Properly Calibrated

Assassin’s Creed continues to be interesting. Even though the entire game essentially boils down to …

• Run Around
• Assassinate Guards
• Fight Guards
• Collect Flags
• Pickpocket Dudes
• Assassinate 1 Important Dude Every Two Hours Or So

… it’s still reasonably fun to do all of the above. I’ve discovered that I can just avoid the sidemission types that I find distasteful (Informants and Collect These Flags In A Circle). Granted, there aren’t many choices to begin with, but I’m okay with just pickpocketing, interrogating and eavesdropping my way to success.

I haven’t mentioned it here yet, but I love Fallout 3. I was previously a fan of both the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls, so when Bethesda made the new Fallout, I was in Best Buy on opening day, buying the Vault-Tec lunchbox (which, by the way, included an awesome concept art book and an equally awesome Nuka-Cola bottle opener.)

Since then, I’ve bought all the DLC. The Pitt, Anchorage, Broken Steel. Last night, right before I was headed to bed, I saw that Point Lookout was available.

Dang it.

I loaded up, fired Fawkes (nice guy, but keeps stealing my XP) and hopped on the dilapidated riverboat for Point “Coney Island By Way Of Louisiana” Lookout.

The framerate was just a touch funny walking through the opening wharf area, which stood out to me against Fallout’s normal high levels of polish. However, another polish-related problem almost caused me to assassinate my TV with my controller. Allow me to elucidate.

The wharf is a burnt-out waterside fair. Nearby, there’s a giant mansion on a hill. Smoke is billowing from the roof. I headed that way (burnt-out skee ball machines give me the creeps).

Now, I need to complain about this, but I’ll do it without spoiling anything. I head for the mansion, to find that there is [DUDE] needing me to help protect him from [GUYS]. Said [GUYS] attack in packs, and do insane amounts of damage. I was a high roller back in the DC area – here I’m getting 20% of my health taken away with every [ATTACK] from a [WEAPON].

It takes a while to get through all the [GUYS] to protect the [DUDE], climaxing in a pretty serious battle where I laid some mines down for extra protection.

The fight finishes. I run past my mines. One explodes (?!). I take damage. [DUDE]’s lousy AI triggers that I must then be a HOSTILE.

[DUDE] proceeds to shoot me, repeatedly. I stand there, helpless and pissed off that I didn’t think to save (and the game didn’t autosave) at any point since I first entered the mansion. A nerve-wracking 45 minutes or so, down the drain. Thanks bunches, Bethesda.

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My PS3 has primarily become my demo machine. The paltry 20GB drive on my XBox (not getting the Pro: mistake) is bursting at the seams with DLC, with about 700MB to spare — just enough to download the X-Blades demo. X-Blades appears to be about a scantily-clad, double-sworded, triple-ponytailed Olsen twin who shoots fireballs. X-Blades feels like a fictional game that exists inside a movie — perhaps in a peripheral scene where “gamers” are portrayed, perhaps by someone oily. I’m going to stop writing about X-Blades now.

Assassin’s Creed was one of the first games I bought on the 360 (yes, I bought mine late) primarily because of the incendiary trailer. I played it for a handful of hours, performing the meager handful of mini-missions again and again (and again), until I reached one where a fellow wanted me to run in a large circle, collecting a specified number of banners in a specified number of seconds. In a world that was already copy-and-pasted to hell and back, now this? The developers lost me. Grand Theft Auto never required Niko to drive around the city collecting icons. Some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

That said, Assassin’s Creed is more beautiful than GTA (and most other games) and is proving to be the perfect type of game to play for an hour or three — just until the repetition sets in, at which point it can be set aside for another month.

I also played the Killzone 2 demo today — finally. I like the cover system a lot — not being able to see (mostly) when you’re crouched feels proper. The controls are slightly wacky; the X and Y axis acceleration feels like a strictly gaussian curve - bizarre amounts of acceleration, and too dead in the middle.

But neither of those sentences make for entertaining writing, so how about this: the Helghast bad guys are the most indescribably generic masses of grey-black Video Game Material possible, and they live on the most indescribably generic planet I have ever seen. How is Helghan an alien planet? It looks like the Every Shooter Video Game Planet. Helghan (the demo, anyway) is all piping, concrete, steel, facemasks, dirt, and testosterone.

Also, when shot in the head, the Helghast’s helmet comically pops off into the air, every time. It’s a bizarrely out-of-place moment in what otherwise is a Totally Serious Video Game. I appreciate it, I think.

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