Assassin’s Creed Rant (Not a review)

Yesterday’s rant was probably about as coherent as a kangaroo playing hopscotch in a giant dictionary of cuss words, but despite my extra use of salty language, I wasn’t actually mad. I was incapable of anger because somebody in the weather department set a dozen temperatures in a blender, walked away, and then forgot to come back to turn the blender off. So I spent most of the day in this mental fog where very little reached me.

One thing did last night after dinner. (I suspect the carbs helped lift the fog) Kotaku showed a video of Assassin’s Creed III where the final part of the game is a chase sequence. Except every five steps, your chase is being interrupted by random, stupid, impossible shit. And this did reach me, because I stopped playing Assassin’s Creed: Liberation for almost the same reason.

In the Vita game, I’m told I must find a man in the Spanish Army to question him about some Templar plot, and the moment we walk into this fort, he takes off running. Then the games says “chase him, you saucy assassin. Oh, but don’t let him get more that fifteen meters away, or you lose.” Well okay, fair enough, (what a lie that turned out to be) and so I dash across the fort while this dude goes running up a ramp. Said Spanish dude has 80 pounds on my lithe French Creole killer, and his ascent up the ramp causes nary a shake of the planks. But the moment my character gets on the ramp EVERY SINGLE PLANK COLLAPSES like I just trundled on them with Fat Princess after a particularly gluttonous cake binge.

And this is Bullshit with a capital B. Ubisoft are a bunch of fucking wankers who’ve made bitch slapping the players a part of their definition of fun. Their games start off with “We hired cultural experts to make sure this game won’t be offensive to anyone.” Yes, anyone except the fucking people trying to play this shit.

Is there just not enough air in Montreal to fire brain cells up, or is there too much beer at the Ubisoft office? Because I can’t believe some moron looks at a sneaking assassin and says, “But what this character needs for accuracy is a broad daylight direct frontal assault leading to an improbable Hollywood chase scene.”

No, you fucking yutz, what this scene needed was you pulling your fucking fingers out of my nose and remember that you were calling this piece of shit Vita game a “sandbox”. If it were a sandbox, you would have given me the options of the full frontal assault and chase OR to climb the fort wall from the opposite direction, tail the Templar fucker discreetly until he’s out of sight from his troops, and then handle an interrogation.

And really, I wasn’t the least bit impressed by how Ubisoft handles assassinations. I’m set up to kill the governor, right? Well, the game just puts me in the same fucking room with the governor and his guards. So the guards shout and more guards arrive, and soon, I’m running down a hallway chasing the governor while being pursued by an out of place set of the Keystone Coppers, and the only thing missing to make this vaguely amusing, and thus entertaining, is a saxophone playing Yakety Sax in the background for that proper Benny Hill feeling.

Once I do finally kill the governor, THE GUARDS LEAVE. WHAT THE FUCK?! OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK BARBECUE! Listen, if I fucking murder a governor of ANY place, IN ANY TIME PERIOD, you can be damn sure the twenty guards that just saw me do it are going to jump my dainty ass and kick it around a long, long time before anyone gets around to saying words to the effect of “You have the right to remain silent.” (Yes, I know they didn’t have that yet, shut up. It’s not like Ubisoft is big on historical accuracy either!) But no instead, the “Matrix” makes the next scene so fucking unbelievable by giving me a long time to talk to the dying governor ALONE.

And fuck you Ubisoft, for these long death speeches spoken clearly and without the slightest shake of the voice acting despite the fact that I’ve just stabbed this guy in the heart 22 times. When I leave this stupid speech, the guards all left and went back to their fucking posts. But when I get outside, ONE guard runs into the courtyard and yells, “The governor has been assassinated!” At no point does he say who did it, or more sensibly point to me and yell, “And that’s the bitch who did it!” But from there on out to the edge of New Orleans, EVERY GUARD IN THE CITY just knows it was me. Why? Is it because I’m black? Oh, you Spaniards, you evil racist profiling fucks.

I run all the way out of town, picking up every single guard on the way. Can’t change my clothes, because “You have attention.” Well no shit, Ubisoft, and how did I get this much attention? Because you forced it on me like a jock forcing himself on a virgin cheerleader. I can’t climb a building to hide on a roof, because you’ve TOLD me to wear only one type of costume for this mission. Seeing as how I’m dressed in a ball gown, I would have been content to walk home quietly, but every guard just knows I’m the bitch wot done the guv.

So fine, it’s another Keystone Capers as I run down a dirt road and start to gain some distance on my pursuers when I run face first into an invisible fucking wall. Oh, the immersion! So magical! I’d almost never know this wasn’t the real New Orleans. Except for all the bullshit, of course.

But FINE, I turn around and begin the most ridiculous battle I’ve ever had in a video game, running around in circles in petticoats and a ball gown while I wait for guards to straggle off from the herd following me.

NOTE: Real people would have stopped chasing me, formed a circle and kettled me. No, really, Ubisoft, fucking stop hiring cultural sensitivity consultants, and start hiring security consultants who can tell you why your guards are hideously stupid. Spend your money on something that will improve the game play instead of the script, because frankly, NO AMOUNT OF CONSULTING on the script is going to change the fact that you write like shit-faced fratboys after a major kegger.

It’s not like you even need to hire a Native American to make sure you got Connor right. I didn’t need to consult an expert to know that when Peter Holmes meets a Native American in his last book, the chief shouldn’t talk like: “Me am big chief, me live in wigwam. Me think cheerleader wolf should lay down the pompom.” Similarly, you don’t need an expert to tell you what not to have your characters do in your game. No, the kind of expert you really ought to hire is a fucking writer who hasn’t drank away half their fucking brain cells yet. Or if you’re springing for consultants because you just have too much money, why not hire some gamers and tell them it’s okay to be bluntly honest with you? Then, in a shocking twist, actually fucking listen to what they don’t like and fix that shit.

But let me get back to that fight outside of town one last time. I finally picked off stragglers and killed everyone, but not after taking about 40 stab wounds. Finally, at long last, the flashing alert indicator goes silent, and now when I walk into town, no one recognizes me. No guards jumping me, and no citizens running and screaming. Which doesn’t make much sense, does it? I should be getting even more attention now, being a bloody staggering black woman who matches the physical description of the suspect wot whacked the guv. At the very least, I wanted one of the NPCs to yell about how I’m covered in blood.

But of course the game doesn’t really register injuries, because despite these Ubisoft guys stroking the word realism like a pubescent boner just discovered (by its owner, not by Ubisoft. Cause that would be creepy times 100) there is in fact no realism to this game whatsoever. Realism won’t even take Assassin’s Creed’s calls, and if it somehow got caught on the phone, realism would stammer about needing to wash its hair…for the next ten years. Or something.

But you know what? I forgave all of this shit even though I wasn’t having any fun, and I was willing to play along and accept that, despite just being a human pincushion, my assassin is just so fucking hardcore she can walk off a missing uterus and say “It’s merely a flesh wound!”

But then…THE CHASE. Did the Spanish soldier I chased have an army of trained mutant termites to collapse the ramp right after he ran up it? No, he had a team of game programmers, not one of whom apparently reads fiction, watches TV, or has any passing relationship with the physical world aside from blurry tourist photos from their parents’ last vacation. Because if even one of these anti-social assholes had been outside, someone should have said, “Wait, so the whole ramp section collapses? Not just the planks under the character, but all the planks at the same time?”

Now I really did give this chase a try, and after being dropped off the ramp, I ran and “parkoured” my way up a wall to get to the next section of ramp…WHICH ALSO COLLAPSES IN CATASTROPHIC ORDER RIGHT AFTER THE FAT FUCKING SPANIARD JUST RAN OVER IT.

Fuck you, Ubisoft. I don’t understands why you make video games when you aren’t even clear on the definition of a word like fun. You might have thought you were aiming for challenging, but most of your game is hand-holding linear bullshit followed immediately by these stupid chase scenes that bitch slap me into a major rage. Having only played two of these AC games, now I know that you’re creatively bankrupt. And I don’t even have to play ACIII to know you used the exact same cheap punk tactics in that game too. You make me pay an arm and a leg to buy your shit, and for what? For you to treat me with all the respect of a whore who specializes in scat clients?

And you know, when Hollywood insults my intelligence, at least they charge me a quarter of what game makers do, and at no time do the characters stop the film and say, “No, you can’t see the rest until you’ve chased me across California.”

I wouldn’t even mind doing the chase if it was interesting instead of frustrating. But the way Ubisoft is making chase scenes shows they’re suffering from creative burnout. AND again, if this is a game about assassins and this is supposed to be an open world where I can “parkour” (I put that in quotes because this shit wouldn’t be around for a few CENTURIES, but what’s historical accuracy matter by this point, right?) up walls and houses, why don’t I have a sneaky, assassin-like option for these scenarios? Why must Ubisoft run me out in broad daylight when THAT’S NEVER BEEN HOW ASSASSINS OPERATE? It’s like the company couldn’t be bothered to look up the job description before making up these games. “Oh, stealthy and sneaky? Well…fuck that, we’d rather ambush the player in the open. That sounds like loads more fun.” For who? You can hire consultant to make sure Connor isn’t scalping, but you can’t look up tactics of actual assassins?

But you know what would be more fun than playing Assassin’s Creed: Liberation? Putting down your game, going to my bedroom door, and slamming the door on my neck a dozen times.