Ah, Roma. Once my grades were done, you have consumed my life.
But that's how I roll, so this is neither a surprise nor a seal of quality.
To sum up: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a third person sandbox parkour simulator where the player (typically an Italian aristro who schmoozes with Da Vinci, but sometimes a kidnapped ninja barkeeper) gets to kill people in Renaissance Rome. Enzio (the aristro, not the barkeep) is a leader in a secret society dedicated to supporting freedom and stopping the Knights Templar from... doing something bad. Whatever the opposite of freedom is? Oppressing? Governing? Being aware of economics?
It's basically irrelevant. They are bad guys, and the game makes certain that you know that, so that you can be the "good" assassin, in an order of good guy assassins. Because, I presume, Assassin's Creed was just too good of a name to pass up.
But is it a good game? I'm going to go with a qualified "yes".
First, the qualified part. I'm very tired of hearing about grand conspiracies that engineered the fall of nations, great events, et cetera. Impassioned young revolutionaries make me wince. This game is full of them. In Assassin's Creed II, that was less of a "thing". Enzio was growing up and becoming an assassin, so the rhetoric tended to stay in the background. Now, he is older, and has learned the lessons of the past, and he talks about them. Constantly. So does everyone else.
Gameplaywise they add some improvements (you get to recruit locals and they are baby assassins who function, in essence, like another weapon). I enjoy the fairly accurate Rome of the 1500s, it feels like a real place. The use of famous pieces of art and real history is fun and appeals to the teacher in me. Solving spotting puzzles based on historical photos and art made me go back and check and see if the Easter eggs are really there (they aren't). Rome is as well crafted as Venice and the other cities were. I compared a map of Rome IRL with the in-game map and they look pretty similar. It looks like it really was a good city to go sprinting across roof-tops.
I'm still on the fence regarding the auto paurkor functions, when running down a hall I often end up trying to climb the walls, which can allow the person I'm trying to pursue escape. At the same time, I only notice it hitching about every hour or so, which mean for every two minutes I spend forcing the camera around and running up the wrong damn wall, I'm spending fifty eight happily leaping about. It's certainly an improvement on Prince of Persia's acrobatic railroad. The mechanics work fairly well to support the sandbox aspects of the game.
While I enjoy rebuilding Rome, the real reason I bought this game was to train up my assassins. The "Brotherhood" in the title is there because Enzio recruits assassins to his cause and uses them as weapons as well as sending them out on missions. They are a fun weapon, and good money generators. I feel the system lacks depth, but that is just because of my love of deep economic sims.
((meta: On my second draft, I decided to take out the bit on video games as art and my own dislike for conspiracy. The new version makes it seem less like a pet peeve and more like the characters are always talking instead of showing. Both are true, the second is more valuable to my imagined readers. I polished up some transitions, though I think I still have a first without a second wandering about in there. I really only had a couple of minutes to work on this, so I left it fairly abrupt, this is so I can find what I'm doing next time))
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Review: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (1st draft)
Ah, Roma. Once my grades were done, you have consumed my life.
But that's how I roll, so this is neither a surprise nor a seal of quality.
To sum up: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a third person sandbox parkour simulator where the player (typically an Italian aristro who schmoozes with Da Vinci, but sometimes a kidnapped ninja barkeeper) gets to kill people in Renaissance Rome. Enzio (the aristro, not the barkeep) is a leader in a secret society dedicated to supporting freedom and stopping the Knights Templar from... doing something bad. Whatever the opposite of freedom is? Oppressing? Governing? Being aware of economics?
It's basically irrelevant. They are bad guys, and the game makes certain that you know that, so that you can be the "good" assassin, in an order of good guy assassins. Because, I presume, Assassin's Creed was just too good of a name to pass up.
But is it a good game? I'm going to go with a qualified "yes".
First, the qualified part. Maybe it was being in my twenties and in college when 9/11 happened, but I'm really leery of reductionist thinking, like "freedom vs. oppression". And I'm very tired of hearing about grand conspiracies that engineered the fall of nations, great events, et cetera. Impassioned young revolutionaries make me wince. This game is full of all three. In Assassin's Creed II, that was less of a "thing". Enzio was growing up and becoming an assassin, so the rhetoric tended to stay in the background. Now, he is older, and has learned the lessons of the past, and he talks about them. Constantly. So does everyone else.
This game is attempting to be taken seriously as a work of fiction. As as a "video games as art" person, I think this move is a step in the right direction. However, by doing so, the designers are asking me to assess the work on a different level, that of narrative fiction, as opposed as purely a game system. Enzio (the Italian) and Desmond (the ninja barkeep) both learn and grow (though they don't have character arcs). It makes me grumpy that these arcs seem to end in their early twenties.
Gameplaywise they add some improvements (you get to recruit locals and they are baby assassins who function, in essence, like another weapon). I enjoy the fairly accurate Rome of the 1500s, it feels like a real place. The use of famous pieces of art and real history is fun and appeals to the teacher in me. I'm still not a fan of the auto paurkor functions, when running down a hall I often end up trying to climb the walls, which can allow the person I'm trying to pursue escape.
((meta: This is a first draft. It's basically unorganized, and the gameplay section is far too small. I went on a little rant, which is par for the course, but it's sloppy writing))
But that's how I roll, so this is neither a surprise nor a seal of quality.
To sum up: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a third person sandbox parkour simulator where the player (typically an Italian aristro who schmoozes with Da Vinci, but sometimes a kidnapped ninja barkeeper) gets to kill people in Renaissance Rome. Enzio (the aristro, not the barkeep) is a leader in a secret society dedicated to supporting freedom and stopping the Knights Templar from... doing something bad. Whatever the opposite of freedom is? Oppressing? Governing? Being aware of economics?
It's basically irrelevant. They are bad guys, and the game makes certain that you know that, so that you can be the "good" assassin, in an order of good guy assassins. Because, I presume, Assassin's Creed was just too good of a name to pass up.
But is it a good game? I'm going to go with a qualified "yes".
First, the qualified part. Maybe it was being in my twenties and in college when 9/11 happened, but I'm really leery of reductionist thinking, like "freedom vs. oppression". And I'm very tired of hearing about grand conspiracies that engineered the fall of nations, great events, et cetera. Impassioned young revolutionaries make me wince. This game is full of all three. In Assassin's Creed II, that was less of a "thing". Enzio was growing up and becoming an assassin, so the rhetoric tended to stay in the background. Now, he is older, and has learned the lessons of the past, and he talks about them. Constantly. So does everyone else.
This game is attempting to be taken seriously as a work of fiction. As as a "video games as art" person, I think this move is a step in the right direction. However, by doing so, the designers are asking me to assess the work on a different level, that of narrative fiction, as opposed as purely a game system. Enzio (the Italian) and Desmond (the ninja barkeep) both learn and grow (though they don't have character arcs). It makes me grumpy that these arcs seem to end in their early twenties.
Gameplaywise they add some improvements (you get to recruit locals and they are baby assassins who function, in essence, like another weapon). I enjoy the fairly accurate Rome of the 1500s, it feels like a real place. The use of famous pieces of art and real history is fun and appeals to the teacher in me. I'm still not a fan of the auto paurkor functions, when running down a hall I often end up trying to climb the walls, which can allow the person I'm trying to pursue escape.
((meta: This is a first draft. It's basically unorganized, and the gameplay section is far too small. I went on a little rant, which is par for the course, but it's sloppy writing))
Some Students...
... at the end of the quarter asked if I had any writings out there in the big, bad world. I responded "yes".
And I do, but I realized that I don't have them anywhere... real. I have some articles on writing in Evergreen's Inkwell, and I have my short lived run as a music reviewer in a magazine that went the way of the buffalo back in nineteen ninety something, and of course I have my master's paper. There is also a few reviews out here on the interweb, but those are all under the name I use for posting to forums and such, and none younger than three years old. You get a degree and a new job and time just slips away.
I really don't want to be a liar to students, that's a little off. So, to that end, I'm going to start posting here, on this dust covered blogger account. It seems hypocritical to tell my students that the best way to get to be a better writer is to write, and not write. It seems odd to say that the most important part of the writing process is to publish, than not publish.
And I do, but I realized that I don't have them anywhere... real. I have some articles on writing in Evergreen's Inkwell, and I have my short lived run as a music reviewer in a magazine that went the way of the buffalo back in nineteen ninety something, and of course I have my master's paper. There is also a few reviews out here on the interweb, but those are all under the name I use for posting to forums and such, and none younger than three years old. You get a degree and a new job and time just slips away.
I really don't want to be a liar to students, that's a little off. So, to that end, I'm going to start posting here, on this dust covered blogger account. It seems hypocritical to tell my students that the best way to get to be a better writer is to write, and not write. It seems odd to say that the most important part of the writing process is to publish, than not publish.
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