GhostofAnakin

Finished AC III's main story quest. Dumb final few missions, IMO. Decided to buy Batman Arkham Origins. It was either that, CoD Ghosts, or one of the older games I hadn't played yet. I went with Batman because I liked Arkham City and figured it's a good bet I'd like this one too. CoD, the novelty would probably wear off after playing for a couple of days.

Assassin's Creed III allows you to jump through the branches of trees, on top of the rooftop hopping. Yeah, but those branches suuuuuck. And all the rooftops are pretty short. Those branches really do suck. All those "synchronization" tasks where you have to get to the highest point of a given structure and hit the synchronize button for the tree areas, I didn't manage to do 90% of them because of the awkward tree climbing. Hopping from tree limb to tree limb wasn't so bad, it was just scaling trees to the tops that made me frustrated.

Assassin's Creed III allows you to jump through the branches of trees, on top of the rooftop hopping.

Yeah, I liked Altair the best of all the AC protagonists. Largely because, perhaps, he was the most mysterious and didn't dwell on his childhood. Conor is my least favorite, largely because a lot of these sequences seem to be repeating the previous one, with just a different name for the end boss.

The sequence missions also aren't particularly long, they're just padded with fluff to make them appear longer. For instance, it will take you a couple of minutes to ride on horse back across terrain with nothing to do other than literally following another dude. No enemies, no actual "gameplay" elements other than pointing the horse in the direction the companion is heading. I've found that so far too many of the main story missions are like this. Relatively short, but padded in length due to the inclusion of "gameplay" that is nothing more than a couple of minutes of traveling.

Assassin's Creed III is so hit and miss with me. One minute I'm actually enjoying it, the next I'm just pushing myself to finish it because I have nothing else to play. The missions in each sequence seem way too formulaic. What's worse, it just seems like each sequence is dedicated to killing another person off the list. I get that it's "assassin's creed", but it just seems way too repetitive and the sequences just flow into each other, since every character you kill seems no different than the previous.

Far Cry 3 is pretty entertaining. The story really goes off the rails at some point, but the openness and things to do can keep you entertained for quite a while. Plus there's nothing quite so amusing as seeing an enemy guard walking by a river bank on his patrol route, only to have a crocodile jump out of the water and drag him under. Saved me a bullet.

Okay, Assassin's Creed III has picked up a bit now that I'm officially an assassin. It still seems a lot more devoid of things to do than the previous versions.

Assassin's Creed III seems to be a wide open space of nothing to do compared to previous versions. Maybe it's just the early stages, but I'm at Sequence 5 and there's only the main quest and a couple of hunter challenges to do. It's just wide open terrain with not a whole lot of fun stuff. Also, the protagonist (so far) is so much more a boring character than Altair and Ezio to play as. I actually felt like an assassin playing them. This guy (the Indian dude), I just feel like I'm some dude running around the forest killing bears.

Assassin Creed III's story is ... certainly a divergence from the previous games.

I don't know how it is on the other systems, but on the XBox 360 it's very, very awkward. You start off by rotating the left thumb stick until you feel it vibrate, then you hold it in place. You then rotate the right thumb stick until it vibrates, then hold it in place while continuing to hold the left thumb stick in place. Then you mash the R2 button repeatedly, all while holding the two thumb sticks in the exact same position. Sounds relatively simple? The problem is the thumb stick positions have to be PERFECT. Your thumb twitches even a hair, and you have to start over. Maybe my dexterity sucks, but just the simple action of pressing the R2 button with my index finger causes the thumb on that hand to move ever so slightly. And that's what constantly causes me problems.

The lock picking mini-game in Assassin's Creed III is stupid. I don't know who comes up with these things and thinks it's actually fun.

Decided to go back to my save game of Assassin's Creed III from about a year ago. I gave up on the game early, so it's not like I got far the first time. But it's taking a bit to understand what the hell I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. I'm still not a fan of the combat. It doesn't feel very fluid or intuitive to me. The world is quite beautiful, though. It's the kind of "busy city" that I was hoping to see out of Dragon Age, especially the whole Denerim thing. But I've talked about that before, so I won't dwell. In any case, that's one thing Assassin's Creed does very well -- big cities actually feeling vibrant, alive, and packed with actual people.

Finished Splinter Cell: Blacklist on the realistic difficulty. You people should be proud of me. I usually wuss out and play the easiest settings only. I'm even going to attempt professional setting after I take a bit of a break from it.

Hmm... that in itself is enough for me to consider buying it.

What's new in the director's cut that wasn't there in the original?

Playing through Splinter Cell Blacklist on a higher difficulty. It's the first time I've ever replayed a stealth/action game. Usually, I only replay RPGs.

Apparently Blacklist didn't sell as well as Ubisoft had predicted so there probably will be changes next time. I think Blacklist is the most enjoyable of the series though, even if it's not the same genre as SC of old (which were all excellent). Yeah, I read similar. Well, if they do move far away from the Blacklist formula for the next game, they might lose one sale (however microscopic in the grand scheme of things, obviously).

Finished Splinter Cell Blacklist. IMO, better than Conviction. And, being a pretty bad stealth player, it had the perfect blend for me in terms of stealth, but more forgiveness in case you're seen. Hopefully this is what future Splinter Cell games will be like.

What the heck happened to gamespot's website? I was never a fan of their articles, but I did like the layout of their site. I used it to check on upcoming release dates and such. It was easy to navigate, even for "internet dummies". Now? It's ... a muddled mess. When will folks learn that often times less is more? ----- Finishing my play through of Splinter Cell Blacklist. I decided to play Conviction first before finishing Blacklist (was about a quarter of the way through). I like Blacklist better. There's just something ... RPG-ish about the ability between missions to hang around on the Paladin and either talk to my crew about the latest mission, or do a bunch of stuff like upgrade my gear or do Co-op missions.

I'll buy this, but man I wish Obsidian was doing Alpha Protocol 2/Dungeon Siege IV/KOTOR III/FO 4 instead.

Bought a copy of Splinter Cell Conviction for dirt cheap, so I'm playing that first before finishing my play through of Blacklist. These two last SC games are more to my liking than the earlier iterations, largely because they're more forgiving for folks like me that aren't very good at remaining stealthy.

Oh, and staring at Jill Valentine's butt all game never gets old.

Loved Revelations (played it on the 360). Much better than RE6, which I played immediately after it. IMO, Revelations was a good blend of old RE (ie. more survival horror/creepy environment) and new RE (shooting things like a third-person action game). I think it's the best compromise in the series, in terms of pleasing fans of the old style and new style of game. My only complaint is it's a bit short.

I have the opposite problem, which tends to ruin my replay experience with games. I remember *too much*, no matter how long it's been since I last played the game. I'd love to be able to replay a game and be all, "Oh crap, I forgot about this quest/mission". Instead, I'm usually, "Okay, I remember what comes next". Just finished a play through of one of Grim's side missions in Blacklist. I was able to unlock the Panther achievement because of it (Master the Panther Style on 7 Missions).