Creed

Everyone who has played it wants to talk about it, and so do I. Assassin's Creed, it's great. I've heard it said several times in several places that it's repetitive. Well perhaps there is some repetition but it is by no means boring.

Do you remember what it was like the first time you saw Grand Theft Auto III? Instead of walled-in levels and linear map progression you were suddenly presented with a free-form wander-around do-what-you-like three-dimensional city filled with NPCs. The freedom that Liberty City afforded us was a revelation. Since then we have played Vice City, San Andreas, Morrowind, and Oblivion. Of course there were free-form games out before these titles. Daggerfall, Fallout and its cult hit sequel Fallout 2 were among several other games which presented the player with a large world to explore freely, but it was never done in such a rich, three dimensional way.

And now there is Assassins Creed. It's GTA3 all over again. Where GTA3 had three islands (progressing from industrial, through commercial, to residential type districts), Assassin's Creed has three cities. It also has your home town base and the "kingdom" in between these locations which features villages, hamlets and outposts.

These cities are not small either. The areas of the cities you can visit at the beginning of the game are limited until you "unlock" further districts. Revealing how these areas are unlocked would spoil the big twist which occurs right at the beginning of the game. However, unlock enough of the English-held port city of Acre and climb to the top of the Cathedral and you are presented with a view of a colossal city. I really do mean huge. And it's all open for you to explore. No loading zones, no invisible barriers (once it's all unlocked at least), no broken wagons blocking the way; just pure, unadulterated freedom.

The acrobatic method Altair has of moving over, through, and around the streets is also satisfyingly portrayed. Whether you're looking for a vantage point from which to plan your route, fleeing from angry soldiers, or simply trying to avoid the crowds below; running, jumping, and climbing the buildings in Assassin's Creed is deceptively easy and provides for fluid, cinematic game play.

The combat system is satisfying enough. If you liked the swordplay in the Prince of Persia games (fancy that, Ubisoft Montreal made the PoP series too!) then you'll be happy with the visceral melee in Assassin's Creed.

There's more, much more, than I can write in this blog. I have a passion for adventure games and Assassin's Creed has currently taken the crown in my list of favourites. So I won't go on, I'll leave it there and go have a cold shower. My only regret is that the XBox 360 controller won't work when it's wet.

Complaint

I can compose an email using a size 999 font and read the result on one line in Hotmail. But not in GMail. You'd think Google were just pandering to the majority, what about the people with reading problems I have to email? The people with 200" monitors? What about them?

In other news: if someone doesn't take Assassin's Creed away right now I may never be seen again.

Caricature

Okay so it got me again. Guild-frikken-Wars. I got to the Shiverpeaks and now I just want to play the game more and more. I remember now that last time I played Guild Wars I just couldn't get enough of the Shiverpeaks. Sure they're infested with ettins, centaurs, and evil dwarves but there's something about the mountains that I really, really like. I'll probably have to play it a bit more to put it into words, I think it's the atmosphere. The ambient music in the mountains is some of my favourite in Guild Wars.

Speaking of which, I recently downloaded the bonus music tracks from DirectSong. The bonus tracks are even better than the regular music. Two tracks that really stood out were "First Light" and "Journey to Lion's Arch". I don't know how easy it will be to burn the tracks onto CD because DirectSong use some convoluted licensing software.

So, in Guild Wars related news I thought of drawing one or two Guild Wars inspired comic strips, sort of the same way I drew the Jedi Academy comics. So I've been drawing characters from the game (different player classes, charr, important NPCs, etc.) so I'll be well practised when it comes to drawing the strips themselves. My most recent illustration was a female elementalist (part of my ongoing campaign to become proficient in drawing female characters, I'm still having trouble drawing them!), I tried using vectors in Photoshop. I know it's my first time using vectors but I don't like the way it came out. I think I'll start it again. I'm also going to have to find a better way to shade/highlight my drawings because the way I usually do it hasn't worked well with this picture either! Also, I'm finding it difficult to draw Charr from certain perspectives. Their anatomy is hidden underneath all that fur and those spikes. I never was any good at drawing muzzles.

I searched the Internet (very briefly) to see if there are any Guild Wars comics already out there. I found Healbot Blues and GearTrick, both of which were entertaining. Both artists seem to have managed to pin down the likenesses of characters from the game very well in a relatively simplistic manner which is something else I could work on.

I'll post my drawings here once they're done but don't hold your breath.

Conclusion

I think I'm at the end of Splinter Cell Double Agent. It really feels like it. On the one hand I'm very glad because the final maps set in Africa were ridiculous. It's broad bloody daylight and there's a huge battle going on. I got a 32% stealth rating on that level because I killed every rebel and soldier in the final area after reloading my most recent checkpoint about thirty times. I was that tired of it, usually I refrain from even knocking enemies unconscious and just creep on by without being noticed but this part of the map just pissed me off no end. And I usually don't get a stealth rating below 80% (even then I can't justify "Identified as Intruder x 2", "Alarms x0" when the hell was I seen? Who employs these sentries? Do they say Oh hey, there's a spy. Should we hit the alarm? No, don't be silly, then we'd have to chase him and I think he has a knife. It's like the Ankh Morpork guards were imported to Splinter Cell or something. If they at least had the common courtesy to shoot a few bullets my way then at least I'd know where I went wrong).

On the other hand, the level after Africa is fantastic! It's got everything that defines what the game is/should be about. Shadows; betrayal; choices with dire, dire consequences; sneaking... there's no frustration as you're spotted by the mystery guard for the umpteenth time; there are no stray bullets flying into you from random directions; your objectives are clear; the areas are well paced and laid out. So now I'm kind of disappointed that there had to be some really irritating levels (I'm looking at you, Russian tanker!), that would feel more at home in Hitman 2 than Splinter Cell, between the really awesome levels.

I'm also at the climax of Half Life 2: Episode Two. How do I know? Well I haven't looked at the chapter list recently but if there is anything more intense than the battle I'm taking part in now then I'm not going to be able to complete the game without changing my underwear at least once. I tried to play it last night to get it over and done with but my computer (which desperately needs replacing now) froze at the game menu and would not respond. "Fine" I said "I'll just play some Guild Wars!"

I've been writing more about Windy Cross (the village, not the blog) for my D&D campaign. But there is so much to write that it will take a while before that's finished alongside adventure 4.

In other (real world related) news Sam's ferret, Whisper, had to be put down yesterday. £100+ and the vet still can't tell anyone what ailed the poor creature. "I have no idea what's wrong with him but I can kill him for you. That'll be fifty quid please." I don't think Sam has taken it very well at all. He still has Whisper's mate, Jessica, but Whisper was his favourite and was a better working ferret than Jessica. Also, ferreting is generally done in the winter and guess what season we're on the brink of. Actually I'm not sure if we've had anything but winter this year.

Cascade

It's cruel and uncalled for, that's what it is.

You're riding to work through the cold and the rain, on a national speed limit (60mph) road, and you start to feel it. It has only just started but you know now that it will continue relentlessly. You sniff and sniff but it is of no use, it continues. Slowly. Mercilessly. As it gets further and further you try anything you can think of; you start shaking your head, sniffing harder, cupping your top lip to catch it. But nothing stops the malicious flow...

The snot dribbles silently and cold onto your top lip. You cringe but the mucus is without sympathy and continues, as much a servant of gravity as a despoiler of comfort. You can only sit there, riding as fast as possible in the hope that you'll get to your destination sooner and wipe it off your face before... oh no! It has reached your bottom lip!

The salty, cold, sour taste of ooze reaches your mouth. Oh why won't it stop? Why? You curse the cruel fates but to no avail. The snot trickles onwards, never stopping, soaking into the balaclava you wear under your helmet and making a mess of everything.

Bleeeuuugggrrrhhhh!

Cinematography

Here he is at last: Sten the bard! I realised that Sten was mentioned a few times on my website but I hadn't actually put up a portrait of him. Also, my best drawing of Sten was in biro from last year (or perhaps the year before) and didn't scan very well so yesterday afternoon I composed the below drawing and coloured it ready for upload. His left forearm is a little warped and his head is rather large but otherwise I like the way it came out.

I'm a fan of old legends and mythology, and I thought Beowulf was pretty good. I hadn't seen any trailers for it so I didn't know about the whole computer generated imagery aspect of it; the special effects really merged with the rest of the film very well. It might not be this year's Lord of the Rings but it was still very watch-able, I'll probably see it again when it comes out on DVD. If you liked Troy or 300 then you'll like Beowulf. Also, apparently there was already a Beowulf film called Beowulf and Grendel. I wonder what that adaptation was like?

On the subject of films I've had Man on the Moon suggested to me by a friend, while my brother Sam is still insisting that I should watch Jerry Maguire. I'm still trying to get around to watching A River Runs Through It all the way to the end, so far I've seen about half an hour of it before something has come up to take me away from the rest of the film.

Sam's ferret, Whisper, was ill over the weekend so Sam had to spend all his time and money on him. Whisper seems all right now, his physical symptoms have cleared up, but he's not eating as much as we'd like. Hopefully his condition will improve further. I think Sam has parted with a total of £90 this weekend in vet bills... and the vet still can't tell him what's wrong with Whisper. Money well spent huh?

I've been playing Thief: The Dark Project this weekend. Despite its ancient graphics, the game is still highly playable. I'm surprised at how easy it was to pick up and play. Rope arrows... rope arrows! I might actually get around to completing it this time around; last time I played Thief I played it up to the last level before the computer had to be formatted (this was on an OLD Pentium 166Mhz processor that could barely take Thief's graphics). Then, when I played Thief 2 on a newer computer (1.4Ghz AMD Duron processor), I managed to get to the very last level before, guess what, my PC had to be gutted and formatted when the motherboard blew. So despite being a big, big fan of the Thief games, I've only ever completed Deadly Shadows. Speaking of stealth games, I'm borrowing Splinter Cell: Double Agent from Sam for the XBox 360; so far it has proved to be very good, but I despised the Russian tanker level and I'm not sure if it's possible for mortals to attain a 100% stealth rating on most levels.

And I finally managed to retrieve Althea's Ashes in Guild Wars! My part consisted of me (ranger/mesmer though I never use my mesmer abilities), one warrior/monk player, and two NPC henchmen (the healer and the mage). In the end my warrior buddy timed out and I was left with two low-level NPCs against an army of Charr. Thanks to the command heroes or henchmen buttons that are now available (they didn't exist last time I played Guild Wars) I was able to set and spring plenty of horrible traps for the Charr and lure them away from the ashes for long enough to grab them... then I slew the lot of them. Now I look back I wonder what was holding me back when I had a whole party of players behind me. I suppose players are less inclined to act as bait than NPCs are.

Cartography

I've updated the Lerranshire map on my website; last night I added a map title, a compass, a scale bar, and names for regions which are on my hand-drawn version but didn't make it to the CC3 version. I added the region names in Photoshop because it is much easier to do it that way and the program gives you great control over text (which I learned when making GMod comics with it). The map still doesn't look stunningly good, perhaps I just planned for too large a setting when I started drawing it. At first Hydrobadi (the country) was too small, now it may be overweight. Ah well I'll just have to see. If the players start asking me why it's taking so long to get from one town to another I'll just have to remind them that they aren't adventuring in a modern setting and that settlements can only survive if placed in an area with sufficient resources. This isn't SimCity you know.

I've been thinking of getting City Designer but I'm not sure how much I'll use it. Currently most of my adventuring plans only take place in villages, hamlets, and one or two towns. It would be nice to be able to map out a city or large town but do I need to spend the money on it right now?

The most annoying thing about my maps right now is that my hand-drawn ones don't scan very well. And if they do, they don't resize very well. I'm sure there is a way around it, but that's something I have to hunt down.

I played the Bioshock demo last night. The graphics are top-notch, the game itself looks very interesting and I'd love to explore more of Rapture. The only niggling complaint I have is the accuracy. Okay it's not supposed to be a run-of-the-mill first person shooter but in Halo or Half-Life 2, when I find myself with Covenant/Combine between me and my objectives I generally point my arsenal in their direction and get results. The AI in Bioshock seems to be very jumpy and evades things without even trying thanks to its unpredictable movements. This may be something that I've just got to get used to but it seemed that the sudden, random movement of the AI was more accidental than deliberate. The game reminded me, strongly, of Clive Barker's Undying which was an amazing game.

Which reminds me, I wanted to try the 360 demo of Jericho as well.

I've been writing as much as I can about Windy Cross (the village, not this blog) for D&D. With all this feverish scribing I suppose the time of playing is drawing near and I need to start thinking about when and where the actual gaming will take place. I've still got adventures four and five to write before I can even start thinking about playing though, and after that I need a way to tie in the following story lines.

Cerebration

I've been thinking. And recent events have pushed that thinking. Sometimes you only need someone to point out to you that you're awake to feel tired even though you should have been in bed hours ago.

So I've decided to be a little more proactive. Stop putting things off until tomorrow and get them done now. I don't know how long this wonderful vibe will last but so far it has been good. I raced home from work just before the shops shut so I could get an organiser box which I've stuffed all my important documents into (birth certificate, driving license etc.), that took almost all afternoon to do! Yesterday I moved my whole room around and tidied it up. It looks and feels much better now. I think I've also gotten back into the habit of cooking bigger, better meals from raw ingredients (spaghetti, chilli con carne, casserole etc.) rather than just bunging breaded chicken/fish and some chips into the oven.

I'm bent on continuing this trend. Tonight I will have boiled potatoes and steamed vegetables again! And I will finish that map of Lerranshire, then I will start the map for Curse of the Vargouille. And if there is any time left after that, perhaps I will have a go at completing Half Life 2: Episode Two, or playing the Bioshock demo on the 360.

Or Thief. Yesterday I was emailing Matt and for some reason I couldn't help myself from visiting The Circle to see if it was still up and running. It is. And now I really want to play Thief. So I've downloaded Darkloader and I'm sure some times soon I'll be playing as feverishly as I did when I first laid my paws on the king of stealth games. Well I think the title actually gets passed from Garret to Sam Fisher and back again quite often...

I played the Overlord demo on the 360. It was fun but too short. I wonder what the rest of the game is like?

Contagion

Since Wednesday I've been almost cripplingly ill. I don't remember ever being so sick.

>>> Gory details start here <<<

The gory (almost) details? I was vomiting and retching all day Wednesday, not to mention the diarrhoea, but the vomit was the worse. I don't recall throwing up being so physically traumatising. It just kept coming. My mum was a real godsend and came over, got me medicine (which I promptly threw up, then had to retch on an empty stomach), tried to keep me comfortable, and eventually took me to her place where she and my brothers live, in a taxi. I spent the rest of the week and the weekend up until now over there. I couldn't do much for the first couple of days except drink water, sleep, and go to the toilet. Since then I've felt my strength returning but it was not an ordeal I'd like to relive. I couldn't walk easily, I was dizzy and suffering from a high temperature and mild hallucinations. Horrible.

>>> Gory details end here <<<

My mum really was a hero though. I can't thank her enough. I just hope work goes well tomorrow. My mobile ran out of battery while I was over at my mums so I couldn't find the number to call work on Friday morning. I'm guessing that the headteacher cottoned on to how sick I was (salmonella I think - a bad chicken from Lidl) and won't childishly penalize me for not calling on Friday morning. I wasn't even awake to call them anyway.

Other than that nothing, of course, has happened. Because I was in bed most of the time... ill. When I got back, yes the house is still a tip. To add insult to injury someone had left uncovered salami in the fridge (which I promptly binned). Luckily someone had thrown the chicken out. On the subject of the house, I'm giving more and more serious thought to at least trying to live on my own. It will mean saving up for a long time though. I might have to wait until June, or maybe as late as July. We'll see. I'm just fed up of certain things which are too depressing to mention in a post already containing bleak content.

Convicted

On Friday I downloaded the final episodes of Red vs. Blue that I missed when I was away from the Internet. Of course, I've always loved RvB and couldn't wait to watch the final videos. But why did they make three endings? Couldn't they decide which was more fitting/funny? I have my preference and I'm sure other people have theirs, and I would really like to see another season of videos, but I feel that it may be a while before we see more from the guys at RoosterTeeth. I'm probably wrong but there you go. I'm currently curious about Civil Protection.

What else did I do at the weekend? I got paid, waited in all Saturday morning for a parcel that never arrived, went for a night ride out to Eastbourne, started playing Condemned: Criminal Origins, purchased and downloaded Half Life 2: Episode Two, and finished (kinda) a map in Campaign Cartographer 3.

The night ride was good but what can I blog about? The amount of fireworks that were going off that night? For a moment I thought there was lightning over the horizon but it was actually fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks. It was very dark. I fell behind since Adam rides a two-tone silver (urgh) CBF 600n and Sam rides a black and red CBR 125r, both of which are much faster than my poor ol' CG125 which requires certain conditions to reach speeds in excess of 55MPH (i.e. downhill, wind behind you, no cargo/pillion, etc.) The CG is great for low-end performance and riding from town to town or commuting but once you get onto the big roads you just can't keep up with the faster traffic. I'm not saying it's useless outside of an urban environment, I'm just saying it's not suited for riding at high speed.

Condemned was impressive to begin with, looked repetitive after half an hour, then really captivated me after another half-hour. I was compelled to play it until completion. The ending could have clarified things a little better but perhaps I need to find all the birds and metal pieces? I liked the game play, I love it when games break the mould and give you a different way to play rather than just relying on shooting things until the credits roll. Some parts had me swearing whether in shock, revulsion, or apprehension... sometimes a mixture of all three. And the last time that happened was in Call of Cthulhu.

So far Episode Two has proved to be just as good as Episode One. I only regret that I can't play the game with the graphics pumped up to the maximum. I'd upgrade my computer but we really need a sofa, and I should get on with organising my bike lessons.

The map can be found on my website later on today when I upload it. It's not one-hundred-and-ten-percent finished yet, I still have to add a compass and key but other than that it looks pretty good in my opinion. Better than the ones I drew by hand anyway.

No one told me XBox Live! silver membership was free.