Anybody else think Assassin's Creed is going to be a huge dud?

[heybtbm]

The reason I feel the same way is just the reception that this game has been getting from people who actually got the chance to play the game say it was not coming along all that great.

I want to emphasize this point. It's the exact reason I've been a little worried about this game.

This months EGM article was based around the premise that Assassin's Creed needed major work. Ubisoft caught wind of this news and invited EGM back to re-evaluate. EGM gave it another try and still had the same concerns. They document each one in the article.

The good news is how they keep referring to this game as a medieval version of Crackdown. That's exactly what I've been hoping for.

[Garry Silljo]

(Note how I can say that without writing three paragraphs?)

Nice.

[zemmix]

Hey it looks like there might not be a need to worry about this one. Famitsu gave it a 37/40.

As if we needed further proof that November will assassinate your wallet, Famitsu has heaped glowing praise atop Assassin's Creed. According to a forum post on the Ubisoft forums, Famitsu has given the title a very respectable 37/40, with the individual reviews standing at 10, 8, 9, and 10. Incidentally, Famitsu handed the same overall score to Halo 3. There are some tiny scans of the reviews on the forums, but our Kanji is a little rusty. Thankfully, someone went to the trouble of summing things up. Apparently, the Famitsu reviewers were impressed by the story, presentation, and addicting acrobatics, noting that Assassin's Creed is a true next-gen title. Some knocks against it are the one button combat, confusing map, and occasional camera problems. All in all, it sounds pretty solid. Good news for gamers, bad news for bank accounts.

10 -- A gripping story, feels like a movie. A true next-gen action game, simple interface but satisfying.
8 - A stand-out title in the 360 library, but camera issues (while nitpicky) are often enough to be a problem.
9 - Surprising and amazing in lots of ways, but even just moving the character around is a lot of fun. Jumping from wall to wall or diving from high places makes for great action.
10 - Climbing walls and performing acrobatics is highly addicting. Story is impressive.

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/11...s-creed-37-40/

[Anthony1]

Yeah, i'm thinking that my concern with this game is way overblown, because I finally got around to reading the new issue of Game Informer, and they had a five hour hands on session with the game, and were in love with it. So maybe my worries are completely unfounded.

Great news. I don't mind eating Crow for dinner if this game is going to be awesome. I definitely need a kick ass 3rd person adventure.

[digdug]

I think the game will do well. I think the main problem is that there is TOOO many companies releasing games this time of year hoping to get the profit it deserves and alot of titles fall to the waste side. This happens every holiday season. When its all said and done you have a 3 month period after the holidays that doesn't have many quality titles and companies have financial problems b/c their game didn't do as well as they hoped.

A good example of a quality game that released after the holidays that did well: Lost Planet. Was the game perfect by all means no, but people were, at that time getting sick of gears of war, and COD 3, and wanted something new. I think that is why GTA IV got pushed back (partly that and hard to finish on the PS3).

I really like Ubisoft products and think the game will do well just not as well as the other re-hashed sequels (Galo 3, COD4, Mario, etc. don't get me wrong these games are great but not unique).

Just my 2 cents

[heybtbm]

Bump.

7.7 (good) from the IGN review. Maybe not quite dud-worthy...but damn.

[Chuplayer]

The IGN review of the PS3 version says there are load times of 5 minutes long. WTF?

Wait, it says the 360 version has the same problem. I figured the fact that the PS3 version was on Blu Ray with its bad disc access times was the main culprit, but now it's probably just bad coding.

[gum_drops]

Bump.

7.7 (good) from the IGN review. Maybe not quite dud-worthy...but damn.

But it also received a 9.0 Editors choice from Gamespot who are usually tougher on giving out 9.0+ than IGN.

[slip81]

well so far it's got an average score of 84 on metacritic. guess you were wrong about the whole bug riddled dud theory

[YoshiM]

The IGN review of the PS3 version says there are load times of 5 minutes long. WTF?

Wait, it says the 360 version has the same problem. I figured the fact that the PS3 version was on Blu Ray with its bad disc access times was the main culprit, but now it's probably just bad coding.

From what the review said, though, after the load you've pretty much got full reign. So you have to decide if you like shorter but more loading times or one big-ass one.

I'll give it a rent when I have time. Still going through Bioshock.

[geneshifter]

The IGN review of the PS3 version says there are load times of 5 minutes long. WTF?

Wait, it says the 360 version has the same problem. I figured the fact that the PS3 version was on Blu Ray with its bad disc access times was the main culprit, but now it's probably just bad coding.

Some mods on shacknews.com that had played the game said that must have been a typo because there was almost no loading to speak of on the 360 version anyway. Also, no other outlet has reported such a horrible flaw so I'm going with it was a mistake.

[Chuplayer]

From what the review said, though, after the load you've pretty much got full reign. So you have to decide if you like shorter but more loading times or one big-ass one.

I'll give it a rent when I have time. Still going through Bioshock.

I'd prefer they streamed the data like in Shenmue. Not to mention, I doubt you're typically going to finish each area in one sitting. Say you spread it across three days. That's 15 minutes wasted.

[misfits859]

I bought this yesterday and on my way home I stopped at a local shop and my buddy was inside playing the game. Not so sure I was impressed. He murdered a guard who was standing in front of a bunch of subordinates standing at attention. They failed to react to the murder right in front of them...Maybe this is an isolated case but it seemed to be a horrible display of AI.

How are other experiences? I would like to hear some other views on the games strong/weak points. I have kept my copy sealed and have debated simply trading it in for Mass Effect next week.

[Oobgarm]

Gave it a shot and liked it. Th 'futuristic' aspect is well integrated and the controls are great.

Not going to be a dud, but it'll probably be somewhat overlooked at retail.

[theoakwoody]

I only played for like 40 minutes but it's not a game you can just jump into which is frustrating. I hate games that have a forced tutorial level. If I want to play the tutorial it should be optional not forced. I have to admit though, in the short time I played it, its fun just running around and climbing and bumping into people and whatever. It's very different that GTA in that your surroundings are so much more interactive but you can't enter buildings which would have been a nice touch, especially for hidden items and secrets. I like the game but yeah, I'm glad I'm through the tutorial.

[geneshifter]

I also got it yersterday and I really like this game. Very gorgeous graphics but more importantly the gameplay is fun. Lots of mixed reviews had me wondering about it but I love it overall. The storyline is very cool BTW.

[zemmix]

Gabe from Penny Arcade posted an interesting read on why he thinks 70% reviews are wrong.

I want to talk about Assassins Creed but first I need to get something out of the way. I have a lot to say about the game and I want to talk about some of the bad reviews it's getting but I want to make sure everyone understands I'm not saying this because of the comic we did for them. So I'm going to link you to an old set of news posts about Prince of Persia 2. Feel free to read those and come back if you like.

Now I'm going to tell you how advertising on PA works. Every other game site out there takes ads for whatever game they can get. It doesn't matter if it's a pile of crap, if the publisher pays for the spot IGN or Gamespot or whoever will run the ad. That's fine but that's not how we do it and the news posts you just read are part of the reason why.

We were huge fans of the first Prince of Persia game so when Ubi came to us and wanted to run ads for the second we said yes. We had no idea they were going to completely fuck it over. So from then on we started demanding playable copies of games before we'd agree to advertising. No matter how early the build we tell the publishers that unless we can see it played in front of us or play it ourselves we won't run ads for it. Obviously a lot can still go wrong during development but we make the best decisions we can. We do not think of the ads you see on our page as ads. They are recommendations and we try extremely hard to insure that anything we put over there is worth your time. When Prince of Persia 2 came out and we saw that it was crap we said as much on the site. Ads for the game appeared right next to those news posts slamming it. Needless to say Ubi wasn't very happy and Robert got some angry phone calls but our loyalty is to our readers not the people paying the bills. We explained to Ubi that the reason our ads perform better than any other site out there is because our readers trust us and that means we have to admit when something we advertise doesn't turn out as good as we hoped. Obviously they understood because we're still advertising their games but like I said this isn't the way other sites operate. I actually give Ubi a lot of credit for not just telling us to fuck off and buying more ads on IGN and Gamespy with the extra money.

I'm telling you all this because I want you to understand that if Assassins Creed actually was a 7.0 game I'd tell you. I also want you to know that when I tell you it's fucking incredible I'm not bullshitting you because we're running ads for the game.

There are about four or five reviews of the game with scores in the low to mid 7's. I want to cover some of the common complaints these reviewers had in case anyone out there is worried about them.

Many of the reviews say that the ending is bad. Obviously I don't want to give away any spoilers but I will say that the final confrontation was exciting and gratifying. It was an extremely satisfying ending to this chapter of the game. Chapter is the important word here. This is a huge story, probably a trilogy at least. The game does end with a cliff hanger and it certainly sets up the rest of the arc but that's how the first part of any multi part story ends. If Star Wars had ended with Luke jumping into his X-Wing to go take on the Death Star that would be a shitty fucking ending. It doesn't though, Luke destroys it and then we get hints about what's in store for our heroes. I'm telling you right now Altair destroys his Death Star.

I also can't be 100% positive but I'm guessing that some of these reviewers didn't let the credits role. Again, I don't want to spoil anything but wait for the credits to end. Until reviewers start posting their Gamertags along with the review we'll never really be able to tell how much of a game they played. But I'd be willing to bet some of them are missing the "Visions of the Future" achievement. I'm not gonna say why but If you don't have this achievement you can't say jack shit about the ending.

I think the biggest complaint I saw was that the missions become repetitive and boring. I actually didn't understand this complaint at all until just the other day. I had gotten an early copy of the game just like everyone else in the media but I was just playing it for fun. I'd cracked into it over the weekend and when I got into the office on Monday I started seeing these negative reviews. When I saw the low scores I was actually really upset and I wanted to talk about the game here on the site. I wanted to tell everyone that these guys were full of shit. However, since so many of the complaints were based on the ending I wanted to beat it first so I was sure I wasn't missing anything. I attacked the game again but this time with the goal of beating it as fast as I could. I was determined to get a post up on Tuesday and I was pushing through the game as fast as I could. I went from finding every high perch in a district to only getting the ones I needed to advance the story. I stopped saving every citizen and avoided any unnecessary confrontations. The informer missions that I had really enjoyed before, I now avoided because I knew they took too long to complete. I did the bare minimum of missions to progress the story and anything that "hindered" my progress was frustrating. Monday night after skipping over another combat (something I used to really enjoy) I stopped myself. What the fuck was I doing? I wasn't playing the game because I wanted to I was playing it because I had a deadline and I needed to beat it. I stopped immediately and decided I'd write about the game whenever I got around to beating it. I spent another day and a half with it and during that time I hunted for hidden flags and explored the cities again. I came in this morning and finally did beat it but I did it at my own pace and I enjoyed every part of it.

Imagine what an open ended sandbox title must look like to a reviewer especially right now. How many games do they have piling up on their desks? A game like Assassins creed isn't meant to be played under a deadline. You shouldn't be trying to beat it as fast as you can so you can move on to Mass Effect or Mario Galaxy. As soon as I gave myself a deadline all of a sudden I understood all their complaints. It was like a fucking Escher painting. I had put myself in their shoes and suddenly the landscape flipped and I could see games from their perspective. In the end I wasn't angry at them for their bad reviews. I actually just felt bad for them.

-Gabe out

[heybtbm]

The Penny Arcade article sums up my feelings exactly in regards to sandbox-type games. The fun isn't going from mission to mission. The fun is getting from place to place and interacting with the environment. Just running around the sections of the city in Crackdown (for example) was the reason I loved that game...not because of the short ass "kill this guy" story missions. The article above really nailed it.

[Bojay1997]

I too picked up Assassin's Creed and I think the reviews are pretty much right on. I guess part of the problem is that the expectations for the game were so high and the development period was so long that everyone expected this to be an industry altering title. I'm not sure if Ubisoft or the gaming public are really responsible for this raising of expectations, but in the end, I'm not sure if a game of this type can ever live up to the hype. In the end, I would say this game is for fans of Prince of Persia who also enjoyed the games Thief and Hitman and not really something that is going to appeal to the mass audience. I have played for a couple of hours and while I will probably finish the game, I can see myself losing interest if I make the mistake of starting another game in my pile in between. It's a good game, it's just not a great game.

[Daria]

I saw a friend playing it last night and it looked fun. Sort of Fable meets Splinter Cell. Also noted that they early hype for the game was complete bullshit. The whole 'controlls will take two hours to master' using the sticks and buttons to control your character like a marionette. None of that shit was there. Which was disapointing because it sounded like a neat idea. Instead just like Fable or God of War your buttons are mapped to actions that change slightly based on your enviorment. Nothing new, nothing fancy. But the game looked like solid fun and it just goes to show what bullshit pregame hype really is.