Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Assassin's Creed: Revelations


In light of the recent release of Assassin's Creed IV (which is actually the sixth installment in the series) I thought I would set aside some time and talk about Revelations. Why, you ask? Because Assassin's Creed: Revelations was easily the worst installment in the series so far. As with every Assassin's Creed game, that opinion is far from being across the board; there are some aggregates who called Revelations the best AC game thus far, but I think most people would agree, this was a low point for the series.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Assassin's Creed. Nobody was more ready for Revelations than I was. I preordered it, I had the poster, I was obsessed with the trailer and watched it probably a dozen times along with the various other gameplay showcases and such, I read all of the news covering it and I even went back and renewed some of the experiences from the older games just so everything was all fresh in my mind. I really wanted to love this game when I put the disc into my console on November 15th, 2011.
What I got was a bit disappointing.


First and foremost were the graphics. Now, I'm not one to get all uppity over such a thing, most of my favorite games are featured on older consoles. I know that fancy graphics do not a great game make but did anyone else watch the release trailer? Was there any doubt that this game would look stunning beyond what any other game had previously accomplished? Ezio does not look like the badass assassin master that we saw with a noose around his neck in the trailer, he looks... homely. I can't quite place it but they messed up his face somehow.
Next we have the setting. Before I played the game, I thought that Constantinople would be a really great city for Ubisoft to work their creative magic. It seemed ripe for the assassinating. When I got there, however, I realized it wasn't quite as fitting as I'd originally thought it would be. It was crowded, shrouded and all very much the same looking. It made me miss the clear openness of the previous installments or the many completely unique structures and city squares that those worlds were littered with. I found myself becoming very board very quickly with this dull landscape that you'd expect would be just the opposite. And sure, it's vibrant at first but after playing for a few hours, you'll know what I mean.
The next major issue is the equipment used within the game. The hookblade was a big selling point for this installment and it was supposed to be this awesome new tool that would reshape the way you play the game. However, if you've played AC III, you know that the hookblade isn't in that game at all so obviously, this did not happen. The hookblade could be utilized in many ways to assist in combat, escape, climbing or just getting around. Despite all of that, I found that I barely used the damn thing. Every chance I had the opportunity to use the mechanic, I either didn't think of it, found it was too difficult to go out of my way to pull off or I simply didn't require it. For instance, you can do this neat escape maneuver that does a flip over a stationary guard while you maintain your speed in a sprint but instead of doing that, I found it much easier to just run around the guard, that way there's no chance of me fucking up the timed button pressing. The only thing I regularly used it for was for zip-lining which was, admittedly, really cool.
Another equipment inclusion would be that of the reimagined bomb system. Whereas in the old games, you had a bunch of smoke bombs that could be used tactically to either make an opening or stall for an escape, in Revelations you'd be able to construct your own bombs and tailor them for use in various situations. This is done by combining a plethora ingredients that you can acquire throughout the world be it from a locked treasure chest or off of a dead guard's body. This is a neat idea and I can see where they were going with it as it encourages the player to explore and think tactically. Depending on what ingredients you use you can control the size of the explosion, method of detonation and the effect of the bomb. For instance, one bomb could just kill while one is a smoke bomb while still another is a blood bomb that creates panic. At first I got all enraptured in this idea and thought it was great until I realized something: they're all pretty much the same. Yep. The only real difference between bombs is that you have ones that kill and ones that stall. Size? Always go maximum, no reason not to. As for the detonation, don't bother with anything that's not explosion on impact after being thrown. I found that even after all of my meticulous planning I still had a very difficult time getting guards to walk across my tripwire bombs and even then it wasn't worth much when I could easily just kill him myself and be done with it.

Pictured: Being done with it.
When I play through Assassin's Creed games, I don't take any part of it for granted. I do everything from even the pettiest of side quests to collecting all of those elusive feathers and achievements. You know what's fun? Putting effort into obtaining money and then purchasing land in order to build a strong tax base in order to buy more equipment as well as more land and then being satisfied as you reap your rewards. You know what isn't fun? Finishing that only to have someone erase your hard work before telling you to do it all again. This is what I faced with Revelations which tasked me with buying all kinds of land and properties in the exact same manner that Brotherhood had me do. At least they upgraded and modified the process from AC II to Brotherhood but here it's just copied and pasted. I didn't even give it the time on my playthrough and to this day, it remains unfinished. Who wants to do all that shit twice?
Another thing that remains begrudgingly the same would be the Borgia tower missions. AC Brotherhood introduced this feature wherein if you systematically take out the Templar-backed Borgia fortresses, you could gain land and footholds towards taking Rome for the Assassins. Revelations lazily recycles this idea and by now, it's just tedious.
What's even worse is the addition of the tower defense mini-game which received ubiquitous disapproval. In this mini-game which occurs randomly during gameplay, Ezio must command his assassins to defend one of the multiple towers that you've won from the assailing Templars. You do this by positioning various squads at different vantage points. This is fun all of one time, after which it's a drag and you'll wish the Templars could just take the stupid tower and coexist. Furthermore, this completely dissolves the whole idea of the enduring secret war between the Assassins and Templars that is a (if not the) defining point in the story that sets up the universe. All of this sniping and bombing and exploding and marching and armies just kills it completely.

Ezio signals commands to his Assassins during a high profile tower invasion.

But what's probably the biggest complaint I have for this game is your invincibility. I could probably count on two hands the number of times I died during my playthrough of Revelations (not including the times I deliberately committed suicide). With the first AC game, you were fairly weak and charging head on into a big group of guards was a pretty dumb move, at least in the beginning of the game. The second game was much the same way and Brotherhood added in the assassin follower mechanic wherein, you can summon your underlings to take out menial targets for you. This was an interesting and useful addition to the game that spared you the trouble of going way out of your way to kill everyone and probably saved you more than once.
But in Revelations it's flat out abused. In Brotherhood, it takes awhile before you accumulate enough assassins to pull these stunts off but in Revelations you have it really early on. On the other hand, you don't really need the assassins because you're already so armed to the teeth with bombs, swords, guns, crossbows and a whole shit load of other things to keep any foe at bay. Once you figure out the fighting mechanics, nothing can touch you and the entire stealth feature goes out the window. Why even bother sneaking or trying to run away when you could easily just kill your way through anything? I found that I never had to even think about something before I just dove right in. I could use eagle vision and plan out a complicated attack but there's simply no reason to do so.
Well, the game does add in the full-synchronization feature from the other games, which is basically a bonus objective to complete in each mission (e.g. don't be detected, don't take damage) but I hate it just as much now as I did then. I almost always make an attempt for these bonus points just out of a sense of obligation but they take a lot of the fun of the game away from the player. If it's telling you exactly how it thinks you should approach the situation then whatever happened to the whole 'choose your own methods' thing? Furthermore, just trying for these frustratingly difficult goals often had me throwing my controller in anger. Long story short, the normal game is too easy but the full-synchronization is just too fucking hard.


But even after all of that, Assassin's Creed: Revelations is not that bad a game. I loved that they brought Altaïr back and after all those years, it was nice to get some closure to his story. However it was admittedly pretty absurd that you were sitting in your living room controlling Desmond who's in the Animus controlling Ezio who is controlling Altaïr... still however a great addition and big selling point for this game.
After all, the game is called Revelations and Ubisoft definitely made good on that. They cleared up a lot of the questions that had been floating around since the end of the first game. As far the story aspect goes, this game satisfies and excels. Interestingly, I didn't find the plot-twist at the end to be that, well... twisty. The reason being is not by any fault of the game by any means but rather because of an intricate side-quest in AC II that tasked the player with tracking down numerous runes and symbols hidden in out-of-the-way, otherwise unremarkable places. These runes are invisible unless you view them through eagle-vision, making them all the more obscure. After finding one, you unlock a challenging puzzle mini-game and upon completing that, you'll be granted a few fractions of a second of a clip. When you complete the entire clip, the game rewards you with something that makes a huge allusion to what is eventually explained at the end of Revelations. After I took many hours to laboriously track these down and having months to think about and hypothesize about the clip, I was able to arrive at a simplified version of the conclusion we're treated with in Revelations.
One of the reasons I love this series is because you can go and do things like that and to me, that just adds so much intricacy to the game. That they had this whole elaborate puzzle that they must have known only a handful of people would figure out.


On the other hand, the online multiplayer is also a very rewarding distraction. For Revelations, they took the existing formula they created for Brotherhood and innovated upon it, expanding it to accommodate more game-types and to appeal to more styles. I wish that the techniques utilized online were as prevalent in the story mode. Online, if you go high profile by sprinting everywhere and jumping around, you're doomed. The game rewards creative and stealthy approaches to your kills whereas in the single player, I found that there were multiple times where I simply had no choice but to engage in a head-on assault which would've practically been blasphemy if it were in the first or second game.
I don't hate Assassin's Creed: Revelations, not by a long shot. It's still a good game however, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless you're involved with playing through the series, in which case, you can't afford to miss it as it's integral to the lore of the game. It's still full of great mechanics and it's built atop an already awesome series but it's terribly flawed. The problem with taking a leap and going out on a limb as the Assassin's Creed games often do is that some times, the innovations just don't work out. However, Revelations was a combination of this and the exact opposite problem. Not changing enough. AC II was a massive step above the original and Brotherhood took that formula and perfected it. After two games of that, by the time I got to Revelations, I was ready for change that didn't come. They innovated in places that didn't call for it and left things that should have been amended. Overall, not a bad game but definitely below the standard that I hold for this exemplary series.

7/10 - Good formula. Flawed execution.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Top 10 Black Metal Logos

One of the major staples of black metal, the leading paradigm of bad stereotypes and concerned mothers in music, is their flamboyant usage of often illegible artwork that they display as their logo. These artworks generally include the band's name and are often quite impressive and intricate works. Today I'll be counting down my top ten and believe me, it was difficult to choose out of the many runners up.

10. Xasthur


This depressive American one-man-band is known for the usage of topics of suicide, despair and other comforting emotions as musical basis. The name Xasthur is a combonation of the name Xastur and Xenaoth, two spirits from some pagan thing or another. Another fun tidbit, the original band name was going to be Xasthuriath but it was shortened to just Xasthur in 1997. But fuck, that logo, man. It's like an explosion of angst.

9. Anataeus


This one has all kinds of shit going on in it. Look, for instance, to the top of the logo, you should be able to make out a 6-6-6. Anataeus is a classic, straight-up satanist band that is every bit as cliche as you've heard black metal is. That's all fine and dandy for some but the rhetoric is a bit tired and it's good to see the genre taking new strides in the past decade.

8. Wolves In The Throne Room


Good fucking luck reading that one. Every time I think I see the words lining up, they always manage to disappear on me. WITTR is a black metal duo of brothers who've been around since 2004. They fancy themselves with subjects such as mysticism and the natural world which gives them a less angry vibe than a lot of other black metal bands. I like that.

7. Agalloch


Still one of my all-time favorite metal bands, the Oregon band, Agalloch, has been going strong since 1997 and hopefully won't be stopping any time soon. Delivering music that is both calming as well as hellish seems impossible but is pulled off flawlessly by the foursome. I like that the logo looks wooden and gnarled like dead trees.

6. Nhor


And speaking of bands that are just as serene as they are deathy, the one-man-artist, who simply goes by Nhor, is my personal favorite ambient black metal band and is right up there with Agalloch for all-time best black metal. Nhor has all his artwork done by an artist who goes by Sin-Eater. Sin-Eater designs the many monochromatic and bleak as well as beautiful and inspiring works that accompany Nhor's music. It's a great compliment considering Nhor's heavy emphasis on nature within his works.

5. Ayat


This one has clearly crossed the line between trying to make out the words and simply trying to make out any letters at all. The band is called Ayat and yes, if you look hard enough, the letters are all there. This Lebanese, straight-black band pretty much just hates all of humanity. Fun stuff.

4. Aifur


This is one of those bands that obnoxiously refer to themselves as nihilists which is basically a fancy word for atheist. If you're not a theist you're an atheist, you don't have to pretty it all up. Regardless, just look at that fucking logo. The way the roots make up the letters is just awesome.

3. Exiled From Light


Now that is what I call a fucking black metal band. This is complete with a forest of long, gnarled tendrils; dark, silhouetted birds; a callous sliver of a shrouded moon and ominous, stygian shadows. Another lone artist, this guy likes to refer to himself as Mort... He should hang out with Gort, the giant robot cyclops from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

2. Forestfather


Yes. Here we can see the obscure, international, atmospheric/folk metal band, Forestfather, taking the formula from Exiled From Light and perfecting it. While it's true there isn't any crescent moons involved, the way the words form a tree, complete with crows alighting upon it's branches; the way the letters are wispy and include tiny details such as the dozens upon dozens of minuscule branches and twigs reaching off of it... this logo is just beautiful. Bravo.
So what could possibly beat this one?

1. Coldworld


I'm not really sure why, but I really love this one. It's so simple but at the same time, imposing. Coldworld is yet another one-man project that has released two albums since 2006. The logo is minimalist in black metal terms. It's design perfectly compliments the gray, austerity of it's artworks. Truly awesome design, well-done.

Runners up:

Unsurprisingly, there were several bands who didn't quite make the cut, however, I'd like to pay them homage as well.


Korgonthurus


Darkthrone


Addaura


Bosque                                                     Triste


Senthil


October Falls


Woods of Pestilence                                                        Dark Fortress


Austere

Those were just my top favorites. This was a hard list to make because even discluding the logos above, there are dozens of other bands I could've chosen. Did I miss any good ones?