Over the weekend, I saw Need for Speed.
Typically, movies based on video games turn out to be a mess, mostly because the cast and crew try to strike a balance between being faithful to the source material, while also trying to make it open to wider audiences who generally have no idea about the game it’s based on. For example, the last movie I saw based on a video game was Prince of Persia back in 2010, and as far as I remember, there were no ostrich races in the 2003 game.
Welcome to Abstergo Entertainment.
Every Assassin’s Creed game has some kind of modern-setting component to it. The first Assassin’s Creed had small intermission sequences with Dr. Vidic and Lucy resulting in a more-questions-than-answers ending with cryptologic glyphs. Assassin’s Creed 2 had Desmond training to become an assassin leading up to a confrontation with Dr. Vidic once again during the end credits. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood had you renovating the Villa Auditore and traveling under the Coliseum to Santa Maria in Aracoeli.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations took place entirely within the animus with the exception of a cutscene at the very end. Assassin’s Creed 3 finally realized Desmond as an assassin in the modern day, jumping off skyscrapers in New York and a mission in Brazil before heading back to Abstergo to rescue Desmond’s father and take out Dr. Vidic.
What makes this all work as a premise is the perspective. Whereas in previous games you’ve always played from an assassin point of view, Black Flag is through the eyes of templars. They view themselves as the ones doing good, with the assassin order corrupting minds. Ultimately though, the modern day story is a stop-gap. By the time you finish scrubbing through Edward Kenway’s memories, and a trailer is produced for the project you’re working on, the only thing that’s happened between the templars and assasssins is you handing off some Abstergo data to Shaun and Rebecca.
I’ve never played a Metal Gear game before. The closest I’ve ever come is playing the beginning of the original Metal Gear on the NES, which held my attention for all of about five minutes before I took the cartridge out and replaced it with Super Mario Bros. 3. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a spin-off of the Metal Gear Solid series, recently released for PC almost a year after its console release, and for someone like me it’s the perfect window into the Metal Gear series.
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag doesn’t waste any time introducing you to Edward Kenway. With the sound a boom, you’re on the deck of a ship, cannons firing back and forth in the middle of a storm as Ubisoft puts its naval combat front and center. There’s no cutscene to show who his family is, where he came from, or what his motivations are. Kenway is a pirate, out for riches and himself and that’s all you really need to know about him.
There is an exception to this, of course. There are a few flashbacks to his earlier life with his love Caroline Scott, showing how her father didn’t approve of Kenway. It’s a stark contrast to compare Kenway to the other assassins of Desmond’s lineage. I spent a good chunk of time getting to know Ezio’s family, and in turn, their deaths being his motivations for becoming an assassin. I spent even more time with Conner and his family. I spent time as his father, Haythem Kenway, Edward’s son, as Conner when he was a child and Templars killed his mother, as a teenager, and as an adult.
Altair is the only assassin who comes close to having as little backstory as Edward. I know Altair was a master assassin, before being demoted to a novice for breaking the assassin’s creed and essentially being too cocky, but before that, not much is known.
The short introduction to Edward is a far cry from Conner’s introduction in Assassin’s Creed 3, and almost feels like a direct response to it. For the most part, I liked Assassin’s Creed 3, particularly it’s time and place during the American Revolutionary War. But its long, drawn-out, and unreliable introduction set a pace that made the rest of it feel arduous. It’s near eight-hour introduction left me feeling like I was already halfway done with it before even starting. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag slims the introduction to Edward and the Caribbean down to maybe three hours. Once you get your ship, it’s clear sailing from there.
Through the process of completing missions, recruiting crewmates, and upgrading your ship, it’s almost glaringly obvious Edward was written to invoke the vibe of Ezio, and I’m ok with that. Ezio is, without contest, the best protagonist the Assassin’s Creed series has seen, no small thanks to having three games dedicated to him. But Edward Kenway nicely fits in at no. 2. His selfish attitude and lust for wealth is just what was needed, and the way he plays sides, assassins and templars, makes his tale intriguing and unique among Desmond’s ancestor.
Intriguing and unique are also the words I would use to describe the real world setting of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and it’s probably the thing I’m most excited to talk about, but I’ll save that for the next entry.
Remember how terrible Aliens: Colonial Marines turned out to be? From its retconning narrative that conflicted with the films, despite its position as the official sequel, to its stilted animations and unspectacular gameplay, it unquestionably set a low-point for the Aliens franchise in video games.
Back in October of last year, Sega copyrighted the name of the next Aliens game, Alien: Isolation. The reveal trailer for it released today and it might be the Aliens game we’ve always wanted.
Alien: Isolation takes places 15 years after the events of Alien, where you play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley. As a Weyland-Yutani engineer, Amanda takes a mission to recover the black box of the Nostromo, the last ship her mother served on. When Amanda arrives at Sevastopol space station where the black box is located, things start to go bad.
One of the main things that makes Alien: Isolation stand out from past Aliens games is that it has more to do with Alien than Aliens. It’s a survival horror game, not a first-person shooter. You don’t have a gun or any other way to defend yourself other than hiding in lockers or other compartments similar to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. There’s no HUD with a motion tracker, though you can hold one up to see if anything is nearby similar to the flashlight in Doom 3. And there’s only one alien on the space station, stalking you the entire time similar to Nemesis in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
Creative Assembly looks to be finding a way to capture the vibe of great horror games and combine them into Alien: Isolation. I never would have thought the developer behind the Total War series would make something so intriguing. Take a look at PC Gamer’s preview, which covers the built-from-scratch engine Creative Assembly is using and how the alien is completely AI driven, which makes sense given their Total War background. Alien: Isolation is scheduled for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC sometime late 2014.
Well, it seems like the Assassin’s Creed franchise decides when it’s time for me to upgrade. I originally started writing this series because I had to upgrade my computer to be able to play the first Assassin’s Creed. Since then I’ve played through all five games, seeing the changes from one to the next, with each one playing silky smooth. That is, until Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag.
From the first scene, Black Flag told me, “Hey, I’m going to tax your system.” The naval battle at night in the rain chugged along; dipping to 30 frames per second at times, no thanks to the way the AnvilNext engine handles vertical sync. I spent about a week at the area above tweaking settings, trying different anti-aliasing options, seeing if I could squeak out extra frames by turning down shadows, foliage, god-rays, and other environment effects.
I built my computer in November 2011, and by 2013, it was already showing signs of age. So I did what I thought any other PC player would do gain a bit of power without spending extra money: I overclocked, further. When I built my system, I overclocked my i5-2500K from its factory setting of 3.3GHz to 4.0GHz with a third-party cooler. This was my first time ever trying to overclock something, so I thought that was decent. Doing more research, I found the i5-2500K was stable enough most people could overclock to 4.0GHz using just the stock cooler, and with third-party coolers, it could reach up to 4.8GHz.
In order to make sure conditions were right for overclocking, I cleaned out my system of any dust or particles, cleaning up around the desk area, and in general making the area cooler for the system to run. With that, I bumped up the CPU to 4.5GHz and ran a few stress tests to make sure it was stable. Once it was, I also dug into overclocking my EVGA GeForce GTX 570. I used MSI Afterburner to bump it up from its default settings of 732MHz core clock, 1464MHz shader clock, and 1900MHz memory clock, to a core clock of 850MHz, 1700MHz shader clock, and 2000MHz memory clock.
What this all essentially means is I gained about 10-15 extra frames per second while playing Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag, making gameplay range anywhere from 45 to 60 frames per second, which makes for a vastly better game experience. I also was able to stave off having to upgrade for another few months until Watch Dogs releases.
I’ve never read a single issue of the Fables comic, but that makes me the perfect audience for The Wolf Among Us.
It takes a simple premise and flips it on its side. All the fairy tales we heard about as kids, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Jack and the beanstalk, they’re all real. But rather than living happily ever after, they were forced from their homes by ‘The Adversary’ and now live in a place called Fabletown in New York City, where they live among normal people hiding their true identities with spells called glamour making make them look human.
BioShock 2 and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified developer 2K Marin has been hit with layoffs today. Official numbers are unknown but a source told Polygon the “majority” of the studio has been let go.
According to the source, the only developers safe from layoffs were those already in transition moving the new 2K studio in the Bay Area under former BioShock Infinite producer Rod Ferguson.
A 2K Games representative said, “We can confirm staff reductions at 2K Marin. While these were difficult decisions, we regularly evaluate our development efforts and have decided to reallocate creative resources. Our goal to create world-class video game titles remains unchanged.”
One former employee took to Twitter stating he is no longer employed by 2K Games.
As of today, I am no longer employed by 2K.
— Michael Kamper (@michael_kamper) October 17, 2013
Former 2K designer Steve Gaynor, co-founder of The Fullbright Company, reacted to the news on Twitter, sending out condolences to those affected.
Word is the remaining staff at 2K Marin got clipped. Sorry to hear it, and hope they land well. Was honored to work there with such talent.
— Steve Gaynor (@fullbright) October 17, 2013
I was I think employee.. 16? At 2KMarin? Was amazing to see such talent in one place, and what so many have accomplished since. Godspeed all
— Steve Gaynor (@fullbright) October 17, 2013
The Blizzard themed MOBA, which first debuted as Blizzard DOTA then renamed to Blizzard All-Stars following Valve’s development of Dota 2, has a new name again: Heroes of the Storm.
“Yep, we’ve changed it again,” reads the description of the video above debuting the new name.
Heroes of the Storm first appeared a few weeks ago when Blizzard filed for a trademark for the name, leading to speculation that it might be the name of the next World of Warcraft expansion.
The video description also says to, “Set aside whatever you think you knew about Blizzard All-Stars,” as more information will be released at Blizzard’s upcoming BlizzCon on Nov. 8 and 9 in Anaheim, Calif., where it assumingly will be playable.
I played Blizzard DOTA at BlizzCon 2011 when it was still called Blizzard DOTA. It was the first time I’d ever played a MOBA. You can read my impressions here.
Ubisoft announced the delay of Watch Dogs, its open-world game set in Chicago, to spring 2014 today on their blog. When it was first shown at Ubisoft’s E3 2012 press conference, Watch Dogs was synonymous with next-gen, heading the charge of the new comes that are now less than a month away.
“Our ambition from the start with Watch Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we’ve made the tough decision to delay the release until spring 2014.”
According to the post, Ubisoft is using the extra time on polish to closer deliver on their desired quality.
“We know a lot of you are probably wondering: Why now? We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune each detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience.”
Watch Dogs was originally slated to release on November 19 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 version launching alongside those consoles. It will now release sometime in spring of 2014. The push to spring leaves November 19 open to Need for Speed: Rivals and the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.
