I want to like Assassin's Creed.

[Shadarr]

Interesting fact! That's something that Darkstep of these very forums threw in cause he felt like it.

Way cool! I also really liked the ground fog and the cottonwood fluff (?) floating in the air.

The one feature I'd really like to see in AssCred2 is the ability to change your disguise. It's great that you can blend in with scholars and get past checkpoints, but like a lot of things that was pretty neat the first time and not so much the 20th. I'd like to be able to dress up as whoever is around--a guard to get through guard posts, a crate carrier in the market, a shirtless crazy down on the dock--so you can blend in with the actual crowd rather than seaking out scholars to "blend" with. And then wham! wristblade in the neck.

[BlakeD]

Figuring out how to climb that church spire? Here's a hint, hold up on the analog stick. If that doesn't work move left or right until it does. Rinse, repeat.

There is at least one church so far in the game, that I've found, that you can *not* do that. I was trying to go from the ground up, no success. I realized part of it was the camera angle in relation to the left analog stick movement, but some of it was leaps of faith. Most of the time those would result in my death, but for some reason it was working this time. I believe it was in the rich district of Damacus. Can't remember exactly though. It was not easy where as most of the other ones were not.

Some buildings are more difficult to navigate than others, maybe you gave up on climbing every vantage point though? I know I would if I found it tedious after a while. There are some you can't just immediately tackle from the ground or from an adjacent building and "push up on the left analog FTW".

[Shadarr]

There are some viewpoints you can't start from the ground on, but you shouldn't have to just jump at them blind. If you can't see where to start climbing, get further away or higher up. Usually it's fairly obvious where there's a building close by and a handhold to jump from, but you won't be able to see it if you're trying to crane your neck right next to it.

[Drastic]

Yeah, the tougher climbs all boiled down to finding the right nearby building to get onto and jumping from there. There may have been a couple that required the use of the ledge-grab ability, but since the areas with them were forcefielded away (dumb, so dumb) until after you got that ability, it didn't much matter.

It is true there was really nothing on the scale of the Agency Tower ascent, and its achievement for the dive into the little pool waaaaay down below. Crackdown is a fine, fine game that AC should have used time travel to learn more lessons from.

[BlakeD]

There are some viewpoints you can't start from the ground on, but you shouldn't have to just jump at them blind. If you can't see where to start climbing, get further away or higher up. Usually it's fairly obvious where there's a building close by and a handhold to jump from, but you won't be able to see it if you're trying to crane your neck right next to it.

There was one, the church I mentioned, where you were hanging on a ledge about 2/3's of the way up and had to do a blind jump to a ledge behind you and to the side. I tried for a bit to fanagle the camera angle to allow me to shuffle over to it, but it wouldn't work. I've also had to jump up in a few cases. I'm not saying the game's climbing aspect has ever been devilishly difficult, just that there were some nice touches where I had to think slightly differently. Quite frankly, I approach it more as a game of exploration and not so much as "am I being challenged". There are plenty of other games like that and it's not like you can just slap buttons and autoprogress through the game.

[Lizard_King]

IIRC, it's in the rich district of Acre that I came across one of the few viewpoints that took me a while to figure out. It also had the best leap of faith, ever, which was just the icing on the cake after the templar I tossed off the building to his death. It gave the idea that "more time" and not a lack of good intentions were a driving force behind the ease of most of the climbs.

In any case, a game with such a (purposely) constrained jump function has no business getting too platformy on me a la Crackdown. I like to gush about that game as much as the next guy, but many of the climbing challenges were just trying to unfuck the collision detection for grabbing onto ledges. I don't really think that would have helped AC as much as the difficult and not so difficult feats outlined in shadarr's list.

I will never understand how games that are allegedly premised around experimentation get through testing without a good save system, or with scripted events that break easily. I mean, I understand the mechanics of time limits, but it really knocks a game down from what it could have been, moreso than any plot quirks could.

I mean, I should have stopped playing Mass Effect ages ago, but the save system alone (the ultimate budget "save anywhere") gives me the leeway to keep enjoying the good in spite of the bad, even if they failed to polish it so you could efficiently quicksave or default to replacing your oldest save rather than scrolling through all of the recent ones. Even the broken autosave is salvaged by that flexibility...if your game is unfinished or obviously imperfect to you, don't make that more of my problem, please.

[Don Quixote]

Just finished last night. The things I hated about the game are pretty standard:

Falling into water and dying
Getting pushed into water and dying
Having guards materialize out of thin air, getting pushed into water and dying
The entire endgame. So fucking cheap.
The unskippable cutscenes
The unskippable cutscenes that lead into timed missions
The way you somehow get stuck on objects when walking in cutscenes and in the present day, even if you're trying to go parallel to the object.
The save system. Because of the screwed up autosave, I somehow didn't get credit for doing the investigation on one of targets even though it's impossible to do the assassination without it. And I ended up having to rewatch a couple cutscenes because of it.

I would've considered it a GOTY candidate if not for the end boss fights. No game that leaves that bad a taste in your mouth can be GOTY.

Ditto here. I finished last night, and most of those are problems I had, too. I didn't have a problem with the water, though- I guess I jut avoided it most of the time, so it caused me no problems (the assasination on the docks I just went through/over the guarded towers on the south end of the docks, in opposition to all the advice going in).

I, too, hated the endgame. I was prepared to call bullshit on all the haters, but found myself hating it along with everyone else. The 'mowing down several armies worth of guys' was kind of fun, but it just made no sense given the game that came before. No way to scout to get in, or take an alternate route (I can scale sheer walls, but not some simple boulders? WTF?). Fighting twelve Templars at once- not fun. Killing all the guys I had to kill before- not fun, and completely cliche. Killing twelve clones of my master, the uber-bad-guy, not fun, and somehow even less inspired than the previous one. And finally the ending cutscene. So the ending of the game is.... I don't get killed and they just leave me in a little room, staring at drawings only I can see. Wow. Totally anticlimactic.

[Shadarr]

I will never understand how games that are allegedly premised around experimentation get through testing without a good save system, or with scripted events that break easily. I mean, I understand the mechanics of time limits, but it really knocks a game down from what it could have been, moreso than any plot quirks could.

Heh, I started using flags as save points for nearby missions after I repeatedly had to run partway across the city to get to the docks to try to reach the viewpoint on the island. Of course, once I did that I almost never died during missions again.

[Shadarr]

Ditto here. I finished last night, and most of those are problems I had, too. I didn't have a problem with the water, though- I guess I jut avoided it most of the time, so it caused me no problems (the assasination on the docks I just went through/over the guarded towers on the south end of the docks, in opposition to all the advice going in).

I didn't die all that much in the water, but each time I did it really pissed me off, and I had to travel a fair distance to get back there. The two times I yelled "fuck you Charles!" at my TV were when the guards materialized out of nowhere and pushed me into the water, and the time Altair just decided not to jump, at all, and fell into the water.

I tried getting on the boat via the guard post but it set off an alarm and the whole thing went sideways. It was actually fairly easy to jump across the pilings and climb the stern of the boat. In fact, if I'd realized that I had climbed up right behind my target I could've gotten the Blade in the Crowd achievement right there, but thinking he was a regular guard I used a throwing knife instead, which apparently just spooked him like a racehorse and I had to chase him down.

Fortunately I got the achievement later, when I totally didn't deserve it, for shanking someone who was being held by the vigilantes.

[Charles]

I didn't die all that much in the water, but each time I did it really pissed me off, and I had to travel a fair distance to get back there. The two times I yelled "fuck you Charles!" at my TV were when the guards materialized out of nowhere and pushed me into the water, and the time Altair just decided not to jump, at all, and fell into the water.

Yeah well, neither of those things were in my area, so haw haw.

[Shadarr]

I still blame you for everything that is wrong with the game. Just FYI.

[Charles]

I still blame you for everything that is wrong with the game. Just FYI.

Oh yeah? Well, I blame you for everything that is wrong with the internet. Because, you know, you are from there.

[SqueakyFoo]

I have to admit to whispering "fuck you Charles" under my breath a couple of times while playing the game.

Also, I never noticed your name in the credits. The only Charles I saw had some frenchie last name (unless you decided to change your name recently).

[Shadarr]

I will proudly wear the mantle of making the internet a colder, more hostile place. Not to mention shitty blogs and webcomics.

[Charles]

I have to admit to whispering "fuck you Charles" under my breath a couple of times while playing the game.

Also, I never noticed your name in the credits. The only Charles I saw had some frenchie last name (unless you decided to change your name recently).

It's there, under gameplay programming.

[Shadarr]

I have to admit, I went out and made myself a hot dog while the credits were rolling. I'm willing to take your word that you worked on the game, and there were a hell of a lot of you guys.

[Wendelius]

As far as I'm concerned, the controls are one of the big strengths in AC. I love both its simplicity and the consistent feeling of being a "puppeteer".

I'd actually not like it like bit if a sequel tried to introduce things like "when you are in combat, Y is not head related anymore but a weapon switch control".

What the AC devs did is make up a new control system that just makes sense and doesn't change willy nilly or contradict itself. Please keep it that way.

Wendelius

[Zep--]

I never felt comfortable with the R1 + X mechanic of the controls.

I think it could have been improved with Full Up/On Left Analog Stick + X to go into Crazy Climber Mode or something...

Also using the same button to go into climb mode that is also the jump button....ya know, causing to to jump off whatever you were climbimng if you accidently slipped off/on the button is InstaFail in the controls Dept.

But really, what bugged the shit out of me the most were the lockups and random world freezes. This is what I feared when consoles became mini PC's, the ship it and patch it later bullshit. (Real) Console gaming is dead!

Zep--

[Charles]

I never felt comfortable with the R1 + X mechanic of the controls.

I think it could have been improved with Full Up/On Left Analog Stick + X to go into Crazy Climber Mode or something...

Also using the same button to go into climb mode that is also the jump button....ya know, causing to to jump off whatever you were climbimng if you accidently slipped off/on the button is InstaFail in the controls Dept.

Once you are already climbing, you don't have to press A again to keep climbing. Or RT for that matter.

[Zep--]

Once you are already climbing, you don't have to press A again to keep climbing. Or RT for that matter.

But you get in the habit (I did anyway) of holding those buttons down when you are rooftop escaping because you are constantly climbing over or jumping things, so then even when just climbing to a lookout point, I was trained by the game to just hold those buttons in.

Zep--

[krokodile]

I did too... But you shouldn't leap off by letting go of either control, be it A or the Right Trigger.

You must be double tapping it accidentally or something, because unless i hit A again while climbing, and even then if I was in mid animation, I never jumped.

[Drastic]

I untrained that habit right quick the first couple times I leaped to my death from the top of an unsynchronized high point.

[Charles]

But really, what bugged the shit out of me the most were the lockups and random world freezes. This is what I feared when consoles became mini PC's, the ship it and patch it later bullshit. (Real) Console gaming is dead!

Zep--

Yeah well, there's a patch on the way at least. Market pressures, ain't they grand.

[SqueakyFoo]

But really, what bugged the shit out of me the most were the lockups and random world freezes. This is what I feared when consoles became mini PC's, the ship it and patch it later bullshit. (Real) Console gaming is dead!

No lockups or random world freezes for me and the 360. Lolps3.

[Drastic]

Yeah well, there's a patch on the way at least. Market pressures, ain't they grand.

This reminds me of something that would make more people actually pay attention to game credits. They should include blocks like:

These People Made Us Release Before We Thought It Was Ready:
(names)
These People Tried To Buy Us More Time, But Failed:
(names)
Overall We Didn't Like X Section of the Game But Were Stuck With It--These People Were Responsible:
(names)

Credits-as-commentary is a great untapped resource.

[Shadarr]

No lockups or random world freezes for me and the 360. Lolps3.

Oh, Wudi played on the ps3? I was gonna say that I didn't have any issues at all, except for the ones I detailed earlier.

I never accidentally jumped off anything I was climbing, but it did annoy me that the sprint button and the climb button were the same, so periodically when I was trying to escape the guards I would accidentally run up a tree or hop onto a fountain, and then get a sword in the back as I leisurely hopped back down.

Drastic, your idea would be great if Charles did the credits. Not so much if The People Who Made Us Release Before We Thought It Was Ready were in charge, which is a virtual certainty.

[Drastic]

True, true. It would need to be made with the normal boring credits, but ship with a secret code, to be leaked after release, that unlocks the actual credits upon entry. With everyone having plausible deniability about just where that easter egg sneaked in from.

[mkozlows]

Once you are already climbing, you don't have to press A again to keep climbing. Or RT for that matter.

Yes, you do. On some towers, there's a top part where if you're not holding the buttons down, you just hop over a barrier and get to a part where you're standing; if you're holding them down, you hop the barrier onto the next wall. It makes it smoother and more fluid to keep holding them down, so I always do, and then randomly sometimes, the little fucker will just jump off the building.

[Wendelius]

No lockups or random world freezes for me and the 360. Lolps3.

Yeah that.

Wendelius

[Shadarr]

What's the deal with combo kills? Apparently I didn't manage to do 50 of them over the whole course of the game. I take it they're more complex than just hacking a guy to death? I honestly can't tell the difference between a combo kill and a regular (non-counter) kill. And yes I did practice in the ring.

I'm also a little choked that I never got a chance to get the 25 guys in one fight achievement. Do I need to run around gathering multiple groups to fight or something?