Boycott, you say?

Right here we go! Or well, before we start I just wanted to apologize for the radiosilence. I’ve had a few drafts but they’ve all sort of fallen to pieces, but now at least we have something juicy to talk about.

First of all, “what is this boycott?” you might ask. It’s quite simple. After the seemingly complete lack of response from Ubisoft in regards to frequent and continued complaints about certain aspects of the multiplayer aspect of AC Revelations, some players have called for a boycott and many others have joined in this call. The original idea was to boycott both the DLC and the playing of the game in general to try and hurt Ubisoft as much as they can and to get them to listen to the players’ complaints.

Quite frankly I didn’t expect much of it. It started as a thread on the multiplayer forums which you can find here. I figured it was a couple dozen, maybe a hundred or so dissatisfied players who happened to jump onto the bandwagon, until I started seeing videos pop up from some of the players I respect the most. You can view both EscoBlades’s and Shenmue36′s videos by clicking on their names. I’ll add others that I find at the end of the post.

Before I go on to express my own opinion, though it must be rather obvious from the tone in which I’ve written so far, I will implore you to do one thing.

Make up your own mind.

This sentiment can’t be expressed enough. Whether you agree completely with me or whether you agree completely with the reasons for the boycott, and trust me there’ll be plenty of middle ground, in the end you have to make this decision yourself based on the arguments presented to you. Don’t do it because this player or that player are supporting it or not, because then you’re just a sheep and shouldn’t even be participating in the discussion.

With that out of the way, I will begin by saying that I will not be supporting this boycott. As soon as I can I will be getting the DLC simply because I am starved for new (and rather old) maps. I have heard the price is a little extravagant and I will agree to that, but I adore the game and as I said in my first blog post, I think this game is getting too much hate. There are arguments floating out there such as “Brotherhood is -so- much better!” and quite frankly I have to ask: “Did you even play Brotherhood at launch?” Watching back some videos from the start of Brotherhood and the complaints that came with them, I can only conclude that people who say this did not. Brotherhood had its own entirely unique set of issues when it first came out, and people came to love that game. I don’t know if the support was better back then, but I for one am willing to give Ubisoft more time to remove the major glitches and errors that have made it through, even if these things should have never made it into the game to begin with.

Then there are arguments like we shouldn’t be feeding them money if they don’t give us the fixes we need. Well guess what? The DLC is never going to surpass the amount they’ve already made on us simply buying the game and on the people that will still be buying the game. I understand the concepts of a capitalist market well enough, and I understand that the wallet is your best attempt at influencing the actions of a big corporation like Ubisoft, but boycotting the DLC? Give me a break. I can see time being better spent by trying to warn people who haven’t bought -any- Ubisoft games not to buy those games. Tell them they will lack the support they need, get people to stay away from Ubisoft -altogether- until better support is promised and given. One 60$ game going un-bought is the equivalent of six DLC packs not being bought. And besides, we all have the game who are boycotting the DLC. Meaning that unless you’re selling your game, you’ll be buying the DLC eventually anyway. Either because your friends have it or because you just want to try it. Honestly, there are better things to boycott.

Another and probably my last point for now is simply the amount of people you can hope to reach. Right now I don’t know how many people have bought the game, but we can assume it’s a fair amount. (I can’t be bothered to look up the numbers, I’m on a train, sue me!) But how many of those really go to the forums and watch the videos that are effectively calling for a boycott? Even if half of the AC Revelations population checks the forums regularly then there is still no telling how many of those will actually get on board with the boycott. How many others will, like me, think only of the futility of this boycott and buy it, even though they wish desperately that the issues would be fixed? I think in the end the impact this boycott will have will be so very insignificant and simply lead to more anger towards Ubisoft and perhaps even create a schism between players who have the DLC and who haven’t. What’s the point? We’d be better off exploring alternatives, exploring ways to actually and profoundly impact Ubisoft and its customers so that we can actually get the support we deserve.

As can be seen above, I do agree and understand that the reasons for the boycott need to be handled much better by Ubisoft. I however can not see the point of not buying the DLC. You may offer your arguments against me and I will gladly reconsider if there are good ones made, and even if my mind isn’t changed I will gladly add your opinions to the post.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the DLC. Or the boycott.

>New videos found:

SquiddishReturns agrees that not-playing is pointless but that he will not be buying the DLC.
LaddieMcCrispy thinks the boycott will not work.

Happy new year!

Okay I’m about ten days late, but it’s been a busy time, what with uni starting back up (even though that doesn’t happen till tomorrow for me, I’ve had to give fixing my sleeping schedule a go) and a buttload of personal stuff. Never mind that, here we are, and indeed a happy new year to everyone!

Let’s kick this post off with a little update for everyone who’s had trouble adding their exclusive multiplayer character: it’s fixed! What happened? Well the deal was that a lot of players who had purchased a pre-order from Gamestop (though for European countries, it was also delivered by different retailers but with the same benefits, at least for me it was) were unable to add their multiplayer DLC codes, and thus found their Ottoman Doctor/Crusader unavailable for play. A few days ago a hotfix was released by Ubisoft and now all characters should be perfectly available for play. I haven’t been able to find a comprehensive list of things fixed in this hotpatch (then again I am no Online Sherlock Holmes) but I think they’ve fixed a few other things as well.

One of those is the bodyguard ability.The bodyguard now appears to be capable both of climbing buildings and a great many other things that it wasn’t able to before. Just the other day I had one climb up and try to stun me. Thinking it was a player I thought “Hey, easy kill!” only to have my hopes and dreams (okay, a few hundred points) taken away when it turned out to be nothing more than a bodyguard. If you’ve spotted any other improvements that haven’t been mentioned in a patch (and maybe the bodyguard was mentioned in a patch, but I am notoriously unobservant), then please feel free to drop a comment with just exactly what.

And then we move on to the most exciting news I’ve heard in a while: the Mediterranean Traveler Map Pack for Revelations, which will be released on january 24th 2012.

Oh beautiful Siena, how I've missed you.

That’s right, Siena will be returning! A player-favourite by many, they’re finally adding this beauty of a map back into the game, and quite frankly I can’t wait to slaughter some people in there. That said, Siena is obviously not the only map to be added. It is in fact one of three maps returning from Brotherhood, being added to Revelations along with three new maps. The new maps are:

• Dyers
• Imperial District (of Constantinopel as far as I can tell.)
• Jerusalem

The old maps being added are:

• Siena
• Firenze (Oh the roofing that went on there… -Shudders-)
• San Donato

Now obviously I can’t say too much about the new maps yet since I am hardly a tester of any kind, but they look cool enough. Dyers is apparently set in Rhodes as well, just as Knight’s Hospital is, though it seems Dyers is meant to give you a new perspective on the city by showing off its less prosperous parts. The Imperial District appears to be a map that is meant to show off some of the incredible work that was done in the single player by being an almost exact copy of the single player “Imperial District”, which is by no means a bad thing. Go and play through it again to get a feel for the land if you like, I think it’ll certainly help players who are just beginning the multiplayer by giving them a map that they already know to some extent. Jerusalem I am looking forward to as well, simply because I already loved the city’s architecture in the first game, and that was what? At least 300 years before the setting we’ll get now!

Then there are obviously the returning maps from Brotherhood, which I think every Brotherhood player can get excited about. I know I am, and not just because of Siena. All three maps are quality maps, though one is left to wonder why they were left for a DLC while a map like Mont St. Michel was added, arguably the most dreadful map in the game for many of us.

I mean look at it, far too many rooftops!

Oh well, what’s done is done I suppose, though I perpetually cringe every time I get dropped in Mont St. Michel (which is to say, every other game.) Moving on to the two maps I haven’t discussed yet, we have Firenze and San Donato. Firenze was famous, or to me at least, in that pretty much the entire center of the map was a haven for roofers. With the Mercato Del Vecchio at its center, it could’ve been expected. After all the market is an open space towered over by arches on all sides, which make perfect staging points for kills. Quite honestly I can’t even blame people much for roofing on this map, since it just provides too many good opportunities for kills. All the same I’m quite excited about Firenze making its return, simply because it is a beautiful map in itself, I love Florence and I’m rather curious how Deathmatch will work out with just a part of the map available for play. The center, perhaps?

Oh look the only quality picture I could find... Is of people on the rooftops.

And then there is San Donato, a personal favourite of mine though I must say I hadn’t quite realized it until we neared the end of Brotherhood. San Donato is one of those maps, to me, that are just plain good. It does everything right, and even with the big monastery-like-building in the middle (can’t for the life of me remember what it was exactly) which didn’t really help with roofers, there was plenty more of the map to explore and actually play on. I’ve had some memorable Manhunt matches, hiding there in the center, and that church with its chasebreakers (if you’ve played it you know the one) just never stops being fun to hide in.

The map that does things just right.

Right! Well I coul add a section where I rave more about Siena, its beauty and the lack of any high buildings, but I think I’ll spare you the headache and simply thank you for reading instead. Having rather stupidly forgotten about this in the last posts, I realize now that I could’ve easily added an invitation for playing with any of you. Let me do that now. I play on PS3 and my username is simply “Keden”. I’ll be happy to accept a friend request and play a few matches, though I must warn you that I am a dreadful player in the free-for-alls, but always happy to have my ass whopped by a reader.

For now, do keep checking in, even if I take a while between posts, I most certainly will be keeping up with my writing. Take care and till next time!

Escort! Or “murdering everything IN SIGHT”.

Apologies for the bad quality – Was forced to take a picture with my phone since I don’t have any capture software. Anyway this is a pretty badass score I got not too long ago, and it made me want to write a post on escort.

Let me first explain how escort works, for those of you that haven’t played it before or didn’t get it, which is no shame because it can be a confusing mode at first. As per usual in a team game, there are two teams: one starts out defending the VIPs and as a result, they have kill contracts on all of the players of the other team. Then there is the other team, who have to try and break through to the VIPs, only with one catch: they can only stun enemy players, and their contracts concern only VIPs. So it is key to either rush a VIP for 100 points, or try to get through stealthily and stun people as you go.

There is one more catch: the VIP-defenders can’t get stealth-bonuses and the VIP-assassins can. This means that you can cause a chase, at which point the VIPs will start running, whereas the VIP-defenders will not be stopped from running because they have to kill you whatever it takes.

Okay so with that out of the way, I’ve got to be honest first: I haven’t played escort much. Back in Brotherhood I generally only played Manhunt/Wanted (hey, I stuck by what I did best!), but even while branching out in Revelations escort sort of got left out. Now the scores here are hardly what I usually get, and on average I’m on about ~5000-6000 points, which is still very good, or so I think. If you don’t, well, leave my poor ego in tact. What I wanted to talk about is what really happened this match, and how you might prevent it.

One of the first things I noticed was that the other team (we started hunting VIPs) really hugged their VIPs, which is generally a good strategy, but they didn’t move actively to kill targets unless they got close. Always remember that if you have multiple targets, and another one is close, then their portrait will still light up. The only difference is that you have to keep an eye on the little portraits next to your main target’s portrait, which are the ones that light up. One goes flashy, and you know you’ve got to keep your eyes wide open.

I think perhaps a part of the opposing teams passiveness was that they had no way of discerning their targets. There are plenty of lookalikes in this gametype and if you don’t have a way of spotting someone in a crowd (templar vision, charge) then you’ll have a hard time defending your VIPs. While assassinating the VIPs I played with mute and smoke, which proved a rather deadly combination. Always beware of that combination when you’re hugging a VIP, because if you get muted and smokes together with your VIP, he’s dead no matter what. Again, it’s better to be proactive. (Good advice in life, too, I hear!)

Later in the match, when we were defending VIPs, I went with templar vision and smoke, which worked like a charm. Templar vision to spot them and when that’s on cooldown, just drop the smoke when you panic. It’s saved our VIPs more than once, though I noticed another thing: people were too fixed on VIPs, and by that I mean the other team. They came running, charging, practically screaming warcries if they could’ve, trying to rush our VIP (we’d lost one of two) to death. Hint: it didn’t work because it makes you obvious very quick. You are in fact better off trying to stun people without getting the VIP than you are killing the VIP. The moment you go running for a target while there’s someone around, even if you get him, they’re always going to get more points in return by killing you which only works against you.

Anyway I’ll bet there are a dozen more profile sets that are effective in escort, but these are the ones I’ve found most effective, and as you can see it worked pretty well. I might add more ‘tips’ as I play it a little more. I might just play it a lot, if I can drag my regular team mates into playing a few matches of escort.

Either way, that’s it for now, so thank you for reading. Remember to email me at kedenb@gmail.com or comment if you have anything to add or even if you would like me to write on another mode next. (I can imagine Deathmatch might be interesting, since there is much more room for different profile sets). For now though, take care and till next time!

Manhunt

Time to make a little post about what is arguably my favourite mode in ACR: Manhunt. I am a huge fan of the new modes like Steal the Artifact and Deathmatch/Simple Deathmatch, but good old Manhunt will always be one of my favourites. As of late I’ve also taken to playing with a few friends, something I’d never really done before, but by God I still think it’s one of the greatest modes out there. I should add that my favourite part is the defense part because there is no greater satisfaction than feeding your enemies some fist and a headbutt or two to go along with it.

I’ve always played as an agressive defense player, which basically comes down to sometimes even running after other people’s pursuers, which is remarkably effective if they are already in a chase. With the new stun range as it is in Revelations, not to mention that being able to use abilities while in a stun animation is incredibly convenient, I think agressive defense has become more viable than ever. I’ve heard some people claim in videos that it might be better if you play more cautiously, but I’ll have to disagree: there’s no way you’re going to get 10-15 stuns by being careful: people will roof and offensive smokebomb you left and right. Now 10-15 stuns might be a little much but the reality is that you might only get like 3-4-5 if you don’t take the initiative, because a mere blend group will certainly not be helping you in staying alive.

A good strategy to play with is to have at least one person with morph (or the Blender perk if you’re not working together with anyone) while the rest has at least smoke bomb and whatever else they like (which is pretty much a given considering the complete destruction a few well-placed smoke bombs can do.) Always keep in mind to run when you can though: there is no stunlocking anymore (except through smoke bombs) and even then you need to place them very well. Always try to keep an eye on your surroundings. If you’re being chased from far away, or see them coming, you can always try a cornerstun. There is nothing more frustratingly effective than to hide around a corner and go straight for the stun where they don’t expect you to be at all. And last but most certainly not least, you’ll always want to try and find your team mates. Hiding alone will only end up getting you killed more often and with less stuns, because you simply do not have anyone around to distract your hunters from you, nor anyone to help you.

As far as attacking goes, some of the above applies as well. Especially at the start of a round, you don’t want to wait around for an ingognito bonus because your team mates most likely will not, and even if you do, you’re going to be a little more than obvious whether you’re stalking around the same area for a half a minute or whether you’re sitting on a rooftop, waiting for that meter to fill up. Personally I would advise you to just take one player with templar vision (and preferably a mic) and have them call out one or two. (Alternatively: take Templar Vision and smoke. Usually you can find a group with two targets in it. Mark one, drop the smoke and kill them both before it runs out.) – You’ll want your smoke to have an extended duration for this to work though.

I should remark upon a few things that bug the living bejeezus out of me: animus hack and the hidden gun. I think I most certainly do not stand alone when I say that they are both dreadful skills and their use should be minimized. First of all, they do not earn your team any great amount of points, so you’re really not helping anyone. Second of all, if you’re going to use them, use them on targets that are actually running away. Too often have I seen someone line up five feet away and aiming a gun at a blend group because they “weren’t sure”. Well be sure, or work together with your team mates to eliminate all the targets at the same time. This isn’t a first person shooter, and shooting people is just about the least imaginative and least helpful way of killing anyone. -Rant over-

Anywho that’s just about it on Manhunt right now, a few pointers that have been winning me quite a few Manhunt matches these past days. If you have any tips or tricks you’d like to add yourself, do leave a comment or send me an email at kedenb@gmail.com. Next time I think I’m going to do a piece on my favourite abilities, and be sure to keep a look out; I’ve already gathered up a few awesome videos that I’ll be posting over the next week. Thanks for reading and till next time!

The day I saw red

Which is to say, I see red almost every day I play Assassin’s Creed Revelations. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the game. I played through the storyline in two days straight and have been playing the multiplayer to death this past week, courtesy of Christmas break! Woohoo. But you have to admit, Revelations does have its flaws. For instance the delay on the smoke bomb or my all-time-favourite, mute not working. See I’m just walking around, minding my own business and doing some manhunt defense, and the entire other team comes walking up. Oh! Mute you say? Why of course! ZAP! Now let’s stun this mo-ANDYOU’REDEAD.

That is a pretty regular sequence of events for me. Really, the range and delay on some of these abilities just needs to be adjusted, because even on a perfect connection it does not always work the way it’s meant to.  COD players, known for their extreme fits of rage, can not begin to imagine the anger all of us Revelations players feel when we get killed through a smokebomb.

That is not to say however, that these flaws are gamebreaking! I read earlier on Ubisoft’s forums that there have been an awful lot of people simply criticizing the game to death and that it could do with some praise for a change. After having seen just a few too many YouTube comments about how people have gone back to Brotherhood or even just tossed the game out, I’ll have to agree and say people need to stop raising their expectations ridiculously high. Assassin’s Creed Revelations is just absolutely an amazing game, even with its flaws.

The storyline remains strong as ever in the singleplayer, and the gameplay is smooth as ever (even with its ridiculous bugs at times). The multiplayer continues to be something special since I can hardly name any other game that actually plays even remotely like ACR:MP. The Reverse Detection Meter is also a great addition, even if it requires getting used to, especially by Brotherhood players. Sadly it’s messed up Assassinate but quite frankly I never cared much for that to begin with!

Hah, well I do a little and was getting into it towards the end of Brotherhood, but now it really is messed up. Yet when all is said and done, I adore the game and I think there is no reason for anyone to be “putting the game down” because of its current state. Fact of the matter is that you probably just weren’t playing well enough and that you’re probably blaming bugs for your own mistakes, which can be especially true in the multiplayer. Heck, I think we all do that from time to time. When it comes down to it though, and you do want to drop the game altogether, then do so: don’t go whining on the forums or on other people’s YouTube videos (such as the ACR videos posted on Machinima Respawn.)

Well that pretty much sums up my general view of the game, though I’ll no doubt go into more detail in later posts. For now I’d just like to include a few channels that I watch regularly, which you’ll also find in the links-section of this blog once I get permission from the channel owners to do so! I’m not actually sure I need it, but better safe than sorry.

First up is EscoBlades, who is just a fantastic player and also seems like a great guy (though I’ve only spoken to him through a few facebook posts! I was ever so proud when he responded) and is quite frequently in contact with some of the developers at Ubisoft. He’s really one of the biggest players in the ACR community and also a writer for Xbox Gamezone. You can find his channel here. 

Another channel that I love to watch and which you’ve probably heard of as well is Shenmue36′s channel. Frequently in Beast-mode (or always these days?), he tends to be a brutal player and I can only consider myself ever so lucky he plays on Xbox360. I would not want to be in a lobby with him and have my guts torn out repeatedly by his awesomeness. You can find him here.

Then there’s Angie, better known as Subject 17, who I think has one of the best voices for doing commentaries, ever. She’s also a great player and it’s generally just amazing to be watching her wipe out a lobby. Big fan! You can find her channel here.

Last but most certainly not least, I’m going to bring up a channel which I’ve only newly discovered through Gamersbeverage, which is LaddieMcCrispy. An excellent player and very fun to listen to, though admittedly this might be because of his live commentary where he showed the exact same rage as I would’ve felt. Either way, definitely worth checking out! You can find him here.

Well that’s all for now, and it’s probably rather obvious still that I’m only new to this blogging thing! But I’ll keep updating and pretty much linking anything ACR related that might seem awesome too, which in the future will include particular videos and of course more channels if and when I find them. For now, thanks for reading and until next time!