Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

I'm kind of glad that I get to review AssCreeBro as a noob meaning this is the first AssCreed I ever play. No rampant fanboism in this review no way!

AssCreedBro is the third game by Ubisoft (And all the multicultural people who work there) in the AssCreed series and the second game featuring the oh so sexy Ezio Auditore Da something something.

Starting off the game I was completely lost on what was going on but luckily some light recapping done by Ezio and various cutscenes got me caught up with the main bullet points of the AssCreed storyline. Apparently the world has been taken over by some horribly oppressive force and it up to Desmond and his Scooby gang to chase down an ancient artifact that might be the answer to bringing down the corporation.

In the beginning you get to test out the basic controls fro controlling Ezio and I would like to say, hand cramps. I've never had to hold so many buttons to do things before. It felt weird in the beginning when you were being forced to keep up with someone as you ran through a small villa and I couldn't stay on the rooftops for more that 3 seconds without flailing and falling onto the ground below. As the game progressed however I got the hang of the basic jump,climb, run mechanic and found it to be fluid. Not one of the easiest games to learn the controls for.

The fighting is where this game puts me off. Its just so clunky and awkward I avoided fighting unless I accidentally stabbed a guard (which happened way too much). I'm not going to lie, when you landed a hit it felt solid and the clang of metal against metal or flesh was music to my ears. The thing was that you had to hold a button to do counters or dodge an attack and when you're being attacked by 10 or more guards you don't have enough reaction time and wind up getting sliced up. Even when you do try to do a counter if its off by a second you end up doing this weird mystical hand wave thing that leaves you open for attack. Regular attacking is just a one button mash until you land a hit and kill your opponent so there are no combos to preform. There is a kick button which is insanely helpful when the asshole guards block 98% of your attacks; it breaks their guard by delivering a kick to the balls. When you do manage to counter Ezio preforms glorious dance of death that has him kill an enemy in such a great way; from double eye stabs to a blade in the stomach to neck breaking, its really something. The silent assassinations are pretty easy to do and incredibly satisfying. Dropping a Borgia guard and continuing your badass mofo walk is easy and highly awesome.

I got a bit lost with the story but from what I gathered, a man named Cesare Borgia son of the first Borgia you kill in the second game (So I've heard) is back for revenge or something but he attacks Ezio's city, kills his Uncle Mario, and confronts Ezio inviting him to Rome then shooting him. This pisses off Ezio and vows revenge. The story circles around Cesare and how Ezio takes him down bit by bit. Then some orb comes into play that has amazing amounts of power (but bogs you down extremely when you actually use it in-game) and needs to be taken away from him. You meet alot of great characters during the span of the single player story(Leonardo is here again), each with their own problems that Ezio MUST help them resolve. In the real world, Desmond and the gang find out where the orb is and some things happen in the end that left me going wtf. Cliff hanger ending that irritated me but my friends say that's how the first two AssCreed's ended.

Ok now to the main thing about the new AssCreed, the Assassins you can hire. You can spot them being attacked by Borgia guards and you must defend them and kill the guards before you can hire them. You can send them on on assassinations to different locations and although the descriptions sound awesome the assassination contracts occur via tons amount of texts and commands. You can also call assassins into battle to help you out and kill certain targets so you don't have to or want to remain hidden. There's also a pretty awesome Arrow Storm ability when you have a certain amount of assassins that lets you rain down arrows on groups of Borgia for fast crowd control. All and all they are insanely helpful in a pinch and are easily replaceable if one falls in battle (which is rare anyway).

Quick note, this game is incredibly gorgeous. Seriously I've never seen such a great looking game. From the cobblestone streets to the architecture to the sky, everything is very nicely made and makes you feel like you're in there during that time period.

There are tons of collectibles with the Feathers and Flags and there is also renovation of buildings which I find kind of stupid since the money you earn from renovating them is the same money you use to renovate other buildings so its a vicious cyclone of money. You can use money to upgrade your gear but they don't cost much and neither do health potions so you end up with all this extra cash and nothing to spend it on which just keeps on growing until your wallet explodes I guess. You get tons of weapons but you'll end up using your double blades the majority of the time and the rest feel like random knickknacks you can't get rid of.

In all this game is great and if you're a pre-existing fan of the franchise you probably already have it but if you're a new player I suggest it highly. It inspired me to go out and buy AssCreed2 and see what I've been missing.

(Note: I didn't talk about the multiplayer partly because I had no one to play with and I forgot it existed before returning it.)

[PROTOTYPE]

Prototype has to be one of the greatest fucking around games to come out in the last 3 years. I say that because you can waste a good chunk of time throwing people into buildings and elbow dropping into cars before remembering the game has a main quest line.

Prototype, a sandbox game,(By Radical Entertainment and Activision) gives you controlled of a super powered test subject called Alex Mercer. He wakes up in the morgue of the testing facility and sets out to find out what happened to him. Yes, another main character with amnesia and the entire story revolving around it; not the freshest idea in the cliche box but I doubt you'll care much.

Prototype gives you a superhero(villain?) level character and sets you lose in New York City, more specifically Manhattan (duh) with plenty of high buildings you will most likely be hurling yourself off of and landing on innocent people below. Like I said, Prototype is the best game to just have incredible amounts of fun without even touching the main quest line. You are given incredible amounts of power usually coming in the form of giant blades, spikes and bludgeons. High jumps can't kill you and actually cause shockwaves throwing anything nearby off to the side. You can also glide by squirting out jets of blood from your hands and feet (that's what it looks like, it may be magical grape jelly that makes you fly for all I know) making traveling through Manhattan feel effortless.

The controls for these may take some time to get use to but are overall easy to understand. You can charge up jumps by holding jump button while running to do a mega jump that you can use to easily clear barricades and small buildings. Selecting different weapons is simple by letting you use a radial menu that slows down the game to a crawl giving you SOME time to chose the right weapon before being torn open by a giant mutant or a tank. There is a quickslot option that maps a weapon, an appearance, a sensing ability and a shield ability to the D-Pad which allows you to massacre an entire block then quickly transform into an old lady and walk away like nothing happened. The human consume ability is enjoyable to say the least. It replenishes your health but also gives you that person's appearance. What makes it amusing is HOW you consume someone. You either punch them through the chest, slam them on the ground, or snap their spine. If you have a mutation weapon selected it gives you different moves.

As you could've guessed this game is bloody, bloody, bloody. Blood and body parts will be all over the place when you go on a rampage. Even when certain areas of Manhattan get infected by the virus you're trying to keep under control, the streets and buildings turn red and people mutated into blood covered zombies.

Oh right the story. The story for Prototype is confusing. Its like a conspiracy/revenge plot with you trying to discover who you really are and what the company (GenTec) is doing with all these mutants but the government is involved and trying to cover it up but the virus is escaping somehow and there's this woman you're trying to save. Its really confusing. Its so confusing that there are people you can consume to fill something called a Web Of Intrigue which explains what the hell is going on. they needed collectible human brains to try to explain to the player whats going on in the main story they're playing through. Right then.

My biggest gripe in Prototype is the lack of a block button. There IS a dodge button but sometimes that just doesn't cut it. Especially when there are monsters (picture a giant gorilla turned inside out) that do an chain attack that you can't block or jump out off and when there's more than one you can kiss your mutated ass goodbye. Another thing was some of the combos you could unlock. Some of them have you press two buttons at once but sometimes they pick strange buttons like X and B which are impossible to press without hitting A or Y (unless you have strangely slender fingers) so it makes them un-usable in a battle against the army or a hoard of mutants. Last thing the graphics could have used a bit more polish. Things look muddy and at times textures look cloudy and messy. The explosions are.....oi the explosions.

If you want a game that's high in messing around and low on story, Prototype is a great choice. Solid gameplay, simple enough controls, and a high replay value. What more could you want? (Plus its probably like 15 bucks now so its worth a check out)

Fable III

Ok so I'm going to try to get through this without sounding like a jaded gamer which is extremely hard for me because of what Fable 2 did to me.

Fable III is the third game by Peter Molyneux in attempt to make you care about the fate of a bunch of emotional-less NPCs being oppressed by their King who happens to be your brother. You are essentially the rebel child and set off to try and overthrow him to make Albion a better place to live. The reason that I was so upset with Fable II was the lack of any real change from the first one. It just felt like the only things that changed were bigger maps and a dog. Even the story lacked any real kick and sadly Fable III follows its predecessor with its uninspired story.

The game starts off following around a chicken. Yes a chicken. It follows it as it tries to escape from being killed by random towns folk as Reaver (yes again) does the narration. The chicken ends up being killed (spoiler?) and one of its feathers lands on your window sill thus beginning your journey.

Right away you'll notice that the lip sync and graphics for this game are god awful. I'm being totally serious the lip work is totally off and the cutscenes(apart from like 3 HD ones) look even worse. It looks like everyone has lockjaw. You would think that will all the next gen engines that Lionhead would've gotten a better one. The only thing that look decent are the horizon shots which look pretty colorful and I guess the fog but I don't think anyone can mess up how fog looks.

Speaking of fog let me quickly touch on the monsters, most of the monsters are exactly the same from the last to games although rather uglier especially the Balverines. There are a few monsters but they are confined to an area so you wont be seeing them around as often. You will fight Hollow Men. Lots and lots of Hollow Men. They are EVERYWHERE. They've become what Hobbs where in the first and second game.

The combat for Fable III is pretty much exactly the same as Fable II. You're standard each button controls Magic,Ranged and Melee. The Melee combat is still the same flail and flourish type of combat. I don't know a lot about the ranged since I barely used it. It was pretty useless since magic does twice the damage and casts faster than you can shot and reload. The Magic for Fable is still great which is the only thing I still love about the Fable series. The magic combinations are fun but feel a tad overpowered at times. The one big step back for magic is the fact that you can't scroll through them on the fly, they are now in the form of gloves which you need to swap out (you can only have one at a time or two if you've unlocked the spell combination skill)and some spells have been converted to potions that you use on the D-pad. I didn't like the fact that when you could combine two spells you couldn't use the spells on their own. For example if you had Fire and Vortex you couldn't just use vortex, it had to be vortex and fire.

They bring back so many elements from the old games in Fable III it feels like you're playing Fable I again. You're base is again the Guild HQ. There you can swap weapons, spell gloves, clothes, etc. This opens up when you press the start button so saving is a bit longer. Luckily you can do it in the middle of a fight if you feel a spell or weapon isn't adequate for the current situation you can just change it. Reaver is also around and she will be your guide(again) through what you need to do. The story for Fable III is so overly dramatic. You have to gain followers to help you overthrow your brother and you have to make promises with them in order for them to join you. I thought to myself, a quick slip of poison into my brother's morning coffee wouldn't have done the trick? I LIVE IN THE SAME CASTLE AS HIM!! But then I remembered it was a game and sighed. Anyway not only that, there is apparently a big shadow thing that is going to destroy Albion and so on. I heard that its similar to the black shadow in Kingdom Hearts. Never having played KH (don't judge me) I can't say but for those of you that HAVE, there you go.

The ending for Fable III is again a load of shit. You see it coming miles away and it isn't even that hard. I literally sat there and went "Is that really it?" They spend the entire last half of the game hyping up this huge war and then it happens and its over in a few minutes. In other words, don't get your hopes up for a change in tradition of Fable having crappy endings.

Customization has been obliterated in Fable III. You can't buy clothes the old fashion way, they sit out in the open and there's about 10 or so styles of clothing to choose from (if you don't mix and match). For a game that's all about the Role Play element they really messed it up in this game. Also the towns don't feel different. It all feels like you've been there before.

One more gripe and I'll end this (wow this got long) the button holding to open or do anything. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? I don't mind holding down the A button to open the door but I have to let it go for it to work. It doesn't automatically happen. Trust me, after playing so many games where doors open on one press, it will frustrate the crap out of you. Anyway, Fable III just made everything worse and didn't deserve to be made. That said, lets all sit back and wait for the inevitable Fable IV. Maybe they'll give us new ways to fart on people.