Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: Take that, Renaissance

Just like the rest of the video game world, I was really confused on whether this was a standalone installment, or just Assassin’s Creed 2.5. I was wrong. It’s both, and boy is it awesome.

Look how cute he is! So cute he’ll kill you.

Taking place literally right after the second game, you once again take control of Ezio. He returns from his villa after getting the Apple of Eden, a artifact known to control and even kill people. A artifact that everyone wants to get their hands on, whether they are from the past or in the future. At the villa, they have a little bit of time to themselves before the Borgia show up at their door. They attack the villa, destroying everything, and taking the Apple.

Once again, Ezio’s actions are driven by revenge, and holy shit he is pissed. The entire territory of Roma is now controlled by Borgia, and he has to purge them all.

I will admit this, despite my huge love for the series. The story isn’t as good, despite it being very cinematic this time around. Objectives are sometimes really confusing, or sometimes you have no idea why you are just doing it. You are just killing for the fun of it, I guess.

There aren’t many weapons added to Ezio’s arsenal this time around. You literally start right off as a badass. To be honest, it’s kind of disappointing. One thing that made Assassin’s Creed 2 great was how you started with nothing, and in the end, you owned a huge villa, had a massive income, and had any weapon you could possibly imagine. You start this game with almost all of that from the very start.

For whatever the story lacked, the side quests will make up for it. The number of side quests in this game is massive. Mind boggling at times. Sure, there’s flags, feathers, treasures, and viewpoints to get this time around, but still. Now there are “Lairs of Romulus", basically the Assassin Tombs from AC2. There are also Borgia towers to destroy, which need to be destroyed first before you rebuild that area.

Having assassin’s at your side is a great feeling.

You will also have to keep track of four guilds: Courtesans, Mercenaries, Thieves, and Assassin’s. The first three grow when you purchase empty lots for them to settle in, doing missions for them, and also getting discounts. It helps a lot in the end.

Now, this is where the word “Brotherhood” comes into play. At a certain point, you finally get to help those citizens getting their asses kicked by the Borgia. When you do so, they are pissed at the Borgia and want to join your side. Fun, right? Hell yes. The recruitment system is beyond awesome, and is really well done. You can send them on missions, level them up, and bring home a badass. A badass which can help you by killing a target for you, helping you in combat, or by killing everyone in a level with arrows. Awesome, I know.

Despite all of what happens here in the Animus, in the “real life”, Desmond is still on the run. They now take shelter from the Templars by coming to the destroyed villa of Ezio and making camp in the underground chambers below. By the end of the game, you will never, ever want Desmond to step foot in the Animus. You will crave a modern Assassins’ Creed more then ever.

 

Online:

Now for the online. Many people said that the multiplayer was just tacked on, and given no real thought. They are so wrong. It’s one of the most interesting multiplayers I have ever seen, considering how sick and tired I am of online shooters.

See that guy stabbing the other guy? That could be you.

There are four online modes, which are fairly easy yet brilliant. It’s basically hide-and-go-seek. Players represent one of a handful of people in the level, then dropped into a small populated area with hundreds of civilians. Players then get contracts to assassinate other players, all while getting a contract on their heads as well. It’s a race against the clock to getting to your target, which can be hard because they can easily blend in with a crowd.

To be perfectly honest, the online isn’t about skill. It’s not about how good you are at running. It’s far smarter then that. it’s about passing the Turing test, and it’s brilliant, terrifying, and unique all at the same time. There are 50 levels of awesomeness to get through, along with unlockable characters, perks, and items. You could play this forever and never get bored.

Misc.:

This game is beautiful. Ubisoft did a brilliant job making it all seem real. There were times where it felt so real, that I wanted to go dress up and act like I was from the Renaissance. However, as awesome as Roma looked, the game engine is getting old. I have seen it used for three games now, and I’m getting a little sick of it. It’s time to put that beautiful engine to rest, and make a  beast from it’s ashes.

I loved the music. Ever hear of Jesper Kyd? Yeah, he’s awesome. The music will suck you in, and really make you feel like you are there. In chase sequences, it will get your heart pumping. During sad parts, it will literally make you want to cry your eyes out. It’s very well done, and I’m glad Kyd is sticking with the series until the very end.

Pros:

+Great add-on to the storyline

+Recruitment system is amazing

+Graphics and audio is always on it’s best behavior

+Online will suck you in and spit you back out

Cons:

-Few glitches here and there

-Graphics are getting a bit on the old side

-Somewhat confusing narrative at times.

 

Conclusion:

Don’t get this game if you aren’t a fan of the serious. Do get it if you want to have your mind blown. I really don’t have much of a conclusion for this one. My mind is still blown by the ending and online, so I’m going to continue to sit here and think about it all.

Get it. You won’t be disappointed. One of the best games of the year.

Rating

9.5

Happy ThanksKilling!

Sorry. I couldn’t resist using that as a title. Look up “ThanksKilling” on Netflix or something. You have to watch it.

Anyways, how is everyone? I have been either too busy to post or just not feeling like it. I have just been playing video games the past few days. Well, that and taking care of my fiancé. She isn’t doing so well now, but we are hoping things start to come around soon.

I’m going to release my review of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood tomorrow, as well as posting my opinion on the Shattering that happened in World of Warcraft.

Anyways, this is all that I can write for now. Check back tomorrow for reviews!

Agenda: Sneak Attack and Racing

This week is going to, I hope, involve lots of girlfriend time and video games. I only have school today and tomorrow and then I go home. I have thanksgiving for both my family and hers, as well as visiting my very ill grandmother. Other then that, I have a few papers to write and lots of video games to play!

Currently playing:

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: Finishing campaign, buying all businesses', and trying online. Hopefully having a review in Friday.

Enslaved: I’m hoping on starting this soon. I bought it on Amazon for $5, which is a amazing deal. I’m sad this didn’t sell well. I’m glad that I get to play this wonderful gem, though.

NFS: Hot Pursuit: With Black Friday right around the corner and 45 bucks worth of Amazon points put solely towards video games, I’m hoping on getting this. It looks beautiful and I need a good racing game. I’m sad that I can’t get Gran Turismo 5. No Playstation 3.

Oh! I’m planning on releasing my reviews each week on Fridays, giving me time to both play them and try online. It also gives me time to do school and be with my girlfriend.

Hope you all have a good week! I’m going to go watch my girlfriend play Monopoly Streets and maybe a little more Halo: Reach!

Call of Duty=Call of Suck

“I am impressed that the reviewer was even able to speak with Bobby Kotick's cock stuffed so far down his throat...”

We’ll get to that in a moment. I first what to tell you something. Something I let every FPS fan know. I’m not a Call of Duty fan. At all. I have played them all, and I have to say the only one I remotely liked was Modern Warfare. I only liked it because it was different from any shooter at the time. Call of Duty just sucks. The story lines are always horrible, the graphics and people look like they were made of plastic, and the online was just bad. Who wants to play a game where you spawn and literally die less then two seconds later? It’s nothing but luck. No skill. Just luck.
According to just about every video game website known to man, Black Ops was supposed to change shooters as we know it. It was supposed to blow our minds with explosions, bullets, and just plain awesome. Have they succeeded? Hell no.

Campaign:
I’m a hardcore fan of Batman, so when I found out that David S. Goyer wrote the script for Black Ops, I actually got excited. The Dark Knight blew my mind, and just about everything else Goyer helped create blew my mind, too. First off, the menu is actually cool. You are strapped to a chair with monitors all around. You are given the chance to get out and walk around the room, finding a few cool Easter eggs if you do. While in the chair, the main menu appears before you and once you select the campaign, the story starts right away. However, this little part is all that I liked throughout the entire game. That and something else.

The campaign is that it starts off in a completely different setting then the other CoD’s. That’s the other part that I liked. For the rest, it just sucks.  You are basically given a gun and shoot the hell out of everything. That’s it. I was hoping for a little change, but I was wrong. It’s the same over and over again. The objectives are almost the same for every mission. Go to point A, blow something up, go to point B, shoot some guys. Repeat. The only thing remotely keeping me from throwing the game out the window was the narrative written by Goyer, but that’s it.  I, for once in a CoD game, grew an attachment to a character only to be let down by the campaign. However, the story itself was nothing but fail. It jumped around way too much and tried to do too many things. The storyline was mostly in the loading screens.

Suck on that!

The action supporting the story was horrible. The AI was really messy. There were plenty of times where my men got stuck running into a wall, having a checkpoint show up right then, and have to restart the mission in order to proceed. There were also plenty of bugs in the campaign. I can’t tell you how many times I had to kill myself and restart because the enemy’s glitching throughout the air was freezing my Xbox. As interesting as the weapons were, they were wacky. It’s almost like they wanted the storyline to be put in the test so they could add new weapons to the CoD universe. However, I was liking the  explosive crossbow.


Zombies:
I thought the Nazi Zombies in World at War was interesting. It was flawed, but fun. It was a different take on the zombie horror games, which was great since it was also the time where Left 4 Dead became so popular. Zombies are back in Black Ops. Why? I have no clue. It’s basically the exact same thing from WaW. It only added a little bit of variation, a few new types of zombies, and someone called the “Pentagon Thief”, who would take your weapons if you aren’t careful. That’s all they did to it. It’s like they wanted more features to the game, but didn’t know what to do so they just copied it over. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Cute, aren’t they?

Online:
Ah, the world famous Call of Duty online. To be honest, I was actually excited to try this. I have thought for years that Activision should just make CoD online-only, don’t add anything else to it and add as much support to it as Bungie does with Halo: Reach. I started it up for the first time, taking about 20 seconds to load up the main Live menu, only to have my Xbox crash. I tried again, and was able to start a match. I played for about five seconds before the frame rate dropped. I was so mad at this point. I just wanted to stop trying and only write about this much for the review. I decided to try one last time. I joined the same game and went for it. Thankfully, it was fine at this point but bugs? That many? Especially when it comes to CoD’s strong point. I ended up in second place in the map, by the way.

I give kudos to the customization feature in the game. It was probably the most customization I have ever seen in a video game, in terms of FPS’s. It worked really well.
Now for the bad side to online. There were countless glitches. I played both before and after the latest patch and even then it was bad. It’s true that this can completely change given more time, but why should I wait? It should have been fixed from the beginning. I also doubt they will fix the horrible respawn points. The other team literally spawns behind you, so you do nothing but get raped by bullets. Where’s the fun in that?
This is all I’m going to say about the online. There is much to say about it, but why bother?

Misc.:
I’m not going to lie. The graphics were just bad, especially when put alongside other FPS shooters out there such as Bad Company 2 and Killzone 2. The background in most of the maps looked like it was painted by a three-year old. It was horrible. The blood coming out of my recently killed enemies looked really off. It was like they hid ketchup packets inside their jackets so when I shot at them, they could explode.
The sound effects were really good. The explosions sounded great, and the guns all had their unique sounds to them. The one thing I noticed when it came to audio was that the helicopters flying over had no noise attached to the machine guns, as well as no footsteps being heard from the people sneaking up on you. Hopefully all that can be patched.

I had a huge problem with the music. It was so boring! I literally turned off the music in the game about half way through it to stop from going crazy. There wasn’t much variety in it, and every time I died, it would start it from the very beginning.

Pros:
+Deep narrative.
+Explosions and guns all sound so pretty!
+Customization is very through.

Cons:
-Action supporting story is horrible
-Same zombie mode from World at War. Nothing really added to it.
-Glitchy campaign and online.
-Boring music and some sound effect issues

Overall:

I know as much as you do that this game will continue to sell wonderfully until next year. The quote in the beginning of the review is from a commenter, saying that the CEO of Activision basically bribed major online reviewers to give it good reviews. Lame, right?

Whether that be the case or not, the sad truth is that the gaming demographic is changing. Remember the days of Donkey Kong, Mario, Metroid Prime, and early GTA? There are quite a few that remember those games, but don’t like playing them now. It’s all about shooters, action, and blowing stuff up. The gaming world is changing. Studios need to take the time to make a good product. One with a great campaign, addicting online, and excellent support and patching. Activision should have taken a bit more time with this game. However, despite whether it’s good or bad, CoD’s will continue to sell. I’m saddened that I bought it. I was hoping for so much with Black Ops, only to be let down once again.

Rating

5.0

That rocket carries my hopes for this game.

I changed the way I write reviews. Is this better? It adds a little bit more color and organization to it all.

Kinectimals: Cute, sweet, and A Little Boring

My first ever review! I’m excited. So excited that I’m going to go get a Mountain Dew to celebrate. Anyways, here you go.

 

The cuteness will get to you. It will, one way or another. Microsoft has released Kinectimals, Microsoft's version of EyePets. This pet simulator was definitely meant for the younger generation, but it has a way of getting to you. Be careful as you play this game because you just might end up dying from cuteness overload.

Gameplay:

The moment you start the game, you will be amazed. The first scene that plays shows all of the cubs that you start out with, all of which are adorable. After the scene, you start out selecting a cub to call your own. You chose from a small selection of super adorable big cats. You bond with it by petting it, scratching it behind the ears, and even by pulling his tail. If you decide to keep it, you are able to give it a name, which you have to say out loud a few times for the cub to learn it. Make sure there is absolutely no background noise because the microphone is very sensitive. After the cub has a name, you start off on your adventure. If your attention has been grabbed yet, you will soon fall in love with it.

After you chose your pet and start your adventure, you come across Bumble, a flying lemur who is your guide throughout your journey. He feels very out of place, despite being essential to the story of the game. You find out from him that you are a treasure hunter, who just landed on the mystical island of Lemuria. It's filled with rabbits, cute cubs, and dozens of mini-games.

The point of the game is to map out the entire island and find the legendary treasure called the Felis Aurum. The map is filled out by unlocking the maps six regions, which each consist of five mini-games. Regions take about 30-50 minutes to complete, depending on how skilled you become. Regions are unlocked by playing with your cub. This is where the Kinect comes in. There are various mini-games to play, such as throwing Frisbees and balls, treasure-hunting, and driving little remote controlled cars. Everything you end up doing unlocks Discovery Points and money, allowing you to unlock regions and buy items from the shop.

The shop is lemur-run. After you get past how adorable they are, you are able to purchase furniture for your house, which acts as a place to store stats and accomplishments, or toys and accessories for your cubs. There are a ridiculous amount of unlockables for your cub to own from the shop and even more of them are earned by doing well on mini-games. Besides the house and shop, the game makes it very easy to head back to the bonding circle and switch cubs.

All the mini-games are based on just a few core mechanics (shooting water, throwing objects, obstacle courses, and petting). After awhile, the game starts to feel awfully repetitive. The motion controls are hit-and-miss. Simple things such as petting your cub or looking for treasure are fine, but when it comes to throwing something, there are many annoyances. Input lag is especially noticeable when playing with the jump rope, and the Kinect goofing off, such as the Frisbee throwing all by itself. The RC car also suffers, both for being annoying and laggy. The voice control help, as many of the tricks can be commanded by voice. Despite naming him in the Bonding Circle, you never really use it.

Graphics:

For a kids game, it's beautiful. The cubs look very authentic, looking every bit of adorable. Their faces are very expressive. However, their movements and expressions are very exaggerated, but it's not that overdone. The environment is also brilliant looking. The sun shines through the trees, rabbits hop around in the background, the grass and trees move with the wind. Getting covered in dirt and water looks great as well. However, the game does suffer from the occasional frame rate drop and some screen tearing. The game is also very menu heavy. It's a huge pain just getting to the food bowl., waving your arm over the toy box, waiting for it to be selected, scrolling to the food, holding, scroll to the bowl, and hold once more. It makes the simplest of things take forever to do. It really takes away from the immersive experience.

Sound:

Bumble will definitely get on your nerves. As essential he is to the game, he grows very old. Other then that, the sound is great. The environment, with the birds chirping and wind blowing through the trees, sounds great. It does a great job making you seem like you are there. The score is also great, being quite catchy yet not to the point of annoying.

Replay value:

For the average gamer finishing it, there is very little replay value. You can try to get gold on all the events, learn all of the tricks, and buy all the toys, but that's it. There isn't much to really do. Children, on the other hand, will love it. They will keep finding reasons to play.

Overall:

Someone who plays games such as Fallout, GTA IV, and Uncharted 2 will find themselves throwing a fit. The laggy and repetitive motions, as well as boring mini-games, start to get on ones nerves. However, the Kinectimals' target audience will love it. It may be repetitive, but children will continue to play it for hours. My little sister played for hours. She washed it, petted it, played fetch with it, and even talked to it. It feels real. The fact that the cub never ages or needs food allows anyone to pick it up and play. Kinectimals, as cute as it is, is a shallow and repetitive game. However, seeing someone such as my little sister play it, and hearing her laugh and watching her smile makes it all okay.

 

Thoughts on what I should add to my reviews?

Technorati Tags: Review,Kinect,Kinectimals,Xbox 360

Girlfriend Gaming: Okay, Okay. She’s my fiancé.

I’m so glad that I found a fellow gamer to be my own. Okay, so she many only be into a few selected games and not understand my need for playing games for hours on end, but still.

 

At least she knows that I’m a gamer at heart.

 

I need someone in my life that understands my need to play games. I can sit for hours playing games. I can’t tell you how many times that after a epic sit down with my Xbox, that I look at the clock and realize that I have class in three hours. I can easily get lost in a game.

 

That’s why I have her. She helps me by making sure I eat, sleep, and even shower. After that, she hints that she needs some love and so I cuddle and talk to her for awhile, and then everything is alright. The process repeats over and over again. I need her for many more reasons then that, but I’ll leave those for another blog.

 

I’ll dedicate one or two sections a week to her, whether it be about a few games she likes, me talking about how lovely she is, or her opinion on a game I’m currently reviewing. I love her, so she must be put in a little bit.

 

She is addicted to the Sims, by the way, so expect some of that in here as well.

 

I have never found any good in goodbye, so hopefully I’ll see you next time.

I'm redheaded and proud of it.

Hello, everyone! Thank you for coming to view my blog. My name is Kyle Amen. I'm 19 years old and live in Nebraska. I currently attend Peru State College, majoring in Computer Systems and Journalism. I'm starting this blog to help get myself out to the video game world. I love writing reviews and love playing video games so why not make it a career, right? More things about me? I also have fiancé, whom I'm marrying in June of next year. I'm very excited about it. There's not much else that I have to say right now. I'm writing this in class, not really in the mood for anything. I'm excited on getting Call of Duty: Black Ops in the mail today, making it my first video game review for this blog! After CoD, I'm going to review the Kinect for the Xbox 360. That's what I'm currently messing with right now, and so far I love it. It's amazing what it can do and definitely defeats the Move. The Move honestly looks like a updated Wii Remote, where as the Kinect is something completely different. You literally are the controller. Hopefully, I can get my hands on the Move and try it out for myself.

Anyways, class is ending so I guess that means I should be off. Please check back frequently as I'm hoping on posting a few times a week, if not once each day.

Happy gaming!

Oh. I also have red hair. Just figured I would mention that.