zwolanerd

I am completely invested in the Assassin-Templar war. I’m on it, I dig it, and I don’t much care that it most likely won’t ever end. I’m signed on for the whole Animus thing and digging into memories, and I even don’t mind the “hey, we figured out how to relive memories of people you aren’t related to!” explanation. I like running around recreations of old cities and leaping from 50 feet in the air to stab a dirty rotten Templar right through his dirty rotten Templar head. I’m all in, I am predisposed to liking your next game, I want to like your next game.

So why you gotta make it so hard to do that?

First the good stuff:

• The game is beautiful. Revolution-era Paris is teeming with angry people who live in a vibrant, active city.
• There are plenty of opportunities to stab jerks and Templars (Not all jerks are Templars, though I’m pretty sure all Templars are jerks)
• You can play in groups with your friends (I assume. I mean, it’s all there waiting to be tried, but I don’t have friends who are playing, I guess?)
• No more dealing with Desmond.

It’s more of the same, which is pretty much what I want out of a sequel. But there are things, things that irritate me and make it difficult for me to like the game (let alone love it):

• Too many people! Yes, it’s super neat that there can be crowds all over Paris, it’s very impressive. You know what’s not impressive? Trying to run through wall-to-wall crowds. Yes, I’m aware that I could run on rooftops, but
• The buildings aren’t close enough together for long runs, and there’s too much stuff on the roofs (rooves?) to make it a smooth experience anyway.
• Something is different with the melee fighting and it stinks. Used to be if I was surrounded by 10 enemies I’d be all “Tally-ho!” and make short work of them. Now if there’s three I’m pretty much dead. A lot of that is because there are more guns now, and I don’t have a good way of getting a guy who’s three stories up and sniping me while I’m trying to deal with two other jerks hacking at me with swords or pikes or hammers. “Go around and get all those rooftop guys first!” you say? Lovely plan, except you don’t necessarily know when you’re going to draw the ire of the groundjerks, so you wouldn’t know which roofjerks to have offed ahead of time.
• You can run through houses and buildings as of a couple games ago, but it’s expanded even more in this one. But once you’re inside the camera gets crazy, and the camera isn’t great even when you’re outside. “Who is stabbing me?!?” I keep saying.
• The second-screen experience(s) are confusing. You can get the app and you can also go to the Initiates website. Both let you do different things, but they boil down to “send members of your Assassin team off to do things which will earn you stuff in the actual game.” I will admit that it’s very cool to see an overall map of Paris on your phone with an icon of Arno in the game moving in real time, but “neat” and “useful” aren’t necessarily the same thing. Plus, the website isn’t actually functioning yet, so who knows what’s going on over there? These things could be enhancing my enjoyment of the game, but it’s doing more to frustrate me than anything. I go up to a chest marked on my map in the actual game and try to open it, only to be told “Do [insert ridiculous quest] in the app to open this chest in the game!” and I’m starting to think the game was made by Templars.
• There are lots things to collect (which is good, to me, anyway), but the map is very, very cluttered (which bad). You can filter the map by certain things (good), but sometimes the things you want to see at the same time are on two different filters (bad). All this and no frogurt (cursed or otherwise).

I’m still planning to play all the way through, assuming the glitches don’t get bad enough to prevent that, but I just wish I was enjoying it more.

Tags: Assassin's Creed

Written by: Mark