So, in news I am still not quite ready for and haven’t had enough coffee to take seriously, GamesRadar have pointed out that the Assassin’s Creed Collection has turned out to be a hideous partwork figurine subscription service.

Is it wrong that it’s kind of so terrible that I’m now really into the idea?

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Would I want to watch a movie about Michael Fassbender’s chiselled, time travelling jaw? Yes. Would I want to watch an Assassin’s Creed movie? Slightly less so. But this first trailer goes some way to convincing me that even if the plot turns out to be about Desmond, there’ll be enough leaping about and kicking to make it worthwhile watching on Channel 5 in four years time. Come see.

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My calendar tells me we’re now over halfway through April. The Met Office tells me astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere started on March 20. Yet the weatherman told me yesterday that I can expect highs of a whopping nine degrees centigrade here in Glasgow this weekend. I’d swear it was still winter had the annual Uplay Spring Sale not kicked off this week, with big discounts on the likes of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Rainbow Six Siege and Far Cry 4, among others. Which others, you say? Find out after the drop.

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Since 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, Ubisoft have released a new open-world murder playground every single year. Not in 2016. AC will indeed be taking a rest for a bit of a reworking, as was rumoured. I wonder if that means the Ancient Egypt setting for the next entry that rumourmongers mentioned is real too. Point is, Ubi are skipping 2016 and planning to return later with something fresher. Say, I wonder if Watch Dogs 2 will fill that October/November slot now open in Ubi’s lineup for this year.

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A rumour is going round, based on anonymous 4chan posts supposedly by an Ubisoft employee, that we’ll not see a new main Assassin’s Creed game in 2016, but it’ll return in 2017 with a complete overhaul set in Ancient Egypt. Not the most reliable of sources, that, and probably not a rumour to put money on. However, now we’re all back at work and loitering around water coolers with idle hands and malevolent intent, let’s gasbag and tell other people how to do their jobs. We ask: how would you revitalise the open-world parkouring murder simulator series?

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Review code for the PC version of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate [official site] activated this evening and I’ve spent the hours since playing through the opening sections and fiddling with various settings to see how it all holds together. In short, it runs beautifully and looks a treat. Details and early thoughts about my trip to the Big Smoke are below.>

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“Admire the Chief’s feather headdress, his wives’ shameless outfits and the adorable little faces of their red-skinned offspring. Feeding time is not to be missed!”

If that excerpt from the XIXth Century Search Engine hasn’t caused your sides to split, don’t worry – there’s more. Ubisoft sent news of their latest AssCreed [official site] marketing initiative this morning, calling it “a rich historical research tool designed to look just like the search engines our great-great-great-grandparents used in 1868″. I clicked on it expecting an irritating collection of steampunk iDevices and mustachioed memes. What I found was somehow worse than that.

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It wasn’t fair that last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity became the fall guy for an entire industry’s reluctance to make its digital people diverse. Unfortunately the apparently contradictory excuses, rather than acknowledgement of oversight, for cutting playable female characters from a game whose headline feature was co-op play with customised avatars made the situation much worse. In any case, the series now seems determined to be more inclusive, starting with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate [official site].

We already know that you can switch between its male and female protagonists, twins Jacob and Evie Fry, and now it’s been revealed that the supporting cast will include a trans man. … [visit site to read more]

Ubisoft have launched something called the Assassin’s Creed Council which appears to be a souped-up version of a devblog with a promise of some exclusive content and a side helping of “community”. I have been going through the comments to see what I can learn from the community. So far I know someone made a real life hidden blade using a drawer runner, some power tools and actual blades.

Right, I guess we should cover what the Council is in a touch more detail:

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Almost every time I watch a trailer for an Assassin’s Creed game, I think the same thing: I want to go to this place but I do not want to spend my visit climbing up the walls, collecting feathers, and bumping into people (and bumping people off). My repetitive cry of “great city, tedious experience” has itself become tedious. But here I go again because Ubisoft have released a new trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate [official site] and when the marketing department considered the target audience they wanted to reach, they were looking at a picture of me. It’s a beaut and I’m going to pretend it’s a trailer for a tourism simulator. Or Dishonored 2.

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