As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been breaking several of my self-imposed rules. The result has been pretty good, actually.<\/p>\n
As I said before, I beat Unwound Future a couple weeks ago. Last night I beat AC: Brotherhood. I’ll get to that in a minute. But right there I was breaking a rule: playing more than one game at a time. For a while there, I was playing Unwound Future, AC: B and Final Fantasy XIII-2. Now it’s FF XIII-2 and Professor Layton and the Last Specter. That’s not so bad \u2014 Layton games are really just puzzle games with a story wrapped around them, and it’s on a portable device. But after beating Brotherhood, I’m all fired up to play more Assassin’s Creed.<\/p>\n
My wife picked me up AC III on Black Friday (for $35 \u2014 not bad) and I ordered AC: Revelations (got it free with Amazon points). That’s another broken rule \u2014 no new games. Still, I’m really enjoying the AC games, and Brotherhood ended on a cliffhanger, so I’m probably going to jump into Revelations.<\/p>\n
Anyway, back to Brotherhood. I really,\u00a0really<\/em> enjoyed this game. I don’t remember why I stopped playing it in March 2012, but over Thanksgiving break I dove right back in. I was on Sequence 6, I think, which is very close to the end of the game (there are 9, and Sequence 9 went very quickly). I had already opened up most (but not all) of Rome. So I proceeded to mop things up. I finished Sequence 6, claimed the final Borgia Towers (which \u2014 long story \u2014 allows you to exert influence over a regain by reinvigorating its economy and also allows you to acquire more Assassin allies). I then went on to finish Sequence 7 and finished up most other missions. I actually finished every single side mission in the game except for the Mercenary Challenges. One mission, “Young at Heart” frustrated me to no end. So I skipped it. I don’t know if I’ll go back and try to finish it. I also don’t think I’ll try to finish each mission with 100% synch, which basically means I’m not going to redo old missions, keeping with certain goals or restrictions in order to get full credit. There is some DLC (Da Vinci Disappearance, I think) that I may play; not sure yet.<\/p>\n Anyway, Sequence 9 went fast and was surprisingly easy. I remember the end of the first Assassin’s Creed being more difficult (and frustrating). It was very entertaining, though.<\/p>\n SPOILERS follow.<\/p>\n I really did not see the last couple minutes of the ending coming. My wife and I suspected that Lucy Stillman might actually be a Templar (and at this point that hasn’t been ruled out), but I did not see the Final Fantasy VII-esque Desmond-being-possessed and murdering (or maybe just wounding? It’s not made clear, but she appears to bleed out) Lucy thing coming at all. The fade to black surprised me too. Nice cliffhanger.<\/p>\n One worry I have is that the game makers are dangling a lot of little hints, strange references, etc. that I’m not sure will pan out. For example, “Subject 16” babbles a lot of things to Desmond that make no sense out of whatever context they should exist in.<\/p>\n It bugs me when storytellers do this kind of thing without a substantial, meaningful payoff \u2014 Lost and Battlestar Galactica were guilty of this. It’s ok to leave\u00a0some<\/em> ambiguity, but it’s not okay to string an audience along with promises of an explanation just to leave them with mystical half-explanations.<\/p>\n I’m not saying that will happen in the AC series, but it has some of the hallmarks of a story that ends up like that. So we’ll see.<\/p>\n Still, Brotherhood was a fantastic game. I loved the Assassin recruits. It adds a whole new strategy to the game. I loved the Project Legacy tie-in. Legacy doesn’t work reliably anymore, but I got all the rewards available from it early on.<\/p>\n I don’t think I really mastered combat \u2014 kill streaks in particular did not come easy for me. At least not beyond 2 or 3.\u00a0I also never tried the multiplayer mode. Multiplayer doesn’t appeal to me much for whatever reason.<\/p>\n Looking forward to AC: Revelations!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been breaking several of my self-imposed rules. The result has been pretty good, actually. As I said before, I beat Unwound Future a couple weeks ago. Last night I beat AC: Brotherhood. … Continue reading