Assassin's Creed Plot - A Lesson in Failure

More good comments from Rachel yesterday. She's wrong about one thing though...I have no issue with linking to her site no matter how big an Ubisoft fan girl she is. In general I really like Ubisoft and I've played a ton of their games. It's just that, thanks to Assassin's Creed, I'm once bitten and twice shy.

Speaking of Assassin's Creed, one of my biggest disappointments with the game was the story. A disgraced member of a brotherhood of assassins must redeem himself by slaying nine high profile targets in the ancient Middle Eastern holy lands, all the while unraveling the mystery of how they're connected and what terrible secret they're dying to protect? How can that miss? Well, it missed and by a wide mark.

More than anything, the designers' biggest mistake was in rationing out the story FAR too slowly. I like suspense as much as the next guy, but every time you eliminated a target you'd think, "Finally, they're sure to tell me a little bit about what's going on now!" But surprise...it's just more of the same ambiguous crap and idle prattle that you've been given in heavy doses all along. By the time the game decided to tip its hand and give us a big reveal (at the VERY end), I had long since stopped caring. I think a lot of this was borne of the fact that they were trying to make a series of games and didn't want to use up too many good ideas on the first one. Here's a thought guys: make a great game first and THEN develop it into a series if people like it.

Plus the dialogue was insulting to the player's intelligence on a variety of levels. I remember the doctor who maimed his psychologically ill patients to keep them under control. And when I killed him, the magnanimous bastard had the audacity to make it sound like he was the good guy, chiding me that he was only doing what was necessary and "you wouldn't allow a child to come to harm if it was throwing a fit, would you?" Uh no, but I wouldn't break it's legs to shut it up either, dumbass. Who are you kidding here?

I only bring these things up because my next post will talk about the plot of Prince of Persia, which is greatly streamlined compared to AC, and yet it works for me on a more subtle level. Also AC2 comes out soon and I'm hoping against hope that the story is better conceived. The tedious gameplay of the first game would have been well worth it if the story had lived up to expectations.

Prince of Persia - Gameplay

Prince of Persia is a series reboot that Ubisoft released for a variety of platforms, including the 360. The previous games were much beloved, and I'd like to think this move was an apology by Ubisoft for the wretched release that was Assassin's Creed. For a full review of that monumental failure, check Jeff's Achievement Box here.

Playing Prince of Persia, I feel like Ubisoft could have made the perfect game if they had just combined it and Assassin's Creed into one uber-game. Whereas AC saddled their platforming masterpiece with a bunch of tedious busywork and design flaws, POP is all about scrambling through richly detailed environments. That includes climbing walls, hopping from pillar to pillar, leaping across chasms, and a number of other acrobatic moves. While there's certainly a learning curve, a little practice is all it takes to get the Prince scaling impossible surfaces with seeming ease.

I can't play a third-person platformer without commenting on the camera, and in the case of POP that means doling out some well deserved praise. The camera in this game is fantastic, easy to position and almost always pointed right where I need it. A sure sign of a great camera is that I've barely even thought about it while playing.

Another mechanic that works really well in POP is your companion Elika, the magical "do-over" machine. Any time you make a mistake and send the Prince on a flailing plunge to Jagged Rock City, Elika uses her magic to transport you back to the most recent solid ground you were inhabiting. It's the same effect as if you were saving the game after every series of jumps, but without the tedium of actually doing so. I really like the way Elika works in the game, because it encourages you to explore the environment without the punishment of a Game Over if you're wrong. Hmm...that column is pretty far away. Can I make the jump? Whoops, it looks like I can't...good thing Elika is here to save me!

The only area where I think Ubisoft needs more improvement is in combat. POP doesn't feature nearly as much combat as AC (thank God), but there's still a fair bit of it. They've replaced the frequent battles against waves of soldiers with occasional battles against boss monsters. The issue is that these are repeated quite a bit and they become pretty tedious over time. Again, Elika saves you before you can ever die, so it's mostly a matter of pattern recognition and attrition. By the time you fight the same boss for a fifth time, you'll probably feel just about done with the experience.

I'm a little over halfway done with POP, but so far I'd recommend it to anyone who likes well-designed platformers.