Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>

The Assassin s Creed series has abandoned its mutliplayer modes and that makes me sad. The multiplayer, introduced in Brotherhood, was one of the most playground-like games you could find. It s basically the game of Assassin, popular among university students, but played on cool-looking streets from the past. You re hunting somebody, but somebody else is hunting you. And oh no you re all disguised as computer-controlled characters. You need to find a Jester among dozens of Jesters, while also hiding your own Courtesan among dozens of Courtesans. (more…)

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

The first Assassin s Creed, with its underwhelming and repetitive missions, seems destined to be judged as Ubi s half-decent prototype for the much better AssCreeds to follow. But as much as the sequels added some much-needed character and features, the series also lost something. Most people will probably be happy it s no longer a part of the game, but I really liked it when you had a long, final chat with the people you killed. … [visit site to read more]

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.

… [visit site to read more]

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]