Review #123: Assassin's Creed II

 It makes Assassin's Creed 1 look like one ugly beta.

 Assassin's Creed was a good game, it wasn't anything special and had lots of little flaws that took away from it. Assassin's Creed 2 polished every single aspect from Assassin's Creed, resulting in a vastly superior, and more entertaining game.

 The game picks up almost exactly where the last one left off, with Lucy and Vidic leaving the room, and Desmond developing the Eagle Vision. Desmond escapes with the aid of the Assassins from Abstergo, and vows to help the Assassins defeat the Templars, doing what he does best: Strapping to the Animus chair. While in the Animus, this time Desmond goes back to his paternal ascendants, in the form of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian Assassin living in Florence during the late 1400s. This time around, characters are much more engaging than in Assassin's Creed 1, even though the present-day scenes are but a fraction of the game(A change I most welcome), Desmond and Lucy have received a bit more personality, as well as the rest of the supporting cast. The cast featured in Ezio's time is even more appealing, Ezio himself being everything that Altair wasn't: Funny, charming, emotive and above all, likeable. Story wasn't particularly bad in AC 1, but AC 2's story is much more involved, intriguing and better written, dialogue is more refined, with a couple of jokes that were more funny than they should've!

 Gameplay follows the same print from Assassin's Creed 1, but polished and expanded upon. Parkour was a great idea, but it wasn't as good as it could've been, AC 2 makes parkour flow much smoother, Ezio doesn't stop on his tracks while climbing, and does everything much more swiftly. There's the occasional jump when you didn't want to jump, or dropping to a haystack instead of a ledge, but they are infrequent enough as not to be too annoying. There's a fair amount of new mechanics, like looting dead bodies for money, medicine or knives, or even stealing money from passersby. Among people Ezio may come around Courtesans that can be hired to distract guards, mercenaries or thieves that can fight for Ezio, signaling them to do their works is pretty easy and they rarely get stuck on the environment. When it comes to stealth, Assassin's Creed was never a stealth game, but it did have some elements, and they were expanded upon in this one, blending with crowds is now a matter of walking with them, Ezio will turn grey if done correctly, you can now carry dead bodies and drop them to focus attention on them and using the Hidden Blade is much more fun, now that Ezio can kill while hanging from ledges, while falling, while hiding or even perform dual assassinations when he gets a second Hidden Blade!

 New to the series is the monetary system, instead of earning weapons as he killed enemies, like Altair, Ezio now can buy his weapons or armors from Blacksmiths. You can also buy bigger pouches to carry medicine, knives or poison, or even dye his white robes! The best part about all this is that the changes reflect on Ezio himself. Health doesn't restore over time, so visiting doctors to heal or using medicine is a necessity, even though the game is nice enough to heal you completely whenever you start a new mission. Early in the game, Ezio will enter the Villa, a town that can be upgraded by investing money in it, the more it grows, the more money it makes every 20 minutes. Investing as much as you can early on will end up with Ezio swimming in money later in the game, so it's a good idea to upgrade it as early as possible. AC 1 quickly got very repetitive, once again AC 2 tops it by offering more missions types: Assassination, Races, Courier and Beatings. Main Story missions also vary quite widely, you'll go from tailing people to flying on Leonardo's flying machine, competing in a carnival for a golden mask or protecting a boat from bowmen. There's also a slew of sidequests: Gathering all 100 hidden feathers, finding all 20 glyphs(each one rewards you with a very odd puzzle unlike anything else on the game), finding all 73 viewpoints and the 6 Assassin's tombs, each one possessing a platforming challenge that reward you with items to unlock Altair's armor. AC 2 is a very long game, but repetition won't sink in until much later in the game.

 To offset the removal of the regenerating hit points, combat was made easier. The window for parrying was widened and most counterattacks now outright kill. Continuously attacking blocking enemies will also damage them, so you could potentially win every encounter by just mashing on the attack button. The tools for combat have also increased, with the addition of smoke bombs, a gun on the Hidden Blade, poison on the Hidden Blade and barehanded beatings now actually packing a punch. As easy as combat is, there's a new Notoriety system implemented, killing in public or doing outrageous actions like pushing people in front of wards will raise your notoriety, which translates into how fast will guards realize that you are an enemy on sight, you can lower it by ripping posters off walls, killing certain officials or bribing spokesmen.

 Assassin's Creed 1 had some rather large cities, but they seem so small in front of Assassin's Creed 2's Italy. The player can now swim and ride boats, which comes very useful when traversing the watery city of Venice. Each of the game's town(Tuscany, Romania, Forli and Florence(And I'm sure I probably spelt two of them wrong)) are huge and very different from one another, with broadly different flavors making exploring them a joy.

 Character models definitely look better than in AC 1, but they are still a bit on the ugly side, with a couple of scenes in which they just look off as they talk or move onscreen. Animation is still a looker, even if there are a couple of odd ones(Just look at Desmond's neck when he punches while the game is loading!). Cities are still the high point of the game's presentation, every city portrayed in the game is downright beautiful with a ton unique landmarks. The game does suffer from a ton of pop in and a bit of clipping, frame rate does take a hit every now and then, the close-range draw distance is terrible, with flowers popping out of nowhere, but when it comes to distances you can see, very, very far away, and it looks glorious. While AC 1 wasn't big on the music department, AC 2 has some rather grandiose-sounding pieces, a particular favorite of mine being the one that plays on the race missions. Voice acting is very good when it comes to primary characters, although a few of the NPCs are fairly unconvincing, still a step up from AC 1!

 Assassin's Creed 2 is an awesome game, I'd go as far as to say that it makes AC 1 obsolete. Ubisoft did polish a diamond out of a stone, AC 2 is among my favorite games of the last generation, and while the game could use a bit of touching up, to make the framerate steadier for example, polishing certain glitches(Like freezing, which happened to me once but seems to be a rather frequent occurrence, or how certain cutscenes may desynch leaving characters to stab the ground or what have you), it's a great game.
 9.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Assassin's Creed 2

 Wow!

 I was ready to hate Ezio, I mean, Ubisoft created a sub-trilogy focused on him, I already found him annoying... but man, is Ezio hard to hate. The game is better than Assassin's Creed 1 in every way: Better graphics, better cast(The modern-day characters are engaging, Ezio's supporting cast is interesting and Ezio himself is completely different from Altair who was as unlikeable as it go), movement and fighting flows much much better, the game has already shown more variety in missions, and now there's even a currency system implemented. I played up to the "betrayal", and I can already say that this game is gonna be much, much better than the first one.

 Surprisingly, Jim Sterling gave it a 2, I usually agree with Jim, so I'm gonna wait until I finish it to re-read his review and see the whys, but so far I am thoroughly impressed.

Review #122: Assassin's Creed

 7 years too late, but here I am!

 Assassin's Creed is, at the moment, Ubisoft biggest cash cow, it quickly became a yearly franchise after the first one, the one I'm writing about today. Rough around the edges, Assassin's Creed was the first entry in the series, so it's only fair that we start off from here.

 The game is set in two different eras: Present day, with Desmond Miles, and during the Third Crusade as Desmond's ancestor Altair. Desmond is captured, before the game's beginning, by Abstergo and is now strapped to the Animus, a machine that puts him in the place of his ancestors, in this case, Altair. Turns out Desmond is a descendant from a long line of Assassins, and by relieving Altair's crusade against the Templars, Abstergo aims to obtain something. Desmond's short sequences are easily the most boring, but they are a bit interesting, Altair's story is much more interesting. The story itself is alright, and while the dialogue is nothing special, it does have a couple of shining lines. Furthermore, the whole lore surrounding the Assassins and Templars is very interesting. Oh, and the game ends with one of the biggest cliff hangers ever conceived, not cool Ubisoft!

 First things first, Desmond is the means to tie up subsequent sequels, his sequences consist of him walking around and asking questions... now, the meat of the game lies on Altair. The game features an open world with three huge towns, an "overworld" that connects the towns and a smaller village where the Assassin's guild resides. The game employs a functional parkour system, while holding R1 and X, Altair will try to climb or jump his way through buldings, walls, stands, windows or what have you. It works well most of the time, but occasionally Altair will stop dead on his tracks, requiring you to let go and then press the buttons again, and sometimes while trying to run in a direction, he will try to climb a wall. Luckily, most of the time it works well, but it clearly needs refinement. As an Assassin, Altair should kill without alerting anyone, should he be found out, he'll enter alert mode, not unlike Metal Gear Solid's, while in this mode you can either kill all the guards that spawn or avoid their line of sight and hide in a haystack, or bend with walking erudites or civilians sitting on benches. It's more fun than it sounds.

 Combat is fairly simple, and Altair packs a couple of weapons to make his job easier. The Hidden Blade is useless in battle, but it can be used to kill unsuspecting or fallen enemies, but when it comes to fighting he wields a sword and a small knife. The knife doubles as the projectile weapon, according to the distance, Altair will shoot a knife or try to hit his enemies with it. Fighting with the sword or the knife, at close quarters, is virtually the same, you can mash on the attack button to attack, time a Counter Attack(Which may or may not kill, which means its usefulness can vary!) or sidestep. To be honest, combat is dead simple and easy, only a couple of enemies can perform counterattacks and most of the time mashing on the attack button is all you really need.

 The game is fairly formulaic once it gets going. Very early in the game, Altair gets his arrogance get the best of him and gets demoted to the lowest rank, and must now prove himself to the brotherhood. The game is divided in chapters("Memory sections"), each chapter has up to three assassinations for Altair to perform, quite conveniently, each assassination takes place in a different section of each of the three towns. Before each Assassination, you must obtain at least three pieces of information, which is done by performing sidequests. Sidequests come in a few forms: Climbing vantage points, races, eavesdropping, pick pocketing, assassinating some targets without alerting guards or saving citizens from guard abuse. It's easy to tell that the game can get quite repetitive. Fulfilling sidequests has the added benefit of increasing your hit points("Synchronization rate") so it's in your best interest to do as many of them as possible. Regardless, after you get the information you need, you are off to Assassinate your target, each of this major Assassinations are the highlight of the game, and while they usually go down the same, the set up is entirely different, as well as their last words. After each assassination Altair will also go up in rank, regaining a weapon alongside a skill.

 The game also offers some optional quests in the form of hidden flags throughout the towns and 60 hidden Templars for Altair to defeat, but since the PS3 version has no trophies, they are not worth it. One thing that really irked me is that you can't manually save the game, you must rely on the autosave system. The game autosaves every time you find a collectible or clear a side quest, but it would've been nice to be able to save at will. Another annoyance, albeit much minor, is that when you are selecting a Memory Section, the nice Abstergo scientist will nag on Desmond, it quickly grows annoying when you are just checking stuff out.

  Graphics are a mixed bag. Most textures are fairly muddy, and character models aren't very pretty. Hilariously enough, Altair is the only Assassin missing a finger, which is supposed to be a trait shared by the brotherhood, not even Altair's Mentor is missing his finger! Also, secondary NPCs share heads, even with the Mentor who is a rather important character, or the Assassin Knights in the Assassin's HQ having 20 fingers(I'm not kidding!)... yeah, characters don't look very good. On the flip side, the world itself is beautiful, towns are a joy to see from above, and having the screen filled with NPCs walking around is really nice. Music is used very sparingly, but it's nothing special, and the voice acting is just passable. Altair in particular was fairly unimpressive.

  Assassin's Creed was a very decent first game, but it clearly needed a lot of polishing, and as repetitive as it got, I found myself having more fun than I expected.
 6.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Assasin's Creed

 It's time to begin the Assasin's Creed.

 It is time. I've never been too interested in the series, until Assassin's Creed III, set in a time period I love. Then IV got announced, and while I didn't care for it as much as I did three, the interest had set in, so now here I am, ready to play all six of them.

 First impressions? "This game looks ugly!". It does! Models look a bit shaggy, textures are muddy and movements are a bit off, and there's a tiny bit of framerate drops every now and then. The city, however, looks fantastic. Altair's voice actor doesn't manage to impress me either, the rest of the cast is as unimpressive. The gameplay is fairly alright, the parkour is really fun, but it definitely could use a little bit of polishing and Combat is dead simple. There also seem to be collectibles, but I am oblivious to their use, specially since this game doesn't support trophies.

 I may sound overly negative, but despite everything, I'm having fun with it.

Review #121: Vanquish

 It's all about them Space Marines.

 About four years ago, Sega released the Platinum Games' developed game Vanquish, a game that was touted as being the evolution of the third person shooter genre. While time has proven that statement overblown, how well does the game fare today?

 The game takes place far into the future, where Rusia has invaded and taken control of a North American Satellite that doubles as a weapon of mass destruction. As Sam Gideon, an ex-quarterback turned space-marine, you are equipped with the ARS(Augment Reaction Suit), an armor that allows for fast movement and enhanced reflexes(AKA Slo-mo), you are tasked to save Dr. Francois Candide from the Russians. The story is pretty cliched, with twists that you'll see coming a mile away, and the dialogue is downright terrible, typical action-movie stuff. The game is surprisingly cinematic, with a ton of cutscenes between and during chapters, they look fairly cool for the most time.

 Luckily, story is the last thing you'd play Vanquish for, its gameplay is where it's at. At its core, it's a third-person action shooter set in space, a dime a dozen, but it introduces a couple of gimmicks that make it unique. The ARS allows Sam to slide at frenetic speeds through the battlefield, how long you can slide is determined by a gauge on the bottom right corner of the screen, deplete it and the suit will over heat. There are two other actions that deplete the gauge, entering slo-mo, by dodging and then holding down the aim button, or using a powerful melee attack. The gauge also acts as a safety net of sorts, you don't get a health bar, instead the game uses the now obligatory regenerative health, if you take lethal damage, the game will slow down for as long as you have energy left, allowing you to easily dispatch of the aggressors or run into cover, as soon as the slo-mo ends you'll be in Overheat status. Overheat is something that you want to avoid, as you won't be able to dash, use melee attacks or slow down time, even worse, if you receive too much damage while Overheated, you will die. While the controls are extremely responsive, sometimes when slowing down time when aiming, soldiers, objects from the stage or even Sam himself will stand over your aiming reticule, making it hard to aim. It didn't happen too often, but enough to be worth mentioning. All in all, it's a very engaging mechanic, as you will want to make the most of your suit while being careful of when to push it.

 You can take with you up to three different weapons, from a total of 8(11 if you purchase the DLC), they all fill very gratifying to use, and you can upgrade them as you go through the game. Dying actually resets back one level every weapon, it only happens upon your first death on a chapter, but it actually encourages to play carefully if you want to keep them! Almost every stage has you allied with some space-marines, they are not a huge asset, but they can draw enemy fire, and if you revive them before they fully die, they will drop a weapon refill for you. Interestingly, while the game encourages you to zip around your enemies with the slide mechanic, the game offers a very functional cover system, if you so wanted to, you could play this game as you would any other third person shooter. Regardless, the game feels very arcadey, with a score based grading, which I really liked.

 On the Normal difficulty the game packs a decent challenge, but the unlockable God Hard difficulty will test even the most hardcore third person shooter enthusiast. While the game is a bit short, 7 or so hours on your first playthrough, not skipping cutscenes and figuring stuff out for the first time(Like those annoying enemies that have one hit kills!), further playthroughs will probably slim down to 2-4 hours depending on how good you are, although 4 hours will be impossible on God Hard mode! After each chapter you unlock Challenge missions, there's 6 of them, and they are all pretty challenging, but pretty fun as you must destroy waves upon waves of enemies, these fights are more intense than the skirmishes you'll face on the main game.

 The graphics are fairly good on a technical level, but characters look extremely generic. Space-marines look like any other game's space-marines, there's not a whole lot of enemy variety, the common robots you face also lack personality, even if they are colored according to their behavior(Reds are common grunts, oranges tend to stay back and blues will dash towards you). On the other hand, Sam and his ARS look extremely cool and do stand out amidst the other characters. The futuristic satellite the game takes place on also looks very neat, even if it doesn't stand out too much. The soundtrack is comprised mostly of techno tracks, very fitting for the game, and while I won't be humming any track any time soon, they are not bad. Voice acting was very good, even if Sam and the rest of the marines try their hardest to sound gruff.

 Vanquish didn't sell very well, probably had to do with reviews mentioning how short it was, despite getting mostly glowing reviews. Despite its length, Challenge mode does make up for it, and the mechanics are very solid, with just a little issue that sometimes popped up when aiming. While it wasn't the future of the genre, it does stand out against the others when i.
 8.0 out of 10.

Archile's Grab bag: Fabulous Murderous Tuesday Edition

 It smells... like a new box has arrived.

 Cut cut cut.

 Borderlands 2 - Game of the Year Edition: It's no secret that I loved Borderlands 1, and it seems Gearbox found their cash cow, as they created loads upon loads of DLC for it. At least it was made after the game was finished.

 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4: I needed Tony Hawk in my life, and this was probably my favorite one. Now I need Underground 2 and maybe, MAYBE, Tony Hawk 3.

 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Ah, the PS1 JoJo game, it was really good at a non-competitive level.

 Assassin's Creed: It's time to play the Assassin's Creed saga. The first one is the one I'm the least excited about!

 Assassin's Creed - Ezio Trilogy: The Ezio Trilogy, I wonder if Ezio is as good a protagonist as they make him out to be, heck, Ubisoft managed to create a Trilogy inside the first Trilogy. Trilogy Inception.

Assassin's Creed III: I've read that this was one of the least liked entries, but ever since the first trailers, this was the Assassin's Creed that got me interested in the series, I just love the time epoch it takes place in.

Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag: Second only to the third one in how excited I am about an AC game!

Now Playing: Vanquish

 About damn time.

 Vanquish is a game that I've always wanted to play ever since trying out the demo, but for one reason or another, never got around doing it. That changed today.

 The game is right up my alley, it's fast, frenetic and very arcadey, even if it does embrace the cover mechanics that third person shooters must have nowadays. Still, I'm having a blast, I just cleared Act 1 and defeated Bogey. I should also admit that I'm quite terrible at the game, but I'm getting better by the minute!.
One thing that surprised me was just how cinematic the game is. The story isn't engaging, the dialogue is terrible, but there's a lot of cutscenes and cool looking stunts.

 And now, I must slide away into Robogeddon.