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RipTen Review: Assassin’s Creed Revelations

Murray Hibble — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:00:44 +0000

When it comes to annual franchises, nobody does it like Ubisoft. Each Assassin’s Creed title has improved subtly on its predecessor by folding in new activities and gameplay elements scattered across gorgeous city traverses. Revelations offers perhaps the smallest list of enhancements in the series but when the core gameplay is so good, and the complex, unwinding narrative surpasses itself, you’ll again find yourself drawn into many hours of running, murdering and boggling at what’s on offer. The franchise hasn’t lost step as it confidently reveals stunning new insights and revelations, so while the slick gameplay isn’t markedly different, the narrative is in the driving seat and offers every motivation that you’ll need to discover the last days of Ezio and Altair.

The setting for Revelations is a divided 15th century Constantinople, where the Ottoman King’s attention is held to other fronts allowing the Byzantines and Templars full run of the city. Ezio Auditore arrives in town seeking a weapon to fight the Templars, a weapon once weilded by Altair Ibn-Lahad himself, and the fight will take him across Constantinople to the underground city of Cappadacia and to the hallowed ground of Masyaf itself. Throughout the journey you’ll befriend local Assassin’s Guild Master, Yusuf, discover a new love interest for Ezio in the form of passionate bookstore owner Sophia and play through intertwining narratives for the two other main characters in surprising and incredibly fulfilling ways.

Narrative is clearly at the forefront in Revelations so much so that even the cityscape feels like it has its own monologue. It’s not just the colour; the beautiful swathes of pastel rainbows in the local people, stallholders and the strong visual representation when seen from a vantage point and it’s not just the fantastic presentation of hostile soldiers, particularly the masked faces of the Ottoman’s ‘Janissaries’ troops, or the level of detail in the lead characters. The story is in the amalgamation of these elements and is rooted in the architecture of the city itself through the subtle use of undulating structures and zip-lines (accessed using Ezio’s new hookblade or parachute). Constantinople is a gorgeous gamespace and thanks to its clever structure you spend less time finding the right lines and more time flowing across the city.

As an ancient history GTA, Ubisoft have again refined and expanded on the side-missions and for the most part it works. One of the major new additions is bomb-crafting. You’ll be able to choose a shell, an explosive element and an extra effect and these are grouped under further banners for Offensive, Tactical and Diversionary. These can be crafted at various bomb-stations throughout the game world and you’ll pick up the components from looting bodies or the almost overdone abundance of containers, purchase them from bomb-makers or from historical figure Piris Reis. Bombs, secondary weapons and primary weapons are all now selected cleverly from a single hold of the right button allowing on-the-fly changes to your entire weapon set, but the problem is that bombs are never really needed outside of forced moments in some missions thanks to the overly-effective primary weapon counter-strikes and insta-kills. Trip-mines take too long to activate, explosives can often kill citizens and with swordplay that is as fun to play as it is easy to do, there’s little incentive to employ your arsenal.

Expanding on the Assassin’s Guild mini-game, this time you’ll not only recruit new killers to your ranks and send them on missions but each mission will reduce Templar control in a city, with the goal of controlling the entire Mediterranean area. Templars fight back however, so you’ll need to keep revisiting the tougher ‘Reclaim The City’ missions to retain your hold. Your recruits tie into the other mini-games as well, and there are various Assassin’s Guild buildings across the map and once a recruit has become a Master Assassin a simple mission alongside them will give them control of that den.

To unlock new recruit slots you’ll need to find a Templar stronghold, locate the Captain and kill him which can be tedious as it entails walking around in blue-tinted Eagle-vision to find him standing out in gold. At times you’ll also be given the option to defend your Assassin’s Dens which are assaulted by templars if you gain too high of a public profile. These offer ‘tower defense’ gameplay and involve setting up barricades and manning rooftops with Assassin’s against waves of incoming enemy soldiers. Unfortunately this is way too fiddly to work and the constant requests to recapture your dens means this element is as frustrating as dealing with girlfriends in GTA. Clearly though, with these side missions and even more there is a ridiculous amount of content for fans of the series to be had.

Ripten Review: Assassin’s Creed 2

Danielle Cantrell — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:06:09 +0000

My first impressions of Assassin Creed 2 gameplay was during Ubisoft’s presentation at PAX last September. Several new features were promoted then, such as the capability of swinging around corners, poisoning guards, and tossing money or smoke bombs to distract anyone who might be tailing your hide. Ezio was also capable of swimming in mid air at that point — truth be told that was more of an amusing early preview bug than a feature.

In the first Assassin’s Creed, there were many complaints about how repetitive the missions and combat were. It was essentially gather information – kill (hold the right trigger and button mash) – repeat until you got to the end of the game.

With the second installment of the game, it’s quite obvious that Ubisoft considered the opinions of gamers seriously. From the very beginning, you can tell that the characters have been developed, whereas the first game’s protagonist was essentially devoid of any real traits. He had a blade, he was an assassin during the crusades, he wore white.

Ezio, the main character of Assassin’s Creed 2, has a personality that is strong throughout the game, but unlike most games, you can tell where he acquired this trait, or what led to his rage in any given situation. Due to the incredible background story that’s provided for Ezio, you want to help him exact revenge on his foes because it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from.

The majority of the game takes place in renaissance Italy, with majestic architecture dominating the scenery. As Ezio Auditore, you can either weave through the crowds of civilians or clamber to the top of well-known cathedrals. Either way, you will encounter friends and enemies, who are now much more sensitive to their surroundings. If you run around killing people, the guards will recognize you and come after you, even if you aren’t breaking any laws at the time. This makes the game more demanding, but it also heightens the realism and separates the second game from the first.

Although the approach to obtaining missions in Assassin’s Creed 2 is virtually the same as its predecessor, the missions themselves vary much more. Instead of a straight line from mission to mission, you can decide the order in which you want to take them on. This made the game much easier to beat, since I could distract myself with other parts of the game instead of getting distracted by other games. Many of the side quests involved collecting things, but unlike the 200-flag collections from the original, the most difficult collection to finish in this game is 100 pieces. It’s not nearly as frustrating as the first one in that regard.

There are a few things that are frustrating about Assassin’s Creed 2: the details and shadows frequently pop in, the graphics aren’t what I expected, and the 100 piece collection is still pretty aggravating. The game would also freeze sometimes, although only once to me, while traveling from city to city. It’s really unnerving to think that you might have lost 30 hours of gameplay because the game froze while saving.

If compared to its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed 2 would receive a 10; but when compared to what it could have been, it cannot fairly earn a perfect score. It can, however, earn a close-to-perfect score.

HAZE: Final Words on PS3 Exclusivity

Patrick Steen — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:17:59 +0000

HAZE Script Writer Rob Yescombe

It’s hard to put exclusivity disputes to rest. What’s worrying is that there are disputes – anger and seriousness over the possibility of losing a game to the “competition.” There’s been buzz around Metal Gear Solid 4, Bioshock, and most certainly HAZE.

Free Radical’s script writer, Rob Yescombe, attempts to put the bickering to rest in this interview we held at Sony’s Playstation 3 Rooms.

What makes HAZE (and to a lesser extent Bioshock) more complicated than MGS4 and Final Fantasy XIII, is that it was originally announced for three platforms. Moreover, the game’s producer turned a presumed Playstation 3 exclusive, Assassin’s Creed, into a multiplatform game. Ubisoft don’t appear to be the exclusive type.

This begs the question, why did Free Radical choose Ubisoft as their producer this time around rather than Sony, or the previous Codemasters? Rob Yescombe had this to say of their decision:

Well their pedigree for shooters is pretty good. I mean, they’ve got a good gambit of things under their belt. And part of the pleasure of being an independent studio is you don’t have to work with the same guy every time.

It’s not that we’ve had problems with any other publishers, it’s just that in order for us to remain…er…vigilant in the market that we occupy, it’s important to know what it’s like working with various people. Ubisoft have been bloody great, I mean they’ve put us here [Playstation 3 Rooms, London.] This is nice.

Still, as a result of Ubisoft’s indecisiveness over console exclusives, there has been a continuous cycle of reports saying Haze is no longer exclusive, to it being a timed exclusive, and then to exclusive again. So what is the truth of the matter? I asked Rob whether HAZE really is Playstation 3 exclusive?

Why does everybody keep asking that? It’s a Playstation 3 exclusive. Buy a Playstation 3 and play it. I want it to be the reason people buy a Playstation 3.

That’s all well and good, but will this really put the rumours to rest? Couldn’t it just come out on another platform further down the line?

We’re a Playstation 3 exclusive. If by some magical wave of the wand that happens, I won’t be complaining. But we’re a Playstation 3 exclusive.

Rob has certainly put things into perspective. Like any good business decision, I presume it’ll all depend on the game’s sales on the Playstation 3. Still, as obvious as this sounds, people will still be talking about whether HAZE really is Playstation 3 exclusive. In reply to the sentiment that everyone is talking about HAZE’s exclusivity, Rob muses:

I find it so confusing that some people are so offended at the idea that it will be format exclusive. But it’s like people get angry about it. What are you angry about?

Indeed, what are people angry about? I expect most are annoyed by the conflicting reports from both news sites and Ubisoft/Free Radical themselves. It would help to know who’s decided on the gam’es exclusivity. Perhaps it wasn’t Ubisoft’s decision, but Free Radical’s choice to concentrate on one platform?

No, it’s not our decision.. It’s a publisher decision. And it’s not like this bizarre practice of gamers kind of demonising publishers like they’re some evil guy. Ubisoft have helped us out a lot on this game, in terms of being very supportive to the decisions that we wanted to make and to approve it.

They allowed us to delay it. You know people are so furious “Oh god, I pre-ordered this game and it’s delayed.” The fact of the matter is, what we want for people to do is not just to have a knee jerk buy at Christmas. You know, we want people to feel like they spent $50 and it was worth that money. You know, that’s what that delay was about.

In addition to delaying the game, changing focus from three platforms to just the Playstation 3 must have helped the game’s quality also:

Originally it [development] was kind of open ended. The fact of the matter is our pedigree at Free Radicial, when we were doing Timesplitters, all of that started out on Sony hardware. And so those guys have a lot of experience working in that realm.

Starting on any new hardware has its quirks, and Playstation 3 is no different, but it meant that we were able to hit the ground running maybe a little bit faster than some of the other developers that found it a bit tricky.

Hopefully such focus would enable Free Radical to concentrate more on the Playstation 3′s quirks, such as the Cell Processor:

Well, I mean, it’s something that those guys, the technical guys, are very capable of doing.

Even then, Sony’s technical wizards have been relied upon by some developers, especially before the arrival of improved Playstation 3 tools. So have Free Radical had any support from Sony’s techies?

Well to be honest with you, we haven’t really needed that kind of tech support. I mean, they’re willing and able to provide it, but we just haven’t run into that problem.

Which is pleasing to hear, since this is one game where the framerate won’t falter. Expect a locked 30fps on release. We all hope that this little interview has put HAZE’s exclusivity into context and will potentially put the bickering to rest. Then again, we’ll only be able to guess at why Ubisoft made this decision.

For more information on Haze please follow this link, or have a gander of our gallery. Stand by for our incoming hands-on preview.

Kojima: Violence in Games is Important – If Done Right

Kev Lochun — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:35:55 +0000

In the midst of the ongoing ruckus surrounding videogame violence, Metal Gear godfather Hideo Kojima has come out saying that it’s pretty much essential.

In an interview in Famitsu magazine, he says:

When you hit someone or inflict pain, faces get disfigured for example, and I want to make games that show that sort of thing.

If you don’t see the pain, you can’t understand what you’ve done, and you’ll pass through battles without taking responsibility for your actions. I don’t want to ignore that. I want players to think, even if it’s just a little, about what violence and war are.

It’s good to hear a heavyweight getting behind the industry for producing mature content, but it’s also clear to see that he means this with a caveat. Earlier in the interview he stated that he doesn’t think many games tackle violence head on.

He reinforces this point by adding: “I think there are fewer developers around today who think about making a good game.” Manhunt 2 and its ilk aren’t getting any love it seems.

As for Kojima’s vision; Metal Gear’s well established penchant for existential debate means we’re going to get a fair dose on the morals of war, but facial disfigurement? Is this some curious new IP brewing in his brain? We can’t wait.

More to the point, why is he being interviewed by Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond?

Read the interview here.

Far Cry 2 Officially Announced for PS3 and Xbox 360

Patrick Steen — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:59:16 +0000

After rampant rumours of Far Cry 2 coming to consoles, Ubisoft have finally announced the game for both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

A predictable outcome for Ubisoft; a company that doesn’t like to keep all its eggs in one basket, as was seen in Assassin’s Creed reaching both consoles – and soon to be PC.

Whether the console iterations of Far Cry 2 will be as solid and impressive as the PC version that we’ve always been expecting, we’ll have to wait and see.

Here’s the press release, which is regrettably in French. Nothing against the language, but it’ll be foreign to the majority of you.

Ubisoft annonce aujourd’hui que Far Cry® 2 est actuellement en développement sur Xbox 360® de Microsoft et PLAYSTATION®3 de Sony. Far Cry 2 est un jeu de tir à la première personne développé par le studio d’Ubisoft Montréal.

Plus qu’une performance visuelle et technologique, Far Cry 2 constitue pour le joueur une expérience de jeu inédite, basée sur un moteur de jeu conçu spécifiquement pour l’occasion. Les joueurs seront plongés dans un univers de jeu totalement ouvert, au sein de somptueux paysages africains, grâce à la haute définition et à la technologie next-gen.

La sortie de Far Cry 2 est prévue pour l’année fiscale 2008-2009.

In way of a translation: Far Cry 2 is being developed for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which will be released in the fiscal year 2008-09. Or there abouts.

UK Market Research: Too High Risk to Stock PS3 Titles

Patrick Steen — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:31:11 +0000

Let me preface this with the sentiment that I find this following retailer comment interesting, but not indicative of the whole of the United Kingdom gaming market. This is from one small independent retailer, and not from a main retailer such as HMV or Woolworths. I would still like to share my findings with you.

On my trip to a local town I thought I’d have a wee gander in the gaming store for a Playstation 3 game to treat myself for Christmas. Maybe a little bit of Assassin’s Creed or Ratchet and Clank, and to check whether they had my current favorite PS3 title, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Wandering into the store I can hardly find any Playstation 3 titles at all. To my delight I do discover a corner plastered with Heavenly Sword posters and a small selection of titles. Firstly, most of the PS3 games appeared to be used and not new.

This isn’t to say that people are returning PS3 games more than other platforms, as there were also many used Xbox360 titles, but the amount of new PS3 games were few.

So I asked the shop owner whether these were all the PS3 games he had.

Yes, that’s all.

In asking why, I get the reply.

People only started buying the system 6 weeks ago, so we just don’t get the trade.

Really? But there are lots of great games out now and the system is more affordable. How about Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune?

Oh we get the new titles in and they sell out very quickly, but it’s high risk having Playstation 3 games in stock, as we aren’t guaranteed a sale. So we just let them go.

O.K. thank you. (Not).

What does this mean? Well firstly it means that he lost a sale, as I was very willing to fork out £50 for a game. Thus, he could just be a foolish store owner who isn’t pushing the Playstation 3 and its games enough, especially when he says the exclusive titles sell out straight away. Perhaps he just knows his buying public very intimately.

Is this even a sign of the whole UK market? Playstation 3 exclusives aren’t selling at a huge rate, but Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty 4 have done quite respectably – both of which weren’t in this store. Their Xbox360 counterparts were. Is this retailer just out of the loop?

The UK is one of the few European countries where Xbox360′s outsell the Playstation 3, so this store may well be a sign of the other gaming stores around the country. This retailer suggests that the PS3 only really kicked off 6 weeks ago after the price cut, hence stocking PS3 titles just isn’t worth it.

This is a shame, because it could turn into a vicious circle. Low PS3 sales mean small retailers don’t stock PS3 titles, meaning gamers don’t know what titles the PS3 has, meaning they don’t get to see great games like Uncharted, and thus the PS3 doesn’t seem like a worthwhile buy.

So is this retailer’s understanding of the market correct? Is it still high risk for small retailers to stock Playstation 3 titles in the United Kingdom? Isn’t the PS3 now selling well enough to justify trying to push the console and its games?