A Green Mushroom

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is an interesting entry in the series.  Its main addition is the fleshing out of ship to ship combat into a full gameplay system which, in turn, makes it the best open-world pirate action game out there. If you're ever looking for an entry in the Assassin's Creed series to go for 100% map completion in, this should be one of your first stops.  The mix of on-foot and on-boat gameplay means that you always have the option of switching your current moment to moment activity while still making progress toward map completion. As an open-world pirate game, Black Flag succeeds amazingly.  As an Assassin's Creed game, it's fine.  It's not an amazing entry in the context of the series but there's a ton of fun to be had if you set your expectations to "pirate" instead of "assassin". So, should you play this game?  Well, this is one Assassin's Creed game I can recommend as a very solid open-world game.  It's perfe...

Following up on yesterday's post, I dove into the two latest Assassin's Creed games which represent the pivot that Ubisoft has made in the series.  Both Origin and Odyssey fall squarely into the action RPG genre instead of the stealth action games that the series started with. Revisiting Assassin's Creed Origin was interesting.  I initially bounced off the game when it first released because it was such a radical departure from the series I loved.  After Origins reset my internal calibration for what makes an Assassin's Creed game, I was able to really enjoy Odyssey on its own terms when it released. This revisit of Origins made me realize that the game is better than I gave it credit for at the time.  If all you're looking for is an open-world Egypt action RPG then this is a great game.  But, if you are looking for a stealth game with assassination in it, you'll be disappointed.  Removing stealth and instant kills was the biggest thing they did in Origins ...

My revisit of the Assassin's Creed games sped up a bit over the weekend.  I finished my full re-playthrough of Assassin's Creed Revelations and then went into "sampling" mode for the other games in the series. Revelations is an interesting one, in that it's the most ambitious storytelling they do in the first five or six Assassin's Creed games.  It ties Desmond, Altair, and Ezio together and has them all communicating across time and space.  It works surprisingly well.  The gameplay in it is iterative with some new gimmicks, but it is definitely the strongest gameplay and storytelling of the Ezio collection. I'm skipping over Black Flag for now since I know I really like that game and it's a great time waster.  My plan is to come back around to it at the end. Which brings me to Unity.  Assassin's Creed Unity is the worst mainline game in the series.  They tried a lot of new things as they brought the series to a new console generation.  It was amb...

I just wrapped up my playthrough of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in my revisit of series as it exists right now.  This was an interesting one.  I almost didn't stick with it.  I'm still giving myself that out for other games in this series revisit but I ended up sticking it out and finishing Brotherhood. It's the middle game in the five game Desmond meta arc of Assassin's Creed and, in some ways, it feels like an awkward in-between game (since it kinda is).  Brotherhood picks up right where Assassin's Creed 2 leaves off and ends on a cliffhanger that Assassin's Creed: Revelations picks up.  Not only is it the mid-point of the Desmond saga, but it's also the mid-point of Ezio's story and his time as the main character. In terms of gameplay, Brotherhood leans hard into the open world.  The critical path in this one is much faster than any other Assassin's Creed game but the open world gives tons of optional things to do.  You spend the entire time ...

I finally decided to write something for the Geek to Geek Media site!  I just posted an Assassin's Creed 2 review over on the site that dives into the question of whether or not AC2 holds up over a decade later. My Geek to Geek Podcast co-host has been trying to get me to write something over there for awhile and I finally gave in.  Consider this part of my revisit of the Assassin's Creed series! Now I also need to figure out the balance of writing here versus writing articles on the Geek to Geek site.  I think I'm probably going to continue to use this blog as quicker thoughts that are off the cuff or more personal.  But, I may be tempted to write more in-depth and SEO-able articles over on the Geekery Blog.  I dunno for sure, we'll see. But, if I continue to post over there I'll definitely make sure I'm linking to that content from this site too.  This is basically the one home on the internet that I own (well, the URL anyway) so this is a good place to...

Oh hey, look, a wild post appear! It's been awhile since I wrote a regular post on here instead of just highlighting the latest podcast episode but I kind of... accidentally started replaying the mainline Assassin's Creed series.  So I figured I should put down some sort of record of it similarly to what I did for my Final Fantasy Project all those years ago. My intention is not to be as in-depth as I was with Final Fantasy.  This is truly supposed to be more of a surface level revisit of Assassin's Creed to see what holds up and how far it's come over the last decade or so. I accidentally stumbled into this replay because of an episode we did on the Geek to Geek Podcast about gaming shames.  In the course of that discussion I realized that I didn't have much shame about any of the gaming I had done and I really didn't feel like I had missed out on much in the world of gaming over the years.  As I dug into it, I realized that the only thing I truly felt ...

After finishing up Far Cry Primal I already had uPlay on my computer from installing it so I figured I might as well install Assassin's Creed Rogue since I had picked it up on Steam Sale a while ago. It's kind of a weird entry in the series since it came out at the same time the newer consoles were getting new Assassin's Creed games.  While that was happening the previous generation consoles got Rogue. After a few hours I see exactly why this is.  Rogue is just Assassin's Creed 4 systems given a slightly different coat of paint and a new story.  There's really nothing to see here unless you feel obligated to play through every facet of the overall Assassin's Creed story. If you're ever tempted by this game just go pick up Assassin's Creed 4 instead.  It will give you a better experience. I'm putting down rogue and probably never coming back to it.  I'll wait for the next main entry in the series.  After last year's fantastic Assas...

Playing Assassin's Creed last week really brought something to light for me.  Often, in games, we define characters by the weapons they use.  It's an interesting phenomenon. In Assassin's Creed Syndicate the Frye Twins have different default weapons that give them a different feel from one another.  Evie has a cane sword and Jacob has a brass knuckle.  It immediately distinguishes them even though they're twins and mostly have the same skills.  They are quickly shown to have unique styles via their weapons. When I was watching DareDevil the other week there were a few episodes that focused on how he started using his batons as weapons.  They end up becoming a defining part of his character. Not to mention iconic characters like Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII are also often defined by their weapons.  No one ever really thinks about Sephiroth without thinking about his super long Masamune sword.  And the image of Cloud with ...

Assassin's Creed Syndicate is this year's entry in the series.  It's set in London during England's industrial revolution.  It's a classic Assassin's vs Templars set up but the setting seems especially fun this year. The Frye twins are both main characters which is a first for the series.  They're Assassin twins with very different, but interesting, personalities.  Jacob likes to just wing it or charge into a situation, he specializes in fighting.  Evie plans and thinks before approaching a target.  She is great at stealth and infiltration. They have separate skill trees so you can build each one the way you want to.  But, Jacob has a few end-game powers that make him especially good at combat and Evie has the same for stealth. I honestly love the way these two characters play off each other and interact.  It's believable friendly banter that I didn't know I wanted in the Assassin's Creed series, but now that it's here I love it.  T...

The Ubisoft Press Conference was mixed for me.  There were a couple games that piqued my interest, and of course I'm always excited for a new Assassin's Creed (it's a weakness) but I didn't really see any games that are a guaranteed day one buy for me. For the most part I'd like to hear more about these games from the journalists who will get to play them this week on the show floor. I want to know more about Rainbow Six Siege, The Division, and Assassin's Creed.  Hopefully we'll get to read some good impressions as the week goes on. The thing that impressed me the most with the Ubisoft press conference was the amount of real gameplay footage and live demos.  It seemed like almost every game had real gameplay footage to go with it.  They're not hiding behind pre-rendered CG trailers for their games and they deserve applause for that. Now I'm going to wait for the Sony event to start.  I'm really excited to see what pops up in that one.

I'm sick.  It sucks.  My son has been fighting off a bug for the past two weeks and in taking care of him I managed it pick it up. But, one benefit that has come out of being sick at home all week is getting to blast through some of the new releases that have been coming out.  They're hard to keep up with.  And I got to try a mobile game that's been on my radar for awhile.  Let's go rapid fire impressions here. Assassin's Creed: Unity I'm playing on PS4.  I've seen tons of hate for this game online and it seems to be especially buggy.  In my experience on my console I've only had frame rate slow down a couple times in the course of over 10 hours of play.  I only hit a weird animation bug once.  Your mileage may vary.  Especially if you're playing on PC or Xbox One.  Apparently they're much worse than PS4. I'm a huge fan of Assassin's Creed so I'm still having a lot of fun with it.  That being said, if you aren't a huge f...

I finished Shadow of Mordor recently so I started looking ahead at other fall releases on my calendar.  I realized Assassin's Creed Unity is out soon and I hadn't finished Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.  I was still in the mood for some open world antics so I jumped back into my AC: Black Flag playthrough and picked it up where I left off. Unfortunately, the main campaign of AC: Black Flag is really weak.  Looking through my archive, it doesn't seem like I even mentioned the game when I was playing it last year.  I have it for Wii U (because it was my only living console at the time) and I had put in over 30 hours. I don't regret any of those hours I sunk into the game, because it's the best pirate simulator out there.  The open world exploration and pirating is so extremely fun.  I never got tired of seizing ships and stealing their goods.  The naval combat engine is fantastic and the feeling of being a pirate is just a ton of fun. This t...

I picked up Assassin's Creed Revelations for $25 on Black Friday thanks to Amazon lightning deals.  I always keep an eye out for when they do video game lightning deals and in this case it paid off.  The game had only been out for about 2 weeks and I saved $35.  I love Amazon. Anyway, AC Revelations is ok.  I know that's not a rousing endorsement, but it's the truth.  In terms of gameplay there is so little added on top of the last installment that it's hard to be excited. There are a few minor changes.  Desmond gets some intriguing puzzle gameplay while stuck in the Animus, Ezio gets to customize bombs, and Ezio has access to a  badass hookblade that allows the use of ziplines and faster climbing.  None of these is bad, but they don't go far enough.  The puzzle gameplay with Desmond tells an interesting story but the puzzles themselves don't offer much fun.  The bomb customization is worthless outside of specific bomb missions...

I love to see innovation , polish, refinement, and new gameplay experiences in gaming.  But it's hard to find games that do these things well.  One of the things I always take into consideration while looking at new games is the game's pedigree.  Which is to say that I pay attention to the developer of the game. Halo 3 developed by Bungie When I look at the developer of a new game that hasn't been released, a lot of the time I can tell if it's going to be good based on previous games the developer has made.  Take my post the other day on Halo Reach .  I'm debating whether I'm going to buy it, but I can guarantee that it will be a highly polished and well executed game.  I know this because I've played all the other Halo games that Bungie has made and they're all examples of high quality games.  Bungie has proven themselves to me. World of Warcraft developed by Blizzard Entertainment I know a lot of other developers that I can count on to make gre...