First of all – the fuck? Whenever Rabidgames buys the ultimate or whatever version of a game to enjoy the complete version with all DLCs or just because it is dead cheap and the 360 version is in a box, boom, a remaster appears out of thin air. Dragon’s Dogma, boom! Far Cry 3, boom! Red Faction Guerilla, boom! And now, Assassin’s Creed 3, boom! How about Oblivion Remastered then? Or New Vegas, you know, the Fallout people fucking want?
Anyway, what were we talking about, oh, Assassin’s Creed 3, right. As you might have heard, the Remastered version will be part of the Season Pass of the soon coming Greek tragedy Assassin’s Creed Odyssey! Or you can buy the game separately if you don’t like Greek culture and food, or if you’ve had one too many ouzos once or twice …
So yeah. There are some reasons to question Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – it is set before the Assassins were formed, it is set only in Greece (which feels a bit sad after the diverse climates and the pyramids of Egypt), people there don’t revere cats as much, and then there’s a focus on naval combat no one has really asked for because let’s face it, naval combat in Black Flag – aye, naval combat in Origins – nay.
But it could still be a great game – there are also tons of good news – exploration mode for isntance. No more “follow the main quest” … well, still a bit, but Odyssey allows you to explore Greece at your leisure even more than Origins did with Egypt. One could say you can have your own open-ended Odyssey …
Choices also appear to be meaningful in this seemingly deep action RPG, at least if we believe Ubi’s PR machine. In many ways, Odyssey sounds like the Bioware game fucking EA has denied us this generation. True, Inquisition was decent enough, although it paled and withered once The Witcher 3 claimed the RPG throne. But Odyssey could have what it takes to best at least Bioware’s efforts. At the very least, we can decide if we support Athens or Sparta, and it seems we can do a whole lot more dirty mercenary work, including recruiting a crew again (there’ll also be a trophy for having recruited an all-female crew) …
And then, all the stuff after release. Sure, it would be nice to have all at once – but have you read the details of Odyssey’s Season Pass? Two expansions, one about Atlantis! The episodic content sucks, sure, but Atlantis!
Here’s the thing. Ubisoft does questionable, very questionable things at times, like still having games with fucking loot boxes, or always-online for The Crew or The Division. And fucking loot boxes! But when it comes to value for money, Odyssey looks like a big fucking deal! Procided you like Assassin’s Creed, you pay 80 to 100 quid (depending on the version) for a 100 hour game. Plus the massive Assassin’s Creed 3 (hopefully a bit streamlined) plus its great tyrannic alternate history, plus the smaller bonus of Liberation!
And then, there’s the free stuff. We’ll get another Discovery tour and more free weekly and daily DLC in the form of mini quests! So, that’s plenty of bang for your bucks. But … well, there’s also a big concern. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey could very well have an expiration date, similar to pretty much every fucking game this year if you own a PS4 or a One. Let’s face it, Red Dead Redemption 2 is already raring to go, and unless Rockstar does a massive, massive fuck-up, it looks like a goddamn serious Game of the Decade contender. But pretty much every game this year has that red dead problem …
Time to Say: Fuck Nintendo!
Posted in Commentary, Gaming these days ... with tags Microsoft, Nintendo, online, Sony, Zelda on September 20, 2018 by RabidgamesRemember how Nintendo always pretends to guise the clothes of the only consumer-friendly company in a world of sharks? Well FUCK THAT!
First of all, yes. Nintendo sometimes pulls of good shit such as the Xenoblade Chronicle games or the Zelda games – although quite often you feel they would get -10% points were they released on more advanced systems. Take Breath of the Wild – great phyiscs and a big open world, something unseen on a Nintendo system. But not exactly innovative in any way. We’ve seen physics before, we’ve seen open worlds before, we’ve seen a stamina system before. And we’ve sure as hell seen breakable weapons before, although hardly ever that ridiculously.
But – apart from that, Nintendo is an incredibly backwards company (just look at their 50s style family presentations in their games) and above all, they rip off their blind sheepish fans wherever they can – and always get a way with it!
How, you ask? Well, imagine Sony games would never get cheaper. Look on Amazon for the price of Breath of the Wild – 50 quid. For a game that was releases way over a year ago! Imagine Sony selling controllers for 60 quid – and that’s the “Joy-Cons” (imagine frustrated folks buying them thinking they bought a dildo …). But the motherfucking icing on the shit cake is this, quoting Eurogamer’s slightly rose-tinted article about the terrible Switch online service (more on that below):
Funny, isn’t it? Imagine Microsoft designing a retro Xbox controller that ONLY works with original Xbox games. Sounds fucking stupid now, doesn’t it?
And then that shambolic online service. First, you need a phone app for voice chat. If only a console could handle that … Second, you can back up some of your saves now that you have to pay to play online, but as soon as you don’t feel like paying, Nintendo fucking deletes all your cloud saves straight away! How fucked up is that?
But let’s be clear – Microsoft and Sony and their paid online is as fucked. We’ve become used to pay for a service that is often still utter shit. And Nintendo joining them doesn’t make Nintendo worse (in this regard). But – Nintendo isn’t better. Nintendo isn’t the motherfucking knight in shining armour rescuing gamers in distress from the evil dragons Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is just the same, and when it comes to online, Nintendo is incompetent as fuck on top of the shit cake they’re all eating together.
But couple this with ridiculously overpriced pricing for peripheral devices, couple that with the always extremely high prices to buy their games, and we see the combined result: A greedy company leeching its devout fan base on a level only EA and Activision reach, while pretending to be completely different wearing the family friendly colourful disguise of someone who almost credibly cares. So here it is: Fuck Nintendo!
Leave a comment »