Assassins Creed - Unity

The Freeman wrote: »

the perfect scenario would be, that ubi learn from rushing this9(doubtful ala creed 3), people vote with their wallet and for it to be patched up nice and good next month and we get it in January for 30e on sale.:p

The Freeman wrote: »

cant help but look forward to The Division and Rainbow Six a tiny bit less, or atleast lower my expectations for both by about 30%.we shall see...

The new crouch button lets Arno sneak up on people in a way that's more predictable and useful than the stealth controls in the series' earlier games. It's tied to the left trigger, and on paper, it works similarly to the generally excellent stealth controls in Ubisoft's Splinter Cell games. But it and the game's cover-snapping do not gel, in part because the game, frustratingly, does not allow you to corner around an object you're covering behind or easily snap from one piece of cover to another. Imagine you're in a room full of chairs and desks. A guard is walking back and forth. You've taken cover behind a desk where he can't see you. You've pressed the A button and you're "stuck" to it. The guard walks away from you and you want to sidle around to the side of the desk to get a bead on him before pouncing. You can't, because you cannot turn a corner while crouched and snapped to cover. You have to unsnap, creating space between you and the desk, risking detection, and then you have to sneak around the corner of the desk and snap again. This is not a hypothetical. It happens during the first big stealth mission.

gizmo wrote: »

That's not really how it has worked though. AC3, for instance, was in development for over two and a half years, lending it the longest dev period of any entry since the first title in the series. The problems with that game were fundamentally to do with its design, both in terms of the world and the lead character. No amount of extra time given to the project was going to change that.

Similarly, Watch Dogs had quite a protracted development period but quite obviously over promised and under delivered. While I've yet to play it, the majority of complaints I've read again focused on tired design and a poor underdeveloped protagonist. Graphics issues aside, again this doesn't really indicate an issue with a rushed production schedule.

Now, I'm not going to argue that these games were released without bugs, especially if you looked at some of the undercooked PC versions, but I can't agree that their primary problems have been caused by Ubi forcing out broken or unfinished games. Hell, look at Black Flag and the initial reception to Rogue, these games have had the tightest development cycles yet have been praised more than their mainline brethren.

If you want to level real criticism at Ubi, I'd go with either changing the direction of the series from it's originally planned trilogy and losing Patrice Désilets in the process or insisting on devoting such a large number of resources to the series in order to pump out an iteration annually causing it to stagnate. As johnny_ultimate said below, it could really use a year or two off to give people some breathing space and the devs some freedom to try something really new. Or they could just finish the ****ing series and give Michel Ancel the budget he deserves for Beyond Good & Evil 2.

As for the quality of Rainbow Six titles, while I pine for a return to the days of the original games where planning was key to mission success, the first Vegas title was pretty great and was roundly well received. I have absolutely no idea how the new one is going to fair but I'm going to keep an open mind and at the very least, stop telling myself the footage at E3 hinted at more of a SWAT4 style game.