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penryn's Assassin's Creed (360)
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| [January 15, 2008 03:29:56 AM]
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GAMEPLAY
My second hour (more like 45 minutes, really) was a little stressful: I was meeting a old friend for dinner and I knew that I hadn't even really finished the tutorial yet and why didn't I go over to my brother's an hour or two before that and blah blah blah. Thankfully my brother and his friend had gone for a walk for the first 30 minutes, so I didn't have that "performance" anxiety. But then they came back.
Combined with my frazzled state, I felt a little like I didn't get enough instruction from the game. First there were the fives tries to successfully pickpocket and not get shoved by the basket-weaver. Then there was the practice fight. I couldn't read which buttons to press (an issue of the TV, to be sure, but it's not like that sucker was small. Is it necessary to either know the Xbox 360 symbols *that* well or have a wide-screen TV to play?), so trying to execute the moves was painful. Also, with two on one, I just kept getting hit. Then, and this is a slight matter, there was the jumping off of the view tower, not realizing I needed to jump off of the conveniently placed log into the cart filled with nice, soft hay. I realize that a lot of this can probably be boiled down to the fact that I am not a hardcore gamer, and that of all kinds of games, excluding FPSs & war games, this is perhaps the least likely I am to usually pick up. But I do wish that some certain things had been more explicitly explained. That said, I *did* love riding the horse. Pretty horsie!
GAME DESIGN
So, one of the best things about Assassin's Creed is that the biometrics of the game are amazing. Altair moves so fluidly and well that it's just fun to watch and play. When he climbs, he grabs a handhold every time, he walks like a person, albeit a kind of sketchy person, like an assassin (why doesn't anybody notice this but meeee?). The horse moved beautifully as well. I just rode around in circles, admiring the horse and the way Altair's robe billowed. Along with that goes the game environments are awesome. The cities look like maybe the game designers studied actual real cities, maybe even modeled them, and based the cities in the game off of them. There's just this organic, real feel to them that is lacking in most video games I've played.
Ideas for gameplay: The organic city: odd overall shape (also odd interior shapes), curving windy streets, lots and lots of people (why do video game towns always look so deserted?). One great (and standard) way to introduce exposition is always to have the "newborn" character. AC twists that cliche a little in that 'you' are Desmond, experiencing Altair's memories for the first time. Time to brainstorm other twists for the amnesiac/newcomer cliche! Gameplay-wise, I love the focus of investigation and not out-and-out slash-n-bash. I'm not sure I would want to do a stealth/investigation type-game, but definitely taking the focus away from fighting. That's not to say that there will be no fighting, but it won't be the main point or method of gameplay, I think.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 15th, 2008 at 03:33:15.
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| [January 13, 2008 07:41:02 PM]
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SUMMARY
Assassin's Creed is a "third person stealth game" set in two times: modern day and the Middle Ages. The majority of gameplay is with Altair. He is an assassin of an ancient brotherhood and an ancestor of Desmond, the modern day dude. You go around gathering information, killing people, and running away from other people in order to complete missions for the brotherhood.
GAMEPLAY
I always get a little nervous playing games like this: what if I do something wrong, what if I irrevocably screw up? I know in my head that I can always try again, but I still freak out a little bit. So here I am, trying to assassinate a random soldier in the tutorial and I just keeping thinking, "Am I close enough? Am I too close? Why isn't he dying? I'm pressing the button, why isn't he DYING???" and then I realize I'm pressing A instead of X. Aaanyway...
One of the first things I noticed was the amazing graphics. I don't own any of the newer systems (I'm playing this at my brother's place) and so I tend to expect a lower quality than is available right now. But this, this was beautiful! The faces look great (I wonder if they used real faces and just... er... 3D-ed them), the glitches during cut scenes distract me so much I forget to press a button :P, all of the background characters and buildings and AUGH! Just lovely. The second thing I noticed was the voice-acting. Also very lovely. Bad voice-acting always takes me out of the game and I'm so happy to see more and more games having above-par acting.
Like I said, I'm playing this at my brother's apartment. I always have mixed feelings about playing video games in front of people (my nerves again: I feel like I have to "perform" well), but it's even worse the first time. Then again, he gave me plenty of helpful tips, gave me some pasta (very, very helpful), and told me that I suck at life. Which is totally not true, I'm just not terribly good at these kinds of video games!
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penryn's Assassin's Creed (360)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 13 January, 2008
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