The Creed of Tempered Diction

I have been back to playing Assassin's Creed II on the PS3 in the last few days and I don't really know why I ever do anything else.

I have now made my way to Venice and, in my own bundling way, played through a lot of the plot and have finished Sequence 9.  The races, beat-ups and courier missions have never been the most exciting part of the game but in Venice there seem to be none and I realise that they gave a wider choice of things to do and therefore the appearance of depth.  The reason seems to be that there is a lot of plot to get through in Venice and these distractions are not currently needed to bulk the game up, especially as part of sequence 9 involves Ezio entering a competition with several parts, one being a race and another a fight.



The Serene Republic.

Ezio has a big advantage in Venice which is swimming.  I remember in Assassin's Creed Altair would drown if he fell into water a foot from the bank.  Ezio is a strong swimmer and no guards can swim so they can be safely knocked in or escaped from by swimming along a canal (few of which have a tow path) or across the river.

There has been one training session outside the Animus where Desmond had to leap around a warehouse.  This was followed immediately by a short section where he found himself hallucinating that he was Altair and back in a familiar looking part of Acre.  This was all a bit unnecessary but was soon over and the game otherwise has been a delight.  Wherever this series might have gone since or might go in the future I really hope it will not be forgotten that this was a classic.

Speaking of the future, I have been interested to read about AC III recently.  The thing that I am most curious about is the name.  I am yet to play them but it from what I know I'm surprised that Brotherhood and Revelations are not being considered full games and that this new one is not AC V.  Perhaps this is simply because the intervening games are the same era and protagonist as number two.

So this new protagonist is to be a half British half Mohawk guy called Connor.  From which side does he get that name!?  The game is set in Colonial era America.  Why do I feel like we (the Brits) are not necessarily going to be the good guys in this game?

Otherwise it looks very promising with a radical change in terrain (New York and Boston and spending a lot of time in the wild country in between).  I do not think that Connor's enemies having guns is going to make a huge difference.  Enemies had bows before and the guns of this new game have a long re-loading time and are hardly likely to take Connor down in a single shot (that would be no fun).  It will probably be ages before I play this game since I've got two other AC games to get through first but I'm already looking forward to it.

Fifa 11

When I was deciding what difficulty level to play this game on I was shocked to realise that I have never played a football game before!  I think this has been partly because I am not very interested in football but a good game is still worth playing and this has already proved to be good and has it's hooks in me after just two days.

Because of my inexperience I am playing it on the easiest difficulty.  I have started on career mode and was initially rubbish.  Playing it on easy means that it is as simple for my AI team-mates as it is for me so as long as my guy is picked to play by the coach our team (Nottingham Forest) always wins by a wide margin.  Sometimes I have been dropped due to poor performances and in my absence the team struggles a lot more.

It seems a bit of a farce that I get dropped from the team and several successive matches can go past while I just watch (I don't actually watch the match but the PS3 going through the process of calculating results and match events takes time and I'm excluded).  Early in my first season I was injured for 43 days and missed loads of games and it was not very exciting.  I have at least got the hang of the game now to the point where I don't usaully get dropped for bad performances.

Shooting is something I still cannot do. When running in on goal the camera switches to a low dynamic angle but this makes it harder to see where the player is relative to the goal or goalkeeper and so I often leave my shot too late and the keeper has closed me down.

Forest finished the first season at the top of the championship (art failing to reflect life) and the new premiership season has started.  We have won the first two games but after a bad game against West Ham I have managed to get myself left out again.  You'd think the coach would notice that we always win by a wide margin when I play, even if I play badly.

You'd Better Look Around

I meant to write something new sooner than this but could not stop playing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

It has all the atmosphere of GTA IV and a surprising number of the subtleties.  The Map of Liberty City familiar from large scale game is largely present.  I do wonder if I would be quite so blown away if I did not mentally fill in some of the missing parts of the more detailed map, but the game is great in it's own right.

This picture fails to do the game justice.

The game's sounds give it it's atmosphere.  There are many different styles of music and while it only comes in simple loops each piece evokes the type of music it represents brilliantly and never seems to get monotonous.  The comments shouted as you walk down the street, the sound of gunfire and car engines and the occasional train passing overhead.  It is a rich, urban, aural tapestry.

The gameplay is perfect, too.  The Gunplay and fist fights work well, stealing a car is candy from a baby.  If the cops are after you there are degrees of wantedness and these decrease if no cops see you for a while or, more often, when you force a police car to crash and burn.  If you are driving slowly any policeman on foot near you, including one who has just bailed out of a smashed car, will pull at the door handle.  This is brilliantly done and even though he's only a tiny figure on the screen you can really see him straining at that door.  If you don't get away fast enough he pulls you out and you are busted.  If you just manage to get away you will drive off with the car door swinging open (another great touch) and as you speed around the next corner you can almost feel the car leaning as it turns, again due to great use of minute images.

Great (grown-up) humour.  Imaginative tasks to perform.  Superb use of the touch screen... I could enthuse all day!