I um...

It's...

Hmm.

Ironically, the informer missions are ultimately what makes it casual fun for me. The "dreaded" flag fetch mission was more of an Amped style "Kitty Litter" challenge than an actual SEARCH for the flags, and I honestly thought it was quite fun to quickly identify where the next flag was and running like a nutter over rooftops to claim them.

My only gripe is that there's no obvious way to replay them, which I really could've kinda liked. Slap some sort of leaderboard on there too and your climbing line skills would actually be worthwhile.

Granted, my warming to the game might just be me warming to the idea that it isn't a life-altering experience, but I had fun with it last night even though I've already hit the initial wall of disappointment.

There's jumping in the wrong direction?

Oh, the irony.

Maybe he didn't, maybe he meant knob. :O

You can tell when stuff doesn't catch on. I mean, to some people, Noob is still that ultra gay mega palette swap that raped you with all the cheap ninja techniques combined.

14 year olds won though, and noob is just an infinitely inbred version of newbie. :(

Nub is just a more advanced version of noob, duh. Example, in context, "You think you're hot, but you're just a pub nub." Come on now people..

And trust me, "noob" is not a word limited to teenagers in the FPS community. I hear it from people in their late 20's and early 30's all the time, we grew up with it. The 14 year olds are just.. noobs ;)

No I agree. All the reasons for making full use of the crazy parkour stuff are also reasons to love the game.

I'm gonna return right after a visit to the crapper with a new... perspective I've gained on all of this. One that'll please fans of the game I'm sure.

Well it's not about finding flags, it's just about looking at the mini map and recognizing the line. It's common for such tasks to be in skateboarding games and stuff, but where it's hard to actually nail a line in those, here it's just about being really quick at spotting the next flag, and adjusting your line accordingly.

I think the parkour stuff is so smooth and has these subtle differences in how fast you could be going, it's hands down the best thing about the entire game when recognizing a good line actually pays off.



Anyway, back since a while now from the crapper and some subsequent Phoenix Wright, I promised some new perspective talk in my last post. :D

So yeah, basically I've started looking at this game differently. It's not about lowering my expectations (although that is what made me decide to get it even though a lot of sites seemed a bit underwhelmed) but rather about... well adjusting my perspective.

See, when I fell in love with Sam Fisher, part of it was because I was willing to tackle his first adventure a bit based on my own set of rules. The game made it clear that Sam's objective was to do surgical strikes without anybody even knowing he was there, and this was even further emphasised in Pandora Tomorrow with the CLASSIC exchange;

"Aren't you here to save me?"
"I'm not here at all."

So yeah, from the get go, I knew that the way I wanted to play Splinter Cell was about killing only when it was ABSOLUTELY necessary, and if possible, not being seen at all. I rarely even shot someone in that game, and if people noticed me, alarms going off and such and things got too messy I just loaded the last save and tried again. It wasn't because I would've died otherwise, it was because... for me it had already gotten too ham fisted, random and ugly. I wanted to do it cleanly.

Chaos Theory opened the game up like no entry before it, and dying in that game requires a mess up of epic proportions, instead it leaves you sitting there with your half-arsed-ly carried out mission, filled with shame. Or not, if gunning your way through the game is your thing.


A lot of my initial criticism towards Assassin's Creed was that it's too easy, too forgiving. No matter if you're surrounded by 4 or 40 guards, cutting them down is absolute child's play. In fact, leaving the whole town massacred without breaking a sweat is not only possible, it's not even remotely a challenge. Walking away with all those people dead after having publicly and clumsily killed your target, you're not left with a big red sign going "BOO! YOU'RE CRAP". There's either a sense of accomplishment...

...or shame.

And it's entirely up to you to feel one or the other.

I was talking to a friend on MSN about the game this morning, and I'd been pretty much slashing my way forward in it up to that point. He told me that he only allows himself to quietly dispatch guards that he can't avoid spotting him, and the target itself. To that he adds a clean getaway, even if there's a chase he expects himself to manage without killing any guards.

As he told me this my face was distorted in dismay and disappointment. I was disappointed in myself that I hadn't seen the connection to Splinter Cell before, that this game just like that game expects you to have your own moral compass, your own sense of challenge. Immediately I felt that up to that point I'd been playing the game all wrong, and that from there on I'd set up my own rules, my own code if you will to follow.

When you think about it, the entire introduction to the game underlines the way they sort of want you to approach the rest of the game by showing you an example where the arrogant Altaïr does kill everybody and makes a messy exit.

The way you can't easily reload missions in this however really does leave you hanging if you are found out and chased all over. There is no obvious way to just make your mistakes go away, so the planning before each kill is made even more important. Therefore, when you are in a situation where you have to fight, you don't feel like there's the option to just magically get out of it. You may NEED to kill someone to be able to run away from guards. Of course, whenever you do fight it looks fucking FANTASTIC, but it's never difficult. You see, in the eyes of the game, in the eyes of your assassin brothers, you have already messed up.

With this new perspective of mine, the game has morphed into something entirely different. No longer do I expect to get my ass kicked for every mistake, nor do I feel the need to be rewarded for everything I do right. I really would've liked a new difficulty that brings back one hit kills like they showed off all those E3s ago, because it would've felt great to actually RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIFE. That would prolly add a few more points for me, but even as it is, with this newfound sense of purpose, I'm enjoying it far more than I expected.

It's settling in as a truly solid 8 for me.