Up in the Air
While developing the story for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and dialogue for the game’s protagonist
Ezio, I took inspiration from Ryan Bingham, the corporate assassin played by George Clooney in Up in the Air — the loneliness and missed opportunities he experiences, and the way he hides his real emotions.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Man, someone at Ubisoft must be a huge fan of electronic music. Embedded here is the the latest Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood trailer, and if you said to yourself, “Hey, isn’t that that Röyksopp song?” then you win a prize! Well, not really, but you have the same musical tastes as I do, which is prize enough.

You’ll recall that the big Assassin’s Creed II commercial was set to Justice’s “Genesis,” off their 2007 album Cross.

And now we have Röyksopp’s “Röyksopp Forever,” off last year’s album Junior.

Not that I know much about this Brotherhood game, mind you. It looks to be a sequel to the second game, but the PC version isn’t due for release till next year so I haven’t paid much attention to it. However, I do look forward to having to go back in time to ask Saint Peter for permission to play the game.

Fellow PC gamers: it’s time to freak out. You’re familiar with Ubisoft’s newfangled DRM scheme that requires you be online in order to play its games, right? It’s 100 percent as awful as we had thought it would be. PC Gamer recently played Assassin’s Creed II, and discovered what a pain the in the ass the DRM really, truly is. Get this: every time you lose your Internet connection the game boots you to the main menu, and all progress made from the last save point is thrown out the window. This isn’t an MMO, mind you, but a plain ol’ single player game. In other words, no Internet, no game. Bravo, Ubisoft.

Off the top of my head, here’s a list of people who won’t be able to play Ubisoft PC game from now on:

• People with rubbish Internet connections, like Devin

• People with rubbish Wi-Fi (or wired) networks, like me. My Wi-Fi cuts out at least three or four times per day, just because. Clearly it’s a piece of junk router, but it’s my piece of junk router.

• People without 24/7 Internet access. Maybe you’re in the military and play games on your laptop to kill an hour or two? Sorry, you lose!

Off the top of my head, here’s a list of people who will have no problems playing Ubisoft PC games from now on:

• Pirates

Yeah, that’s about it. You show me someone with a flawless Internet connection and I’ll sell you a bridge for a dollar, or some other cliché that I can’t think of right now

The point is, the DRM is completely overbearing.

Let’s be conspiratorial about this for a moment. Maybe Ubisoft is sick and tired of having to devote resources to making PC games. So what it does it, make the DRM so completely ridiculous that nobody buys the game. Then Ubisoft can turn around and say, “See, nobody buys PC games anymore, clearly piracy is to blame.” (Never mind that console piracy is pretty rampant, too.) So then they pull out of the PC market for good.

Good riddance, then. Take your DRM nonsense and become just as irrelevant as the music industry is today.

I already bought Assassin’s Creed II for the Xbox 360 last fall, but I never finished it. I was planning on buying the PC version to actually beat the game this time around, and see how it benefits from a proper GPU (an ATI 5850), but now? There’s no chance of that happening, even if Ubisoft predictably retracts the DRM from the game before it comes out. Too late, the damage has already been done. Be sure to promote the suit(s) who came up with the idea in the first place!

Wankers.

/end nerd-rage

via Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If you never played Assassin’s Creed, I suggest taking the time to look online for synopses of the game so that you get a feel for what happened as Assassin’s Creed 2 does a poor job of rehashing the tale. I played the first game almost a year ago so I was hazy on the plot and was a bit disappointed that I had to look up the Wikipedia page to figure out what was going on. Ubisoft could have done a better job here by having some flashbacks, or even some dialogue at the beginning of the game to help those who are new, or haven’t played in a while.

This installment of Assassin’s Creed has you playing as Ezio Auditore, a suave ladies-man hell-bent on exacting revenge upon those who took part in the killing of his father and two brothers. His blood lust carries him throughout Italy, assassinating all who he deems guilty. As you progress through the game, you learn new techniques, as well as acquire new weapons–through the help of Leonardo DaVinci. Each weapon has different assassination traits, and I highly suggest trying them all out–they are extremely satisfying and awe-inspiring and keep the game from becoming stale. My favorite however, is the dual-hidden blades, because let’s be honest, there aren’t many things cooler in video games than jumping from three stories in the air and assassinating two unsuspecting guards below. Don’t believe me? Just try it.

The first thing you notice when playing this game is the awe-inspiring graphics. The engineers in this game went through a lot to make sure the game looked absolutely amazing. Whether it’s the movements of Ezio himself, or the structures he ascends, every aspect of this game is painstakingly detailed.

The combat in Assassin’s Creed 2 is good, but nothing exceptional. It actually reminds me a lot of the combat system used in Fable 2. Controls are simple–one can get through this game by simply mashing the attack button over and over again–but using combos and making sure your weapons match up well against your opponents (for example, using your knife is better than your sword against a spear) make the game more strategic. Like many games, throwing an enemy is obscenely overpowering (think Super Smash Brothers). You can grab a guard and throw him off a roof and watch him plunge to his death, or simply throw him to the ground and assassinate him quite easily. Unlike in the first Assassin’s Creed, you can swim, while your enemies cannot. Thus, grabbing an enemy and throwing them in the water is a sure-fire way to kill a pesky guard. As I said before, you get most of your combat pleasure through the use of various assassinations. As such, I used the counter-assassination move quite often simply because of the animations which followed.

Assassin’s Creed 2 adds the concept of an economy this time around. You can use money you collect to upgrade the villa you’ve been put in charge of, as well as to buy supplies such as weapons, medicine, or art. Everything you collect in the game, whether it be new weapons, armor, or paintings, adds to the value of your villa which is proportionate to how much money you get per 20 minutes of play time from the villa chest. This, while a good idea in concept, makes it very easy for people to game the system. By upgrading your villa early on, you make enough money to buy anything you need later on in the game. By the time I had progressed far enough to purchase a certain set of armor for instance, I had triple what was needed to buy everything in the store.

Like any good RPG, Assassin’s Creed 2 has a multitude of side quests. For the most part, these are quite enjoyable and add to the scope of the game. There are over 20 assassination contracts you can fulfill, all with a varying degree of difficulty. Races and beat-up events were introduced as well. The beat up events are pretty pointless in my opinion, but the races are quite fun, as they take full advantage of the free-run capabilities of the game. The races start with a timer and you must run through checkpoints before time runs out. One fall or a mistake and you’ll have to start over. Luckily, these races are only about two minutes, so messing up a few times isn’t going to want to make you quit playing for a while.

This brings me to my point: free-running. I spent a great deal of time just jumping from rooftop to rooftop and it was extremely enjoyable. The grace and precision in Ezio’s movements is simply astounding. When scaling buildings, you’ll always find Ezio grabbing onto a ledge or a crack in the wall while placing his feet in supports as well. You will hardly ever find Ezio grabbing onto an invisible ledge or putting his feet somewhere where he shouldn’t be able to. It was small details like these which makes you actually believe some of the things Ezio is doing are possible, and they did not go unnoticed.

The controls in this game are pretty basic and intuitive, which is a major plus. Since there are so many things going on at once in this game, the game does slip up every once a while. It was frustrating to be scaling up a wall and then suddenly diving into a bale of hay twenty stories down when in fact you wanted to simply jump to another building. There were also times when I wanted to assassinate a certain individual and ended up killing nearby civilians instead. While these occurrences were rare and far-between, it was annoying nonetheless, but did not however detract significantly from the game. For the most part, Ezio did precisely what you wanted him to do, with grace and swagger to spare.

As you can see, all my gripes with this game are small and nit-picky. Assassin’s Creed 2 excelled in every way imaginable, from the story line to the gameplay. I have not had this much fun playing a single-player video game since Mass Effect.

It is a shame that we have to wait for the next installment of Assassin’s Creed to come out. Hopefully Ubisoft can correct the few flaws in this version, and make a perfect ending to this epic trilogy. When thinking about game of the year for 2009, Assassin’s Creed will definitely be in the running. The gameplay is smooth, the story is compelling, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play. If you have $60 to spare, I would suggest going to the store and buying this game right away, you will surely not regret it.

If you’ve already beaten the game, don’t be hasty and trade it in. Ubisoft will be releasing two DLC packs, one in January and the other in February, for your enjoyment.

CrunchGear score: 9.45

Well, the teaser site launched a week ago and we’ve known about the sequel for a long time, but today, Ubisoft “officially” announced Assassin’s Creed 2. And it’s coming to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC for the holiday 2009 season.

Big thanks to Mark D. for the GI article.

In a vast open world environment, the game invites players to incarnate Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who’s been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy. Ezio’s subsequent quest for vengeance plunges players into a captivating and epic story that offers more variety in missions, surprising and engaging new gameplay elements, diverse weapons and a profound character progression that will appeal to fans of the original Assassin’s Creed as well as entice players new to the brand.

[PSGallery=5ei5as4b05]

Ubisoft is not amused about the 700,000-some copies of Assassin’s Creed that spread like wildfire around the web six weeks before the game was available at retail stores. Ubisoft has tracked the initial leak back to Optical Experts Manufacturing, the company in charge of producing copies of the game for sale. It was found that an employee of the company had taken the game home and leaked it out onto the internet, which Ubisoft called “an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence.”

What’s interesting is that, not only is Ubisoft suing the company lost sales, it’s also suing the company for irreparable harm to Ubisoft’s reputation. Why? Because in order to prevent piracy, Ubisoft had planted a bug in the game up until the final version that purposely caused it to crash halfway through. As it turns out, a fair amount of video game reviewers had been reviewing pirated copies of the game and gave it lower scores because of the apparent instability.

The final legal tally adds up to copyright infringement, breach of contract, and negligence, plus a recuperation of legal fees for all three claims, plus at least $10 million each in damages for the negligence and breach of contract claims.

This week on CrunchArcade, your weekly roundup of gaming news, commentary, and downloads: Assassin’s Creed on the PC, Aerosmith on consoles, achievements in TF2 and indie developer Cactus in a zip file. Read on, bold CrunchReader.

The week that wasn’t

Not a lot of big news this week, but we found cool stuff anyway. The entire Atari Catalog from 1981 has been scanned and put online for your perusal, and there’s more old school stuff like that over here at Metafilter. It’s interesting how it’s all illustration – no screenshots for you!

Peter got to try out Guitar Hero Aerosmith, which he said was sweet, but I think liking Aerosmith is kind of a prerequisite. I’m more into Team Fortress 2, where the first set of extra achievements and unlockables has been revealed, for the Medic. Some of the achievements are, as far as I am concerned, completely impossible, even if you’re working with pals to game the system.

 Assassin’s Creed PC first impressions

The controversial creeper that got mixed reviews on its release has finally made its way to my PC. I happened to agree with the positive reviews for the consoles, but that doesn’t mean it would necessary be any good on the PC (see Resident Evil 4 and numerous racing games for examples of bad ports of good games). Fortunately, the game has for the most part made a good transition.

I’m using an analog gamepad, but some people say the mouse/keyboard controls are better. That sounds weird to me since it’s essentially a platform/action game. I’ll give it a try, though. The new gameplay includes some extra investigational tasks, although the biggest difference is the graphics.

Oh, the graphics. This game is utterly beautiful. Above you see a screenshot resized from 1280×720 and a crop from it at that resolution. I am running it on my rig at 1920×1200, and it is unbelievably good-looking at times. Every little detail is there and the animation in the game shows no flaws in the move to high-res. I’ll put up another shot as soon as I get back to my home PC.Check it out, it looks even better in motion:

Unfortunately there are still a few bugs to work out. For instance, in the "Kingdom" area, there is a freaky stutter no matter where I go or what settings I change. It’s nowhere to be found in the cities. I’m a few missions in and I’m looking forward to the rest of the game, though I am definitely hoping for a patch to smooth out the more obvious bugs.

Cactus Arcade

No matter what you’re looking for in the indie game community, whether it be platformer, puzzler, shoot-em-up, or whatever, prolific developer Cactus has probably released a game in that genre. It’s a bit troublesome to keep track of all his releases, even though they’re the cream of the crop, so a compilation has been thoughtfully put together.

It has fully 17 games included, it’s free, and it has an interface included so you don’t need to worry about tracking 17 extra directories (my "indie games" folder is a hopeless mess). Here it is (direct .zip download), and if that dies here is Cactus’ directory of games. Try Akichuzoku, Fractal Fighter, and Mondo Medicals if you’re feeling adventurous.

That’s all for this week, kids. Tune in next week for more.

Assassin’s Creed PC Q&A [IGN PC UK]

I like AC as much as the next guy, but I’m not so sure I’d want to play it on my DS. It looks better than I expected, but it’s not really doing it for me. Yay or nay?

Assassin’s Creed Passes 2.5 Million Sold; Ubisoft Raises Guidance [Game Daily]

GameTrailers.com has a good video review of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about this game. GT’s basic view is that the game is gorgeous and innovative, albeit a bit repetitive and with a less-than-stellar enemy AI. "Assassin’s Creed breaks new ground but fails at nailing some fundamentals."

Assassin’s Creed review HD [GameTrailers.com]