Oh, to kill again!
Normally when I post my impressions of a game I do it at least a couple of times throughout the time that I'm playing it but for some reason, possibly because I was plodding through it at such a slow pace, I never even mentioned that I'd even been playing Assassin's Creed 2 (Xbox 360) on here. Well, I have been, and I FINALLY fucking beat it! I got 1000/1000 achievements and, more or less, "one hundred percented" the game too, just a I did with its predecessor. The verdict? I loved it.
"The entire city is yours... to murder."
Foremost on my mind as I started playing the game, other than how nice their engine is holding up, was that despite the differences between it and the first Assassin's Creed, they were still very, very similar. I was a little surprised at just how similar they were since so many reviewers and the like said that even if you disliked Assassin's Creed you should give Assassin's Creed 2 a shot - I can only agree with this opinion to a point. Let me go into some details before I break this conclusion of mine down though.
First, and this is a big one for players who hated the first game, free running/parkour, despite minor improvements, is almost identical to what we had in the first game, which, in my mind is sublimely smooth most of the time. Like in the first game, however, you can occasional hit moments where your character will seemingly inexplicably (I say seemingly because it is probably my own fault most of the time) jump the wrong direction, grab the wrong thing, or otherwise not behave how you expect him to. This can really break up this otherwise enjoyable part of the game and kill the immersion a bit - one minute you're a badass assassin effortlessly bounding the rooftops in search of your next mark, and the next instead of gracefully running across a line tied between buildings, you just decide to hop off the side and plummet 75 feet to your death. Wow. This felt the most silly the couple of times it happened when doing "leaps of faith" and instead of jumping cleanly into a bale of hay I instead dove head first for the cobblestone road below. Well, so much for faith... 
"I've slaughtered so many of these poor roof top guards that I actually kind of feel sorry for them now."
One thing definitely worth mentioning relating to the free running, given that it is such a big part of the game, is that it is used in more creative ways this time around. As you progress in the environments you run into structures that require more creative climbing. This is expanded on much, much more in the various "Assassin Tombs" and "Templar Lairs" in the game which transform your character's city traversing parkour into a Prince of Persia series like puzzle/platforming experience. Most of the time, except for when you run into some of the above mentioned rough points, this works quite well and is a great change of pace for the series, even if it did make me use my brain a bit more than I was expecting to going into this game.
AC2's combat system feels like a good analogy for the whole game, really. It is almost exactly the same as the first game's, only with some subtle improvements and the addition of some new options at the player's disposal. A lot of the time these improvements and additions don't feel truly needed but they at least succeed in giving players a tiny bit more choice and variety and apparently a lot of people needed those things. As someone who liked the first game already, more is usually better, and they didn't overdo it or otherwise ruin a good thing here. It does indeed feel like improvement and refinement.
"Who is my friend? Oh, it's only Leonardo FUCKING Da Vinci!"
The single most important improvement to AC2 over AC, and the one that feels the largest to boot, is the story. AC2's story is much more involving with frequent cutscenes and more varied, plot related missions and, depending on how quickly you decided to proceed (this is STILL an open world game, after all) it frequently pushes the pace of the plot along and even succeeds in doing some interesting things with it along the way. We also have a much more sympathetic character in Ezio than we had with Altair - Ezio was pretty likable and had a fair amount of personality. I wasn't one of those people that felt like Altair was a huge asshole but Ezio is an entirely different, and much more fleshed out character. As for the story itself it went places I wasn't expecting it to despite thinking I had a pretty good handle on things. The end was pretty out there, leaving me scratching my head for a moment, and revealing much more about the overarching plot of the series than I expected them to give us.
The improvement in the story and the variety brought along by the more active plot development should go a long way in fighting off the burn out due to repetitiveness that a lot of people complained about with the first game. Assassinations and introductions to new areas are now more driven by the story than the formulaic system of tasks that those parts of the game devolved into before. I do have one word of warning though: while flags are gone there are still various collection systems in the game, the most similar to the flags being the feathers. If gathering flags was part of the reason for your burn out in the first game then I'd highly suggest avoiding as many of these tasks as you can altogether, or at least saving them until after beating the game proper.
"Alright men, gather 'round him and watch as he kills us all one by one!"
I could ramble on a lot more about the game and in a lot more detail but I'll cut myself off. Back to the conclusion I referred to before. Like I said, I loved it, but I also loved the first one despite its flaws. Still, it is hard for me to recommend Assassin's Creed 2 to someone who absolutely hated the first Assassin's Creed - again, it is largely the same game with some improvements, some needed more than others, and a new setting with all kinds of awesome Italian accents. If you were simply turned off by minor issues in the first game then certainly check it out, otherwise you might as well wait until we see what Assassin's Creed 3 brings to the table. Of course by then it is possible that you won't have ANY FUCKING CLUE what is going on in this batshit crazy conspiracy story.
I have no idea what Assassin's Creed 3 will be. It could literally take place anywhere, at any time, and they could change the gameplay in any number of ways. So far I like where they're headed though. I'm a little puzzled (and maybe put off) by the announcement of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood but I can't imagine not playing it at this point unless it just gets awful reviews. I would like to request that if they keep adding in requirements to complete things in stealthy means they add some more traditional stealth mechanics to our assassin's repertoire of abilities though.
One more note: I played the game with the 2 "additional" DLC chapters intact and feel like I would have definitely missed not having them there, at least story wise, so I'd recommend picking them up if you care about that sort of thing and/or consider yourself a fan of the series. They were a tiny bit buggy, with sound dropping out on me a few different times during cut scenes, which I had heard others mention as well. Still, worth it.
As usual with Xbox 360 games I stole all of my screenshots from other people. It was really hard to find decent, non-PR released bullshots for this game. Most, if not all of these are from the PC version.
Unlocking The Vault
So, after a pretty sporadic schedule of playing my girlfriend and I finally managed to get all the way through our first Borderlands co-op game, finishing the story and every available side quest at around level 36.
"If there aren't really roving bands of angry midgets bandits in the future I'll be soooo disappointed."
The ending was a bit of a let down - if you've ever read any forum threads or news comments on the game then you've probably already seen a bunch of people complaining about it. I didn't think it was that awful though I suppose I didn't exactly have high expectations given how bad the game seemed to be at narrative throughout. Without spoiling anything let's just say that the ending isn't what most people would expect it to be, and even the best explanations of what went down still leave various questions on the table. The best and most likely explanation is that the story parallels the myth of Pandora's Box but even that isn't extremely fulfilling. Like I said though, Borderlands isn't exactly a game you play for the story. The silly blocks of quest text coming from mannequin-esqe NPCs would have left much to be desired if shooting and looting weren't so much fun.
"Much less fun when you're on the receiving end."
I wasn't super happy with the loot system. It's pretty badass, no doubt, but from the mountains of loot we got it seemed like I rarely ever found an item that was a worthy upgrade. I would have preferred finding "good" items just a little more frequently. It just needs to be tweaked a little. I never did find a support machine gun with both high damage and a good rate of fire, and it took 10s of levels between each of my shotgun upgrades, for example. It kind of left me itching to play Diablo 2 yet again, to be honest.
I have some other complaints about the game too, but nothing too major. It was a fun co-op experience, fun enough that I wouldn't mind experimenting with second playthroughs and other classes if some parts of it weren't so tedious to think about replaying. When I get an upgraded hard drive for my 360 (sometime very soon, I hope) I'll definitely be buying and playing through the Zombie Island and Secret Armory DLC expansions. I'm actually probably more hyped up for the possibility of a proper sequel.
As usual for 360 games, not my screenshots. Pretty sure these are from some official PR releases.
March?!
Damn, it seems like it has been an eternity since my last update. I guess it has been almost a month already. I guess time flies when you’re not having much fun too.
First and foremost after finishing up with The Ballad of Gay Tony I started playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on my 360. I wanted to go ahead and start playing it right away to capitalize on the massive buzz surrounding its much lauded online multiplayer.
"There goes the neighborhood..."
I played my share of Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer and liked it a lot. Modern Warfare 2 is more of the same, only now cranked up to 11. Of course adding more rewards, perks, unlocks, challenges, etc. does tend to change the game quite a bit despite the similarities and I’ve talked to a fair amount of players who prefer COD4’s less insane (and possibly more balanced) multiplayer to that of MW2. Still, MW2’s increased focus on rewards succeeds in achieving an almost MMO level of addictiveness that is hard not to appreciate. In fact I had a hard time convincing myself to play the single player while the multiplayer was there, calling out my name. It isn’t usually the most tactical or cooperative of online military shooter experiences but it is definitely a hell of a lot of fun and has become my go to “kill a few minutes” online game on console.
I did eventually finish up the single player campaign on “hardened” difficulty and unfortunately enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed Call of Duty 4’s. Most of the observations I made in my write up of COD4 a few months back remain true in its sequel. It’s a highly polished experience but I’m just not a big fan of the whole “get funneled around the map while running and gunning through hordes of enemies” thing and would rather be granted the freedom to use some actual tactics to complete my objectives. I suppose the checkpoints are a little better this time around. There have also been claims that there are now always a finite number of enemies so you can never run into nigh impossible situations facing seemingly infinitely spawning enemies that you often could in previous COD games. While this may be true it is honestly hard to tell as the unpleasant, often controller-smashingly frustrating “meat grinder” sections of old are still alive and well here. If you don’t care about the additional achievement and this frustration doesn’t sound like your idea of fun then do yourself a favor and play it on one of the easier modes and for god’s sake stay the hell away from “veteran” difficulty.
"Boom! One of the first of MW2's innumerable huge explosions."
While I’m bitching the plot of this one makes the COD4’s story look like a classic war documentary or something. It’s completely over the top and full of weird plot holes. Games Rader has a pretty funny article about it. I really wonder what happened over at Infinity Ward to make them go from writing stories more or less based on real life WWII events to the bizarre shit they’ve given us in the last two COD games. It doesn’t bother me that much – it’s more amusing than anything. These stories at least give us plenty of opportunity to shoot stuff which I suppose is their primary purpose.
As a complete aside I’ve always liked the way Infinity Ward handles first person cinematics and the perspective in general. The spacewalk scene and the flare popping scene on Whiskey Hotel’s roof both come to mind from MW2. There are others as well. They might not always look accurate but they always look cool and feel fairly immersive. It’s too bad they never actually do anything with it by venturing outside of the usual FPS gameplay conventions.
"This mission makes it disturbingly clear that someone at Infinity Ward hates waiting in line at the airport."
Oh, before I move on let me reiterate a piece of advice that has been passed around a lot since it was first announced that Party Chat wouldn’t be supported in some of MW2’s game types. Its usefulness goes far beyond replacing Party chat though and finding it isn't nearly as intuitive as it might sound.
How to mute everybody, all the time on Xbox Live: Hit your guide button. Scroll to the right to the "Settings" section. Select "Profile", "Edit Profile", and then select "Privacy Settings". Select "Voice and Text" from the menu and change it to "Friends Only".
This will make it so that you can ONLY hear people on your friends list in chat (and vice versa so you won’t be spamming public chat with weird half conversations.) It’ll also block that ever so pleasant after match hate mail you might get from time to time. It can allegedly have some odd effects in some games but for the most part muting all of the insufferable shitheads that plague Xbox Live is easily worth any negatives I can think up. I just wish it were a tad more accessible so that one could simply toggle it on and off for those moments when you might actually want to work together with your teammates and the like but I guess that might go against the spirit of everyone having voice on Xbox Live. *shrug*
"Molgrun the Wary at level 7."
On the PC front I really haven’t been playing much lately. I grabbed a copy of the collector’s edition of Lord of the Rings Online for dirt cheap and decided to check it out after not setting foot into (onto?) Middle Earth since beta. Other than the utterly ridiculous patching system I had to endure I had fun. I still contend that it is an excellent game but it definitely feels “slower” and a little bit less exciting than some of the other post-World of Warcraft MMOs out there. Actually, it very clearly feels to me like a good pre-WoW theme park style MMORPG that they’ve bolted on lots of WoW influenced features to, which I suppose is probably pretty accurate. That said like Turbine’s other current MMORPG offering, Dungeons & Dragons Online, I could easily see myself playing LOTRO if I had a regular, small group who I liked to run instances and the like with. I played my Dwarf Guardian for just 15 or so levels before I felt WoW itself calling me back.
It has been quite a while since I’ve really played WoW besides occasional romps with some low level characters my girlfriend and I play but as I mentioned before I finally purchased the Wrath of the Lich King expansion recently and have now finally decided to start working my main character up to level 80. I’ve only been playing it very sporadically when the urge and/or boredom strikes and it has been working quite well for me so far. The new content is, for the time being, pretty fun (if not more of the same) and no matter how sick I get of it I always find it hard not to appreciate what Blizzard has done with WoW over the years. It still feels like the most complete, most polished, and best bang for your buck MMORPG out there.
"Borderlands: not your kid's cartoon violence."
Speaking of MMORPGs Star Trek Online was a game that I was pretty hyped up for around this time last month but unfortunately due to waiting on some features and fixes I wanted patched in and the horrible stability of the game servers during the first few weeks after launch I really haven’t played much STO since it officially launched last month. I’m sure I’ll get back into it sooner or later but for the time being Cryptic kind of missed the boat on hooking me in.
Finally, back to the Xbox 360 I started playing Borderlands. I’d had my eye on Borderlands since first hearing about it but when it finally came out it just didn’t seem to equal the sum of its parts. Of course, next thing I knew peer reviews started rolling in and people loved it. When I heard how good co-op was in particular I knew I had to grab it to play through cooperatively with my girlfriend.
It is very much a traditional FPS combined with the quest, skill, and loot systems of an MMO. Actually, I’d probably equate the loot system with more loot centric games such as Diablo and its ilk. It sounds kind of disjointed and odd but it actually works well enough. The game definitely has some issues (which I’ll probably expand upon more in a later entry) but the combination of the random loot-a-thon treadmill and the furious combat is fun and very addictive. In fact I think I may need to cut this short and continue the hunt for more purples…
As usual my Xbox 360 screenshots were shamelessly swiped from elsewhere. The LOTRO one is mine though!