Giving Bitmob a Try

I've been writing this blog for around 7 months now, and while I am enjoying it, I have one major problem: I don't know how well I'm doing. Since I've had no previous experience in writing articles and reviews, the only knowledge I have is my own. Editing, in particular, is something I've mostly guessed at. That's not good enough if I want to eventually write professionally.

I've come across a website named Bitmob, which seems like a good place for amateurs looking to improve their writing. I only started visiting it last week, but I've already learned a hell of a lot about editing, as they have some great articles on the matter. If I were to look back on some of the stuff I've written here, I imagine I'd find plenty of cases of stylistic features that should actually be avoided.

They have a team of staff writers, all of whom have had plenty of experience writing within the video games industry. Voluntary writers can submit their own articles, and the Bitmob staff pick out any they deem front-page material, edit them, and put them up alongside their own posts. Along with a few writing exercises every now and then, the whole thing seems to be designed to help rookie writers improve their work.

I'm going to try it out. I need feedback, and this seems to be the place to get it. There was a post last week, asking for more articles about Skyrim. That seems like as good a place as any to get started. I wrote a short piece about the game I've been obsessing over for the past couple of weeks, and I've spent some time focusing on editing, paying attention to some of the advice I've read.

From now on, I'll be writing articles for Bitmob. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this blog yet, but if I do happen to have any regular readers, you can follow me on Twitter, where I'll be posting links to any articles I write for Bitmob.

If there really is anyone out there, thanks for reading, and may your nets always be full!

This Week, I 'Ave Been Mostly Playing (14/11/11 - 20/11/11)

Skyrim (PC)

Like so many others, Skyrim has me. The amount of buzz surrounding this game is incredible, and I can't remember the last time I heard so many people talking about one game. It's strange to think that it was only two games previous that the Elder Scrolls series wasn't that well known, and was mostly for hardcore western RPG fans. I'll admit that I didn't even know what Morrowind was until a few years after its release. By the time Oblivion came out, a lot more people knew of the series, and now the latest entry is towering over this year's Call of Duty game, with at least 3 times as many players. I guess you could say the series has... gathered steam (ho ho ho).

It's all I've played this week, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I skipped Oblivion, but I heard that it was a little repetitive, and empty compared to Morrowind. I did play some of the third Elder Scrolls game and enjoyed the open world that, despite its size, was still packed with things to see and do for the inquisitive explorer. Skyrim seems to follow that style, but looks a lot better, and brings in a slightly streamlined skill leveling system that makes it more accessible. I appreciated that, for once, I was able to begin playing this game without too much prior planning. I merely decided on a race that started with bonuses to the skills I was interested in, and they've developed naturally as I've played in my own preferred style.

I've barely touched the main storyline. Whenever I'm on my way to the next objective, I find caves to loot and new quests to embark on. Merely visiting a new town fills your quest log up with plenty of opportunities to completely ignore the main questline and enjoy the feeling of freedom.

I decided on an orcish character, as I tend to favour orcs in any game that doesn't represent them as dumb beasts. I'm going with my usual approach of wielding a one-handed weapon and shield, and playing defensively, bashing enemies in the face with the shield and striking when they're open to attack. It's working out well. Meanwhile, I've been dabbling in a bit of smithing and enchanting. I love crafting in RPGs. It's even better when you can actually use the stuff you create. I'm currently working on a full set of orcish armour, in order to look the part.

I haven't decided between the Stormcloaks or Imperials yet. It seems there are plenty of reasons not to join either, but it's probably something you should get involved in at some point. I guess I'm leaning towards the Imperials at the moment, seeing as the Stormcloaks hate everyone that isn't a Nord. Yes, the introduction to the game gave a pretty good reason not to join the Imperials either, but hey, we all make mistakes. Maybe they deserve a second chance.

Anything Else?

My druid reached level 83 in World of Warcraft, and we're nearly done with Deepholm. I still have Arkham City to finish, but it's really difficult not to play Skyrim when I sit down to do some gaming. I'll try and get round to it this week. All it would take is to log out of Steam. I can never remember my password, and the effort of resetting it might serve as enough of a block to sway me towards switching the PS3 on instead.

Review: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Release Date (PS3, Xbox 360): NA: November 16, 2010 EU: November 19, 2010 AUS: November 18, 2010 JP: December 9, 2010 

Release Date (PC): NA: March 22, 2011 EU: March 18, 2011 AUS: March 17, 2011 JP: June 3, 2011

Developed By: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Singapore, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Quebec, Ubisoft Annecy

Genre: Third-person action-adventure

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac

Platform Reviewed: Playstation 3

This review focuses on the single player component of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. With Revelations now out, most players of Brotherhood's multiplayer will have likely moved on to the latest game in the series, so to review it would perhaps be somewhat redundant.

Annual releases of the same franchise are becoming a common thing. With such little time to improve on the previous game, you might wonder if it's worth investing more of your own time and money into something that could be a little too familiar. That's why Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is a big surprise. Released only a year after Assassin's Creed 2, you may be fooled into thinking it was a convenient way of putting out a game in the series with multiplayer in it, with a mandatory single player mode tagged on as a formality. After all, it would have been simple enough to continue Ezio's story just by putting out more DLC for Assassin's Creed 2. But what actually we have here is a follow up that proves its worth as a standalone entry in the series.

Set immediately after the events of Assassin's Creed 2, Desmond Miles is still looking for the piece of Eden and is once again thrown into the time of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the hooded hero that has grown into a wise, skilled assassin. And he really has come a long way from the boyish rogue he was at the beginning of the previous game, which is made very apparent when you experience some of the flashbacks Brotherhood takes you on. After an attack on Monteriggioni by the Templar Borgias, Ezio travels to Rome with his family to take revenge, and put an end to their tyrannical rule over the capital city.

When in Rome...

The game starts out slow as it has to cater for anyone new to the series, and spends a good few hours refreshing your memory of old Assassin's Creed concepts, while introducing you to the new ones. It's not until a few chapters in that the story reaches a point where it can truly open up and allow you to take on all the different gameplay elements Brotherhood has to offer.

Every action you take as Ezio is a step towards taking down the Borgia. The main story missions are traditional in the sense that they have you taking out important Templar figures using the proven methods of assassination you learned in the last game. Meanwhile, every side mission has you disrupting a specific part of their rule. Side missions are plentiful, and involve tasks such as taking control of Borgia guard towers, destroying war machines, and rebuilding derelict buildings to gain support of the citizens. Rather than feeling like arbitrary tasks that have been tacked on, each side mission you complete ties into the story of taking down the Borgia really well, and the more you get involved with them, the better experience you have as a whole. 

Not only that, but many of them are just plain fun to play through. Special mention has to go to the sabotaging of war machines sequences, which feature scripting on a level that you'd usually only expect in the main line of missions. You also encounter new game mechanics when you get to spend a little time trying the machines out before their inevitable destruction. It gives the impression that the developers put equal amounts of effort and polish into every aspect of the game, rather than just focusing on the main sequences.

If that weren't enough, many of the main and side missions have optional challenges too, in the form of '100% sync' objectives. An example of this could be during a combat heavy section, where you're tasked with not losing more than 3 squares of health, or you'll sometimes get out of the ordinary goals such as staying out of water that would have otherwise made for a convenient escape route. You can play through the entire game without paying any attention to these, but completionists will find themselves busy trying to get 100% in every mission. It provides an extra challenge to those who may find the main objective of the mission too simple.

Stabtastic

One of the drawbacks of Assassin's Creed 2 was the eventual repetitive nature of the combat. It generally boiled down to waiting for an enemy to attack and countering, which felt slow. Brotherhood improves on this with a new kill streak ability, which allows Ezio to smoothly move from kill to kill, cutting through large crowds of guards with ease. 

It's still on the simple side, and it doesn't seem like Ubisoft's goal is to actually challenge the player during combat anymore, which may not even be possible without a major overhaul to the system. While that would have been appreciated to make combat more engaging, the increase in overall fluidity and speed means that it at least doesn't suffer from repetitiveness as it once did, and always feels satisfying.

Sneaking is still where the real danger of failure applies, and there are plenty of sections where detection isn't an option, forcing you to use all your assassin skills to remain unseen. There were times in Assassin's Creed 2 in which this created an unnatural spike in difficulty, but Ezio now has a few more tools at his disposal to relieve some of the frustration you may have felt in his last outing. A crossbow makes for a more suitable silent, ranged weapon, as opposed to the noisy pistol you had last time (though you can still use this, if you like everyone to know where you are). 

The only problem that comes up in these sections is that it sometimes seems that the game wants you to play through the sequence in a very specific way, and it's not always clear what that is. If you don't catch on, sometimes even the most logical of plans can fail simply because you're unaware of what is and isn't permitted.

With a Little Help from My Friends

Of course, the title feature of Brotherhood is just that; the brotherhood of assassins that you take charge of. Recruits can be found causing civil unrest, and when aided, will join your cause in liberating Rome from the Borgia. These brothers and sisters in arms can then be called upon at any time, subject to a cooldown after each use, to take out any target in Ezio's sight. Since this doesn't count as detection for Ezio, it can make for a really powerful tool in sneaking through a heavily guarded area, or for keeping enemies busy while you're chasing down a specific target. And most of all, it just feels really stylish to whistle, and have a fellow assassin instantly leap off a nearby building, striking your enemy down.

Recruits can be trained up through a new system of overseas missions that they can be sent on. Missions have a varying difficulty level attached to them, with a proportionate reward on offer when successfully completed. Up to 5 recruits can be sent on one mission, and the combination of recruit levels, mission difficulty and number of assassins add up to a percentage chance of success. Once sent on a mission, assassins are unavailable for around 10-20 minutes, so there's a lot of management involved in sending away recruits for training while keeping some available to help you out on your mission, at least until you unlock more recruitment slots by completing other side missions. All of this is done through menus, but it does well in creating the illusion that you're heading up your very own assassin's guild and taking on Templars across Europe. If you put enough time into it, you'll ultimately be rewarded with a small army of Ezio clones. A sight to behold.

Presentation... by Da Vinci?

This is a beautiful looking game, more so than Assassin's Creed 2, which was a great looking game in its own right. 15th/16th century Rome is just as majestic as you would imagine, and it all seems to be down to some dramatic improvements in lighting and shadows. The framerate is a little more consistent now, but still suffers from slowdown in busier areas due to the massive scale of the cityscape. The music still consists of a romanticised Middle Ages style, with some dramatic pieces to accompany the more action orientated sequences. The voice acting is, as always, brilliant, and each actor is on top form, smoothly interlacing Italian into English when the script calls for it.

The main drawbacks of Brotherhood are mostly technical. Loading times still feel just a little bit too long, which is noticeable if you find yourself failing a sequence a few times in succession, leading to some irritation. It also still suffers from interface overload, as the screen can become busy with distracting prompts which often aren't necessary. They can also pop up at inappropriate moments; one that comes to mind being a romantic scene in the beginning of the game which was hard to take seriously when a loading icon kept appearing, yelling "video game!" profusely.

Overall

These are only small complaints, however, as Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is pure fun throughout. "The sum of its parts" is a term often thrown around when it comes to video games, but in this case, it describes the game in question perfectly. Every mission and gameplay element, whether side content or part of the main campaign, adds up to form a plot about rebellion and uprising that you always feel fully invested in. 

Considering this is a sequel to a sequel, Brotherhood fully earns its place in the Assassin's Creed series by improving on the previous entry in many ways. For the developers to have achieved that only a year after releasing their last great game is no simple feat.

Rating: 9/10

This Week, I 'Ave Been Mostly Playing... (31/10/11 - 06/11/11)

Trophy Huntin' wasn't working out. It seemed like a good idea when I started it, but I've discovered that some achievements and trophies offer very little in the way of something to comment on. Team Fortress 2 is a good example, as most of its achievements are earned by accident. On weeks where I'm playing a game that dishes out frequent trophies for even the smallest thing, I end up with quite the intimidating list to tackle. One look at all the plot-based Arkham City trophies I got this week made me realise it was time to scrap Trophy Huntin'.

So, I'm giving this format another try; a casual overview of what I've been playing during the week. This blogging thing... it's a learning process.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Finishing one set of distracting side-quests led to another. After completing the fantastic 'Leanardo's Machines', I just couldn't bring myself to continue with the story until I'd paid a visit to each of the Romulus shrines, which would eventually lead to the locked treasure room. For once, I hadn't read any spoilers as to what was unlockable in the game, so I had no idea what I was going to be rewarded with. It makes for some surprises, and without spoiling anything, the reward for destroying Leanardo's machines came completely out of nowhere and provided a new, fun way to travel around Rome, and even pull of some ridiculous looking assassinations. The eventual reward for completing all the Romulus shrines was more traditional, but still worth it.

I've really enjoyed the assassin guild system, which allows you to train up your recruits by sending them away on missions around Europe. It may feel more involving than it actually is, but it keeps up the illusion well. The outcome of half a dozen Ezios to call upon at any time is worth the time spent training them up.

With side business taken care of, I finally found myself on the home straight. The last few sequences weren't particularly long, but built up to a suitable climax. There was a strange moment where, in the penultimate Ezio sequence, the gameplay became absolutely terrible. For plot reasons, you were unable to use any weapons except for a certain item you'd recently retrieved. Using it didn't make a lot of sense, and I'm still not convinced I worked out the correct way to complete that section. I ended up calling on my assassin recruits to do the killing for me, but I can't imagine what it'd be like for someone who hadn't paid a lot of attention to assassin leveling. A minor glitch in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable game.

And I finished it. I'm glad it was 1am when I did, because it was the perfect time to have my mind blown. The ending had me interested in Desmond's story for the first time ever. That's how much of a shocking cliff hanger it was.

I'm looking forward to Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but I'll probably give it a few months before playing it, and let the hunger for some more assassin action build up.

Batman: Arkham City

I'm not going to hide it; I was a massive fan of Arkham Asylum. The combat was engaging, the gameplay was solid, and there was a generous amount of Batman villains, all of which were very well represented. So far, these qualities have all been carried over to Arkham City.

Though a lot of time is still spent inside buildings, the environment feels a lot more natural now that it's a city, rather than the confines of an asylum. It means you run into more spontaneous brawls, and even groups of armed henchmen outside of the structured stealth rooms. It also allows for a lot more side missions, all of which are distracting me just as they did in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. The Riddler's puzzles are back, but there's a much needed sinister edge to them this time, as there are now hostages involved that can only be rescued by playing his insane games.

The Catwoman sections seem interesting enough, but only from a story point of view. She plays mostly the same as Batman, with a few moves swapped out to be more Catwoman-esque but retaining the same function. They do tie in well with the main story though, and I'm glad I'm not missing out. Whether or not it'll be a significant hole for those who buy used copies of the game, I can't say just yet.

World of Warcraft

My alt, the troll druid Grimtoosk, is still making his way to level 85. He reached a milestone this week and hit level 80, so our little leveling group is finally up to Cataclysm content. It doesn't seem that long ago that I took my orc warrior through these zones, but I'm enjoying them again all the same. Hopefully we might hit a few of the dungeons while we level, as I'm still yet to see any of the Cataclysm 5-mans. It's about time I picked up the tanking reins once again.

DLC: The Cupcake to the Expansion Pack's Gateaux

The age of downloadable content (DLC) began with the rise of the online platform for consoles, as well as internal storage space and the ability to install game data. Previously, it was mainly PC games that received additional content in the form of the much meatier expansion packs. Though console hard drives began with a small amount of storage space, there was the potential for expansion packs to become a trend on consoles too.

However, the console market is very different from the PC gaming market, and that's most likely why DLC rose as the dominant method of adding to existing games. For console owners that had never really gamed on a PC, it might have appeared as a strange, alien concept to pay £20-30 for extra content in a game they'd already paid full price for to begin with. The appeal of DLC is that it provides content in smaller, more affordable, easy to swallow chunks.

Whether for good or for bad, DLC has spread to PCs and has begun to stamp out the expansion packs we once knew. Take Civilization V, for example; past Civilization games have had one or two expansion packs, including the rather successful Beyond the Sword for Civilization IV, which included new mechanics, units, buildings and a multitude of playable civilizations. Since the release of the fifth game in the series, several playable civilizations have been released as individual DLC packs. It's looking less and less likely that there's even going to be an expansion to Civilization V, because Firaxis are leaving themselves with less to put in it. The result is that even though we are getting some of the extra content we're used to, the big expansion pack that provides something of an overhaul to the game is unlikely to ever see the light of day. Though games like World of Warcraft and The Sims 3 are sticking to tradition, in many cases, the expansion pack is dying out.

I see several problems with the DLC model, one of which is that, whereas you knew you were getting something substantial with an expansion pack that almost felt like an entirely new game, you can never be quite sure what you're getting for your money with DLC. How many hours of gameplay are you going to get out of it, and is it worth the cost being asked for? You can't really be sure until you take the plunge and play all the way through it. There's not a lot you can do if you finish the content in a couple of hours and feel dissatisfied.

We're potentially getting less out of a full release too. Cosmetic items such as costumes used to be unlockable, but are now only available for a small fee. Detaching this content from the main game has also led to pre-order nightmares such as with Batman: Arkham City, where several different stores in the US were offering a different costume for Batman if you pre-ordered from them.

From an enthusiasts point of view, several DLC packs released over the course of a few months to a year can fragment the experience. When you return to a game that you finished months before, it takes a while to refamiliarise yourself with the controls, gameplay elements, and the storyline. To achieve that re-integration and still have plenty of time to enjoy new content afterwards was possible in an expansion pack. It brought you back into the game's world, and you were reminded of all the great things that you enjoyed about it the first time round in a fresh new experience. It was almost like rejuvenation for a game you thought you'd left behind. DLC, on the other hand, brings you back for two or three hours, then asks you to spend more money on a another pack that's usually completely unrelated and disjointed from what you've just completed.

You also have to ask yourself if it's even worth returning to a game you've moved on from for as little as a couple of hours. This was my experience with Mass Effect 2. I thoroughly enjoyed it when it was first released, but never revisited it to try out any of the DLC afterwards. Short stories were released, introducing new characters or revisiting old ones, even tying up certain plot arcs that have been part of the series since the beginning. But I've had no desire to dive back into Mass Effect 2, even though there's new content waiting for me. This may be all down to personal gaming behaviour, but when I'm ready to start something new following completion of a game, I look for something I can really sink my teeth into. A short, fleeting visit to an older game just isn't something I'm looking for.

It looks like DLC is here to stay, though, as it's seen great success in a business sense. Rather than resist it, I just have to hope that there are developers that can make it work. After recently playing the first Portal 2 DLC pack, I may yet be convinced.

It seems like a winning formula; Portal 2's co-op doesn't really focus on an overarching plot and is more about pure Portal gameplay, which just so happens to be very strong, even without the set pieces of the single player. It still had the problem of re-adjustment to game mechanics, but I happily played through each new chamber with my co-op buddy, and can safely say that I would pay for more. The puzzles were more smartly designed than ever before and posed a satisfying new challenge.

But the real reason I returned to Portal 2 at all was because this DLC was free. With the absence of a price tag, even I couldn't resist at least trying it. Steam downloaded it without me even noticing, so it was all ready for me to play without having to do anything at all. It lured me in with promises of no commitment, and now I have a taste for it.

It's a skill that developers are going to have to pick up if they want DLC to be accepted by the non-believers. Those few hours are going to have to be jam packed with so much quality that we really feel like we've made a valuable purchase. No longer can they provide more of the same and expect us to be sold by the mere addition of some extra plot. It wouldn't hurt, either, if developers followed in Valve's footsteps and started offering their initial DLC packs for free as a taste of what's to come.

I'll miss expansion packs, but I have to hope that there's potential for the DLC model; potential that hasn't yet been fulfilled.