@welshbloke, Indeed, but it's exactly what Microsoft needs. They need a popular source in Japan like Famitsu to do some serious promoting for them. The deciding factor in buying a console is always the quality and number of games on the system. For proof check the PS2 library. Right now the 360 has probably got a large library in Japan, but lets face it. The Japanese have different interests. A few more games like this and Microsoft might actually stand a chance against Sony and Nintendo in Japan.
This game seems very interesting and will most definently uphold ubisofts record for having good games. The Social-Stealth will be something im looking forward to.
Scoring 10, 10, 8 and 9 on the Famitsu scoring system. Famitsu must have been bought out by Microsoft as this is the second big Xbox game score from the Japanese magazine. The last 37 they gave was for Halo 3.
From what I have seen, not much except elbowing people and pushing through crowds, maybe some horseback mixed in.
I think the game is relying pretty heavily on narrative. The ridiculously hot Jade Raymond said as much in an interview a while ago, can't remember the source.
You touch on what I feel is an excellent point though. Can a game that is presumably so limited truly become a large scale success?
I feel like they are offsetting the lack of content by just making the controls extremely detailed. But if you go too far with that it's not actually a fun game to play anymore.
The game has been self-referrentially referred to as "Splinter Cell in a huge crowd" or something to that effect. But hasn't the gaming audience as a whole lost a decent amount of zeal for the whole sneak and stab formula??
Maybe it's my own personal bias, I have always found most of the "stealth" genre games to be repetitive and boring, I play games for the rush, not to sit around for minutes at a time waiting to do something, only to die instantly and have to start over if my actions aren't picture perfect.
I guess we will see in a month or two if this game can meet it's expectations, but I am going on record with a solid 'NO" vote.
I would have thought this game might take the gta open world crown, but what worries me (besides people not relating as much to medieval times) is that we have yet to see featured videos of distractions which I believe were a big deal in gta: the little arcade games, the minichallenges... From what I've seen Assasin's creed only showed "find target-kill target"... maybe the inbetween towns part? What will people be doing in the open world of assassin's creed when they're stuck or don't feel like killing the next target?
The last in game demo which was some 8 minutes long looked very promising. I did not see any signs of complicated movement but then I only saw the output. I expect this game to do well.
My point is really aimed at the number of recent and about to be launched titles for the 360 this Christmas that are already A list or potentially. Some good games will miss out simply because they drowned in the christmas wish list rush.
@welshbloke, This is just a prediction, but I believe that this game is going to be a HUGE letdown, and once the first batch of real reviews are out and it trickles down to the average consumer, sales are going to come in well below predictions as there will be too much competing product out there to support big sales on a so-so title. Unless they fixed the broken movement system. From what I have heard they went too hyper-realistic, to the extent that the game stands a good chance of simply not being all that much fun to play, which is what really matters at the end of the day
I just wonder how much money the Mum's and Dad's have to spread around because they have a lot of hardware and AAA software to buy this Christmas period.
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