8 Great Ubisoft Games That Prove That They Aren't All That Bad

DrStrangelove

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8 Great Ubisoft Games That Prove That They Aren't All That Bad

There's been quite a bit of Ubisoft hate going around lately. They aren't that bad, as a matter of fact they've produced a veritable plethora of great games. Today we go back and focus on those games that were fun to play, and helped change the face of gaming.

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Jaeger_CDN

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I wouldn't say the hate is with respect to the games they've developed/published more the questionable decisions they've made with DRM and DLC over the years. Lately they've added shoving a game out the door before it's fully ready (day 1 patches be damned) but what AAA publisher hasn't been guilty of that in the past 5 years.

Although they may deserve some of the hate for some of the shovelware they cranked out for the Wii
 

2xDouble

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Yes, I too enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Wind Waker and Super Mario Schaefer.

Ubisoft, like any entertainment company, has the unenviable responsibility to both please and rip off its customers like a housekeeper in a sitcom trying to do serious drama. Sometimes they skew towards the former, and we love them. Sometimes they skew towards the latter, and they love us. There will never be perfect balance and we all, both sides, must accept that. So long as the balance is maintained, we have little to worry about.

UPlay, however, can sod off.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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What? No Just Dance 2015?!

No Raving Rabbids: attack of the mini game poppycockery?!

...i am disappointed, Escapist overlords!

Captcha: grain of salt. Im calm, captcha! See! Perfectly fcking calm.
 

Grabehn

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Well this is one funny list if I've ever seen one, "past games" don't cahnge anything about how the "company" is now, not the game, but the company itself, Black Flag is praised by how it changed stuff around to make AC "appealing" to some people again, and FarCry 3 is a game that I just fucking love.

But that's the game's not the company, the one big problem I have with Ubi's "representatives" is that the WON'T SHUT UP! I doubt is that hard for someone to think a bit and say "Let's shut the fuck up and make games", without dumbass claims that they're going to "do this or that" or be the freaking face of "next-gen" with "amazing graphics" there wouldn't be such an outrage against them.
 

Trishbot

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The fact that we don't have Beyond Good & Evil 2 yet (or a follow-up to 2008's Prince of Persia and its enormous cliffhanger) is proof enough that, yes, at one point they were pretty good... but lately, they've been pretty awful.

... Child of Light is pretty good though.
 

Flammablezeus

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Far Cry 3 and Black Flag? Really? No Far Cry 2? Not the best list when two of the games are two of the most watered down games (compared to previous games in their series') and you leave out the one game that actually tried to push the envelope more than the vast majority of games.

Then again, it is a "top _" list on the Escapist, so I shouldn't be surprised.
 

SonicKoala

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Sep 8, 2009
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2xDouble said:
Yes, I too enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Wind Waker and Super Mario Schaefer.

Ubisoft, like any entertainment company, has the unenviable responsibility to both please and rip off its customers like a housekeeper in a sitcom trying to do serious drama. Sometimes they skew towards the former, and we love them. Sometimes they skew towards the latter, and they love us. There will never be perfect balance and we all, both sides, must accept that. So long as the balance is maintained, we have little to worry about.

UPlay, however, can sod off.
Why should we accept a company ripping off the consumer? That's not the "responsibility" of a company, that's a choice made by the people who run the company. If they exhibit this kind of blatant, anti-consumer behaviour, we shouldn't respond by saying "oh well, you guys didn't used to suck so much, so I guess it's not all bad", we should respond by getting pissed and not buying anything they put out.
 

Metalrocks

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sure, these games are fun and worked well on pc. even when i have never played rayman and good beyond evil. but this list doenst proof anything of how bad the company is today. the games are fun they do but now they focus too much on finance that they rush games out the door before it could brush its teeth and we end up with bad optimizations. i think unity would be the best example now. hell, even watch dogs (and i actually really enjoy this game) is fun but these constant freezing i have, is unacceptable.
 

Avaholic03

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From Dust was a god-awful (no pun intended) port on the PC, which is pretty much par for the course from Ubisoft. It was actually that game which was the final straw for me no longer buying Ubisoft games (requiring Uplay despite buying on steam, terrible controls that were obviously designed for gamepads, etc.). Claiming that over 90% of PC gamers pirate their games [http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/22/ubisoft-pc-has-piracy-rate-of-93-95-f2p-the-future], they never give PC games the attention they deserve. Fuck 'em.
 

PunkRex

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I get that you didn't mention the new ones because you included the original Rayman but comparing the two is like comparing a Hyracotherium to a modern day stallion, the new one is this incredibly beautiful, majestic animal while the old one's this clunky little thing, cute but kinda derpy.
 

Rebel_Raven

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It's not so much the games, but the decisions behind them. As much as I'd like to look fondly at the games past, it's "what have you done for me lately," and lately, as in FC4, and ACU, and AC Rogue, they ain't done shit for me lately. Oh, and hiding the 2.5d AC game in china behind dlc I don't care about.

"What have you done for me lately" is due to the fact that while they have made me pretty thrilled with AC: Liberation's remake, and Child of Light, they jut turned around and crapped on it. Dunno when they'll stop with these choices, so until they do stop, I'm not their biggest fan.
 

Elvis Starburst

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1-5 had me saying "Old game, old Ubisoft." It's not so much about the games in the past as it is their games and decisions now. I could point to pretty much every recent thing Ubisoft has said that's dumped them in hot water time and again. They may make some good games, sure, but they do need to stop talking so much, and quit making so many damn excuses
 

2xDouble

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SonicKoala said:
2xDouble said:
Yes, I too enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Wind Waker and Super Mario Schaefer.

Ubisoft, like any entertainment company, has the unenviable responsibility to both please and rip off its customers like a housekeeper in a sitcom trying to do serious drama. Sometimes they skew towards the former, and we love them. Sometimes they skew towards the latter, and they love us. There will never be perfect balance and we all, both sides, must accept that. So long as the balance is maintained, we have little to worry about.

UPlay, however, can sod off.
Why should we accept a company ripping off the consumer? That's not the "responsibility" of a company, that's a choice made by the people who run the company. If they exhibit this kind of blatant, anti-consumer behaviour, we shouldn't respond by saying "oh well, you guys didn't used to suck so much, so I guess it's not all bad", we should respond by getting pissed and not buying anything they put out.
Name any business that doesn't make money from consumers. That includes charities and non-profit organizations, by the way... just because they don't keep the money/value doesn't mean they aren't getting money/value, does it? Are you seriously going to posit that companies be required to offer products and services that are worth more than what you're expected to pay for it? by all means, explain how losing money with every sale is a viable business strategy.

It is absolutely the responsibility of a company to squeeze as much value out of their products as possible. That includes exploiting its workers for "free" labor (if you've ever had a salary job... *shudder*), ripping off its consumers (ever heard of store markup? the "middle-man" so many adverts claim to "cut out" to "save you time and money"?), scamming its suppliers for the best prices possible (and who are, in turn, also ripping them off no matter what deals they offer), and making as many shortcuts and cheap substitutions as they can get away with in their product to reduce resource costs. Businesses call that "cost-effectiveness", and that's the only way to make money in a competitive environment. Funny thing is... you're doing it too. You're trying to get more value out of a company just as they are from you. The only difference is they're doing it on a much larger, more visible scale... and they're better at it.

This is not a question of ethics, it's an issue of capitalism. They're not going to stop trying to make money, and you're not going to stop demanding expensive products and services without paying more for it. The market is going to sway back and forth so long as these forces are in opposition. That is something all must accept. You should not, however, condone sways in the balance away from yourself, else equilibrium (which is mutually beneficial) cannot be achieved.

TL;DR: Read that last bit again.
 

NoX 9

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Jul 2, 2014
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My problems with Ubisoft is uPlay -which barely worked at first, and is still a terrible and annoying aditional layer between me and playing their games. Doesn't help that it STILL causes connection issues- and the sometimes incredibly poorly ported and optimized games they put out. That is not to say this is the ONLY company that does this, but these are the main reasons Ubisoft gets on my nerves. Why can't we just have Steam?! Steam works (most of the time...) and gives me enough benefits and ease of access that I am willing to live with it. uPlay does NOT.

Having a ton of fun with Far Cry 4 btw, that game works great on my system -runs at around 100FPS stable with highest settings-, but although I wanted to get into AC: U what I have heard from that games countless bugs and impossibly poor optimization I shouldn't go anywhere near it for the time being...

Ohw, and I won't buy the season passes, for the same reason I won't pre-order. I don't buy the content before I can see the content!
 

Mangod

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Feb 20, 2011
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Yeah, the original Rayman was a wonderful little game, I still have it for the PS1. But to quote Eddie Murphy:



None of these games change the fact that Ubisoft have fucked up, and fucked up badly with AC Unity. And their public statements-for the love of God, shut up! Everytime you open your mouths Ubisoft, you inevitably wind up even deeper in the shit than when you started!
 

Abomination

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Yes, Ubi is capable of producing some really stellar games. They're also capable of producing some corporate cashgrab bloat.

Their distribution service is superfluous and nothing more than a memory hog.

We know they can do better and so demand they do better.
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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I get the feeling that it's articles like this that caused Jim to leave The Escapist...

People aren't pissed at Ubi for having a horrendous track record, they're pissed at Ubi because lately Ubi's been pissing all over everyone's faces and telling them it's raining.

"Seriously, making a female protagonist for AC would take way too long and be way too expensive!"
-Two days later a former Ubi programmer comes out and says "Yeah, we could have knocked that out in a day before lunch."

"Seriously, 30 FPS is WAY better than 60 FPS!"
-That's just straight-up bullshit and everyone knows it.

"Seriously, we just want reviewers to have access to the full experience and the multiplayer wasn't ready until after launch!"
-Really? Sure you just didn't want people blowing the whistle on how your "Grand epic game that is at the forefront of innovation for the next generation of gaming" is a hilarious joke of a bug filled mess?

 

Zydrate

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I buy, play, and enjoy most Unisoft games. I just don't appreciate some of their decision making.
 

SonicKoala

The Night Zombie
Sep 8, 2009
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2xDouble said:
SonicKoala said:
2xDouble said:
Yes, I too enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Wind Waker and Super Mario Schaefer.

Ubisoft, like any entertainment company, has the unenviable responsibility to both please and rip off its customers like a housekeeper in a sitcom trying to do serious drama. Sometimes they skew towards the former, and we love them. Sometimes they skew towards the latter, and they love us. There will never be perfect balance and we all, both sides, must accept that. So long as the balance is maintained, we have little to worry about.

UPlay, however, can sod off.
Why should we accept a company ripping off the consumer? That's not the "responsibility" of a company, that's a choice made by the people who run the company. If they exhibit this kind of blatant, anti-consumer behaviour, we shouldn't respond by saying "oh well, you guys didn't used to suck so much, so I guess it's not all bad", we should respond by getting pissed and not buying anything they put out.
Name any business that doesn't make money from consumers. That includes charities and non-profit organizations, by the way... just because they don't keep the money/value doesn't mean they aren't getting money/value, does it? Are you seriously going to posit that companies be required to offer products and services that are worth more than what you're expected to pay for it? by all means, explain how losing money with every sale is a viable business strategy.

It is absolutely the responsibility of a company to squeeze as much value out of their products as possible. That includes exploiting its workers for "free" labor (if you've ever had a salary job... *shudder*), ripping off its consumers (ever heard of store markup? the "middle-man" so many adverts claim to "cut out" to "save you time and money"?), scamming its suppliers for the best prices possible (and who are, in turn, also ripping them off no matter what deals they offer), and making as many shortcuts and cheap substitutions as they can get away with in their product to reduce resource costs. Businesses call that "cost-effectiveness", and that's the only way to make money in a competitive environment. Funny thing is... you're doing it too. You're trying to get more value out of a company just as they are from you. The only difference is they're doing it on a much larger, more visible scale... and they're better at it.

This is not a question of ethics, it's an issue of capitalism. They're not going to stop trying to make money, and you're not going to stop demanding expensive products and services without paying more for it. The market is going to sway back and forth so long as these forces are in opposition. That is something all must accept. You should not, however, condone sways in the balance away from yourself, else equilibrium (which is mutually beneficial) cannot be achieved.

TL;DR: Read that last bit again.
Did I ever say that companies should offer their services at a loss? No, I didn't. I'm fully aware that the primary goal of most businesses is to generate a profit, and I'm completely fine with that, but offering up sub-par, unfinished products at full price is one of the worst possible ways to cut costs. Plenty of game developers are capable of producing quality products that actually work at launch - that's all I'm asking, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect as a video game consumer.

So, no, once again, there is no reason for me, or anybody else, to accept the kind of behaviour that Ubisoft is exhibiting. Yes, make a profit, that's fine, but the product upon which your company is dependent for those profits better be worth buying - that goes for any business. If that's not the case, then that business deserves to go under.