Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag Box Art

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is the 2013 release of Ubisoft’s action-adventure series, Assassin’s Creed. Although it is a numbered release, Black Flag is a prequel to Assassin’s Creed III, following the story of the pirate Edward Kenway, the grandfather to the protagonist of AC 3‘s Ratonhnhaké:ton, or Connor when he wants to blend in with white people. The Assassin’s Creed series is known for following two separate, but connected storylines in each game, both focusing on the history of the Assassin’s vs the Templars. The main story in Black Flag follows Edward Kenway’s adventures in the Caribbean during the later portion of the Golden Age of Piracy. The other story in Black Flag takes place in modern-day Montreal, and focuses on an unnamed employee at Abstergo Entertainment, a company that is run by the Templars. Since the modern-day story is terrible, we’ll get that one out of the way first.

In an attempt to be brief, Abstergo is focused on recovering the genetic memories of Desmond Miles, a descendant of the protagonists of each game in the series. Desmond died at the end of AC 3, but his memories were stored in “the cloud”, and now this unnamed employee at Abstergo is tasked with sifting through Desmond’s genetic memories of Edward to help develop a game and provide the Templar’s with the location of the Observatory. If that sounds incredibly stupid there is a good reason, it is. This modern-day story is the main arc in the series, but it jumped the shark way back in Assassin’s Creed II and was fucking terrible even before that. The gameplay during this sections does not involve any combat, just some puzzle solving (hacking) and eavesdropping. Without a doubt, these are the worst parts of the game, and disrupt any momentum that the main story builds. One thing the Ubisoft got right this time is that these sections are not nearly as prevalent as they have been in previous entries.

The land combat is pretty shallow, but can still deliver a few exciting moments.

Edward’s story, the good one between the two, begins with him killing an assassin that was on the way to Havana to sell information. Edward, being a money-hungry pirate, dons the fallen assassin’s clothes and sets sail for Havana. Edward is unaware that the assassin was a traitor to the Creed, and that the people in Havana are Templars in search of the Observatory, an important location for the Creed. This sets up a story that bounces between Edward’s life as a pirate, and his quest to prevent the Templars from using the Observatory to eradicate the Assassins. Edward’s journey crosses paths with many notable people like Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, Calico Jack, and Mary Read. This story is told through a series of missions that become a bit repetitive as the twenty-hour story unfolds. The repetitiveness is not terrible, except in the case of the missions where Edward has to tail and/or eavesdrop on an enemy. Those missions are an abomination in the eyes of God and should be burned in fire.

Anybody that is excited to see how the Golden Age of Piracy would alter the skills of an assassin will be sorely disappointed to discover that the gameplay has pretty much been lifted straight out of AC 3, including the sailing controls. What is especially aggravating is that AC 3 introduced simplified controls to make the parkour sections easier, but this simplified control scheme leads to many moments of frustration when Edward climbs a wall during a chase sequence or climbs a treasure chest instead of opening it. Fights in Black Flag are well done, although a bit simple, which is fortunate due to missteps with the parkour skills resulting in more battles than the player may desire. The sailing controls are solid and straight forward, but controls for naval combat can be a bit wonky. Different weapons on the ship are selected by swinging the camera around, which takes a bit of getting used to but works well enough. Once the controls become familiar, the naval battles provide some of the best moments in the game. The sea’s waves affect the aim of the cannons, and engaging other ships during a violent storm is as exciting as it is difficult.

Waging war on other ships is extremely satisfying.

Apart from the parkour, sailing, and combat, Black Flag has quite a bit of other content for players to take a stab at. The West Indies is a vast area for players to explore, and it has a lot of collectibles. Animals to hunt, treasure maps leading to buried treasure, upgrade plans, and manuscripts are some of the things Edward can find as he sails the West Indies. To make things a bit easier, locations of most collectibles are labeled on the in-game map, and each area tracks its collectibles separately, so completionists will know when an area does not hold any more secrets. Plundering other ships and hunting animals provide the money and supplies to upgrade Edward’s weapons, armor, and ship, but it was a bit disappointing to learn that every area pays the same price for items. Any dreams of striking it rich by buying low and selling high will still have to be lived out on Sid Meier’s Pirates! or Uncharted Waters.

On the surface, Black Flag is a good-looking game. The major cities, the ocean and its landscape, and the ships all look great, but after the first impression wears off, it becomes clear that corners were cut with the visuals. Clipping is quite common, from sails clipping through the mast of a ship to Edward’s hands going right through the animal that he is skinning. While the main cities look and feel different from one another, the rest of the fifty locations fall into one of three categories, and there is not much deviation within the categories. The music is pretty much standard fare for the setting and era, but the shanties that the crew sings while sailing are a nice touch. The voice acting is by and large mediocre, with Edward and a few of the other main characters being voiced quite well, but everybody else being somewhere between alright and awful.

With more development time, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag could have been a great title, but it comes off as feeling like every other game in the series with a pirate theme painted over the top. Fans of the era will enjoy the exploration and the ship battles but may be disappointed that the Templar story overtakes real historical story. People that enjoyed previous entries in the series will find the experience they have known now for over four years. Black Flag does not do anything especially groundbreaking, it just kind of melts away into the porridge that the series is. It is a decent game, worth a rental for anybody interested in the series or pirates, but that is about it.

Choices, Choices…

Download: Produced 2013.03.31

The Legendary Zoltan braves goblins innumerable as he premieres his latest remix from The Secret of Mana, whilst SiliconNooB and KillswitchTool drive Lusipurr to distraction with an overabundance of language not wholly fit for a genteel audience.

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This month, Lusipurr.com is pleased to present the second commission from our Music Director: Jahan ‘The Legendary Zoltan’ Honma!

Followers of Lusipurr, welcome back to another episode of The Starlight Megaphone. I am The Legendary Zoltan presenting my sophomore musical piece for your listening enjoyment and the appeasement of the keeper of my soul. That said, I doubt he will be very appeased this time around. Last time, I brought you an unlikely call to action from the Kingdom (Queendom?) of Zeal. This time I have brought you a suspense story from the Kingdom of Wherever-the-hell-Secret of Mana-takes-place.

Source Music: Secret of Mana – The Oracle
Original Composer: Hiroki Kikuta
Remix: Don’t Open That Door! There’s a Dark Lich Hiding in There!

Unlike my previous goal of trying to simultaneously satisfy Lusipurr’s set criteria and make it sound good. I decided to go with something far less noble and throw “sounding good” out the window. This is a remix of the music that plays when you fight the Dark Lich boss. The original song is practically without genre. If I had to call it something, I would say that it is drum and bass music. Aside from the crazy percussive breakdowns, there is really only a single melody that is repeated often. So my goal was to turn a genre-less, repetitive, and scary piece and turn it into a different genre-less, repetitive, and scary piece. How creative I am!

I just threw away all the drums and build-up sequences in the original and just repeated the main melody over and over again. Are you worried yet? Each time the melody is repeated it is done so with different instrumentation, feeling, and sometimes even different tempos. The resulting piece is actually extremely varied and while not terribly catchy, is not uninteresting by any means.

When you are listening to the song, imagine that you are in a horror movie, opening doors in a giant mansion, one after another, looking for the exit. Behind one of those doors lurks a Dark Lich. During your flee of terror you eventually manage to find the exit. You feel the safety of sunlight and nature around you…until you learn the hard way that Dark Liches are in no way inhibited by sunlight!

This is what it looks like when a company cares more about cost cutting than it does about reputation.

SimCity Launch An Unmitigated Disaster

This past week has seen EA’s launch of their new SimCity reboot, a game which Lusipurr.com readers will probably be familiar with on account of it featuring some abysmally punitive DRM, which requires players to stay logged in to an EA Origin server despite the fact that it is a single-player game. Well, it would seem that just like every other launch of a single-player game with always-on DRM in the history of gaming, the game has launched with nowhere near enough servers, and players have been facing mammoth waiting queues to even gain access to their full priced game, and once they are finally into the game Origin’s straining servers frequently refuse to save a player’s cities on account of their not being allowed to store and access their save files locally. In an attempt to mitigate the crippling disaster of Origin, EA has begun stripping the game of all non-essential gameplay features, such as leaderboards, achievements, and region filters – and thus basically removing every single element which served as EA’s original exceedingly weak rationale for the burning need to have the game require an always active internet connection in the first place!

Due to a flurry of complaints Amazon has pulled the game from their storefront, as well they should. The SimCity product page on Amazon goes on to explain:

“Many customers are having issues connecting to the ‘SimCity’ servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed. Please visit https://help.ea.com/en/simcity for more information.”

To make matters worse, while many much more reputable establishments have been refunding the purchases of disgruntled consumers, EA’s own Origin storefront has been refusing to do so. EA’s official line on the matter is that Origin does not refund consumers unless there are “special mitigating circumstances” – and apparently rendering the game inoperable beneath a thick veneer of obnoxious DRM does not count as “special mitigating circumstances”.

As one final amusing aside, Good Old Games’ Twitter account was this week advertising the purchase of SimCity 2000 with the cheecky description:

“Server problems? DRM-free SimCity 2000 needs no internet to play AND it’s only $5.99.”

Why is the contest between PS3 and the 360 even close?

Because Xbox Live Was Not Expensive Enough

Xbox Live Gold accounts currently go for an absolutely disgustingly unjustifiable asking price of $60, but what of large families who all like to play online? What if father, mother, sister, brother all want to game online and have their own unique accounts and profiles? Well, until this week one could simply purchase an Xbox Live Family Pack subscription, but now that is no longer the case.

Xbox Live Family Packs allowed Xbox 360 owners to purchase four Xbox Live Gold accounts for the still extortionate price of $99.99, for use by power gaming families. Apparently Microsoft fancies that their offer of family savings was too generous by far, and have unceremoniously yanked the package without even a warning or announcement. If there is one consolation, it is that the average Xbox 360 owner’s console will probably have died by the time their subscription is due.

Game Development Practices For the Current Gen and Beyond

The video game industry is currently gearing up to make the transition to the eighth console generation, and such shifts tend to lend themselves to developers briefly opening up and waxing philosophical about their intended approach going forward. This week has seen personnel from CD Projekt RED [The Witcher franchise], Take-Two [working on Grand Theft Auto V], and Ubisoft [working on Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag] open up to grant insights into their particular video game development processes.

CD Projekt RED’s studio head, Adam Badowski, explained why, for their continued success, “creative vision has to inform business policy and not the other way around”. Badowski considers it to be very detrimental to the studio when business interests win out and are allowed to determine the direction of game production. Badowski went on to state that despite microtransactions and freemium game-models being where all the money is being made at present, such things do not sit well with the creative ambitions of the studio, and are thus being ignored by them at present.

“Financial and business concerns shouldn’t decide which path we take or the creative aims of the company. For example right now we are not dealing in the free-to-play market and this is why – the market is far from perfect yet, I think there’s something strange and awkward about this business model. So we’re not getting involved in it, even if everyone is excited by how much money can be made using this model. Maybe we’ll change our minds in that regard, but not yet.”

Sure to be a massive commercial success, and yet iterative installments are not being churned out year after year.

Meanwhile Take-Two’s chief operating officer, Karl Slatoff, opened up about the reasons for the publisher [and Rockstar] eschewing a bi-annual release schedule for Grand Theft Auto games. Take-Two are of the view that such a quick turn around in game production would degrade the quality of the game’s content, and thereby fatigue the traditional Grand Theft Auto audience who look to each game’s release as an event.

“Often times people ask us, ‘Why don’t you come out with Grand Theft Auto every two years? To us, that doesn’t make sense, because Grand Theft Auto, every single time it comes out, is a brand new experience. You can’t possibly do that in two years. And if we did that, our product would fatigue and the franchise would degrade from a value perspective.”

Finally, Ubisoft lead game content manager, Carsten Myhill, discussed the publisher’s approach to working on such an atypically developed title as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The game has been in development since 2011, is launching on both current and next-gen consoles, and is being developed by a massive eight different studios! Their method seems to be to have two different teams do the preliminary work on the game, and then to bring other studios on board once production ramps up.

“We’ve been in development since summer 2011. We’ve had two teams working in parallel – there’s been some overlapping and when it gets to the end of a game it’s all hands on deck to get it finished.”

When questioned about the Playstation 4 version of the game, Myhill responded: “Visuals enhancements are the most obvious difference. We’ll also be supporting the new Playstation 4 controller. We’re going to be revealing all the details of that [in the future]. The feature is built for the Playstation 4 controller, but we’re also looking at other controllers too.”

It is always illuminating to see the extent to which studios are willing to allow the concerns of business to guide their endeavours; here we see an ascending WRPG studio brush off the bandwagon fads like microtransactions [they also have a legacy of opposing DRM in their games], and we see the undisputed king of open-world action games taking steps to avoid overexposing their top money-earning brand. In contrast to this we can see the custodians of the fast fatiguing Assassin’s Creed property [thirteen games released since 2007] moving heaven and earth to ensure that Ubisoft will have yet another samey Assassin’s Creed game to sell this holiday season.

As a side note, it appears that the PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed IV will be the worst of the bunch.

Not this Warface.

Crytek to Make the Transition to F2P Studio

Amid the vapid pageantry and bustle of last week’s blandly homogenised E3 shooterfest, one developer attempted to slip out an announcement which was actually quite surprising; the developer was Crytek. Once Crytek has shipped the conventional games that they are currently working on, the studio will then transition into developing exclusively free to play titles that are in a similar vein to their forthcoming FPS title, Warface.

Crytek’s CEO, Cevat Yerli, has let it be known that he is thoroughly unenamoured with the business models which currently underpin the conventional boxed-copy sales of video games, stating that the regrettable industry norm of premium services and DLC are “literally milking the customers to death”. Thus all future Crytek games will be constructed as free to play experiences, and will be supported by GFACE, Crytek’s social gaming platform. For gamers concerned that this is an indication of a forthcoming decline in the quality of the studio’s output, Yerli attempts to assuage such fears by stating that all future Crytek projects will continue to be AAA titles, with budgets of between ten and thirty million dollars.

To be honest, the design and AI of Ckytek’s single-player experiences have never been able to quite match the stunning visual design and fidelity that the studio is capable of – and thus this probably constitutes a logical decision on their part, as it plays to Crytek’s multi-player strengths. That said, for fans of Crytek’s single-player campaigns, playing the forthcoming Crysis 3 will likely prove a bitter-sweet experience.

Yaoi fangirls adore this series, don't they?

Ubisoft: The “Big Jump” Made by Assassin’s Creed III was Only Made Possible by Milking the Franchise

Lying frogs, Ubisoft, have this week made the utterly absurd suggestion that the “great creative leap forward” achieved by Assassin’s Creed III was only made possible due to the merciless milking of Assassin’s Creed II with lower quality spin-off sequels. Or to put it another way, if Ubisoft were somehow prevented from making said annualised cash-in sequels, then presumably they would have cancelled their plans for Assassin’s Creed III due to the fact that it would be an unprofitable venture – yeah, sure.

According to Assassin’s Creed III director, Alex Hutchinson, annualised sequels were absolutely necessary to the development of the game, he stated that: “We have multiple groups now working [on the series]. We started this one in January 2010, the same time as Brotherhood and before Revelations. The core team on this one has been working at it for almost three years, which is something you can almost never get in the industry these days – it’s too expensive, too risky. So we need the other projects to support that kind of development – these big jumps.”

If ever there was a time to call bullshit on corporate dishonesty it is here and now at the suggestion that a two to three year development period is in some way uncommon to multi-million unit selling game franchises. That is a claim that simply does not hold water. As this generation of console development has progressed development cycles have in turn decreased somewhat, owing to growing familiarity with the hardware and the increased efficiency of game development pipelines – yet a two to three year development cycle is still far from being a rare occurrence in the industry. Moreover, one must question the Ubisoft claim that the game represents some great creative jump ahead for the series, as, with the exception of naval battles, the title looks to be constructed on much the same foundations as previous entries in the series. Does a great creative jump forward for Ubisoft really just come down to reskinning their Assassin’s Creed sandbox with a Frenchman’s contempt for the great and just achievements wrought by the British Empire?

Japanese Saint Row Promo Art

Saints Row: The New THQ President Just Does Not Get It

The Saints Row series began life as the poor man’s Grand Theft Auto, a knock-off made to capitalise upon the success of Rockstar’s open-world monolith. It was only with the release of Saints Row 2 that the series found a unique voice for itself by embracing the silliness and humour that the increasing po-faced Grand Theft Auto had long abandoned. To put it another way (that readers of Lusipurr.com are sure to understand), Saints Row has become the Nate Liles to Grand Theft Auto‘s Shawn Cooper. The third game in the series, Saints Row the Third, was a crystallisation of everything that had worked for Saints Row 2, which garnered the title a mid-80s review aggregate, and more than four million units sold – but apparently this is not good enough for THQ’s new president, Jason Rubin.

The bristlingly self-important Rubin is unhappy with the game’s risqué sense of humour, asking of the Saints Row series: “Why could’t that be a Red Dead Redemption or a Skyrim? I look at that title and I say, who cares what it is and why it got to be what it is? From that team we can make something that isn’t embarrassing.”

In answer to Rubin, the people who care about what Saints Row is are the same people who helped it become what it is: a multi-million selling franchise. The reason that it cannot be a Red Dead Redemption or a Skyrim is because those games have already made, and the fiscally harrowed THQ has nowhere close to the wherewithal required to even produce a close facsimile. So then at the end of the day it is Rubin’s intent to have the series come full circle, becoming once again the poor man’s Grand Theft Auto. Inspired.

Skyrim Glitches Bethesda

ZeniMax Falls Prey to Industrial Action

For the better part of a month rumours of Prey 2‘s demise have been floating about in the ether of game journalism scuttlebutt, so when ZeniMax, parent company to Bethesda and Id Software, announced earlier this week that the game was still in production, the fears of many an eager gamer were allayed – yet something seemed rather off about the announcement. ZeniMax stated: “Development of Prey 2 has not been cancelled but the game will not be released in 2012 as planned. The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards.”

The above statement has proved problematic for some, coming as it does from the company which oversaw the release of bugfests such as Rage and the Elder Scrolls series. Indeed, one is inclined to imagine that the ZeniMax QA process actually involves them putting bugs into their games in order to have them conform to the Bethesda gold standard, yet the meticulous unpolishing of Prey 2 still seemed unlikely to push the game’s release all the way back into 2013.

Well, as it turns out Human Head, the developer of Prey 2, has been on strike since November due to their intense dissatisfaction with the contract supplied by ZeniMax. According to an unnamed former Human Head employee (laid off after work on the game had ceased) the game was halted in order strengthen the developer’s bargaining position. Apparently negotiations had been going well until January of this year, after which time they proceeded to grow incrementally worse until the relationship between both parties completely broke down at the start of March. Given the way that independent developers are treated by the majority of publishers, it is not at all surprising to find such a stand-off taking place; one wonders whether similar tactics will be used more frequently going forward.

Look at the gams on that broad!

Fool Author Attempts to Sue Assassin’s Creed, Gets Review Bombed on Amazon

John Beiswenger, the litigious author of a shabby little book named Link, has this week made a blatant grab for cash on the grounds that the Assassin’s Creed series infringes upon his book by featuring a machine which allows people to experience the past lives of their ancestors. Such a grotesque display of opportunism was always going to earn the ire of Assassin’s Creed fans, and this week they came out in their droves to review bomb the Amazon page of Link, the 2003 novel facilitating this entire fracas. As of writing, forty-one out of the book’s fifty-one customer reviews are negative one star ratings, accompanied by review text which ranges in tenor from the indignant to the sublime.

LTNetjak writes: “Published in 1981, the short story “They Died Twice” by Alan Hathaway included, among other things, a machine developed for the express purpose of delving into ancestral memories. “Link” is a clear rip-off of this now 31 year old classic tale. While this reviewer would normally ignore such things as there is no such thing as a new idea, the author’s insistence of suing a company for essentially the same thing he did in 2003 deserves a low rating.”, and who could disagree with that?

This situation is apt to leave one slightly torn, seeing as it pits the financial interests of a flagrant opportunist against those of John Beiswenger; yet one does not see why it is not possible to cheer for the prospect of equal measures of injury being visited upon both parties, without first having to pick a favourite in this debacle.

Don't worry guys, Origin is okay now!

Magnanimous EA Decides to Give Back the Games That They Stole From Children

Well it only took ten months, but this week EA have finally been shamed into returning the games that they have been actively stealing from the users of their obnoxious Origin service since its inception – Chris Privitere probably expects an apology. It is unclear what has prompted EA to move on the issue after all this time – customer satisfaction (not likely), or perhaps their slowly dying MMORPG The Old Republic – but at any rate it is now possible for the users of banned accounts to play their single player games in offline mode.

EA writes: “If you find yourself with a disabled account, please note that you can still play EA games in single-player mode. For PC games you will need to enable Origin’s offline mode to play games with a disabled account. Go to the settings tab in Origin (the gear icon) and select Go Offline.”

Given EAs slightly less evil stance on Origin, an individual of loose standards and undiscerning tastes may well expect that one’s position on Origin may in fact begin to soften somewhat; this is simply not the case. While one rejoices in the fact that the soft-minded peons who signed up for Origin are finally having their games returned to them, that does not change the fact that Origin itself is little more than an infection of bloated spyware that only a gormless twit would deliberately inflict his computer with.

The Binding of Isaac Cover

Isaac Creator Gets Bound by Nintendon’t

Ed McMillen, the creator of the critically acclaimed indy title: The Binding of Isaac, has this week revealed on Twitter that Nintendo has put the kibosh on plans to bring the nightmarish isometric dungeon shooter to the 3DS eShop. The game which enacts a modern day re-telling of the biblical episode of the same name, wherein Abraham (or Isaac’s Mum in the game) is commanded by God to kill his son, has been refused release due to censorship concerns – yet surprisingly it has nothing to do with the game’s depiction of a naked child being menaced in his Mother’s macabre basement, but instead is due in large part to what Nintendo calls “questionable religious content”.

It did not take the Tweeting of Ed McMillen to confirm what most gamers already knew: that despite protests to the contrary, Nintendo of America is still enforcing their legacy ban on any and all religious content in the titles available on their consoles. For reasons known only to Nintendo of America, the company has a long and checkered history of forcing developers to expunge even the most arbitrary of religious references from their games, which is why we have such stellar edits as the renaming of “Holy” to “Pearl” in Nintendo based Final Fantasy titles.

The Binding of Isaac is merely the latest casualty in a long list of Nintendo gaming contraband, but where some people might see defeat, others will surely find opportunity, with McMillen already looking into the possibility of bringing his celebrated title to the PS Vita. The situation has also caused McMillan to reiterate his praise and strong support for Valve’s Steam platform in his comment “Thank GOD Steam exists”. Indeed, the biggest loser in all of this appears to be Nintendo themselves, as they have once again shown that their consoles are for children.

2K Announcement Gives Rise to Bioshock Infinite Release Date

Irrational Games and parent company, 2K, have this week revealed that the highly anticipated Bioshock Infinite will be releasing on the 16th of October in the American region, and on the 19th of October for other territories. Maligned PC gamers are also in luck, with the PC version set to launch alongside its console counterparts, rather than several months later as has become the norm.

Ever since gamers first saw Booker DeWitt traversing the lofty Skylines of Columbia there has been a good deal of buzz surrounding the title, yet nothing makes a game feel so real and imminent as a release date – so with anticipation solidified, Irrational Games and Ken Levine are promising big things for the franchise this year. Chief among Levine’s claims is that DeWitt’s AI partner, Elizabeth, will help revolutionise action storytelling, as the player attempts to escort her from one end of Columbia to the other. Levine goes on to say “After Bioshock, we had a vision for a follow up that dwarfed the original in scope and ambition, Bioshock Infinite has been our sole focus for the last four years, and we can’t wait for fans to get their hands on it”.

Bioshock Infinite promises to be the definitive high point in a year that has already been incredibly generous in terms of quality gaming, one hopes that the vision of Irrational Games can be pulled off without a hitch so that gamers can finally forget about that regrettable Bioshock 2 situation.

Assassin's Creed 3 Boxart

Assassin’s Creed III Stakes Claim Over Its Own Slice of Americana

This week it was revealed through the leaking of game art that Ubisoft’s annual cash cow, the Assassin’s Creed franchise, would be receiving its first meaningful update since 2009 in the form of Assassin’s Creed III. The game art reveals a background populated with the British and Yankee soldiers of America’s colonial past, confirming that the game will indeed take place during the American revolution. The leaked art also reveals a protagonist who looks desperately out of place in his assassin’s robes, with an American Indian style bow and arrows being his ensemble’s only compromise to the new historical era in which the game is set.

No firm details have been revealed as of yet, though gamers can probably expect stealth kills, haystacks and a narrative which focuses on an ill-defined Dan Brownesque Templar conspiracy. Ubisoft are promising to furnish gamers with more precise information as early as Monday, though series fans will likely already know what to expect. Assassin’s Creed III will see release on the 30th of October for the PS3, 360 and PC, with a Wii U version allegedly in the works for release at a later date. While a series refresh is a much needed and highly desirable turn of events for the franchise, one is not even slightly tempted to pick it up unless it introduces an Indian scalping mechanic.

North American Box Art

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a beautifully crafted edition to the epic Ubisoft series and is sure to please returning fans-but try not to expect anything groundbreaking.

The third installment of the Assassin’s Creed series picks up right where the second game left off. In the near future, Desmond Miles and the other assassins have narrowly escaped Abstergo and have hidden themselves within the ruins of villa at Monterrigioni. In the past, Ezio Auditore returns to the villa satisfied that his family has been avenged and revels in the fact that he can hang up his assassin hat for good and for all. The momentary peace is shattered when Cesare Borgia brings the fight to his doorstep. Ezio is forced once again to don his cape and venture into the streets of Rome to rebuild the assassin order and overthrow the Borgia regime.

It sounds like an excellent premise. A lone assassin brings together vast networks of mercenaries, thieves, courtesans and assassins to free a city from the tyranny of Cesare Borgia. Unfortunately, the game does not quite deliver on this. There is a point in the game where Ezio is able to recruit fledgling assassins to his cause. Players level recruits by sending them on a variety of missions across the world. In addition to granting recruits experience, these missions bring in a little change and items that can be used in shop quests. The only other role these fledglings play throughout the game is to rain down arrows on the enemy and they can be summoned to assist Ezio during a fight. There is something to be said about having the ability to summon a storm of death from the skies, but it still feels as though this is one aspect of the game the developers could have spent more time with.

Fledgling Assassins

The story itself, compared to the first two installments of the series, lacks depth. Aside from a brief episode where a friend is suspected of betraying Ezio, there is little that stands out within the overarching premise of the game. There is little in the way of character development. In Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio undergoes a series of transformations from a plucky teen, to a man out for revenge, to a full-fledged member of the Assassin Order. Brotherhood, on the other hand, throws players into the middle of the action and expects them to sympathize. This is all well and good for someone who has played through the first two games, but newcomers to the series may find themselves shaking their heads in disbelief.

Where this game does deliver is in both the setting and the gameplay. Players explore Rome from the streets and the rooftops. From the light reflecting across the water to the shadows Ezio casts as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, this game is visually stunning. There is so much to see and plenty of side-missions to keep players engaged in the lush environment. Brotherhood brings back many of the same quests and missions that appear in the first two games. There are feathers, flags, and treasures to collect. There are tombs to explore – though in this incarnation of the game they are called Romulus Lairs. There are the customary courtesan and thief quests. This time around Ezio earns money by upgrading buildings across Rome. He slowly chips away at Borgia power by defeating watchtowers and renovating buildings to generate income.

So, where the plot might be lacking this game certainly makes up for it in the sheer amount of options available to the player. The main plotline can be completed in around 10-15 hours, but players can spend almost double that completing side-missions, upgrading buildings, exploring tombs and immersing themselves in the world of Renaissance Italy. Although not a game that will re-define the Assassin’s Creed experience, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a fitting continuation to the series.