So I just finished Ass Creed

[SefirothDB]

What a ride.

A ride of mediocrity and frustration.

So, I borrowed this game from a friend. Along with CoD4 and MGS1, the first to see if it was worth the praise, the second to continue my mission of preparing for MGS4. MGS1 is still fucking awesome. CoD4 was surprisingly fun, compeling me to finish it, thanks to some great setpieces and scripted moments - the ending in particular is very well done. These two are good games.

Jade Raymond's Ass Creed is not.

Okay, I'll admit it - the concept of the game, of how the character should control, of the crew reacting to your behaviour... that's awesome. Shit, I remember praising the game a lot when it was announced, showcased some great mechanics. But you see, a lot of these promising mechanics were removed or overly simplified.

The freerunning is fun. And so is leap-stabbing the goddamn archers that patrol the roofs. It is entertaining for the first 2, 3 hours of gameplay. Later it just becomes a necessity to reduce the tediousness of walking below, because, you see, if you go through the streets, you'll be incredibly slow, attract the guards' attention for the most stupid things, get abused by retards or CONSTANTLY BOTHERED BY THE LOCAL HOBOS.

Basic game mechanic is simple and repetitive. Get list of people to kill from old dude. Go to city. Talk with person in charge of city guild division. Do one of the boring and tedious and sometimes completely stupid tasks to gather info on target. Go back to dude in charge. Kill victim. Escape.

I'm going to rant a bit on the info gathering tasks. They're: beating up public speakers, robbing someone, eavesdropping and time attacks. Of these, listening is the easiest to do which i took whenever possible, followed by beating up people because it's fun to punch random men.

Let's talk about the time attacks. These involve meeting a guild member that has a piece of the information you desperately need, but alas, they won't give it to you. No, first you need to do something for the lazy fuckers, which is either to collect X flags or kill Y people in Z time. Collecting flags. Holy fuck, rather than annoyed at the complete stupidity that is to have a professional assassin picking up randomly scattered items I'm amazed they had the nerve to include such a blatant gameplay-time-extender fetch quest.

The kill X peoples version? I'd have enjoyed them (it's basically walking up to someone and stabbing them silently in the nuts) if i wasn't forced to walk at a snail's pace to avoid the suspicious-mode guards, to be constantly assaulted by retards and SIIIIR GIMME A SPARE COIN MY FAMILY IS ILL YOU DONT UNDERSTAND GIMME SOMETHING

fuck yeah I'm going to give you something you failed abort of a forbidden sex session between a gamefaqs troll and a female camel. I'm going to give you a STAB IN THE FACE. God. Do you know what is it to have your target at hand's reach but then this homeless bitch stops you in your tracks with her stupid begging? I wouldn't mind if the game made it so it begged to other people, but it seems you're the primary *and only* target of all beggars in the middle east. Same with the shirtless retard that go around babbling until they see you, then get near so they can grab you and push you back. Hope you didn't hit anyone because the stupid peasants can cause a domino effect that results in guard getting hit. And the blame is yours.

Then, guard chase begins. You know how in GTA you can just "disappear" for a while until things cool down? Here, you need to be in one of the several scripted hiding places around while you're not being seen. And rest assured you'll be seen again the milisecond you're about to enter the hideout. No surprise, though, given how every goddamn guard is after you and has a fucking radar to detect your exact position at ALL TIMES as long as they're in alert. Oh, by the way - if you were doing a timed mission get ready to start over. It's occurred to me no less than 3 times that I had finally stabbed the five targets (and about 26 beggars), then accidentally hit a vase that was on the ground, or pushed by a retard into a guard, or "fell" from a total height of 30 cms. BAM. Guard alert. Restart the mission.

And by the way, you CANNOT skip the cutscenes. In this day and age, who the fucking fuck makes unskippable cutscenes? It's particularly annoying when the game makes you restart from the guild division, because you see, it checkpoints BEFORE the speech and not AFTER. Enjoy your monologue again.

While I'm on cutscenes, I'm going to point out the cutscene animation is super robotic and charmless, that the devs have opted to give you control of Altair while dialogues ensue (for interactivity, they say . To not work on camera angles and elaborate interaction between characters I say). In Half Life, I feel compelled to manually act as Gordon would in that situation. In Ass Creed, I just do circles in my invisible shield bubble. It's absolutely painful especially if you've played Uncharted, which features some INCREDIBLE character interaction and animation. And much better visuals. And better plot. And better actual AI. And characters that you can care about (seriously, the AC cast is as uninteresting as it gets. The Doom marine had more charm). Let's face it: Uncharted is pure excellence. And putting mediocrity alongside excellence only serves to make AC look worse, maybe that's why I'm so critical, because I've recently played before a game that's beyond what AC offers.

A lot more to complain about, such as the bugs this thing is filled with. Once I killed a target and had the last words speech dialogue scene occurring, but only the victim appeared (wtf), scene switched over to Altair in the loading screen (WTF) and I had to exit the game and reload.

Or, get this: when you approach a key target, he gives a speech beforehand, which triggers a bubble of invisible walls that restricts your movements to walking and dropping from ledges, to ensure you approach him properly (aka with the rest of the public) to listen to him. So I was on my merry way through the roofs to a target, and decide to sync with one of them tall points to reveal some more map sections. And I happen to hit the roof where the victim is (who can be seen in the inner court of the building), thus triggering the bubble effect - no big deal, I'll do him then sync. So I try dropping directly into the inner courtyard, but I cannot as all the area is enclosed by a waist high balcony and everyone knws assassins lose the jump capability when approaching the target so I cannot jump over it and drop into the courtyard. Okay, fine, I'll just drop by the outside of the building which is 20cms from me and doesn't have any balcony walls.

Or that's was I would have done if the FUCKING INVISIBLE WALL WASNT IN MY WAY. Exit. Reload. Eat up the mission monologue AGAIN. Knobgobbilng fuckmints I'm going to break your head shitwaffles.

Visuals are nice, sort of. Oh look draw distance yes I know those are some nice textured boxes it looks just like a holiday slideshow! And runs at pretty much the same framerate. I can't stand the desaturated colors + high contrase either, coupled with the super hard shadows, the tiny text on my SDTV and fade to white every 5 minutes. finished it some hours ago and I still have traces of the headache. Text size isn't too much of a concern though, as the game doesn't feature subtitles. Seriously, what the fuck?

I'm missing a lot of stuff to bitch over, but I'm going to finish this already with perhaps the biggest offender: the ending. This is not a cliffhanger. This is a cliffhanger of a cliffhanger. By the middle of the game it's pretty obvious this is going to be left open, but oh god. We're talking Halo 2 levels of bullshit here, guys. In the middle of a remotely interesting cutscene, BAM, credits roll. OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE.

Game gives you back control after the credits btw. So you can revisit all the fun missions and relive those great moments. Yeah. That's where I pulled out the disc and back into the case with you, forever. Don't see myself borrowing this again. You think you got me to buy the sequel, Ubi? Hah. I didn't spend a cent on this one, and chances are I won't even bother borrowing the sequel - I'll just watch the story videos on utoob.

At some point in development, this was an unpolished tech demo where you had to kill X people and that was it. Ubi sent it their Montreal team, and this became an unpolished game where you have to kill X people while doing annoying sidequests.

Next time, Ubi, give Michel Ancel the money so he can make Beyond Good and Evil 2 the greatest in Coridae. Or else you will eat the birds for dinner.

So that's about it. I was halfway through and decided to rush it off today just to get it out of the way and finish it to properly troll comment on it. Rent this thing before purchasing.

And now, cue on the usual responses:

a) tl;dr

who cares

c) Ass Creeds awsom and u hav no tste

d) nude Jade Raymond pics pls

Did this need a thread? Probably not and maybe it'll get locked or ignored but i needed to get the bitching out of the way so i can model with peace of mind :3

EDIT: This is just my opinion so chill out AC lovers. Also you have bad taste lol.

Kidding.

maybe

[Spike]

*sees the 4chan meme Luigi*

*leaves topic*

[DarthFettDude607]

rofl that was one of the best and most comprehensive reviews I've ever seen written for this game. I had the foolish idea to rent the game... that is 5 bucks and 9 hours I will never get back.

[Rael0505]

copy and paste this post and submit it as a review to gamefaqs.

edit: don't forget to include the luigi picture

[TRD]

*sees the 4chan meme Luigi*

*leaves topic*

But it's hilarious. xD

Anyways, I was gonna get Assassins Creed for DS, but if it's that bad, I'll hold off for something better.

(Yea, I know that he's talking about the console version, but the apple doesnt fall far from the tree.)

[ssbfalcon]

Who knows TRD... Maybe they'll pull a Sonic Team...

I pretty much agree with half the review... Seeing that I played only a few hours of the game before not caring anymore...

[DimensionWarped]

I played Ass Creed for an hour or so. I thought it controlled like a stick of butter. I became afraid of Prison rape though dropping the ass creed, so I stopped playing.

Short story, sucks.

[Slingerland]

Oh good, other people call this game "Ass Creed." My roommate thinks it's "tits" and won't shut the hell up about it. When he pushed me to play it, I said, "More like...old lady tits." Lololololololololololol.

Stupidity aside, I had a hard time controlling this game. I didn't play the game long enough to get a review as detailed as Sef has made, but after reading it, I'm glad I stopped when I did.

[Icecreamkid]

Lol, that Luigi pic is funny.

I've been wanting to play this game for sometime. The combat looks deep and awesome just like how it is in the PoP(Prince of Persia) series. And all those acrobatic move off of high places looks awesome. I really don't care how repetitive the game may be because Crackdown was very repetitive and I think it was a cool game as well.

[DragonXVI]

Didn't think it was too bad... The Missions started of as fun but steadily became unimaginably repetitive (The game started to overstay is welcome around about the time it told me to go back to previous cities again and again) - And why do all those silly beggar women approach the skinny bloke armed with about 6 knives, do they honestly expect him to be friendly?

The basic system was fun, climbing up and down things (For the most part, occasionally one "WHY CAN'T I CLIMB UP THERE!? THERE'S A THING!" did crop up here and here) was great fun. The Combat system was ass, and there wasn't enough actual assassinations

More Hitman, Less GTA I think was needed. Nice attempt though... Wasn't terrible, just wasn't pretty towards the end.

[Pheonix Gamma]

I think you mean Ass Is Red.

[ila]

Reading Sefiroth's review was like watching Zero Punctuation, except I didn't laugh, didn't finish it, and did not refrain from calling the writer a twat.

[SefirothDB]

So basically it was like your post.

Except that I did finish reading it because it had much less content put into.

It's not a review that pretends to be funny, it's a rant on why this game is boring and frustrating and why you shouldn't waste your time and money on this shit.

Don't like how I write? I don't give a shit. You disagree with my opinion about AC? Cry moar.

The basic system was fun, climbing up and down things (For the most part, occasionally one "WHY CAN'T I CLIMB UP THERE!? THERE'S A THING!" did crop up here and here) was great fun. The Combat system was ass, and there wasn't enough actual assassinations

This. The whole climbing mechanic had an annoying flaw related to how relative movement is dependant on the camera. You know how in most 3D games, when you keep pressing forward and the camera rotates, the character keeps running in the same direction you were pressing? Well, I don't know what they did to such a common feature nowadays, but in this game it's not uncommon to press up and right (from analog stick rest position and with the camera perfectly centered on his back!) to reach one ledge, just to see Altair DESCENDING.

And the combat = mashing the square button, then mashing R1+square some more. Countergrabs are useless because they'll get you while you were pressing square and there's no way to cancel out of a move. Kind of like Project Altered Beast, but in PAB the combat had some hints of satisfaction with limbs flying around and all that jazz. AC's combat AI takes turns one by one, and yet it fails to put up a good fight. Can't count the times either where I tried to finish off a fallen baddie with the dagger and Altair autotargeted another guy, resulting in zero kills and a push back.

[Pheonix Gamma]

Type is as one big word to make it funny.

[Duckboy]

you just posted this review for that luigi picture

[SefirothDB]

shit DB caught me

[DarthFettDude607]

Lol, that Luigi pic is funny.

I've been wanting to play this game for sometime. The combat looks deep and awesome just like how it is in the PoP(Prince of Persia) series. And all those acrobatic move off of high places looks awesome. I really don't care how repetitive the game may be because Crackdown was very repetitive and I think it was a cool game as well.

If the repetition doesn't kill you, the completely wonky control scheme will. What Red said about needing more Hitman is quite true as well. It almost feels like they were aiming for a sandbox-ish game, but fell short when they realized an authentic sandbox game requires more than time trial missions and ubiquitous castles.

On that same train of thought, Blood Money is such a fantastic game.

[Guest Shadix]

Ehh, I thought it was pretty fun. The repeated quests kindof reminded me of those old school action\adventure PSX platformer games. No less tedious, just a bit nostalgic.

I dunno, the controls were so smooth and satisfying I was able to stomach doing the same thing over and over again just for kicks.

[DimensionWarped]

Too smooth. Smooth like someone smeared butter all over the ground and poured grease on your weapons.

[Andrew]

What's this here thread I've stumbled on with many bad jokes and people who think theyre funny?

[Khorney]

i really couldn't be bothered to read all of that, but from skimming i see you brought up most of the general quibbles people had with the game. i found you had to approach the game in a particular way to enjoy it. if you went through thinking, ok now i need to do this and this and this to get to the next thing so i can do the next assassination etc... then the missions and stuff do drag on a bit. however, for my first play through i made sure i went through and explored everything, and did every mission, and it was loads of fun. even better on the 360, as there are achievements which give you extra objectives. i will admit i haven't gone back to find all the sodding flags, but without a guide its an exercise in futility, and using one defeats the entire point of enjoying it in your own time.

so kinda what i'm saying in an extremely drawn out manner is the game is only what you make of it, like the combat, sure you can sit there and reverse everyone and win in 5 seconds, but it's more fun to mix it up a bit using all of your moves, perhaps not killing all the guards, breaking off mid-fight then letting them chase you, or try to fight using only your hidden blade, stuff like that. also playing with everything on the HUD apart from the minim map (since you need that to get anywhere) disabled makes it much more immersive and prettier, since you get a visual cue when your life is low anyway

[DimensionWarped]

Khorney, if you don't learn to capitalize the words "I" and "I'm", and the first word of every sentence, I'm going to get very angry and sentence you to a weekend in the tiger pit.

[DarthFettDude607]

What's this here thread I've stumbled on with many bad jokes and people who think theyre funny?

Oh Andy, you're just too obvious! :-*

If someone else had written them, they'd all be hilarious.

[ila]

See the funny thing is how Sefy here is stating his entire review as dead facts. I'm just reviewing your review, and trying to inform people of why its boring and not worth the time to read.

[jumpbutton]

You're assassinating his review.

...

All in all, I do however agree with the general opinion that running on things and jumping on things can only be fun for so long if you're not mixing it up. And throwing in the same mission with new characters repeatedly with some fancy sci-fi bullshit does not make it any better. In a sense, Assassin's Creed is a platformer thrown through a wood chipper with an attempt at intelligent writing penned onto it in one swift strike on the remains as they flew through the air after shooting from the back of the chipper.