Two weeks from today Assassin’s Creed 3 will see its full retail release here in Europe. To celebrate the fact and to keep your interest peaked, here are some in game screenshots. And if you ask me, they are looking rather beautiful.
Ubisost have released a video showing the wide range of weapons available to you in Assassin’s Creed 3. Connor Kenway, the ancestor who’s story you will be playing out this time around, is seen with some all new weapons to the Assassin’s Creed series.
Poor Jason Brody. He is on the trip of a life-time, jet-skiing and hang-gliding around beautiful tropical islands with girlfriend and best buds when everything goes to hell. Girlfriend and mates kidnapped, with psychotropic drugs flooding his system and manipulating his senses, he has the bad luck to meet lunatics like Buck and Vaas.
Are you familiar with the details of the American Revolutionary War? How about the specifics of the Battle of Bunker’s Hill? And John Trumbull’s painting of the Death of General Warren? Then Ubisoft, developers of Assassin’s Creed 3, want you… to go pixel hunting in their Hacked History webgame.
The more we see and hear about Far Cry 3, the more I am convinced that it is a meeting of FPS and RPG. Just take this latest trailer which you can find embedded below, it talks about side-missions, crafting and hunting wild animals. If they aren’t RPG-like elements, I don’t know what are. The current console generation might be drawing to a close, but there are some massive titles to come out still, and Far Cry 3 is certainly one of them.
In an expansive interview on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Ubisoft’s director for online games, Stephanie Perotti revealed that the much-maligned (justly so) always-on DRM used by the company is no more. She told RPS:
“We have listened to feedback, and since June last year our policy for all of PC games is that we only require a one-time online activation when you first install the game, and from then you are free to play the game offline.”
This is very good news for all of us who want to play Ubisoft’s PC titles. The rest of the interview is well worth a read with details on piracy rates, DRM and how the company treat PC releases of their big franchises. Read it now.
If numbers are your forte then hold your breath for some impressive figures heading your way, courtesy of Assassin’s Creed III‘s new trailer. Ubisoft are showcasing the capabilities of new engine AnvilNext, boasting some impressive stats in the process. Over a thousand new animations have been added for Connor alone, allowing for more freedom and fluidity when fighting and climbing. A whole host of new abilities make the combat look far more impressive than in previous releases in the series,…
Update – Ubisoft have released a patch for Uplay which closes the exploit. More details on RPS.
There appears to be a pretty large security risk located in Ubisoft’s Uplay game launcher/DRM manager which, as detailed here installs a backdoor onto your computer which can be used by those with bad intentions to install programs onto your machine remotely. Alec Meer on Rock, Paper, Shotgun has been doing some digging and has talked to a security expert about the matter.
Earlier in the year I gave my thoughts on the newly discovered Settlers Online. Since my first impressions article The Settlers Online has had its official retail launch and has gained considerable interest from all over the world. With the new-found popularity and new direction I thought it was about time we heard some more from TSO. I managed to pose my questions regarding the new direction for The Settlers to the friendly looking chap in the picture Timo Gerken, the ‘Worldwide Active Game Manager’ for Ubisoft.
Kevin – What made you want to bring The Settlers to a browser-based setting?
Timo – Looking at the current changes in the video game market, The Settlers Online was a logical step to expand The Settlers universe. Ubisoft is always looking for ways to reach new customers by expanding into new territories like the online market. This includes releasing strong Ubisoft brands such as The Settlers and Silent Hunter in the free-to-play arena.
Beginning a demo with a cut-scene of a half naked woman is a risky manoeuvre. It can put people off the game instantly, making people think that it is shallow, attention seeking and even misogynistic. Yet this is how the demo to Far Cry 3 opened, a game which could possibly be the most intelligent and abstract FPSs of the past few years.
The demo was available to play at Rezzed where I got a hands-on preview. The first thing that was noticeable was how beautiful the game looked running on a high-end PC. After the opening cut-scene the demo started out in a thicket of jungle, every leaf on every tree stunningly rendered. A path led to a cliff overlooking the island and the pristine blue sea that surrounded it, showing off the game’s impressive draw distance. On a dock on the island a man was casually tipping corpses into the sea.
After a dive into the lagoon and a brief swim the game really began. The jungle’s thick foliage and the default weapon, the bow and arrow, made stealth the most obvious tactic. Picking off enemies with the bow gave a satisfying sense of power. The tension of being seen while drawing back the string countered by the elation of an enemy dropping to the ground, bolt protruding from his body.
This feeling was somewhat lessened though by the relatively quick drawback speed of the bow and its one hit kill effectiveness, regardless of where you shoot an enemy. However, it’s possible that both these issues were due to the difficulty settings of the demo.