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Jun 18, 2021

Assassin's Creed Valhalla used in Irish tourism campaign

Assassin’s Creed® III

Pottering around a Viking-era version of your home in Assassin's Creed Valhalla is an enormous amount of fun - as I discovered from my adventures in Gloucestershire - but could it also encourage others to visit your country? That's what Tourism Ireland is banking on, as the organisation has teamed up with Ubisoft to use Assassin's Creed Valhalla in a promotional campaign.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla's first expansion, Wrath of the Druids, brings Viking protagonist Eivor across the seas to embark on new adventures in Ireland. Locations such as Dublin, Benbulben, the Giant's Causeway and the Hill of Tara are all visitable in-game, and Tourism Ireland has collaborated with Ubisoft to create a comparison video showing the game versions and their real-life counterparts:

The campaign doesn't end there, however, as streamers in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia will help showcase Irish landscapes in Wrath of the Druids as part of the collaboration. This is the first time that Tourism Ireland has worked with gaming content creators.

May 17, 2021

Assassin's Creed fans translate all of Valhalla's Vinland dialogue

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin's Creed fansite Access the Animus has worked with Montreal's Kanien'kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Center to translate all of the unsubtitled dialogue in Valhalla's Vinland arc.

The video below reveals what is being said in all of the conversations going on around Eivor in this part of the game, which she (and you) are deliberately left unable to understand.

As well as dialogue, it includes translations of item descriptions and more. There's also a fascinating explanation of the Mohawk creation myth Eivor hears around the campfire - previously told by the Oneida tribe in Assassin's Creed Rogue. Intriguingly, there are differences in the stories which accurately depict the differences in its telling by the two tribes.

Feb 6, 2019

Here's how Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered looks

Assassin's Creed 2

Ubisoft has given us our best look yet at Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered, which will launch 29th March on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

It looks like it'll also be available on Nintendo Switch too, although Ubisoft doesn't want to announce that yet.

Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered is, as its name suggests, a shinier version of the series' North American set entry, originally released back in 2012.

Apr 12, 2012

Far Cry 3 Preview: Trouble in Paradise

Far Cry®

It always pans out the same way. You turn up a bit late and slightly sweaty, because in East London every street looks the bloody same. You then get shown a Powerpoint presentation extolling the virtues of 'Big Shooter Next' multiplayer, and soon after you and your fellow journalists are herded next door where sixteen glowing screens are humming in darkness waiting for you.

It's great, not least because you often get free posh sandwiches, but because it's a perfect way to judge a multiplayer game's potential. Online gaming is about shared enjoyment - so when you hear the gasps, the shouts, the swearing and have someone level an accusatory finger at you then call you an arsehole, you know a game has potential.

Far Cry 3 is going all out to encourage those yelps. Everything about it is being built to encourage teamplay - to keep your side fighting the good fight together. For example, myself and my cohorts were at one stage approaching a Domination point - a lonely spot caught halfway between a wrecked submarine that sits in a murky green dock and the dark interior of a network of jungle caves.

Rather than simply rush in all guns blazing, however, we all took a quick moment to congregate behind a boulder - where I slammed down on both thumbsticks to issue a rallying call. This is a buff, essentially, to prepare everyone in the direct vicinity for the coming s**tstorm - in this case granting my companions a deeper health reservoir, and for which everyone automatically showed their appreciation with a fist-pump. Manly motions didn't last long, however, since an enemy pirate had chosen that boulder as a good spot for a hidden triggered explosive - but our tactical build-up was, at least, excellent.

Rewarding those who kill together and stick together is currently high on the agenda for most shooter developers (a game like MW3 was all about rewarding team players as much as lone wolves) but Far Cry 3 is knuckling down and making it a focus. You build up Team Support Points (so TSP, the stuff my Grandad used to smell of) by saving downed allies, issuing battle cries and grabbing objectives - and they can then be spent on fun things like heavy weapon drops and the Far Cry variant on a UAV. Alternatively Psyche Gas turns the viewpoint of enemies to woozy-vision, makes every player look like a scary-eyed demon and conveniently flicks the Friendly Fire toggle into a more dangerous setting.

Overall the pace of the game itself is refreshing - wide levels give you breathing space post-spawn, but also never keep you too far from danger. A lot of Ubi-thought, meanwhile, has clearly been directed at keeping every map's location variety and encouraged play-styles in balance. The wrecked sub map, for example, features a rickety up-close fishing village, a network of tunnels and an ammo dump beneath a wide downward vista perfect for sniping - or just messing around on a rope slide and firing pistol potshots at the campers below.

Throughout, meanwhile, the Far Cry 3 engine (here running on a PC with a 360 controller attached) excels in its explosions, flames and the way palm fronds are buffeted and burnt by explosions. In fact, it's this that's central to Far Cry 3's most extravagant multiplayer mode. Governmental whispers about Firestorm's abuse of gasoline could cause a panic that'd leave your local petrol station running on fumes for months...

You're out to set light to your enemy's two fuel dumps, the trick being to make sure they're both simultaneously aflame, while the bad guys do their darnedest to do the same to you. Once the skies are full of black smoke (your character is too tough to cough, or for his eyes to start watering) the second stage of the mode begins - a Headquarters-style timer starts ticking down to the grand opening of a radio capture point.

The team who've just ignited half the map need the radio to call in a plane with a cargo hold full of petrol to cause even more destruction (for reasons unknown), while the team that's on the back-foot need a plane full of water to douse the flames and reset the battle. Far Cry's fire system is rarely anything but a pleasure and it's certainly a tense mode to play - but you'd certainly worry that its bottleneck finales are destined to provoke drawn matches, while it's a shame that most of the fighting takes place away from the blazing infernos themselves.

Of more concern, perhaps, is the irritating dialogue that bookends every game - Far Cry 3's edginess seems to be of the variety that's desperate to use f**kwords to impress. Before bouts your inspirational faction leader encourages lollygaggers to "Die like f**kin' deserving dogs", while once you've taken (or doled out) enough bullets for the cause a sequence plays out that sees a winning player choose to show mercy or deliver further punishment to captured losers.

I'm firmly of the opinion that swearing can be big and clever (often both simultaneously) but rarely in cases when dialogue is laced with swears like they've been fired from a machine gun. Why would two groups of men who've been repeatedly killing each other for ten minutes suddenly want to show the enemy leader mercy anyway? A war crimes tribunal at The Hague wouldn't buy it for a second...

Another concern, perhaps, is that the game currently has a wants cake/eating it issue with showing you a confusing death-cam of the shots that left you bloodily sunbathing, and simultaneously showing you lying there hammering the gamepad to ensure that you stay conscious long enough for a life-saving injection of magic-juice. You'll spend a lot of time horizontal in Far Cry 3, and generally not in the good way.

There were yelps and occasional real-world battle cries of 'You got me, you bastard' during this play session, then, but no war stories that anyone would necessarily find themselves telling their grandchildren. It very much feels like an adjunct to the main game, rather than a star attraction in itself. The feel of the weapons and the scenery (and indeed the ways the two combine) bode extremely well for the solo experience - but extra spit and polish will be required if Far Cry 3 multiplayer truly wants its place in the sun.

Jan 31, 2012

The Simpsons Arcade, Far Cry 2 headline PS Plus update

Far Cry® 2

PlayStation Plus subscribers can pick up the impending re-release of 1991 coin-op classic The Simpsons Arcade free of charge for a limited time this month.

Konami's cartoon tie-in is available at no charge from 1st February to the end of the month.

It's a bumper few weeks for PS Plus members, with Far Cry 2 and Final Fantasy V among the other freebies up for grabs. There's also substantial savings to be had on Rayman Origins, Sonic Adventure and House of the Dead 3.

Here's the full list of offers, as seen on the PlayStation Blog:

From 1st February:

The Simpsons Arcade - 100 per cent off (you save £7.99/€9.99)
Final Fantasy V (PSone Classic) - 100 per cent off (you save £7.99/€9.99)
Hungry Giraffe (minis) - 100 per cent off (you save £2.49/€2.99)
Farm Frenzy (minis) - 100 per cent off (you save £2.49/€2.99)
Sonic Adventure - 50 per cent off (you save £3.15/€4.00)
Sonic Adventure DX Upgrade - 100 per cent off (you save £3.19/€3.99)
Rayman: Origins - 50 per cent off until 08/02/12 (you save £24.00/€30.00)

Second chance offer:

Sega Megadrive Classics: Sonic the Hedgehog - 100 per cent off; Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 100 per cent off; Golden Axe - 100 per cent off; Streets of Rage 2 - 100 per cent off; Altered Beast - 100 per cent off; Comix Zone - 100 per cent off (you save £24.00/€30.00)
Jellybeans Dynamic Theme - 100 per cent off (you save £1.59/€1.99)
Skulls Dynamic Theme - 100 per cent off (you save £1.59/€1.99)
Rayman: Origins Globox Toe-Grab Avatar - 100 per cent off (you save £1.20/€1.50)
Rayman: Origins Darktoon Avatar - 100 per cent off (you save £1.20/€1.50)
Rayman: Origins Baby Dragon Avatar - 100 per cent off (you save £1.20/€1.50)

Still to come later this month:

Far Cry 2 - 100 per cent off from 14th to 22nd February (you save £15.99/€19.99)
Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment - 75 per cent off (you save £7.50/€9.75)
House of the Dead 3 (Move) - 30 per cent off for two weeks (you save £1.45/€1.79)
Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - 50 per cent off for one week (you save £12.00/€15.00)

Jan 8, 2012

Retrospective: Far Cry 2

Far Cry® 2

Name: Quarbani Singh

Age: 45

Nationality: Mauritian

Eye Colour: Grey

Quarbani wasn't my first buddy in Far Cry 2, just the first person I'd met in Africa I didn't actively hate on sight. He seemed to at least have a little dignity in the depths of his mercenary psyche. Maybe it was just that he didn't say a whole lot, or what he did say was the bare minimum needed to convey his message. In a world notorious for its absurdly fast-talking, verbose residents, Quarbani was a breath of fresh air.

When Far Cry 2 gives you a buddy, there's not a lot of fanfare. They deliver their hyperspeed dialogue about how we should all be looking out for one another here in the depths of Africa, and then you've got some prick who will ring you up before you do a mission with something borderline genocidal and most definitely approaching a war crime for you to do on top of that. It's that or a guy who'll save your life a dozen times, at least.

Quarbani was the latter kind of buddy, the one that saves your life. When you go down in a firefight, you black out, getting snatches of consciousness as your buddy rushes in to save you, blasting away at whoever plugged you while dragging you to safety. Then he gives you a shot of morphine, a pistol, and you clear out the bad guys together.

It's an experience that'll create emotional ties between men. It's not often that I have my life saved by a game character in what wasn't a completely scripted occurrence, and to have it happen multiple times over a few hours made me really bloody grateful to have him around. Thanks to Quarbani, I was all but immortal. I relied on him. Hell, I even began to enjoy his company, when he had the time to give it.

Quarbani Singh died while I was trying to steal some diamonds from a militia checkpoint.

I'd gone in way too hot, rather than picking them off quietly. It was because I was being lazy and I had enough arrogance because I'd done it before. Except this time I got hit by an errant grenade and went down, doing that whole blacking out, semi conscious routine. Quarbani saved me, pulled me out of the fire, and we finished them off, splitting up to deal with them more quickly.

When your buddy goes down in Far Cry 2 they let loose a flare. It's always a bit of a shock to see, because they're tough bastards, but you just give them a morphine shot and they're done. Maybe two if you've taken your time getting to them.

I ran over to the flare, knelt down beside him and jammed a shot into his chest. His fingers beckoned at me. He needed more. Another shot rammed home, and another beckon. I only had one left, but he'd never needed this much before. So I gave him another shot, and again, he beckoned.

Well f**k.

I didn't have any more medicine, and so my buddy was going to die. He'd saved my life numerous times, and I couldn't even get him back up. I could leave him here to bleed out, or I could end his pain with a bullet to the head. The game, and I, looked away and the gun fired. I closed his eyes.

He was the first.

Name: Frank Bilders

Age: 36

Nationality: Northern Irish

Known Alias: The Mazeí

Frank Bilders, the ex-IRA nutcase who would do just about anything to get out of Africa and back to Ireland, including genocide, robbery, diamond heist and medicine destruction. Some really s**ty stuff. I never liked Frank, as charming as he was on the radio. Frank was a dick.

He'd always call me up when I was about to do another distasteful mission, giving me something even more unpalatable to complete, and I'd have to try and justify it to myself. More often than not I'd ignore him, but this time he was getting clear, getting the next plane out of Africa. I suppose I owed him that much.

I don't want to take blame for this one. My gun jammed, some piece of s**t AK-47 that I'd been using for far too long. It's probably my fault for not swapping to something that wasn't rusted through and covered in dirt, Far Cry 2's way of telling you your gun isn't worth the bullets you put in it, but firefights have a tendency for making you not really pay attention to the little things. A bullet has an amazing power to distract.

He was surrounded, and it'd just be a case of emptying a clip into them and he'd be fine. But the bloody gun jammed, and by the time I'd cleared the chamber he was dead.

So Frank never left Africa. The world is probably better off, but I've let down another person that didn't have to die.

Name: Andre Hyppolite

Age: 40

Nationality: Haitian

Andre replaced Quarbani as my secondary buddy. He was ok, did the job, didn't screw up too often. He only lasted a few hours though.

I think he got run over by a jeep while I was leaving the area. The residents of Far Cry 2's Africa are homicidal, and while you can blaze through the checkpoints in a jeep, if any of them have transport, they'll chase you like no one's business. After going down and getting rescued, I'd cut my losses and hit the accelerator. Andre didn't make it to the passenger seat.

I didn't exactly stop to go check he was alright, mind. I just never saw him again.

Name: Michele Dachss

Age: 35

Nationality: French

Hair: Blonde with a red bandana

Michele was annoying. I would've killed her myself if she hadn't taken a shotgun blast to the face in a militia camp somewhere.

Name: Xianyong Bai

Age: 24

Nationality: Chinese

Tattoos: Full sleeve Chinese Dragon on his right arm

He shouldn't even have been in Africa. What the hell does he know at 24? Idiot.

Got hit by a grenade.

Name: Josip Idormeno

Age: 48

Nationality: Kosovar Albanian

Known Alcoholic

Josip didn't die. How could he, when he had all these people sacrificing themselves to save his life?

I came to Far Cry 2 expecting intricate fire physics, a beautiful open world to explore and revel in, and a Heart of Darkness-lite story to tide things over. A standard shooter with a bit of extra weight on its bones, some freedom for the player, and the odd literary nod.

Thing is, Far Cry 2 managed to make me care about people I had no reason to care about. Nasty, amoral characters who cared about little more than themselves. Yet, because of the way the game worked, I built an attachment regardless.

And then, once all this had been done, it pushed me away, and made me care even less than I had when coming into the game. What's the point in investing in these people when they can die so easily? Why bother even learning their names, if the next grenade could finish them off? No, it's better to just take them for granted until they're gone, and then replace them with a new face.

Far Cry 2 taught me the emotional detachment of a mercenary, while at the same time holding up a mirror so that I could see this happening to myself. It's not perfect by a long shot, with its psychotic inhabitants driving hell for leather the instant they even get a whiff of you, but it's still the only game I've played that managed to really nail emergent narrative in a way that felt natural and involving.

Every one of my buddies died in an unscripted scene that was a direct consequence of my own actions, and my own mistakes. Their blood is on my hands. I caused that, and I then have to live with a reminder that I messed up in the guise of whoever replaces them.

You're not Quarbani, Andre, and so I don't care about you. You're not Quarbani, Michele, so I couldn't give a s**t. You're not Quarbani, Xianyong, and so I'm not going to watch out for you, to make sure you don't get killed.

The fact that guns can jam, that fires can start, that grenades can roll innocuously down slopes and staircases before shredding the surrounding area created a game world where these battlefield stories can occur. And at the same time, it establishes a set of rules that ensures there's drama - eventually. The player will die, at some point, and so you'll have that last minute rescue. You're going to get into a critical state and have to perform some battlefield surgery, pulling bullets out of your arm or some rebar out of your leg. Things go wrong, and stories emerge.

Despite all of the problems with Far Cry 2, the fact that it can do that sets it head and shoulders over most other games. If you can get over the constantly respawning checkpoints and accept the grimy undertones of each mission objective there's a game that embraces the unpredictable, and has decided to strip away the heroic bulls**t of other FPS games. It's a hard pill to swallow, but it's good medicine.

Jul 4, 2011

Crytek discussed going MS first-party

Far Cry®

Microsoft and Crytek discussed the possibility of the Crysis 2 developer going first-party just after the launch of Far Cry.

At the time, Crytek was about to create Crysis for PC. Microsoft corporate vice-president Phil Spencer told OXM it was decided the Xbox 360 manufacturer had enough shooters in a similar genre, so let the idea slide.

"The first time we met with [Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli] and the team was around seven or eight years ago, and we started talking about what it'd mean for them to become first-party," Spencer said.

"And it was a process of what do you guys want to do, what's unique for us, and they were just going to do Crysis, and they'd just come out of Far Cry, and we said we've probably got enough military future shooters, so go do that."

Crytek is currently hard at work on Xbox 360 exclusive, Kinect-fuelled first-person brawler Ryse.

"Then they came up with this idea around Ryse, and now they've really fallen in love with Kinect, and it's a perfect marriage for us," Spencer continued.

Video:

May 4, 2011

Far Cry 3 reveal at E3 2011?

Far Cry®

Evidence of Far Cry 3 mounts, and rumour suggests Ubisoft may reveal the new game at E3 next month.

Internet bloodhound Superannuation sniffed numerous mentions of the project online.

Stuntman Lee Villeneuve's CV cites past work on Far Cry 3, and stuntman Stephane Julien also mentions working on Far Cry 3.

One Ubisoft programmer notes on LinkedIn that he's beavering away on an "Undisclosed First Person Shooter" for PS3 and Xbox 360 that has "exotic gameplay", "scripted events" and "cinematics". Colleague Miguel Angel Sepulveda, an animation and AI engineer at Ubisoft, calls his current project as an "Unannounced Action AAA" game for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Ubisoft 3D animator Marc Echave goes one further, noting Far Cry 3 among other confirmed and released Ubisoft projects.

All of this after a Ubisoft writer confirmed Far Cry 3 and online shops accidentally put Collector's Editions of the game up for sale.

Coincidence?

"We are not commenting on speculations and rumours," Ubisoft told Eurogamer this afternoon.

Crysis developer Crytek created the Far Cry series. The original Far Cry - a real head-turner at the time (2004) - earned 8/10 on Eurogamer. Xbox game Far Cry Instincts took the tropical survival bent a step further and earned another 8/10. An Xbox 360 conversion of that same game earned 7/10.

Far Cry 2 (2008) was a different kettle of fish, owing to it being an internally developed Ubisoft game. Gone was the tropical environment, replaced instead by harsh Africa-inspired bush and malaria. Far Cry 2 was huge, attractive and refreshingly mature. Christian Donlan dug out an 8/10 for Far Cry 2 on Eurogamer.

He wrote: "Far Cry 2 is unforgettable rather than perfect, then; brilliant, frustrating, sombre and comical, it offers freedom within extremely curtailed limits, and strives to treat its players like adults."

Video: Far Cry 2 on PS3 and Xbox 360.

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