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Finally hit rank three on Iron Banner in 'Destiny' tonight. Bought the boots I needed to hit level 30, so I'm very happy.
This game is a literal blast. I've had so much playing it. It's 100 times better than Brawl and even better than dare I say Melee. I love playing as the Mii fighter characters because you can put your own little cartoon face on the and kick butt like you're in the game. I miss the story mode though.
10/10!!!
There is a game sort of like that. It's called "The Getaway" for PS2.
I have Doom 3 on the Xbox (which I never really got into) and the only reason I kept it all these years is because it included Doom & Doom II! :D
I have so far put about 5 hours into this game, and I have no complaints yet. The hand-to-hand combat is the best aspect of the game.
You'll have to let me know how you like it. I followed the game for many years, even when it got axed, and was beyond thankful when Square Enix picked up development of the title again. Another ill-advised move from Activision, that.
Love the game myself: Hong Kong is new to the open world sandbox of the newer gens so I loved seeing it in all its cultural glory. I think the developers did a great job of showing its true surroundings and they were very tuned into Chinese culture and aesthetics. As you said, the combat is out of this world amazing, as are the thrilling things you can do with the mechanics of the gameplay.
It looks darn incredible; I already love the 3DS version, and the Wii U one looks 5x better. First thing is first; gotta buy a Wii U.
Better there than on the Doom 3 BFG Edition. They play so crappy on PS3... it's actually quite sad. The only good thing is I have a legitimate version of Doom II: No Rest for the Living, which I'd already played as a fan-mod on the PC, anyway.
I'm enjoying Sleeping Dogs so far. The neon soaked streets of Hong Kong are fun to explore, and the story is worth investing time in.
I haven't played a GTA game since GTA4 (I have lost interest in the series), but Sleeping Dogs ticks all the right boxes for a sandbox game.
I started playing it last Thursday after completing Alien Isolation. I think it's not a brilliant game but it's far from being a bad one.
I played it a week after it was first released and thankfully pretty much all the bugs have been sorted. I haven't really had any technical issues apart from a bit of lag sometimes (mostly during co op).
I'll start by saying what's good about the game. First of all, Paris. It's one of the best open worlds I've ever seen in a video game. It's gorgeous (the graphics are mind blowingly good, they really show what these new consoles are capable of) and so alive. It's packed with people. Rioting crowds, starving beggars, poncey noblemen, violent criminals, police and revolutionaries, all going about their business with or without you. It's a real living, breathing city.
The new combat system is much more challenging before (no more instant counter kills or chaining kills together) and kills are brutal and satisfying (I use a spiked mace and watching Arno cave peoples heads in is great gory fun). Parkour isn't that much different to AC III and AC IV but you feel more in control. The big addition is how you control direction now (you can have him parkour up, down or stay on the same level) and controlled descent. This is a brilliant new feature. It can be clunky but when it works, it works brilliantly. Watching Arno dive, spin and flip his way down the side of a building is awe inspiring.
What I also like about the game is the Assassination missions. You have to plan out how to kill your target and how to escape and there are so many different routes. It's really open. In AC 1 and AC IV, the assassinations were open in the sense that you had a wide open area to explore and multiple ways of killing your target. Here though there are actually different paths to take, optional objectives that could aid you, etc. It's like Hitman and Dishonoured.
The customisation is also really cool. I mentioned how I'm using a mace but there are tons of weapons. Swords, axes, spears, rifles, it's up to you. You can also customise Arno. My Arno is decked out in a mix of phantom and military gear whilst my mate is wearing medieval armour. It's fun seeing what other plays look like and how they play. It's a much more personal experience than the other AC games.
Co op is really fun. When you work together properly you can pull off some awesome stuff and it's just so much fun messing about with friends. Even running around doing tedious tasks like getting chests and collectables can be fun if you're talking to and playing with a mate.
Now, onto the problems.
The decision to give the characters English accents instead of French ones is weird. They still haven't properly explained why and it is jarring, especially since they've been so good with the accents in previous games. What's even worse is that the English accents aren't great sometimes. Most of the supporting cast are fine but I've noticed Arno's accent slip into the actors natural American one a few times.
And now we move onto another problem. Arno. Here's my problem with Arno: he's a a charismatic European Assassin who comes from a wealthy family. His father was an Assassin and was murdered although Arno didn't know about his dad's real job before he died. He's a likeable roguish character in the beginning, we see him when he's younger having fun and into scrapes but he matures over time. He's charismatic and he quips as well as he kills. He's also elegant, he has a lot of finesse and he has a taste for the finer things in life.
Now if you've played previous Assassin's Creed games, this probably sounds very familiar, and it should. That's my main problem with Arno, he's essentially a French (with an unconvincing posh English accent) version of this guy
Ezio Auditore. Italian, James Bond esque badass, hero of AC II, Brotherhood and Revelations. The best video game character of all time (his voice is so cool) and still, by far, the best protagonist of the series. They've tried really hard to make Arno the new Ezio. They even look the same when they were younger. But they're never going to make a character on the same level as Ezio by copying him because why would people prefer the crappy rip off to the original?
It's a shame because with Connor (AC III) and Edward (AC IV) they made two great, well fleshed out protagonists who were nothing like Ezio. So it's a shame that Arno is basically a less cool version of Ezio.
In fact this criticism extends to the game as a whole. It tries so hard to be the new AC II but it doesn't come close. There's the cafe theatre, which you can renovate to earn more income (like the villa in AC II), but it just doesn't feel as good. Arno's mentor is a rough old badass Assassin but he's nowhere near as likeable as Mario (and him calling Arno pisspot got old and annoying really fast). The villain of the game is a shady old man who wears a hooded outfit exactly like Rodrigo's in AC II, but he's nowhere near as interesting. Well, I say he's the main villain, but I'm on sequence 7 and I've killed him now, so idk who the main villain is meant to be.
In fact that's another problem with the game: there's no real end goal. In previous Assassin's Creed games there was an end goal established right at the start that drives you throughout the game. In most of the games you have a list of targets and work you're way to the top (like in AC II and III) or at least have an end goal (taking out the Borgia, retrieving the Masyaf keys, finding the Observatory). In Unity you just seem to stumble about killing random Templars in the hope that you'll find out more about why Arno's adoptive dad was killed.
I mentioned Arno's adoptive dad there. This is another problem: the characters. None of them are well fleshed out enough for me to care at all about them, there aren't many cut scenes and this hurts the game.
Arno's dad is murdered at the start and it's all emotional and slow motion when Arno finds the body. He literally has a few seconds screentime and one line of dialouge. So why should I give a shit?
Same with his adoptive dad. A Templar who was killed as part of a coup. Arno was meant to deliver a letter to him warning him of the impending attack but went to a party instead. This is a great premise. Arno feels responsible for the death of the man who raised him and joins the Assassins seeking redemption. But his adoptive dad, like his real one, gets a couple of lines. I know literally nothing about him other than the fact he was Arno's dad. So it's hard for me to get behind Arno's quest for redemption when I never gave two shits about his adoptive dad in the first place.
In AC II the game spends some time with Ezio's family at the start and you get to see what they're like and how happy they all are with their lives. So when the Templars take that away, you can easily get behind Ezio's quest for revenge, unlike Arno's quest for redemption.
In AC III they took their time with the opening sequences but this helped develop the characters. We get to know Haytham and his crew, which means that they're well fleshed out, memorable villains (unlike the Templars in Unity, who we don't know at all and who get hardly any lines/screentime).
In Unity I don't care about any of the characters, good guys or bad, because they get so little development. Which is a shame because part of what makes AC special for me is the detail they put into the story and the characters. Not many video games do that.
I think this is down to the people who complained about AC III. People said that the game took too long to get going. So Unity speeds through it's opening sequences (I was an Assassin in no time) but it does this at the expense of plot and character.
The side content is disappointing too. Murder mysteries are cool but other than that, meh. The Paris Stories (which are the main side content) and social club missions are just generic kill this guy/fetch this object quests that get old fast. In previous games we could take over forts, hunt sharks, win underground street fights, take assassination contracts, go tomb raiding, recruit and train Assassins, get into bar fights, etc. So the side content in Unity is very disappointing, especially after all the fun, varied stuff we got to do in AC IV.
The soundtrack is also a let down. Like AC III, there's no background music when you run around the city (which adds so much atmosphere in the other games), and when there is music it's bland, themeless and forgettable.
When Arno jumped off the Bastille and the "Ubisoft presents" logo came up, I was on the edge of my seat. I thought we were going to get another cool AC title intro. But after the intro was done I thought "wait, is that it? That's the theme song?". I went on Youtube and apparently that is the theme song, and it's sooooo disappointing.
Seriously, compare this
To these
It's like comparing Thomas Newman to John Barry. Compared to the melanconich beauty of the AC II/Brotherhood theme, the sad haunting Revelations theme, the grand epicness of the AC III theme and the bombastic AC IV theme, the Unity theme is shit in comparison.
Overall Unity is a good game, but it is a slightly disappointing one. At the moment I'd place it as the weakest AC game outside of the original. But it's not all bad. The customisation, co op and the amazing new city help save the game.
1) AC IV
2) AC II
3) AC Revelations
4) AC III
5) AC Brotherhood
6) AC Unity
7) AC
Edward in ACIV was a step back in the right direction, but the pacing of the story and plot structure never gave me any sort of reason to care about him, or his struggles - until his young daughter showed up - but at that point the game is over!.. wtf!.. that would've been such an interesting dynamic to show Edward juggling the life of an assassin with being a full time father - something we havent seen yet - but instead they cut the legs off that by keeping it at the end of the game, and then you just sail back across the ocean.... meh.... ACIV as a whole was a much better game than ACIII, but it lacked a little in the "why should i care?" department..
for me.. it still goes..
ACII
AC Revelations
AC Brotherhood
ACIV Black Flag
ACIII
AC
**ps.. i do like all the games :) ... much like Bond, i just realize some aren't as good as others.
*He watched his mother burn to death aged 5
*He was eventually forced to kill his father
*It turned out that one of his closest allies (Washington) actually burnt his village down (which killed his mother)
*Was forced to kill his best friend
*After all he went through, he still couldn't save his village, his people were driven away by the same people he'd just (pretty much) singlehandedly won a war for
*His mentor, the only real father figure he'd ever had, died
So I think he didn't really have a lot to be happy about. And he did have lighter moments. I didn't really like Connor for most of the game but by the end I'd warmed to him. He was unlikeable at times but he was still a brave, honest, good guy who tried to do the right thing despite leading a very shitty life.
Besides, even though he could be unlikeable, I still appreciate what they did with Connor. At least they tried to create an original, interesting, well fleshed out character, instead of rehashing Ezio (like they've done with Arno).
I really liked Edward too, who I think is the second best protagonist (after Ezio). A charismatic, roguish, badass relatable everyman who stole the robes of an Assassin in an attempt to make some money and ended up becoming one. I loved how for most of the game he was just a pirate (not an Asssassin) who cared more about earning his fortune than the whole Assassin/Templar war. He wanted to get rich so he could give his wife the life she deserved (and then she tragically died while he was away). I thought it was a really well done story. I remember reading this comment in a review which I think sums it up really well: "Edward wanted the world for Caroline, but all she wanted in the world was Edward".
I liked his character arc. He goes to the carribean with honourable intentions (to give his wife a better life) but he becomes greedy, even after he's gotten rich he's still obsessed with finding the observatory. Money clouds his judgement and he ends up abandoned and lonely, with most of his friends dead and even Adewale choosing to leave him. So he joins the Assassins to redeem himself.
The whole juggling Assassin/family life idea has been done, just not in a game. Ubisoft did a mini series which they released on Youtube (can't remember what it was called) leading up to AC II's release starring Giovanni, Ezio's dad. It was a prequel, showing him begin to uncover the Templar conspiracy to take over Italy (before he was betrayed at the beginning of AC II) and it shows him struggle to juggle his life as an Assassin and his role as a father.
You'll enjoy Unity. It's a fun game, I just think it's a bit disappointing so far (although I haven't finished it yet so it could get better).
Mod edit: f-bomb removed.
I've been playing a whole lot of 'Destiny' online over Thanksgiving Break, and the RNG for it simply infuriates me. I put in countless hours today doing the hardest of missions (twice, because I have two characters), and I get trash rewards every single time. I hate looking back at how many hours I sunk into it today for just about nothing, while my buddy tonight received the one gun I want in the game for the THIRD time. Unreal.