Assassin's Creed is Officially Running on Fumes

Darth_Payn

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But, Yahtzee, did you play Rogue if you're using screenshot from that game? That's the one that had more of the high-seas adventure you were looking for.
But among an otherwise aimless column, I found some constructive advice for Ubisoft: remember what made the concept of Assassin's Creed great and focus on sticking to that.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Thanatos2k said:
The last Assassin's Creed with actual Assassin's Creedy gameplay that I appreciated was number 2
What a coincidence, this is also the last Assassin's Creed game that I think is good, since it was actually about assassinating people and not a sandbox collectathon with the story just being your character being Forrest Gump to history.

Even then I think Assassin's Creed 1 is the best game in the series, given it was actually about planning, executing, and escaping from assassinations, rather than following the minimap.
I will *third* this. Black Flag aside, I have always felt that ACII was the best of the games that used the traditional AC formula. It focused a little more on actual stealth and assassinating than the recent entries and I really enjoyed Ezio and his story. Also, they had those Assassin Tombs that were all puzzle-y parkour areas that reminded me of Prince of Persia that they decided to stop including in the franchise. My interest waned through Brotherhood and Revelations, and III just killed it for me. Played Black Flag since being a pirate is great, but nothing after that. The fact that I'm on PC now doesn't make matters more appealing either. I guess at this point I'd probably be more satisfied replaying ACII than anything that's going to be coming out from Ubi in the future.
 

someonehairy-ish

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I don't know anyone who still gets excited about AC releases. The only game to rise above meh since 2 was Black Flag, 'cos pirate ships.
I feel like they should strip back all the extra gadgets and take the setting back in time, maybe to ancient middle America. A Creed game set in the heart of a Mayan or Aztec civilization would at least get my attention. They also need to fill the setting with content besides meaningless grey sludge.
 

remnant_phoenix

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shrekfan246 said:
Gone Rampant said:
I guess I'm just too hooked on AC to get out, if only because I do like the Modern Day Arc and want to see how it ends.
Really?

Genuinely shocked here, because the chances are it's not going to end. If it was, it would've been with what they did in Assassin's Creed III. Or they would've at least provided some sort of actual follow-up to that, rather than saying, "Uh... well... I mean... EVERYTHING'S OKAY JUST SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THIS PASTICHE OF OURSELVES NOW FOR THE NEXT TEN GAMES!" I'm not sure how you could even say the modern day stuff has a narrative arc anymore.

I doubt that will get anything remotely approaching a satisfying conclusion even if Ubisoft surprises everyone and actually gives Assassin's Creed the axe.
Yeah... The ending of ACIII was probably as close to "closure" as we're ever going to get, and I don't know anyone who was following the Desmond story who felt truly satisfied by the ending of ACIII; it seemed more interested in setting up the hook of "Escaped evil Ancient! We're not done yet!" than giving the Desmond story a truly satisfying wrap-up.

The ACIV stuff wasn't bad, but it felt token compared to the Desmond arc, like it was just throwing a bone to those who cared about the present-day stuff. I stopped playing after IV, but I've heard that they're trying to get away from the present-day storyline as much as possible.
 

Yetisage

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Maybe it's cause I'm just a history junkie, and enjoy reading through the databases, but I'm on the the fence about the series still. I still enjoy it, but for me after AC:III I feel like they were starting to phone it in.
 

Therumancer

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AC as a series is fine, I don't think innovation for the sake of innovation is a good idea. Fans seem to be rather happy with the way the series has been going which is why people still line up to buy them. That said the current AC game did wind up majorly burning PC gamers who pre-ordered by going on sale for 40% off a few weeks after release via a STEAM sale. The theme of that sale was award winning games or something like that. I put up a complaint to STEAM about that one in their forums since I had just bought the game for full price, not that they seemed to care.

See, I'm one of those people who sits down and believes if something works there is no reason to fix it. I don't like how a lot of series like say "Mass Effect" morphed into something very different than what they started as despite claims that it's all the same thing. At least the AC series comes with a specific expectation of what kind of game it is and how it's going to play and be balanced and manages to fulfill that.

I personally would like to see Ubisoft experiment a bit, but that means launching new IPs to do it right, and their last attempt to change things up a bit "Watch Dogs" was a bit of a failure.

That said I will admit I haven't been a big AC fan until fairly recently, it was "Black Flag" that convinced me to give them a shot and I had a lot of fun with it. I went back and tried AC III and it was "meh", Unity was okay though as I liked the place and period. "Rogue" is okay but I haven't finished it yet, it seems to be trying to blend III and IV with mixed results that and I think it was trying a bit too hard with the whole "air rifle and grenade launcher" additions. "Syndicate" is okay, but the big problem I have with it is the whole way the game is leveled, I'm an RPG fan, but this isn't an RPG or action RPG series, gear in assassin's creed should not have a 'you must be this cool to equip' specification and the whole idea seems to be to force me to explore the city and clear things out in a specific order as opposed to being able to proceed in any direction I like. What's more the general mechanic of clearing viewpoints and then seeing everything that is around seems to be gone and largely replaced by "grind for money, or have your gang bring it in, and then buy a treasure map for each type of thing to be found" which to me seems to be a way of padding out the time things are supposed to take.

AC had a really buggy game that was decent once it worked in "Unity" and what feels like a mess to me in "Syndicate" which I haven't been playing that much. A couple of bad installments in a series like this isn't anything to get concerned about, especially seeing as AC's failures are arguably still more successful than the victories by a lot of the competition. Of course Ubisoft's business practices are still horrible, I mean letting STEAM put the game down for 40% off that quickly was low, and the sad thing is that they seemed to be screwing all of the loyal customers in the process of doing a victory lap over how well the game performed.

I'm really surprised there hasn't been more expressed outrage over that sale/price cut.