What if Altair's knight-punching and eagle-diving across the ancient Middle East wasn't a solitary affair? As Assassin's Creed III Mission Director Phillippe Bergeron tells OXM, a "huge" drop-in co-op mode was planned for the first entry in the stalk-and-drop franchise, but the creation of modern-day Animus-warmer Desmond Miles sunk a spring-loaded blade into the idea.

“Co-op was one of those big things at the beginning that just didn’t make sense in the end,” Bergeron says. “For us, it was really part of the single-player experience to have in-and-out co-op, and in the end we never thought it made sense in the storyline that we had for the Animus. It just became too hard to do: the engine couldn’t support it, and then the metaphor we had above it didn’t support it.”

Bergeron also points out the glaring paradox of tracking a secondary player's branching storyline within the ancestral memories of their partner. "There was no way to reconcile having multiplayer or co-op in an ancestor's memories," Bergeron says. "Your ancestor lived his life in a certain way, so assuming you had branching storylines, it creates a snag. It didn't fit."

It's a little strange to hear that Ubisoft rejected co-op on the basis that it wouldn't jive with the plot, considering the ridiculousness of the game's premise (human DNA stores picture-perfect recollections of face-stabbing ancient warriors). Multiplayer Creed does live on in the cat-and-mouse versus modes that first appeared in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Read what we think of its current incarnation, Assassin's Creed III.

On the cusp of an open multiplayer beta for Crytek's maximally lustrous Crysis 3, Nvidia released an early version of its GeForce 313.95 drivers today. The GPU giant claims the drivers boost SLI performance for Crysis 3 by up to 35 percent in addition to other "sizeable SLI and single-GPU performance gains" in games such as Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 3.

Nvidia says users should expect a 27 percent gain in graphics performance while playing Assassin's Creed III, 19 percent in Civilization V, and 14 percent for both Call of Duty: Black Ops II and DiRT 3. Just Cause 2 improves by 11 percent, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, F1 2012, and Far Cry 3 all improve by 10 percent.

Demonstrating its mastery over orderly green bars, Nvidia also supplied benchmark charts for these games using four of its most recent cards: the GTX 650, 660 Ti, 680, and 690. With the 313.95 drivers, the company declares GTX 690 users can max out all settings in Crysis 3 and still achieve 60 FPS.

Grab the new drivers and check out the charts at Nvidia's website. Also try out the GeForce Experience—which we've talked about at length—to automatically optimize and configure your games based on your PC's hardware.

The first part of an Assassin's Creed III DLC pack exploring an alternate-reality America in which Washington crowns himself king comes out on February 19, Ubisoft announced today. For $10, grizzled assassins can take a break from giving colonists surly looks and chasing after techno-balls for a chance to take on the imperious Founding Father.

In the first episode, named The Infamy, Connor "wakes from an unsettling dream" to come face-to-smirk with a power-mad Washington who ascended the throne with a platform less about liberty and a lot more about "off with his head." The next two parts, The Betrayal and The Redemption, arrive at a later date, and you can bet Connor won't leave his tomahawk un-bloodied before the end.

Have a close look at Washington's royal jewels in the trailer below.

2012 was a particularly great year for writing in video games. There was the harrowing campaign of Spec Ops: The Line, the consistently funny caricatures of Borderlands 2 or, like, a whole 90% of Mass Effect 3. Then, of course, standing way out in front was the emotional bombardment of Telltale's The Walking Dead. So it was no surprise that when the Writers Guild of America announced their shortlist for the Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing award, they of course included... wait, what?! They included 007 Legends? How does that make any sense?

Here's the full list of nominations. Set your facial expression to "huh?"

007 Legends, Written By Bruce Feirstein; Activision
Assassin’s Creed III, Story By Alex Hutchinson, Corey May, Matt Turner; Multiplayer Story By Richard Farrese, Jeffrey Yohalem; Lead Scriptwriter Corey May; Scriptwriter Nicholas Grimwood, Russell Lees, Matt Turner, Danny Wallace, Ceri Young; Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, Scriptwriting by Richard Farrese, Jill Murray; Ubisoft
Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, Writing Consultant Marv Wolfman; Disney Interactive Studios
Halo 4, Narrative Design Christopher Schlerf; Microsoft Studios
Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Written By John Garvin; Sony Computer Entertainment America

It's worth pointing out that a WGA nomination is dependant on a couple of additions. Firstly, the game must have been released between December 1st 2011 and November 30th 2012. Secondly, and this is the big one, "Credited videogame writers must have been or must have applied to become members of the WGA Videogame Writers Caucus at the time scripts were submitted." WGA membership is less essential in the games industry than in film or TV, so it's entirely possible that many of the year's great game scripts simply weren't eligible.

The awards will be held on February 17th.

The tech world has gotten itself into a lather over the bombardment of announcements coming out of Consumer Electronics Show. Here's one that's relevant to us, though: NVIDIA's Project Shield. While it may look like an HD screen bolted to a parody of an Xbox controller, the Android powered device is also capable of streaming your PC game library.

Powered by the also-announced Tegra 4 mobile chip, Shield promises a full Android gaming experience. That may sound a bit rubbish, especially if, like me, your Android device is almost exclusively a platform for running Canabalt. Still, it means the handheld will be able to play the upcoming Hawken Android, as well as the newly announced ArmA Tactics, a turn-based ArmA for tablet devices.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shield is its ability to hook into Steam for local network streaming through Big Picture mode. NVIDIA's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, showed off the streaming during the presentation, playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Assassin's Creed 3 with reportedly little to no lag. The downside is it requires a Kepler-based graphics card inside your rig, meaning you'll need a GTX 650 or better to push pixels towards the device.

Project Shield offers a 1280x720 screen, but can output to a standard 4k TV. It's expected for release in "Q2", but there's currently no word on pricing. In the meantime, you can see the Shield's website for details.

A shiny new PC-playing toy. Any takers?

Thanks, Engadget.

If I have to endure another level in which I must escape from a burning building on the verge of collapse, I'll set fire to my house. I'll collapse through the floor, tumble twelve feet onto my back, crawl at tedious pace through a low section, traverse a room that's entirely on fire apart from a narrow path of miraculously not-on-fire floorspace and then climb a series of conveniently collapsed roof beams to safety.

"Phew!" I'll think, "I'd have been in a spot of bother there if I hadn't played through pretty much the same section in Black Ops 2, Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter and twice in Assassin's Creed 3 this year."

It's not the fire that's annoying. Things tend to catch fire a lot in videogames. No, it's the feeling that there are mission designers worldwide calling their set-pieces from the same playbook. You could tear out the pages, laminate them and resell the package as an Action Adventure Videogame Construction Kit. Shuffle the cards and lay them out in a row for an instant framework.

Let's have a go with the modern military shooter edition: escape a burning building - sniper section - flee a helicopter - warehouse section - fire at pursuers from the back of a truck - breach and clear - press X to kill prominent antagonist.

This section felt particularly incongruous when it interrupted the terrific free-roaming violence of Far Cry 3, especially considering the fact that Far Cry 3 has a fantastic dynamic fire effects built into the engine. The "escape from burning building" sequences that emerge naturally from Far Cry 3's systems are much, much better than the scripted sequence written into their early story mission.

But not all games aspire to create a dynamic open world, and nor should they. But in a dedicated, scripted action game there's an even greater need for new set-pieces and fresh settings.

Take Bulletstorm, whose opening sections dramatically undersold its capacity for bonkers theatrics. Sure, it had a "fire at pursuers from the back of a truck" bit, but in Bulletstorm's case the pursuer was a colossal red doom-wheel that careered about the landscape blowing up pipelines and threatening to stomp the player into a smear at any moment. If action games are determined to be rollercoasters, we're sorely in need of some new twists.

Ever wonder what the PC games of 2012 would be like if they were text adventures? Of course not, no one in their right mind would ever wonder that. In related news: I wondered that! So, rip out your GeForce GTX 680, plug in your dusty 10" CRT monitor, and stuff your programmable eight-button mouse in a stocking, because this week we're going to imagine five of this year's games the way all PC games used to be: as text adventures.

This year, Assassin's Creed III took gamers to colonial Boston to unravel the ever-denser mystery of the Assassins and Templars, let us hunt, fight naval battles, and participate in American history, and exposed us to roughly 436 hours of cutscenes. Oh, it and occasionally let us assassinate someone! That was nice of it. Now, climb a church, stand on the steeple, and watch as massive expanses of words unfold around you in Assassin's Creed III: The Text Adventure!

It might be a good idea to check that you're running the latest batch of Nvidia drivers. The full version of the GeForce 310.70 WHQL set are available now, and it sounds like they'll add a fair few extra frames per second to some of this year's biggest games. Nvidia say they'll boost Far Cry 3 by 37%, Black Ops 2 by 26% at max settings, add an extra 17% to Assassin's Creed 3 performance (compared to a pre-release version, mind) and deliver smaller increases to Battlefield 3 and Skyrim.

"In October's GeForce 310.33 beta driver we improved performance by up to 15% in nine games, and this time we’re improving performance by up to 37% in twenty-one games," they say.

If you're running a GTX6 series you can experiment with TXAA antialiasing, which promises to do a better job of de-jaggifying edges than traditional anti-aliasing techniques. Also, because there are some letters of the alphabet we haven't capitalised yet, there's a new SGSSAA tool that'll make it easier to implement this top-tier form of luxury line-smoothing on high-end systems more easily.

The new drivers are a nice follow up on the recent release of the GeForce Experience system, designed to recommend optimal game settings based on your system requirements. Does it work? Dave gave it a try, find out what he thinks here. For more on the latest driver release, read all about it at the Nvidia site.

According to Ubisoft, the first DLC pack for Assassin's Creed 3 takes place in an alternate reality. Which is cute, because it suggests they think their current tale of exploding suns, genetically coded tourist trips to the past and magic space wizards is the actual reality.

In the upcoming alternate-alternate reality tale, George Washington is recast as a power-mad tyrant who crowns himself king of the US. Hijinks ensue, likely in the form of Connor running up trees, sulking at people and stabbing a deer. Maybe there'll even be an assassination or two, although not on the basis of the few hours I've played of the main game so far.

Here's a trailer full of dramatically earnest narration.



I'm genuinely looking forward to finding out what justification they give for Desmond pursuing this line of history warping investigation.

Threequels Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed III have been mysteriously absent from the UK version of Steam for a few weeks now, possibly because of the impending apocalypse, possibly because Ubisoft hate Christmas, possibly because they were pushing their awful Uplay service. Whatever the reason, it's thankfully now moot, because both games have suddenly popped up on Steam. You won't find them under New Releases, but both Assassin's Creed III and Wallet-Crafting Simulator 2012 can now be bought with Steam money. And just in time for Christmas, too.

In related news, Ubisoft have revealed that there's a Far Cry 3 patch in the works that will allow us to customise that intrusive HUD until it's to our liking. In a statement to Kotaku, Ubi had this to say:

"Based on feedback from both press and fans, the Far Cry 3 production team is working on a patch that will allow you to toggle most HUD/UI elements based on player preference. The patch will also avoid issues encountered in the .dll hack that might create a mission walkthrough break (missing QTE prompts, critical information, etc)."

A double-dose of jolly good news, then. There's no word on a release date for that patch yet, but hopefully it will arrive before Christmas.