Assassin's Creed Rogue: Going Rogue

Wow, I haven't written anything in a while, which is a blessing for the internet.
From what I hear, Assassin's Creed: Unity is a piece of crap that's glitchy to the point of being unplayable, with an underlying pay-to-win philosophy. Luckily for me, I don't have an Next-Gen system (the Wii U will never, ever count). Released simultaneously alongside Unity was a Last-Gen system game called Assassin's Creed: Rogue, which most people are saying is better than the over-budgeted Unity. It was made on-the-cheap by recycling old maps, animations and character models, but a lot of games have been doing that lately. Saint's Row IV and Arkham City Origins immediately springs to mind. The gameplay is almost entirely similar to it's predecessor, Assassin's Creed 4. In terms of chronology, the main game is a direct sequel, where the framework story is you're an employee at Abstergo Industries researching old memories in search of pieces of Eden. In terms of chronology in the historical context of the main story, it takes place during the Seven Year's War a few decades after Assassin's Creed 4 and shortly before Assassin's Creed III. That doesn't make sense to me either. You play as Shay Patrick Cormac, who's an Irish-American Assassin turned Templar, and now you're killing Assassins and the French instead of the British and the Templars (you still get to kill Templars and British people, though). He's an original character with no obvious genetic links to the heroes from AC 3 and 4, although he does work for Achilles, meets Haytham Kenway and talks about Conner at one point. The gameplay is very similar to AC 4 right down to the naval batles and harpooing, but with some new twists. If you've ever played the weird online multiplayer matchmaking for AC, you can play an offline mode of that in-game. Assassins will constantly try to kill you, and your only warning beforehand aside from spotting them outright are "whispers." This prompts you to use your Eagle Vision, which has been in every AC game, to find them using a radar. You then either have to draw them out or get the drop on them before they try to stab you. This makes the game more challenging, as you will have to contend with them while walking through New York, and also while doing missions. Failing to route them out while trying to achieve your set goals, while optional, can have you fail some mission. As Assassins, they're also fairly powerful and can defeat you if not handled properly.
The game also adresses one of the many, many problems with the entire series: namely, virtually all the Assassin targets in all the games have been weak, old men. Shay laments having to kill George Washington's Templar brother, who's already close to dying. He then later has to kill another man who, "Could barely lift up his sword," in his words. From that point, all his targets become deadly Assassins.

REBOOT!

If you've read my blog in the past, you know I've talked a lot about Skyrim. Specifically, the glitches and fuck ups. Previously, I was playing solely on the 360, and was limited to that experience, but now I've expanded to my computer. In fact, I was able to transfer my save data to my computer and erase those bugs with new ones!
Using a transfer cable and the removable storage for my old, white 360, I was able to take those files over to my computer via USB and a program called, "Horizon," which frankly sucks. I was able to use the program properly the first time off the bat, but I didn't have the proper save file on that storage system. I had to transfer it from the cloud onto my black Elite 360 using the internal system, then transfer that into the removable storage system using the transfer cable. When I tried to transfer that back into my computer, none of the files would show. The only clue I had was that I had to run the program as and administrator, but I've never had to do that with a program before. I finally learnt how from a web tutorial, but that was only after viewing several others to figure out what step I was missing. Things went pretty smoothly from there. I had to extract the files using Horizon, and then saved them under my files saves for Skyrim on my computer. After that, I had to rename is with a ".ess" filename. When I booted up the game, the picture for the save data file was nothing but corrupted static, but it loaded perfectly.
From there, I could fix what I wanted, with a little tinkering. I wanted to resurrect my dead wife, Temba Wide-Arm, whom I killed in werewolf form because she frankly annoyed me and there's no such thing as divorce in Skyrim. I had to enter the appropriate command code. Surprisingly, when I set my command to move to her (moving her to me wasn't working), I found she was still located inside my house in Breezehome. Even though she wasn't physically there, she was still located right in front of the fire. There was nothing to click on to actually resurrect her, so I had to use a method where I locked in her name to the command, then entered "recycleactor" instead of the old, "resurrect" command. POOF! She's alive!
Only, we were no longer married. She acknowledged that I'd completed quests for her, but she didn't acknowledge me as her husband. So apparently there is a way to get divorced in Skyrim.
From there, I decided to use the same method to bring other dead NPCs back. I travelled to one of my homes where I had a dead thrall lying in the basement. I had previously used necromancy on the NPC, whom was killed in battle by the enemy, and kept them as my thrall, leaving them in my home for safe keeping afterwards. If you think that's creepy, it's better than leaving their dead bodies in the streets.
From there, I remembered an old Easter Egg I'd heard about called Wideadbodycleanupcell, which is literally a dead body clean up cell. It's accessible only by typing in "COC WIdeadbodycleanupcell," and it takes you to an unfinished-looking purple and green crypt made up of two joining halls that lead into oblivion. Jumping out through the unfinished halls into the blackness will only take you back to the room, and you have to type "COC" location to get back out. All the dead bodies that disappeared off the world map end up there, for some reason. They're naked and piled ontop of each other, with some missing heads. Their limp bodies materialize in the air and collapse when you first enter, so it looks like you walked into the world's worst orgy. One NPC was still on his feet, but didn't really articulate well.. He simply acknowledge me with a, "What do you need?" I couldn't recall who he was, but perhaps he was an old Companion.
My first attempt at mass resurection for the game backfired when I clicked on myself and typed, "recycleactor." That removed and eliminated some, but not all of my armour and weapons, and changed my helmet for some reason. I was now wearing a Dragonplate helmet, but no shirt or pants. I kept on going regardless.
The second person I resurrected was an old man, who proceeded to try to fight me. After 200+ hours of having played, I couldn't recall what I'd done to him, but obviously he was pissed off. I fought him bare-handed and drove him back to the door to the abyss before finishing him off with a cinematic.
From there, I resurrect a woman, who proceeded to walk at a bizarre angle out of the room. Before she left, I talked to her and she made some crack about being naked. That's when I decided it'd be a good idea to reload my save to get my armour back.
This second time around, I resurrected everyone in the first-person view so as not to target myself. I went through the pile of bodies typing, "resurrect," but some came back with errors complaining they weren't bleeding out, so I used, "recylceactor" on those. I did it all in one go, and when I finished, to no surprise, they all came back to life in full apparel wanting to kill each other and me as well. I booked it out of there. Hopefully they'll return to their homes on their own so I don't have to move them.
From there, I used a command to reset my marriage quest, since I was now an elligble bachelor. Strangely, I ran into Temba on the way back to Breezehome, and she was interested in marrying me again. Some people never learn. I almost went for it, but I think this time I'll play the market.

Trevor Phillips vs. Wolverine

The characters in GTA V have similiarities between themselves and previous characters in the decades-long series, like Michael De Santo and Tommy Vercetti.Trevor Phillips, however, shares more in common with everyone's favourite Canadian mutant than Niko Bellic.
 
Seperated at birth? No.
First off, he was raised in Canada, despite living and working in America, a fact that everyone he knows makes fun of endlessly because of his slight accent. He also sounds exactly like Wolverine does inside your head, like a drunken Canuck that smokes two packs a day. Trevor Phillips also has a special abillity that makes him virtually invincible. He uses this ability while going on berserker rampages where he kills everyone in sight. His friends have a habbit of coming back from the dead. For Trevor, that person is Michael. For Wolverine, that person is every X-Man and his roster of nemesises. They're both basically hillbillies that like drinking, fighting, and country music.

GTA Cover Chicks

 
GTA V is still weeks away from being released, but I'm going to go ahead and call it that the bikini chick is nowhere in the game. Why?

 
Lolipop chick wasn't in the game.
I
Martini girl wasn't in the game.
There were alway prositutes/bikini girls in the past decade of GTA games, but they were never true to the art in the load menus, promos, and covers for the game. Why? The series never shied away from overt sexuality. It even produced, "The Ballad of Gay Tony," expansion pack for GTA IV, which wasn't really about Gay Tony. Look at the cover for GTA IV. Everything else is in that game, including the gondolas, which weren't a big draw to begin with. (Do you even remember the gondolas? They were available.) The chick with the lolipop isn't. Apparently an NPC licking a lolipop was too much for the Next-Gen technology to handle, but gondolla rides weren't. .
Also, as for the selfie girl in GTA V: How is she taking that selfie? She's on a beach. There's no mirrors nearby, and she's using a cell. Is someone taking a pic of her posing as she taking a pic of them?It's GTA V, by the way, and she's flashing the peace sign, which is also the number, "2." What if she were flashing five fingers? No? Too stupid? What about three for all three playable characters in the game... What? I'm fired? Well FUCK YOU TOO! I SHIT IN YOUR COFFEE THIS MORNING!

Dog Bites Man

While playing Assassin's Creed III, I came across a "meme" of sorts that's been prominent in video games over the last generation. That is: wild animals and dogs can inflict more damage on your character than knives and bullets. 

In games that boast their, "realism," wolves can own you, while your character ignores bullet wounds to the head. I've had entire rows of soldiers line up and shoot me as one, only to walk away, or fight my way through while being stabbed in the kidneys. A wolf, on the other hand, can kill you in one or two bites to the arm.

This is a prominent feature of most games containing wild animals and hunting, like Far Cry 3 and Red Dead Redemption. In Red Dead Redemption, any wild cat can basically insta-kill you. Your super-macho character is less likely to survive an attack than you are in real life. 

The Call of Duty franchise is by far the worst offender, where in multiplayer unleashing the dog attack is second only to unleashing a nuke. Once you hear the dogs barking, you're screwed. If you see one, you have exactly a split second to aim and open fire at this scud missile with fur on it. 

 

On the other hand, in games like Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Minecraft where you have dogs and wolves as pets that can fight for you, those dogs are incredibly likely to be killed instantly by you with a misplaced blow. I don't know anyone that's accidentally shot their own dog... ever. Even Dick Cheney hasn't. In other games like Fable II and Fable III, your dog is basically immortal... until he's not. In Nintendogs, you have all the responsibilities of being a dog owner without any risks of mortality.

I'm basically just pointing out that no one has gotten dogs and animals right in a video game yet.

Tablet VS. TV

Today someone was mentioning how you can use you tablet in integration with the the Next Gen Battlefield 4 to call in strikes, etc (according to E3). This reminded me of the Wii U, which I have, which I forget I have. The Wii U is a Wii with a tablet. Playing video games on you TV with a tablet is a chore. It's an experience that no one should live though. To this day, Lego Undercover for the Wii U is the most fully integrated console/tablet experience, and it sucks. Scirbblenauts for the Wii U simulatenously plays on the TV and tablet. Guess which one you look at more? The tablet.
Ever have the TV on (playing TV shows) and use a tablet on at the same time? I'm used to multitasking, but in this case, the tablet wins every time. By multitasking, I mean I might be on the internet, watching TV, playing DS/PSP, and reading a book all at the same time. Having a tablet means I'm doing all four at once, which means I'm only using a tablet. That counts as one thing. If the TV is on in the background I'll be all, "Huh? John Oliver is hosting the Daily Show now?"
The Xbox One is fully integrated with Kinect 2.0, which no one wants to use. It's all motion-controlled and voice command. Have you ever used voice commands with a non-living thing? Socom 2 and Lifeline first introduced me to the world of voice commands. In Lifeline, a PS2 game controlled by voice commands, you were treated like a schizophrenic rapist while asking for your character to, "DODGE!" Fact: character wouldn't dodge although that was one of the required actions to play the game.
The problem with Kinect is that it supposedly understands natural hand gestures.Who's hand gestures? An Itallan's? Who use hand-gestures naturally? Does the Kinect discriminate against you if you have tiny hands?

Console Wars

Since Nintendo and it’s rival Sega went from 8-bit to 16-bit, then to 32-bit, the console wars have become steadily less inspiring. The key-push to the war was always graphics. The system with the best graphics usually won out, or got left behind. Now, Playstation and Xbox are on-par with each other in terms of graphics, with Playstation leading the race. With the next-gens we’re reaching the limits of what our TVs can even reasonably display, but they’ve given up on “gimmicks” like 3D display. That being said, the debut games on the next-gen consoles won’t look much different than the last games on the old consoles. This has always been the way. What’s the advantage, then, or the reason to update?

The Wii U is already out and being lambasted for not having the most advanced hardware. It’s considered a Wii with a iPad. It, however, has tons of backwards compatibility, and easy access to it’s back-catalogue of games. You can literally play the Wii on the Wii U. The new PS4 and Xbox One (X1?) both spit on that concept. You apparently can’t load a 360 game onto a One, despite the technology being there and it being connected to your old Xbox account.

Beyond that, the new systems have little to offer that couldn’t be made available with an app, like on the later-day 360. The One boasts the Kinect 2.0, which isn’t something people necessarily want. The Kinect 1 was nothing more than an expensive gimmick for the 360, with few gaming options. Players were always promised integration with their favourite games, and that never happened. The “big” Kinect games like the Star Wars one were on-rail jokes.  People traded in the Kinect Adventure game it came with, and you could buy it for pennies used. That’s likely because no one wants to shout commands at their TV, or wail their arms around like crazy when they’re trying to unwind. Have you ever tried using voice commands? On any system from the Kinect to Siri, to Google Voice? It DOESN’T work. Having the integrated Kinect 2.0 only adds to the cost of an already expensive system, plus gamers are being told they’ll have to pay extra to “unlock” used or borrowed games.

The gaming industry hates the used gaming industry because it creates a secondary economy. The great thing about the secondary economy is that’s it’s a viable alternative to the first, which sucks. Every new game comes out costing around $70, and without the secondary market, it’d stay that way. Only the AAA titles are worth that expense, but the full content is always kept from players in the form of “downloadable content” which can cost double the shelf price. Essentially, you’re always paying for half-a-game. The secondary market cuts through that bullshit. Garbage titles will soon find themselves in the bargain bin. With Xbox or Playstation controlling the market, they’ll never likely dip under the $40 mark until well over a year has gone by. They’re fleecing the consumers every way they know how.

Their other forms of “integration” aren’t phenomenal. Being able to link your gaming console with your handheld device like Vita, or your smartphone, isn’t really useful. I’ve tried using the Xbox app on my tablet, and beyond being able to search for videos on youtube slightly easier, it’s useless. The One was really pushing it’s integration with TV viewing, neglecting the fact that no one watches TV anymore. Nobody. It’s all downloads, Netflix and youtube. People want to be freed from their TVs. There’s little point in even owning one anymore, except for having a bigger screen.

Then there’s the “exclusives.” These are the real reason to decide between consoles. Nintendo pumps out the same stuff it’s been giving us since the 80’s. PS4 has ??? and God of War. The One has Halo and ???. The Halo franchise doesn’t even belong to Bungie anymore. As for Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty franchise that’s the game-killer, Infinity Ward isn’t even Infinity Ward. The rest of the sports games belong to EA, which is the worst company in the world two years running, and will likely fuck up their launch titles on both systems while they’ve dismissed working with Nintendo outright.

Blood Dragon

I finished playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon in it’s entirety, including all Achievements and collectables. The game itself is pretty short without much re-playability. That being said: It’s awesome. It’s like the 80’s exploded. It’s filled with references like Ninja Turtles, Krull, Star Wars and Terminator. Everything is neon, which is the way things should be. It even feels like Skyrim at times when you’re fighting giant dragons. Instead of CGI cutscenes, the game uses rertro-80’s style 16-Bit cutscences full of one-liners and Rocky-esque montages. There’s cheese-ball jokes like:

“Tell my wife I died a hero.”

“Tell her yourself!”

The game is very self-aware of itself as a game. The training sessions and the load-screen hints are parodies while being helpful. Your character, Rex, will even reference other, terrible missions from other games while basically doing the same thing in his. Him saying, “I hope I don’t have to collect any fucking flags,” while collecting TV sets of VHS tapes is likely a reference to the Assassin’s Creed side-mission where you have to spend hours and days collecting flags to get a pointless Achievement. Rex’s top running speed, the availability of vehicles and fast travel, plus his Cyber-eye that pings targets and the ability to unlock all collectible locations on the world map makes his collectible quest painless and easy.

Rex is able to finish quests to upgrade and trade-out his weapons. This becomes moot once you get the Killstar, a reference to the mystical weapon in the terrible 80’s movie, Krull. It’s basically a spinning Ninja Star that shoots out lasers from your cyber-arm. It’s uses your health-bar as ammo, but once you max out your level you won’t notice your health taking a hit. It can kill anything and even score head-shots with sweeping laser blasts. I spent hours just running around shooting anything that moved. This was a complete departure from how I started off in the game sneaking around getting Stealth kills. Stealth is only important if you don’t have the guns to back up a frontal assault.

The game’s ending had once of the greatest moments I’ve ever seen in a game, when you walk into a room and the floor lights up with a rainbow bridge to lead you to your new cyber-dragon-thing, which is basically a dinosaur with a giant cannon on it’s back you ride around on and kill things on-rails. This leads you to the end-game moment, which skips the obligatory boss battle.

Some areas are difficult, though, like when you have to kill two dragons at once in an arena-style fight to progress the game. They even have extra baddies come in to shoot you while you’re fighting for your life. I had to stealth the first part of the fight to set up mine and C4 traps (the only part of the game I used either weapon, despite the ready availability of both throughout), then blast away with the gattling gun and hope I didn’t have to reload.

I haven’t even played Far Cry 3, and I have no idea how similar the two games are, or if they’d even play the same. I know both are vaguely RPG, open-world-style FPS, but then Far Cry 3 probably doesn’t have a button for flipping people off.

Retrofit

I was trying to boot up N64 games on the Wii Virtual Console on the Wii U, and was greeted with the message I would need to attach a Wii Classic Controller to the Wiimote. I have two Wii controllers, the Wiimote with nunchuks and the Wii Pad, or whatever ridiculous name they’re called. They all have the requisite number of buttons, but it won’t let me use them. I have to physically go to a store and buy a Wii Classic Controller. This raises the number of controllers you’re expected to own to fully use your Wii U to five, at a bare minimum. Games like Nintendoland expect you to use the Wii pad and up to four Wiimotes for up to five players. Super Mari Bros. U makes you play multiplayer with the Wii Pad and up to four Wiimotes. Games like Assassain’s Creed makes you use the Pro Controller. Retro games in the Virtual Console make you use the Classic Controller. Make no mistake that the Wii U Game Pad is all you need to play any of these games, but it won’t let you use it in some cases, or else use more than one. It has every button, a touch screen, infrared, and motion controls. There’s little reason for the console itself to exist. Basically, with a Wiimote, a Pro Controller, and a Classic Controller you’re looking at about $100 in extra expenses you don’t need because someone can’t be bothered to figure out how to map buttons onto the Wii Pad. I remember back in the old days when the original Nintendo came with two controllers and a completely useless light gun, and the special edition came with a fucking robot. Nowadays, you have to buy a special edition or a deluxe edition just to get a game and a larger hard drive (which could be replaced by a $9 SD card for $90 in savings).  You only get one controller and a fuck you with the basic editions, or even the mid-tier editions with the slightly larger hard drive.

Seriously though, the Wii Virtual Console requires you to have a Wiimote just to access it, which means either buying one or owning one from an underused or traded-in Wii. The Wii Virtual Console negates the need for a Wii completely, which means you’d obviously want to sell your old one off, or junk it, or maybe keep it around for low-def use of Netflix, but you’re expected to keep the Wiimote.

With the new generation of consoles coming out, the expectation is that the new PS4 or Xbox 720 (or whatever they’ll be called) are going to have integrated motion controls. That means the new Xbox will have built-in, non-negotiable Kinetic 2.0. With the path that the Wii U carves, the next Nintendo console will probably have an even newer requisite controller, but also require every controller you ever owned, or found in a garage sale.

The other big push with the Virtual Console update is playing old-school Nintendo games on the Game Pad. That’s isn’t that big of a draw. The license for the original Nintendo expired last year and there was a rush of portable game emulators you could pop a cartridge in and play (assuming the old cartridge batteries weren’t dead, which is expected to affect games like Zelda soon). Plus, if you look at the Android Play store, the SNES emulator is around #7 on their top-selling apps. That means anyone with an Android device and $2 can play any goddamn SNES game anywhere they want, with a longer battery life and more portability than the Game Pad. Those Roms are free, too. After all, a person can only be expected to pay for the original Super Mario Bros. so many times. They’re only releasing a handful of games to begin with as well, which is ridiculous. To think they’re keeping hundreds of games in their catalogue at bay and releasing them one-at-a-time once-a-week is a money losing idea. Most of those games themselves are only a few KB, and the rest is all emulator. How hard could it be? I could probably torrent their entire back-catalogue in an hour.