I understand the AI is somewhat screwy (I've seen, in a review video, stealth killing a guard in full view of another guard just metres away AND facing your direction and utterly ignores you...
The idea being that they don't know that you killed him. When you stealth-assassinate someone, they don't fall over right away, they waver for a few moments before falling over, giving you a chance to step away from them before they fall. The guards opposite the lane don't react until they see the guy fall down, at which point you're already ten feet away amongst a bunch of citizens. It's not perfect, sure, but I don't recall that sort of thing being done before, so take it for what it's worth as a first attempt.
Bear in mind that the kill has to be stealth.. if you do it in High Profile mode, you'll catch the immediate attention of everyone around you.
Ya I dont think a leaping stab to the throat is exactly appropriate for younger children.
Well, it IS rated Mature.. hehe. Blood, strong language, and violence. Yes, language.. they even drop the F-bomb. That caught me off-guard, but I applaud the fact that they didn't try to censor it down for the ninnies out there.
I've played through for some time now, just finished my third assassination, and I think this is one of the most intriguing and satisfying games I've played in a long time. I'm a big fan of open-ended "sandbox" games, and I'm really enjoying the degree of freedom the game gives you when moving about the environment. I'm trying to play the game in a "realistic" fashion, taking my time, staying stealthy, not just powering my way through it the way a game reviewer would (read Gabe's statements on Penny Arcade to understand where I'm coming from). I just spent almost three hours in Jerusalem before I actually went after my target. Wandered the whole district, hit every view point, saved every citizen, found a bunch of flags, got almost all the investigations (I dislike the flag-fetching missions, but I do all the other ones). Actually made my kill and escape much easier, since I had some of the crowd helping to slow down not only the guards, but my target as well!
The controls do take some getting used to, but once you do, you'll find yourself moving effortlessly across the entire environment, whether in the city streets or hopping across rooftops. The combat is all about timing. I prefer the defensive counter-kills, makes me feel like such a bad-ass to be surrounded by six guards, to brutally slaughter five of them inside of a minute while barely lifting a finger, then have the sixth guard run away screaming.
On the graphics side, I'm a big fan of realistic lighting, and I've been quite pleased to see more and more developers taking advantage of it. AC is one of the best examples I've seen of proper lighting, of having that sharp contrast between dark shadow and bright sunlight, but without losing any visible detail. The framerate is a tad low if you're looking for it, but it's generally very consistent, which may have been what Gamespot was referring to in their review. X360's framerate may be higher, but it stutters more, whereas PS3's framerate is lower, but stays steadier. There's some tearing here and there if you're looking for it, but it's not very bad, and doesn't detract from the game in any way at all. Don't let the reviews fool you.. the game looks absolutely fantastic, perhaps the best-looking game I own, and remains 100% playable throughout. Anyone who badmouths the graphics performance of either version is just nitpicking.
While I haven't had the consistent problems that Slackbladder mentions, I did have it lock up on me once when attempting to leave Acre and enter the Kingdom. Otherwise, it's been fine.
The story is also getting very interesting. There's more than meets the eye about what's happening in both storylines, and I'm very curious to see where it's going. Sure, I could read about the whole thing online, but I think the best way to do it is to just play through the game. And I have no complaints about doing that.
) but these memory glitches MIGHT hint that the Animus can also reconstruct a memory from a point of view in a completely different location. If true, and let's face it I'm just about blindly speculating here, then it could throw in a whole new dynamic in gathering surveillance in future missions (most likely to occur in AC 2, although I'm only on mem block 3 so I suppose it could come into play later in this one).
