Assassin's Creed Comments by Tom Bramwell

So, does anybody here like forming opinions for themselves?

Anyone?

Oh.

If you want to know the plotline go to 1up. They spoiled it. I didnt read it, but i red the comments. So i warned you. :-/

You know - I've never actually ignored someone before. I now discover it literally removes them from existence. Other places where I've ignored people have a little "Post Missing" bar.

I can solipistically annihilate people from existence. It's quite a thrill.

KG

Didn't see that coming to be honest. I also expected the score to be lower than seven after reading that review...

"A game that starts off brightly, wriggling elusively as you try and grasp what's going on, delighting in the mechanics and beautiful visuals, before sinking into a pattern that, while fairly gratifying, never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive."

ANYONE else think the above comments should have been slapped on the Bioshock review?

You only have to watch the gamebreaking AI problems in the gametrailers.com review to see that the ending score is at least a little inaccurate. They also gave 9.7 for the story which I'm guessing reviewers like Edge and EG completely disagree with.

Awesome. The count on the front page says it's higher than the actual one - so presumably there's a post from geezer saying "I hate girl's because of what's between their legs and you are also what's between their legs, BremXJones" or whatever nearby.

And I don't know! Aces. Is he funny, anyone? Or is he just being a nasty little sexist git?

KG

"Idly, I'm going to be watching this thread carefully, and anyone who goes on about the games' producer in it will be added to my list of people to carefully ignore in future for being misogynistic gits."

It's not the fact that Ms Raymond is a lady and *SHOCK* working on a video game, but that she was quite blatantly nothing more than an attractive mouthpiece put there to appeal to horny teenagers. She probably knows as much about game design and programming as I do about flying a space shuttle.

Never mind.

Be interesting if KG has had a chance to play it. Opinions if this is the case?

Given that it's a three page review, and how negative the last two pages were, I was honestly expecting a "BUT! None of that matters because here's the thing that makes it the best game ever..." Pisser. 7/10 is still a decent score, but I had started to believe that the game was going to be something truly special.

The premise is interesting enough to pick up as a rental, I think, but almost certainly not a purchase for me now unless it gets relegated to bargain bins in the new year.

I said a week or two ago that this had 7-8/10 plus 1 or 2 for the hype factor written all over it ...

Respect for EG for not falling for the hype.

It's a great concept and unfortunately, Ubi are selling it on the hype alone without the necessary effort and polish required to thrust it well and truly into new AAA IP territory - sadly predictable really ...

MY CHRISTMAS IS RUINED

I'm amazed gametrailers came to that conclusion on the score, the video review basically said

great looking, little substance.

bit like jade raymond then?

Nice review EG, and it's good to see you were not influenced by this game's enormous hype.

Why so much hateship against a person you barely know?

Pear: There's the thing - how much do you know about Raymond's background?(Clue: You don't) Or did you presume it because - y'know - she's more attractive than Gabe Newell?

Frankly, the wanky SHIT! A GURL! response around Assassin's Creed has been embarassing for everyone - both the people lusting after her and the people who dismiss her because they /could/ lust after her. Since it's only going to get worse because the game seems to be not what everyone was hoping for*, I thought it worth saying something publicly about it.

For God's sake, grow up the lot of you. It's possible to hate a game without being sexist bastards.

KG

*Of course, if it was the world's best game ever, people wouldn't credit her with anything to do with it.

Team Xbox have a review up...

OOer

Oooooo good but not amazing score; not exactly unexpected really from the numerous "repetitive" comments I've been hearing elsewhere. Still my game has been sent from Gameplay now and I am looking forward to discovering just how good it is for myself.

Read all about it:

Eurogamer rocked by sexism and racism scandal.

-On monday 12th Novemember racial equality champion Razz Razzington highlighted the growing problem of the use of the term 'orientals' on supposed 'gaming' site eurogamer
-Just one day later acclaimed journalist Kieran Gillen spoke out against the tide of sexism washing the notoriously rabid comments section of the site.

so they've made a brilliant engine but not a good game with it.

i can live with that.

Inquisitor: I missed that entirely. Where was that?

KG

EG built this up like it was gonna be a blockbuster, looks like next time they shouldn't believe the hype.
I was believing it too until I seen a combat video on youtube a few weeks back and it was very poor.

This game was always going to disappoint from the moment they showed that video with the terrible combat, you could see it wasn't going to be up to it. It had the much potential to be one of the greatest games ever and even though 7 is a decent score, for a game with a concept like this it's catastrophic.

They blew it.

(The graphics are amazing however so pat on the back)

Sounds good to me - I personally had more fun this year with EG's 7s and 8s than with the 9s and 10s - not that I necessarily disagreed with the scores, often the games had some flaws, but all in all they were simply more my cup of tea.

It really is quite a read KG

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_po...

Shame its not AAA but I doubt it will be a bad game.

/thinks about sticking up for Jade in the hopes of a shag... nah lol

"Pear: There's the thing - how much do you know about Raymond's background?(Clue: You don't) Or did you presume it because - y'know - she's more attractive than Gabe Newell? "

Untwist your panties, Gillen. It's bugger all to do with her gender, I'm questioning what skills and experience she has to qualify her to lead a team working on a major game. Granted, I don't know much about the details of game development, but I'd have thought you need to have done more than some art and production on a couple of MMOs to be considered for a role like that. With the way she's been promoted almost as much as the game and her odd behaviour during live demos, it's not a major leap to assume that she has been put in place simply because of her pretty face. It's not like Ubisoft are strangers to that kind of thing.

And you shouting down anybody who dares voice a negative comment about her because she's a girl is just as sexist as the hairy-palm crew salivating over her pictures. Would you be doing that if it was just some guy?

Pear: Put it like this - why on earth are we even talking about it?

KG

Inquisitor: Christ. I can't deal with that.

KG

I so had this down as a Thief/GTA cross, feh.

BremXJones same reason we talk about any producer(difference being a male producer has to put a lot of hours in before he gets mentioned alot), its expected it will go off topic a bit she's an attractive Female... why do we care so much, I'm sure like any other producer she doesnt give a shit. If this is her first producing role for a game then you have to cut her some slack though, didnt do half bad but a bad choice from the publishers point of view thats a big project to start off on.

yeh, i guessed at 7. just disappointed they didnt use my 'kingdom of seven' tagline.

We are talking about it because this is a major release that's been hyped for years, and Ubisoft insisted on carting out their trophy staff member at every opportunity. If you want to wail on somebody for being sexist, go have a word with Ubisoft. I'm not questioning this obvious marketing ploy because the game is bad and there's a woman supposedly in charge, but because it's misleading, embarrassing and backwards.

I knew this was overhyped, just by looking at the videos from the last view months.

Just to change the subject, does anyone know WTF happened to the enemy AI? Was this limitation imposed by the PS3 version, as some people say?

What you can see in the gametrailers video review (enemies passively waiting for their turn to die) completely breaks the immersion in any game.

@PearOfAnguish: Nowhere do I find anyone judging the game to be bad. It just didn't live up to the exaggerated hype.

This has to be one of the worst threads on EG... pathetic. Great review though.

For what it's worth, wikipedia, that most reliable of sources, says that Ms Raymond has a degree in comp sci, so maybe she knows a bit about this computer lark after all.

"Just to change the subject, does anyone know WTF happened to the enemy AI?"

Focus on the visuals at the expense of the AI, probably. Could also explain the shoddy plot.

Some of my best friends are 7/10s

"trophy staff member"

That's harsh mate. She's the producer, why shouldnt she be talking about the game to punters. There were also others who were interviewed (the lead tech guy for instance I saw many a time). To be honest this is the reason the industry is so male dominated and I don't blame women for not being part of it. Also forums show the best and worst sides of the human species this thread being a good example of it.

Some chill pills need to taken.

There's a brief summary in this thread,

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_po...

Only a few posts long as well.

lol @ NickyJD & http://i12.tinypic.com/4mmwg8k.jpg%3Cbr%...

... Oh so many captions....oh so little time...

Calgon: Point - but what I was really talking about was the assumption she's a corporate mouthpiece. Her credits are questioned in a way which no other fronts-persons get (And - Pear - Mobygames isn't really a complete source of information in any way. She's programmed at Sony. And even if you're assuming that's a lie, she's got a Comp Sci degree. She knows how to bloody program).

Yes, Frontspeople from games get slagged. But they don't get gender-centric sexist insults which are really saddening and what I wanted to say about.

Does she give a toss? Who knows. I hope she has hard skin, but - y'know - people are people and to see a thread full of people like that isn't a nice thing (Especially attached to a relatively downbeat review). I mean, people have been insulting me forever and stuff occasionally throws me.

Human empathy and decency are the least we can expect. It's not so hard.

And, I suspect, that's my last words on the topic. Be nice, people.

KG

Amazing amount of sexist idiots in this comment thread.

Wow .. never expected all that last page. Not as spectacular as the hype machine made it out to be... dang!

A few responses:

Killerbee:

"most of the previews seemed to indicate it was going to be a solid title"

That's understandable - it definitely makes a strong first impression, but over the 15-20 hours it takes to finish it the flash wears away. A shame, but as someone else in the thread points out, 7/10 is still "good". It's just not what it might have been.


JDub:

"'After each briefing, you travel the same route to the Masyaf border with no way to skip the journey' ... The 1up review mentioned something about being able to warp to already found destinations - Not sure how, but still..."

You can warp from the edge the Masyaf border to any of the cities you've already visited (dodging the Kingdom area travel) and you can launch yourself back to Masyaf once you've finished a mission in one of the cities. But there's still a lot of unnecessary plodding around on foot. I assume this was meant to encourage playing around with the world, but there's surprisingly little to do, which is why it grates.

I'm inclined to agree with the idea that a bit of extra time and polish could have given it a real bump. The platforming in particular is just dying to be put to better use. Scaling the cathedral in Acre is the sort of challenge the game should have made a bigger deal of emphasising, but instead it's an isolated moment of decency in that area.


the_sas_man:

"Worse than Halo 2's ending? If so then its REALLY bad."

It at least concludes (partially), but I think there's going to be a fair bit of gawping unhappily at what occurs. As I said at the outset, I've deliberately avoided talking about the "other" elements of the game - that's partly because it's fun to have that to look forward to, but also partly because it doesn't make enough of an impact to really deserve considered dissection, which says a lot too.

Not to say that you shouldn't read around to inform your purchase decisions (I would), but upon skimming a few places this afternoon there's definitely a lot of chatter about what else goes on, and if you're tangled up in the desire to find out about that then you will want to tread carefully.


deaner:

"Why does the review read exactly like the one on 1UP.com, almost paragraph for paragraph?"

I suspect we played the same game! But to set your mind at rest, I wrote this on Monday morning. I haven't read the 1UP review yet but I'm aware of the score and I've heard it's quite savage. It's worth bearing in mind that I'm not sure how they use the 1-10 scale elsewhere, but it's always possible that they're harsher on 7s or whatever. As someone else rightly pointed out, 7/10 here is a positive response with reservations rather than a slagging.


Emth:

"They also gave 9.7 for the story which I'm guessing reviewers like Edge and EG completely disagree with."

No, I'm not particularly enamoured with it, but it's worth pointing out that while it has a bearing on the impression the game leaves, it doesn't ruin what's good about it - and as the review says, there is a fair amount. I also think that once it hits on Friday a lot of people will play it for a couple of hours and then get cross with me, play it for 10 more and then go "oh".


PearOfAnguish:

"It's not the fact that Ms Raymond is a lady and *SHOCK* working on a video game, but that she was quite blatantly nothing more than an attractive mouthpiece put there to appeal to horny teenagers."

I don't think that's fair. I've met Jade and talked to her about the game and that's not the impression she left me with.


keith123:

"EG built this up like it was gonna be a blockbuster, looks like next time they shouldn't believe the hype."

As I said above (and in the review), it demos really, really well. It's genuinely very exciting up to the point when it becomes clear how it works, what it's doing, and that it's not going anywhere else with it.

By the way, I'll be checking the thread tonight if anyone has any queries about stuff not mentioned in the review.

7/10 ain't a bad score, and its just one persons opinion.

Halo 3 was massively over hyped and the biggest let down for games this year...boring game, crap ending etc etc.... this at least looks like a fairly decent attempt at bringing something new and different to gaming (with the Parkour and crowd interaction stuff).

I'll buy it, complete it, then trade it back + £14.99 at Blockbuster for Mass Effect, and probably be happy!

I'm sure their pressure to get it out for Xmas was crazy.

OOOOH BURN