Zero Punctuation: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

[Callate]

Worth remembering that PoP: The Sands of Time came out in 2003, methinks. It did a lot of things really well. And it ran on my old AMD notebook and looked gorgeous.

The big thing, though, was the time mechanic, which was quite a step forward for the time. A game filled with lethal and near-lethal traps that doesn't make you re-do six perfect leaps because you mis-timed the seventh and landed on a buzzsaw? Bless my soul, that was a good idea.

...And, yeah, the combat gets old before it's over (pardon me while I avoid being flanked by vaulting over someone's back for the fifth time in the past thirty seconds), but it still has a certain cinematic flair.

As far as Assassin's Creed goes... Yeah, I should really get around to playing those, shouldn't I? Especially as everyone else seems to have done me the courtesy of expressing where I can stop.

I do rather feel that the "Unity should have had a female protagonist" thing seems quite half-baked in hindsight. If nothing else, the state in which Unity shipped ought to have put to rest the idea that the developers had some massive pool of spare resources with which to forge a new character model in the eleventh hour if they had really cared to. The PR guy made lame excuses, as PR guys are often wont to do; that shouldn't have gotten the whole enterprise burned in effigy.

(That should have been reserved for releasing a game in that sorry-ass state.)

 

[The Heik]

Anyone know the gun he uses @2:50?

 

[Callate]

The dev team spent an entire fucking YEAR designing ONE fucking building in the game(I really wish I was joking), if they could do that, they absolutely could've had a female protagonist, Ubisoft just loves making really shitty excuses.

Yes, if designing a female protagonist had been in their original design document, they could have. No one was suggesting there was some inherent impossibility to making a female skeleton, applying texture and lighting to it, and putting it under player control.

But the furor over the idea that of all the games on the market, Unity specifically should have included a female character model didn't rise until well into the game's development. By that point, there's little indication that they had the ability to create and integrate such a character, even if it would have fit into the context of the way they were doing multiplayer (with each character continuing to play as their own version of the (male) protagonist as they dropped into multipayer games or back out into their own solo sessions.)

Indeed, as I said, the state in which the final game was released suggests that it was overly rushed, not that they had time to indulge in adding late-stage features, no matter how much anyone might have wanted them.

One could argue that they should have incorporated a female character from the beginning. One can also certainly argue that given the lackluster reception of the multiplayer element, it would have been time better spent on other things- including, possibly, different character models and/or a simpler multiplayer like the one in Brotherhood that would have been more conducive to alternate player characters. But those views come from the benefit of hindsight. Virtually no one was waving banners for such things at the time the game was first advertised to the public and a more significant alteration might have been achievable, and an awful lot of the response was a particularly bandwagon-happy and reality-averse kind of self-righteous self-congratulation.

A bad response to an unexpected question prompted a lot of people to make Unity the scapegoat for the industry. As Yahtzee noted, Ubisoft's response, viz. Syndicate, has been pretty predictable- a fairly stock female character in a by-the-numbers storyline in a game that- coincidentally- has jettisoned multiplayer all together. Even if I were inclined to judge the outcry solely on the basis of that outcome, it seems like the sledgehammer result of a sledgehammer approach to an issue that no one was half as interested in solving as they were in yelling about.

 

[MysticSlayer]

People hated Ashley because of how irritating she was rather then because her A.I. was stupid.

Maybe it is just where I happen to go, but I've seen plenty of people criticize RE4 simply because it is one big escort mission. Yeah, Ashley's character gets criticized (I personally didn't mind it that much), but it isn't like that's the only thing people dislike about her.

 

[Lightspeaker]

I remember when the first one came out, I said something like, "I'll buy them as a set when the series is complete." I thought it was going to be a trilogy. Clearly I will never own these games.

Well the Ezio trilogy is its own package, and those are the best games in the whole series. Well, AC2 and Broho are the best ones and Revelations is just ok like every other game after Broho so thats a good sample of the Assassin's Creed experience and you get the whole of Ezio's story, the only character worth a damn in the franchise.

I take umbrage with that. The best character in the series is, by far, Haytham Kenway. Who you play for a short prologue in AC3.

Pity about the rest of that game...


As far as this new one goes...actually I find it rather depressing. If you'd told me back around the time of Brotherhood or even as late as Revelations that there'd be an AC game set in Victorian London I would have pretty much wept with joy. But over the past few years they've sucked long and hard on the blood of Assassin's Creed and now I'm just totally fatigued. I really don't care about this game. At all. And I'm actually seriously upset about the fact that I don't care about this game, because its something I've wanted to see for years.

I just can't bring myself around to it. Revelations was okay but nothing to write home about. AC3 was an absolute abomination. I disliked AC3 so much that I didn't even buy Black Flag until around a year or more after launch after reading constant positive things about it. And I'm still to buy Unity. I might get it at some point, just to play through it, but I really don't know. I'm pretty much just drained of this series now.

 

[Abomination]

Were there really that many women in Victorian London gangs?

Does the British Army also have that near 50:50 gender divide?

 

[C117]

Maybe the gang system would be more useful if the enemies you met were more threatening. In my experience, every single enemy in AC is too polite to attack you when you're preoccupied with another enemy, and will blithely wait for their turn. If they removed that and made enemies actually gang up on you, maybe fights would feel more dangerous, and maybe running to your mates for help would be more tempting.

That's a lot of "maybes'"...

 

[Mangod]

So, because I was curious to see how the series has evolved, I went back and watched all the ZP AssCreed episodes, in order. And... it's really a rather sad development, actually.

Assassin's Creed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/16-Assassins-Creed].
Assassin's Creed 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1148-Assassins-Creed-2].
Brotherhood [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2519-Assassins-Creed-Brotherhood].
Revelations [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5114-Assassins-Creed-Revelations].
Assassin's Creed 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6516-Assassins-Creed-3].
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/8424-Assassins-Creed-IV-Black-Flag].
Unity [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9920-Assassins-Creed-Unity-Review].
Syndicate [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/106803-Assassins-Creed-Syndicate-Review].

 

[Dragonlayer]

Hmmmm.

I *do* like Assassin's Creed.

But I don't like Victorian England as a setting (possibly because a tragic early encounter with the accents of Fable 2 filled me with eternal hatred for the sound of my own country's language).

But I *do* like killing women.

But I don't like blandly written Templars, especially after Rogue showed good characterisation of the designated "villains".

Decisions, decisions....

 

[bluegate]

The zip line is actually a really nifty tool for crossing big gaps between buildings or climbing buildings when you are in a hurry and don't feel like wasting your time with climbing up and down.

Same goes for the carriages, a fast way to get across parts of the city and to checkpoints. Running is piss slow, and loading times with fast travel are also rather lengthy, making the cart thing a welcome addition to speed up the gameplay.

As for the writing, yeah, total pants.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I was actually planning on getting this game. I watched about 3 hours of gameplay for it and while the combat looks disgusting, the zip line thing a bit stupid when it comes to long distances, and the AI dumber than a dog without a brain, the characters really appealed to me. Jacob is a shit eater, but Evie was cute, and I mean that both in a "Awww, its Pikachu" and a "Holy shit, is that Emma Watson eating a sausage!?" way. Their brother/sister relationship is something I can really relate to. And I like the hat that Jacob wears at the start. For some reason me and my friends just love anything British.

As for the female enemies, I would have been fine with them if a) they didn't look fucking ridiculous (sorry ladies, you will never look good in top hats. Then again, no one does) and b) they didn't make things weird. There was this voiced enemy once who was supposed to be a dude, but the voice actor was that of a woman. This was what cemented for me the idea that female enemies were just tacked on because of that fucking stupid controversy with Unity's coop. And Ned... Yeah... No...

From what I've seen it is a step up from Unity, and that in itself is good enough. I mean, obviously I'm not getting this at full price! Just a week after its launch its price dropped quite a bit in my local store. I'll probably wait for an online Black Friday sale.

Surprised though that Yahtzee considers it as good (bad?) as Unity, when even people like Jim praised it.

 

[stormtrooper9091]

OK:

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a good game. A really good game, and I played it two times. HOWEVER, the second time I played, lots of time passed, and I didn't really enjoy the clumsy controls much. Everything else was (obviously) still good, but I've come to realize that game kind of didn't exactly age well. The entire series was never about flawless writing anyway but it still features one of the best romance subplots in video game history.

So yeah, not top 5 greatest of all time, but certainly not "overrated" as some of the hipster edgelords would like.

On to the point, I'm not really the right person to talk about AC series, the thing is, I played a PC port of 2, and I gave up after half an hour, there was simply nothing in there that I could possibly latch on to, the controls were atrociously badly mapped, I mean they just replaced the PS controller button icons with icons corresponding to the action the command would execute, like, action, run, stuff like that. And after pressing the wrong button for the zillionth time, I knew the game was not for me. That whole thing just felt incredibly lazy, just depict the icon with the key it was bound to, how fucking difficult is that??? And I've missed out on a lot, probably but I never looked back.

Also, why have the SJWs not shown up yet, I want to see how they will be mocked. Or perhaps the Internet has finally gone back to normal and idiots like that Jenner person will finally stop getting the media attention they so crave for

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Were there really that many women in Victorian London gangs?

Does the British Army also have that near 50:50 gender divide?

That is a good question. The only thing I have seen is the game theory video on AC:s that talks about it. apparently there were women gangs and mixed genders gangs. I haven't seen anyone else comment on it though. I think most people are just assuming it's just something made up for the game.

No idea about the army though.

 

[Ishigami]

Wait... this disclaimer is for real?


So its another AC, alright... nothing to see, moving along.

 

[Jburton9]

Great review, thank you for posting it : )

"Jolly Hook shotable" I shall attempt to use this later today, finding the proper placement will take skill and timing, *looks off into the distance* hmm.

 

[KikReask]

So, because I was curious to see how the series has evolved, I went back and watched all the ZP AssCreed episodes, in order. And... it's really a rather sad development, actually.

I was hoping he would review Rogue after Unity. I know it's mostly the same game as III and IV, but it's still a main game in the series according to wikipedia, and apparently it was much better than Unity. I wouldn't know however seen as I left the series after III and have never wanted to get back into it after Unity's launch disaster. I can understand why Yahtzee didn't bother with Rogue though, considering that having Assassin's Creed as an annual series is bad enough but two main titles in one year, out on the same week?!

Where's my sequel to Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones already? And no, if Ubisoft will only make another Prince of Persia game as another obvious movie tie in, don't bother. =P

 

[Recoveryanonymous]

It's strange how quickly the Assassin's Creed series has become stale. It's only been around like 8 years. But they've made around that many games in the franchise during that time.

 

[Mangod]

It's strange how quickly the Assassin's Creed series has become stale. It's only been around like 8 years. But they've made around that many games in the franchise during that time.

There's been 22 Assassin's Creed games, nine "main games" and thirteen spin-offs, since November 2007. To quote Funboy:

"Don't you ever f***ing die?"

 

[thanatos388]

I remember when the first one came out, I said something like, "I'll buy them as a set when the series is complete." I thought it was going to be a trilogy. Clearly I will never own these games.

Well the Ezio trilogy is its own package, and those are the best games in the whole series. Well, AC2 and Broho are the best ones and Revelations is just ok like every other game after Broho so thats a good sample of the Assassin's Creed experience and you get the whole of Ezio's story, the only character worth a damn in the franchise.

Personally stretching Ezio's saga out to three games was when I knew this franchise was headed for the pits, every game they introduced some new mechanic that was either pointless or only served to pad the game out(I.E. the Tower Defense in Revelations)

Yeah but that's the full AC experience. It starts good, then you get the time sink grind of Brotherhood, then it wraps up with a bad game called Revelations that pads everything out with stupid gimmicks. You truly haven't experienced Assassins Creed until you feel one of the games suck your soul away with half baked minigames.

 

[Callate]

Even people who were getting sick of AC like Jim Sterling have praised Evie as an interesting character though(though he despised Jacob, and I can see why, as he comes across as an arrogant dick in the trailers), and I actually don't think getting rid of multiplayer is such a bad thing, as i'm honestly getting quite sick of games having tacked on multiplayer modes that nobody ever plays(Jim Sterling mentioned that barely anyone played the multiplayer in Overlord, after managing to get into one MP game on launch, he couldn't find another MP game ever again), or games being multiplayer-only and having no single player at all, despite the fact that making a game that way ensures that once the servers shut down the game disc will be worthless and only useful as a drink coaster(I.E. Battlefront, Titanfall, Evolve, Rainbow Six Siege, Shadowrun 2007, SOCOM Confrontation, MAG) so Ubisoft at least did two things right with this game I suppose, too bad it's still the same boring-ass-creed we've all played before.

Definitely agree with you about multiplayer in most regards, though there seemed to be a fair amount of admiration for the multiplayer in AC: Brotherhood. And Ubisoft seems to be trying to move multiplayer in sufficiently interesting directions (especially as a compliment to games like Far Cry 4 and Watch Dogs that I'd almost hate to see them abandon trying altogether.

But, yeah, for an awful lot of games multiplayer seems like a desperate plea for longevity that merely ends up stripping time and energy out of the development process that could have been better spent elsewhere. My understanding is that Spec Ops: The Line, for example, only added it to the game under pressure from the publisher. Games with no single-player at all sometimes seem to have all but seem to have forgotten that their job is to entertain, not to send "the kids" out to play and not bother the grown-ups.