Assassin's Creed III: The Super Secret Character

Assassin's Creed III is a third person sandbox stealth/action adventure game. I can't really think of any better way to categorize the game then that. As far as I can tell it was developed and published by Ubisoft. It wass released Oct. 2012. Assassin's Creed III follows the story of Ratonhnhaké:ton, a half Native American/ half British character. We follow him by viewing the memories of one Desmond Miles through his use of the machine called the Animus. A device which allows you to relive the memories of your ancestors, and boy does Desmond have a lot of mixed blood.

But first the game has to pull a fast one on you! All of the pre-game press for this game talked about the character Ratonhnhaké:ton (aka Connor). But when you first play you are dropped behind the guise of Nathan Kenway. Wait, his name is Haytham? I always thought it was Nathan. Well glad I got that out of the way.

So we start the game playing Desmond for a little as the backstory of the series is laid out for you. I got to admit that the backstory of Assassin's Creed is more then a little confusing. Especially when they decided to involve space aliens but this one has gone and tied the whole game to the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy. Good thing I started playing the game now before the world ends.

Shortly after the intro Desmond passes out and his dick of a dad shoves him into the Animus to learn what he's thinking about. It's somehow related to these space aliens. One space alien tries to guide the Assassin's and I guess the other one guides the Assassin's mortal enemies, the Templars. Space aliens have kind of sucked the fun out of the backstory for me, I'll be honest.

Anyways once in the Animus we meet Desmond's ancestor Haytham. Haytham is a very proper British man-of-action type character. We follow him from England to the American colonies where Haytham is on a quest to find a secret cave of the Precursors (the space aliens). Once in America Haytham recruits a team of characters to help him with his quest. This eventually includes the Native American woman Kaniehtí:io (Ziio).

I'm not going to go to much into his story as it is a very quick portion of the game (2 - 3 hours if you don't do sidequests) but I will talk about the big twist! As you follow Haytham around you never for a moment suspect that he is anything but an Assassin. He climbs buildings, uses a hidden dagger and has the eagle vision. Everything about him screams Assassin.

After Haytham finds the cave of the Precursors, fails to find a way in and greatly frustrating him he spends a night with Ziio. I really start to feel sorry for Desmond, he's had to relieve all of his ancestor's having sex at some point in there life. That has to be like some major creepy version of walking in on your parents or something. The poor guy would probably be scarred if he had a personality. Anyways Haytham goes back to his merry band of men and they induct a new member into their order. I was expecting this guy's finger off. Instead they put a ring on his finger and declare his a Templar! Shock and amaze! Desmond has more Templar blood in him!

Now I really didn't see this coming so kudos to Ubisoft for pulling it off. But it's not a big deal for Desmond since Altair's wife Maria was a Templar as well. The difference is that Haytham remains with the Templar's while Maria eventually left them.

So that was the big plot twist. I think Ubisoft was trying to make Haytham a little more engaging of a character by having you play him for a bit. All it ever really does is annoy me though. I didn't like playing as Roxas in Kingdom Hearts II. I kept waiting to get to Sora since he was the character I cared about. I didn't like playing as the Arbiter in Halo. Again, I kept wanting to get back to Master Chief. So I can say that I'm not a fan. I wanted to play as Connor. But now that I've got the chance to play as Connor I may regret that.

So I Feel Like Posting

Ugh, haven't touched this thing in nearly a year. Happily working and when you throw in my family it all keeps me really busy. Not like I have any followers to worry about right now. Maybe if I was more consistent. So let's talk about some of the games I have been playing recently.

I joined Playstation Plus for the Instant Game Collection. Sadly I missed out on Just Cause 2 but I did get a few others and these will be some really quick thoughts.

Infamous 2: The Continuing Story of Cole McGrath.
My biggest complaint with the first game was the camera and that the entire story was just a big build up for the second game. Well the second game pays off. The camera is still an issue but gameplay is really tight and the story is fantastic. The moral dilemma at the end of the game really works, will Cole save himself or will he save Zeke. Oh and how they tie in The Beast. Well played Sucker Punch.

My only real complaint was the companion switch at the very end of the game. I liked Kuo. I didn't care for Nix, at all. I took the moral high ground so I assumed that I would be fighting alongside Kuo at the very end of the game. Instead I ended up working with Nix and fighting Kuo. Not the type of twist that I really enjoyed.

Saints Row 2: Please Sir, May I Have Another.
I almost turned this game off shortly after starting it. It was the very dated graphics that got to me but then I remembered something I always like to say, "Graphics don't make the game." So I pushed forward with the title and I was well rewarded for it. Saints Row 2 is an excellent game. It's got that level of crazy that I really liked from San Andreas and it wraps it all up in a great sense of style. This game knows what it is and the ludicrousness of what it is all about so it does not hold back. Definitely worth checking it out.

My gripe, cars that purposefully got in your way. I hated when I was doing a chase scene down a busy street and every car seemed to swerve straight for you. I knew there was an issue when I could tell how a car was going to behave. It started to become really easy to guess which ones were going to target you.

Oh, and I went with the British voice. Totally made the game for me.

Starhawk - Single Player: MultiPlayer Training Only. 
Oh geez is this bad. Starhawk is the spiritual sequel to Warhawk, a multiplayer only game that was designed to show off the Six Axis controller. The catch with Starhawk was they added a single player mode! Well good for us. Except that story, characters and overall gameplay just sucks. I can't even tell you the main characters name, only that the story involved him having to kill his brother who was possessed by some Mako Stream energy source stuff.

The game's single player mode is all about teaching you how to play the multiplayer mode. It's roughly 5 - 6 hours long and it gives you all the tips and tricks to survive with your buddies when online. Except that I didn't care. The novel resource management and RTS elements never really seemed to click with me. You could build up energy and drop a turret into the battlefield and that was about all I did. With waves of enemy troops coming I would drop nothing but turrets in the enemy drop zone so they would die immediately. I only used the other options when the game said I had to.

And the flight sections, those just made me miss Star Fox 64.

Well, I will leave it at that for now. I'm playing through Assassin's Creed III at the moment so if I post about that then I will almost feel relevant. I also have a game of Warhammer: Space Marine in the works. *Sigh*

Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 - Quick Thoughts

Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3. Where do I begin with this? I'm going to make this short and quick but I wanted to say something about it.I'm a casual fighting game player so I don't get into the mechanics of it very often. I don't really notice the re-balancing of characters or how some moves have been nerfed. Dante is still a massive powerhouse to me and I still enjoy playing him.

You know what I don't enjoy about this game? Phoenix Wright. What a wasted character he is. He has to be the weakest, most annoying character ever to appear in a fighting game. His mechanics and gameplay are just SOOOOOO awful. I kept trying to see his ending but the way he randomly flails about makes it really hard to attack. I couldn't believe how bad of a character he is. There were so many other characters out there who would've been SOOOOO much better.

I actually enjoy Nemesis though. He's a pretty slick powerhouse of a character. Still not happy with him being another Resident Evil character. We really didn't need 4 of them in this game.

That's probably my biggest complaint with this game though. A lot of the new characters feel like wasted choices. Off hand I would throw out Rocket Raccoon, Phoenix Wright, Nemesis, Vergil, Nova, Iron Fist and Firebrand. Wow that half of the dozen new characters that were added.

Now for who I would've replaced them with? Rogue, Silver Surfer, Blade, Nick Fury, Ms. Marvel, Daredevil, Cyclops, Psylocke, Nightcrawler, Black Widow, or Luke Cage would've been better choices on the Marvel side. Seriously they should have just studied Marvel Ultimate Alliance for a great character list. Squirrel Girl should have been the most obvious choice for this game.What a missed opportunity.

For Capcom, how about classic Mega Man (and no, not the crappy North American boxart version. I liked the joke for Mega Man Universe but having that version show up in Street Fighter X Tekken is taking it a lot to far). Rival Schools and Power Stone both had characters ripe for the plucking. How about Regina from Dinos Crisis? Or how about someone from the Onimusha games? Why not someone from the Breath of Fire series? There were so many untouched games with much more potential then what was used.

Part of me hopes for character  DLC in the future but I think Capcom will stick to lame costumes and call it good. (Seriously, why would anyone pay money just to change a costume? That crap should have been included on disc.)

So I fell for the double-dip. That's my choice. What can ya do? I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Warriors Orochi 3 - The Great Gut Wrench!

Hey. It's been a bit but no one actually reads this blog anyways so I'm not all that concerned. I just felt that typing this out will help me vent a little bit. Maybe fix this bum mood that I'm in. This is probably a very silly reason to upset but I will admit that it did get to me. You see, I'm a big fan of of Koei's Warrior series of games. I was bummed when Samurai Warriors 3 was Wii exclusive (I still think that was a dumb move). But I've been eagerly awaiting the announcement that Warriors Orochi 3 was coming to the U.S and that I could get it for my PS3. On January 23 that announcement finally came!

Man was I excited. It was supposed to launch on March 20th which is right before my birthday so I thought that this was perfect. It would make such a great b-day present. But today I was looking up some info when I ran across the news, some really bad news (to me at least). The game will be released in with Japanese vocal track only.

WTF?!

Now I understand that the Warriors games have become more a niche thing and are no longer the massive seller here in the States that it once was. But now the series has gone super-niche. It will appeal only to those who enjoy subtitles.With the Warriors games being fast paced it's not exactly easy  to read during battle. It doesn't help that I only have a standard def TV and no one makes text readable for those types of TVs anymore. It's really frustrating not being able to tell if it's an 8 or b that's on screen and this isn't going to help me any.

So I'm going to pass on Warriors Orochi 3 for now. My excitement level is completely crushed and I will admit that I feel kind of betrayed by Koei. I've always been a day one purchaser of their product. Now I get that they don't actually owe me anything, but it doesn't change the way that I feel about it. I may still pick it up when it's going for under $20. And then it will probably be used too...

Now if they happen to announce a free English voice pack download to fix this horrendous mistake then I will reconsider my purchasing plans. But at this point I just don't care if they stop releasing the games overseas. I would like to listen to the game in my own language. Anyone else is afforded the same right. Just as I have to forgo my purchase.

Thanks for memories Koei. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm sad to see that you've stopped trying.

Dark TImes, not over but that seems to be life.

Well I feel like I've been through the ringer but things aren't done yet. I've decided to get back to blogging though as a way to "entertain" myself. I've gotten a few games under my belt over the past few months and I will be talking about them a little at a time and I will get back to talking about the current title I'm playing. Which will be interesting since I technically have 3 games underway (4 if you count Dynasty Warriors 7). Demon Souls, D.C. Universe Online and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 are all on my current playlist at the moment. You can expect some thoughts on Bionic Commando, Batman: Arkham City, inFamous, and a few more that I can't think of at the moment.

Well it is nice to be back and I hope things can pick up for me pretty quickly.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Final Thoughts

If I had to describe Castlevania I would call it 'technically perfect'. The game is a conglomeration of God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Prince of Persia and it imitates them all near perfectly. Heck, one of the best things about Castlevania is its' combat system. Gabriel is able to easily flow from one combo to the next without a lot of down time. Plus there is a wide array of moves at his disposal that it is easy to play around with the combat system. I loved it. I had so much fun whipping enemies whenever the chance arose. I also found the secondary weapons to be highly useful. Dagger lost their usefulness pretty quickly, but I was constantly using the fairies and holy water an enemies. The crystal summon proved highly useful on many different occasions and finding crystal shards was easy enough that I didn't feel that I had to save the summons. I may not like the look of the summon but it was still nice to have.

Graphically the game is gorgeous. Many of the earlier levels really stand out with their lush green looking environments. It is a shame that later levels devolve into browns and grays just so they can have a gritty, wasteland look to them. The game is much too gorgeous to justify using those colors. Sadly the levels are littered with 'invisible walls'. I would constantly find an area that Gabriel should be able to jump to just to find that he couldn't. Why? Because someone said so. It was also a shame to see the earlier 'multi-pathed level' theme did not continue long into the game. That had me excited to explore the other path while revisiting levels for power-ups.

Now the game has two massive flaws in my humble opinion. The first is the story. Most of the story is told only through voiceover by Patrick Stewart. I never really got to know Gabriel. I never felt that Gabriel was as dark, angry, unforgiving, overworked, or devoid of compassion as Patrick Stewart implied. He did seem driven and little bit cocky. Heck it seemed to me that Gabriel was having fun during his quest. He didn't even seem to feel that badly about Claudia and I'm still not sure why she is in the game. The game should have spent more time with Gabriel. Maybe they could have gone Prince of Persia and had Gabriel talking to himself during the levels. That would have been a great way to get to know the guy. Plus, I never felt that Gabriel was the all-out murder machine that you were lead to believe he had become. Gabriel did his best to save people. He did ruthlessly slaughter Vampires, Werewolfs, Trolls, Goblins, Giant Spiders, Gremlins, etc. But any member of his Knighthood would have done the same thing. Those are unnatural creatures of darkness and therefore needed to be destroyed. It did not seem that Gabriel couldn't wait to slaughter everything in his path. That aspect was never shown.

I mean, the overall story is fine. Heaven and Earth has been separated and the only way to reunite them is to kill the Lords of Shadow and obtain their power. A nice bonus is the resurrection of Gabriel's wife. The big twist with Satan has zero impact since it tool away a fight I had been greatly looking forward to, the fight with Zobek. When somebody randomly shows up and says "I am actually the big bad guy of this game!" you kind of go "Oh. Okay." instead of being all "I cannot wait to destroy this guy. I've wanted to crush him the entire game!" You see the difference. There is only one hint of Satan and it is a very poor hint. The Witch that wants the blue rose says something about serving the 'Lord of the Angels' or something along those lines. But it is a throwaway comment at best. Besides, Satan isn't Lord of the Angels. His real name, Lucifer, means Son of the Morning. He thought he deserved to be God's equal without doing any of the work. For this was he cast out of Heaven and he took with him 1/3 of the Hosts of Heaven. Not exactly a lord of anything in the end.

The second major problem with this game? Oh you can probably guess this one. The stupid camera. Holy crap, how hard is it to hold that thing still. There is no reason for the camera to keep wiggling during gameplay. I had to build up a tolerance for the thing and even then it would still affect me. Heck, I want to get the DLC had some point but I don't want to have to deal with this dumb camera again.

Also I am so over fixed-camera games. This game would choose some of the worst angles making it very hard to see where I was going or even the enemies that I was fighting. Just give the camera back to the player and stop wiggling it. Do this and I would be very happy.

Despite these two flaws Castlevania is a very good game. I still had a lot of fun with it. I felt the opening dragged on a little bit, but after reaching the halfway point the game really took off with some interesting gameplay. So yes, I would recommend this game to anyone unless you suffer from major motion sickness.

Time for a new game then. Boy this game seemed to take forever.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The End Of The Long Road

Chapter XII, there is a TON to be said about Chapter XII. This is the final battle of the main game and with it all of the twists are turns are to be revealed.It's got drama, fighting, betrayal, and true love. So I should stop wasting time with the intro paragraph. It is time to crack into this game and reveal all of the dirty little secrets that hide at the end of this tale.

Behold The God Mask

The Chapter starts off with the longest cutscene in the entire game so far and boy is it a dozy. Gabriel acquires the final piece of the mask and with it he can put the God Mask together. Once done Zobek magically appears. I'm serious, the guy is just suddenly standing there and Gabriel is just too stupid to question where he came from. Instead Gabriel is all like "We have the mask now we can bring back my wife." To which Zobek replies, "No you can't. I have betrayed you!"

That's right, be surprised. Zobek is actually a bad guy and I bet you didn't even see it coming. Oh wait. You did see it coming? From over a mile away? Really? It was that stupidly obvious? Yes, yes it was. Zobek's betrayal comes as a surprise to no one except for Gabriel. I mean, come on. The guy suddenly shows up out of nowhere, happens to have the right tools to help Gabriel. Tells Gabriel how to bring his wife back so he will go on this stupid quest. He is constantly pushing Gabriel but the entire time Zobek does next to nothing to actually help. Instead he follows Gabriel around and waxes poetic about the man from behind a bush while holding a shaky camera. He was very obviously evil.

And here is the Devil Mask

So Zobek shows up holding a different mask. This mask is not identified in game but it is called the Devil Mask.It looks sufficiently creepy and if you've been paying any attention it might actually look a little familiar. But I will cover that a little bit later.

Zobek dawns the mask and he turns in to the real Lord of the Necromancer. Now if he is the real Lord then who did I kill? The butler? And speaking of that how did Gabriel get the final piece of the mask? If Zobek is the third Lord of Shadow then the third mask piece should not have appeared until Gabriel killed him. But here is Gabriel with an intact mask. That kind of ruins the entire setup for the story in case any of the dev team is reading this.

So Zobek reveals that he has been the mastermind the entire time. Now if you were paying attention you should have recognized the Devil Mask. It was the mask that Gabriel was wearing in Pan's temple when he was shown killing his wife. Again it is not a big surprise to everyone except to Gabriel that it was Gabriel who killed his wife. But he did so under the influence of the Devil Mask. Gabriel also killed Claudia, the stupid mute who wouldn't shut up. So I can't condemn him for that. She had it coming.

So Zobek's master plan in a nutshell was, kill Gabriel's wife and use this to send Gabriel on a quest to kill the Lords of Shadow so he could resurrect his wife. Doing this would unite the God Mask that Zobek would then take from Gabriel and use to rule, well..... everything. I guess. *shrug* So far so good.

At this point Zobek kills Gabriel. (Ok, first off, Zobek rambles for a very long time. I was pretty bored by this point so I'm not going to cover every minute detail of his speech.) So Gabriel is dead and Zobek is congratulating himself on his victory when suddenly the real twist is pulled.

Zobek is hearing voices and the voice is claiming that it put all this entire idea into his head. Zobek then bursts into flames. Wait a second. Zobek is dead? And I didn't get to kill him. That is just lame. Alright, who stole my battle against Captain Picard? It's some veiny guy with yellow eyes and long, black, greasy looking hair. And he's yelling at God, who he calls Father. Wait a second!

So Gabriel is dead. At least until Marie shows up and says he has to go back and that it isn't his time. Gabriel is unconscious during this point so he has no idea what is going on. Gabriel is sent back and he gets to confront... wait for it... SATAN HIMSELF!

Doesn't he just look evil?

So the final fight is against Satan. I can dig it. But first I must talk a moment about Satan. I really like this version of Satan. This isn't the angel who refused to bow down before man. No, this is the angel who assumes that he should be equal if not greater than God himself. Why? Because he said so. That is why. There is an air of confidence around him. A sense of self assurance that what he desires is already his. I like it. It makes me want to beat his face in even more.

So here it is at last. The Final Confrontation. Now I would like to point out that Satan is a very solid boss fight. He is not cheap, he is just tricky. The only really issue I had came down to magic. For some unexplained reason during this fight Gabriel has unlimited magic. I didn't have that during the fight with Pan and Pan used the same concepts. The only reason I could think that the gave Gabriel unlimited magic is due to the rings that appear when Satan is stunned.Gabriel has to run through these rings and only the correct corresponding color will allow Gabriel to pass. This means you have to change magic and you have to have magic. Without it you cannot win the fight. It gets even worse the second time Satan is stunned since the rings move so changing becomes even more tricky.

Satan does have two moves I will call cheap. The first is when he places colored rings on the ground that will trap Gabriel. The are easy to break free from by using the correct magic and when you break free you can normally get a free hit. The second attack is that Satan calls in these Grim Reapers to help. These things can kill in a single hit or they just hit really hard and Gabriel was just that low on health. Either way, they feel cheap. Plus they are color coded to the magic as well. You have to use the opposite magic to kill them.

And that is the big thing with this fight. Satan will use Light and Shadow magic so Gabriel needs to use the opposing magic against him. This is not a bad idea. What cheapens the fight in Gabriel's favor is that Satan swaps often enough that Gabriel has ample opportunity to heal. This removes some of the danger of the battle. You still have to remain on your toes though. Satan can hit hard so you need to learn to dodge/block on a very regular basis. Also, don't screw up the QTEs or it's an instant death on Gabriel.

Wow, I have typed a lot and we are not done yet. Gabriel shoves Satan back into the Earth and calls it good. All of the trapped souls begin to move on. Marie shows up and Gabriel is all. "I have the Mask. Lets bring you back." And Marie is all "You can't. The Mask doesn't work that way." No, the Mask doesn't bring people back. It just makes souls tangible, so they can be touched. Probably inappropriately. Gabriel has to stay and live while Marie moves on. The guy is very sad about this. I'm sad that Dracula hasn't shown up yet. Instead Claudia shows up. She just stands there for a moment and then vanishes without saying a word. She probably figured that she deserved her death for being such a NAG!

And finally the credits role. But like any good Marvel movie you don't leave your seat until the credits have finished. There is a decently long scene buried at the end of the game and it raises a lot of questions.

First, Zobek is still alive. He enters some church looking for an old friend. The friend is of course Gabriel. But Gabriel has changed, a lot. He also calls himself Dracul. Now, I kind of guessed that Gabriel would become Dracula. I figured that Gabriel would make the same basic offering that the founders of the Order of Light did and that Dracula is what would be left behind. Doesn't appear to be the case, especially since Gabriel calls himself Dracul (The Dragon) instead of Dracula (Son of the Dragon). Not quite sure what that means.

This scene is very carefully crafted. Zobek and Dracul talk about the return of Satan. They are in a very old church. The type that Gabriel would have gone too. But it is revealed that they are in the modern day. I have no idea where. But there are skyscrapers and cars and neon signs everywhere. I must say, Gabriel really smacked Satan back down if it took him 1,000 years to recover his strength. Zobek wants Dracul's help against Satan and in return he will end Dracul's immortal life.

The scene ends with Dracul vanishing into a puff of black smoke and Zobek just walking away. There was no agreement made. Pretty bizarre ending if you ask me.

Final Thoughts are next.