Zero Punctuation: Assassin's Creed Origins

sageoftruth

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I knew Yahtzee would tear this one apart, but I was pretty surprised when he talked about scrapping the old combat system like it was a bad thing. That's pretty scathing when he considers the old combat system is considered to be the more skill-based one between the two. Ouch!
 

sXeth

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sageoftruth said:
I knew Yahtzee would tear this one apart, but I was pretty surprised when he talked about scrapping the old combat system like it was a bad thing. That's pretty scathing when he considers the old combat system is considered to be the more skill-based one between the two. Ouch!
You can do the counter thing anyway, though its not instantly lethal (level varying of course) and doesn't have the blatant prompt.

The two main downfalls in Origins combat are that Bayek has no real limitation like a stamina bar or anything. So you can dodge around a guy forever pecking him in the side with light attacks (until your combo meter fills up and you just use the super murder attack moves) or spam charged heavy attacks to break his guard constantly. The latter is that every enemy in the game seems to have ranged attacks so if you get in any kind of fight with more then 3 guys you just get arrow/spear spammed to death.

There's also those scattered abilities that kind of break the game. The first node on the melee tree gives you health regen in combat, which undermines the system a lot. And its the first node, so you can't even skip around it to avoid that. A later (but optional node) causes you to start every fight with a full combo meter, so you start off with an attack thats often a one-hit kill, or flurry of unblockable hits.

The side quests would be less of an issue if they had much to offer. Occasionally you get one with some depth, but they're fairly scattered. Most of them send you to retrieve thing or retrieve person or kill person in an existing enemy stronghold that you could go in and do open-world objectives (kill leader, loot treasures) anyway. Layered on top of that issue is that despite the giant ass map, they somehow end up reusing several of the locations for multiple side quests.

The loot boxes are there, and the buyable crafting stuff, but its kind of unobtrusive. Not great, but you'd have to be pretty desperate to go there. It takes maybe 3 hours to max out all the crafted upgrades normally by farming them up. Most of my better legendary stuff was quest rewards that I assume are non-random since they reference the quest they were acquired on.
 

Erttheking

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A lot of AAA games really did lose their soul over the past couple of years.
 

Jacked Assassin

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For a moment I wanted Assassin's Creed: Origins because I saw animal masks. But then I remembered this is Ubisoft. And that Assassin's Creed started turning into manure when Ubisoft made AC3.
erttheking said:
A lot of AAA games really did lose their soul over the past couple of years.
In the case of Elder Scrolls Online, you win your soul back. But since Bethesda & Zenimax don't know what value your soul should have they instead try to find a way to charge $150 or more a month in microtransactions.

Sure most of the said purchases are "cosmetic" but why would you even buy the such a game if you weren't into cosmetics? Surely if such a person only plays a game for the challenge they would be settling for graphics as dull as Tetris.
 

darkrage6

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Canadamus Prime said:
Another fine example of why AAA gaming sucks.
I think a lot of AAA games are pretty good, but this franchise ain't one of em. I hated AC from the beginning, if there's one gaming series I could totally erase for good, it would be this one, the games are all boring as fuck.
 

Canadamus Prime

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darkrage6 said:
Canadamus Prime said:
Another fine example of why AAA gaming sucks.
I think a lot of AAA games are pretty good, but this franchise ain't one of em. I hated AC from the beginning, if there's one gaming series I could totally erase for good, it would be this one, the games are all boring as fuck.
If it comes from any of the major Publishers, it sucks.
 

Darth_Payn

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This was less about the game itself and about AAA game development as a whole. Could have been an Extra Punctuation column.
HazardousCube said:
I really hope he critiques South Park: The Fractured but Whole next.
One of these days, he should retro-review Assassin's Creed: Rogue. More of the ship-to-ship combat from Black Flag that he liked.
 

mysecondlife

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Darth_Payn said:
This was less about the game itself and about AAA game development as a whole. Could have been an Extra Punctuation column.
HazardousCube said:
I really hope he critiques South Park: The Fractured but Whole next.
One of these days, he should retro-review Assassin's Creed: Rogue. More of the ship-to-ship combat from Black Flag that he liked.
Can't say I blame the guy.. I have the luxury of not giving a crap about crappy games. He , on the other hand, plays it because its his livelihood. I'd be exhausted to play games with microtransaction after another.
 

Leguma

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Thank you Yahtzee , there are my exact feeling on the Gaming Industry ! Creativity has gone to shit all in the name of Money ! I have no game to play cause they are all Unfun Time sinks ! -_- Hopefully Cyberpunk will be at least decent ! ....
 

Cid Silverwing

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I was right to quit the series around Brotherhood. Already then it was getting repetitive as fuck with the Italians and collect-a-thon bullshit.
 

Onliuge

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Hey Yahtz, you know how you renamed the 'Modern Shooter' to Spunkgargleweewee? Let's rename what these shit AAA games thinks is a 'sandbox' into Elementary playground shit-pit.
 

sageoftruth

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Seth Carter said:
sageoftruth said:
I knew Yahtzee would tear this one apart, but I was pretty surprised when he talked about scrapping the old combat system like it was a bad thing. That's pretty scathing when he considers the old combat system is considered to be the more skill-based one between the two. Ouch!
You can do the counter thing anyway, though its not instantly lethal (level varying of course) and doesn't have the blatant prompt.

The two main downfalls in Origins combat are that Bayek has no real limitation like a stamina bar or anything. So you can dodge around a guy forever pecking him in the side with light attacks (until your combo meter fills up and you just use the super murder attack moves) or spam charged heavy attacks to break his guard constantly. The latter is that every enemy in the game seems to have ranged attacks so if you get in any kind of fight with more then 3 guys you just get arrow/spear spammed to death.

There's also those scattered abilities that kind of break the game. The first node on the melee tree gives you health regen in combat, which undermines the system a lot. And its the first node, so you can't even skip around it to avoid that. A later (but optional node) causes you to start every fight with a full combo meter, so you start off with an attack thats often a one-hit kill, or flurry of unblockable hits.

The side quests would be less of an issue if they had much to offer. Occasionally you get one with some depth, but they're fairly scattered. Most of them send you to retrieve thing or retrieve person or kill person in an existing enemy stronghold that you could go in and do open-world objectives (kill leader, loot treasures) anyway. Layered on top of that issue is that despite the giant ass map, they somehow end up reusing several of the locations for multiple side quests.

The loot boxes are there, and the buyable crafting stuff, but its kind of unobtrusive. Not great, but you'd have to be pretty desperate to go there. It takes maybe 3 hours to max out all the crafted upgrades normally by farming them up. Most of my better legendary stuff was quest rewards that I assume are non-random since they reference the quest they were acquired on.
Wow. Very informative. Thanks.
 

NerfedFalcon

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Mar 23, 2011
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My sister still buys these games and enjoys them all. The last one I played was Syndicate, and I didn't play it for that long until I picked up something else instead. Then again, I did that with The Witcher 3 as well, so I guess I just have a short attention span.

At least I probably don't have to put any of that attention span into this, unless my sister gets it for me for Christmas, in which case I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I mean, I nearly 100%ed Black Flag, after all.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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leet_x1337 said:
At least I probably don't have to put any of that attention span into this, unless my sister gets it for me for Christmas, in which case I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I mean, I nearly 100%ed Black Flag, after all.
Black Flag was genuinely good though. Sure, the combat sucked, but it didn't matter much because the presentation was spot-on. It really felt like you were playing as a pirate. And even the whole collectatron thing that Ubisoft does made more sense in Black Flag. The way you unlocked upgrades for your ship, for instance. That was well done, ship battles were amazing and taking over forts never got old for me for some reason.