Assassin's Creed III and Women

This isn't going to be a long post but just a sort of mini rant based on something I stumbled upon yesterday. Earlier in the week I saw a handful of gaming posts that had something to do with Assassin's Creed III and women but I filtered it out. ACIII looks like a super cool game but that's not really something I'm a big fan of. Either way, I finally settled down and read a Forbes article about it and was rather surprised.

They discussed a bit of why a woman lead wouldn't jive with this game. In particular, creative director Alex Hutchinson said:

“In this period it’s been a bit of a pain. The history of the American Revolution is the history of men. There are a few people, like John Adams’ wife. They tried very hard in the TV series to not make it look like a bunch of dudes, but it really is a bunch of dudes.”

Just this would have been irksome enough but then the Forbes author added on:

"Of course, this applies to essentially all of history up until the very recent past. History is largely the story of a bunch of dudes, though this is hardly the point."

Okay, what? I can almost expect that developers aren't going to think outside the box. I have come to mostly accept that they will add in all sorts of unrealistic elements to a history (league of assassins spanning the globe and time periods, hello) but not allow women to take a leading role (you can be a woman assassin in multiplayer). This is expected even though it's a cop out. However, to see the Forbes writer suggest that women have played only a small role in "all of history" is incredible.

For some reason I thought Forbes was a smart people publication written by other smart people. Anyway, this barely has to do with games but I thought I'd point it out. Of course history we get in schools is full of men - who do you think is selecting topics to write about for the textbooks?! You'd think with women being, you know, half the population that they would obviously have a large contribution to the world around them.  I guess people who accept their history classes as the complete history of everything worth knowing just assume women sat around doing nothing for centuries like they were supposed to and only started becoming autonomous lately.

It's just so incredible. Without any thoughts otherwise, both these men completely accept what they've been taught over the years. Sure, the things that do get taught are highly factual but what they leave out is telling. Gosh, I hope sometime people with different mindsets and life experiences will be given the chance to create triple A games. We need to see truly different stories told and dispersed to the gamer masses.

66 - Enchanted Arms (360)

Genre: SRPG
Rating: T
Developer: From Software
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: 360 (Also: PS3)
Release Date: 2006

I'm not really sure what spurred me to play Enchanted Arms but it led to a really great day of gaming. Usually I don't find myself playing games for more than an hour at a time. For one, there's other business to attend to. The much larger problem though tends to be that I just can't remain interested for that long with nay game anymore. Every once in a while something grabs hold and won't let go (like, say, Corpse Party) but otherwise even the most "addictive" games are passed over by me.

So it was definitely really strange when this RPG managed to hook me in for a great deal of hours on my first time playing it. The game isn't honestly all that great though. The graphics have definitely been surpased by now and the voice acting in particular is awful. You can switch between the English and Japanese voices and, unless you need a laugh, stick with Japanese. I just left it at default English voices because it made the otherwise same-y story have more life.

The game itself is basically a turn-based SRPG. What makes this more interesting is that you've got "golems" to create. These golems are basically like Pokemon or anything else because one big point of the game is to catch them all and train them well. They gain new abilities and all that jazz just like other members in your party do. It's rather fun.

What makes this game probably so awesome to me is that it adds in a lot of features that modern RPGs should have. For one, it allows the option to save anywhere. Why is this still not the case in every game? Just keep players from being able to save mid-battle or something and then it should be fine. Secondly, the game lets you put battles on auto and even speed up the proceedings with the push of a button. I wish more games allowed you to fast forward through the repetitive bits. These were pretty much necessary additions though as random battles happen a lot.

For all the good stuff I have to say about it, Enchanted Arms failed me at about 7 or 8 hours in. It's around this point that the game finally takes on JRPG tactics of old and requires copious amounts of grinding because all enemies have suddenly become insanely strong. I don't like grinding in any games and I wish this didn't have to be a part of the genre. So, I've put it aside for now and don't expect to touch it anytime soon. Still, for a fan of the genre it would probably be worth trying out to see what it does right.

Would I play again? No.

52 - Assassin's Creed II (360)

Genre: Action adventure
Rating: M
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: 360 (Also: PC, PS3)
Release Date: 2009

When Assassin's Creed was going to come out I was pretty hyped. I picked it up day one and at that point realized it was actually a really annoying game. It was dull and repetitive and even the story was awkwardly woven. That's why when Assassin's Creed II came out that I didn't rush out to buy it. I played it a little and found it a big improvement, but nothing special overall. Because of that, I have avoided Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood like the plague.

This weekend I played it again because my partner was over and I know she really loves it. I felt it would be a nice way to spend a bit of downtime after a bit of a Banjo-Kazooie run. Somehow, playing it for the second time felt brand new. That, along with the knowledge base of my co-pilot made the game a lot more understandable.

Where I struggled the first time I was able to pass in a few tries. Where once I had a huge problem scaling buildings I was now vaulting from roof to roof like a pro. I have no idea what really changed in two years, but it was really invigorating this time around.

As for the gameplay, it's still not very deep overall (you can win most fights by mashing the same attack button). Beyond that, the game still manages to be a very entertaining package. There is more to do this time around. There's even the basics of a strategic game where you improve a city to increase funds generated. Finally, you have the fact that Ezio - or at least his outfit - is crazy attractive. You gotta love a guy with style.

There is one thing about the game I strongly dislike, and that is the story. Not overall, because the Ezio story is pretty neat. It's the story that comes from the "modern" characters like Desmond who are trying to decode Ezio's world. Why couldn't the game have purely been a historical kind of piece? The modern storyline seemed extremely tacked on and could have been ignored completely in favor of the purely renaissance-era world. How they attempt to tie the stories together at the end is just plain stupid and in fact feels like they put it there just so Brotherhood could come and finish off the story later. I've heard that the first Assassin's Creed had a similar cliffhanger ending but I could never get myself to really enjoy that game.

Would I play again? Nah. (I beat it and had about all the fun I could with it)

33 - Beyond Good and Evil HD (XBLA)

Genre: Action-adventure
Rating: T for Teen
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: XBLA, PSN
Release date: 2011 (HD)

You know what's an awesome game? This one. Like, oh my goodness I haven't played something this fantastic in a while. The PS2 is one of my favorite modern consoles by a landslide because it was just brimming with excellent games. While I got to experience many as they came out such as various Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solids I totally ignored this one.

Yeah, I knew that it had a cult following. I heard all these people always giving it tons of praise but for whatever reason never went to actually try and play through it. However, I did buy it the year after it came out or so for pretty cheap on a Black Friday sale. Sometime around then I popped it into my console too but only played for maybe 10 minutes.

From those initial 10 minutes it really seemed like a hokey game. There didn't seem to be anything particularly special about it and so I figured everyone must have been crazy and put it back away. However, upon playing the XBLA release I was forced to get past the intro (to review it for a site) and fell in love almost immediately after the first few minutes. Despite games rarely grabbing a hold of my attention this one did it with insane force. I fell right in love.

Damn, there's really no way to express how much I love this game. The experience was wonderful and never too frustrating to play. There were some weird glitches at times but usually it was all good. If you've never played this one I really suggest giving it a try, especially now that's available for a fair price. If you want to check out my actual review thing then you can click here.

Would I play again? Yes!

26 - Chessmaster

Genre: Board
Rating: E
Developer: Ubisoft Romania
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PS2 (Also: GBA)
Release date: 2003

Chess is pretty awesome. I'm not all too good at it, and maybe because of this I've never cared to seek out a chess video game to play. Well, unless you count that action chess game on N64. What's the name of that game?

So yeah, I don't really trust my skill at the board game but that's no reason to not try. The first thing that struck me about this game was just how many options and various modes there were. It was a fully packed disc. Among the various gameplay modes (including an online mode) there was even a section where you could view famous chess matches. If I were more into chess I'm sure that would have really excited me.

What is really sad is that I put my skill level basically as I stated. There were four difficulty selections and I put myself at the second from the bottom. Despite this, the AI still kicked my butt in 5 moves. It was embarrassing.

Overall Chessmaster seems like a really solid package for a chess fan but there's nothing really for the casual player. Well, there are tutorial modes and you in fact have access to help persistently when you play a regular match but I doubt that stuff would have helped me out with my game. It seems the AI was just a tad too intelligent for my skill level and that's just too bad, because none of my friends ever want to or even know how to play a fun game of chess.

Would I play again? No