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I was playing this this morning actually and it's by far the definitive hitman game.
Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles
Resident Evil
Resident Evil 4
Up next, Resident Evil Revelations 1
But I am rambling Goldeneye is fun
Nightfire & Everything or Nothing are better Bond games, imo. But in terms of impact, GoldenEye made the biggest impact on gaming. It set a whole new standard.
Speaking of PC, more bad news on the GTA V front. Another delay until April 14. I wish they would have just said back in Dec or Jan, we need until May to get this straightened out instead of b.s. us twice by pushing the date back. I have no problem with delaying to fix problems now instead of after release, but just be upfront about it and state the real time you need instead of continually pushing back every month. And yes, I know if I really want to play GTA V I should just get a console. I'm a PC player at heart, but I'm really looking into buying a PS4 possibly around black friday this season.
Speaking of- I love how recruiting and working on Mother Base is almost a second game (separate from the sneaking and combat). I'm overjoyed that Phantom Pain will be bringing this concept back, and expanded too! Everyone will be building their base as they see fit, completely customizable.
Rumors of Solid Snake popping up in Phantom Pain are all over the place. Just imagine, if there is a hidden epilogue stage where you play as young Solid Snake and you have to destroy the base you built!! It would be as cruel as in MGS3 when they made you 'pull the trigger' to kill The Boss!
Over the past while now I've played through ACII, AC Brotherhood and now find myself onto Revelations. Overall, I have really enjoyed myself. Ezio is a great character and I have enjoyed following his growth from a pompous young ladies' man to an honorable mentor. ACII does a great job of setting up the characters and world of Italia in the 15th century, creating a palpable atmosphere. As the game goes on, Ezio feels so much like a Renaissance-era Batman to me that it isn't even funny, except he lets the playboy persona of Bruce bleed through a bit more than the one we know and love.
While I enjoyed ACII, I was let down by some of the story, specifically in the final sequence. It bugs me that
I then went on to Brotherhood, and absolutely loved it. We get to see characters of the last game grow just as Ezio is, especially Leonardo, my second favorite character here. Brotherhood takes everything from the previous game, the platforming, combat, atmosphere, and improves everything in my eyes. The movement and overall platforming is much more fluid and less infuriating. While in ACII I had numerous deaths when Ezio jump in directions I didn't mean for him to, in Brotherhood those moments were almost nil. The combat is brutal and satisfying with better countering and the ability to chain an onslaught of attacks.
And of course, the most enjoyable part of Brotherhood is to see Ezio grow into the man he was destined to be: the leader of the assassins. It's really satisfying to rescue recruits in this game, train them through sending them on missions abroad, and getting to swear them in as offical members of the order. The game gives you the option to have these assassins on call any time you desire, which is great because you truly feel in charge and responsible for these comrades of yours. While the game is never hard to the point that you actually need to use them, it's a fun feature to the game that helps to characterize Ezio as a mentor and master of assassins. And of course, Rome is a great landscape to explore. ACII teases you with it, while in this game, you get it all.
I loved almost everything about Brotherhood, and found it to be far greater than II in every way, except for, once again, something stupid Ezio does in the game's final sequence.
Now I find myself in Constantinople as a geriatric Ezio, and am absolutely loving it. I salivated over playing as an older Ezio ever since I heard there was such a game, and have loved every second of it. All the aspects of Brotherhood that I loved, including the platforming, combat and assassin recruiting is back and unchanged, thankfully, and Constantinople is large, atmospheric and beautiful, one of my all time favorite AC settings. I love seeing Ezio out of his element and rather capeless in Turkey, and all the different stakes that puts on him. The hookblade, a new weapon you get here, is beyond amazing and offers all kind of great gameplay opportunities for managing the terrain, and so far I find the story very interesting. After living the life of an assassin for 30 plus years, Ezio still has questions that need uncovering, hidden by the always enigmatic Altair. I look forward to continuing the final chapter of his story, though I will be sad when it is done with. He was definitely the right character to spend three games developing, and I can see why he was so popular amongst fans of the series.
I finished Assassin's Creed Rogue and really enjoyed it. It was too short and you could tell from the campaign that it didn't have the development time or budget of the other games in the series, but I really liked it. The world was fantastic, the side missions were all really fun and the story was great (although I wish we'd seen more of Haytham again). I plan on replaying AC III soon, because Rogue leads into that game and I haven't played it for a while anyway.
Victory will probably be cool (if they learn from their mistakes with Unity), I like the Victorian England setting, but after playing Rogue and being reminded of AC III's story, I really wish that Ubisoft had done something else with Connor. Doesn't have to be a full game but another short film, maybe a DLC for Rogue or Unity, something showing what happened to him, would be cool. I liked Edward too but at least he got closure with the end of Black Flag, and it revealed what happened to him afterwards in the Haytham novel. With Connor it seems like AC III is only the beginning for him but then we don't know what happens next.
It's the same with Arno (no real closure), but I didn't really like Arno enough to care. I wish Connor had been the protagonist in Unity. They even had the perfect set up for it. Connor is still a broken man after the events of AC III, he's leading the Assassins but he's struggling to find a purpose after the events of AC III, so he takes that French general up on his offer and travels to Paris where he gets caught up in the revolution, aiding the French Assassins. But instead they decided to do yet another coming of age, young new Assassin (with a personal vendetta after a family tragedy) rises up through the ranks story. That's one of the reasons Edward was so great. He actually had an origin story that was fresh and original, it was different to the previous games.
For Victory I'd like something new. We don't need another samey origin story, we don't even actually need an origin story at all (Altair didn't have one, he was an Assassin at the beginning of the original game), we could start with the protagonist already being an experienced Assassin. It'd be cool starting off as a grizzled veteran Assassin.
My favorite game of the trilogy would be hard to pick because I feel they each do something unique so differently. II tells a great origin story and shows Ezio growing into the man he was destined to be, Brotherhood continues that development and sees him take on the status of Mentor, and then Revelations is both a continuation and reflection of all that he has accomplished as he heads into what I guess you could call is retirement.
Of all the locations, I do think I loved Revelations' Constantinople the best. I feels so alive and it is so culturally varied that there is always something fascinating to explore about it. Of the stories, I think I liked Brotherhood best. Cesare was a great villain and I loved seeing Ezio in his prime, leading the assassins. We also got to see characters from the second game come back and the Cristina memories that Ubisoft added to the game were beautiful just as much as they were tragic. They really peeled back the tough exterior of Ezio and showed us a broken man who just wanted to find love and happiness.
The best gameplay would probably go to Revelations. I feel it's the closest to what I loved about Black Flag, and that hookblade is just freaking cool. I'll miss it while playing Black Flag again, because it was so useful in both traversal and combat scenarios. While Revelations had a lot of quiet moments to it, the times that it really let is hair down, it got incredibly cinematic, which was cool. There's nothing better than seeing an old Ezio going to town on Byzantine Templars with nothing but his bare hands. If Ezio is the Renaissance Batman (I'm convinced he is), then this was definitely his Dark Knight Returns, for sure.
The story that I think carried the most weight for me was also Revelations. I'd played as Ezio so long and literally saw him grow from a baby to a matured man, and really became connected to him. He was rough around the edges at the start, but just as with Edward, he finally learned what was the most valuable in life and matured into a wise leader. Revelations was a great closer to his assassin journey, and though it was the least "eventful" of the trilogy in terms of adventure or stakes, it was great to see him like a fish out of water in Constantinople, finding his way. In addition, I'm so glad that
As for Embers, I found it extremely powerful. I didn't know what was coming and was often on the edge of my seat, sharing Ezio's own paranoia. It was odd for me to see him in such a weakened state, but eventually he shows that he's still got a little fight left in him. I enjoyed seeing him back in Italy, and
I thank you for sparking my interest in pursuing this series, @thelivingroyale, because I've enjoyed myself quite a lot these past few months. Ezio and Edward really are in a class of their own. :)>-
Since I'm this far behind, maybe you could shed some light, @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7: should I even bother starting from the beginning at this point? Or is there one in particular I should begin with?
Start at the beginning. You'll never understand the present day story if you don't.
I'd agree with @Agent007391, start at the beginning, and play though them in order.
Honestly, I don't think that's entirely true, because I skipped the first game and understand it fine. The present day story isn't important to me regardless, so missing out on #1 didn't affect me in any way. I find the modern day plot, Desmond and his merry band of bland to be on the whole rather uninteresting and not at all engaging. It just feels like Ubisoft went out of their way to make Desmond as bland and blank as possible, never really letting us get to know his past or anything about him that would make us actually care about his journey. Hell, the first time we learn anything substantial about his past and why he left his parents is in AC Revelations by collecting animus fragments, but those memories are just infuriating block games that are optional to play and aren't even part of the main story. If Ubisoft waited until they were four whole games in to tell us all that stuff, why the hell should we care about Desmond at all at this point?
Like it's been said: everyone plays these games for the historical time periods, not the present day story. Everything that is special about these games is rooted in the characters' lives we experience in the animus, and not anything Desmond and his cronies are up to. That said, the present day Black Flag sections are a breath of fresh air from the usual fare you come to expect from an AC game's modern day plots, and it has a thrilling essence of espionage and paranoia to it as well. For my money it's the best present day section of an AC game I've played yet, and you don't even know who you are playing the entire time. Yet somehow, that character manages to still be more interesting and important to you than Desmond.
@Master_Dahark, I would easily recommend these games to you. If you love open world sandbox games jam-packed with tons of content to sink your teeth into, these games will give you that. All the games are now just $20 or below on the PSN, and you really get your money's worth; honestly, it's a steal. I started the series playing Black Flag, and my life was overtaken by it. There's so much to do and so much to explore that there is never an opportunity to get bored. When I first got it I'd play it for most of the day and still hated taking a break from it.
However, where you want to begin in the series is something entirely up to you. I skipped the first game because I'd seen a lot of playthroughs of it and I hated how repetitive and unrewarding it felt. You get targets and you just have to do a bunch of boring missions over and over to gain information about them until you can finally kill them, most of which are so tedious it doesn't feel worth it. For that reason, I skipped it, and instead watched a video on YouTube that basically put together all the modern day parts of the game so that I'd know who the characters were, their motivations and what the big idea was. If you do that, I don't think you need to play the first game, but again, that's your choice.
If you do decide to skip #1, I honestly don't think you'll ever be lost because I've understood the grand scheme between the Templars and Assassins just fine without it, and you should too. All you really need to know is that the Templar and Assassins have waged a centuries long struggle between each other that has largely surrounded objects of Eden, powerful tools that can allow you to do evil, manipulative things if you chose. The Templars are all about peace, but through what I'd like to call "forced control." All the Templar leads/"Grand Masters"/big shots of the games I've played so far want to use the objects of Eden to control people in some way, shape or form.
The Assassins on the other hand are all about freedom, and do anything in their power to stop the Templars from achieving that kind of control. They hold a great stake in free-will, and don't want to see anyone manipulated into doing something that they consciously wouldn't do otherwise, even if that end result is peace. I've always thought of it this way: the Assassins would probably rather have a world where people acting on their own free-will started bloody conflicts like wars, then one where there was peace that was achieved through forced manipulation, like with the Apple of Eden, which can bend the will of man. Often, the Assassin leads/Mentors/big shots strive to attain the objects of Eden not to use them but to hide them away so that nobody, especially the Templars, can get at them. They understand the power they hold and their corrupting nature, as well as the temptation that they can stir in those too weak to deny them. The moral line between the Templars and Assassins is one of the better aspects of these games, and often that line is very blurred.
So, in conclusion:
Positives
*Amazing open worlds with palpable atmosphere
*Endless amounts of side content keeps you busy and often away from the main story as you give in to the temptation to explore the worlds Ubisoft has created for you
*Moral dilemmas aplenty-Templars vs. Assassins
*Great characters that stay with you long after the game is finished-See Ezio and Edward
*Great attention to detail in every aspect of the games, from the unique aesthetics of each location and period in time to historical events that the story unfolds alongside
*You learn about actual history through the process of playing the games-That's right mom, video games teach you stuff too!
*Great traversal mechanics and combat that gets better as the games go on
*Amazing voice acting-See Roger Craig Smith and Matt Ryan
Negatives
*Present day story-Should we care?
*Desmond puts you to sleep-Not entirely his fault, however, as it feels Ubisoft often don't make any effort to flesh him out in a meaningful way
*The plot surrounding the modern day can get very incoherent and pretty zany at times
*Certain arcs are often left up in the air in favor of underwhelming cliffhangers in the present day
And it is this very thing that pisses me off the most. The modern day portion of the story was the most important thing to me, and Ubisoft kept shoving it into the background and shoving it into the background even more after that. Altair wasn't particularly interesting in AC1 (and the odd thing is that I believe I read somewhere that it was intentional, probably one of those "so the player can be that character" things that don't make sense for speaking protagonists, or even protagonists with more than a basic background), while Desmond and the things you could learn from around that small set of rooms was a brilliant mystery that I wanted to solve. Halfway through the first game, I forgot what Altair's goal even was, and solely wanted to know what Abstergo was up to.
And now... most players don't care. The just want to run across their 40,248,582,042nd rooftop and use the hidden blade to stab their 402,485,025,482,457,670,317,035,672nd guard in the back (and if someone has ranked that many kills across the series they need a g*ddamn life!). The present day storyline was a wonderful mystery, and the historical storyline was just the gimmick of "Hey! Meet Leonardo Da Vinci!" or "Hey! Fight King Washington!" or "Hey! Sail on a pirate ship with Blackbeard himself!". Gimmick can only last for so long.
Could the modern day story matter to gamers like myself? Yes, but obviously Ubisoft don't really have an invested interest in taking that story to the next level. Again, I play these games for the history. I love seeing locations from the past recreated before my eyes as I play as these troubled men who run into famous names of their respective eras. That isn't a gimmick to me, it's just smart game design and storytelling. Ubisoft manages to tell interesting stories while staying as true to history as possible, and with amazing detail to boot. Their locations are infused with life, inviting you to spend time in the animus and not with Desmond and his crew, because honestly, who in their right mind would stay in modern day America when there exists an opportunity to travel in Italy and Constantinople during the Renaissance, the Caribbean during the days of the pirates or the states during the Revolutionary War?
It isn't my fault that Desmond has been characterized so poorly and that any meaningful plot lines in the modern story never get any kind of resolution. Even if we actually got to know Desmond, I still doubt I'd care about him, because I just don't believe this kid was an actual assassin since birth. He's not interesting, his "plight" isn't captivating, and he has no actual skills or endearing traits. Nothing he does or says connects to the so-called past he was said to have, a past which we only get a peek at. The only thing I enjoy about the modern day sections is Shaun, because at least he's funny, but after a while even his snarky personality gets tiring.
Hell, Desmond even had to count on the bleeding effect of the freaking animus to give him abilities because he didn't train naturally and learn things the hard way like a true assassin. It reminds me of where the Bourne series is at now: why the hell should I care about Cross when he has to count on some stupid pills to give him the abilities Bourne gained naturally through hard work and extreme diligence? In this context, how is Desmond even close to the level of someone like Ezio, who, instead of whining like a child every two seconds about his sad situation, embraced the life of an assassin and had the constitution to lead a charge against the Templars, despite not knowing the purpose of his fight at the end of it all?
Overall, the modern day plot was an interesting idea that was ruined through years of misdirection and shoddy presentation, which you pointed out. I'm sorry that Ubisoft steered it in that direction, because there's a chance that something meaningful could've been salvaged. At least with Black Flag, Rogue and Unity they seem to be doing something different with the modern day story and have largely stepped away from Desmond's story little by little. I'm sure that just like Clay though,