I don't really see how the gameplay was 'god awful'.
Did the game feel rushed to me? Yes, considering they released a major patch last week that tried to fix a bunch of glitches and some of the chase sequences, which did tend to get annoying.
Aside from that, the gameplay's better than it has ever been IMO; it is certainly better than that of Brotherhood's, which was the peak of the series as far as gameplay is concerned. The game world is also much better than it has ever been.
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: Minerva stated that Desmond would be destroyed. Effectively, he's dead.. The ending kind of sucked, and I will say I was disappointed with the Desmond sequences in that there were too few of them, and only the Tower and Abstergo ones were any good. It was only in the Abstergo sequence that we got to see just how far Desmond had come along over the course of 5 games. Not much development to him as a character too, so in the end, he's really just a proxy for us as usual.
Yeah, Connor's not very interesting, especially when you stack him up against Haytham, or even Ezio, who are the best characters in the series by a mile now.
My only other gripes with the game would be:
a) The map unlocking aspect that pissed me off to no end.
b) The fact that they removed Free-roam with the Ship, and had only 6 main-story missions with the ship, 1 of which was a tutorial, and 4 of which were not part of the main sequences.
c) The economy system that while fairly interesting, had little to no relevance at all to the rest of the game world.
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
Last edited by Demonic Phoenix on Nov 30th, 2012 at 05:55 PM
Don't know what to say about that, I've had the exact opposite experience. Also going by the Leaderboards statistics, I've played and experienced more singleplayer content a lot more than you (unless you have played it on another account or a lot offline).
There's just so many of the little tweaks that simply ruined the gameplay for me:
If I am not mistaken, I remember that in previous AC games you had to gold RT+A in order to climb up buildings, in this game however they changed it to only RT. Which happens to be the same button as the sprint button (as it was in previous games), this simplification however really ruins the flow of the game. Now Connor might suddenly start climbing anything around him when all I intended was for him to run past the objects.
Eagle Vision is now activated by pressing in the left stick, however you must stand still to do so, what the hell is that? At least let me be able to do it while pitching the left stick back and forth (the controller still registers the click regardless of its orientation). Also Eagle Vision is now much more useless than before, why can we no longer see the path of guards on the ground for instance?
Weapon selection, still the same button, however now we are sent into more of a "menu screen" which takes a precious couple of seconds to enter and exit, unlike the good old popup menu from previous games.
No dedicated "horse button": Why the horse needed to be among one of our "items" i can't really understand, they could have easily tied it to one permanent button given how often you want to get a horse while also wanting something attached to the Y button.
Syncrhonization and "Drop Down" button is the same button...seriously? Being in the right spot for a synchronization, only for you to move slightly off the spot when pressing B might see Connor suiciding down from the treetop...
That's just the gameplay issues I have at the top of my head, when I remember more I can return to post them.
Also gotta disagree with that. THe frontier is artificially made large simply by removing proper fast travel capabilities. I like the nature and the graphics, however moving about the Frontier (read: the trees) isn't as fun as it should be. And Connor have made some very questionable moves when I attempt to make him jump to a branch easily within his reach.
Boston and New York however I don't really like, I questioned their decision in making the game take places in such young cities with really few large buildings, and I feel that it hurt the game (I applaud them for trying something new, but it didn't pay off imo).
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: At no point does she state that, all wording in that scene is very ambitious (which I think Ubisoft did intentionally so that they can cop out of their "This is Desmonds last game" ridiculousness).
Agree with all of that, more Desmond section would have been a good thing imo.
R1+X for me. But yes, that is how it was before. It was annoying at first for me, but I got used to it over time. I'm guessing they did it to make it easier and more streamlined. Now we don't need to hold down two buttons and push an analog stick in order to run at full speed. I guess you either hate it or love it.
Also, unless you point Connor/the analog stick towards said object, Connor will not climb it, he'll run past it.
Besides, in gameplay, Connor moves faster while free-running from ledges and pole-swings than Ezio did, so meh.
Eagle Vision was first remapped to the Left Stick in Revelations, not this game, and I'm pretty sure you had to stand still to activate it in Revelations as well.
In-verse explanation: Connor's Eagle Vision is not yet as refined as Ezio's Eagle Sense.
Real explanation: Dunno. Never really needed that aspect of Eagle Vision though, but I understand.
Yes, this annoyed me too. I do not know why they did this.
However, at least they let us access the Assassin Recruits Menu without having to go to a Pigeon Coop, and they expanded the Assassin Recruit abilities.
Annoyed me too, but I got used to it. I simply hot-keyed the Horse button to the down directional button, and the Bow to the left directional button. That way, if I wanted something that was nearer to the Horse button on the menu, I could switch to the Horse button, open up the menu, and spend less time scrolling to the desired item.
Don't really recall running into this problem. If you press the Drop Down button, Connor will drop and hang onto the ledge/branch that he was on. Were you holding down RT when you pressed the Drop Down button? That will cause Connor to automatically jump down from the ledge/branch/edge of the building and to the ground.
Lol, just yesterday I remembered another gripe I had with the game that I did not post, but I cannot recall what it was right now.
Either way, most of your annoyances are ones I've had, and at the end of the day, I've had to get used to most of them, so as to not let them ruin my experience of the game, which at the end of the day, is still a great game, though it's not at AC2 standards (in terms of overall experience).
The control scheme getting remapped was a change 'for the worse', given that they started this series off with a puppeteer concept for the control scheme, which was a nice touch. Then they altered it in Revelations, before completely removing it here. shitsux.
Even if there were more fast travel points, one could see that the Frontier is rather large, and apparently it's the largest map in an AC game. Besides, there's quite a variety in the landscape too.
Moving through the Frontier is far more interesting than moving through the two cities IMO. Not only are there more trees, which I like, but the friggin Horse cannot gallop inside the cities. I also don't have to worry about being spotted by rooftop snipers, and moving through the trees looks pretty awesome.
I understand where you are coming from with regards to NY & Boston, and I didn't like those cities as much as I did Florence or Rome or Venice. I did like the Frontier a lot though. The only problem was the map-unlocking bit.
It would have. Desmond's never been more than a proxy tool throughout the series. It was only in Revelations where we got to learn something about the guy, though it was tied to those First-person sequences which were thread-bare in terms of gameplay. It would have been nice for him to break out of that.
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
Before I continue my whining let me make it clear that I do like this game, I love the series as a whole and this game does keep me enertainted (for 30++ hours now, almost got 100% syncrhonization, just a few more feathers to go and the darned Encylcopedia). Ok with that out of the way, commence with the whining!
Yes I know it is to make it simpler, but I do not condone making things simpler if we loose a lot of the precise control. I cannot count how many times I want to run UP TO a wall, or run alongside a wall, for Connor to just start climbing like a moron. Perhaps he will make me loose a target I am hunting, prevent me from entering a hiding place or expose me when trying to remain in stealth. I have to use one button less, but I loose so much more. It also comes into play when you attempt to do tricky manouvers when climbing. All in all, I hate it.
I remember that, pretty sure I could move and enter it in Revelations though. However it doesbn't help AC3s case by comparing it to the second worst AC game...[/b][/quote]
They sacrificed sense to gain user friendlyness, don't know that I agree with that decision. How exactly does Connor communicate with his recuits? Are they all psychic? The pigeon coops at least made sense. Also, even though I love all the new Assassin Recruit abilities... I've ended up using them a lot less than in Brotherhood for some reason.
Yeah that didn't really do it for me, to keep the fighting more fun I constantly switch weapons (mid-fight even, Hidden-bladeify one guy->swordify another->disarm and kill with own weapon a third->shoot a fourth). I know this isn't a general argument, but that's the way I play the combat.
Ok I might have exaggerated a bit, I don't think he fell down that often (I sometimes double-tap B just to make sure I click Syncrhonize, which obviously would make him fall down).
Can't be larger than Rome.
The first one: You I read as "Humanity".
The second one: Yeah I didn't understand what she was talking about at that point, but I'm pretty sure if Ubisoft comes to its senses they can hand-wave that one away.
I desperately want a Desmond only game, as you might tell.
Some more annoyances:
The animals, why oh why are they so bloody aggressive? I thought this was made by Ubisoft Montreal, in Canada, a country where you might actually run into wolves and bears. I found this instant-attack nature of theirs to be really ridiculous.
****ings courrier, you know (or will soon) who I mean.
B-button (again) - having the B button be the main Action button for half of the game, and then also having it be the Cancel button for the other half of the game gets really annoying. Don't know how many extra loading screens I have witnessed due to that nonsense.
Loadingscreen - blinding white? Really?
Sure to be more to come up.
Positive note: I hardly played any Naval missions during my playthrough, but I must say I really enjoy them during this roundup play I am doing now. Port this out and make a standalone Pirategame with these mechanics and I am in.
Gender: Male Location: Stuck In the future where Akus evil
So I have had a theory that some historical figure was actually the villain...I mostly was leaning towards George Washington so I have to know from someone who beat it Is there a twist historical villain at the end and if so who is it?
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: No twist, although they start to portray the more as less black and white nearer the end. Making the Loyalists and Patriots seem more or less equally "in the right".
On the note of the feathers, the prize this time feels like less of a reward to me than the one in ACII. Maybe it's because it's just a costume change that has no bonuses or such. At least there are a fewer number of feathers this time around.
Again, really depends on where you are pointing the analog stick when you are sprinting next to a wall. You'd run into the same problem if you were sprinting after someone in the other games and pointed the analog stick towards the wall instead of forward/the direction you are supposed to be moving in. If it ever does happen to me, I'd press RT+Jump and point the analog stick in the direction I wanted to go.
The Thomas Hickey chase involves a fair number of alleyways and the only real problem I had with that challenge was that he was just as fast as Connor and didn't have to bother with avoiding people in order to complete a constraint.
In some ways, they new system's better. We no longer have to hold down a different button that slows us down, just to shove people out of the way, and Connor can now vault over low-height obstacles as opposed to jumping onto said object, and then jumping off.
Meh, I used to have more trouble with the fact that Connor's a good deal faster (in-game) than Ezio/Altaďr were when it came to free-running, even though he's likely slower in-canon due to his extra mass.
Recently replayed a bit of Revelations to check the Eagle Vision, and Ezio was slower when free-running.
Nope. It has the same activation requirements as that of ACIII.
I'm not comparing it to ACIII. Merely stating that ACIII wasn't the first game to implement the change, therefore putting the blame solely on ACIII isn't correct.
You really want to argue a certain aspect of this series based on how much sense it makes?
The Leap of Faith itself makes less 'sense' than how Connor sends his Assassin Recruits on their Contracts. The entire concept of Assassin recruits coming to their leader's aid makes little sense. Do they follow Ezio/Connor everywhere with an invisible cloak on, like the Horse? Where does Ezio put 15 bottles of Medicine, 12 bullets, 25 throwing Knives (when they only show room for like 10), 30 Crossbow bolts, 5 parachutes, 15 bombs, thousands of coins, and so on and so forth?
I rarely use their abilities as Connor is quite overpowered in combat, and situations requiring an undetected entry are minimal in number. It is easier to shred through a small squad of soldiers with Connor than it was with Ezio. Which is probably why they opted to remove Arrow Storm and Medicine.
Fair enough. I do not like switching close-combat weapons multiple times in the middle of a fight. Breaks up the flow.
Still, it is just a suggestion for spending as little time as possible in that menu.
You must have mashed B then. Double-tapping it while he is standing on an edge will not make him fall down, as the second B won't be buffered in afaik. Synchronization also takes priority over Drop Down; if you're not sure you are in the right place, wait for less than a second for the 'Synchronization' prompt to appear. If it does not, move.
It is. Whereas I do not think it is 50% bigger than Rome as the developers stated it would be, a large portion of Rome (the Antico & Campagna districts in particular) was just open space with interspersed buildings, as opposed to the Frontier, that has trees, rocks, and cliffs to traverse, along with towns, Valley Forge, and so on and so forth.
Indeed, they can retcon Desmond's death if they want to. However, as far as ACII itself is concerned, Desmond's dead as of now. Minerva & Juno confirm that he would be killed if he released Juno.
As do I. Would be fun to run around in a huge open-world urban environment with Desmond's free-running skills.
Animals - Only if you run up to them instead of stalk them, though wolves are fairly difficult to stalk as they typically travel in packs of more than 3, and all of them will try to attack you. It's just a series of QTE's anyway.
I've only run into one courier. Had more run-ins with Thieves.
Loading Screen - Looks better than the loading screen in II & Brotherhood. More akin to the one in the first game, which I liked.
Boring though, as all you can do in it is walk around/sprint.
They should have given us Free-roam with the ship. Even though I can see the pointlessness of such a mode, they apparently said Free-Roam would have been included.
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
Last edited by Demonic Phoenix on Dec 5th, 2012 at 07:17 PM
VGA 2012 trailer for Tyranny of George Washington.
Gotta say I like Ratonhnhaké:ton's design.
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
Gender: Male Location: Stuck In the future where Akus evil
Ooh interesting. I didn't know if this should be in spoilers or if it was common knowledge but to be safe [SPOILER - highlight to read]: I saw recently that the DLC is about George Washington's story. “As the revolution comes to a close, a new and most unexpected enemy emerges,” Ubisoft explains. “Driven by the desire to secure the fate of the colonies, the greatest hero of the revolution, George Washington, succumbs to the temptation of infinite power. The new King is born and his reign leaves no one untouched. To return freedom to the land our new hero must dethrone a tyrant he once called friend.”
There are hacks in the multiplayer of AC3? Or do you mean the pivots in single-player?
__________________
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
I don't think I've ever played a game that was simultaneously so impressive and disappointing before.
First the good - The world is much more interesting and varied than the prior AC games I've played (just 1 and 2). Running around in the wilderness feels like this game's homage to Skyrim, and it's a lot of fun and offers a nice break from the city atmosphere of Boston and New York.
There's also a ton of content. Almost an overwhelming amount of sidequests and collectibles. The best seem to be the homestead missions. They feel like this game's homage to Mass Effect, in how they're character based and offer character development among your friends living on the homestead. The naval missions are quite good, too.
The setting itself is pretty interesting, though it does have a bit of a Forrest Gump feel to it, as Conner basically just happens to be wherever an important historical battle/event is taking place.
Now the bad. This series is in dire need of a total gameplay revamp. A series of this magnitude, with the budget it has, should not be as clunky as it is. The combat hasn't really improved at all, and seeing as we're in a time where Arkham City has come out and basically perfected this style of combat it just feels stubborn for Assassin's Creed to not adapt and, frankly, copy the parts that Arkham City did better.
Also the stealth aspect is just a joke. Relying almost solely on automatic contextual animations is just not acceptable in this age. Why not have an actual duck/stealth button like every other competent stealth game? The enemy AI doesn't help. At times they're complete idiots, and other times they will see you while their backs are turned. Not acceptable. And since this game sells itself as a stealth game, it's a big blemish.
Desmond sucks. He's just not interesting, and neither is his setting. To be honest I've never been a fan of the whole modern day shit in this series. Feels shoehorned and pointless. Why put effort into making an interesting and historic setting if you're just going to pull me out of it every few missions and force me to play in a much less interesting setting. Also, apparently crazy shit has happened since I last played, as there is some weird Sci Fi stuff going on that just feels ridiculous and laughable. A lazy attempt to make the events going on feel globally important. Not necessary.
Conner's story was passable, though this series has never had great story telling/characters so it's not a shock that aspect isn't top of the line, here.
It was strange how it basically took 5 sequences for the actual game to start, as well. Dunno what they were thinking, but a game taking about 7 hours to really get going is just disrespectful to the player.
Overall, solid game, though deeply flawed, like the whole series. Gets points because there's a lot to do.
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Nov 30th, 2012 04:48 PM
