Ubisoft last week announced the Assassin's Creed: The Americas Collection, a bundle including Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed: Liberation and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (sick of the words 'Assassin's Creed' yet? I'm sorry). That's all well and good, but it appears PC owners in North America will not be able to buy the bundle. While a PC edition of The Americas Collection has been confirmed for Europe and Australia, the same won't be true for the US.

It's especially strange since the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions will be available in North America. Nonetheless, Ubisoft confirmed with Gamespot that there are no plans to release the PC edition in that region. No doubt there's some arcane corporate logic to this, and given how easy it is to get these games at a discount digitally I'm sure few people mind. Nevertheless, Ubisoft did admit in August that it needs to work harder to do right by PC gamers, and this seems to clash with those sentiments.

Assassin's Creed: The Americas Collection releases October 3 in Europe and Australia and October 28 in North America.

I know a lot of people are sick of them, but I really love killing zombies. Shooting zombies offers this highly distilled sense of guilt-free violence that I can easily deal with. Another bonus: zombies arrive pre-killed. Putting them back down is really just a public service. I m sure one day I ll get tired of shooting/stabbing/blowing up the animated dead; on that day, I ll no longer be intrigued by Dead Cry, an upcoming total conversion mod for Far Cry 3.



Built using the Far Cry 3 engine and map editor, Dead Cry is a single-player campaign very much inspired by games like Left 4 Dead, according to the mod s moddb page.

Character and enemy animations will look very familiar to anyone who played Far Cry 3, but the environment, plot, and character models are all brand new. DEAD CRY will not merely be a bunch of maps or a mod alone, the mod page says, It's as close to a completely new game as you can get. The campaign will include an immersive soundtrack, cinematic cutscenes, custom sound effects and voice over work.

Dead Cry just entered open beta release a few days ago, so you can download and play it here. They re also inviting players to fill out a beta survey form to help them make changes; you can find that survey here.

Expected sequels to popular games often begin their public lives as tiny echoes awash in the din of our media age. Far Cry 4 seems to be following this familiar pattern, with an Ubisoft Shanghai game designer listing and then removing a reference to the sequel from his LinkedIn resume, according to a report at Joystiq.

The designer, Xavier Plagnal, reportedly listed his work in recent months as a Content Director on "the next Far Cry" at Ubisoft Shanghai. That line on his resume now lacks any specific information regarding exactly which "content" he's directing, but Plagnal isn't the first person to let slip a connection to a new entry in the series. Ubisoft executive Tony Key made a direct reference to a sequel to the 2012 Far Cry 3 last July when he said the following: It s a great brand, and now it s got the recognition it deserves, so we re clearly going to make another one: more on that soon."

Additionally, composer Cliff Martinez revealed in October his involvement with a "video game called Far Cry 4." We liked Far Cry 3 for its sneaking, its hunting, and for its hugely detailed open world. And the DLC followup Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon had its own part to play for its use of '80s icon Michael Biehn and its tongue-in-cheek approach to action-movie heroics. In any case, absent an official studio announcement to the contrary, it's looking more and more likely that a new Far Cry is on its way.

 

Technically, I'm aware that the employees of Valve have regular jobs, doing regular things on irregularly mobile desks. Even so, when picturing Clint Hocking's year and half stint with the company, I can't help but imagine him strapped into a central development node, where tendrilled mind probes extract creative ideas to be fed into the Almighty Feedback Formula. I'm not saying that's definitely what happened, but if it is, it's perhaps understandable why he'd leave. Which he has.

News of Hocking's departure comes via his LinkedIn account and personal blog, where his biography states: "From 2012 until the end of 2013, Clint worked as a designer and level designer at Valve in Seattle."

Hocking is probably best known for his work at Ubisoft, where he was creative director for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - a game that, to this day, remains the highpoint of that series. He was also the creative director for Far Cry 2, which is either the best of the worst Far Cry game, depending on your fondness for emergent situations, jamming weapons and malaria.

In typical Valve style, we don't officially know what Hocking was working on. But based on leaked information taken from their internal database, he was suspected to be part of the team developing the yet to be announced Left 4 Dead 3. As yet, there's no information about his next project, but hopefully it'll evoke the same manic clash of systems that defined FC2's best moments.

Thanks, ValveTime.

More and more new games every year are sequels, so I guess the next logical step is enormous collections of previously released games. Bethesda announced at QuakeCon that every Elder Scrolls game would be available, and now Ubisoft is following suit with the Assassin’s Creed Heritage Collection. Available on November 8, the Heritage Collection will include Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and Assassin’s Creed 3.

The official price has not been announced, but some listings are starting to pop up in the neighborhood of $70/£40, which isn’t outrageous for five games plus DLC. Still, at that price you’re paying a premium for the packaging and whatever extras they throw in there, and we have no idea what those extras might be.

Of course, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag lands on November 19. Technically speaking, I suppose gamers brand-new to the series could pound through the first five games in time for the launch of Black Flag, but only if they’re willing to give up showering and eating. Still, die-hard fans might appreciate having the games and their individual DLCs all in one tidy package.

As worthy a goal as liberation may be, most of us aren't going bother if it means dealing with those ugly "low" definitions. Not only that, but playing Assassin's Creed 3 spin-off Liberations would have meant buying a PS Vita, which, according to sales figures, is not something a lot of people have done. Perhaps because of this fact, Ubisoft have announced Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD; appending the near-meaningless suffix to an upgraded version of the game that's due for release on PC and the less portable consoles.

Liberation was set in 1765 New Orleans, starring a new protagonist, Aveline de Grandpré, and continuing the series' penchant for batshit fisticuffs between Assassins and Templars. For the HD version, new missions are planned, as well as an upgrade to the shiny graphics department.

Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD is, according to the trailer, "coming soon". Meanwhile, Ubisoft are also pretty hot for pirates, and will release Pirate's Creed 4: Hooray, It's Got Pirates! in November.

 



Ubisoft Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Tony Key has told Gamespot that Far Cry 3’s success has already greenlit a sequel (though this one will probably have fewer laser dragons in it).

"We’re totally psyched from ,” Key said. “It’s a great brand, and now it’s got the recognition it deserves, so we’re clearly going to make another one: more on that soon."

Key went on to talk about how Ubisoft’s investing most of its time and resources into open world games, though you don’t need to be a financial analyst to figure that one out. Both of Ubisoft’s big new IPs, Watch_Dogs and The Division are open world. Add Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed into the mix and it’s enough to make you wonder when Splinter Cell or Prince of Persia will hit the open world.

Of course, Key didn’t actually say when we’d actually hear more about Far Cry 4, so we’ll just continue fighting our losing battle with the unstoppable beast known as the cassowary until that day arrives.

Susan O’Connor, who helped pen the stories in BioShock, Far Cry 2, and the latest Tomb Raider along with Rhianna Pratchett, isn't happy with the state of game storytelling. She doesn't condemn video game stories themselves, but rather the overall process through which those stories are written. She sees storytelling in games being as dominated by teams that care more about compiling code—and she's tired of it.

In an interview with The Gameological Society, O’Connor pointed out how the creative process for video games is different from other forms of media.

“For me, I always want to focus on the entertainment side of it,” O’ Connor said. “This is supposed to make people feel something. It’s supposed to be fun, or be scary. But when I look at conversations that creatives are having, like in television or film or theater or freaking mimes, everyone else, the conversations they’re having are totally different.

“If you were to say, ‘Books are a great way to go inside a character’s mind for pages and pages, and movies are a great place to see larger-than-life movie stars and phenomenal explosions that are 40-feet tall,’ games are a really kinetic medium. The story is what the player does.”



She has a point. Books and movies rely on well-developed plots because that’s all they have. Movies might add amazing special effects to distract you from a poor script, but games are interactive. Whether you’re taking out an enemy base, scavenging an abandoned cave, or opening inter-dimensional portals, you are busy doing something. Sometimes, there’s not enough time or priority to inject enough plot to tell you why you’re doing said thing.

O’Connor went on to admit that she was tired of writing stories for video games and wanted to move on to other areas of entertainment.

“I don’t want to put up with this s$*& anymore,” she said. “I’m grateful for the success I’ve had, but I’m never going to be able to do work that can come anywhere close to the kind of emotional impact that stories in other media have, at least not in the next five to 10 years. I love stories, and I just happened to fall into games. I’ve learned who I am as a writer, and I think my talents and skills are much better used in other places."

It’s a pretty good day to be a wallet at Ubisoft. Newly released financial statements reveal that the French publisher and developer pulled in $1.615 billion in revenue after selling more than twelve million copies of Assassin’s Creed 3 and six million copies of Far Cry 3. Not only was overall revenue up 18.3% from last year, but take-home profits rose a staggering 73.7% over 2012.
“The expertise and talent of our teams enabled Ubisoft to manage the year’s difficult market conditions and the drop in the casual segment remarkably well,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said. “In addition, the success of Far Cry 3 confirmed our strong comeback in the major segment of shooter games.”

Though it was admirably restrained and professional, that statement should be understood for what it truly is: investor-speak for “we are seriously rolling in it, and things are awesome.” Ubisoft is the fourth largest independent publisher in the United States and the third largest in Europe.

“Our franchises are underpinned by recognized creative know-how and premier development capacity,” Guillemot said. “With more than 7,000 developers, Ubisoft has the necessary caliber to offer its fans exceptionally rich and immersive gaming experiences on a regular basis.”

Ubisoft’s next big release, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, is out next week.

Ubisoft’s stock jumped about 10% on Thursday after financial statements were released. You can find statements for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, here. (PDF)

So just where has the illustrious Peter Molyneux's pet project, Godus, been lately? Well, there was a lot of talk about Mud Huts in their last update for backers, but for the most part, the usually hyper-talkative Molyneux has been uncharacteristically quiet about 22 Cans' next project. Secretly, though, it seems he's been putting some of that Kickstarter money towards securing some top-notch talent - a casual namedrop in the latest update video reveals that his newest employee is Jamie Stowe, a former level design director who's worked on the likes of Assassin's Creed 3.

Aside from the fact that Molyneux steals apples from the desks of his employees, the other big news imparted in the update is Stowe's arrival. Stowe takes up the position of 22 Cans' Technical Director now, which sounds decidedly less thrilling than determining the placement of hilariously hatted foes in AC3. Stowe's helping the team piece together new builds of Godus, working on balancing the game, data-mining, various analytic hoo-ha, and developing the homeworld that we'll be playing in the eventual alpha release.

The leap from level design lead to technical director is quite vast, so I'm interested to see how Stowe adapts his existing skillset in shaping the world of Godus. I'm also hoping that going from AC3's 600-person team to 22 Cans' 20-ish allows for more creative freedom, because I'm hoping this spiritual successor to Populous can remain relevant to today's gamers while still retaining that earth-shaping, population-controlling charm. In other words, those better be some damn fine mud huts that 22 Cans is building.