I haven't played very far (only just got to Damascus), and while it seems like a pretty good game, one thing leaps out at me over and over: every time I want to exit the game, I have to jump through so many hoops that I'm sorely tempted to just bring up Task Manager and kill the game process. First I have to exit from the "memory" to the Animus (clicking yes to confirm that I want to exit the memory). Then I have to exit from the Animus to the profile-selection screen (again clicking yes to confirm that I want to exit the Animus). Then I have to select my profile, even though there is only one, in order to get to the main menu. Then I have to click Exit (clicking yes to confirm that I want to exit the game). I just want out! Seriously, how in great Cthulhu's unholy name did this get past QA? Why weren't the interface programmers lined up against a wall and shot?

I fucking hate that game, for the obvious console porting (a ubisoft trademark) and for the agonizing repetitiveness. Still, I know people who totally loved it. However, these people did play on the xbox version.

Guilty as charged, Backgammon. Guilty as charged.

Having wrestled with the Lost Planet port, however... I conceptually sympathize.

Actually I have the PS3 version and yes I love it to death. Mind you if I want to exit the game I just press and hold the PS button and then select "Exit Game". I would be tearing my hair out if I had to go through the process stated.

On a side note, since removing Windows from my main computer for Linux, I only use the console for my gaming and I can't say I'm disappointed. I find it more relaxing playing video games in the comfort of my living room then in my office on my hard office chair.

I agree too, I abandonned PC gaming 2 years ago for my now beloved xbox 360. Totally the right move.

The only things I still play on my PC are the Call of Duty games (by which I mean COD1 and COD2, the only ones I've played very much), and the Total War series (Shogun, Rome, Medieval, and Empire).

Even with Assassin's Creed on the 360, though, I all-too-swiftly got bored with it. The repetitive mission set up just wrecked it for me, sad to say. I've heard nothing but good things about the second one, though, so it's in my Gamefly que.

Assassin's Creed was like a work of art in terms of graphics and animation, but yeah, on the whole it was very simplistic and retarded gameplay. I liked it enough to beat it, though, on the PC.

IMO they should have let Altair get all bloodstained while slaughtering guards. It would have been awesome and very Kill Bill if you went from white to gore-streaked when like 12 guards come after you and you counter them all to death.

Mmm hmm. With the PS3 and 360 the games just work. No having to worry if your hardware can run it. No needing to manually deal with patches. My only major gripe is that for some styles of games (read FPS) a mouse is the superior method of control compared to the controller. Of course, the xbox360 just steals its named from Playstation. Look at their control. It has a Triangle, a Square, an X, and a Circle.

X (X) Square (Box) Circle (360)

--



And totally unassassin-like and problematic with the first Assassin's Creed. Now they could have done that in the second with the introduction of currency and tailors. Basically pay the tailors to clean your clothes of blood so you blend in better.

I think this will interest you:

http://www.splitfish.com/

I don't own one personally, but the second I get approval from the boss (ie my wife) I'm getting one. Most people I know that have one say it improves their FPS playing by at least 20% (I've been on the receiving side of one of these games and you curse the day you were born).

Umm...

Alt-F4?

Just sayin.



-karma

I've played through it on the PC three times, ya I know I need a life.
Ya quiting is a bitch, AL-F4 dosn't work normaly exepet under one special condition, as I recall if you press escape, bring up the winodw, click the exit game button and when it brings up the starotypical "are you sure you want to leave" box, press AL-F4 right their and the game will end.

Gameplay is kinda repetitive, but if you go to the trouble to try and get as many cool combos in a fight as you can or try and hunt down ALL of the templers it gives it more replabilty.

The game would be hilarious and awesome with more bloodstaining.

One thing that bugged me was how the contemporary guy you play who gets to walk around and get whipped by the doctor is a total pansy. I mean, I know that's supposed to contrast with the ancestor, and how in the sequel the contemporary guy probably magically gains all the moves so he can kill the modern day templars, but for someone who supposedly used to be an assassin he is such a pansy especially with his whiney dialogues with Laura.

If he used to be an assassin why doesn't he RNC the doctor to death when the doctor has got his back turned and at least try to escape? I mean anyone can do that. The doctor behaves much more carelessly than any prison guard or warden would in a real jail or prison.

EDIT: I actually consider that a critique of French or more broadly European culture. They never see violence as a solution, even if it is.

Have you read European history?!?!

EDIT: OK, I did here what I don't like others doing to me. Sorry. Let me rephrase. "Your view of European history is very different from mine."

And in particular French history. When they try something repeatedly and wholeheartedly for ten years and it just makes things horribly worse, can you really blame them for deciding that what they tried isn't much of a solution?

~J

Well I made a post a lot earlier about this subject. The Europeans used to be the global violence experts, but then seemingly gave it all up after they had two existential crises in the wake of World War I and World War II. Now they eat chocolate and smoke cigarettes.

Ten years? Are you referring to Dienbienphu and Indochina?

It's not really their fault they suffered such a tragic and crushing defeat at the time at the hands of the Vietnamese. At that time *nobody* had really begin to develop effective tactics to attempt to counter Vietnamese anti-colonial warfare.

I mean, the Groupe Mobile 100 was the unfortunate victim that started the textbook articles on how to have that not happen to you. And as per usual in French history the commanding officers screwed over the grunts by refusing to air evac casualties.

Dienbienphu was kind of the same in that they didn't have air support and were basically logistically cut off.

It kind of seems to me in retrospect like a lack of committment and disregard for the lives of the people on the ground on the part of the people in charge, which is in turn just a symptom of the hierarchical nature of European society.

I was actually thinking of the French Revolution.

That said, on reflection I would argue that that view is simply wrong. Does Opération Satanique sound like an operation launched by people who don't see violence as a solution?

~J

Ha ha ha, you know I actually heard about that first from some Greenpeace members who were on another boat called Rainbow Warrior who were making a stop in Micronesia while I was there?

Of course the Greenpeace guys were acting all outraged or whatever over it, but to me it sounded more like a stupid poorly executed op that was thought up by some idiot, as opposed to something reflecting the politics or what have you of France as a whole. That was just my impression based on what I'd heard. The whole thing seemed remarkably pathetic.

I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior



French black ops agents punked by the neighborhood watch. Wow......

EDIT: Aha, au sujet de violence, part of the reason the secret operation failed so pathetically was because they were trying to eliminate civilian casualties. So there, even the French black ops guys who are going to blow up a ship still do so in a nice, more-socially-appropriate left-wing manner.



That was a pretty stupid plan. Of course it was impossible to predict that a small explosion would make everyone leave the vessel. And even if that particular plan had worked in that they'd been able to sink the vessel with a mine with nobody onboard, it's not like there wouldn't have been any forensic evidence of how the ship was destroyed. If the last thing people heard before the vessel went down was an explosion I actually wouldn't be surprised if a bomb squad might investigate.

I'll bet that all the Shadowrun players on this forum would be able to come up with a better plan than that. I mean, setting up a hot dog stand with free ice cream and beer was probably a better way to make everyone leave the vessel than trying to use a small explosion.

Okay, I'm going to start another thread where you can use your Shadowrun campaign planning skills to monday morning quarterback Opération Satanique.

I guess that losing a lot of the population and infrastructure and losing the n°1 status to the USA was enough to make European countries wonder if war is such a great idea.
Europe used to have wars all the time, but the impact of these wars on the population was nothing compared to what it was during the 1st and especially the 2nd world war. That's why people said that World War 1 had been "The war to end all wars": war has gone to a completely different scale and it was no longer something you could do every 20 years or so.

It's different for Americans: the USA became the world 1st power after WW2 and the mainland never suffered directly from the war.

Anyway, to me Afghanistan and Irak show that violence alone can't solve problems.

Afghanistan and Iraq could be 'solved' if we used sufficient violence. What you mean to say is violence can't conscientiously solve all problems, which is quite different.

I think most (sane) people pretty much take that as read, Nezumi.

I thought that what it showed most people was that while violence can solve all problems no Westerner is willing to go to the extreme brutal genocidal extent that would be necessary to make the violence work in those situations.

The irony being that it's nihilistic crazy people who *do* want to take violence all the way who are being protected by Western ethics right now even as they kill/maim Westerners and cost them lots of money.

Well, yes, and the other 99% of the people who just want to grow old in peace. They are getting protected too. As has been alluded, Genghis Khan had the only sure-fire way to deal with insurgents: if there is any trouble, kill everybody.

With fire?

The only sure way to ensure peace is to surrender.

Depends on who you surrender too. Some will just subjugate you. Others...well there are worse things then death.

I have it on PS3, fan-fucking-tastic game. Assassin's Creed 2 was also major love.

I suppose I'll have to try 2 for the PC, but since it's single player I'll gladly wait a few years for the price to come down.

and also different equipment. WW1 was basically napoleonic tactics against machineguns and long range artillery.

when a formation of riflemen can be cut down by two guys manning a machinegun nest, you need to rethink things from the ground up.

Note also how in World War I they were still trying to use cavalry, and it only took that one war for cavalry formations to pretty much disappear from the Western military panthenon.

(Very funny, air cav isn't cavalry with horses and swords.)

Not exactly.

There were still generals who had considered using cavalry during WW2, but this was limited to very specific terrain types (read mountainous & hilly). However, this was a product of how the tank schools failed miserably at creating good tank commanders. The US Army tank school and officer training school managed to spit out a lot of tank commanders that were ex-artillery or ex-infantry. To those ends, most of those commanders were some of the worst and brought the tank down to moving at 3 mph with the infantry rather than using it to its potential. It was the ex-cavalry tankers and a few others, that made tanks respectable within the western armies (Germany excluded).

That infantry focused view of the tank was more prevalent than one could hope. The only one who really wanted to use the tank to its fullest potential was Major General John S. Wood. Luckily, he was under the command of Patton. Unluckily, Patton was hesitant to fall too far outside of "traditional" thinking, lest he piss off the higher-ups.