is the first time the franchise actually took its first small steps toward “gray and grey morality” that had been nuked to cinders in Brotherhood. And Connor burying Achilles is the most poignant scene I’ve ever seen in this series. The only thing I hated was the board games; they should not have been required for anything.
Black Flag: Mostly very good, a little bad, overall well worth the money. Let’s face it, being a roving, rowdy pirate is just plain fun, and the Caribbean is a big playground. Perhaps the best thing is that you can make it as easy or as hard as you want simply by deciding how many upgrades to get and how many challenges to take on. If you deck out the Jackdaw to the hilt and only take on the main mission (and whatever’s needed to get all the upgrades), seeing the whole story is a breeze. Of special note are the Legendary Ships. These are absolute monsters, an absolute white-knuckled, nerve-shredding experience, but they can be beaten, and when you finally do smash them, it’s absolutely exhilarating. I could count on one hand the number of games that successfully pulled this off. This is one of three titles, the others being 2 and Revelations, that I was able to get 100% completion on. The only things I don’t like are that it takes too long to get the good stuff and there’s too much emphasis on “social” stuff…just way too cumbersome and doesn’t add anything.
If I ever get around to buying Liberation for PS3, I’ll add that.
AC2 is close to perfect. A balanced and enjoyable challenge, with a great story and variety.
Brotherhood improves on this in almost every area, though the new killing spree setting makes some combats too easy.
Cesere is arguably a less compelling antagonist then his father but it is still a great and atmospheric story.
Revalations adds a lot, but it is a bit rough around the edges, and many of the new options are unnecessary and/or tacked on. It has by far the most entertaining ending scene.
I agree with DKW about 1+3.
Amazon have the Assassin’s Creed series on sale at the moment
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_383223362_3?ie=UTF8&node=2445220011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-1&pf_rd_r=1WSERQYSJYBBR046VSJT&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1888465922&pf_rd_i=979455011
Oh you gigantic bastard. Now I have that voice clip looping in *my *head. AGAIN :mad:.
Mousetrap ?
It’s hated because Connor is a bad protagonist, mostly. Whiny, humourless, all the charisma of a wet cat, gets manipulated by everyone… but still goes along with them so he can whine at them. Bah.
Also he’s not charming British badass Haytham :).
Beyond that : the homestead & its crafting system are horrible (and pointless, and horrible), the Frontier while pretty outlasts its welcome and is a pain to navigate (“Remember how fast travel was so convenient in Rome and Istanbul ? FUCK YOU !” - Ubisoft), the underground mazes & their “puzzles” were inane and went on for fucking ever. Finally there’s barely any architecture to scale - y’know, half the point of the series ?
The other big issue I had with the game was that there’s such a disconnect between its two in-Animus plot threads. Like, it starts with a fake-out that ostensibly sets up the American Templars as somewhat reasonable fellows (if not-quite-saintly, but then I don’t remember Ezzio hanging around with choirboys)… then you switch to Connor and lo, those same guys are suddenly industriously setting fire to baskets of puppies while twirling their moustaches. And THEN the plot has you be back-to-back badasses with Haytham all over again because Templars & Assassins are really Not So Different. Then back to Charles Lee, puppies and kerosene.
Make up you goddamn mind, game.
Mind you, I really enjoyed the Tyranny of George Washington DLCs. Which may or may not have to do with the fact that Connor ain’t such a whiny bitch in it.
You know what would have made the story of this game better?
If they would have dropped the whole animus BS. IF the games were the stories of this assassin organization throughout time, I might be a lot more invested in the storyline.
Oh, God yes.
I only played Black Flag but the game seemingly has three components:
(1) Pirating! Hooray! Take ships, defeat forts, swirling melees of sword and powder! Pit your skill against the imperial might of the English and Spanish empires! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
(2) Plot. Eh. Not terrible and it has its moments. Mostly bogged down by far too many “sneak and listen” missions where you have to creep through bushes and over clotheslines to listen to a couple jamokes for seven minutes. But at least it feels as though it’s advancing the pirating bits.
(3) Office work? What? Wait, how is this even a little fun? Now some guy is yelling at me and making me go get files for him? Is this even a game? I should be getting paid to do this.
Overall a good game but the pirate bits I’d rate an “A”, the story bits a “B-” and the Animus/Office bits a “D”. Each time one came up, it was like discovering a turd in your breakfast cereal.
I agree with what the posters have said. AC2 was, for me at least, the pinnacle of the franchise. I picked it up on a whim after not finishing the first one and was blown away by how fun it was.
I enjoyed AC2 and Brotherhood immensely. Playing through Revelations now, and I agree with what’s been said… it’s not bad, but it feels a bit grey and past its prime (as is Ezio, in the game). I bought AC III for a few bucks in a recent Xbox Live sale and haven’t started it yet.
Thanks everyone, I’ll install AC2 and Brotherhood and give them a go.
I gave up on supposed “action” games that relied on frequent cutscenes after about 20 minutes with Max Payne 2. The toggling back and forth between active play and sit’n’wait drove me nuts. (Especially when the end of a cut signaled the need to take immediate action or die, lose the suspect, etc.)
AB Jr. plays AC, and I frequently notice him staring at the ceiling in exasperation as creepy characters emote at each other.
Do you mean Max Payne 3? 2 didn’t have those types of cutscenes, it had the comic book panels for exposition.
As for what you’re describing, yes, it’s incredibly frustrating to play. The game looks amazing as passive entertainment, but as the player it’s absolutely infuriating to have control taken away from you literally every 90 seconds for a (usually pointless) 20 second cutscene, only to be thrown back into a gunfight with no warning at all. I got almost to the end, I think, but I’ve still never finished it because I put it down, started playing something else, then realized I wasn’t interested in putting up with that shit anymore.
I actually like Connor, he was naturally awkward, as the young Mohawk man was entering a whole new world.
His whinings weren’t so bad, they added a degree of historical balance to a game which otherwise would be a British murder simulator.
I don’t think Charles Lee was a bad character, though the chase scene was rather frustrating at times.
Haytham was definately awesome, though I doubt he’d have been able to carry the game on his own. His relationship with his son added a lot to the story and he made the Assassin-Templar conflict a lot less black and white.
Combat was improved, the pioneers/highlanders added a tactical element to combat, and firearms improved dynamism without being overpowered. Naval combat was fun, but I’m waiting for Black Flag to go down in price, so I can’t make any comparisons.
The King Washington segments were fun, and a welcome jaunt from historical realism. Turning into a bear whilst storming Washington’s pyramid is always fun.
Kobal 2 - Hey, how do think I felt? The beggars were actually worse, BTW. So…damn…whiny. Arrrrrgh!
The “mousetrap” was one of the trophies. Nail 5 guards with a caltrop bomb, then kill them all with a scaffold while they’re stunned. Pulling that off was TORTURE. Either someone hits me before I can throw the bomb, or the bomb lands in the wrong place, or I don’t stun all 5 guards, or one of them’s not close enough to the scaffold, or the circle button grabs a guard instead of knocking down the scaffold, or I run completely past the scaffold without knocking it down, or I climb the scaffold…just one of those endlessly irritating tasks where there are a thousand ways to screw it up. I took me like 20 attempts.
As for 3…I didn’t mind any of the things you found horrible; liked them, in fact, and found it very rewarding to see the community come together piece by piece. There are fast-travel points in the frontier. Yes, they are spaced out, because the point is you should be exploring the frontier. I thought the underground was pretty cool, actually: Explore, open up paths, and make it much easier to get around. UbiSoft set out to make a different game from Ezio’s, with a different environment and different tasks. I don’t need towering cathedrals and golden palaces every time. I appreciate variety, and I’d like to think most other AC players do as well.
And I think you missed the point with the portrayal of the Templars. Yes, they appear to be fairly okay guys in the beginning. It’s been well-established that putting on a good face is something they’re very good at. (Even then, I wouldn’t call them good, particularly a drunk womanizer like Thomas Hickey.) And anyone would look good next to a freaking slaveowner and bloodsoaked hawk. When they meet the young Connor, that’s when they first show their true colors. Even then, they don’t devolve into cartoon villains; they have sound motives for what they do, and for the most part they probably would have had fairly unremarkable lives if the Templars hadn’t gotten their hooks into them. None of this is contradicted in any way by any of the pre-Connor scenes. Connor teams up with Haytham grudgingly purely to get what he needs, and there’s zero indication at any point that he has any respect for Haytham as a Templar or father. Yes, it’s complicated, it’s murky, it’s tricky. THAT’S THE POINT. Both sides have their pros and cons, and while the Assassins are more…virtuous, for lack of a better therm, you can see the appeal for both sides.
I’m very surprised you didn’t have a problem with the board games. They were the reason I eventually threw the game away (I even made a thread about this).
Kinthalis/Jophiel - I was a little suspicious about the Animus when I first heard about this game. The bottom line is that it gives UbiSoft more freedom and flexibility. Get killed/let a target get away? No sweat, you merely “desynchronize” and get to try again. Why can’t I massacre everyone I see? Because that’s not how the ancestor did it; step too far out of character and you’ll desync. It’s easy to put training simulations in as well, not to mention block off areas you’re not supposed to be at yet. And of course, since this takes place over different time periods (and not in chronological order), having one element in control of everything makes keeping them all in order a lot easier.
In addition, the whole story of the ancient war is supposed to tie in to the present day, which is why the present-day scenes matter. That’s why I didn’t mind the Abstergo Entertainment tasks at all. You don’t have to hack into EVERY computer, and the ones you do are a snap. The whole point of this is to establish John (and give some important follow up on Shaun and Rebecca), which ties in to one of the major players in Edward’s life. You may like it, you may not, but AC is driven by the story, and Abstergo isn’t going anywhere.
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard anything on what the premise for Rogue is going to be. I’ll probably wait until launch day to find out (we’re nearly there anyway).
That’s cool that the real world/Animus stuff worked for you. I found it to be dire. Tore you right out of the good story and into some dull crapfest that you just slogged through until you could get back to the fun stuff. Terribly executed. Again, just my opinion and how it made me feel while I was playing the game. I’m not likely to say “Gee, I thought it was bad and had very little fun playing through it but now I see how justified it all was…”
It may not be going anywhere but that’ll weigh on if/when I buy the next games. I suppose I’ll mind it less if I only spend $5 on the game after it’s been out for 18 months.
[QUOTE=DKW]
There are fast-travel points in the frontier. Yes, they are spaced out, because the point is you should be exploring the frontier.
[/quote]
I know why they did it that way. I’m saying it’s bad game design regardless of intent. Especially when missions make you trek all across the frontier, and back, then back to nowheresville again and again and again. Being attacked by stupid wolves, bears or elks the whole way LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE BEAR I ALREADY GOT YOUR CHEEVOS I WANT TO SEE WASHINGTON NOW.
The idea is fun. The execution is horrid. Like, OK, you take your time to figure out the various hidden “this is the way” tricks at every intersection, the rats and the torches and so forth, and you feel a bit clever. You find one exit, hurray ! This is cool !
Now back to the crossroads : do it all over again. Not a single new trick this time around. A couple guards to waste your time along the way and make you fiddle with your lantern. A magic lantern puzzle, or a lockpick minigame. Go back to the crossroads, either backtracking or going out, fast traveling, going in - who doesn’t love loading screens ? Do it again ! Etc…
*Hours *of this dullissimo crap just to unlock every FT point. Ugh.
But that’s the thing : if they are bastards pretending to be good guys, wouldn’t their secret meetings be the place to let their evil moustaches down, so to speak ?
They don’t ? The very first thing that happens in Connor’s story (well, after another half hour or so of tutorials… because lord knowns that didn’t break the flow of the game or anything) is that Lee strangles Connor, a 10 or so year old child he has never seen in his life, threatens to break his neck and calls him a filthy animal. Before asking him any questions, mind. And the question was “where is your village ?”. Then bam, rifle butt to the head.
I, too, routinely assault people when I need simple directions, monologue at them at lengths and bludgeon them unconscious before they can get a word in edgewise. I’m a complex and nuanced character that way.
Then you’ve got the “nice” one (I forget his name - the Indian PR specialist, dressed in brown with the sash ?) who goes from lamenting that Whitey is harsh and brutal against the Natives and making enemies of them unnecessarily when you’re playing Haytham, to being the “stealing land from Indians” mogul and setting up prisoner firing squads at his own casa when you’re playing Connor. And so on.
I guess the subtext we’re supposed to pick up from that is that their being Templars having been doing Templar things off-screen for years while Connor was growing up changed them over time and made them bust their moral compass, but there’s a **bad **disconnect there from the player’s point of view. All the more so that Haytham, for his part, hasn’t changed very much - still being the lovable (and reasonable) rogue with a steel edge behind the velvet words.
But it’s not. It quite evidently tries to be tricky and murky but it fails badly at that, turning it all into a caricature.
Seriously, Charles Lee goes from mild-mannered, polite, witty sidekick to Angry Hollywood Nazi Officer from one chapter to the next ; and the Templars as seen through Connor’s chapters are not grey in the least. They’re bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
And since you, the player, can plainly see that ; it can’t be a case of unreliable narrator/biased protagonist either.
I honestly don’t remember playing them much - I liked checkers and fanorona at least (and did 3 introduce the knife thing, or was that only in black flag ? I liked that as well) ; though I sucked badly at X-Man Morris.
Then again I didn’t achievement hunt them, either, maybe that’s why I don’t have too many terrible memories 
It also lets them handwave away any hateful mail from historians saying this or that guy didn’t die like that or behave that way ; or asking why there appears to be a high gothic cathedral in 12th century Jerusalem (when the architectural style was barely in its infancy in France at the time) - it’s the Animus being faulty, the coders messing things up, the genetic memories playing tricks and so forth. It’s built-in suspension of disbelief.
Now that the conceit behind the games has moved from “a cadre of assassins picking at Desmond’s brain to find hidden info” to “Abstergo making propaganda games without feeling shackled by ethics or accuracy in the least”, they’ve got even more leeway to add anachronisms if and when they’re cool. Like Moby Dick or the Queen’s Staircase of Nassau in Black Flag (the latter being specifically pointed in the codex as not really having been there in Edward’s time, “but screw it, it’s a famous landmark, in it goes”).
Plus, let’s face it, going two animus deep in *Revelations *was a fun little mindscrew.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with the Animus conceit myself - I’m a lot more annoyed with the ever-expanding scope of the Assassin/Templar thing to the point that seemingly every historical character you’ve ever heard of was one of either or unwittingly propped up by them, and every single historical event was really about The Secret War and Totally-Not-Magic items. I thought* Foucault’s Pendulum* had definitively put the kibbosh on that sort of silliness. That or the oWoD :p.
AC3 really would have been better if they had cut out like… 60% of the story. The Connor/Haytham dynamic was great, but, the prologue aside, the story went nowhere until Bunker Hill. That was near the end. There were also missions that were clearly just there for historical fanservice. Take Paul Revere’s ride, it was an obvious inclusion but it doesn’t fit with the gameplay and it’s clear they really didn’t know how to make it work.
When I say the early parts were superfluous, keep in mind I don’t totally mean you could just take it out and the story would work the same. The early parts have a lot of necessary setup needed to get the emotional resonance of earlier scenes. Still, so much of the game is just a mishmash of setup and history porn. Ezio’s stories had far less setup. Admittedly sometimes this led to asking why you were doing something, and the explanation was often “because assassin stuff”. Still, I preferred it to knowing why Connor was doing something, but not really caring until the tail end of the game.
Forgot :
I did like the Homestead story lines. I liked that their scope was generally penny-ante and down-to-earth, it was a nice quiet reprieve from all the heavy war stuff. I did not like stalking my fellow villagers for 15 minutes to see if maybe this time the hunter’s going to do the skinning animation I’m missing, then trekking across the map to maybe have a hope of seeing the chopping wood animation…
And the crafting/commerce system was so, so fucked. Here’s what you do when crafting in AC3 :
Buy a ton of raw materials of every kind, navigate through various menus to figure out which halfway products you need to build the things you might want to sell, spend a ton of cash to make those, make your finished products, sell them at a big loss until you grok that each time you build something everything *else *costs more and more exponentially and the grand majority of products have a dismal return on investment even when manufactured at their most profitable rates anyway (both in terms of in-game money and the time it takes to navigate all those menus when you could have been stealing money or having fun instead), realize that raw bear and castor pelts sell for a mint without having to do **any **of that shit.
Sell bear & castor pelts exclusively, forever.
I appreciate the fact that they wanted to build a system that would be a little more involved than “buy all the things, go to the bank once in a while to receive a big pile of free cash to buy all the things with” but there again they cocked up the execution tremendously.
The fleet thing in Black Flag is not any better mind you - it’s more mindless menu-driven busywork that ultimately boils down to “once in a while receive large bags of free money and maybe a bonus thingamabob”, except on top of that you also get to passively watch the same abstracted naval battle dozens of times. Rivetting.
Sooooo…
Those reviews for AC:Unity. Heh.
Apparently a technical mess and buggy as hell. Dropping frames into the teens and even occasionally into the single digits on PS4 to boot.
Nothing new in terms of gameplay, outside of the co-op side-missions.
PC performance scales well, but the base is just so bad that you need very powerful hardware to hit that maxed settings 60 FPS goodness.
Hmmm… Gonna skip this one util it’s cheap on a Steam sale for sure.