Current Events > Why do Assassin's Creed games feel like they're trying to make it not fun

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I'm playing Black Flag, which is an AC game a lot of people say is one of the good ones.

There's so much on paper about this game that sounds like a lot of fun. You're a fucking pirate, you're an assassin, you can upgrade your killing stuff and your pirate ship, you can sail around the world, blow up ships, sing songs, do contracts and follow a story. All good stuff.

But then the actual gameplay is so bloated with hideous clunky nonsense that it just feels like a chore. The HUD and menus are so obnoxiously modernistic that it doesn't ever feel right in the context of being a pirate. I know the whole nature of the series is that you're using some kinda advanced genetic VR system to look back in time, but consequentially you're always reminded of the fact that nothing is real.

The everyday gameplay is just looking at a hideous map, clicking a waypoint to one of the ten thousand map markers in your immediate 1000m square vicinity, and then doing a thing which usually involves holding down a button for 5 seconds. Nothing quite like travelling to a location for 5 minutes so that you can hold B to win.

Just the general movement in the game never feels fluid. Why am I fighting with the controls all the time...

I dunno. Maybe I'm not on the money here. I just feel like they try to make it all harder than it should be.

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It's to artificially extend the length of the game so they can boast about content.

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The old games were just boring shit. I just got odyssey on sale and man the series took such a positive turn

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I'm trying to have fun here but its a struggle. Apparently I can't get past this ship battle at my current ship level, so I need to upgrade it, which means I need to sail around collecting money and animal skins or whatever. Great.

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Huh, never heard these type of complaints. The only bad thing about Black Flag is the main story tbh. It's just a million boring ass tailing missions.

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They have definately gone the bigger is better route and repeat stuff. Their quality hasn't suffered too bad minus a few real clunkers but there is definately something to be said with quantity over quality in their games.

AC2 was the only one that I really enjoyed, tried Odyssey recently and just couldn't get into it.

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AC Odyssey has become like MMORPG without the Massive Multiplayer online or rpg. They are rpgs in ways but not really. It feels like wow with better graphics but not the same charm.

This is how I feel with a lot of popular games from the last 10 or so years tbh.

I always felt like the modern day stuff was the worst part of Assassin's Creed.

It's like you want to get so immersed in these historical environments, but then the game deliberately reminds you that you're just playing some virtual simulation and it totally takes you out of it. What's worse is that it never feels like it's really adding much to the story beyond giving some sort of meta-explanation for the more video game-y aspects of the series which....isn't really necessary IMO.

Thankfully, Odyssey has very little of that going on and the game is a lot better for it.

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ive played AC2, black flag, uh... the other pirate one... and the egypt one. ac2 was the closest i came to having fun but mostly because i was into the setting more than anything else. each one i eventually dropped because the combat in all of them was horrible and the free running sucked. there were always additional ideas that seemed kinda neat in each of them like sailing was kinda fun in black flag, but at the end of the day the core gameplay was just the most bland overly cinematic brainless shit ever

i hate that series. not only is it bad, it's not even bad in an amusing way. it's just total tedium

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I'll never understand why people rate Black Flag so highly. It's got all of the standard Ubisoft map clearing crap on top of having much jankier movement than past games and the majority of the game being sailing a boat at 4 miles an hour around an empty map. I couldn't play more than a few hours of it.

Hmm ok. I keep going through peaks and troughs in this game.

I just did a main story mission and it was awesome. Got myself a town to build up and some items to unlock.

And then it dragged me straight back out so I could walk around Abstergo office with a clipboard for 10 minutes. Not fun.

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