Assasins Creed, dumbed controls.

I was looking forward to Assasins Creed till I read the first review. I imagined something that mixed the best of Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell in historic medieval settings.

The one thing I like in a good game is controls that require some skill to really master and give you a sence of accomplishment when you do.

Assasins creed looked good in all the videos, but now it appears there is no jump button, all the fancy manouvers are mostly automatic :(



Here's the full review.

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?GID=456

Looks like I won't be getting this game now :(

Sounds like a great game, but it seems like a missed opportunity doesn't it?

Oh dear!

I was looking forward to it after reading this review, where one lucky sould got sent off to play it..
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=85982

...So, you have no control over the timing of jumps off roofs? :-(

It seems like a good idea to me. I hate games that are full of pixel perfect, finicky jumps. I reckon that this should quite nicely improve the flow of the game.

After 5 minutes of thought, I can kind of see why making it automatic in some instances would be necesary- users jumping off at slightly odd angles just to die (POP anyone? "NO! I wasn't FACING that way you tw*t!")

But if there really is no jump button, It could be very very dissapointing.....

Empire have now posted this statement, regarding their "review":


http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/games/

(on the left hand side of the page, in red, near the top)

tell you what, automatic jumping would make it a lot easier to code probably...even though it seems they didn't do it in the end.

Avon: I've nearly finished star fox with my boys. It's actaulyl pretty neat in the end, lots of unlocking extra places based on your abilities (like Metroid). It does have annoying dinosaur dialog and the start was boring. Also you can't jump as it jumps automatically and I found this to be annoying for sure.

Ahere better be a jump button is all I can say. If you can jump and have the game AI try and automaticly compensate for slight errors of judgement that would be very cool.

It's true that jump puzzles are rarely fun if they require pinpoint accuracy. Thanks for the link Avon :)

I'll reserve judgement on the game till more reliable sources turn up. That was the first review to come out, and very disappointing after being really excited about the game.

I thought Zelda did have jumping?

Zeldas jumping is automatic as you go over an edge.

As time goes by, I'm thinking Sands of Time was a great game by accident, rather than concious design choice.

Yes. If you ran "over" the edge of a platform Link would automatically jump for you. Pressing a button does seem rather redundant in that particular case. I suposse it largely depends on whether you want a Mario 64 type "platformer" game, or a more action oriented game.

One cool aspect of the jumping in Zelda was that you could do other things (like throw boomerangs and shoot the hookshot) while the game made sure you didn't miss a jump.

Heck you could still miss jumps if you came in at the wrong angle anyway, it's not like there was no skill.

It's being dumbed down for consoles.

I think we are going to see a few developers like Crytek break away from console development, and a new rift will develop between the two, based on graphical quality and depth of gameplay.

Seems there might be something more to the story.

Btw, I tried Crysis - WHY can normal koreans take 100's of bullets before they die?!

try crysis in delta mode, they die much easier but so do you and the nano suit doesn't give you as much of an advantage.

I'm glad it gets better. I probably gave up too early, but a game needs to hook me within the first 2 hours or I struggle to continue.

Try Metal Arms: Glitch in the System next, it's a good fun game that provides a serious challenge when you reach the later levels!

Damm I haven't played Zelda TP in so long that I almost did forget that you coudn't jump.....But then again, it never bothered as far as I can remember.

Thing is, being in full control is relative.

You can be in control of stategic choices
You can be in control of every footstep

ultimately the cinematic and immersive route is strategic choices.

You're in control when you use a knife and fork, but you dont think about the knife and fork. you make strategic choices on what food combos you're gonna eat.

Micromangement isn't immersive. The dumbed controls is ultimately a step forwards.

I definately see more games going in that direction, but hopefully it doesn't just ends up begin like Dragons Lair where everthing is just button pressing...

Precisely.

This is all about context too. If you're a trained assassin, performing these actions would be second nature, so a conscious decision to perform an action would be all you would need or indeed perceive. If you were playing a pastry chef who had to work as a trained assassin, perhaps micromanagement of your every move would make sense, but that's not the context here.

In the same way - when playing a football game - I expect the player to be able to use some intelligence in where to pass/shoot and all I should be doing is indicating which player I want to pass to or what nature of shot I want to make. Ultimately, this leads to ever more intricate and believable in-game behaviour without needlessly complicating the controls so as to remove all the fun from the experience.

A small degree if auto jumping might be ok, but I still feel it should still be initiated by a jump button. If you watch the videos, the guy runs along a rooftop and jumps across a whole string of horizontal beams. I wouldn't want the computer to make my decisions for me on jumping across those beams.

Especially with the new edge detection algorithms they use in this game that let you character grasp any surface edge that juts out. It seems like auto jump would be limiting. It's not supposed to be a mario or zelda game but something more like medieval splintercell.

Anyway, apparently the original review was incorrect and there may actually be some kind of jump functionality in there. I'm still interested in the game. It looks like it may have a combat system a little like Severance:Blade of Darkness, which just happens to be one of my favourite action based RPG's.

May have to get an Xbox360 so I can play the game on initial release, apparently the PC version isn't due till 2008.

Really? Well, fire up your trusty C64 emulator, get Last Ninja, go down two or three screens, and try and jump across the river. It takes hours of hit and miss jumping to learn which way to properly cross the stream. It doesn't help that the visual cues are a bit off. After that if you still don't want the computer to help you gauge which jumps are safe, I have no option to conclude that you are highly masochistic, and that your notion of fun, is probably not something the rest of us should feel inclined to indulge.

I mean seriously? A Ninja drowning in what looks to be a fairly shallow stream, because he misses a rock by an inch? That stuff never happened to Michael Dudikoff.

hehe, thats just bad level design Flameduck.