Link (YouTube) |
Whatever other complaints we have about the game, Venice is a really impressive accomplishment from a level design standpoint. I was amazed by some of the large cities in the original Assassin’s Creed, but I think Venice outshines them both visually and technologically. There’s a lot more variety of color, street traffic, and ground detail. I found myself getting lost (disoriented, really) less often, because the place was so much more visually diverse.
Link (YouTube) |
Venice was the point in Assassin’s Creed 2 where the game suddenly became much more visually rich and interesting, but also much more contrived and game-y.
In particular, the way from Florence to Venice is filled with oddities that can’t be really explained with the usual “animus did it” excuse.
Seriously, the bad guys stationed dozens of mooks along this road to kill our hero? And burned down a bridge? And then stacked crates on either side of the road to encourage slalom-style driving. Did they KNOW you were going to get on Leo’s cart, because the slalom thing and the men chasing you would have been kind of pointless if you were on horseback.
Rather than burning down an ENTIRE BRIDGE, which would be a massive loss that would harm the area for years, why didn’t whey just string a single rope across the road? Rather than fire archers shooting gallon-sized globs of oil, why not just build a single fire across the whole road? Why not just install a checkpoint with a fence? Were these guys coordinating their attacks via two-way radio?
What is the deal with this guy who won’t sell you passage on his ship because you’re not allowed to enter the city? What sort of documentation was he expecting to see? Was HE in charge of keeping people out? Why was with this lady who lives in a town made entirely of water, unable to cross water, to the point of being willing to publicly BEG random strangers for aid? (I’m told later she turns out to be an assassin, which only raises more questions. Was she PRETENDING she couldn’t swim?) Did she always make obvious passes at guys in front of gossipy peasants, or was she just unable to help herself because of how sexy Ezio is?
Yes, you can cook up justifications for a lot of this after the fact. (You know, by writing plot-patching fanfiction.) It’s just obvious that someone said, “Pffft. Screw it. Car chase time.”
It’s not a game ruining problem or anything, and it was mildly amusing from a gameplay perspective, but this part really does stick out as fairly artificial and contrived.
I’ve always said that one of the most unhealthy things about videogame journalism is the fixation on previews. Critics are always gazing at stuff on the horizon, furiously plowing through current releases, and rarely looking back. This means there is very little thoughtful analysis, and a great deal of hype-mongering. (After all, in a preview you can comment on what marketing chooses to show you.) I’ve always tried to avoid doing a lot of previews on my site, for this very reason. However, I hope you will forgive me for doing another preview today. I’ll try to make up for it by combining it with analysis of Oblivion.
Bethesda has put out a promotional video, showing off the Sounds of Skyrim. Let’s have a look:
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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Sound of Skyrim”
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With our total victory over the Imagawa, our clan’s borders have expanded to encompass a whole host of provinces along the central Honshu coast. But few daimyo would be content with merely a few provinces when the very Shogun himself is such a tempting target, and the Oda are no exception. But a brash, reckless attempt to take Kyoto by force â€" in our current state â€" would doubtless end in complete failure. Though the coastal regions we inherited from the Imagawa have added to both our prosperity and prestige, they are not overly rich in their own right, and they would offer us little true strategic value in a war against the Shogunate.
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But right on our eastern border lie the home provinces of the Hojo clan. Sagami, with its skilled smiths, could make our armies the envy of Japan. And Izu is one of the wealthiest provinces in the east, owing its prosperity to its complex of gold mines. Control of both of these provinces would not merely be a boon to our clan â€" it will be necessary in order to defeat the other great clans and establish a shogunate of the Oda. And our ninjas have revealed that neither province is particularly well defended â€" the only Hojo forces in the area are camped outside Sagami’s castle, and while they are large in number, they lack a general to lead them.
But there’s a problem.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Josh Plays Shogun 2 Part 8: Diplomatic Overtures”
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So The Old Republic is due out in 33 days, and it’s still under an Non-Disclosure Agreement. I am not in the beta, and I have not played the game, which means I have more freedom to talk about it than people who have played the game.
This is an incredibly cynical move by EA. It boils down to, “We believe this game will be poorly reviewed, so we want to delay that for as long as possible in order to trick the maximum number of people into buying what we know will be a substandard product.” We are long past the point where most publishers are furiously trying to build hype. The silence itself is is a kind of admission of guilt at this point.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Old Republic NDA”
I know I promised the autoblography thing was over and I hope this post doesn’t have the awkwardness of an overlong goodbye. I thought I’d post one last photo to finish things off. If I’d been thinking, I would have put this at the end of part #39. This is a picture of the family, taken just a few weeks ago at Angela and Daniel’s wedding:
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Back row, from left:
My sister Ruthie, who was born back in part 12. See? She’s no longer a baby.
Shawnee and Patrick. That’s right, the Epic Mullet is long, long gone. She seems to love him anyway, bless her.
Myself and Heather. No, I don’t know why I have Jonny Bravo hair. I think that’s actually cleverly disguised hat hair.
My daughter Rachel. She turned 13 earlier this year.
Front row, from left:
My Daughter Esther.
Mom, who you might recognize from the comments around here, under the name “Mom”.
Angela and Dan. Dan was born back in Part 18.
Stepdad Dave, who was also introduced in part 12.
My son Issac.
Okay. That’s enough about me for a long, long time. The autoblography is over and it’s time to get back to work on the ten thousand other things that popped up while I was writing this monster.
I don’t know how to mark this occasion. I looked around Target, but they didn’t have any greeting cards for this sort of thing.
Also, the discussion for this post might get a bit hot. Before anyone gets pissed off I’d just like to remind you to be cool and don’t post mad. Everyone agrees kids should be educated, we just differ on the details.
Looking back on my school career, I see that the vast majority of the hours I spent in school were squandered. Most classes washed over me with no effect. I listened to the lecture, took the test, passed, and then never thought about the material again. For many classes, I have no memory of the lessons and it’s as if I never set foot in the classroom. I still retain some learning in a few subjects, although these were things that captured my interest at the time. I likely could have learned them without attending school, and perhaps bought the lessons with less pain.
The point is, I could have dropped out of school after sixth grade and it would not have impaired my abilities with regards to my career in the slightest. I suspect this is true for a lot of other people as well.
This is not to say that education is bad or that people shouldn’t get a diploma, only that getting a diploma is not for everyone, and that we should not have a narrow view on what education is and how it should work. A large portion of my grandparent’s generation dropped out long before graduation, and those folks did fine. They went on to hold down careers, start businesses, and even invent things without the benefit of a diploma. You might say, “Those were different times, and people didn’t need as much education back then.” Okay then, how do we explain my situation, where I was pretty much on the cutting edge of technology?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 40: A Word On Education”
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
T w e n t y S i d e d
