GoldbergBlog

There are three things I pray for every night before I go to bed: the safety of my family and friends; peace on earth; and for Assassin’s Creed to live up to its potential. It looks fantastic and I think “How could this game be as bad as I’ve heard from people who have played it?” And the only rational conclusion I can come up with is that if you built the game, the of course you can play it perfectly. But if you’re new, you’re going to make tons of mistakes and what should be a game with a ton of freedom is going to end up being endlessly frustrating and prohibitive. And you can see the subtle signs of this like when producer Jade Raymond says you shouldn’t approach those guards because they look like they’re barring the way or you should walk past the guys holding crates so as not to knock them over and draw attention to yourself. But if the game has the poor hit detection that I’m hearing about, you’re going to find all the stealth is for naught because you got a little too close to guard and now you’re on the run again.

There are other possible problems. Jade mentions that if you tried to sword-murder the guy who spotted you instead of using a throwing knife, you’d be fucked because you drew the attention of too many guards. Well how does that really speak to the freedom of the game? I understand they want a reasonable level of difficulty but that’s a pretty big leap to assume that someone will just know to use the knife and that if they don’t they’re probably going to fail the mission.

Something that is clearly a problem is the fighting. It seems that they’ve opted for this clumsy one-on-one combat where you’re in a pit full of guards but they only attack you one at a time. The others stand around like morons waiting for their turn to be murdered.

Please God, let this game be good. And let us have peace on Earth. Amen.

Tags: videogames //