Assassin's Creed is going the wrong way.

So I'm playing AC 4 nowadays and I gotta say it has changed so much over the years that it has forgotten to be what it was. I had loved AC1 very much & it's still is my most fav AC game. Everything in it fascinated me. The character, Altair, the story, the setting, the gameplay etc was so beautiful. And then came Ezio's adventure for 3 games. I had liked AC2 almost as much as AC1. Some people liked it more some liked it just as much as 1 but I loved the 1 more. Everything you did in AC1. i.e. eavesdropping, viewpoint synchronizing, random killings, were all related to the main missions. AC2 was way too non-linear for me. I hate it when games are so non-linear that they forget to pay more attention to the main missions. The only "too sandbox-ish" game I like is, 'The Sims' series but that is because it doesn't have any pre-made story that you need to follow in order to proceed. I also hated Ezio as a character. I loved Altair's personality. He had this bad-ass attitude in the beginning and he later becomes very down to earth and nice. I also loved to hate Al-Mualim the antagonist. I hated his accent in the PSP game as much as I love different accents. Though Ezio changed a bit in brotherhood but the game had started to get a little less interesting for me. Revelations was good too but nothing special. I loved Ezio in the intro. He looked very different. I also didn't like the way they showed Altair's story in revelations or so though it wasn't that bad maybe. Desmond's story had started to bore me too with all the 'end of the world' crap. Finally Ezio's story ended as a trilogy & we were given the new character. Unfortunately the game took so much in developing the character that it didn't have any excitement in it except for a few parts. I had thought it would be my last AC game but then I heard about the new game having pirates and later when it got released it managed to get great reviews so I thought of getting it. I'm still very early in the game (3rd sequence) & I just want to stop playing it already. Half of the game is full of boring, hard to control ship travels and battles. It doesn't even seem like an 'Assassin's Creed' game. I'm liking the story for now and the platforming is also still interesting. In fact, I had loved to do all the platforming very early in the game on the beautiful island. I wished that was more in the game, but there are many things that I'm hating. The repetitiveness, the timed missions etc. While I still want to play more and see if there's anything interesting or till I get another game, here are the things that I hate in this game. I might include them again in my review if I do a review if I complete the game:

- Sailing: Very boring and hard to control.
- Ship battles: Always hated these in AC games.
- Random side missions,
- Timed side missions (target went to pee) Side missions shouldn't be timed. why would I waste my time on other missions if they are just as hard,
- Timed main missions: Desynchronized because you couldn't reach in time blah blah boring.
- Baby sitting:  Desynchronized because your Ally died because he can't take care of himself.
- Chasing fragments, shanties etc. As if getting to these shits isn't hard. After you do find out the locations of these shits & reach them they start to run away from you. Why would I waste my time chasing them instead of paying attention to the main game?
- Too many main ship missions: Half of the game is full of ship battles that are not optional. Is this a stealth assassination game or Around the World in 80 days?

 There are two things I hate about Ubisoft. 1. They tend to include things only THEY like and fans hate (for e.g. timed missions, chasing which includes not only human beings but fragments & papers too, horse races with crappy controls & ship battles) 2. They tend to change the sequel way too much from the original. So much, that it looses it's originality & becomes something else (For e.g Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia series, Splinter Cell, And I yet have to try out Far Cry series.)

 What they should do IMO for the next AC is to add more stealth elements & assassination moves. After all it's "Assassination" Creed & not "Pirates"Creed unless they change the title. We should be able to utilize the platforming, I loved the crypts in AC2. Give us more stealth weapons. They are actually removing throwing knives from AC, Unity I read. That would suck. It was fun throwing knives at the rooftop guards.

Anyway, I'm going to play AC4 to see if I want to continue or not. I've started Far Cry 1 on PC. It doesn't seem much stealthy for now but lets see. And here are my scores for the AC games I've played excluding the PSP one.

AC 1: 9/10
AC 2: 8.5
AC B: 8
AC R: 7.5
AC 3: 6
AC 4: ???? 

E3- My fav conference

This could be my first e3 post here. I had talked about it last year too but maybe somewhere else. I may be a Sony lover but I try not to become a fanboy when judging E3 conferences. I don't think last time I had said that Sony was the best & the rest sucked. But I don't remember much & let me talk about this time. IMO Sony nailed it :P Out of the three consoles, Sony had the best conference. Microsoft came a second for me & that's all. But if I was to include EA & Ubisoft press conferences too, I'd say UBI won :P My scores for these conferences are:

Microsoft 4/10
EA: 1.5/10
Sony: 8.5/10
Ubisoft: 9/10
Nintendo: 1/10

Microsoft:
I loved the new trailer/gameplay/footage for my most fav game Tomb Raider. There were some other good games too but I found the rest boring.

EA:
The only trailer I remember liking was Need For Speed: Most wanted. Even though it's my most fav racing game, I wasn't much excited at the end of the footage. The emphasis was on multiplayer. Something I still haven't properly experienced and I was confused why they chose the title 'Most Wanted' too soon, considering the game was popular both with fans and critics.

Sony:
I loved almost everything Sony showed. Loved God of War: Ascension footage. They have seemed to gone higher than GOW3 in graphics. This is the best looking Minotaur ever. Although, I haven't read anything on any elephant guy in Greek Mythology, I loved the boss. 'The Last of Us' was mind blowing & I enjoyed 'Beyond' too. I missed 'The Last Guardian' & 'Infamous 3'. Also, they could have showed more of 'Hitman: Absolution' and 'Bioshock: Infinite' It was also good to know that you can get classic games on PS Vita, though I'm playing TR1 on PSP nowadays.

I had missed Ubisoft live because of some net problem but thankfully I could then sleep for an hour before waking up for Sony. So I watched it at IGN later on. The rest of the live stuff at gametrailers.com. Anyway, so I enjoyed 'Assassin's Creed 3' footage very much. 'Watch Dogs', the one showed at the end? was mind blowing. For me, Splinter Cell is dead so that was a disappointment. But at least the footage I saw was better than what Microsoft had shown. So other than a few little things, I didn't find anything I didn't like.

As for Nintendo, I'm sorry this time I didn't like it very much. The only thing I liked was third party games like Batman, Assassin's Creed & Zombie U. I don't know what's the purpose of an HD console when the games are as shitty looking as those on wii.

I'm still watching the live stuff on GT & will be watching their backstage stuff. I'm usually unable to watch all the vids I want because of some site problems they have but hopefully I'd be able to see many good trailers. I'm still dying to watch God of War:A again.
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Other than this I've been playing L.A. Noire on PS3 but I'm not going to talk about it tonight as I've already said enough. So that's all for me. I've been doing some bird photography lately & I usually post my photography at flickr, I might post a few pics here ;)