New games are announced every single day, so why the hell should I post about this particular one? Assassin’s Creed has captured my imagination and joy ever since the first game in 2007. What some saw as horribly repetitive and flawed game, I saw as a gameplay break through. The graphics of the first game were remarkable, the combat made my cry with glee when taking down opponents, the story was rich and remarkably deep. Assassin’s Creed II took that great formula and made it 10 times better. I had two massive cities and the vast Italian countryside to explore, all gorgeously and accurately rendered. The combat got even better with multiple weapons, armor, new techniques, and an all around more badass main character: Ezio. An in-game economy was another wonderful touch to make the game feel like a real world. Assassin’s Creed II has vastly increased my desire to travel to Italy, just because I feel like I’ve gotten a great digital taste of the country’s geography. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was an icing-on-the-cake continuation of Ezio’s amazing story, further fleshing out a really complex character for one of the best narrative arches I have seen in many years. In summation, Assassin’s Creed is perhaps the one franchise of this generation that has completely enthralled me in its gameplay, mythos, and characters.
That is a lot for sequels to live up to, not just in the game industry but for me personally. Every game in the series has been better and better, so a move backwards or stagnation into uninspired territory is a personal insult. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Ubisoft’s latest installment: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I was trepidatious at the thought of another yearly release in the series. ACII was quickly followed by Brotherhood in 2010 but that was largely the same technology as the previous game. Games that become annual releases tend to see their quality degrade overtime. Brotherhood was a pretty exceptional game but that is the exception, not the rule. Another 1 year development time could spell disaster for a series that is in its prime. Only time will tell if Ubisoft has kept up their magic.
Revelations takes Ezio, now a man in his 50s, to Constantinople at the height of the Ottoman Empire as he searches for memory imprints of his own ancestor from the first game, Altair. This memory in a memory scheme may seem a little too Inception-y but it seems like a cool way to bring back the first character with updated mechanics. This is the third game in what Ubisoft is calling the “Ezio Trilogy”, so this is not Assassin’s Creed 3. While it’s good to see Ubisoft really flesh out the entire life of Ezio (one of the richest characters in recent memory), I would like to see Ubisoft go to completely new eras and new locations with a new character. Perhaps that will be left for Assassin’s Creed 3. Ezio being in his 50s is a pretty startling thing, since in the 16th century most people were lucky to make it that far. I wonder if Ubisoft will almost slow down Ezio to account for his aging?
2012 will probably see the last chapter of this series, since that’s when the in-game climax takes place. I almost wish that Ubisoft had scrapped this game to focus on the third game proper, but if Revelations keeps to the same quality as its predecessors, I will have no problem with another yearly bout with Ezio. He’s like an old friend now. Revelations will be out this November.
Last week, I went to Washington D.C for Spring Break. Along with visiting family and looking at GW as a prospective school, I also just wanted to be in D.C, which I’ve always loved as a city. I thoroughly enjoy walking amongst the classical architecture and greek-revival style buildings that line the Washington Mall and mark the best museums that the city has to offer. But while walking through the city, I had this strange feeling of deja vu. It could have been from the fact that I have been to D.C many times, but I found myself trying to place myself in the city from a different perspective: “So, if I’m here, how to I get to Galaxy News Radio?” To anyone who doesn’t get the reference, I found myself constantly looking at the city from the perspective of my character in Fallout 3, the 2008 post-apocalyptic video game that takes place in a nuclear wasteland version of Washington D.C and the surrounding Maryland/Virginia countryside in 2277. Now, having a sense of nostalgia for the nuclear-war obliterated version of Washington is probably enough to get me on some sort of FBI watch list, but let’s be honest: like I wasn’t before? And while it is sort of laughable to be reminiscing about the city in its destroyed, super mutant-infested state, I don’t think it’s a totally invalid point. It speaks to the increasing quality of video game technology and art direction. Game developers can now push graphics and level design to a point of near realism. Games like Fallout 3 don’t use the irradiated crater of DC for sheer shock value but rather to offer breath taking vistas of popular and well-known buildings and monuments to give a sense of familiarity in the game world. When working my way up the steps of the Capital Building, dodging fire from machine guns and plasma bolts, a crystallizing moment came to me where I remembered: “Wow, this used to be the very heart of our national government.” Being in the city during its decline, becoming familiar with it as a place of danger and of salvation, a place of adventure and burdened task, has allowed me to feel a sense of relationship to the DC metro area in a way that I hadn’t before. 
Well this was an interesting thing to wake up to. Nintendo, rather plainly and with little fanfare, released a notice to the press that they will be unveiling the first true successor to their runaway hit portable game console, the DS. It’s been a long time coming as the venerable DS is now on the eve of its 6th birthday and in terms of hardware is rather antiquated. Yet it is fascinating that Nintendo would be so nonchalant in their announcement of the device, especially since there have been more proper introductions to more basic hardware improvements. Hopefully we’ll get a more proper unveiling (and some juicy tech specs) at E3. So, what does the 3DS bring to the table? What makes it worthwhile? 3D. Yep. Is it a gimmick? A crazy plan? Or another example of Nintendo’s crazy awesome ability to innovate? 
After a week of teasers and hints, Valve on Monday announced that Steam, their digital distribution service for games, will be coming to Mac OS X in April. Steam is one of the most popular sources for game downloads on PCs and is wildly popular among PC gamers. Valve is one of the game industry’s leading software developers, famous for their revolutionary and critically acclaimed Half-Life series and their completely open game engine Source. Source is an incredible resource in the gaming industry. Valve releases complete information and code for their engine to the community, hoping for hobbyists and coders to “mod” the engine for their own creations. Such community-based efforts have yielded professional-level results and are often acquired by Valve for major publishing. Games such as Counter Strike, Team Fortress, and Portal began as mods from enthusiasts.
I woke up on February 4th expecting it to be any other day. Yet unbeknown to me, that was the day Sega was set to unveil their new Sonic game, which before was known simply by “Project Needlemouse”. Sega had teased the game by posting virtually every side character to be associated with the spiny blue rodent on a teaser site, asking which character would be in the new game. Of course only days later, Sega upended all our guessing by revealing that none of these characters, not even long time staples like Tails and Knuckles, would be in the new game. It was all Sonic. But why does this matter? And why didn’t I care?
I’m always torn when it comes to gaming, mostly because there is so much good stuff out there to divide my time (and money) but also because I have a terrible anxiety that I’ll make the wrong purchase. For example, I could have bought Batman: Arkham Asylum probably three times before I finally did, because I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’m not a snob or anything, it’s just that I am terrible at video games despite loving them and I’m often worried there will be elements in the game that will make me eventually stop playing. It’s really a foolish compulsion of mine, since we can always return new games or trade them in. But ever since my neighborhood Blockbuster closed, I lost my ability to rent games for test drives, so I’m now far more pre-cautious about throwing down $60 for anything.
Digital Gravitas 