Assassin's creed

[Goza]

Necro-thread must live!

Played this for some hours yesterday, made it to the first big city (Damaskus) outside your main base. The presentation is absolutely top notch, as seen in the demo vids shown. No slowdowns at all, wide&open maps, awesome animations, crisp sound and music by Jesper Kyd.

I'm not thrilled about the gameplay yet, so far it seems a bit too stripped/dumbed down: Press X to attack, press X twice for combo; the freestyle climbing/jumping also just requires you to press the analog stick into the direction you want to go, your char automatically does everything on his own then. It's not bad by any means, but too easy for my taste. Well, it probably gets more complex later on.



****
**** minispoiler - you might not want to read this yet: ****
****
****
The background story that gets imposed over the whole game... wtf? So far that's a complete /facepalm. Hopefully it will evolve and justify it's very existence later on, so far IMO the game would have been far better off without it. But that might be personal taste.

[Kawe / Dave]

I'm not thrilled about the gameplay yet, so far it seems a bit too stripped/dumbed down: Press X to attack, press X twice for combo; the freestyle climbing/jumping also just requires you to press the analog stick into the direction you want to go, your char automatically does everything on his own then. It's not bad by any means, but too easy for my taste.

I was having a peek around to see what I could find on opinions on the game, and I remember something mentioning this very same point, about combat being a bit 'one button'.

Nevertheless I'm looking forward to playing this alright - I am a real sucker for well presented games, things like Shadow of The Colossus and Heavenly Sword are great examples of good art and direction in games, in my opinion.

God, Shadow of The Colossus. I love that game so dearly, it is just so incredibly beautiful and striking. I can't wait 'till those guys make their next game, with the newer hardware available now.

[Kergash]

Bump!

I've played this game for quite a while now, and I cant stop playing it. Its awesome, I love the graphics, kinda boring fighting mode, but the game itself is pure win!

Had to be said.

[delling]

Played this for about 3 hours at my friend's house.

Running down the mountain got really dull.

Free-running is neat, but you can't base a whole game upon it.

WHY THE IMMERSION-BREAKING MACHINE THING?

Did I mention running down the mountain was dull?

I will pick it up on the PC I guess and hope the game gets better...

[Goza]

WHY THE IMMERSION-BREAKING MACHINE THING?

Yeah I wondered about that, too. My best guess it's just to get the 16+ rating instead of some adult-only rating as "You don't really kill people in this game, it's all some virtual machine stuff olol!"

Did I mention running down the mountain was dull?

I will pick it up on the PC I guess and hope the game gets better...

Na it stays the same from start to finish. If you don't like the first 3h, you won't like the rest, either.

[Cwave]

I liked the horsy + sword slaying.
Or standing in between the common people acting like you are a monk, then wipp out the sword and chop away for about 3 blocks and murder 10% of the population....cccccccomnboooooooooo

But yeah, it got dull quite quick

[Goza]

Well I finished it when I played it last year and had a lot of fun doing so, but mostly for the graphics, music, atmosphere. For the sequel they should hire some level designers.

[Myogoblin]

I liked the horsy + sword slaying.
Or standing in between the common people acting like you are a monk, then wipp out the sword and chop away for about 3 blocks and murder 10% of the population....cccccccomnboooooooooo

But yeah, it got dull quite quick

Does anytime body actually have those coommboooooo sounds from that arcade game? be damed if i remember the name but you could do 64 hit combos and all that crap. I recall it having awesome graphics (most likely crap now)

[Kawe / Dave]

Well I finished it when I played it last year and had a lot of fun doing so, but mostly for the graphics, music, atmosphere. For the sequel they should hire some level designers.

I was told he city layouts were created based on best ideas/geological whatevers to try and make them more or less close to the actual things as possible. I guess they'll have taken artistic liberty on a small scale though.

My favourite part of the game was the way the cities really had a feeling they were alive, busy, bustling.

I actually quite liked the story. At first when I kicked up the game I felt a little bit as though, "don't know if I want..." but to be honest, I spent most of the time trying to work out the truth of what was going on looking for little links, so on. Searching through the files and so on was quite a nice little touch, as (at least early on) it seems you could quite feasibly miss them out if you're just trying to power through the game. But then if you're just trying to power through, then you're probably not enjoying it that much.

The main drawbacks for me were the weak combat system, one button does all play, but mainly the combat. The combat just wasn't massively enjoyable, and after a reasonable play session, I often found myself avoiding combat wherever possible not out of danger but purely out of not being arsed to go through it. Ended up purposely trying to make things harder for myself by attempting to kill large packs of guards with only stealth-knife-coutner-kills (seems the timing required on them was a fair deal tighter than with the other weapons).

Seems to be more a free roaming experience based on a core of a mystery based story. If you enjoy trying to work things out before they're shoved in your face, you'll enjoy it a lot more. Whilst trying not to spoil anything, even the 'end' leaves you with plenty to think about and puzzle over.

[Goza]

I was told he city layouts were created based on best ideas/geological whatevers to try and make them more or less close to the actual things as possible. I guess they'll have taken artistic liberty on a small scale though.

That's possible. The cities look awesome, no doubt. But from a level design perspective, they are aweful, as - there's no "real level" (regarding gameplay goals) at all but just a more or less open sandbox city.

In a sequel I would like to see more task oriented levels that actually have you work out a route to your goal instead of just "ok im like running in the general direction of my target while the city is populated by more or less randomly generated NPCs". Assassin's Creed has just very few levels designed around a task, e.g. the harbour or climbing some of the very large cathedrals.

[delling]

Yea, agree, the levels looked fantastic, just no actual ... level.

I thought I'd have some kind of 'sneak past X to get to Y'. But I just heard from eavesdropping that there were wooden beams in a certain part of the city...

I guess they wanted really open-ended gameplay.

But unfortunately, that just means you can stab shit up...

But maybe they didn't want to force a certain kind of gameplay...

On a game that's called 'Assassin's Creed' though... a bit of sneaking would be OK...

[Goza]

Necro-threading this again!

Just finished the new 2nd game, called... Assassin's Creed 2 (zomg, really!).

Damn hot. Apart from the still super-easy simple fights, they improved everything people complained about in the first game. Gone are the boring, repeating information-gathering mini-missions that you had to do all the time. Instead now there's a story leading you thru the whole game. While the missions themselves are still basically simple (go there, kill X, collect Y etc; the GTA problem), at least they are put into an interesting context. Last thing to fix for the next episode are the main assassinations: still too simple, run & stab usually works best.

But: They hired level designers! The cities have way more landmark buildings than before, missions are designed to integrate the city layout and are not just randomly thrown around. There are even 6 tombs designed to provide some Prince of Persia gameplay.

Also, having been to Venice a few times, it's fucking amazing to walk around virtual Venice thinking "hmm, this looks like the street at Piazza San Marco", then taking a turn and there actually is San Marco.

• the engine now supports day/night cycles
• tons of stuff to collect/buy
• main cities are Florence and Venice; plus your home base village, 2 additional small cities plus surrounding country landscapes

If you enjoyed the first game even a bit, check out the sequel.


Frickin game really looks like that 

[Daekesh]

purty

[Inphy]

How does it run on your PC? By the looks of the screenshots, you have to get some high-end game PC. But looks can be deceiving.

[Goza]

Xbox360. I don't think it's released for PC yet.