2015 was a disappointing year in all as I continue to have less interest in playing video games and have fewer games I’m anticipated for. The game I was looking forward to this yeah also turn out to be pretty disappointing. However there were enough games that I enjoyed to make this an average gaming year for me as of late.

GAME I DID NOT LIKE FROM 2015

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China is a terrible game with terrible controls and infuriating combat and bad checkpoints and uninspired stealth. It has a distinct look but otherwise I hated everything else associated with this game. Stick to Assassin's Creed II: Discovery for your 2D AC needs.

10

While Costume Quest 2 did not technically come out this year and I played it a few weeks after Halloween (whoops) I am adding it to the list so try and stop me. Costume Quest 2 continues the cute adventure/turn-based strategy with the twins from the first game needing to save Halloween from an evil dentist with time travel. It's as ridiculous as it sounds and while the combat is still never challenging, the game charm and cuteness shines bright and keeps the smile on my face while playing throughout

9

Bladestorm: Nightmare is a quasi sequel/remake to a game from last gen and is pretty much Dynasty Warriors set in Japanese viewed Europe. The game does right by having strategy to the button mashing by allowing you to decide how to split up your squads and deciding who should attack or defend and where. Also the game adds a fantasy campaign that allows you to ride dragons and trolls and Joan of Arc is possessed by a demon and wears a revealing outfit and it's all silly fun.

8

Galak-Z is my most disappointing game of the year. Yet it still gets enough right to be on my list (and also cause I barely played 10 games from this year.) Galak-Z is a space shooter roguelike. First off, the game doesn’t have a good roguelike structure because it does a poor job encouraging the player to play anymore after beating the last season. I also found the game to be way too easy personally, with me dying around once in season 3 and 4, and 1/5 of the game that was promised a few months after release is still not out which makes me feel cheated. Also the story is nonexistent, characters are 1 dimensional, and the script is terrible; the style and look of the game makes up for that fortunately. I really, really wanted to like the game more with it being compared to the likes of the first Halo AI, but sadly it just did not do it.

7

Omega Quintet is an anime game that I played. It has idols that need to idol it up to keep the people safe from monsters. The combat is turn-based strategy and is generally bland. There is not enough visual novel moments of the idols talking and being great. It takes way to much effort to get the good ending. Yet the idols do a concert and it's the best. Also there are a few twists in the story that makes it surprisingly decent. I hope there is more cause I really do not want to venture into the dark path aka the Hyperdimension Neptunia games.

6

Hero's of the Storm is the latest* game in the hottest** genre around, mobas. HOTS won't be taking down the two juggernauts in the field anytime ever, but it does do things differently by keeping the matches short and the barriers to entry much much lower compare Defense of the Ancients 2. However this does tends to mean you will know who is going to win within 5 minutes of a match, with very few upsets happening in all the matches I have played. Yet any reason to play a game with the internet friends is a good one.

*That Witcher moba or the SNK one is probably newer.

**Wait this just in, those FPS MOBAs are the new hotness around, just today 3 new games in that genre were announced.

5

I probably would not of played Box Boy, let alone it being on this list if it wasn't for how cool it looks. Puzzle games are never my forte and it's much harder for me to enjoy one, but if a game keeps me smiling with amazing idle animations and costumes and great music then I do not mind playing you, game. Also the puzzle part is good too I guess.

4

Life Is Strange is a unique one. Probably the most budgeted "walking simulator" (with all the quotes around that phrase) it tries to tell the story of two childhood friends getting back together after being apart for 4 years to solve a missing person mystery with the help of time powers. While the game have a metric ton of rough edges and trouble child Chloe is a walking annoyance and just sucks, Max is a pretty cool character and I still enjoy seeing the big twist and how the game ends.

3

The Taken King, the first big expansion to Destiny came and improve the game in many ways. Even though their efforts to improve the story and characters don't do much in my mind in making it anywhere near good, TTK adds a good amount of content to the game and makes the content unpredictable with more coming out weeks after the game came out. Also like HOTS, any reason that allows me to play with my internet friends is a good one.

2

Fallout 4 needs no explanation of course, the long awaited hyped sequel from Bethesda. What Fallout 3 does well Fallout 4 does just as well. The world is big, there's a lot to do, and you can do it however you want. Thankfully since I been playing FO4 while not working at the time, I can lose myself in the world, build my settlements with crazy metal bases where i store all my comics and games and such. However if I did not have as much time on my hands as i do then I would find the lack of focus these games have as a major complaint. Even after playing over a hundred hours I'm still only halfway in the main quest. Finding my son should be something I prioritize, but sadly I view the main quests as any other quest.

1

Dying Light, the newest game from Techland, and I'm happy to report the game is coming from good Techland. Probably the best game from Techland at that too, Gunslinger being close, but that's besides the point. Dying Light is the spiritual successor to the Dead Island (with Dead Island 2 still slated to come out, probably [maybe]) and has everything Dead Island has, but does it all just better, way better, The combat is still the same, using melee weapons to hit the zombies in the face, but by having improved crafting mechanics and constantly getting better weapons makes the combat refreshing each time. Now fighting humans with melee is where the combat more rewarding then completely most quests. Sadly after guns are introduce and there is a plethora of ammo, the combat gets samey because the guns actually do their job in this game and kills when shooting something in the head. The one thing this game does that Dead Island did not is the parkour. When moving to and from quests is just as if not more fun then the combat and climbing the Ubisoft® towers is terrifying yet exhilarating, you know something is done right. Moving around gets even more fun and silly when halfway in you get a grappling hook that works probably too well. One more thing is the superb voice acting, where the main character feels like a character instead if the thing you control, mostly do to how well the voice acting is.

mostly meaningless now giantbomb.com/shows/demo-derby/

Dan and Drew

Pizza Hut Disc 0.

Toys "R" Us: Attack of the Killer Demos!.

PlayStation Underground: Volume 3 Issue 3.

PlayStation Underground: Volume 4 Issue 4.

Official Xbox Magazine 039 (With Dan and Jeff)...

Sega Dreamcast Generator Vol. 01.

Dan Drew and Jeff

Official PlayStation Magazine: Issue 58..

Official PlayStation Magazine: Issue 85....

Official PlayStation Magazine: Disc 52..

Official Dreamcast Magazine Vol. 2, Vol. 9..

Official Xbox Magazine 040..

PlayStation Underground: Volume 4 Issue 3..

PlayStation Underground: Volume 1 Issue 1..

PlayStation Underground: Volume 1 Issue 3..

Official Xbox Magazine 011..

Official Xbox Magazine (Australia) 052..

PlayStation Underground: Volume 3 Issue 1...

PlayStation Underground: Volume 2 Issue 4..

Official Xbox Magazine 052..

Drew Jeff and Brad

Official PlayStation Magazine: Disc 79...

Jeff Jason and Ben

Official Xbox Magazine 031..

Jeff Brad and Ben

Official Xbox Magazine 054..

........................................................................

I had so many plans for this blog. I was going to beat one of Double Fines first wave of fortnight games, Stacking and explore Steam early access with the game Pixel Piracy. Turns out, I don’t like Stacking that much and Pixel Piracy is maybe too early for me. Which means I fell back on some warm food games AKA Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword and Dark Souls. My bad.

Pixel Piracy

So I will try and talk about Pixel Piracy as well as I can. PP (hehe) is a game about a pirate captain starting his career in pirating. After creating your pirate, which you do by picking her/his backstory which alters the game, i.e. picking what your father was like will give you a better starting weapon or an extra starting pirate minion or more level up points, you start at the main town. Here is where you buy your minion pirates, ship parts and so on. Now here is where you get the unique thing in this game. You build your own ship using parts. You start out with some wooden blocks and half pieces that you can use to make a ship however you want. The parts need to be connected adjacent to each other but there are no other rules beside that. I don’t think there is much of a point for making a good ship currently, but it is nice having a sick looking ship.

Now it’s time to embark. Once you and your crew of minions are on the ship (BTW, everyone travels from ship to ship/land by using a graphing hook. Enough said) you go to the map and set the destination. The map is structure in tiny blocks side by side, and you only know what is what when you're adjacent to the block or have been there before. The current locations in the game include islands, evil pirates, towns, and events. Islands have some evil dudes and annoying ass crabs, evil pirates are a rival ship with evil pirates on it, towns are like your base town but with less of the shops, and events have random things I guess, the only time I got one my minion wanted money.

Now unfortunately the major fault I have with PP (gotta take them pictures) the combat is kind of poor currently. Want you do is click on the enemy and watch your dudes fight, The problem is that I never feel like I have any control of my dudes. I can't tell what is going on and how to tell who to attack who. Its hard to see the health of everyone with out pausing and the 2D nature of it make the fact that dudes can overlap hard too see things. I wish the combat is still early on cause I find it not fun the way it is. Once the fight is over you loot the things around you and move on.

There is not much to the game story/motivation wise. There is no story and no objective. The goal is to be the best the world can ever know. Pixel Piracy can be a very interesting game in the future if the team behind it does it right. This is also my first early access game I bought and tried and its interesting to see the game so bare bones. I still will not be doing any more early access stuff in the future because I have no interest to play early games for most games. But this was a fun experiment.

OTHER STUFF OR SOMETHING

So I tried Stacking but I could not get into it. I kind of hate the trial and error part you need to do. I also feel like the problem is never clear enough and that I don’t know what can be interactive or not. I wish I liked it more but I just was not loving the style enough to get past the puzzle stuff that I did not enjoy at all.

Dark Souls continues to be a game I enjoy mostly for the upgrading of my character and decent satisfying combat. I love how there are so many things that needs upgraded, and the combat gets me invested in it which also means me getting fucking furious that no other game does. But no matter how angry I get, I would always return.

Next week, I should have beat Metro Last Light (if I enjoy it) and maybe play Dynasty Warriors 8.

Hello Duders. I’m here to talk about Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon and Tomb Raider. I’m going to try and not rush out a word thing like last week. Maybe if I give myself some spacing I won’t use fuck three times in a sentence. I like to be edgy, but come on me.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon

How disappointing can a game be if I already went in expecting to be disappointed? So as I said in last week’s blog I was half way in FE and as of now I finished this video game. So where do I begin?

Like I said last week, the story was pretty weak and it continues to be weak sauce until the end so I won’t dwell on it. The story is very formulaic to a T and with no twists and character development I don’t see any reason not to skip all the dialogue. I did find the ending romantic stuff to be laughable so I will give it that.

I think playing the game through normal was a big mistake. After learning the patterns of the map and restarting, there were very little difficulty I had when beating a map. I think it had to do with there not being enough enemy units. When the enemy never gets a chance to surround my units and many of my units can destroy them in one battle then me being impatient is the only thing that can kill my units. The dragon people added some tough units, but when the game throws the weapons that can kill them with one hit at you then there’s not much point is there? By the end my Marth was near max level and unstoppable. After grinding him at the arena and giving him all the permanent stat buffs, Marth defeated the dragon boss in one battle. Remember how in POR when Ashnard was hard as balls even with a pimped out Ike? Anticlimactic.

The character leveling up stuff is also pretty poor. I like to keep all my units at the same level so by the time all of them were promotion I was at the second to last mission. Very helpful game. And with the low difficulty I had I did not really feel like I needed to make my units more powerful anyways. One thing I did want to retract form last week is the Ballistas. As it turns out, once I got the second Ballistas person/abomination I used him all the time. Being able to kill tanky wyverns in one shot and annoying healers with fortify from a distance is invaluable. And fun fact, Beck was my only unit to reach max level. I think Marth was at 29.

The fact that there are 4 or so missions that need to be unlocked by having some unis die is bullshit. I play through Fire Emblem games with no one dying and I did the same for SD. Having this rational approach to the games means that I lose out on 10% of the game. Also you know that item that hurts everyone on the map and can be used 3 times? I used it during that battle with wolf man guy and killed everyone on the map, making that level a moving simulator. It was fun breaking the game.

I’m not sure if putting it on hard would make me like the game more but I doubt it would by much. Everything else about the game is uninteresting i.e. the level progression and the map design and the story. Having a shit salad with good dressing is still a shit salad, but this game also has shit dressing so I don't know where I'm going with this....

Tomb Raider

Yeah, I’m not enjoying this game. It’s mostly because I cannot get with the game. If a thing is trying to be cereal and is doing a not so good job at it then it’s hard for me to have fun with it. I should be having fun hatcheting all them dudes in the head but Lara being all “SAM NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, There is something on the island I swear but I won’t say why I think that, Let me say Kanji the wrong way.” If all the character drama was not so piss poor then I could just enjoy the combat but alas. I am trying to mock the characters when ever they talk. Good times.

The combat has a couple of cool things to it. The bow has nice mechanics to it and is fun because it takes skill to be good with it. Auto aim cannot help you with the bow so it’s all skill to aim correctly and release at the right time. The CQC is fun also but that’s just because of the fact that Lara is slashing these dudes up and brutally killing them. Sticking arrows in guys all day long over here.

Everything else about the game is not so fun for me. I can’t enjoy the game when it’s a climbing simulator. I never have fun with 3D plat forming so it’s not that surprising. The few puzzles in the game are also not that interesting. Usually it just comes down to finding all the pieces of the puzzle in the dark. The finding of collectables are also an ehhh, but I probably need to enjoy the moving around the environment part to enjoy that part though. It’s also pretty funny how the game just turns into a Michal Bay flim (that is what the kids are using to say explosive?) at times.

I’m about half way through and by the pace I’m going it will be 2 more weeks till I finish. With the character drama stopping me from enjoying the only part I like I can’t wait till everyone dies. Another thing I hate about media is if the characters slowly die with nothing good happening to them ever, but that’s a story for some other time I guess.

Well, I should be playing Stacking and Pixel Piracy for next time. I also bought Dynasty Warriors 8 cause it was $20. And why not.

Mid way through March huh? I’m not complaining, my life has been pretty shit since last November and with the fixing of my car last weekend, hopefully things calm down for some time. So I been playing some games; here are some of said games!

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon

Well, I guess I’m not surprised. I’m about half way through my first play through on normal (thanks @video_game_king) You can certainly tell this is a remake to the first Fire Emblem game release for the Famicom in 90s. The main one being there is barely any story with it really only being there to bring you into the next battle. The characters are also hardly flesh out and are nothing but walking tropes. Now this really is not a damming thing since the Fire Emblem games are not know for rich storytelling; but what makes the best fire emblem game for me so good is the story and characters with bring along your emotions into battle that make you invested in the gameplay. FESD not having this is a big blow for me, but still not surprising.

Now the gameplay is, just FE without the newer features. If you want some raw ass FE then here you go. So far there is not much I really have not seen new except for the Ballistas. Now the Tellius games have those ones that stay in place and use archers units, but FESD is different in where the unit itself is the machine(!) Which means being able to recruit them also. But after using one for a few missions they kind of seem like laguz units, in that they are neat but not something you will use. I’m almost done with the mission with a ton of Ballistas and that mission has been interesting.

This seems like a good remake overall. The graphics are what they are but good enough and I don’t give a shit about graphics anyways. The added gameplay things help makes this game playable in the modern era which is really nice. Reclassing seems cool but I still don’t find much use with it yet.

I will probably finish this up by next week so I will write my thoughts on the ending there. The most damming thing I can really say so far is that this game was made 20+ years ago. But this is the last easily accessible fire emblem game I needed to play. I guess I will have to finally get through Fire Emblem - Thracia 776 already.

Risen 2

I finally finish this one up cause man this game was not as good as the first sadly. For whatever reason I play Risen 1 like six months back after getting it in that humble bundle. Of course I wanted to play the sequel after that when I enjoyed it and I did. It started off promising with the inclusion of crew members and multiple islands to explore. Now this sounded cool but it really just meant less focus. I think the combat had to take more of the work this time and the combat is not the thing in this game.

Risen 2 is your action role-playing game from Germain studio Piranha Bytes (ha) which means some great jank, and boy does it. You control you dude and you have your weapon of a melee weapon and a side weapon. The fighting is serviceable but good stuff is the RPG part. The big choice early-mid way in is to either help out the guns man or the native. Helping the guns man means you can use muskets as your main and helping native means you can use voodoo. Since I helped out the guns man I never touch any voodoo stuff which is always nice knowing a game has more to it. I went with a musket heavy combat since I used swords last time and boy, that may have been a bad idea. By late mid game almost nothing could touch me as I kindof stream roll through everything. All this really mean is boring ass boring combat. Problem was I felt like the latter part of the game had much more combat. It does not help game when you have a 40 minute collect this shit mission near the end.

The gear stuff would have been nice, but I rarely founded anything that could beat my gear I did have. The game would have been much nicer with more loot. The way you “level up” in this game is by spending your glory points (XP) on a number of stats including Sword, Gun, Thief and so on. On stat having 3 smaller traits in them like small guns and shotguns. I never felt like leveling up did much to the combat so I focus it all in Thief early on so I could unlock all them chests.

The story is the world is even closer to being fuck and you’re going to make it less fuck by killing a titan, the things that are making the world fucked. You have to gain all the things to kill said titan by getting them from the pirates that awaken the titan. It helps that you have to gain all the things to kill said titan by getting them form the pirates that awakening the titan. It helps that you became friends with the daughter of one last game and friends with him early on this game. Too bad it is only for early on. By the time you get past the third island I feel like the story does not even try to be interesting and just does it thing. There is a twist nobody did not see coming but that was just about it.

The main thing that attracted me into Risen was the idea of bad guys that did not respond. I really liked that idea in the first one and was happy to see it here. The problem is that there are too many bad guys and you never felt that pleasure from killing all the bad guys because there are always more around the corner.

Risen 2 tried to be a better game by adding more stuff, but I just felt like it made it lose the focus and added more filler. With weak ass combat half way through and boring story and RPG elements I can not say great things about this game.

IOS games

I been playing a couple IOS games a fair amount. The less well known one being Autumn Dynasty. This is a RTS game (I know) on the phone that actually works surprising well. The controls work well enough where you press a button and circle the units you want to control and drag where you want them to go. Since you will never have more than like 10 units and troop placement is not that big of a deal the controls work well enough where I was not that frustrated by them. When I wanted to drag I accidentally selected a different unit which happen a number of times and made me think a IPhone was pushing it with it screen size.

The story and set in ye old Asia where one scholar went to check out things in the south part of the dynasty when he got caught in a civil war along the way, and he has to join up the famous General and a history scholar to find out what’s going on. They try and do a couple twists in there but the problem is that out of the two story threads, one never gets a closing and the other gets a semi closing with a hole for a sequel. I felt like it could have been better with more time and money.

Now with it being ye old Asia, the units are swordsman, pike man, horses, archers, and catapults with the whole men Triangle of swordsman> pike man> horses> archers> swordsman and so on. Catapults are good against buildings and groups of units. The game also has buildings that are needed to keep your army strong; the interesting thing is determining what to build since there are limited slots to build and if you have enough money making buildings or archer towers.

Most of the missions also offer something different. In one mission the goal is to destroy a giant enemy army going through allied outposts that you need to stop with like 5 units by using their unit powers. The difficultie is not too bad, but I usually failed a mission the first time before I knew what was coming at me. The game also has a look similar to that game with the white fox that drew things, which I like the look of a lot.

The game was a pretty good bite size RTS. With interesting missions and decent controls the game was able to overcome the poor story and characters. I would recommend it easily.

I may have also been play Disco Zoo. The latest in NimbleBit games (makers of tiny Tower and Nibble quest), this time you are in charge of a zoo. A funky zoo. Wait a sec… The meaty part of this game is the puzzle gameplay. You have a 5x5 board and a list of animals that are in that board above it. Each animal has a specific pattern they are made of and you have to figure where they are in the board. The fun part is trying to remember what that animal’s pattern is and tapping away at the blocks to find them. It’s a neat puzzle game finding the animals and filling out your zoo. Your zoo is an area for each animal and that area can hold up to 25 of them. The progress is each section of a zoo has 6 animals. To gain access to start finding the next section of animals you need to buy a better aircraft and have a certain number of animals saved.

Now this is a F2P game and I know people have a slightly unfair opinion of them around these parts. The game is pretty good about it though where whenever I hit the wall I felt like I did not need to continue and could wait till I got more money to continue exploring. Yes the animal that make the money do fall asleep and you need to wake them up which is pretty shitty, but that was about the only thing I did not like. The music is pretty good and the visuals are cute. You can also hold disco parties with the premium monies and that is cool in my book.

Ok, that was longer then I was expecting but what eves. I will hopefully start Tomb Raider this weekend and finish FE. See you then.

So, I bought all the Assassin’s Creed mobile games (not including Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, since it actually the only one Ubisoft will acknowledge is a part of the series.) I’m not proud of it, but I did and we all just need to move on with our life’s. Well, I can’t since I have these crappy DS/PSP games next to me. (I’m talking about these three, 1, 2, 3 by the way)

Let’s start off with the past. I do not really like AC1. Maybe if I was older I would have finish the game but at the time I never could get past how boring I found the game to be. But by the next game, I came back. I love the Ezio trilogy. Specifically, Assassin creed 2 is the best. Maybe, if I played 2 and brotherhood back to back today I might reversed that order, but hey, nostalgic is a powerful tool. I mean, that big battle in 2 with the two groups fighting each other is still the best moment in the entire franchise for me. Brotherhood adds the following assassins in the game, which is amazing. Do you know how satisfying it is to use your full meter to rain down arrows on all the guards? Revelations adds a few more mechanics that don’t work out so well and the assassin followers are less fun, but the game is still good even if I understand people’s complaints about it being the same. I will take a slightly less fun, very similar sequel to a disappointing worse sequel any day though. Yeah I’m talking about you AC3. You and your weak story and crappy story missions. I still really like the homestead stuff. And of course I may like it more compared to AC4, more on that next time though. For the present day story stuff, after SPOILER LUCY GETS STABED UP SPOILER I kind of stop caring when they did not property explain everything and ruin what I liked about the story and when the characters did not matter anymore. Anyways, on to the game we are here for.

My first thought when playing Assassin’s Creed Altair Chroncles is that this game is not an AC game. Yeah sure the box say “Assassin’s Creed” on it, and there is a character name Altair on it, but it does not feel like an AC game. It feel like someone outside of Ubisoft made the game, which makes since Gameloft did make it, and they probably got a design doc and got told “make something”. The most obviously thing noticed, tone wise, is that the game adds things for the sake of gameplay that make the game unrealistic. With spikes on the roof of buildings and snakes hanging out and a god dame grappling hook mechanic (yeah, Altair has a god dame grappling hook) everything feels off. And yo, wall jumping. Also, to assassinate a guard, they must have some ZZZZZ over their head. Cause I guess Altair can only assassinate sleeping guards. Also a civilian, cause you have to kill a civilian to get their cloths in this stupid game.

The thing that closely reminded me of the core games and the only genuine enjoyment I sort of got is the combat. The combat has the assassin creed sword play with the strike and the counter. Well, kind of. Altair has a heavy and a light strike, which is the early sign that this game emphasizes on the wrong parts of the combat. The enjoyable part the AC combat is the rhythm of countering attacks and knowing when to attack. So early on when the best option to take out guys is to counter their attacks, the combat is a somewhat enjoyable part in-between the horrendous platforming. The problem is, the counter only works with the first two tiers of dudes out of four. This means that after the harder dudes start showing up, you have to do the annoying and boring part of the combat, mashing out combos. Yes, you do combos with the heavy and light attack. And when the combos are the only way to damage the harder dudes to my knowledge, pressing X,X,Y 4 times to kill a dude becomes a mundane task to advance. And sadly the countering system becomes completely useless halfway through when the game adds easier ways to kill the dudes. After they allow you to knock down the dudes with the grappling hook and the latter combos kill dudes in one hit, there really isn't any reason to counter anyone, making the combat completely boring and sometimes annoying.

And you also have your accessories to use during combat... that are useless. Using daggers during combat would be nice, but you can only have your sword OR one accessories equipped meaning when one of the dudes get up your grill and you have your daggers equip, your probably going to die. Oh, and it does not help that you must equip weapons by tapping on the touch screen, far too long to make switching weapons useful in battle. Altaïr also gets a crossbow, something I don't think excited back then. There is also a boss fight that you press buttons to make it stop about three times throughout the game. But it is just a QTE (there are big ass button prompts above the dude) of you pressing X,Y,X 4 times and done. Good times

Oh and also, Altaïr gains powers at random intervals like it’s a metroidvania game. These powers including wall-to-wall, wall climb, and the one that made me laugh out loud, triple jump. Imagine triple jumping in AC 2? You can’t because that’s completely stupid? I agree. Weapon combos and new accessories like daggers are also gain at random. Another thing you will never see in a core Assassin Creed game is character upgrades, the two being health and sword power. Yes, you gain more health and swords in the core AC games, but not by collection blue orbs along the path like its SR4. I went with sword power first, in case you were wondering.

Okay, we need to deal with the elephant in the room. About 50% of this game is completely garbage, terribly controlled, with a terrible camera in uninteresting environments platforming. Did I tell you how terrible this jumping on roofs and avoiding spikes and jumping on moving platforms is? Cause it is. Let’s start with the controls. Depending on the awful camera, movement can switch 90 degrees, meaning you will fall off and die. I never fully understand hot to climb up after hanging on a ledge, meaning many deaths. The jumping length is too random meaning many deaths. Me just not giving a shit about learning the patterns of the spikey spike so I will just throw bodies at it until I pass it meaning many deaths. The camera is in a mostly 2d plane view, but the problem is that the game is in 3D. Whenever you have to jump forwards it means you get many deaths. It kindof hard for me to articulate my feelings on how much I despise the jumping stuff in this game for whatever reason, so I’m just going to end by saying NO THANK YOU.

Mini games are also here that use the touch screen, and they feel like tech demoy crap like the stuff in that vita uncharted game. The two, stealing a key that involves moving a key past magically moving coins and the other being you interrogating some poor dude by playing a rhythm game. Again, not that fun and they feel even more generic then the other stuff.

There is also a longer felt then probably was stealth sequence that was bad. Instant fail if looked at stealth stuff is awful no matter what. I guess it good then that the stealth was dirt easy making the whole thing feel pointless. A number of puzzles are also in the game. Cause the assassin creed games are not games until they have a crappy mirror puzzle with two movable mirrors. To be fair, all the puzzles were terrible cause they did not require much brain power, just tedious motions.

Oh and there is a story I think. Something about finding keys and about a chalice that turns out to be a lady and a double cross with the assassin’s guild that when you kill the double crosser the game abruptly moves on to the next scene and is never talk about again. And the Templars (I think) attack a city and at the end when you kill the boss dude the Templars still manage to take the chalice lady away and the game abruptly ends and the game say congratulations and I unlock the hard mode and I took the game out and buried this game under a mountain. Oh, and when you need to sneak through the Templars camp dress as a scholar you need to steal a kid for a guard to unlock a prisoner's cage. After the guard unlock the cage he took the lady prisoner away which felt like Altair help a rapist and sigh.

The developer, Gameloft, makes since because the game feels like a knock off Assassin creed game for IOS (the game was latter ported to IOS funny enough), just like Modern Combat compared to Call of Duty. With no modern day stuff, very little gameplay similarities, and it just not being a good game what so ever, it really is not an Assassin Creed game except in name alone. Here’s hoping the only mobile games are not complete trash.

Next week I will probably just do a roundup of other stuff I'm playing to give me some time to play Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines. I also got Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, the only English release FE game I have no play yet, so that will be disappointing I bet. See you then.

Also, I made a list of top Dum Dums flavors as some stupid joke for the Mixlr crowd. I thought I should try and make my wasted time less wasted.

10: My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy (Noucome): Noucome has was it needs for a good harem (I tots not looking at you, Infinite Stratos 2). Girls that are actually interesting. With the fact that all the girls are part of the "Reject Five", they all have some quirk to them. Also the fan service does not hurt.

.

9. Strike the Blood: Speaking of harem. Blood has the action to support the show without needing the great characters that are in the show. I guess it's a good thing the show has great character also. The main protagonist may be more dense then I would like, but the forwardness that many of the girls have are fantastic. Also the non-anime reactions Yukina has (not going crazy) when Kojō gets in a wacky situation with the other ladies is great. But the action in the show is also pretty great. Most action scenes in anime are blend and unbelievable to me but this show does a great job of not doing that. Great flow that does not drag on.

8. Ace of the Diamond: Fall of 2013 is the season I started watching sports animes with this being one of the two. The great thing about this show (and other sports animes for that matter) is that it keeps me wanting more after each episode. Wanting to know how Eijun will try and get to the position of ace keeps me glue to the screen and wanting the next episode.

.

.

7. Yowamushi Pedal: Speaking of sports animes. Pedal is the other sport show I watched during the Fall 2013 season. Pedal has the same reasons I like and dislike Ace, just with different sports and characters. The shows never focus on anything other than the sport, which is my biggest problem I have with these sports animes.

.

6. Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT (Haganai):Speaking of harem. NEXT is the second season of Haganai, one of two season 2 shows on my list, and the one that I liked the second season more. Haganai season 1 was a nice little harem that had great characters, but did not do anything too special. This season ramps up the drama towards the end with more confessions being made left and right.

.

.

.

.

5. Minami-ke Tadaima: With Tadaima being the forth season of Minami-ke, you know what your getting into. It's not that arguable that the 2 and 3 season is weaker than the 1, but Tadaima brings the quality back up the where the first season was. The trio of sisters are back for more harmless slice of life comedy. The show is a top class slice of life with a shit ton of likeable characters, not much more needs to be said. YOU CAN DO IT FUJIOKA!

4. Chihayafuru 2: Chihayafuru 2 is not as good as the first season. But that does not stop me from wanted to watch the next episode immediately after the episode ends. Yes too much time was spent in that tournament and on the other teams. Still left me wanting more. Yes not enough time was spent on the other main characters in the individual tournament. Still left me wanting more. Watching Chihaya struggle as she tries to get to Arata's level and watching Taichi struggle as he tries to get to Chihaya and the amazing look the show has with the music that makes me tingle; I can't help but love this show.

3. Uchōten Kazoku/The Eccentric Family: Uchōten starts the part of the list of shows that I wanted to watch again immediately after finishing it. The way the show does not explains all of itself, but in a way that's not infuriating is extremely satisfying. Do humans know about Tanuki and Tengu? What exactly is Benten? It does not it matter, just start enjoying the show as it unlayers itself piece by piece while learning about the Shimogamo Family. The show starts light hearted as you learn more about the relationship of the Yasaburou and the professor. For the first half of the show at least, until the feels come in. Then you learn more about how the father of the family died and how that will shake up the Tanuki community. Uchōten brings an emotional punch that Muhammad Ali can't ignore. Learning more about the Shimogamo Family brings a story that stay with me after the show and makes it one of the best of the year.

.

2. Silver Spoon: Sliver Spoon is a weird show where it's technically a slice of life, but serious topics will be broach. But I'm not going to lie, I think the only reason I enjoy this show so much is because of the characters. Sure there is that stuff about how we should think about eating meat and stuff, but all I know is that the main protagonist, Yugo, is one of my favorite protagonist. Maybe it's because he reminds me of myself, Yugo tries to get away from his family and avoids contact with them entirely is something that makes me think of myself. And because of that, a rooted for him when he is relied on almost every episode, and to get with Aki, and to make all that sweet sweet pizza. Him going through straggles to find himself, like that meat eating thing for example, adds a ton of character to Yugo and the plethora of other characters. Speaking of other characters, Yugo is not the only character I liked of course because every character in this huge cast brings something to the table and are all so so good. The way Aki's dad glares at Yugo from the corner. Aki's uncle who is tough but always has a smile. The short and all knowing president. All the characters bring an enjoyable show that left me wanting more.

1. Hataraku Maou-sama!/The Devil Is a Part-Timer!: It's hard for media to make me laugh out loud, especially anime. So when Hataraku Maou-sama! came and made me laugh during the first episode I knew this show was special. Even if Hataraku Maou-sama! never reaches the peak the first couple episodes do after them, the show never lets up on its absurd premise. The way everything is done over the top and makes the show feel fresh. The fleeting moments of action in this show are great also. It has a nice flow that does not drag on like most action. It's great that the main protagonist never is not all powerful, he just needs to get the magic to get there. So when he does get the magic, you feel pump as he goes full demon and destroys everything. When I went to watch the first episode again when making this, the show pull me in and I had to rewatch it and I knew the show was one of my favorites.

(turning the English youtube's CC on helps)