the first and second far cry was really good, if a bit unusual (at least the second one was) far cry 3 is a lot of fun, splinter cell is an awesome series (conviction was a bit of a low point but they are going in the right direction with blacklist) plus the rainbow six series and ghost recon series and beyond good and evil and child of light all of those are excellent. My point is its a little unfair to say that Ubisoft makes rushed crap when they have a history making excellent games.

integrating multiplayer with singleplayer is the best way to cut down on piracy. If they had done this from the start instead of complex DRM systems everything would have been much smoother, legitimate players would have been able to enjoy greater depth from a game that has been designed with online play from the start, while those who are still determined to pirate will be stuck with a sub par experience.

The obvious criticism is that it forces people to have a stable internet connection in order to use their product, yes that excludes certain people but it is the developers right to create a game for any audience they intend. As internet becomes more widely available (It has been declared a basic right by the UN) this model makes more and more sense.

(for the most part devil's advocate here, Ubisoft is starting to show some problems in their handling of games)

The problem isn't with the intention, trash talking is a time honored tradition within friendly competition, the problem lies with the language itself and an inherent problem with insults within the English language. Generally when someone is being insulted its by using a word that associated them with a discriminated minority (Niger, ******, Jew, Retard etc) or that they are the subject of, arguably, the single most dominate act that can be committed against another person (rape) or by insinuating they aren't human (Dog, Rat). While your insult may be good natured, the words that you use have a connotation that is the result of at least decades of violence and suffering. To invoke that history for the sake of a petty insult shows an exceptional lack of insight and ignorance and saying that it has no affect is a supreme display of naivety. By using them your are furthering the belief that being black, gay, Jewish, or mentally ill etc is something that is inherently bad, in affect you are further prejudice that has killed at least millions of people and ruined the lives of countless others. So next time you feel inclined to call someone a Niger, ****, ****** etc think for a second of the history that is associated with that word and maybe you'll reconsider your choice of word.

Use of the term "I raped you" or "you just got raped" is something that desperately needs to stop. Using that term implies that rape is an action that , so long as your the rapist, is a good thing because it shows your supreme dominance over someone. This further's the idea of rape as something that is acceptable in society and despite what the law says(although sometimes it seems like it doesn't actually discourage rape) there is an alarming increase in what has been called rape culture, and victim blaming. While the rise of rape culture isn't directly caused by trash talking and throwing out terms like "you just got raped" normalizes it within society.

TL;DR:

Insulting people and trash talking is fine, just be careful of the language you use.

@Pikminmaniac: Any ideas on how stealth could be improved? I'm thinking the option to remove weapons to increase ones ability to blend would be a great addition. More missions like the infiltration of the fort in AC3 during the Kenway section would be a nice change of pace, maybe adding in some choice in the execution of the missions?

First off I'm a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed series; however that said the game is not perfect. The area for improvement(IMHO) is the combat system. Second: I want this to be a discussion by fans about what would improve the game and I request that comments along the lines of "Assassin's Creed sucks and is a stupid game" not be posted and if they are I hope that people will ignore those comments.

The problem as it stands now is that combat is not challenging, and the general difficulty isn't really scale-able. The closest that comes to a difficulty setting is modifying the HUD. So how would one make the game harder while still maintaining its feeling? So far all I've got adding in a system where attack success is a probabilistic outcome. This would mean there is no longer a guarantee of an attacking landing, even if it is a counter kill. With the series now leaning more towards twitch combat also having a system that builds upon a probabilistic system would be adding in recovery moves after a failed attack to avoid being countered and taking damage.

I'm open to other ideas, constructive criticism and comments.

Distilled down into its most basic form I think games are just an input-output system. What you guys are getting at are components that make good games.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the label gamer, sure there is a negative stereotype around it but that has more to do with the connotation and perspective. Most labels have different connotations depending on the person's opinions, for some gamers are an anti-social group, while others see gamer as a source of pride; same goes for football(american) player, some people view football players and dumb meat-heads, while again others are proud to call themselves football players.

@Lulu_Lulu: (completely taking your argument to the absurd) So instead of age restrictions how about IQ warnings on games? (I would like some harder games though)

If you want an RTS game that has a real campaign with a robust skirmish mode, I'd recommend the Starcraft series.

@Lulu_Lulu: I may be wrong but I was under the impression that passing a negative current through element zero creates a field which decreases the mass of things within it, while a positive while increase the mass of objects (now the name mass effect makes so much more sense). Barrier creates a field of high density which aid in blocking projectiles and energy. Warp creates a fluctuating mass effect field that which causes radical differences in density on the atomic level in an object, these differences effectively tear it apart at the atomic level(nasty way to go). Warp's effectiveness against barrier is due to assumption that mass effect fields behave like a wave. Since waves can cancel each other out (Young's double slit experiment) this interference pattern could destabilize the high density field created by barrier. (nerdy enough answer for you?)

If the trend of the current generation of consoles continues combined with the steam machine concept, this may vary well signal the end of consoles as we know it, not because it dies but because it evolves into something that is hardly distinguishable from a PC( or vica versa (less likely thought)).