Assassins Creed Brotherhood and Crysis

Well, I've been neglecting my duties again.

I played about half of Assassin's Creed II before the AC Brotherhood that I had ordered arrived in the post, by which time I was a bit Assassined out and wanted a break so I've played some Crysis which I got for £2.49 in a Steam sale and was a total bargain! It has beautiful scenery splendidly rendered and the gameplay is fantastic.  Playing it does not actually give me any pleasure because I die all the time but if you are semi-competent at games you won't have this problem so please, please play this: just remember to save every time you get through a group of enemies!

Despite all the killing (of me), the world of Crysis is a glorious place.

Crysis happens in North Korea where the army make up the early enemies.  My progress has been so slow that I have not fought any alien types yet but there have been distinct signs of creepy things to come.

Having played some Spacechem and not been as immediately hooked by it as I remember being in the past I have now started Brotherhood, and I have numerous complaints.

Ezio will not always defend himself properly when I tell him to.  I am aware that stronger guards can get through his defences but even weaker ones seem to hit him sometimes - it seems to happen more often at an earlier point in any fight.  When it happens I think, well, perhaps he is not engaged in combat so I press L1 to engage and he immediately becomes unengaged and is attacked from all sides.  This process gets me extremely riled and so I lose all control and have been beaten senseless and forced to take 3 bottles of medicine all of which I strongly resent before I get into the fight.

I do approve of the new class of guard which is tough and did not appear in AC II.  The fights did need to be made harder - though only by fair means.

The other way the controls have let me down is that I can often not persuade Ezio to attack when he is not yet engaged in combat.  He might be strolling across a rooftop and be a dead cert' to slash at an archer before the guard even sees him, never mind shoots him, but I am likely to press square four times to no avail and Ezio will have been shot twice before he decides to retort.  I don't mind if he slashes at the air and misses, I just want a sign that he's paying attention to what I want him to do.  I have had no problems with the controller in other games, so it's not that.

I have now bought Hitman 2 for £1.49 in a Steam sale and am pretty curious about that but I am distracted from it by another new purchase which arrived in the post today.  It is a PS2.

I have several 2nd hand PS2 games which I am selling and I can now play / test them.  The first I'm trying out is Resident Evil Code Veronica X.  I have only played the first couple of minutes so far and am already swearing at the old style view and controls but I am determined to give the game a chance.

That's about all the news I've got for now and this time I absolutely promise to write more sooner.