And rather than blowing all my money on games I may or may not like, I have hired some from the local video shop to test them out and see whether or not my expectations will be met by my new piece of hardware.
This afternoon, I have been playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations, having been unable to figure out how to access the original game on the disc (turns out, however, that I don't have enough space now to play the original game - what gives?). I feel that had I been able to work that out in the first instance, I wouldn't have spent the last few hours in a state of complete bewilderment.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations for PlayStation3
The Plot: From what I can gather - I'd read the Wikipedia pages on this series before, but not in-depth enough to still know what was going on - a man in a hoodie is in a machine that allows him to become someone else (his ancestors, says Wikipedia) - in this case it's Enzio Auditore da Firenze, the Italian assassin from previous games, but now considerably more aged, as indicated by the grey in his beard. Desmond, as Enzio, travels initially to a castle/temple/mini-city in the Italian mountains (I assume - apparently, it's actually in Syria) and is almost killed by some Templars, though this distinction is also assumed as it's never made clear as one plays it for the first time. His mission: to enter the library of his ancestor Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad and discover its secrets. However, one needs keys to access the library, and upon learning that they are in Constantinople (not yet Istambul, thought that is mentioned in-game), Enzio heads there to continue his quest for the keys.
The Review (of sorts): Almost three hours of game play is not enough to properly get an understanding of what a) the PS3 is capable of and b) what the Assassin's Creed franchise is all about. However, a few main things leap out at me as I play (none of them any help, though, and my complete confusion about what I should be doing persists).
Firstly, and without coincidence, I am strongly reminded of the Prince of Persia game series for PS2. I say "without coincidence" as Ubisoft, the company behind the Assassin's Creed franchise, also developed the PoP series, and it has seemed prudent to use the same kind of game play features from their previous successes in this one (perhaps contributing to its success?). Every now and then something overwhelmingly similar to the PS2 games pops up in the PS3 games, from the mechanics of the characters (i.e. climbing up walls, hanging from just-visible ledges, the sword fights) to the atmospheric of the game (i.e. the sound a chained gate makes as it's being drawn, the sound of water being sloshed around, the way the buildings look as Enzio climbs around on them, and on occasion in a sword fight, when the action is slowed for effect, much in the way that it would sometimes especially in The Sands of Time). The Hookblade, too, introduced to Enzio by Yusef in the beginning of the Constantinople section of the game, harks back to the chain used in The Two Thrones. I'd picked the game up anyway because the look of it reminded me of the Prince, and I love the PoP series on PS2 (especially The Sands of Time, and a little less so Warrior Within - any game I have to use a walkthrough to finish 100% I feel less fond of, because was it really my victory or someone else's?). Hopefully as I play more of it and get the hang of the controls, that love of the PoP series will materialise in the Assassin's Creed series.
Secondly, and speaking of the controls - what's with not having an instruction manual? Is this a quirk of hiring a game from the video shop or do PS3 games no longer come with paper books as manuals? I discovered one through the start menu in-game, but as I was playing on an ancient 12" tube-powered television (none of this LCD nonsense!), it was impossible to read and would have taken me longer to do so than it probably did for me to fiddle about and figure it out on my own (dying a few times in the process, mind - or rather, "desynchronising"). Nothing, I maintain, will beat having a piece of paper handy that you can pause your game and just shove in front of your face to read which combination of buttons you need to mash to achieve the desired results. The tutorials are handy, but they don't go terribly in-depth - I guess that's what the first game was for. Never mind...
And thirdly, coming from that last point - the storytelling in Assassin's Creed: Revelations is a bit sparse for a first-time player. Without having read the pages on this game series on Wikipedia previously I would have been completely lost at the beginning, after watching the introduction to the game that really told me nothing of the situation I had then found myself in. For some inexplicable reason, the beach scene at the beginning reminded me of Turok, though I have no idea why (colours? Rocks? Who knows...). And, not to bang on about PoP incessantly - I'm anticipating the "Why don't you just pull out your PS2 and play those games instead" inevitable question - but at least the beginning sequences of those games, particularly the later ones, included enough back-story to allow first-time players to at least catch up on what came before and develop an understanding of why your character is running around killing sand monsters and chasing after the Empress of Time in the first place. At the beginning of Assassin's Creed: Revelations - I'm thinking less of the Enzio scenes and more of the Desmond Miles scenes - too much happens in a short space of time, flickers of memories and mentions of names that are too quick to properly catch, that before you get a chance to reconcile the bits and pieces of information that has just been spat at you, we cut suddenly to Enzio's situation and away we go, we're playing the game. But what does Desmond say about Lucy? Juno? Who's the blond guy? What's a safe mode? What's with all the computer graphics? Etc., etc., - questions answered if I go back and play the first games, I'm sure, but then here's my new problem: apparently I only have like 5,500MB left on my machine, and that's not enough to play the first game. Wha? How can I have run out of space on a 12GB machine? I thought something was a bit suspicious when it took like half an hour (more like five minutes) to load the game up before we even reached the Start screen; at least the PS2s (and the N64s, and the Wiis...) just got up and went when you pressed "ON". While I was waiting, I turned to my partner and asked, "Cup of tea?" It was like waiting to log on to the internet just to check your emails, back in the (good?) old days of dial-up. Do I have the dial-up version of the PS3? I must do some more research.
So anyway, my first day as a PS3 owner has been a little mixed. I just thought having a 500GB machine would be outrageous for what I wanted to do (which was just play games)... but like all new things, it takes time to adjust. Maybe when I give the other game I have, Skyrim, a go, things will be different and I'll have a ball just like what I've been wanting to do for ages. Or else, I'll just sell the system and get my money back and dust off the PS2...
Out of 5:
(right now, I won't give a rating)
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