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Video: Assassin’s Creed II Video Review

Today Controller1.com presents a video review of Assassin’s Creed II via the medium of interpretive dance

10 Things That Won’t Be Announced at E3

E3 will be on us very shortly and Controller1.com would like to prognosticate one what you WON’T be reading about come the first week of June. This is not the result of rumor, heresay or the result of a dodgy phone camera shot of a Best Buy POS terminal. This is pure 100% bullshit. You do know how to spot bullshit, don’t you? It’s easy. Read on…

1- Nintendo will announce the Wii 2 HD console without Motion controllers, merely a redesigned N64 controller with more spikes. The Big N has listened to the whining whims of hard care gamers and is ditching the mass market with millions of easy sales of Wii fit and WiiPlay. Instead, they will focus on the shrinking marketshare that ‘core’ games that are currently divvied up between Sony and MS.

2- A Japanese game without hypersexualised pedo-bait female characters will be released. RE5 will offer new unlockable raincoat costumes for Shiva. DLC for X-Blades will include a petticoats and hoop-skirts. I do declare!Dead or Alive Extreme 3 will feature the ladies in a  new environment- Open Cut Coke Mining.

3. EA will be bought by Midway

Take one company that’s big but losing a bit of money. Take another company that’s on its last knees. Midway buying EA would be like Quebec buying France. But that won’t stop Midway’s bat-shit loco insane management from giving it a go.

4. Microsoft announces a new model Xbox 360- The Bulletproof. This new model is guaranteed by Microsoft nit to break down in any way. It will never RROD or display an E74. It also has no DVD Drive, power supply, CPU, GPU or wireless receiver. It is not backwards compatible with Xbox 1 games, but its also not present-compatible with Xbox 360 games. But its not breakable.

5. Ubisoft announces a game produced by Jade Raymond that will not be demoed on stage by Ms Raymond, but by the games’ designer. Jade’s a talented lady but we’ve seen enough. Show us the dirty smelly bearded nerd.

6. Boothbabes who can stand up without developing lower back pain within 10 minutes.

7. A new Super Mario Bros game for the DS will be announced. Yes, Nintendo will actually make a second Mario platforming game on the DS. All New Super Mario Brothers will be more of the same. No Baby Mario, Wario or Yoshi. Just Mario and Luigi jumping on things.

8. a PlayStation 3 killer application. Yes, a reason for you fence sitters will be announced at E3. Unlike Heavenly Sword, Lair, Haze, MGS4, Little Big Planet or Killzone2, this will actually excite no PS3-owning gamers with two jobs to take the plunge.

9. A Twitter feed of a press conference without LOL, OMFG or Woot being used when sequel x91 is announced for mega-successful franchise y39 is announced.

10. Controller1.com’s game of show will be an MMO.
wat?

ASSASSIN’S CREED

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, DS. Developed by Ubisoft Monteal. Published by Ubisoft

Ubisoft presents a Ubisoft Montreal production…

Assassin’s Creed is an enigma of a game. It looks like a gorgeous open world stealth action game. It looks as though there’s millions of things to do in this [cliche] leaving, breathing city [/cliche]. Well looks can be deceiving. Assassin’s creed has a few tricks up its sleeve. You just have to do them over and over again.

Halo creators Bungie have often said that their games are 10 seconds of fun repeated over and over. Well Ass Creed is about 2 seconds of fun repeated over and over again. It’s like Ubi Montreal got wrapped up in how cool the locale and story was and forgot about making the gameplay varied enough (as GTA does so well). Obviously you can’t have bazookas and helicopters in a game set during the middle ages. Or can you?

SPOILERS (even though this game has been out six months, Flamey still has another 3 years before he can even consider it retro enough for his tastes. This spoiler is not all that much of a spoiler since the menus give it away before you’ve even pressed start and the game doesn’t wait 5 mins before it tells you the big twist)

This game is set in the present. Your character is actually accessing a trace memory on his ancestor (similar to the Matrix). Unfortunately, this serves almost no story purpose, kills the middle age realism by having techno looking menus, computer voices telling you you’re fast forwarding and the like. It even feels grafted on in some ways.

So, hi tech conceits and repetition aside, what has Unisoft done for us? Well, the game is fun to play, the towns are interesting to explore and combat and movement is fun, despite the incredibly wanky tutorial. By incredibly wanky, I mean super incredibly wanky in the vein of Final Fantasy wankery. Its pretty and it sounds very good.I quite liked being able to climb buildings though I found having towers more fun than missions because they were more frustrating than fun to be honest. There’s little skill involved in pickpocketing more luck. Interrogating barely works and stealth kills in order to assist an informant where somewhat more fun.

Metal Gear meets GTA meets the middle ages meets the Matrix meets hype and cute producer meets 5 million in sales. If AC2 managed to fix the basic gameplay issues, I’ll be there, since they’re got most of the elements right. As it is, if you can play it for more than a few hours without getting incredibly frustrated or bored, you might like this.

C1 Rating: 1/3