Assassin's Creed Revelations

Alright, so WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE? You know it takes just one bad apple, or one bad bite of an apple to really make you appreciate what you got before.

To be clear, Assassin's Creed Revelations isn't a total failure. It's not even that bad a game. It has all the hallmarks of an Assassin's Creed title; animus, parkour, assassinations, action, weapons, an even deeper brotherhood mechanic, bombs even, and a brand new city and environment to explore! All the things I would expect, all, but one. Story telling.

Playing the first few minutes of ACII, AC Brotherhood, and even ACIII demonstrates a completely distinct flare for narrative. Characters and dialog feel natural, appropriate for both period and locale. Reflecting back on it, you feel as though someone took time, care, and love for their script. However, playing through Revelations feels like watching someone stumbling through their first playscript. Ezio's dialog feels stilted and disjoint, Yusuf is merely a teaching mechanic, every bad guy is just cardboard cut-out, and Altair is just cruel-caricature of the man I remember leaving behind in the original Assassin's Creed.

I feel the narrative quality is so poor that I sometimes wonder if I am playing a proper AAA instalment of the series. Then a quick reminder that I am running through entirely new assets, custom maps, and new mechanics reminds me that Ubisoft did invest a lot into this vehicle. I cannot understate the severity, the impact, the detrimental effect that poor writing has on an otherwise well designed and implemented game.

I find this all very odd considering a recent article on Ubisoft's Alice.

Looking forward to wrapping this one up quickly and moving back on to ACIII

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

So, as perviously mentioned, totally had to go back and play through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Not only did I feel as though I had missed some major plot points, but I also had heard it was a very good single player experience. Of course, I have to say I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed and its promising premise, and thoroughly enjoyed Assassin's Creed II, so this wasn't a particularly difficult sell.

First and foremost, Brotherhood is a worthy successor to ACII. They took a lot of what they learned there (great story telling, well paced incremental learning curve, city renovations, etc) and improved (flag maps, feather maps, additional side quests, and of course the titular brotherhood mechanic).

Yeah, great title, great experience.

Har, my only complaint is that some of its achievements are multiplayer-exclusive, a very difficult feat to obtain them when there are so few people left playing. Meh. I suppose that's what happens when you're late to the party!

Dead Space 3

Dead Space: quite possibly one of the best new IPs from 2008. Was a dark, brooding, malevolent master-piece. Was so singularly successful in its execution that it has garnered immediate buy-in for anything that follows. Dead Space Ignition, Dead Space 2, and yes, even the somewhat deviant Dead Space 3.

Deviant because they are straying further from their horror-genre roots, against "expectations". To be honest, that is not necessarily a bad thing since you can only beat that shtick so many times.

I really enjoyed playing the game, blasting necromorphs in a more action-oriented mode. Weapon crafting is deep, and allows a lot of variance and encourages experimentation. The story made sense, and revealing ever so little more about the Marker artifacts, culminating in a final epic confrontation that is worthy of a third "trilogy" instalment. Of course, cannot go on without mentioning co-op, and the joy of sharing the experience with someone you know.

As for its misses, my personal gripes are relatively few; I think the first is that no one (other than Carver) seems to be affected by the Marker even though you are smack dab in the middle of a Marker world! I mean, Isaac sure, this is all old-hat for him so get that he has his shit together. Ellie, well .. ok she survived Titan station, but everyone else was fair game. Crazy is always fun! So I think that was a missed opportunity. The second lesser gripe is that optional content got fairly repetitive quick. The main campaign featured a lot of original set pieces and a changing environment that kept things fresh, but slogging through the optional quests actually got a little mindless and confusing. I do have one fun anecdote about this though: I was playing co-op with a friend who never played a Dead Space title before, this was his first. He was playing Carver, and we had a shit-tonne of fun playing through his side story. No spoilers, definitely worth a playthrough!

So yeah, not that bad all-told. A lot of what other people are rambling on about, like micro-transactions and such, I don't really find that big a deal. I did splurge on the resource-bot DLC, but was completely unnecessary. There is little to no struggle through the game for additional resources, and I found the option less intrusive than some. I concede on the "fourth-wall" argument, but [shrug] it's a game. Though I suppose that says it all.

Overall, enjoyed it - even as a Dead Space fanboy. Very curious to see where the IP goes from here.

Assassin's Problem

So, played through Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II when those games launched a few years back. To be honest, the spat of games that then followed (Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Revelations) I thought I could pass by.

Boy was I surprised when starting up Assassin's Creed III that I have missed some obvious plot points. Whoa, where'd that Piece of Eden come from? John de Lancie is who?!

So back to the animus; grabbed Brotherhood and Revelations as digital downloads and playing through those.

Up to this point, the first three sequences of ACIII are a blast, Brotherhood was a good romp, but Revelations seems to lack that AC narrative flare ...