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Haze, Splinter Cell Delayed

Posted by Zonk on from the that-time-of-year dept.

What with Assassin's Creed being one of the best selling new IPs ever, Ubisoft probably didn't think much of having to push back the release of Haze until next year. They've also moved the next chapter in Sam Fisher's story, Conviction, to an unspecified date in the 2008-2009 fiscal calendar. "The announcement came as part of its official first half financial results, showing sales up 52 percent to 261 million ($372.86 million), and profits up nearly 12% to 30.6 million euros ($44.8 million) ... the company [also] announced Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 due for release some time in the same quarter as Haze."

31 comments

  1. cmon ubisoft by loafula · · Score: 1

    how about another new prince of persia game?

    --
    FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
    1. Re:cmon ubisoft by king-manic · · Score: 1

      how about another new prince of persia game? Prince of persia 4: 3 didn't suck, please forgive us for 2!
      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    2. Re:cmon ubisoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's out already -- cept they changed the name to 'assassin's creed'.

    3. Re:cmon ubisoft by twistedsymphony · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm a bit confused over your comment.

      POP4 was "Sands of Time" which actually won game of the year when it came out

      POP5 was "Warrior Within" which was IMO a mediocre title

      POP6 was "The Two Thrones" which I never bothered to play as it looked too much like POP5

      Then of course there are spin offs such as: "Battles of Prince of Persia" for the DS, "Rival Swords" for the Wii, and the "Prince of Persia Classic" which is a remake of the original with updated graphics for Xbox Live Arcade.

      so technically the next game would be #7 in the series

      --
      Collector's Edition
    4. Re:cmon ubisoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rival Swords isn't a spin-off, it's a port of Warrior Within for Wii and PSP, with a couple of extras thrown in. Also, being a pedant might be cool in your mom's basement but the rest of us find it annoying. You'd better get down there before your D&D buddies wonder why you're taking so long to get the Mountain Dew.

    5. Re:cmon ubisoft by LKM · · Score: 1

      gp meant: Please buy POP7; POP6 was not crap, so please forgive us the crappy POP5 (using your version numbers).

  2. Oh Jade... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    What with Assassin's Creed being one of the best selling new IPs ever...

    Oh Jade, your game feels soooo gooood....

  3. Utter Bullshit by Farakin · · Score: 1

    I have to wait for Splinter Cell because they had a good year? What about the consumers and fans here? sometimes, capitalism sucks, but only when I can't get what I want.

    1. Re:Utter Bullshit by xarien · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, you have to wait until next year because they had a good year and can afford to spend more money to polish a game, which equates to you getting a better game. Do you really think developers sit on their hands while a game is "delayed?"

  4. Best Selling Suck by Seumas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure the fanboys will mark me as a troll, but as someone who eagerly anticipated Assassin's Creed, forked out the $65 for it and then sat right down to play it -- it doesn't deserve all the hype.

    It looks pretty good. It has a couple interesting gameplay mechanics. But the story is terrible. They could have done away with all of the "your ancestor's memory lives in your DNA and we're going to stick you in a machine that sends your brain back in time to re-enact your ancestor's life". They could have added more content, too. The entire game consists of three things: Climbing high things to see new parts of the map, fighting a few guards to save citizens (who are ALWAYS in trouble for theft and the citizen saving is always 100% the same), pick pocketing (again, pointless and always exactly the same) one or two interrogations (you punch a guy a few times -- always the same) and then assassinating the "final boss".

    Not only is the game utterly boring (because it is so repetitive), but even the main character (Altair) says it's boring when he's talking to the head assassin guy who takes all of Altair's weapons and special abilities away in the beginning. If your fictitious game character thinks the game is boring, then how the hell do you think the player feels?!

    I wanted to love this game so damn much, but there just isn't enough actual variety and content to it. And while every game entails some degree of repetition, Assassin's Creed has to be right up there with Pac-Man -- only without all the fun. I won't be buying the other two games in the trilogy unless I get them at used prices and even then, only if I have absolutely nothing else left to play and am so utterly bored that doing the same three or four things a few hundred times just to see the long, drawn-out blab-blab-blab cut-scenes (seriously, it's like fucking Dragon Ball Z or something).

    1. Re:Best Selling Suck by DDLKermit007 · · Score: 1

      Well to each their own. It's largely a sandbox game, and many miss that easily. Most of the reviewers who give the game low marks can't figure that out. For many people that's also not what they want.

    2. Re:Best Selling Suck by Liquidrage · · Score: 1

      I've actually enjoyed this game quite a bit. I mean, COD4 basically consists of one thing. Shooting people. Over and over. And yet it doesnt get the repeptitive label.

      Sure, you climb a lot. But they aren't all cookie cutter climbs. There's several very large eagle's nests in the mid to late game that are actually quite the challenge to figure out how to get up. You're free to figure out how to attack targets. The game has as much freedom as any action game I've ever played. I think too many people just want their hand held in games. The other poster got it right when he called it a sandbox type game. I enjoyed tremendously sneaking around and taking out 10 guards one after another without getting caught. Or fighting 30 or so guards in one continuous fight. Or finding the best route to leap attack and one shot some target.

    3. Re:Best Selling Suck by the_fat_kid · · Score: 1

      - The entire game consists of three things: Climbing high things to see new parts of the map, fighting a few guards to save citizens (who are ALWAYS in trouble for theft and the citizen saving is always 100% the same), pick pocketing (again, pointless and always exactly the same) one or two interrogations (you punch a guy a few times -- always the same) and then assassinating the "final boss". -

      that is 5 things. by my count. not that you weren't dissapointed, just that 5 is more than 3.

      --
      -- Sig under construction...
    4. Re:Best Selling Suck by MBraynard · · Score: 1
      I think you would enjoy COD4 if you put it on the Veteran setting. You really have to use your brain to figure out how to get through some of the scenarios. The solutions to the helicopter pilot rescue and the end of flashback mission where you have to carry the pilot were particularly challenging.

      Taking out the helicopter from the Church in the flashback mission was also a challenge.

      I'm taking a pass on Assasin's Creed, though.

    5. Re:Best Selling Suck by Sciros · · Score: 1

      That's the sort of review the game has been getting a lot of places. I'm fairly certain it's accurate, as well.

      Now, if all the criticism was about "omg game too hard" and "ugh camera too fast for me eyes" then I would have bought it in a heartbeat because Ninja Gaiden ruled. But clearly this is no Ninja Gaiden.

      Anyway thanks for the post; solid criticism is rare these days and it helps me decide whether to consider buying a game or not.

      --
      I like basketball!!1!
    6. Re:Best Selling Suck by Tim+Browse · · Score: 1

      that is 5 things. by my count. not that you weren't dissapointed, just that 5 is more than 3.

      Isn't the game set around the time of The Crusades?

      "The entire game consists of five things."
      "Three, Sir!"

    7. Re:Best Selling Suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem though is that the environments are completely devoid of anything to do. It is like a sandbox without the sand.

      They needed to add more activity or points of interest to the environment that are outside of your mission objectives. They also needed more variety to the gameplay. As it is, you basically just pick a direction, hold down RT + a and just go. No actual "gameplay" and every mini game is repetitive, the game doesn't grow.

      It isn't all bad, I actually enjoy the game for what it is, but it just could be a lot better if they hadn't over simplified everything and left it feeling stale.

    8. Re:Best Selling Suck by Seumas · · Score: 1

      I would say Assassin's Creed is exactly the *opposite* of a sandbox game. There are literally only three or four parts to the game and every instance of each part is always exactly the same. Unless you can get some sort of thrill for countless hours by hopping around roof tops to engage in pointless fights with the same guards you've fought a thousand times.

      You can't pick-pocket or interrogate at will. These are only to be performed on a few specific targets.

      There are a couple dozen citizens to save in each city. Always for the same reasons. Always by fighting the same half dozen guards in the same way with the same weapons and then running away before you're caught.

      And that is the whole content of the game, until you are ready to go after the "boss" each time and assassinate him.

      I would expect a sandbox game to have more to do both in the game construct itself and freely as part of the world's flexibility. This game is exactly the opposite. Even if hopping around buildings ala Crackdown gets a person off, it has to get boring eventually when they realize they aren't actually *doing* anything.

    9. Re:Best Selling Suck by Seumas · · Score: 1

      The one thing the game does well is the fighting. It's very smooth and the transitions are amazing. It's exciting to fight four or five or eight people at a time and be able to hack one guy, slash another with your blade's return, shove a third and then chop the first guy through his chest.

      But it is definitely not "hard" and it's very difficult to die in a large fight. The reason this game is such a let-down is that you can see there is such a potentially rich world and a wealth of toys you could be playing with, but they have reduced it to a very mediocre set that you actually get to have and made it an extremely linear game. I think that many people who are overly thrilled with the game are just swayed by the relatively nice graphics and the fact that they can "climb tall stuff" (by the way, how many dozens of times do you have to climb to the top of a perch to expand your view of the map before the stupid circle-eagle-sky-cam-pan thing gets old?!).

      So it's that there *could* be so much more, but isn't, that the result is so frustrating.

      And of course, the story is pretty stupid. I was excited when I heard about a game based on the crusades in the 12th century. But then they crammed that awesomeness into a stupid sci-fi DNA-memory story. *snoooore*

      The experience is definitely worth dropping $30 on a used copy in a couple months. As someone who bought it at full price . . . meh. I haven't finished the game, even. I played about half way through and then found myself not even interested in popping the disc back in for a few days. Maybe I'll get back to it next week.

    10. Re:Best Selling Suck by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Call of Duty is not repetitive in the same way that Assassin's Creed is. Repetition doesn't have to be boring, but in Assassin's Creed, it is. Assassin's Creed says "look at these few things you can do -- aren't they rad?! So rad that we're going to make you do them 800 times! Yay!".

      Call of Duty breaks things up. Introduces different strategies and tactics. Very different environments and goals . . . and while I wouldn't play it a second time, there was no point in the whole playthrough that I felt I was just being suckered into believing that doing something 500 times counts as "lots of content".

      Assassin's Creed reminded me that I should not always be so eager for $60 games to have a lot of play time. If a game lasts 40 hours, but never varies, it's less enjoyable than a game like Bioshock where there is a lot of variety, great story, fun gameplay and it's all over in a couple sittings.

    11. Re:Best Selling Suck by fimbulvetr · · Score: 1

      LOL, 30 or so in one fight. That is correct, up until you realize that you fight one guard at a time while the others stand and watch. Never before have played such a monotonous game. It was a wrectched experience and not worth the gas to drive to the store to pick it up.

    12. Re:Best Selling Suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. Assassin's Creed could be had for $40 at at least one Fry's Electronics location.
      2. The play control is simple, intuitive, and difficult to master. Have you seen EVERY Combo and Counter kill?
      3. You can use all the strategy in the world in Assassin's Creed, if you want, or you can just be the master of counters and grab breaks, and just kill more people than cancer.
      4. The story is a very satisfying puzzle, and better than any of the Indiana Jones movies which preceed it thematically. Filled with pretty interesting characters by any standard, certainly by video game standards. (When's the last time a "magic" artifact led to the formation of a cabal of strong atheists who sought to enslave the world to save it from itself? One that didn't involve Casper Van Deim and or wasn't financed by Megachurch Conglomerated Products, Ltd.)

      As far as sandbox games go it has a variety that far outstrips any GTA or Crackdown, with a fluid play control that is unmatched anywhere. Call of Duty on the otherhand, is a shooter, with a 6 hour campaign, like any of the one's that came before without a genre leading cover system, and some RPG character building more or less artfully tacked on.

      That you didn't experience the variety of Assassin's Creed is just an indication of how little you played it. I just finished it yesterday, and I'm by no means done with it.

      The two semi-serious complaints, why was there no multi-player co-op? And why weren't the models for at least the 2012 future on par with Mass Effect? That's pretty much it. Beyond that it's a brilliant game, with tons of replay value. And not because the story will "change" (where have all the Wing Commander's gone?) but because it's that good. Sometimes you want to climb the 15 hour mountain again. But first: 13 more Templars have to die.

    13. Re:Best Selling Suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The synchronization cam might get old, but jumping off the cathedral in Acre does not. But you're not that far yet, so yeah, what do you know?

      And by the way jackass, the DNA Synchronization as an extended metaphore for a life bar makes a lot more sense THAN a life bar. Not that much of this isn't delt with in conversations Vidic and implication. The fact is if you want a real world version of that story without some sort of filter stabbed == maimed, crippled, killed. Assassin's Creed is The Matrix mashed up with Indiana Jones in a video game.

    14. Re:Best Selling Suck by Sciros · · Score: 1

      Oh give me a break A.Coward, do you seriously think a rubbish storyline to *explain* a lifebar is better than a decent story and a typical "video game lifebar"? That's a terrible tradeoff. Also mashing up Indiana Jones with anything makes it worse, let alone a turd like The Matrix. Not sure how you actually relate that to Assassin's Creed.

      --
      I like basketball!!1!
  5. delayed?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *your funny comment involving spore, duke nukem forever, and soviet russia here*

  6. breaking the naming convention by u8i9o0 · · Score: 1

    I'm a fan of the Splinter Cell series.

    However, I'm less surprised by a delay than I am the title: "Splinter Cell: Conviction".

    What ever happened to Splinter Cell: Adjective Noun? :)

    --
    This is not my sig
  7. Le Fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A 52% increase in sales only nets a 12% increase in profits? As usual, the French suck at running a business LOLOL

  8. Or is it because by jamie(really) · · Score: 1

    games written on engines developed for the PC just suck ass on the PS3?

  9. Re:I am torn on this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What the hell is the link between killing Muslim and the article.
    How can you have fun by simulating people's death and moreover if they're Musulim.
    Don't be an idiot, think by yourself before you get in troubles.

    "One day I hope to surpass Sam Fisher in number of Muslims killed. It's a tough goal to achieve, I know, but he has inspired me."
    Go to hell, you and all the other people that think like you and hate people just because of their origins, their culture or their religions.
    The USA, the freedom country, hum hum... Freedom to be stupid as hell for some of the people.

  10. THANK YOU by Khuffie · · Score: 1

    Any news of a delay is appreciated. I'm glad Smash Bros. got delayed. Over the last couple of weeks, I got assassin's creed, call of duty, super mario galaxy, mass effect, wii zapper, and my sister ordered me Guitar Hero 3. Not only am I broke, but I barely have enough time to play. :p Not to mention games like Uncharted: Drake's Adventure and Ratchet and Clank that I had to pass by. This is ridiculous though. Publishers need to realize that people buy games at times other than Christmas too