PeterBraden.co.ukArticles Tagged "games"

As I've mentioned before, I don't play a lot of video games, but when my brother mentioned that he had Assassins Creed I was quite excited to try it. Around a year ago I'd watched a tech demo video and it looked amazing - sneaking up behind people; using free running techniques to escape from guards.

The excitement was short lived. I got around half an hour into the game before I got so annoyed that I gave up. Assassins Creed is one of the worst games I've ever played. The people responsible should be ashamed.

The game starts with a dialogue in a lab. But to call it a dialogue is perhaps being a little too charitable. For ten minutes of unskippable pain, the jumpily animated avatars introduced a contrived plot-line in the most wooden way imaginable. It hurt to watch.

And then the tutorial. Unlike most other games in the last decade, the makers of Assassins Creed decided to make the tutorial mandatory. I bet they were so proud of their revolutionary gameplay that they thought, screw the player, let's show off. Oh and it's slow. After the first few times that a cut screen wrenched control of my character to explain in minute detail the most rudimentary details, I'd had enough. It was about then that the game crashed, and, as it's not possible to save the game (it's part of the revolutionary gameplay experience), I had to repeat the torture. The worst part was that the tutorial is completely superfluous — all the way through the game a dialog told me what keys to press.

At last it seemed as though I was going to be able to play the game instead of watching a jumpily animated C-movie. But no. Apart from a couple of scant jumps and running, another ten minutes of cut scenes ensued. I actually struggle to imagine how such a terrible plot line was devised, and how awful a script could have been written. I mean, there are enough capable writers working at McDonalds — I wonder if they got one of their programmers to write it? It didn't help that the main character was unlikeable.

The art/technical side was mediocre — some of the textures on the walls were pretty nice. Unfortunately the engineers seemed to have thought anti-aliasing was unnecessary so every straight edged surface in the scene flickered as the camera moved. There seemed to be no attention to detail however — the texture on the loading screen — essentially a sphere of grey mist — didn't even tile properly.

And the pain continued even as I slowly began to be allowed to control the protagonist. The gameplay designers are control freaks who, when not forcing you through painful cut-screens, like to enforce stupid rules, like no weapons in the castle. I mean seriously, I'm meant to be a frickin assassin — I should be allowed to stab whoever I want.

Just as I was beginning to enjoy playing the assassin I was wrenched back to the future for some more pointless plot development that included — and I'm serious — my character going to bed. I mean seriously. I gave up.

Shame on the game-makers — you had an awesome concept and you murdered it.