It’s amazing how lazy I’ve been at updating my page. Mostly because I haven’t had anything I wanted to say that other sites have already said. And now that Game of the Year season is in full swing, I wondered what made these games qualify in the first place. I could ramble on about hype, sales, and popularity, but I’m not a good judge in any of those areas. No, I want to talk specifically is about Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 2 and why so many people have it on their lists.
I spent the last few weeks going through every part of the new assassin’s game and I can safely say I have seen two extreme sides to this game. On one, I enjoyed the story and the concept of the game. On the other, the game is so full of bugs that I am surprised it passed Sony’s and Microsoft’s quality control. I know not every game is perfect so small things like oddly handled jumps and AI decisions are stuff I can forgive. What really stands out is that Ubisoft managed to get away with bugs that would normally cause a game to fail certification process. And I’m going to rant on two of those bugs.
The first and probably the most obvious double twin-assassination move. Reports are all over the internet about the high chance the game will crash hard when the hidden blades kill two people at the same time and then two more in quick succession. I stumbled onto this when I was attempting to assassinate a target in the middle of a crowd. By mistake, I killed the innocent people around me. In my rush to chase the target, I killed two more and the game promptly locks up. Although I can see how this bug may have been missed, since the ability is not unlocked that early on and combat is merely a recommendation. This would also make certain combat related achievements hard to unlock, which leads me to my next bug.
Achievements and trophies does not unlock properly. Many of the story related ones are broken because the save system and unlock system are not synchronized. The auto-save the game creates during the moment a trophy achievement is actually ahead when the trigger occurs. So, if by chance the game quits when the save happens but before the unlock, the will never give the unlock until the next playthrough. Another trophy achievement bug is about the character upgrades. The game has different sizes of item bags available at certain times. When a large item bag is purchased, the smaller bags are locked out. Logically, that makes sense because a smaller bag would be useless. However, the unlock checks for every item purchased and not the highest level, even though that is what the requirement describes. What this means is that this unlock will never happen as soon as a player skips a bag size. I don’t know exactly what is in the certification process, but I am certain this would cause any other game to get rejected.
So why does this game get a pass when others normally wouldn’t? Maybe the game was too big for QA to deal with in a short time frame. Perhaps Sony and Microsoft are willing to forgive since the hype and popularity will move consoles. Or Ubisoft simply just paid them off. Whatever the conspiracy, it baffles me why something like this can get nominated for game of the year.
And that brings me back to my point. What does “Game of the Year” mean anymore? It’s just dark marketing magic that revives games from the dead. Any pride and respect the term carried are part of the illusion. It’s the new mass appeal of video games that allowed me to see through the veil. “Truth is nothing and everything is permitted”.
