The Assassin's Creed Hate Is Inexplicable

Unfortunately. no

People on this website are hipsters and praise games like Dark Souls

They're not.

Until Revelations the series was getting realy stale but I actually thought AC3 improved greatly on it, especially the combat that felt somewhat fresh after the bore fest that was the previous combat. Saying this, I like AC series but its not one that can hold by releasing anually.

French Revolution sounds interesting though

Any game franchise that releases within the window of 2yrs is never going to gain the respect of fans, it is not about question of how the quality is compromised but the developers barely give room for the fans to breathe. It is like reading a book that has no contrasting highs n lows, the reader gets bored rather quickly and i noticed that their schedule for the AC franchise seem to evolve like this.

Make first innovative, then add milked refined sequels, when innovation is milked after two installments, add an innovative layer which resonates with fans, then add another two refined milk sequels.....so on and so on

Gen 7 wouldn't be great without assassins creed, love all of them

Never got it into the Assassin's Creed games. Played two and hated it for it's unresponsive controls.

I prefer gameplay over story/cinematics.

@charizard1605: There won't be two entirely different AC games.

They will just be running on a new engine for PC/Xbone and PS4. So the engine and graphics will be different, but the missions and story and gameplay will be the exact same.

It's just a guess of mine, but it seems crazy to make two entirely different AC games.

**** AC. The concept was interesting based around the Order of Assassins in the 12th century and such but then it just became a generic game with super generic story. Now give me another Prince of Persia instead of ASS Creed.

the last one was very good though. But the hate comes mostly from the fact that they are milking it dry just like COD.

Didn't read all of that.

But it does get unfair hate.

Though the source of the hate is justifiable.

-->AC3 happened.

-->Annualized

-->lolitsUbisoft

And this .^

You make too many threads Charizard.

And yes, they need to stop making Assassins Creed games for a while.

You should play Assassins Creed 4. Great game, and it's even SNIPER approved.

I like AC as a franchise, but I understand if people are fed up with the substandard gameplay that has plagued it for years. I can't come up with a single melee focused game with a worse system than AC. Stealth is broken (AC4 was somewhat better because the AI flaws were in the player's advantage). Parkour is too simplistic and unprecise. It's infuriating that they seem to lack ambition when it comes to the foundations of the game.

Add to that a fairly lackluster mission design and a billion generic collectibles and you have a game that is somewhat of a chore to play.

Now all these being said I still enjoy the franchise because the core concept of climbable historical worlds is so bloody strong. I just wish they would lift the gameplay experience to a reasonable level. All the content in the games would gain sooo much from that.

They should put that on the boxart: "SNIPER approved"

I enjoy the Assassin's creed games, all of them. I just wish they spend more time focusing on a single character again. Part the reason I enjoyed playing II, Brotherhood and Revelations was because of Ezio, where we pretty much played through the guys entire life from birth to retirement.

There was also the lap over with Altair through AC II and add ons which filled up his story as well. I hated the guy in AC, just far too head strong and arrogant but a strong character none the less. By the time I'd got through Revelations, I actually quite liked him because his motivations were easier to understand. (maybe I'm just reading too much into the Assassin Creed games all together :) )

Connor is gone and forgotten, not a massive loss, and come the end of this year so will Edward, which is will be a shame as he has a lot of potential.

Hopefully with this next game they'll spend a bit more time with the 'hero', perhaps a couple of games. It would be possible if they focussed on the French revolution in AC 5 and then perhaps a full game sized expansion (not a 5 or 10 hour DLC), instead of something titled AC 6, that then followed the rise and fall of Napoleon.

After Brotherhood the series really went down hill. The combat became boring and tedious. AC3 sucked in so many ways it's not even funny, and for me at least AC4 wasn't much better. So the idea of diluting the series down with annual or semi-annual releases doesn't excite me in the least.

I haven't played Black Flag, but the other games were so terribly boring. Interesting premise and putting a fairly unique spin on various historical events is a great idea, but the games themselves are simply boring. At least to me. Although, with that said, it doesn't particularly bother me that they keep making them. I've just no interest in playing them.

I love the series but the annual releases do in fact hurt it.

If the series was 1, 2, 4 that'd be a truly amazing series.

Even if you allow Brotherhood's rehashing (they had to focus on multiplayer!), Revelations was a stale rehash (albeit in gorgeous new city) and 3 was a buggy broken mess.

I wish they had the balls to make it only every 2 or 3 years and make each game a masterpiece, as I consider AC2 to be.

@lamprey263: dude, they hinted at 12/21/12 in the very first Assassin's Creed.

As to the rest of it, I loved Assassin's Creed from the first parkour escape after the botched attempt on Robert de Sable. The first game was amazing, but no one seemed to understand how to play it and so it was saddled with a "repetitive" jacket. Ubisoft reeeeally wanted the series to go, though, so they dumbed down the progression in favor of a typical GTA-style go-here-meet-contact-start-mission structure. I never intended to play AC2 after seeing what they had done to it- showing off the Da Vinci flying machine at e3 was the last straw.

Then came Brotherhood. I knew I was going to buy it the instant I realized that Brotherhood meant Multiplayer. But because I'm neurotic, I just couldn't play 1 and 3 without 2, so before it launched I played my brother's copy of AC2. It knocked my fuckin' eyes out- everything from the hints and whispers in the first game finally starting to make sense, to the revenge storyline, the modern storyline and all the way down to the Truth. And none of that even had to do with the game play yet. The polish, the tighter and cleaner traversal, the realization of the social stealth concept. So much the perfect sequel(in as far as there can ever be a perfect sequel).

Then Brotherhood launched the most clever and unique multiplayer mode to ever grace a game console- a game based entirely on outthinking your opponent rather than shooting him before he sees you. A game of guile and deceit where your own tricks are just as important as the tools the game gives you. A game where the guy with the fewest kills and the most deaths can win, and where a level one player can win in a lobby full of 50s, provided he understands the core concepts of the game.

Campaign wise, Brotherhood had the Assassins guild, which was awesome, and the Borgia towers, which were satisfying to complete, and the Truth, which was even more interesting with all the glimpses into the fiction from each of the puzzles. But then Lucy...

I was ready for a 2012 game starring Desmond. What I got was more Ezio, who I hadn't realized that I was totally fucking sick of by then. Played Revelations for 2 or 3 hours and sold it back to Gamestop. Even the multiplayer wasn't as amazing. Then 3 was announced and I knew without them having to tell me that this would be it- the 2012 story was lined up perfectly with the real life date and they had exactly one shot at making this the most amazing real life/videogame crossover event of all time. Then they botched it by not even splitting the campaign in half between Desmond and Ratohn- Ratone- Rot- Connor. Between Desmond and Connor. I was annoyed because the gimmick is the historical setting whereas the story was 12/21/12, and Ubi seemed to have forgotten that- I mean, it's the big payoff for all the time spent in the animus training with the bleeding effect, right? But what do I get instead of the lion's share of the narrative, or even a decent 50/50 split? Two missions and a boss encounter.

Ubisoft pissed away an amazing opportunity in favor of a hook. That's why I don't play Assassin's Creed anymore, and that's why I hope the series dies in a fire.

I spent about 4 minutes being upset at the ending of AC3 before I realized that the ending itself was more thoughtful and committed than my knee jerk reaction allowed for at first.

The hate is understandable, tbh, I mean I've played them all and until ACIV they were getting very stale. There's just been too many of them over such a short period of time. How many more times are we all gonna want to climb churches to sync areas?

I want to climb Egyptian Pyramids, Celtic Forts, Samurai Castles, and Tibetan Monasteries to synch :3

Damn you!

Hipsters would mock Dark Souls, as it is extremely critically and commercially successful.

Now when they praise shit like NIER, you can call them hipsters :P

Like what? Awful combat? overly convoluted story? Its free running is cool but terribly inconsistent. ACIV was a very pretty game on PC though I'll admit but what good is it when the foundation is crap

The games have incredible potential that is absolutely squandered

I don't understand how the combat system can be so poor. Ubisoft Montreal made Sands Of Time more than a decade ago. It had a perfectly fine combat system for its time (an obv inspiration for the Arkham games). Since then they have made four PoP and six AC and they haven't learned a thing. I mean Ubi Montreal is one of the most experienced studios in the world in this area and they are just terrible. It's depressing.

SNIPER approved? Must be shit then.

There is too many to keep track of. Black Flag was a nice change of pace but more has to be done to separate it from itself.

Great point, TC. I feel the series and publisher probably handle the annual installment better than anyone else in the industry. They've managed it well, thus far.

lol what? Assassins Creed is one of the most inconsistent franchises. 1 was garbage, 2 was great, brotherhood was great, revelations was garbage, 3 was worse than garbage and 4 was good. Also, the very first thing they can be accused of is rehashing gameplay concepts. How many eavesdropping missions have there been in these games? Hell, that was pretty much the entire main story in AC4. Also, the combat has barely changed as well since AC2.

The reason people hate on AC is because Ubisoft took a promising franchise and drove it into the ground. The story is incomprehensible at this point and every year you dont know which AC you're getting. Is it the piece of shit AC3 or is it the awesome Brotherhood?

They f***ed up the story to their own series, that's why they deserve the hate.

1 wasn't that bad and if anything was the most true to the assassin gameplay, it was genuinely a problem getting into combat with a load of people in that one and wasn't the easy counter fest it is now. All the weapons felt thought out too rather than the newer games where you get more and more like Batman with over powered gadgets out the wazoo. Definitely a solid start to the series.

Everything else is right though, story has been driven into the ground (where the hell did all the cool religious, alien, apple of eden stuff go?) and the gameplay is just mediocre now. Renaissance France might have been cool 3 games ago but i don't think it'll be enough to save it, the pirate stuff was a decent shot in the arm but this franchise is only going down from here.

I just hope they don't mess up Watchdogs.

I know right? The adam and eve reveal in that subject 16 video was so f'in cool. The religion stuff was always the more interesting part of the game but now they've just lost their way. They stopped focusing on the Assassins vs Templars and thats where they screwed up.

Actually, it's pretty easy to understand, for the following reasons:

• The story is absolute crap. Both the ridiculous overarching narrative (Knights Templar, or Aliens or whatever, you'll still buy it) and the generally unengaging protagonists' personal stories are very poorly written and conceived.
• The gameplay, while it has improved over the years, started out being pretty awful, in many respects. Hyper-repetitive mission design, at times broken combat, and some really poorly designed levels all marred the first game. Like I said, this has gotten better with time, but it's still not great.
• They've been using what looks to be basically the same graphics engine for years, leading to graphical stagnation (this really shows in the in-engine cutscenes).

The strong points of the series are the sense of atmosphere and immersion. When you aren't being forced to listen to a cutscene about the stupid plot, and you are free to roam the cities, the scale and amount of activity really does make these historical settings come alive. So that's largely what I play the games for, but for the above reasons, it's actually quite easy to find an explanation for all the "hate."

though i havent played BF the first 3 were the definition of repetitiveness and eventually boredom. The same mission and same enemies over and over and it didnt help that even on hardest difficulty they are not all that challenging

People complain for the sake of complaining. They apply blanket logic to the industry and argue on those terms. Obviously if one game series has really stagnated and struggled with yearly release, then all must. Right?

It's shitty logic. Good thing people vote more with their wallets than with their complaints on internet forums.

ass creed revelations wasnt just 'a dip' it is the single most boring and tedious game i played all last gen. it single handily destroyed the interest in the franchise for eternity. all ass creed play the exact same way, and the mission structure is identical. they need to give this franchise a rest and only bring it back when they can innovate it because its not fun anymore, been playing the same thing for years

Well the core mechanics could really use a lot more work and attention. Combat and stealth are both very low on the scale of quality. I still enjoyed the games I played in the series, but you'd think after so many years and games, there would have a been a lot more improvement in those areas.

The combat leaves a lot to be desired.

I have bought every major Assasons Creed game and enjoyed them but after AC4 I think I'm done.

1. The Animus BS needs to stop, nobody cares about it. The modern day missions kill the immersion.

2. The missions are terribly repetitive. How many times do I need to eavesdrop and follow someone?

3. The graphics need a next gen engine, the character models are badly outdated.

I still enjoy the characters and historical settings but AC4 did not deserve a 9.

I enjoy the assassins creed games.. aciv was pretty good. acii was the best. still looking forward to the next game.

Just started 3. It is a step back, but I do like the setting. I can see the complaints side, and also the fun side. See, I don't play as they are released. So its ok to play around with it in between Titanfall stints.

@charizard1605: I haven't played an assassins creed game since 2. I bought Blackflag and love the game. But it's the pirate theme done so well that revived it for me. While the land based gameplay was decently fresher up and entertaining. It was the pirate ship gameplay that was the saviour of it. Without that I don't see how it can be anything close to Blackflag!

Right?