I
The Devil’s Brigade
Volume II
So far so good with the
xbox360achievements.com guide to get the dog tags. After about four hours of playing spread
across three days, I have sixty-one out of the ninety-five dog tags, but I’m
getting close to that point in the game, I think, where everything goes wrong
and I miss one or two or three of them.
I was hoping to finish it all tonight, but a sudden wave of exhaustion
set in and I’m beat and in need of sleep.
But not enough that I can’t write a few thousand words or so here. Ha.
II
The World of Assassin’s
Creed
Assassin’s Creed came out
something like fifty years ago, give or take about five decades or so, and it
wasn’t really on my radar at all. I
remember seeing a friend play it on the Xbox 360, and I was somewhat impressed
with it until I played it myself and couldn’t even get into the game because it
was repetitive. It wasn’t until a few
years later when Ubisoft released the sequel, appropriately named Assassin’s
Creed II, that I gave it another whirl and fell in love with the game, and the
entire franchise which has sense become an annual sort of thing.
The main reason I fell in love
with the game is because the setting of the second game is Renaissance Italy
and you get to interact with many architectural wonders and even talk to that
Leonardo da Vinci guy several times. The
Assassin’s Creed games allow video game players a very unique opportunity in
that they are essentially time machines that let you travel back to certain
time periods and actually be a part of that environment. It’s different from books or films that are
period pieces because they’re either descriptions from the author’s point of
view, or they’re motion pictures also given to you from a certain perspective;
never are you allowed to go to those places and adventure in them of your own
free will. You don’t get to climb around
the Colosseum in a movie or a book, but here, in Assassin’s Creed II, you
can. Without getting arrested and thrown
in prison like you prolly would if you attempted this in real life. It gives one an entirely different
appreciation for the architecture of such places, and there are many of them
decorated throughout not only Assassin’s Creed II, but the entire series.
There’s also a huge history
element that is absolutely fascinating.
This particular game deals with the Borgia family and their attempt to
do all sorts of wrong things. The
history is as accurate as one could hope for in a fictional world – if historical
accuracy is important to you and all that – and it’s simply fascinating to
watch it all play out as close to how the events actually unfolded plus the
added fictions that the development team threw in for dramatic intent.
And some of those fictions deal
with a whole lot of science fiction. One
of the main plot points for the game is that you’re not actually playing Ezio
(or Altair from the first game), but are playing Desmond, a young man that
lives right now – well in 2012, because… yeah.
Desmond is related to Altair and Ezio, and he’s reliving their memories
through his DNA thanks to a machine called the Animus. A corporation – that’s evil, ‘cause every
time a corporation is introduced in a fiction, especially science fiction, it
has to be evil, right? – is trying to dig up specific memories from Desmond’s
head in the first game, and then he goes rogue in the second game with a band
of folks that claim to be assassins. You’d
get it if you played it. There’s a lot
of science fiction stuff going on and it’s good stuff. It’s not all too whacky…
But then again! It is!
Assassin’s Creed has this aspect to it that I’m calling the Tinfoil Hat
to Protect Yourself From Mindreading Aliens elements. If you’re at all familiar with the Ancient
Astronaut Theory, then this stuff will be old hat to you. And you’ll probably roll your eyes and call
bullshit. But wait! I’m not a tinfoil hat wearing crazy guy, and
I really enjoy the Ancient Astronaut Theory.
Not because I believe it’s true to the slightest extent, oh, no no
no. It’s just as much bullshit to me as
it prolly is to you, but what it is to me is absolutely fascinating; especially
from a fictional point of view. And the
version of it that Assassin’s Creed presents to me, as a love of all sorts of
crazy fictions, is just awesome. I’m
still excited to see how it’s all wrapped up for the Desmond character as I’ve
yet to finish Assassin’s Creed III. My
original goal was to finish Assassin’s Creed III on December 21st,
2012 because that’s the day the game took place on, but I failed
miserably. I suppose I could set my PS3’s
clock back to that date and pretend, but it probably wouldn’t have the same
sort of nerdgasm level of nerd… gasm.
Assassin’s Creed II also tells a
very unique story within those re-lived memories. Unlike a lot of other games where the story
is eats up a relatively short amount of time, this game covers almost an entire
life span of a single character. From
birth to mid-life, we’re told the story of Ezio Auditore de Firenze and his
involvement in the overall plot of the series.
It’s very interesting and quite unique to see a character grow from an
infant the first time you meet him, to a young man that gets into all sorts of
trouble, to what he becomes at the end of the game – and further continues in
Brotherhood and Revelations, and even the short film, Embers.
III
In Memory of
Petruccio
These fucking things. It seems that in order to make a video game
nowadays that’s not a first person shooter, you have to include these tiny,
almost missable items that you have to collect in order to get 100% completion,
and then they add on top of it a trophy that requires you to get ‘em. If it’s not dog tags you find on the corpses
of sometimes well hidden soldiers, it’s feathers. FEATHERS.
The reason it’s feathers in
Assassin’s Creed II actually has to do with the main character, Ezio, and his
young brother, Petruccio, that is executed along with his father and his older
brother. So, to remember his brother and
do him a great service, Ezio continues to collect the feathers and places them
in a box at his home. I completely
passed over this activity the first time – and only – time I played this game
from beginning to end, ‘cause I was gonna do it much later, and take my time
with it. Then I lost my save file, and
now I gotta play the whole game over again and start from scratch, which is and
isn’t fun at all. Collecting
feathers. Feh.
IV
Show Your Colors
The capes in the game are part of
Ezio’s attaire and have some pretty decent features. The first cape you get is the default one,
and it doesn’t really do much of anything.
The other capes, however, like the Medici cape, the Venetian cape, and
the Auditore cape all have different effects on how noticeable you are in each
of the cities in the game, with the Auditore having the most negative effect of
the three. The reason it has a negative
effect is because the Auditore family has been completely disgraced and framed
for a bunch’a bullshit, so they instantly assume you’re up to villainy when
they see you wearing this cape.
The trophy comes from obtaining
this cape – which requires you finding all the feathers – and wearing it in each
of the cities you can visit in Renaissance Italy. Unfortunately on my previous play through, I
didn’t find all the feathers, so I never even got this cape, let alone the
opportunity to wear it anywhere. This
time will be different!
V
Sweeper
This trophy just pisses me
off. It’s a simple one. You pick up a pole arm, like a spear or a
pike, and you do a sweep move when surrounded and knock down five or more
guys. That’s it. Unfortunately, I don’t think I ever picked up
a single spear or a single pike and did anything with it, ‘cause Ezio’s default
weapons, and the weapons you get throughout the game are much better than a
goddamned pike. After playing a lot of
Assassin’s Creed III and learning how to get EVERYONE’S attention ‘cause I
forgot how to play it, this trophy really shouldn’t be a problem to get at
all. Whatsoever. None.
VI
Game Mishap!
The other day I decided to order
all the Lego games ‘cause I really enjoy playing those goofy little
fuckers. I already re-obtained Lego Star
Wars: The Complete Saga on the Xbox 360 – ‘cause it has Achievements, whereas
the PS3 version doesn’t have trophies – so I said, “What the fuck,” and bought
the rest of them. Relatively cheap. I went ahead and got the other two that didn’t
have trophies on the PS3 for the Xbox (Lego Batman and Lego Indiana Jones), and
ordered the rest on the PS3. I got them
today, and, well, there was a mishap.
One of the games I got for the PS3 was Lego Pirates of the Caribbean,
and instead, the folks selling this copy through Amazon saw it upon themselves
to send me the Xbox 360 version instead.
And this probably wouldn’t be a problem at all if, well… if I hadn’t already
scored 56% of the trophies on the PlayStation 3. So, now I have to make a very unexpected trip
to GameStop tomorrow to fix the situation, ‘cause I’m not fond of returning
things. I’ll just trade it in
instead. I’ve got a few other games I
wanna trade in, anyway, so it’ll make it easier. Dumping off F.E.A.R., The Elder Scrolls IV:
Oblivion, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the PS3 because they don’t
have trophies, and I have the last two already on the 360. Hopefully I can pick up F.E.A.R. for the 360
and Lego Pirates for the PS3 tomorrow, but we’ll see.
VII
But, wait! There’s More!
I don’t just play video games and
try to get all the trophies and achievements, mind you. I also do other stuff. Like work.
I got a job, y’know! But one of
the other things I do that eats up a lot of my free time that my writer’s
muscle doesn’t like is read a LOT of comic books, because comic books are an
essential and important part of the human imagination’s diet. You like to not think so, but then you pay
ten bucks to go see a comic book character beat up some dudes on a giant screen
and lazily lay there snarfing down all your popcorns and sodas that cost you
just as much as it does me to make one trip to the comic shop. Only I get more outta it!
Been reading Rick Remender’s run
on Uncanny X-Force from beginning to end, and while I wasn’t caught up on all
things X-Force prior to the Uncanny X-Force series, but I have to say it wasn’t
required reading. The original X-Force
book was created by Rob Liefeld and others from the declining-in-sales New
Mutants book and was reimagined as a high-octane action adventure book
revolving around mutant affairs, instead of being just a bunch of kids learning
stuff at school. Which isn’t all that
interesting of an idea, even though I’m not so sure that’s what the original New
Mutants book was about. I wouldn’t
know. I never went near it because it
didn’t have an X in the title. My
rationale was pretty retarded when I was a kid.
The new X-Force was reconfigured to be an elite strike team of X-Men
that had no qualms about pulling no quarter when it came to killing folks. So, naturally, the team was led by the one
and only Wolverine. Like how all that
connects?
Uncanny X-Force comes after that
X-Force title, and Wolverine has his team of wholesale slaughters still in effect:
himself, Archangel, Psylocke, Deadpool, and Fantomex. Only, this book goes pretty deep. It deals with the Apocalypse. Not the Christian Apocalypse, or the end of
the Mayan Calendar apocalypse, but THE Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur, Marvel’s FIRST mutant. Born in ancient Egypt, En Sabah Nir was born
with special abilities and eventually became selected by the Celestials, cosmic
being things that do stuff, to ensure that evolution was kept on its proper
path. It wasn’t. Apocalypse was killed (more than once, if I
remember right), and eventually, Archangel becomes his heir. So that’s what Uncanny X-Force was about, and
it’s INSANE. It’s insanely hilarious,
insanely violent, insanely well drawn and well written, and insanely good.
I also made my first weekly trip
to a comic shop to pick up physical comics in four years. I’ve been reading digitally for quite some
time now, but I wanted real comics. Real
paper comics. And I got them. But I haven’t touched them yet. I did manage to find a hardcover collection
of the first eleven issues of the pre-Rick Remender X-Force X-Force book and
snagged that happily enough. I also
ordered vol. 2 of that same series.
Excitement. A part of me feels
sad for non-comic book reading folks.
What hollow lives you live.
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