The more I play these games, the less I actually want to jump around. It’s a hassle to move up, down and around structures. Though they make the assassin swifter, and savvy, the problem of gameplay feels especially prevalent in Unity because I don’t recall ever having going up and down split into two separate buttons. It’s petty, but counter-intuitive to gameplay I feel should be seamless.

So instead of taking the supposed shortcut of traveling across rooftops, it felt less of a hassle to just run down the streets of France to get to where I needed to go. Sure the streets are much busier, and there’s too many people just standing around, but all too often I’m actually pressing the wrong button when parkouring, and fall to my death, or jump to the wrong thing (or sometimes nothing at all).

But on one hand, it’s interesting to watch my laziness in gameplay form. Putting in as little effort to go anywhere and do anything is probably a metaphor for the series (at least for me). But I keep sitting here and giving every next game a chance. Maybe I’ll like it more than I think I do? But I don’t. I can’t help but feel like Assassin’s Creed 2 is the only time they found a perfect balance, and every game since then has just a delusional focus group of what the company thinks people want more of, and then beating the horse to death.

It bothers me that I keep coming to the conclusion that maybe Ubisoft is really just out of touch. I’ve talked about it with a friend over the weekend, in which I actively compared Ubisoft to Electronic Arts. Though EA gets flack for being a terrible company, they actively do try to deliver a game worth playing. Whether it’s something new or something annualized, I really do believe they’re trying to make a game worth your while.

With Ubisoft I never see that... Perhaps the reason why they have a large majority of the company working on every single game is because each person is responsible for one little thing that the company believes works and are too afraid to actually take chances with franchises old and new. So maybe that’s why every game feels far too similar. Why objectives, maps and side-things are all across the board. (The Crew is really just assassin’s creed, but instead of climbing on everything, you drive everywhere. and you drive yourself through the ranks to get an apple or something. What if a Sage is the leader of the 5-10s? Is that even what they’re called? I kind of forget, I played the Beta of that game a little bit and the driving bothers me SO MUCH. I don’t think I’ll care to play it when it comes out.)

But speaking of ‘out of touch’ The Evil Within is another such game that gives me that feeling. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand it as a survival or even horror game. I’ve played enough of it to see it’s just been one long story driven ‘horde mode’ and I don’t feel anything beyond that. I enjoy the game for the constant parallels I keep drawing (for myself) to the Resident Evil series. It gave me drive to continue playing it, as long as I was mocking it along the way.

I hoped to have fun with it, and to an extent it’s ok. In terms of the actual gameplay, you’re already familiar with it. Playing anything like Resident Evil 4 to Shadows of the Damned, and it doesn’t really evolve concepts that are already established in those types of games. You bundle that gameplay up with a nonsensical story that “won’t tell you what’s really happening”, which is more than likely “crazy for the sake of crazy.” And the whole attempt at the game feels lazy and makes you wonder why this game even came out like this.

I really love me some Shinji Mikami, but it makes me wonder if and when he started phoning it in. Survival-horder games, are not interesting. But I have to hand it to the Evil Within, it makes Resident Evil 6 look pretty friggin good.

But let’s get down to business. How has everyone been enjoying their new Smash Brothers game? I picked it up at an early launch, at the nearby eb games. It always seems like a good idea at the time, but then I end up standing there for longer than I want to listening to children talk hot shit about video games.

But the pain was soon over as I picked up Smash boys, along with a Link Amiibo (whom I’ve affectionately called 'SocialLink’) and I can honestly say I’m impressed with how fun the game has been. I never had any doubt considering I picked up the 3DS version of the game, and played that for many hours, but I’m impressed with the quality of the online.

It did have it’s hiccups at first. Bits of lag here and there that sometimes resulted in someone getting booted (or one evening it didn’t even boot me, it just moved me to a separate lobby), but I’ve had plenty of successful matches with friends online.

It couldn’t have come at a better time with my term coming to an end, and all these silly exams that I have to study for, which I don’t have the time for because I’m enjoying playing smash bros. again.

When she was first revealed, I felt an overwhelming sense of duty to main Wii Fit trainer. I’ve been very confident with that decision (except for whenever my friend Dolphin plays Dr. Mario. That Doctor is a REAL MONSTER, and should never be trusted with your health) the normal attacks seem to be her tricky part that I’m yet to utilize, because she happens to be able to attack behind herself just as much as she punches forward.

A close second is Zero Suit Samus. I’ve really been enjoying the way she plays, and actually have a tendency to abuse the down special if only because I want to be a nuisance. I also prefer to play Lucina over Marth because of her speed, and out of principle. The Fire Emblem roster should have really just been Awakening characters.

Which is actually the caveat I have with this game. This smash definitely has a problem with having too many characters from the same franchises. It does feel like there’s too many Fire Emblem characters, too many Pokemon (with Mewtwo on the way), too many Marios and Zeldars. If people view this as a celebration of Nintendo history, then why don’t they take bigger chances with the roster? Some of those assist trophies could have easily been a playable fighter. Heck, Duck Hunt was probably the coolest inclusion to the game (in terms of Nintendo history).

despite the fun that this game is, the roster is definitely feeling padded and lazy, and it makes me wonder if the inevitable future game in the franchise is just going to be a larger roster that is more of the same.

Now I really have to plop this blog post down before I sit on it for another week. I really should get back into the habit of this.