Cheevers: Milking Them For All They’re Worth

In this day and age, video games come with a butt-ton of content. I remember spending $50 on the NES game Shadow of the Ninja, which can be completed in 12 minutes. By comparison, look at Halo 3: it features a single-player campaign (with several hidden items and difficulty levels to keep you busy, not to mention offline and online co-op), a multiplayer experience so robust I can’t begin to list it, the ability to save films of every match you play, a level editor, and downloadable content to keep the fanboys at bay. And you can buy the game used at half.com for about $20 right now. Games today have so much in them that I feel bad trading them in to GameStop after I’ve played through them the first time, knowing that there’s more to them that I just haven’t seen yet.

Xbox 360 games in particular have a great incentive for replaying them: achievement points. Those little “bloop” sounds are enough to make me want to go back and milk my games for all they’re worth. That being said, I’ve gone through my Xbox 360 library and sorted out the games that I would like to re-experience some day, and the achievements/items that I still need to get. Here are the likely contenders:

Mass Effect (only did one playthrough)
The Orange Box (still need to get all the lambda locations)
Assassin’s Creed (I actually want to get the flags/templars)
Crackdown (need all the orbs, but my save game got corrupted)

What about you? Do you have some rainy-day discs that could use a little lovin’?

I’m calling it – Next Assassin’s Creed to be set in Renaissance-era Venice

It was almost two years ago on an episode of 1UP Yours after the refreshing setting of Bioshock was the talk of the town, Shane Bettenhausen asked “Why aren’t there any games set during the European Renaissance?” It looks like the team at 2K’s ears were open because everything at this teaser site jives with the play testing rumor that we heard and the whole “Altair learning to swim” slip of the tongue from David Wilkinson.

I for one love the idea, but I maintain high hopes that there WILL be a feudal Japan-based version in line to take the series to its logical conclusion: Ninjas.

Assassin’s Creed Coming To iPhone

via Kotaku

Looks like everyone’s favorite 12th-Century assassin game is coming to the iPhone, from Gameloft (makers of Hero of Sparta). No release date or anything, but it’s supposed to feature some rooftop scaling, and with any luck, some haystack jumping too.

As a side note, I made the picture above, and I’m damn proud of it, considering I’m the worst at photo editing among the three of us.

Listen, I’m Just As Disappointed As You Are

For some reason, even though all threevue of us played all the way through it and generally really loved it, we continue to snub Mass Effect Assassin’s Creed. It wasn’t even mentioned in our 2007 GOTY list, and our Threevue Review of it gave it only the equivalent of a B+! If that wasn’t crazy enough, the boner-inducing news that there will be an Assassin’s Creed for the PSP came out today, and it didn’t even get a mention! Oh, by the way, did you hear that there will be an Mass Effect 2 Assassin’s Creed 2? You didn’t hear it here, I’ll tell you that.

So I guess we’re trying to say it that we are sorry. We will try and give great games their due from now on.

Hey, You’ve Got Some Altair In My Prince Of Persia

Look closely at that screen above. Nope, it’s not from Assassin’s Creed, but rather from Prince of Persia, my new favorite game of this week. If you register at ubisoft.com you can unlock a free Altair skin for your character, who actually annoyed me quite a bit. Having him dressed as a twelfth-century bad ass really makes the game easier to swallow.

Now if they’d only let me download a Parappa the Rapper skin. I gotta believe!

Threevue Classics: Gamers In The Wild: Tonight At Work

We’re one year old this week! To celebrate, every day this week each of us will re-post one of our favorite articles from this past year, just in case you missed it.

I like this one mainly for the picture I made for it, and I remember that night perfectly. They were on table 12.

Being a waiter at a restaurant in Waikiki, I overhear many conversations about many different subjects, most of which I couldn’t care less about. But every once in awhile, something will catch my ear that will immediately grab my attention. Case in point, this evening, as I passed by table 12, I heard one young fellow say to another, “I’ve only done like four of the assassinations.” DING! I instantly turned around and, amidst the danger that I would uncover a duo of international contract killers, in turn ensuring my own doom, I said, “Are you playing Assassin’s Creed?” At that moment, at the expense of my other tables, we became friends via VG’s.

The funny thing was that both guys were their with significant others, and one of them even had a baby in a stroller next to him all night. But throughout their dinner, nary a word of virtual worlds was uttered, until the ladies went outside with the kid. We chatted about Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect. I asked if they had been following the news coming out the the GDC all week. One of the guys, who I think was South African (it wasn’t Ludwing Kietzmann, I checked his credit card) said no, but that he was going to watch the highlights on “Inside Xbox Live.” It was really cool. 17% gratuity cool.

I’ve had a few other game related moments at work. One night, which was the same night that Russ and his wife came in, I showed a kid how to do the power slide on Mario Kart DS. Another night, I swear to god that heard a guy say “Bioshock” to the rest of his table, but I was in a huge hurry and couldn’t confirm.

H.U.D. Life – How We Check Our Maps, Objectives and Ammo In Video Games

I sort of don’t like to do “tops” lists because invariably someone brings up a game that I completely forgot to add to my examples, then I look like an idiot. Look, I can’t commit! So go ahead, readers. Disembowel me with your pointy, pointy words.

*Ahem*

Head Up Displays. Second in the “Make Tyler Hate You” competition only to un-customizable button layouts, are cluttered, ugly, unnecessary HUDs that stand out like the sore thumbs. It’s a real let down when a game gets story, graphics and gameplay down pat and totally whiffs when it comes to the HUD. Think about it; in an FPS, it’s the one thing that you will see every second in every frame of the game. It’s a hard art to master, I’m sure. How do you make something that doesn’t exist in the Game World but feeds you the telemetry of the character? When should you push a fresh interface over a subtle, out of the way one? I don’t really know, but then again I don’t get paid to make video games. So I can sleep at night, I chalked some prime examples of a few well done HUDs and GUIs.

King Kong

You can’t get a better HUD than no HUD at all. If it’s done right, that is. Not knowing important info when you need it is just as bad having a ton of non-essential shit lining the edge of the screen. Admittedly, King Kong doesn’t have a lot of weapons juggling, branching pathways, resource managing or intricate scoring that you have to keep track of. There are only three guns in the whole game (pistol, sub-machine gun and rifle), you can only carry one at a time and you’re limited to only the ammo that came with the gun. You’d think that this would hamper the gameplay but it doesn’t, due to the fact that you’re always on a fairly straightforward path and can’t easily get lost. The “ammo count” button will inform you through your character’s (Jack’s) observation of how many bullets you have in the weapon, and each gun has a hip and ADS fire option. It made the game a lot more cinematic and challenging (in a good way). Also, since you don’t have a reticle, Jack points at what he’s throwing with his off hand, clever! May be confusing or scary to people who have never played a video game other than Snake on their cell phone, but easy to handle if you completed reading this sentence without drooling in to your keyboard, shorting it out and starting a structure fire.

Assassin’s Creed, Mega 64-style

I realize that this video came out a couple weeks ago, but I’m just now seeing it, and it made me laugh a little bit:

I always feel a little bad for the innocent bystanders that have no clue what these guys are doing. Especially old ladies. But I get really annoyed at guys trying to be macho and threaten the Mega 64 guys – seriously, are they really hurting anyone? Does their behavior excuse yours?

My Gripes: Assassin’s Annoyances Pt. 2

You may remember Russ’ first My Gripes about Assassin’s Creed. Well, I’m back with another. I’ve been playing it again for the last few days, and while I still love it, there are a few things I really need to gripe about, relating specifically to what I’m doing in the game.

There are a total of 420 flags that need collectin’, and 60 Templars that need killin’, but without a very tedious and anti-fun system of checking and re-checking, there is no way that you (or more importantly, me) are going to find all those hidden little nuggets on your own. I’ve been using some really good online guides to help hunt the Templars, but without keeping track externally, I don’t know which ones I have or have not done yet.

Assassin’s Creed really needs to have some kind of in-game map support to find these things. Maybe as an unlockable after you beat the game, or hell, I would even pay upwards of 200 MS points just for some downloadable support. Did you hear that, Micro/Ubisoft? Free money! Just for putting some little red dots on a map! Sounds like a killer deal to me.

Get Back in the Animus!

For the first time since I bought it, I’m going back to play Assassin’s Creed. Just watching the opening cut scene got me all pumped fer some old timey killin’.

I haven’t decided whether to start a new game from the beginning, or just continue my old one. I already did all the assassinations, but I didn’t get the achievement for completing them all with a full sync bar. On the other hand, if I started over, all the flags I found and Templars I killed will vanish like Altair on a park bench.

Ok, I’m not going to start over.

This is the Reason Saturdays Were Invented

It was really nice to get back in the saddle (a.k.a. the ass groove in my couch) and play some games last night. With all the larger-than-life advertising I witnessed in L.A., I was really craving some GTA4, and last night after work was my first chance to revisit Liberty City. It was just as fun as I remembered it.

I have a lot of options on tap today. What should I do? Law-break in Liberty City? Assassinate in Acre? Kill chumps in Killhouse? I can’t go wrong with any of those. How about a little Wii Fit? Sounds good to me. So long, sun!

Delicious, Delicious Cake.

Man, I’m really stoked to have my Xbox 360 back from the dead/Microsoft.

I played a few GTAIV missions (more on that in a later post), drummed out some Rock Band, knocked out 30 cheevers in Assassin’s Creed, played a few Doom levels and then knocked out the last two Portal advanced maps. They were doozies – I spent at least 45 minutes on each of them. But it was worth the 30 extra cheevers.

But what hit me was that I really had forgotten how great The Orange Box (which includes Portal, Half-Life 2 and its two episodic sequels, and multiplayer-only Team Fortress 2) really is. And although our Threevue Game of the Year went to Call of Duty 4, both Tyler and I voted TOB as #1, while Mark who clearly knows nothing about video games voted it #5.

If you haven’t played Portal, go buy The Orange Box and play it. And play through the Half-Life 2 games while you’re at it, when you get a spare 20+ hours. It’s safe to say that the entire experience is equivalent to that picture above.

Cheapskate: That’s Barely a Dollar Per Kill!

I got a great game at an even better price today via Gamefly’s May used game sale. There are some pretty good deals on their site, but the best one, I thought, was Assassin’s Creed for $18.99. I also used my five Gamefly bucks that I got for my first three months of membership, bringing the total to the bargain basement price of $14.62!

It’s true, I already played through the game, but I’ve been craving some Templar-killing action lately, and maybe someday I’ll get all those damned flags. Plus, 14 bucks is small price to pay for such a great game, especially when compared to the $15 dollar price tag of the crap-fest Reservoir Dogs on the OGXbox.

My Gripes: Assassin’s Annoyances

I’ve been playing this a lot lately, I may even beat it tonight or tomorrow. A few gripes:

1. The combat in the game was probably made with simplicity in mind – the problem is, it’s so simple that it gets really annoying. And boring.

2. Why can’t a highly-trained assassin touch water? One foot into that wet stuff and I’m dead.

3. Riding through the countryside from one place to another on a horse while everyone wants to kill you is no fun. It was kinda cool at first.

The Pace Of An Assassin

I’ve settled into a bit of a gaming rut, and have decided to focus only on Assassin’s Creed, little by little, until I utterly destroy it. I’m not going for 1000/1000 achievements or anything (I’ll be damned if I’m going to scour all these ancient cities for some lame flags) but I hope to get pretty close.

Today I really felt like my playing has gone in sync with the pacing of the game itself. The whole thing is such a behemoth, with some unconventional controls and vast areas to explore. But as I was leaping from rooftop to rooftop today evading some pesky guards I realized that this game really is transcendent to a level of art that few games hit.

Now if I could only figure out how to fight a little better.