Digital Life

Yeah I know, it's been out for several days already. I only just got my copy yesterday. Not my fault. Hurricanes wreak havoc on shipping schedules.

Anyway, hmm, I dunno. I feel like I love the concept of the game but so far the execution (heh) feels oddly flat. I played for several hours yesterday and I actually found myself getting bored at points. I've thought about it for awhile and I think it comes down to a few different things:

Characters: Hatham (no spoilers) is affable, if deadly. Achilles, on the other hand, is old and acts so, well, run down. Like he's just sitting in his old, falling apart manor waiting to die. And then there's Connor. So far aside from wanting to kill this game's set of targets, I feel like he's just plain cold and unemotional and so damn serious. Playing him after Ezio only makes the contrast that much stronger. And I think that's where the problem lies. The comparison is inevitable, as Ezio himself was compared to Altair, at least at first. I just feel that from the start Ezio is a much more developed, fully realized character. A big part of this is of course playing through literally his entire life over the course of three games while I've known Connor for what, a few hours. It's unfair, but that's how it is. I liked the first game, but I fell in love with the series because of Ezio, and I think a lot of other people did too, so it's impossible to not be disappointed in Connor as a character.

World: The detail that went into making Revolution-era America is insane. It is beautiful and expansive...maybe a little too expansive. It takes for-freakin-ever to get anywhere. If you're lucky you won't get lost and end up on the wrong side of a cliff because there are no synchronization points in the woods to reveal the map to you, that I've found anyway. Oh, and the map itself? Nigh useless. I've probably spent half of my game time so far just running to the next goal (mostly backtracking from going the wrong way), which is highly irritating. Oh and the random wolf/cougar/bear attacks, which were cool the first couple times but now mostly aggravating, especially if you get mauled by a bear and have to start from your last checkpoint, which could be miles away. Also, I can already tell the Homesteading part of the game will be annoying.

Combat/Tools: Yeah, they streamlined the combat all right...then they forgot to add contextual commands so you have to remember how to do everything yourself. Considering that Connor has more than just weapons, this gets old fast. I should never have to look at a walkthrough because the game forgot to tell you how to shoot. Come on. Especially if you recently played one of the other games and still have that control scheme fresh in your mind. I know they rebuilt the combat engine, but I would have expected it to be more intuitive, not less.

So, I'm not saying it's a bad game, but I'm not really feeling as impressed as I was after seeing the first cinematic trailer. I actually feel kind of the same way about it as I did about Red Dead Redemption; I wanted to like it, I really did, but it just felt too much like work to actually get to the story. Getting the same vibe here. Realistic yes, fun, not so much. It's like the developers put so much into the worldbuilding, they're forcing us to appreciate it. And that never goes over well.