I hope you like looking at stuff, bub.
Assassin’s Creed Unity, the latest entry in the video game franchise that lets you take control of a hooded murderer murdering history people during history, has been catching a lot of flak for populating a game set in Paris during the French Revolution with a cast of British accents. Not just a few here and there, mind you. The entirety of Unity’s gorgeously rendered Paris is populated seemingly exclusively by Brits. Going in to Unity I was prepared to call this incongruity a clause in the ever unspoken entertainer/entertained agreement. Something akin to being willing to brush aside the fact that every creature in most science fiction movies speaks English because every creature in the galaxy speaking English makes things easier on the audience. But after listening to British Parisians sprint through sporadic French words peppered into their monologues for a few hours it became pretty clear that there was really no good reason for the decision. I mean it’s not like I’m being asked to brush aside a bunch of French people speaking English in a French accent. These characters speak full on English. They speak better, more proper English than you.
Whatever the reasoning behind the bonkers decision, the nonsensical accents in Assassin’s Creed are indicative of a larger problem throughout the game.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is like a big shiny globe of a Christmas tree ornament (topical!). It’s bright and shiny but ultimately hollow, and it shatters under even the most delicate scrutiny.
The game’s open world is lavish and expansive. Time after time I’d find myself pausing on rooftops to look around at the stunning Parisian cityscape or the dense throngs of the angry citizenry conglomerating on the streets below me. Bright. Shiny. Paris is fantastic. I don’t even feel like I need to go there in real life anymore.
But Paris is all you get.
Call me jaded but the last entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Black Flag, let you island hop and deep sea dive and spearfish. You could explore caves and jungles and sack fortresses and pillage the high seas. Despite my righteous liberal outrage toward the game, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was probably my personal favorite in the series. In Unity, you get to explore one thing. Paris. It’s vast and gorgeous and densely populated. But it’s also all you get. It’s hard for it not to feel like a huge step backwards for the franchise.
Unlike my time in Black Flag, I spent almost no time on extracurricular activities in Unity. Why would I? In Black Flag I got to hunt and kill a Great White. Unity offers the chance to solve murders by talking to a bunch of British French people and searching for clues. Optimistic, Cole. I felt little to no desire to explore on my own in Unity, which meant my experience leaned heavily on the game’s primary campaign. Which wound up being pretty unfortunate.
An introduction lets you, through the avatar of Arno Dorian, run through the storming of the Bastille. You get to join an order of Assassins in the heat of a revolution. There are guillotines! Again, bright and shiny. This game should have been thrilling.
I play games for the story. It’s what I look for to separate a serviceable game from a fantastic game. But by the time I was halfway through Unity I’d all but lost sight of why anyone was doing anything, most of all me.
Unity starts out as the story of a young man seeking revenge. Then it continues down that same road for eight more hours. Arno and his adoptive sister, the story’s two primary protagonists, are so obtusely defined by a thirst for vengeance that you’ll assume there’s more to their quest and that perhaps you’ve missed some small detail on the way. You haven’t. You definitely haven’t. By the time the game reached its emotional climax I’d been waiting for it impatiently, like a late train, for hours.
None of these things make Assassin’s Creed Unity a horrible game. After all it’s a game not a novel, and my boredom with it was largely condition. Perhaps I’d have thought more of Unity if I’d skipped over Black Flag. But Unity is a game that feels empty. It’s a game whose characters I couldn’t have cared less about. It’s a game that rests on the laurels of being really pretty.
It’s a game where all of France has a British accent.
More Like Schtick of Truth, or, Just Kidding! Stick of Truth was Fantastic! I Just Love Puns!
I’m not sure I understand why more people aren’t constantly talking about the new South Park video game The Stick of Truth.
It’s fun. It’s hilarious. It’s really, really gross. But most importantly it is a completely interactive piece of adapted fiction that is so authentic in regards to its source material that it is indistinguishable from it. Depending on the thoroughness of your playthrough Stick of Truth can take you anywhere between 9 and 14 hours. It is for all intents and purposes an entire season of the show.
You are in South Park, moving about the locales, chatting with the locals and beating people up, and if it weren’t for the health bar across the top of the screen there’d be no way of knowing your filthy adventure isn’t an episode of the show.
The Stick of Truth is as brilliant as an R-rated parody of Skyrim is likely to get. You’re cast as a new kid in South Park whose appearance you customize. Though, full warning, you have to be a boy. Upon arriving in your new neighborhood you are immediately swept up into a heated LARPing session that informs the game’s RPG game mechanics. Of course, as is South Park’s way, the scale of the game amplifies far beyond a bunch of neighborhood kids hitting each other with sticks and hammers.
The authenticity of Stick of Truth very much extends to its quality. Much like the show Stick of Truth is ripe with sharp satire of the lowest and highest degrees. I suspect if you know anything about South Park you know to steer clear of it if you are easily offended. I would tweak that statement ever so slightly for Stick of Truth. If you are offended ever you probably shouldn’t play Stick of Truth.
But taken in stride and with the necessary veil of satire, Stick of Truth is hilarious. Which is yet another reason more people should be talking about it.
Games aren’t movies. Sure, sure, The Last of Us, Bioshock, Heavy Rain, sure, sure. Games can be cinematic, but, at least so far as major console releases go, they aren’t exactly diverse.
The movie section at Best Buy is divided into genre. The gaming section is divided into consoles.
Most games are action games. Such is the nature of the beast. A lot of the best games out these days are action-dramas, and Heavy Rain arguably sways closer to drama than action, but if you zoom out far enough, so far as genre goes games are all fairly similar.
Did you catch all of those qualifiers? Am I safe from the gaming connoisseurs our there?
Stick of Truth isn’t exactly an exception, but much like Heavy Rain took a step towards the truly dramatic, Stick of Truth takes one towards the truly comedic with fantastic results. The game boasts a slew of interactive jokes that make you the punch line. There are clever riffs on everything from character customization to skipping cut scenes. South Park’s creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who were heavily involved in Stick of Truth’s development, have proven that the video game is a medium just waiting to be exploited for comedy. The potential is staggering and will hopefully inspire other developers to follow suit.
Be they Superman or The X-Files licensed games traditionally exist on a scale from blatant cash grab to unmitigated crap. Stick of Truth bucks that trend and in fact embraces it. The South Park license gives Stick of Truth a familiarity and leeway that a fresh intellectual property would not have. Making a comedic game for major release out of a fresh property would be great. But it would also be a pipe dream. Now that Stick of Truth is out, however, maybe that pipe dream has become a little more feasible.
Ghosts, or, Why Do I Play Call of Duty Anymore?
First off, for as long as I’ve been playing them I’ve consistently enjoyed the Call of Duty games.
I bought Call of Duty: World at War years after its release because it was $10 at Target.
I bought Modern Warfare 2 because, hell yeah, Modern Warfare bro.
I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops because I was in college and when you’re in college that’s what you do.
I bought Modern Warfare 3 because I’m a trilogy kind of guy.
When Black Ops II came out near the end of 2012, complete with cryptic “the future is black” tagline, I had very little intention of buying it. The night before its release I told a friend I’d only get it if IGN gave it a 9 or above, convinced it there was no way it would rank above an 8.5.
It got a 9, Trent Reznor did the soundtrack and I was out of college and going on three months without a job. And you know what? That game was great.
But I still had reservations when Call of Duty: Ghosts came out a few months ago. None of the old excuses were there, and I’m very busy running a wildly successful cultural phenomenon of a blog.
But I got a GameStop gift card for Christmas. So here we are.
In Ghosts your boss is named your dad. Not a Bill Cosby dad, mind you. Just your regular dad. Your one squad mate is your brother Hesh and your other squad mate is your robot-backpack wielding dog Riley. Who takes down a helicopter. What? Don’t worry about it.
Maybe it’s because of their massive monetary success, or because I want to find any reason playing Call of Duty doesn’t make me a bro, or because as I get older my time is more valuable to me and I find the things I spend it on have to justify themselves to me for more competently.
Whatever the reason, I’ve placed the Call of Duty games under an increasingly stringent microscope with each entry.
A few missions in to the campaign of Ghosts you find yourself repelling down a skyscraper en route to intercept a business associate of this guy your dad dropped in a river. Classic dad. As you descend step by step down massive windows it’s explained to you that the people inside the building can’t see you because of the light pollution inside the building or because your ghosts or whatever.
Not a minute later I’m peering through one such window at a guy on a computer screen with his back to me. My squad mate tells me to take him out, so I blow his brains out all over what is presumably a doomed game of solitaire.
Soon after that two dudes appear on a balcony below me, looking out at the fireworks lighting up the night sky.
So, with the push of a button, a swoop down from on high and stab him to death.
Knock knock! Who’s there? MURDER!
There was a time when these orders made sense to me – after all, I got no idea what the hell I’m doing. Who gave me a loaded gun? They now feel like the creeping fingers of military propaganda, training me in yearly installments to blindly do as my elders tell me.
“You’re not my dad!” I tell him. He corrects me.
Ghosts is aptly titled. After all the entire campaign is haunted by the franchise’s predecessors. Where once big, jaw-dropping set pieces and quick time events sent your heart racing, they’re now expected. Where once the members of your squad were a selection of world-weary badasses they’re now archetypes. Even Riley.
More than anything else, Call of Duty: Ghosts is familiar.
And that’s why I’ll probably end up finding a reason to play the next one.
Call of Duty is football. Call of Duty is a cold beer. Call of Duty is the Sunday funny papers. It’s a formula with variables that offer just enough wiggle room for a change in number and title. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can depend on an old dog. You know what you’re getting with an old dog.
I’m never going to compare a Call of Duty game to The Last of Us or Bioshock. I’m never going to cite it in an argument for video games as art or literature. But when a dog with a robot-backpack takes down a helicopter while I gun down nameless, faceless bad guys in the ruins of an abandoned sports arena I’m going to have a chuckle. I might even pump my fist.
1. Is Call of Duty a bad franchise, or simply a repetitive one?
2. Do you play Call of Duty for the story or the multiplayer?
3. Are you a bro?