Assassin's Creed. The first thing they did when making the second game was to remove the one thing I truly liked about the series. Honestly, I can't even say I like the series at all. Just the first game. You know, the one where you ASSASSINATE PEOPLE.
But no, now they have to have sections where it specifically only allows you to use mellee weapons because they broke their own fucking games by giving you throwing knives, arrows, guns, poison darts, throwing axes, bombs, bombs and more mother fucking bombs, almost all of which is instant kill. I mean, come on, who played the first game and thought that throwing knives was their favorite part? I mean, sure the combat was interesting, but they seem to be missing the entire point of their own god damned games.
I remember every single assassination target of the first game because each of them was in interesting, dynamic person who does thing for reasons, to the point that when one of them turned out to really be doing what they did just for the hell of it, the character (and I) was (were) shocked. Because it was unusual.
But by now the "villains" are just caracatures of disney characters who run around hurting and killing people FOR THE EVULZ and the main character, a mother fucking assassin, doesn't kill main characters ON FUCKING SCREEN. No, because having Ezio, the -assassin-, just fucking kill Cesare would make us uncomfortable so they have to go the fucking disney G-rated route and have him dropped off a ledge so you don't have to see him die. In a game where you can indiscriminately massacre hundreds of people for no fucking reason.
Ugh.[/vent]
Anyway, the series is trying too hard to be an actiony conspiracy intrigue story, when the best part of the original was the meticulous assinations of real, rounded, sympathetic human beings along with the implication that the main character is not tramping about on a moral high-ground. The characters were always quick to point out, when Altair would get preachy about rights and justice, that he himself is an unrepentant murderer who kills people because his master told him too, and it gave a well-welcomed releif from the constant bombardment of games filled to the brim with self-righteousness-- the view point that killing people is justified by the slightest of convenience-- the kind of game where it ends with a super-powered marine throttling an old man to death because he wasn't on the 'Merican side, and then cutting to a bunch of jets doing a fly-by of a naval fleet while rock music blasts and you're apparently supposed to be all "FUCK YEAH, AMERICA!" but in reality you feel dirty because of how blindingly fucked up the mindset behind such things is.
And ALL OF THAT was the first to go when they made the sequel. I don't even know why I keep playing them. I just don't enjoy them anymore.
