They're starting to advertise DLC. Looks like a World War I setting. [video=youtube;wW_-exDp3CE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW_-exDp3CE[/video]
Played an hour of Unity, mainly spent collecting things in the early area. The free running is a little odd to me. It looks like the developers were more interested in making sure you could get almost anywhere than they were in making sure your actions were plausible. I've seen Arno make a 30 foot jump with animations making him look like he's being pulled by magnetism to the building he's aiming at. The "last known position" mechanic is nice. Basically, the game will place a ghost at the exact spot the guards last determined your location, so you can determine line of sight and also lure them away from posts. It's a neat idea, and I wonder how much it comes into play. It seems more like an exploring tactic than something that's critical to the core game. Combat is tougher. You can and will get your *** kicked, sometimes for reasons not your fault—a lot of combat takes place in enclosed areas where the camera has trouble zooming out far enough to show you all the guys attacking you. So you're fighting one guy, and suddenly his buddy appears from nowhere off screen to slice you. If the camera had been further out, you would have seen his flashing attack icon and could have countered. And if you take a few hits, you're dead, period. No more Connor-like bloodbaths in city streets. So far there have been some fun cameos. The intro sequence takes place in 1776, and Ben Franklin appears in a crowd at the end. I'm wondering if some other AC3 characters appear, like Lafayette. He was pretty decent for a French guy.
Thats going to make the game much tougher for me. I found combat in the last few too difficult. Hoping knives are back in.
I thought the combat was a little harder in AC4, but not by much. In AC3, Connor was basically the grim reaper. I'm sure there's some pattern to the enemy types that I haven't figured out yet.
I barely meet the minimum specs for this on PC. I would think it'd still perform better than the Xbox One/PS4 based on what I have read, but I'm not even sure I should invest in the game until I get a new PC. I have had my PC for 3.5 years and it was never top of the line, and all I have really done since it was first built was add RAM (at some point) and upgrade the graphics card about 20 months ago.
The combat isn't too tough imo, though I did take a sword through the chest in just the 2nd sequence. Also, I thought it was it a bit easy in Black Flag (could slay 10+ guys on a ship on my own lol). Parrying takes a little time to get used to, but the kills are still awesome.
I took a lot of damage on the ships myself. Died a few times. Ended up having to run away and hide to heal far too often. My strategy ended up being to snipe guys from above with the pistol until I was out of ammo, then kill one from above as I came down.
All versions are currently having performance issues. I'm not running it with everything set to max, but I'm pretty close… then again, I have a monster rig. My biggest compromise was to use FXAA instead of MSAA. If you aren't confident you can run it, then you're probably right to wait. But that's why there's AC Rogue; you get a full, real AC game with links to 3, 4, and Unity.
So yeah, this game got problems. Me and a bud sunk a bunch of time into "Heads Will Roll" only to have the guy you have to talk to not appear at the end of the mission. He lost sound at one point, I had a stuck rippling effect over my screen. Just bizarre.
Yep, it's pretty buggy. Two patches are already in the works. Also, Ubisoft… if you want to pimp out Uplay so hard through forced integration with your games, the least you could do is make sure it, y'know, freaking works.
I'm glad I'm not getting this one day 1 for sure. Hopefully by the new year all the bugs will be worked out and maybe even some good DLC.
I wouldn't say it's unplayable, just that it was released before it was ready. Most games are these days. Have to make the Christmas sales period, because everyone knows no one buys games the other 9 months of the year, amirite? The bugs I'm being affected by: * Fluctuating framerate (worked around by using Nvidia per-game driver configs to lower some settings) * Arno falling through the map (experienced it once, then fast traveled to fix) * AC Initiates profile being reset to beginner level (so much for all my AC3 and AC4 points!) Hardly gamebreaking by any means, but this game does need attention asap.
Ubi just posted a list of areas that will be addressed in patch 3. Still waiting for them to give Jesper Kyd a call to compose some damn city background music. In related news about frame rates, at least on the PC version, it looks like some information has leaked as to why the PC version struggles even on the latest hardware, and also affects the console versions. Tech babble to English translation: the game is doing 5 times as much work per frame than the graphics API allows, at least on the PC, for little to no benefit. Contrast with Battlefield 4, which also emphasizes lighting, yet runs great on everything.
I beat the game. Did not like the ending at all, especially knowing we will never see Arno again. (Ubisoft has said they will now always introduce a new assassin in every game, no more Ezio trilogies.) I thought it was unsatisfying, especially given how the game speeds through the timeline of 1789-94. If you aren't familiar with the French Revolution, you won't know what's going on or why it's important. If there were a modern day component, then the modern day storyline could have served as the resolution, but nope… you fight the last boss, you win, the credits roll, you go to the post game. Napoleon is in the game, but only for like 5 minutes. He and Arno had really good chemistry, but we only get a couple of scenes with them before Napoleon disappears forever. Alex Amancio's AC games (Revelations, Unity) are really light and fast on story, and I think that's a detriment. We need more substance, IMO. Overall, 8.5/10 on a real scale, not the video game review scale where 7 means it sucks. The game is really fun just to play, but the story it tells needed more work. Between this and Rogue, we now have every major event of the 18th century depicted, so it's time for a new era. But it's also time to resolve the modern day story. Ubisoft has said there's a definitive conclusion, so let's conclude it.
That was damn fast! Usually takes me 4-6 weeks to play through an AC game. But its never been a series that I'll sit down and play all day, even if I have the time. I also tend to doddle and explore, and spend a lot of time trying to complete the optional quests, Thanks for the review. I'm looking forward to playing the game, but disapointed that the modern day element of the last one was so lacking, and is gone alltogether in this one.
I started out doing a lot of sidequests, but it eventually got pointless when I realized the story was just a series of assassinations and you don't really need anything the sidequests can give you. The next AC needs more substantive plot writing, both for the assassin being simulated and the modern day events.
Unity and Rogue have a really strong tie-in: the opening scene of Unity is one of the last missions of Rogue. Rogue explains what happens at the end of Unity's opening scene. Rogue needs to come to the PC so I can play it.
Ubi screwed up the AC Unity launch so hard that they're giving away free stuff. So if you didn't have the Season Pass, you get free DLC. If you had the season pass or gold edition, you get the DLC anyway and a free game on top. Far Cry 4 plz.
Patch 3 is out on all platforms. Has about 300 (no, really) fixes in it. I'm not posting the full change log, it's massive. But it has resulted in what appears to be more people playing the game in co-op now. I'm having an easier time matchmaking. Patch 4 is now in the works. Should have performance fixes.
So....patch 4 is 6.7 gigs! for the PS4, and 40 gigs!!!! for the XBOX1. I guess good thing I have a PS4? I'll have to get up in the middle of the night to do it and stay within my bandwith limits still. Man, thats enormous.
The patch is enormous because they rebuilt the entire map of Paris to improve FPS. So you're redownloading the entire map. The PC version of Paris is apparently 10 GB or so. We'll see how large the PC version patch is; it's not out yet. In related news, the new Catalyst Omega drivers and the latest GeForce beta drivers improve game performance on the PC.
I officially have the game, though I haven't opened it yet. Got it from my parents as a gift and just got home after a nine hour drive. Might pop it in and do the updates in the morning. Not going to dive into it for a bit until I'm done with DA:I though.
Club Competitions have finally started. You form a team of up to 4 assassins and then complete objectives to unlock gear. A lot of the legendary equipment is locked behind club competitions. Depending on how long you're going to take with DA:I, it might not be worth updating ACU ahead of time. There could be a fifth patch, since patch 4 has actually caused some regressions for a lot of people.
Club competitions have been opened for a week. Basically, you join a club, with a max of 40 players (IIRC). You then play cooperatively with members of the club to accumulate creed points, with certain missions and actions awarding double points during that week's competition. The group with the most points in its bracket wins a piece of legendary equipment. It's actually pretty fun, and unlocking club assignments results in creed point multipliers. I've got like a 1.6x point multiplier naturally, plus the doubling effect from the competition missions. Getting 1500 creed points just for using a phantom blade on ONE target? I'll take it.
The Dead Kings DLC is out next Tuesday. Free for everyone. New city (Saint Denis), new story. Occurs in 1794, after the conclusion of the main storyline. [video=youtube;tTum-VS71Dk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTum-VS71Dk[/video]
Well, I couldn't get onto the PSN all week, so I went ahead and started the game last night. Played through all of the intro missions, and liked it Felt like and played like an AC game. Graphics are a notch up on the PS4 from the PS3, though some of the cut scenes were a little rough around the edges. So far, no glitches of any kind. One thing that I will say though is that they clearly expect you to know what you're doing out of the gate. I've played all of the games up to this point, so it wasn't a big deal for me, but you need to know how to most of the AC play style from the opening minute. Had a number of early missions that I had to do over 5+ times because I failed. Most of the other games allowed you to ease into it before the difficulty of the stealth really got going.
Disagreed. It seems that way… and then you get tutorials in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th missions. Basically, they stretched out the introduction for new players while giving you quick access to the open world for experienced players. When you get halfway or so through the game, replay the first missions and you'll marvel at how easy breezy they are.
OK, I'll keep an eye out for that. I felt that the change in the shop was interesting. Everything just laid out from the get go, but you have to unlock the ability to buy certain things. Reminded me of Tiger Woods Golf in that way. What irks me though are how so many things are dependant on playing online - which I cannot do. They seem to be moving away from the single player offline experience gradually.
You won't have any problem going through the game due to equipment shortages. There's plenty to buy at every single level of proficiency. Unlocking the equipment is just a way to save money, IMO. I have no fear of the series shifting away from a core single player experience; remember, multiplayer has been in this series since Revelations.
One thing I couldn't stand about the campaign missions were the optional objectives (which actually became mandatory if you wanted those sweet skill points you can't get anywhere else). Some of them force you to change your play-style so much you end up being a lot more clumsy of an assassin than you intended to be. Frustrating.
