User blog comment:D. Cello/Safety and Peace/@comment-71.227.113.133-20120402035828

I completely agree with Cello here about the quality fading in our favorite franchise, AC.

When I first started playing AC, I was simply stunned. Altair was such a badass that he actually got me into parkour, which I now do all the time these days. One day, I hope to head all the way to Ninja Warrior, and conquer that course like a true assassin. As far as the game goes, although perhaps a bit repetitive in some aspects, the story and plot were just so great an interesting. The melee combat was perfect with its great flow, seeing yourself sneak through a crowd and suddenly striking out at your target, killing him and making an epic escape. Not to mention the fantastic atmosphere and surprisingly realistic historical representation, considering it is a game.

Then ACII added on top of that. At first I found Ezio to be a pompous douchebag, but as the story progressed I was more and more drawn to him as a character. Plot and story are still great, thickening with every mission, every moment, knowing full well a single, innocent sentence could be foreshadowing for something far greater down the road. Picking up every little detail, collecting all the feathers for his poor brother. Getting rid of the repetitiveness, and all around making the game better in every way possible. Arguably the best Assassin's Creed game of them all, including the little spin-offs they did for the DS or whatever.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was most definitely on par with the previous installment, although I would never say it was better. Multiplayer... Let's just say that aspect wasn't all too appealing, but it didn't seem to have detracted from the single-player experience so I didn't mind. In other words, because it didn't result in a shorter campaign or a lack in single-player quality and content, I didn't mind. In fact, I found it quite fun to mess around in to be honest, for an hour or two with friends, pretending to be assassins and lurking through crowds to try and take them out. A good way to spend the night, you know? A very crazy cliff-hangar that saddened me really, seeing a character go like that with the words, "What the hell?" ringing in my mind. It really goes to show up to that point how powerful the AC experience was that Ubisoft created, connecting me as a player so heavily with a fictional character in a virtual world. Nonetheless, simply flawless story telling.

Revelations? Not much to say. At this point the series just apparently became a cash-cow. All about the multiplayer, which honestly was completely unecessary. Not to sound hypocritical, I will explain: In AC:R the game developers spent so much resources on the multiplayer that it detracted from the solo experience, the storyline. And that was what AC had been all about, the story. However! I did actually like how they tried to add a story of its own to the multiplayer, going in behind the scenes of Abstergo was actually quite interesting. Still, it resulted in the campaign being far shorter, severely lacking in quality, and overall just getting stale. Den Defense sounded cool on paper, but ended up being horrible. The tetris platformer sequences were again, something that sounded cool on paper, ended up being terrible.

Then I read in the GameInformer that they wish they went more in the direction of the tetris crap? Uhhmm... Please, listen to your fans. Scratch that - listen to your fans that have been with you since AC, not the MW2 ones that hopped on board when they heard the magic word "multiplayer" and run around on rooftops, have literally no respect for the story-mode experience, and play deathmatch. Fortunately, ACIII has been in development for several years, hopefully meaning they've had adequate time to work on both aspects (solo and multiplayer) without the campaign experience suffering. Revelations was bad because...

1. Too rushed.

2. Forced by publishers to add things they didn't necessarily want to do (i.e. multiplayer).

3. Thanks to lack of time, they sort of had to force out random ideas that simply were bad (Den Defense and Tetris Crap being perfect examples).

ACIII, with its new atmosphere and game play elements, should make for a fresher Assassin's Creed experience. The formula will hopefully be revamped, and it sounds like there has been a lot of that going on, so I have hopes. Are there doubts in the back of my mind? Of course, mainly being multiplayer yet again draining resources away from a stellar single-player experience. If they do it right though, there shouldn't be a problem, and the Assassin's Creed franchise will end on a single, epic note.

Thanks to anybody who read all of this. I have a habit of rambling.

OT: Sorry to see you go, Cello.