I noticed, obviously, that my posts are becoming more and more .. negative .. yeah (there’s no need for bigger words). It’s not because I'm, like, the king of bad luck and there’s no Tumblr post-worthy positive stuff in my life (actually …) but because I really like this impersonal environment that this site provides. Yes, there is a huge community here and yes, my stuff isn’t private, anyone can read it. But I'm not there when they do. I can like send my thoughts into the wind and not be there when someone hears them, to witness their reactions, to read their judgmental body languages. And that’s just perfect, when it comes to parts of my life that I don’t share with literally anyone IRL.
But I really don’t want to have a wall of sorrow here, so I think it would be great both for this page and for my mental health to write about something .. nice, sometimes. Or to start rambling about something, I am REALLY great at that. I can dissect any innocent subject to tiny little pieces and throw them in every possible direction, back and forth, then just finish the whole thing with ‘yeah, but I like it tho’. I just prefer to see everything in this world from multiple perspectives, and when the light shines from every direction, it’s inevitable to see what lies on the dark side of the stuff .. and I’m not ignorant enough to turn the lights off on that side, so I might criticize something I like, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like it, it just means that I'm aware and I keep my eyes and mind open and … fuck, this has nothing to do with what I had in mind for this post .. CTRL + Z!!
So yeah, something nice. What do I like …. …. …. What the fuck do I like?! Oh, yeah, games. Like video games, not the other type of ‘games’ people tend to play these days .. with other people .. [CTRL + Z] I’m not a hardcore gamer or anything, I just like to sit down and play something that gives me some sort of satisfaction, I guess. Because if the game is sooo fucking difficult, I try it a couple of times, but if I can’t progress I just throw it into the recycle bin. Lame? Yes. I ain't got time to struggle and fail in my free time after 9 hours of people nagging me over the phone at work that something's not working and I should figure out why? Absolutely. So my game library is basically a collection of games I'm good at I enjoy, and I’ve no problem going back to an old game either, if I miss it.
(Totally unrelated side note aka proof that I can’t keep one theme for my posts, from start to finish, and I'm not trying to hide it either: while I'm writing this mess of a post I'm listening to some Zen, “ummmmmm” style study music on YouTube. It’s really just some organ-flute “HaaAaaAAaaA” holy sound shit with a bunch of echo and no rhythm, but it works, it really disconnects me from everything around me. Nice. I won’t give you the link tho.)
I recently started to play the Assassin’s Creed series again. Well, not ‘again’ because I’m not playing again the ones I finished, I just upgraded my PC not so long ago and the first thing I tried out was the last AC game. And I finished it too, now I'm playing the episodes I couldn’t play in the past because they ran with like 15 FPS, which is basically visual cancer. I don’t like all of them, and, clearly, I don’t play them in order either. But that’s not an issue, because the boyz at Ubisoft apparently aren’t really fans of linear storytelling and basically the game went back from the French revolution to the pharaohs. I don’t mind.
Luckily, at least my first AC game was actually the first in the series. And I LOOOOVED it, it was really fresh, creative, and I really liked the whole concept, that modern day Templars and Assassins are using some device that can allow an individual to relieve the life of his ancestors, and with this ‘Animus’ device they’re looking for hidden artifacts, called ‘pieces of Eden’ that were made and left behind by a civilization which lived before us, regular folks. And they were technologically advanced, and their artifacts are super powerful and stuff, and their hologram-paintings are just popping up in different eras, and medieval folks are like “Jesus, wtf is this shit?!”. And the first game was great because it combined really well the two sides of this concept, with Altaïr as its main character.
The 2nd AC game was actually a trilogy. The story takes place in the renaissance Italy, with Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who’s just a super great character, in all 3 parts of the game. Ubisoft also started to progressively implement new game mechanics, which just made everything more complex and nice. Then, at the end of the trilogy the dude dies. Bummer.
Then came AC III and so did my hate. The game itself is okish, the story is okish too, it’s about the American Revolution in the 18th century, not my favorite. But the main character, Connor, daaaaamn he’s lame af. He’s some half Native American dude with some complicated ‘real’ name and he’s voce is just dull, and the whole character is just boring to me. His papa is a Templar and the game actually allows you to play with him some missions in the main story, and he’s just so much better. But the rest isn’t and I ain't gonna replay that.
AC IV Black Flag came after. It implemented a super complex naval battle mechanism, where you could just roam around in a big ass ocean with a big ass ship in the 18th century Caribbean as a motherfucking pirate. The naval combat is really, really great in the game, the character is ok too (definitely better than Connor) but I didn’t enjoy the story that much. I wasn’t even paying too much attention either, to be honest. Don’t know why. Maybe the ship battles were so captivating that I just couldn’t care much about the dialog and the story-line. I don’t know.
Normally, the next would be AC V, but Ubisoft ditched the numbering and it just went with the Assassin’s Creed something form factor. And thus, the next game, AC Rouge was born. Critiques say that it’s just a remix of the previous version, and damn, they are right. It still has the ship combat stuff and it’s a really nice game too, but after all the freshness that came with AC IV, Rouge is just more like a .. remake. It is still played in the mid-18th century and you’re playing as Shay Patrick Cormac who, after a couple of missions has a fight with his Assassin leader buddy and turns into a Templar. The concept is nice, but the story feels a little rushed. He’s nearly killed by the Assassins, then he becomes a Templar with the Connor dude’s papa and goes back to find his old Assassin buddy to give voice to the inconveniences created by said buddy. Classic revenge story.
Next one is AC Unity, and this is the one I'm playing right now. It is the best one so far since Ezio. You’re some Arno Victor Dorian dude in the middle of the French Revolution, who became an Assassin .. in a weird way. Basically, he was framed for killing some important French dude, thrown into a jail where he picks on a cellmate for having stupid drawings on his walls, and the dude’s like “you can see those? Then you’re an Assassin!” and then the revolution came and they escaped and Arno is now a super skilled Hitman/Agent 47 combo. Weird. But the game got a new engine and everything looks super nice and alive and the colors are super vibrant. I really like the feeling it gives me. But I don’t know much about the story yet because I'm writing a supermotherfucking long Tumblr post instead of playing it.
After Unity comes AC Syndicate, which I haven’t played yet and I have no clue what is that one all about.
The last one in the series is AC Origins. It’s set in Egypt somewhere around 49 BC, and you’re a Medjay called Bayek and you just want to revenge your son’s death but you accidentally create the very Assassin’s Creed. With the logo and everything. It’s a nice game. It has Cleopatra in it and her naked servant ladies and Romans. But I still prefer Unity.
And because Ubisoft just doesn’t give a fuck, the next AC game “Odyssey” will be set in ancient Greece, way before the whole Origins story, and you just basically can spear the shit out of people while riding horses. What will THAT have to do with the whole AC idea, I don’t know. But it will have some sort of multiple answer options in the conversations, that’s gonna be new. I won’t be able to go take a piss while the cut-scene is on. Damn. Hope you’ll be able to THIS IS SPARTAAAA some motherfuckers down a big ass hole while Cersei is watching you. That would be epic.
So yeah, I really like the AC series. They do have their flaws, but overall it’s a nice experience reliving some old times, old cultures in some really old cities.
You can also pet dogs in the newer games. What else do you want from life? Huh?
