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E3 Previews - Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect
In a sea of sequels, there are a number of original titles standing shoulder to shoulder with already-classic games. Two of those being demo'd at this years E3 are Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and Bioware's Mass Effect. After the demo shown onstage at the Microsoft event, folks were understandably underwhelmed with Assassin's Creed; though the stalking and chase mechanic seemed fascinating, combat seems overly simplistic and numerous bugs caused some hiccups. Just the same, the idea behind the game remains tantalizing, and we still don't know what the deal is with the sci-fi background. On the other hand, despite an equal amount of hype and hope, Mass Effect looks to be meeting every expectation. Finally Bioware is letting folks play the game hands-on, and there are still few frustrations to be found. From Joystiq's analysis: "We were shown the basic in-game talk interface: get near another character and hit the A button to start talking. You can direct the flow of the conversation, by selecting your responses with the left thumbstick, choosing from a radial menu. For instance, if someone is telling you about an attack, you can pick things like 'Too bad they didn't kill you' to 'I'm sorry' to 'Really? What happened?' They aren't exactly what your character will say, they're more like the gist of it ... It reminded us a bit of the chat in the Indiana Jones games, although those gave you the actual lines that Indy would spout out. Conversations are crucial to Mass Effect, and end up providing you with information and shape your relationships with those characters."
So this is a chick game, like Viva Pinata?
...but that gamespy.com Assassin's Creed piece reads like someone at Microsoft or Ubisoft did an "OH SHIT" because of the poor on-stage demo and then shoveled a fluff piece toward one of their nearest media outlet lackeys to "get out the word" that it wasn't as bad as it seems.
Seriously, it's not like these game sites really have a choice. Play along to a (great) extent or get shut out of press events, pre-release information, etc. Information access is their bread and butter.
Gamespot had both games in their office for demo [Jade Raymond was demoing AC :)] They have a twenty minute video of each on their E3 site. (Check the Wednesday tab).
http://e3.gamespot.com/live.html
Another developer trying to pass off bogus UE3 renderings just Gears of War tried to pull.
Actual gameplay looks like crap. And AC keeps looking worse and worse with every release of new media for the game.
The comments from Ubisoft this week that they had no intention of creating a playable demo pretty much killed any enthusiasm I had for Assassin's Creed. In the days of broadband and no disk needed demos, there is just no real excuse for not having one. The only thing that comes to my mind is the way movies that refuse advanced screenings for reviewers generally do it to prevent anyone from knowing how bad a movie is before its released. What we have seen of it has looked great, but so does every Michael Bay trailer. Without a demo I can only assume that either the game lacks depth and variety so if you spend ten minutes with the demo you have pretty much experienced it all, or its just lacking in general. Hopefully I'm wrong but this just guaranteed I wont buy it until I see some reviews.
According to CVG the reason that the Assassin's Creed demo was a bit buggy and underwhelming in the press conference demonstration was that they were asked to show it off at last minute because Bungie were unable to get a single player demo of Halo 3 ready in time.
So something must be going on, since more people are interested in it than are admitting to it publicly.
Maybe it's like the Sims - some don't want to pretend they'll buy such games, but they do.
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