tran finished up his list early yesterday, and ZFS is nowhere to be found (plus he still has games to finish, or so I'm told), so I'm gonna jump in here and do mine (now with games that people have actually played). Want to try to finish this before Christmas, so we should be able to move at a nice clip.
2011's been one of the best years in gaming in a long time, so I'm looking forward to talking about a lot of the entries on the list this year. Might throw in a couple short mini-lists in between, but probably won't do much supplemental material this time around.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
This writeup is probably going to sound overly negative, despite the game still being in my top 10 for the year. That’s mainly due to the fact that I had high hopes for Revelations and ended up being rather disappointed by what the game ended up offering me. Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favorite games of all time, and Brotherhood was an excellent extension of the gameplay, albeit slightly less focused than its predecessor. Revelations, on the other hand, doesn’t do quite enough to make it feel like a fresh experience, and what it does try feels cheap and tacked on.
Ubisoft pulled a fast one on Assassin’s Creed fans last year when they released Brotherhood. It wasn’t quite a proper sequel to the second game, and a lot of people were worried it was just going to be Assassin’s Creed II+. However, the game managed to add enough significant gameplay features (the largest being the ability to recruit assassins and utilize them during missions) to make it worthwhile. It flirted with the line of “too much stuff” very carefully, and mostly managed to avoid crossing it.
Revelations does neither of these things. All of the core mechanics from Brotherhood are virtually identical - you’re still in a single big city - something I don’t actually care for much, you’re still recruiting assassins, you’re still liberating Borgia Towers - sorry, Templar Dens, etc etc. The developers then saw fit to tack on a ton of other useless things in an attempt to justify this game’s existence. Bomb making is wholly useless, the ridiculous tower defense game is unnecessary (and if you’re careful throughout the game you won’t even see it outside of the initial tutorial), the hookblade is “sort of cool”, but never really seems worthwhile, and it seems like they added even more collectible trinkets that have no purpose. Why do I care about finding books and pages of some dude’s memoir?
The game also makes a couple baffling design decisions that hinder the experience. Why does every every action Ezio take increase notoriety? It almost makes you want to not expand Constantinople when every time you purchase a shop you have to go hunting down a herald, not to mention the fact that the gauge fills completely after taking a Templar Den. This is compounded by the fact that there are now less way to reduce your notoriety than there were in Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood. I understand that this probably “makes sense” within the context of the world, but it’s not fun and kills the momentum of the game at times.
Story-wise, Revelations is mostly pointless too. I will admit that Ezio’s and Altair’s story do come to a fairly satisfying conclusion when all is said and done, but I don’t feel like an entire new game was needed to accomplish this, especially when everything leading up to the conclusion feels so pointless. On the Desmond side of things, we get almost nothing. There’s a few Desmond backstory segments, but they require you to play through awful first-person “puzzle” segments that often demand precision and dexterity where the controls offer none. It all ends with another cliffhanger, leaving you to realize that you’ve actually learned nothing since the end of Brotherhood.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
That’s not to say that everything it bad about Revelations. The game certainly deserves praise for its excellent Assassin’s Tomb missions (or whatever they’re called here). They’re easily the best in the series and were something I always looked forward to while playing. I also still really dig the multiplayer. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy the slower, methodical structure to the fast-paced, twitchy online modes that most games have today. And despite all the misgivings I may have about the new content, the core Assassin’s Creed gameplay is still a lot of fun.
There may be a chance that I’m just beginning to experience a bit of Assassin’s Creed fatigue, but Revelations really feels like a lazy effort to me. Turning this into a yearly franchise probably wasn’t such a great idea, and Ubisoft really needs to do some work with what is presumably going to be Assassin’s Creed 3 next year. I still want to keep up with the series, but if they just keep churning out games like Revelations, I’m going to start losing interest.
The rest of these writeups shouldn’t be as negative or review-y (or long!) as this one, but I just finished Revelations a couple days ago and needed to vent about it. As I said at the beginning, this is more just be being frustrated with the game as opposed to downright disliking it.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
I agree that most of the 'extra' is entirely unnecessary. I feel like they had good intentions with Tower Defense, Mediterranean, and Templar Dens, but they're pointless at best and obnoxious at worst. For me, they didn't negatively impact the experience too much, because I put the main story as a priority, ignoring all the extra sidequests until the post-game. I think you have a good point about Brotherhood walking the line between adding compelling content and bad filler. The Hookblade is awesome, though, and I don't think most people realize how nice it is for traversal until they go back and play one of the previous games. Being able to make those long jumps and hook onto buildings is so nice.
Still, I enjoyed the story much more than Brotherhood. I liked the characters more, I liked the ending far more (one of my favorites ever, in regard to Altair and Ezio), and it was more interesting throughout. It didn't add much to the overarching narrative, but it was a good story for Ezio and Altair. Those two, to me, are Assassin's Creed, so it was nice seeing their stories brought to a conclusion. Wherever the stories goes from here is alright with me because they were given a proper ending!
-- "When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it."
I pretty much never used the hookblade other than when it was required to make long jumps - which by the way, I thought were stupid. Why are you even bothering putting those there if you're only ever going to have to use a long jump? I don't think there was ever a time where I didn't need to long jump through a lamp post thing.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
I used it for pretty much everything. Whenever I jump from a roof to somewhere else, I pulled out the hookblade. Whenever I was climbing, I used the hookblade to vault up buildings instead of slowly climbing up. It was a vital tool for getting around for me!
-- "When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it."
Vaulting up buildings was nice, but all they did was intentionally make the footholds farther apart. To me it seemed like they did all that stuff just to justify the existence of the hookblade because there isn't a whole lot it really adds otherwise.
IMO
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
It was faster, but my point is that doesn't really justify the hookblade's existence because they could have just plain made the climbing speed faster and accomplished the same thing.
give it up zfs your game sucks
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
I just started Revelations the other day, and I can sort of see where you're coming from with all the burnout talk. I like the main narrative, but all of the tedious side missions, I just don't want to do them like I have in the past.
This talk about awesome Assassin's Dens is encouraging though! Been the best part of every Ezio game so far!
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No objections to SuperNiceDog as our Guru champ! http://i.minus.com/iH9vIGOBoyTQ2.gif
I try to be a completionist in a lot of games I play. all the AC games make that really hard to do. terrible side quests in AC1 and 2 (two was a little better, but still got old after a while)
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omg did u red text from last night dats so me LMAO : ) im not a slut i jus liek 2 haev fun LOL : )
I thought AC2 was perfect. It had just enough variety that you didn't get tired of what you were doing, but you didn't get inundated with infinite collectables and stuff.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
AC2 / B had great sidequests. I did all of them in both games. ACR's Tombs are 'best in the series,' but the sheer number of collectibles they added is a bit much. They should scale that back in AC3, make it more in line with the older games and focus more on revamping the main game instead of making 'games within games.'
-- "When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it."
I guess my main problem is I've just never found AC's gameplay to be very compelling. The climbing is polished, but outside of like the tombs, I don't think it's fun. I was thinking maybe the hookblade would do wonders for making it more fun, but maybe not based on your mini-review. Combat was a lot more polished in AC2, it has always looked cool, but I just never could get into it. A little repetitive I think is the main problem. Just not my cup of tea I guess!
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omg did u red text from last night dats so me LMAO : ) im not a slut i jus liek 2 haev fun LOL : )
Yeah, Brotherhood / Revelations are more offensive whereas AC1/2 were more defensive. Combat flows better and it's more enjoyable, though there isn't any real danger from combat anymore seeing as how entire legions of guards will go down almost effortlessly.
-- "When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it."
I tend to have trouble finding a lot to say about Layton games. They don’t particularly change from iteration to iterations (which I funny because I just spent two posts complaining about how Revelations didn’t change LOL), but I always find them enjoyable. The only thing that really sets them apart from each other is the story and the variety of puzzles, and in both cases Last Specter ends up doing pretty well for itself. I think the story is probably the most interesting of the four games through about the first half, but in typical Layton fashion it kinda goes off the rails at the end. Whereas I was able to accept the goofy answers to the questions of the original trilogy, Last Specter’s revelations push even the limits of my suspension of disbelief. But it’s all good because Layton’s doing his awesome Layton stuff, and seeing the origins of Luke is neat. Emmy’s not bad either. Puzzle-wise there’s a pretty good variety, even if the game leans a little to heavily on my sworn nemesis - the sliding block puzzle - towards the end and in the bonus puzzles. They did seem a little easier overall as well, I’m pretty sure I hardly used any hint coins in this one, whereas I wasn’t afraid to throw them at any puzzle that seemed too obtuse in the first three games.
There’s also this Layton Life thing included with the game. It’s billed as a 100-hour RPG or some such nonsense, which of course got me interested. In reality it’s more of a glorified (unglorified?) version of Animal Crossing where everyone looks like they belong in EarthBound. Supposedly it was developed by those guys. Point is I didn’t think it was very good so I pretty much ignored it. But that’s not important because the core game is still Layton I and enjoy myself some Layton from time to time.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
First off, Super Mario 3D Land is kind of a dumb name.
That being said, the game is actually pretty good. And I bought a 3DS for this, so it’s a good thing! Mario 3D is basically a perfect portable game. The levels are nice and quick and for the most part, designed quite well. A lot of people riff on the game because the early portions are kind of easy, and there’s definitely some truth in that. Through the first 4 worlds or so, the game doesn’t do a whole lot to challenge you. As you progress things certainly do get a fair bit trickier, though its still never frustratingly difficult. It actually finds a nice middle ground that really makes the game a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who doesn’t necessarily like their games to be overly hard. There are times that you’ll fall prey to some cheap deaths due to the sometimes awkward camera angles (this is probably my biggest gripe with the game), but they generally don’t happen often enough to become an annoyance.
The amount of content in Mario 3D land is pretty surprising as well. Much like every 2D Mario game since NSMB, you have 3 star coins to collect which you’ll need to open up some levels are you progress, but the game basically has double the amount of levels it seems like it would on the outset. There’s a pretty nice variety in powerups too, though they definitely went overboard with the Tanooki suit. Everything in this game has a Tanooki suit. It was like they took 20 years of people asking for it back and said “Here, you’re going to have so much Tanooki you’ll never want to see it again”. Boomerang Bros. suit is pretty nifty, though. So is the invincibility Tanooki Suit you get if you fail at a level too many times. Not that I’ve ever used it or anything.
The 3D stuff in Mario 3D land is actually pretty minimal. They make pretty good use of in a few puzzle-y ways, though it’s not necessary to solve anything if you choose not to use it. I have the 3D turned off most of the time myself, as I didn’t think the effect looked all that great in the game and it strains my eyes. Maybe if I did play with it on I’d have less trouble with some of those jumps? Not sure.
Anyway, I’m not entirely convinced that Mario 3D Land is a system seller, but it certainly makes a good case for it. It’s one of those games that you kinda have to get when you do decide to take the plunge. And if you do have a 3DS already, there’s really no reason to not have Mario 3D Land. Also Pushmo, get that too because it’s great.
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FF fans don't hang around the internet on a monday morning they are out doing shopping or asleep hungover from parties. They got lives. -The_Djoker
There was something about Mario 3D Land that looked off to me before it came out, but nice that it ended up being fun. It was one of the reasons I wanted a 3DS, too.
-- "When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it."