Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 11/11/2014

That thumbnail is great. Kinda sucks about the performance issues for AC: Unity though.

BEST thumbnail ever.

I don't follow this feature often (I usually only tune in for guests I'm interested in), but this thumbnail's gonna get me to listen to this installment.

Great Episode! Thanks for rearranging the schedule to get the much needed AC feedback.

"Unity reminds me of AClll, but with a lot more technical problems" - Alex Navarro.

Oh, wow. Fuck that game, then.

If anything, Unity getting 7s and 8s is the ultimate proof that the 7-10 reviewing scale is alive and well. That, coupled with the super-gross embargo and 99 dollar microtransactions; just goes to show how much things have changed for the worse these last few years.

Games like Sunset Overdrive give me hope, though.

Oh yes, so glad to see this image picked as the thumbnail.

Ubisoft PR has most likely cost them several million dollars the past seven days. The only thing the embargo has done is leave me with an extremely sour taste for this game, which I don't really know anything about.

Good job Ubisoft.

Here's Vinny's AC4 cow video Patrick mentioned:

Pssst, DA Inquisition has been getting some pretty good reviews and my expectations for that game were lower than Unity.

Game is nothing like AC3 though. It feels more like AC2 (AC2 HP system more or less, similar set up/beginning to the game, no overworld like AC3&4, Has a home base that you upgrade and got money from, just like AC2 where the English voice track randomly has foreign words thrown cause it kind of sounds cool, and so on) with Batman Arkham stealth mechanics (hold down trigger to crouch, last known position, etc.) and with character progression, weapon/armor unlocks, and you can take on multiple objectives at once. Also some pretty good co-op too. Obviously, it mostly takes place during the French Revolution as well. Also, much like AC2 it takes place during a time in which there is significant infrastructure to the Assassin Guild, and so forth.

So far it feels like AC2 but with a less memorable main character and an uneventful story outside of the OH SHIT TEMPLARS ARE DOING SHIT WE GOTTA STOP 'EM thing, which is what I guess Brotherhood had for the most part.

All these games have been mostly the same at their core since Brotherhood, let's be real... They don't even try to improve, yeah they added the ship stuff but the combat and structure/mission design have been identical for years.

People shouldn't buy this since Ubisoft have just shown they don't care at all about the consumer once again. (that and it's also just not a good product)

What I've been hearing about the actual game is that there's a good AC2/AssBro style game in there somewhere, they just need to fix the bugs, and that you can safely ignore the micro transactions.

Which is something I'm totally fine with.

You're JUST getting to glove weather?.... We've already got snow here in MN...

@parsnip: That's exactly what I'm getting from it so far. Honestly open world games never impress me much with story, especially this series, but I play them for the mechanics and this one, IMO, has some of the best open-world "parkour" mechanics I've seen possibly to date. And that includes having just recently beat Shadow of Mordor. Now to be fair I'm only at the very beginning of AC:U, but so far I find the new mechanics and control very intriguing and a lot of fun to look at. The combat feels like a solid mix of classic AC and the Batman-esque SoM with a feeling of actual challenge compared to both of those. ANyway, yeah, I'm digging it so far *shrug*

Yeah dude it's still November. The rest of the country's winter weather doesn't get as fucked up as ours does.

....Fair point....

what ac untiy has performance issue thought Ubisoft employee said they were best at optimizing there games and there no way they could optimize anymore out of game for this generation of machines. whats next going to tell me that 30 fps is not better for 3rd person action games then 60 fps .lol Ubisoft pr bs continues blow up in there face as usual.

Woah, that thumbnail is the stuff of nightmares!!!

@patrickklepek@alex out of curiosity, are you using the Disc version? Because I didn't have frame-rate issues in that beginning sequence you both referenced

At least for me, I'm playing digital on PS4.

That's a real bummer about the technical problems in AC Unity. I was really looking forward to it, but the combo of a lot of it being kinda mediocre-ish, and the technical problems is too much for me. I'll wait until they fix it, or (more likely) the game goes down in price a bunch.

@patrickklepek: Hrm, interesting, same here. To be fair it was very late when I was playing last night, perhaps the frame drops happened and I didn't notice, or maybe what you were referring to is further in then I had thought. Anyway as someone who hadn't gotten much into Assassins Creed because the parkour was always a bit too janky control wise for me (much better in 4 but still awkward), this one feels great on that front, better even than SoM IMO.

Played through till the late title card (basically right to the point where the world opens up) last night on PS4. While the PS4 version has notable framerate issues it sounds like the Xbox One version has more frequent issues. For example Alex mentioned that those church top synchronization moments were quite choppy when he played, but I did two of them last night and the framerate held up fine.

The thing I noticed was that the game looks its worst when the camera pulls way back, all the trees turn into billboarded sprites and the background environments look muddy past the city walls. It doesn't look terrible, its an impressive pull-out shot that pulls back way further than the other games but its in stark contrast to how good everything looks up close.

The mission design in the intro missions seems very similar to the type of stuff in other AC games. The marketing talked a lot about dynamic objectives instead of fail states but so far when I've failed stealth in these early missions it results in a cutscene (showing Arno escorted off the premises or whatnot) before triggering your standard checkpoint reload. I suspect this will change a bit as the mission objectives become more lethal.

I was planning on getting it when it's released here on thursday. But now I'll probably want to wait for the review, and give them some time to maybe patch some of the technical issues. MAYBE I can hold off buying a game for another week and get Dragon Age: Inquisition first.

tell em large marge sent ya!

What in all that is holy...! Kill that thing with fire!

And yes, I'm happy they maneuvered the show so they could talk about AC Unity.

Assassin's Creed games are all excellent examples of 6 or 7-star games.

@patrickklepek on the topic of the discussion on unity and the assassins creed teams, the lead on this game was Alex Amancio, who was the lead on Revelations, so this game could be from that team specifically.

I'm not a big AC fan but I'm enjoying the hell out of Unity. I haven't seen or experienced any technical issues yet(playing on the PS4), but maybe I will. Also I feel like the traversal and movement mechanics are a shit-ton better than previous games. Maybe I'm an exception to the reviews.

Update: Right after I wrote this I experienced both technical issues Alex spoke of: Clipping into the geometry and the infinite fall.

Oh, I don't know; If people are still having fun with the franchise, go nuts. I have 0 interest in AC at this point and better customer service or a better running game wouldn't really change that.

Know the reason that I'm not as bummed about Unity? Shadow of Mordor exists.

Jeez, is that really something witnessed in the game? That image is going to haunt me forever.

Alex's opinion on AC:U reminds me of how Watch_Dogs was a bit of a boring and bloated piece of shit.

@dedbeet:

then I suggest you don't view these

Yeah same here, the framerate and Ubisoft being jerks is just further nails in the coffin. I was never gonna buy this game because it looked like the same old AC in a prettier package.

Please tell me you're not going to rally to have A Bird Story considered for GOTY.

Wow, Alex really made me laugh in this one.

Alex's comment about the usual assassins creed jank was pretty interesting. It has always bothered me that certain games inexplicably get a pass on this. There is such a wide spectrum of polish in games that I feel rarely gets the discussion that it deserves. Maybe it just colors my opinion of a game more than it does others'.

Y'know where it's not glove weather? Australia, baby.

FUCK YEAH SUMMER CHRISTMAS I WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY

Shadow of Mordor took AC's stealth-action assassination and elevated it so much that it basically nailed the coffin on the traditional formula for me. AC2 was a great game in its day, but the annual schedule ran the once-innovative series into the ground.

Oddly enough I enjoyed Watch Dogs, which I approached & played as a stealth-action game, far more than any recent AC, despite all the usual Ubisoft jank (and terrible characters/story).

That thumbnail though.

@devoureroftime: a reference to Snit from 90s YTV The Zone. Kudos to you, sir. That was my childhood.

Only a few hitches with AC Unity on PS4, but I did fall through the environment. I think AC Rogue is more what I'm looking for, as I absolutely loved Black Flag.

Just a note, It seems to me that the AC franchise has never really been very critically acclaimed (Metacritic shows that in general it has always gotten around 80%), but for some reason, it has always a big seller.
That has always been something that I've wondered when each new entry gets OK but not great scores, and people seem surprised.

@superfluousmoniker said:

Heh my pop-in GIF is getting work around the internet :D