My marathon of AssCreed games continues with Brotherhood. I'm not sure if I like this better or worse than the last one. The new little tweaks with combat and movement are nice, as is having followers to help you out in combat, but this setting is a little stale. Rome is big, sure, but with the exception of the famous sites they included, it's not all that interesting. I'd have preferred some variety like the previous games offered.
In between bouts of AssCreeding, I have been playing The Witcher II: Assassin of Kings. Not going to lie, this isn't really gripping me, and I had heard literally nothing but good things about it prior to playing it. The gameplay is pretty clunky, especially with how restricted the movement is. I don't understand why the game will only let you travel through any given area by one specific path, and have you bounce off of invisible walls and knee-high ledges if you try to deviate from that. Also, the combat is really simplistic, being Bamham-style tap-one-button-to-do-all-the-work, although I've heard that it's an improvement from the previous game, which I haven't played.
The storytelling elements aren't so hot either. I know that this franchise was based on some books and all, so it's not really fair to level this complaint at the games themselves, but holy shit, I am so sick of the usual generic medieval European fantasy setting by now. I make jokes about this occasionally on IRC, but I assure you that I'm being quite serious here. There is no other genre that is this stagnant. The equivalent of this in sci-fi would be having every sci-fi franchise be centered around a governmental organization called the "Federation," that exists alongside alien races known as "Vulcans," "Klingons," "Romulans," and so on. Do you think that people would stand for that kind of banal repetition in virtually every sci-fi universe out there? Of course not. So why do we tolerate it in fantasy? I'm not saying that every new IP needs to reinvent the wheel here, but for fuck's sake, they don't need to keep regurgitating Tolkien note for note. Switch things up a bit. Dwarves don't have to be angry Scottish beer-drinking miners and smiths. Elves don't have to be beautiful beings who live in the woods and are attuned to nature. It's not that hard to tweak these details at least a little bit.
In fairness, I should point out that the dark and gritty tone of the game is probably what the devs were hoping would set it apart from other fantasy titles out there. I suppose they were somewhat successful there, at least visually. I don't think a lot of fantasy goes for such a dirty, grungy look. As far as the writing goes, though, what with most of the characters talking very crudely and frequently swearing, it feels very contrived. Trying a bit too hard to establish how ruff and tuff the game is. I'm also rather amused by their use of the word "ploughing" in place of "fucking."