Zero Punctuation: Assassin's Creed Syndicate
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Yeah, I mean no-ones complained about the female enemies in mass effect or the various bioshock games who are sensibly dressed and treating just like male enemies. Its like, maybe there's something different between them and the other women in games who do get complained about. Up for a wager on how long it takes other people to notice?erttheking said:
Having played the entire trilogy a lot even recently, the only way I can see this is in regards to the camera and controls. Then again, I still come across plenty of games with cameras just as bad (if not worse) and controls that will still map two actions to the same button and let context decide things. So I can't really say it is outdated, just as frustrating then as it is now.Samtemdo8 said:
Did you ever play around with the sand powers? Did you try to figure out the acrobatic options available to The Prince and which enemies were vulnerable/immune to which ones? Then did you consider how plenty of fights as you got later on were designed to throw enemies at you that you couldn't spam against? If not, then this complaint is on you not paying attention.
Sure, the overall combat wasn't as good as Warrior Within or The Two Thrones (especially the former), but it was hardly awful either. If you want a game that really was repetitive and encouraged spamming, go play The Forgotten Sands. That is an example of how repetitive, "spammy", and boring combat can get!
Timing and puzzle solving aren't a skills?
Bear in mind also, the game wasn't going out to be an incredibly challenging game to beat. It even tells you that it doesn't want you to be concerned with beating it so much as paying attention to the characters. Speaking of which...
It wasn't supposed to be some elaborate plot, and every fan is aware of that. It was all about the relationship between The Prince and Farah. There was even a seen in the library where Farah broke the fourth wall to tell the player as much. This was, unfortunately, something the later games completely forgot about and many people seem to have missed.
Because they aren't remotely the same. "Press X to not die" is a reference to QTEs, which replace more substantive gameplay with a single button press. The rewind mechanic of The Sands of Time was designed to prevent you from having to constantly go back to checkpoints when you die. Unlike QTEs, it wasn't meant to replace substantive gameplay. It was a way to get you right back to the challenge that you could't overcome rather than constantly running through the same challenges over and over again to get to the one you failed to complete. It was also probably designed more to avoid breaking the flow of the story during difficult sections.Samtemdo8 said:Personally I am surprised people did not call out the time rewind mechanic as essentially "Press A to not die" I mean seriously people complain about games dumbing themselves down to appeal to a broder audiance and casuals and THIS game which was released years before this whole Dumb Down craze began gave us a litiral "Press A to not die" mechanic
Furthermore, it encouraged other things like exploration (you wanted to collect all the sands you could) and ran a slight risk-reward with how certain powers would drain your ability to rewind but would reduce the chance you had to rewind. There was a lot more going on than "Press X to not die".
That's because, as mentioned above, the story is about the characters and how they grow through the experience. It's impossible to have that unless the character has some flaw to work through, hence The Prince's childish, conceited nature throughout much of the game.
I've never gotten the complete repulsion to escort characters. Sure, there have been absolutely awful ones (the Zelda series is full of them), but I've felt that characters like Farah (and even more so Ashley from Resident Evil 4) showed how it can be done right. They're fragile enough to add challenge to the combat and make the player want to look out for them, but they also aren't so stupid or excessively fragile that their fate is outside the player's hands. I've never had Farah die on me in a way in which I couldn't learn from what I did wrong in keeping her alive. That's good challenge and makes the character more meaningful to the story/gameplay dynamic than if you just left them as a vending machine of good things to come (e.g. Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite).
And while her bow can't kill, it can come in handy for stunning enemies and drawing them away from you. You were probably helped a few times throughout the game and didn't even realize it. But of course they have to prevent making her a crutch. Otherwise, the game goes on autopilot, which is a completely new (arguably worse) problem.
And that's part of what Yahtzee was talking about in this video. The Sands of Time was an imaginative game that he believes contrasts Syndicate's lack of imagination.
But beyond that, just because you don't like The Sands of Time doesn't mean it's an awful game that blinds people with nostalgia. Do you really think people haven't been complaining about the camera, controls, combat, and story since day one? Those have been well-known complaints for a long time. Fans of the game (no doubt including Yahtzee) have been aware of these complaints for years. It's just that we've determined it either shows a lack of understanding or is just a subjective opinion we disagree with.
That isn't to say there aren't problems. I have my own problems with it, from the annoying camera to the slightly outdated controls (though not so bad I can't enjoy it anymore). It's just that with all the things it does so well (e.g. characters, platforming, puzzles), I just don't see those problems as significant.
Well the ending to this video makes me wonder if someone could replace all the enemies in Consuming Shadow with sideburns monsters and all the runes with "Cheeky british quotes #1-5". It would probably be a better Victorian London game than this one too.
Well it's always (or at least as far as I'm aware) has tried to have the world itself /feel/ historically accurate, anachronisms and templars vs assassins non withstanding, but having half the enemies be women feels really off.erttheking said:
OT: "Beliefs, sexual preferences and gender identities?" Fuck off, so what? People shouldn't be defined by their sexuality or gender, that's a horrendous attempt at pandering and inclusivity blaring. No one wants or needs this banner in front of a game, or at least I should fucking hope not. If you do, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Well, as someone who played SoT around it's release in 2003, I have to say I loved it from both presentation AND gameplay standpoint. Combat wasn't the best of both worlds (although it had it's moments, especially at the beginning), but parkour revitalized the entire 3D platforming genre (which was in shambles at that point after terrible Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness or even previous PoP game - 3D). Crisp, responsive controls, great camera work let you do your normal job properly, while time rewinding mechanic let creators go a bit crazy with additional stuff like wall running to jumping to wall bouncing, all with killer traps along the way. It was challenging without being frustrating, and the fact that they managed to marry the theme to it (in all aspects, not only setting but also inevitable gameplay moments like pretty amusing "Prince's bad memory" parts, during game over screens) put the cherry on top.Samtemdo8 said:
Would it hold up for me today? Probably not, because:
a) nostalgia is a *****, and after seeing a marathon of old Bond movies lately I know how big of a ***** it can be.
b) Today's games improved the concept and are now doing it better.
But that's the thing, isn't it? It was so good back in 2003, that it was seen as worth improving upon. I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't have not only Assassin's Creed series (which I always considered a spiritual successor to PoP gameplay-wise), but also latest Tomb Raider games, Uncharted or even things like Batman Arkham games, InFamous or Mirror's Edge if SoT mechanics didn't turn out to work so good. It's an important milestone in XXI century's gaming history, and it definitely deserved all the praise it got back in the day.
Ps - I'll agree with you though, I also think that Warrior Within was better. It improved platforming a bit and combat a lot, and I didn't mind the mood shift. It's a good thing though, sequel's SHOULD be better. If sequel is worse, then something definitely went wrong.
Ps 2 - It's funny that you mentioned ICO, because I have similar regards to it as you do with SoT. I played it years after the release (and only because it was bundled with Shadow of the Colossus), and I thought that gameplay was really underwhelming. I liked it anyway because of good world-building and touching story, but both puzzles and combat (if they were supposed to be good in the first place) definitely didn't stand the test of time.
If they want it to feel authentic then every famous person at the time shouldn't stop to have something important to do with the main character. "This person is the most important person in existance" is hardly what I'd call leading towards the historical accuracy. Not to mention quite a few entries that said "Historical person did X!" and then something to directly contradict that happens. If you want historical accuracy or to feel historically accurate I need a bit more about Leonardo Da Vanci than to show his flying machine and hint that he was doing his assistant in the ass. And I say that as someone who downright adored Da Vanci in II. Also I'm going to take a wild stab and say that these terms didn't make it into Syndicate.elvor0 said:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/53529/56-delightful-victorian-slang-terms-you-should-be-using
What they do is not so much historical accuracy or feeling historically accurate as it is creating what people generally THINK feels historically accurate.
Meh. Is a phrase like that really getting worked up over? I mean I find it more funny than anything else. I like what they did with the female enemies but I'm never going to forget that the reason that they didn't have a female playable character in Unity is "Programing womenz is RLY RLY HRD!"
That's your problem.Remus said:
This series hit its peak with the Ezio trilogy (Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations), and then started going downhill rapidly. AC III was pretty crap, and Black Flag, while not a bad game, wasn't the same game I fell in love with back when the series was first released.
But I've been gone so long, I have no idea where the overarching story is. I really don't care enough to get back into the series.
AssCreed has definitely become lazy, but then again it's a side effect of Ubi becoming obsessed with the sandbox game and thinking it's some kind of gaming apex. Too bad all they've done is make their games blur together into a mediocre blob with zero ambition or creativity. It's just tedious and I wouldn't be surprised if Ubi starts scaling back on AssCreed and turns Far Cry into their yearly cash cow.
It wasn't the internet that threw a fit demanding a female protagonist, it was feminists and SJWs. But you already know that because at first you guys were part of the sjws so to quote Cartman "You get to have your cake and eat it too, here Kyle eat the cake Kyle eat it." ^_^
My feeling about Black Flag is that yes it's a good game but the fact it's an asssassin's creed game adds nothing to it. Ubisoft should of honestly just focused on making a really good pirate game and dropped all the assassin creed stuff. It was good despite being an assassin's creed game not because of it.SlumlordThanatos said: