Okay, so maybe I don't hate the whole of Ubisoft but I do fucking hate the Assassin's Creed team.
"But Why?" you might ask, well a lot of this hate has arose out of the frustration I've had while playing through Assassin's Creed. This game makes me extremely angry, and here's why:
The game has a lot of opportunities to build an extremely interesting game but only scratches the surface.
I like being an Assassin. The parts of the game where you really become an assassin are where the game really shines. Trying to successfully assassinate someone while trying to avoid detections is done so well in this game. When I say trying to avoid detection I don't mean killing someone and hiding the body in the dark for no one to see it all quietly and such, I mean killing someone in broad daylight in a busy shop district and running through a series of obstacles leaving the scene of the crime. I always hated the slow pace of most stealth games; having to wait for a target to come to a safe distance from you to kill them, having to find a safe spot to hide the body. Fuck that, I want to take someone out in the thick of the madness and get out of the open streets undetected, you know, something that really gets my adrenaline running.
I feel like Assassin's Creed really does this well in the assassination missions. The real problem I have here is that these missions and the ones leading to the assassinations themselves are super repetitive. I realize saying this isn't an original critique to the game, but it's true. The first few assassinations you do are great and well designed, I wont question that. The problem is that they rehash the same mission EVERY SINGLE TIME. Nearly everything you do is the same; to the way the sequences in the missions play out, to the mission's objective themselves. You walk into a new town and talk to the dispatcher at the Bureau, he tells you that need more info on the target, you scout the area for missions and do them.
The Assassin's Creed team has this weird problem where they fall into routine, its like going to school or doing office work. You know, when you get so used to doing the same shit over and over that your work begins to look the same all across the board. Assassin's Creed feels like that to me. I've noticed the same problem with the Prince of Persia game that came out recently.
What pisses me off about this is that there seems to be so much potential in this IP; relatively interesting story with limitless potential for new worlds to explore, it has an interesting twist on the stealth genre, characters that are compelling (I fucking hate that word) enough to follow. but as it stands they're just scratching the surface of what they can be doing.
Another thing that keeps me frustrated is the game's ability to consistently keep the player annoyed. In combat people will throw you around. It doesn't really do any damage, it doesn't really effect you much at all. All it does is break up the flow of combat. It creates this overwhelming nagging feeling when in a fight. Also, why the fuck is there a need to have beggars and drunks who throw you around? It hardly makes things challenging. Its just another annoyance. This isn't creating difficulty for the player, its not challenging anyone, its just testing someone to see how tolerable they are to stupid bullshit. Its ridiculous, is this how they thought they were going to build a vibrant real world? How the fuck does this equate to a real world experience in any way?
I want to like this game a lot, something in AC compels me. I want to enjoy it but there is so much bullshit built up in this game that it really stops me from even remotely enjoying this game. I still can't understand for the life of me why people raved so much about Assassin's Creed. We shouldn't be supporting game design like this, we should encourage people to break out of these trends. And what makes it worse is that this game has a sequel, and I guarantee that no lessons we're learned, we're going to get the same old garbage and everyone is going to love it.
Fuck Ubisoft.
"But Why?" you might ask, well a lot of this hate has arose out of the frustration I've had while playing through Assassin's Creed. This game makes me extremely angry, and here's why:
The game has a lot of opportunities to build an extremely interesting game but only scratches the surface.
I like being an Assassin. The parts of the game where you really become an assassin are where the game really shines. Trying to successfully assassinate someone while trying to avoid detections is done so well in this game. When I say trying to avoid detection I don't mean killing someone and hiding the body in the dark for no one to see it all quietly and such, I mean killing someone in broad daylight in a busy shop district and running through a series of obstacles leaving the scene of the crime. I always hated the slow pace of most stealth games; having to wait for a target to come to a safe distance from you to kill them, having to find a safe spot to hide the body. Fuck that, I want to take someone out in the thick of the madness and get out of the open streets undetected, you know, something that really gets my adrenaline running.
I feel like Assassin's Creed really does this well in the assassination missions. The real problem I have here is that these missions and the ones leading to the assassinations themselves are super repetitive. I realize saying this isn't an original critique to the game, but it's true. The first few assassinations you do are great and well designed, I wont question that. The problem is that they rehash the same mission EVERY SINGLE TIME. Nearly everything you do is the same; to the way the sequences in the missions play out, to the mission's objective themselves. You walk into a new town and talk to the dispatcher at the Bureau, he tells you that need more info on the target, you scout the area for missions and do them.
The Assassin's Creed team has this weird problem where they fall into routine, its like going to school or doing office work. You know, when you get so used to doing the same shit over and over that your work begins to look the same all across the board. Assassin's Creed feels like that to me. I've noticed the same problem with the Prince of Persia game that came out recently.
What pisses me off about this is that there seems to be so much potential in this IP; relatively interesting story with limitless potential for new worlds to explore, it has an interesting twist on the stealth genre, characters that are compelling (I fucking hate that word) enough to follow. but as it stands they're just scratching the surface of what they can be doing.
Another thing that keeps me frustrated is the game's ability to consistently keep the player annoyed. In combat people will throw you around. It doesn't really do any damage, it doesn't really effect you much at all. All it does is break up the flow of combat. It creates this overwhelming nagging feeling when in a fight. Also, why the fuck is there a need to have beggars and drunks who throw you around? It hardly makes things challenging. Its just another annoyance. This isn't creating difficulty for the player, its not challenging anyone, its just testing someone to see how tolerable they are to stupid bullshit. Its ridiculous, is this how they thought they were going to build a vibrant real world? How the fuck does this equate to a real world experience in any way?
I want to like this game a lot, something in AC compels me. I want to enjoy it but there is so much bullshit built up in this game that it really stops me from even remotely enjoying this game. I still can't understand for the life of me why people raved so much about Assassin's Creed. We shouldn't be supporting game design like this, we should encourage people to break out of these trends. And what makes it worse is that this game has a sequel, and I guarantee that no lessons we're learned, we're going to get the same old garbage and everyone is going to love it.
Fuck Ubisoft.
Posts
Yeah, I don't like it either.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete