Come on snake eyes, I need that railroad!

Today's Daily 60 (seconds) is, pick up an OLD game!

Yeah, I know I'm always ranting about how you should try something new, play a new game, explore a new concept, try a new genre.

That's all great, and you really should, but don't let that make you forget the awesome stuff you loved last year, last month, or even last lifetime!

There's something about grabbing an old game off the shelf that everyone already knows and throwing it on the table to play, like Clue, or Parcheesi, or Sorry!!

You don't need to teach anyone, you don't need to waste time in the 15 minute setup.  I mean I love me some Arkham Horror, but sometimes you just want to play already!

So grab some friends and break out a copy of Monopoly sometime (there are only about a googolplex of themes you can pick from) and have an old-fashioned, non-euro game night sometime!

Come on snake eyes...

See you next time!

Get your Candy Crush Saga On!

Ok, so I've mentioned cheesy little games and time killers before, but today's Daily 30 is about one of my favorites, Candy Crush Saga.

Candy Crush Saga and I have had a tumultuous relationship.  I started off loving it, then hated it because it was hard, then loved it as I figured out the hard levels.

Then more happened, but that's for another blog. Leave it at "administration problems that they fixed."  It's an older game, but I wanted to bring up a favorite that I don't feel is dated. 

Either way, I never stopped loving the gameplay, the new inventive problems, and the catchy sound effects.  This is your basic color match Bejeweled clone, only with candy.  There's nothing (now) that you ever need to buy with real cash, and the game itself is free.

Just be careful!  Once you start playing it, it becomes very addictive. Saying "just one more level" will become a mantra.

Seriously, I would suggest that if you pick this game up, you practice dodging interventions.
(I skipped 3 myself).

So have fun, and I'll see you next time, if I can stop playing long enough… ohh SWEET!

Download a cheesy game!

Today's Daily 30 (seconds) is a simple thing to kill time, download a game!

Casual games are the new fad, the new craze, and the new black (whatever that means). Most of them are free to play, with little add-ons that cost real money but usually they're not required to play or enjoy the game.  There are puzzle games, thousands of Bejeweled clones, running games, matching games, dripping games, and all kinds I don't even think I can describe.  What would I suggest you do? Go to iTunes or the Google Play Store and just click on the top downloads in the free games section. I was sure I'd never like this kind of game, but now my current time waster is Minion Rush.  They're great for waiting at a bus stop or during a bad movie!

So go, find a free game that looks fun and go waste a lunch break, it's what they're for!

Have fun!

Wheaton's Law

Sorry it wasn't posted yesterday, but Today's Daily 30(seconds) is a topic we all should know, Wheaton's Law. (Much of this is paraphrased from Mr. Wil Wheaton himself, but I felt it was very worthy of being repeated)

This law was announced back in the early days of PAX, when online gaming has proven that when you're not face to face with someone, when you're anonymous to the people that are playing with you, the opportunity to be an arrogant little shit becomes available.  If some people act the way they do on those games when face to face, then they'd have their heads beaten in.  All this law wants you to do is just think about what is going on and remember you have a choice in how you act.  Everyone needs to stop, evaluate themselves, and follow Wheaton's law: Don't be a dick.

Thanks Wil!

Curse the Darkness

For today's Daily 90 (seconds) I'm going to talk about a new RPG that I picked up recently and can't say enough good things about.  Let's talk about Curse the Darkness.

I had wanted to wait until I could run a game before I reviewed this, but the chance just hasn't come up yet so this is my unplayed once-over.  Maybe I'll do another one when I've played.

Curse the Darkness is a deep, gripping setting with an amazing storyline and very strong sections of fiction, combined with the rules system that was made to support it.  To be honest, I got my copy of the game based purely on the setting itself, I found it so enthralling that I had to see the game based around it.

This game makes you think about ideology as it fits into the human condition, and on a much more basic level it makes you really think about what you would do to defend your rights as a human being.  All the mechanics, from character creation to challenge resolution, even to death and second character generation, are all based around making sure the mechanics don't get in the way of the story you're trying to tell.

In a nutshell, ten years ago the world was conquered by Him, a mysterious being that has outlawed all forms of ideology, which includes nationalism, religion, racism, and the like.  It's been ten years since he crumpled the world, forming from it the scattered huddled masses of people struggling to survive.  He keeps his laws with ruthless ferocity and his shadow-dwelling servants know and see all. The game circles around your one intrinsic choice. Should you stand up and fight back?  Should you strike out and even if you don't survive inspire others, or at least die knowing that you died a free man? Or do you just cower, cursing the way the world is because you know you're powerless to change it? In other words, do you Light a Candle, or simply Curse the Darkness?

We all love Hollywood, right?

Today's Daily 60 (seconds) is a way to make a quick one-shot game.

What's your favorite movie that no one else has seen.  Go on, I won't tell anyone, but you know you have one.  Is it Repo, The Genetic Opera?  Maybe it's Sharknado, or Twilight.  Maybe it's Equilibrium, or Expendables?  I could go on for ages naming campy or cliquey movies, but the point is that everyone has that one that the odds are most of their friends didn't see.  Well go watch it again, something campy, or fun, or pure action, or whatever.

The point is that you should pick a scene, or section of the movie (or if it's a low-plot movie, take the whole damn thing) and make an adventure out of it.  If you're lazy, you could probably even search online and find someone who made a host of NPCs on your movie.  Either way you could probably fashion a game out of that movie in an afternoon or evening and play the next day.

Give it a try, don't avoid the hollywood stigma, play it, run it, and use it.  It makes them millions of dollars, abuse their research groups and try a game yourself tonight!

Try something new, be a jerk!

Today's Daily 60(seconds) is an addition to monday's article: Don't be afraid to be an ass!

You know your friends, and you know your gaming group.  I'd say at least half the groups out there always play nice.  The thief doesn't taunt the thefts around the paladin.  The assassin pretends to be a good guy near the palace soldier, and so on.  Well I'm here to say that if you really enjoy that then that's fine, but you shouldn't be afraid to be an ass.  Go on, call the anthropomorphic canine soldier a mutt even if he is played by someone at the same table.  And you, did you hear what he called your mom?  Slug him!

I'm not saying to let the entire game derail into inter-party combat, but you're not gonna lose a friend in real life because your character doesn't like hers, so don't be afraid to just role-play where it goes.  Friends can make a good story, but unlikely friends make a better one, and frankly the best stories I've seen are when two characters who have no business even talking to each other stop killing each other, barely, long enough to solve a crisis.

It's all about having fun, so if you feel like you're in the mood to be a royal pain in the ass, then be one!  And GMs, don't start yelling at me when your players listen, just have fun with it too!  See ya next time!

Be someone new this time...

And now it's time for today's Daily 60 (seconds).  One-shot games, and their secret potential.

Many of you have a regular gaming session, and the beauty of that is that you're able to play campaigns.  Adventure after adventure of your favorite roleplaying game, watching your characters evolve, and just having a great time making an epic story with friends.  This also makes a huge problem.  No one wants to be stuck with a character that they hate, and when you play games that last months, or years, you're really stuck with that character, or you're the guy that bails on his character to make a new one.

Enter the one-shot.  A one-shot game is a one or two session game.  What's the beauty of it?  Who cares what the genre is, be someone new!  Besides trying out a new game, you can be the thief that actually steals because they're greedier than Enron (remember them?), or the assassin that is ruthless and kills anyone who gets in their way.  Be the ultimate do-gooder that won't even curse at their enemy and who prays for their soul when they die.  Who cares if you don't have fun for one session, it will be over and next week you can try a different character.  Maybe this will show you get another long-term character that you'll enjoy that you never would have tried before.

It's all about roleplaying, and most people, myself included, play it safe in long games.  So next time you're playing a short one, just be crazy, kill party members, whatever, just do something new to see if that's your kind of character too.

See ya next time!

2 Excellent Games to Add to the Try List

I know I missed the last couple blogs on gaming, so I wanted to catch up with a double dose today.  Here comes your Daily 60 (second) double, two of my favorite Indy games.

First on the list is one that I reviewed a long time back, but I think it's inventive enough to re-mention it and give a quick overview.  Braid, by Number None, Inc, is a platformer unlike any other, and if you enjoy puzzles as much as you enjoy jumping on heads than this is definitely for you.  Braid is a puzzle platformer.  Yeah, it's in a genre all by itself.  The mechanics involve toying with time itself, fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing, slow-motion, and more.  Use those tricks to manipulate the world around you to maneuver your enemies, the terrain, and even projectiles so you can open the paths you need to follow to the next challenge.  I can't say enough good things about this game and how well-thought out it was. The goal of the game?  Well you should just play to find out.

Next I'll suggest the Legend of Grimrock, by Almost Human Ltd.  This game is lots of fun, it's basically a retro-style dungeon crawl with a few differences.  It uses the WASD movement style, where if you tap forward you move forward one "square" worth, and the entire dungeon basically made in graph paper.  I like the fact that it lets you choose to be auto-mapped or not, and if you choose not, you really will need a book of graph paper to keep everything straight.  The idea is you're trying to get out of a dungeon alive, and that's really about it.  To do so, you'll have to collect gear, equip your team, and combat against guards, monsters, skeletons, giant animals, and more.  Add to that the inventive and deadly traps, and the puzzles and key-based progressions of some rooms, and this game climbs its way towards top of the genre.  It's addictive, and requires a lot more strategy than just "clicking until bad guy dies."  If you enjoy RPGs or pure Dungeon Crawls, add this one to your list today!

So add these to your list if you're looking for something fun and inventive.

To Munchkin or not to Munchkin...

Munchkining… That's the theme for todays Daily 90 (seconds).  

For those of you that don't know, that's the fine art of knowing the rules of the game you're playing so well that you can play numbers games to make the most extreme, powerful, almost ridiculous character that you can.  Actually sometimes it's not consider munchkining if it's NOT ridiculous.  "+5 battle-axe of slaying everything I don't like"?  I have two of them.  "+9 Chainmail of boisterous invulnerability," awesome.

Ok, now to the point.  Why not?  I know that there is one group that says that making characters like that makes the game unbalanced.  Either the enemies have to be hard enough to be a fair fight for uber dwarf and they slaughter everyone else, or most the players have a fair fight and cousin Rockbeard just wades through the enemies like a kiddy pool full of jello.

That's true, it is more work for a game master… Come on, game masters know GMing is work, get used to it.

Other side of the fence is how I feel, let 'em do it.  The game is all about fun.  Everyone should be enjoying themselves, and if some players feel the they can only enjoy the game if they TOTALLY ROCK, then go for it, just hope the GM is creative enough to give everyone something to do.  Remember, Super-ultimate-awesome soldier man with sword and axe skills unseen since the turn of the millennium is really pretty useless when negotiating with a King.

So the moral of today's Daily?  It's one I've said before.  HAVE FUN!  Try to encourage your munchkins to be a little more balanced, but just try and find a way for everyone who's playing to leave every session smiling, or really damn pissed at you… because THAT is the real job of the GM.

See you soon!

Cards Against Humanity, and they mean it.

***********  Impropriety Warning, this is your last chance to skip this blog ****************

Ok, It's raunchy, it's wrong, and it's so far from politically correct that even saying politically correct anywhere near it is offensive.  If your crowd of friends feels strongly enough about some particular savior supporting their afterlife that they can't handle jokes about it, or if you have to put away your porno mags before they come over, then this game is really not for them.

This game is similar to apples to apples in that one (black) card is played from the deck and other (white) cards are played from players hands to apply to it.  For example, "_____, Kid tested, mother approved." is one of the black cards, and the idea is to play the white cards, which are nouns, to make the funniest combination.  You might play "Waffles" but then you're not going in the theme of the game.  More likely you'll get cards played like "A big black penis" or "Golden Showers" or "Natalie Portman." (hey, that would be a nice Episode 1 joke)

The game is for 4 or more players, and the "win" condition isn't really outlined.  You play a black card, everyone else plays a white card, then you pick one who wins and they get the black card in a score pile, and then the next person goes.  It's for the perverse and disturbed to make off-color jokes and inappropriate comments using the veil of a game, and if you have a dark sense of humor, then it can be truly a hysterical game.

If you like dirty jokes, and can handle racially slanted humor, along with your friends, then this might be for you.  If not, then be proud of yourself. It means you're a good person, because even the maker of this game agrees that it's "A party game for horrible people."

What the Fluxx?!

I always turn my nose up at Fluxx, and I really don't know why.  If you ask me if I wanna play Fluxx, I'll probably go "eh, nah" or something like that.  I've got nothing against it, but it never really grabs my interest.

Now is why I explain that that makes NO sense.  Every time I play, I have a blast.  There's always laughing, and cursing, and card drawing or playing dilemma (which is part of the fun).  Last night I played and we got an hour long game in because it ended up with, at one point, draw 8 and play all.

Ok, mini-review time.  The game is fast to learn, and starts with one rule, draw one and play one.  From there it gets crazy, even the goal you're trying to reach changes as you play.  Games take between 5 minutes and an hour, in most cases.  You CAN win the game on the first hand, but don't bet on it Doc.

Last night we played Zombie Fluxx which is kind of a monster in its own right.  I'm not going to go into all the rules, but to be direct the rules are very simple, and the game gets so complicated it's hilarious.  Every time I play a Fluxx I leave loving the game, so next time someone suggests it, play.  If you don't gave it, grab a copy, as far as games go it's definitely on the cheaper side, and Loony Labs really hit it out of the park with this one.  I can't wait for Fluxx, the board game! (no, I'm not kidding!)

Group Play, what happened to party mode?

I just want to put in my two cents on something that's kind of bugged me since it came out.  The Kinect, from Microsoft.  Is it awesome?  Hell yeah, I can wave my hand and things happen like on Iron Man or Minority Report.  It's really fun to play with, and the implications aren't limited to games, but computer use, military application, even drafting, construction, and physical therapy could be really helped by this technology, without a question.

My question arose when I watched someone jumping around, kicking a ball in a Kinect soccer game, "head"ing it, and nearly diving to block shots on goal.  Was it neat?  Again, definitely, but I have to ask myself, at that point aren't you just finding more non-social ways to do social things?  If you want to play soccer, go outside and play!  Not only were the games taking you away from outdoor activities and things to do with friends away from the TV, now they're teaching you that you don't even need the outside activities, you can do them inside and alone.

I think we need more interactive games, and by interactive, I mean with other humans, talking, interacting with them, not a computer.  I remember friends hanging out at my house, drinking our mountain dew and playing Tekken, taking turns passing the controller around and laughing as someone got their ass kicked.  Video games can be social, but it feels like more and more they're encouraging you not to be.

Just my 4 cents worth (I never stop at 2).  Let me know what you think below, and I'll talk to you soon!

Random Game Night!

Happy friday!  So when was the last time you played a game just because you hadn't played it yet?  Sometimes you buy a bunch of board games and play most of them, but what happened to the fifth one that you bought with them?  Maybe you're at a friend's house and they suggest a game that you never heard of.  Maybe you were online and saw a downloadable PDF of a new RPG for you and your friends to try sometime.

Well if it's been too long since you've tried that, then do it.  Sure you love the games you play now, but take a chance, and love a new game, maybe one you haven't even heard of.  Go on, I'll wait.  As a matter of fact, after you play this weekend, come back here and comment what game you tried, so someone else can know what it's like!  Now scoot! Go have fun you lil whippersnappers!

Indie Developers? They named the DOG indie...

Ok ok, lame title, I know, but it just illustrates my point even more, how impressive indie game developers really are.  I just went to a gaming convention recently and I really thought I'd share something that surprised me.  There are a LOT of indie developers out there.  I mean some are pretty rough around the edges, but then again sometimes White-wolf publishes a lemon, and seriously, have you looked at D&D 4th?  But other ones are really gems.  Sometimes they need to be cleaned up and polished, sometimes they're just about there, but even the iffy ones I really have to give my respect to.

You guys are going to so much work, often years and years of your life dedicated to it.  Working your ass off to write, design, test, redesign, retest, reredesign, and so on.  Trying different dice mechanisms, randomizers and mechanics, changing stats, and doing so much more work with a game than most of us do at our real jobs.  So this is to all the private and public indie game writers out there, whether it's a paper game or computer, designed for a 4 hour session or year long campaigns, my hat goes off to you.

I can't say enough how much I love going to those indie booths and looking over the new games, and skimming the content, reading the flavor text and setting, and hearing about new mechanics.  Keep up the good work, designers, and if your'e a gamer, get to some of those cons and really meet the people behind the games, maybe even support their efforts.  I promise you that you'll be glad you did.

Players Vs. GMs?

Are you a good game master or a bad game master?  Do you drop houses on people who do things you don't like?  Do you make up magical slippers of teleportation?  Do you do the old "oh but it was all a dream" thing?  (grrr I hate that one)

It's better to ask yourself what makes a GM bad, rather than if you're a bad GM.  Was the movie "The Wizard of Oz" bad?  I know for a fact that you know someone who loves it, and someone else that thinks it's a terrible movie.  Games are the same way, you can't just follow a handful of rules and find the perfect game for every player.  Ask your players what they're enjoying, ask them what bothers them.  I asked you last week what makes a good GM because that's the questions that all good GMs ask.  Are you doing a good job.  The only ones that can tell you that are the players.  They're your customers, and they're always right (unless they botch a skill check) so talk to them.  Keep your players close to your decision making process.  It's their game too.

Remember, an amazingly designed dungeon that the players (players, not characters) hated working their way thorough isn't a good thing.  You're all on the same side in real life, you're trying to have fun, so if both sides aren't, then something needs to be fixed.

Get to the point already...

What makes a good game master for an RPG session?  Well first of all if you don't know what an RPG session is, this probably isn't the article for you.  There are a lot of things that will determine if a session, or even a campaign, goes well and I won't pretend to know every nuance or even be a master myself, but I'd like to share what I find to be a critical one.

More and more, people just don't want long exposition, even in the gaming community.  Do something while you narrate.  No, I don't mean to hire a monkey to dance in circles while you talk in a droning monotone, I mean make the players actually learn.  Give a little background, but make the players learn the rest.  At the same time, don't hide it too much either.  If it's a strange world they're dropped into don't spend the first session talking about it, but let them see someone getting in trouble for something they might have done if they hadn't witnessed it.  If they never saw the girl getting filleted into thin strips of beef because she dared to cover her mouth after she yawned, not during, then they wouldn't know to be extra careful with manners.

I'm learning every day that people want brief blurbs, bits of info in bite-sized chunks so they can digest and consider it, without feeling like they need to take notes.  Give it a try, let them get their own information at a piece by piece pace and see how that works for ya!

And no, if you're the JRR Tolkien kinda player that loves 4.5 hours of exposition with 2 die rolls mixed in, your'e not wrong, just not in the majority…  Though by modern rules of stigma, I guess that means you are wrong after all… sorry to break it to you, next time drink the kool aid sooner.

Assassin's Creed 3 - I expected so much more

Look at the Assassin's Creed series as a whole, and you get what I consider to be an awe-inspiring legacy of games leading to a truly breathtaking visage of miraculous mediocrity.  Assassin's Creed 3 was a fair game.  Not great, not amazing, not even really good.  Fair.  I truly had huge hopes for this game, and brought it home the day it was released (if you know me, you know how cheap I am, me bringing home release-day games never happens).  I played it off an on because frankly, I didn't want to play it.  Finally I beat it this week, because I told myself I really had to so I could publish some thoughts on it.

Ok, ok, I will say that I did not spend all the time I possibly could doing all the little side-quests or minigames.  Why?  Because there was absolutely no reason to.  The gear I started with was more than enough to finish the game with little to no problems in combat.  I only bought gear twice in the entire game, once when a mission made me, and once because I happened to stroll past the shop and got curious.  Yes, I said THE shop, not a shop.  In AC3 you're pretty much never going to have a chance to buy gear without making a special trip to go to the store.  Maybe that was the point, because it was more "realistic" but when the shopping is frivolous at best, why bother?  I have to say that I did buy snares once from a traveling merchant, so that makes a grand total of three purchases throughout the entire game.

To be fair to the game there were a lot of good aspects, most of which were in the gameplay.  At first I was a little put-off because the controls that hadn't changed much since the first game were entirely replaced, but once I got used to them I actually preferred the new controls.  You can control whether to disarm or counterattack an enemy when you parry, or just shove him away.  You won't accidentally dive off a roof that's 15 stories up unless you really want to become road pizza, because now free running has one button that doesn't allow stupid jumps, and another button that does.

They added in Rope Darts which in itself is another pet peeve of mine.  In previous games, every time you got a new weapon they beat it into you, force fed you missions that trained you in using it, then let you choose to ever touch it again or not.  In this game, you get the rope dart.  That's it.  Go, have fun, use it.  Don't shoot your eye out!  If you want to know how, there's this little fricken' corner-of-the-map side quest you only find by using the map and chasing down icons.  Then you find out that it's really neat... and damn gimicky and still likely never use it again.  It's only useful in one specific situation that will take you more time to set up than just walking over and killing your targets.  It's kinda like teaching a monkey to use a whip.  Sure, you might impress a few people, but the third time he cracks you in the junk, you're gonna take it away from him and never give it back.

That leads me to the homestead missions.  You can chase all over the enormous world... no wait, let's stop here a second.

Enormous.  Huge.  Unreasonably big.  It's like they tried to put a sandbox type game map into an action/RPG.  I mean I'm all for huge areas to explore, but when they're all the FOREST give me a damn break.  Let me start by saying that if you have an entire map that has quick-travel icons on every exit, and nothing in the damn map except collection icons, get rid of it, you're just being an ass for putting it there.  Yeah, it looked awesome, had great graphics, amazing looking things that were impressive for the first two or three trips.

I understand that all the other games had these "wilderness" areas too, but you didn't have to run through them every other damn mission, so it just made me hate the damn thing even more.  Your Homestead was your home-base more or less, and after every mission it felt like I had to run back there, get another thing to do, watch a little cut scene, and go back out to another city and I was getting sick of it.

Back to homestead missions...
You chase over that whole stinking map to find these little icons that bring people back to your starting-up village.  If you're a completionist, sure, go for it, but all it gives you is a chance to do more in your little minigame of managing caravans to make money.

Now I'm a programmer so I don't think I'm entirely daft, but I spent 15 minutes on that God-forsaken caravan crap, after the tutorial was finished, and couldn't find out how to make more than half a dozen bucks in 2 hours.  Considering I can get half that amount by stabbing a random rabbit in 4 seconds, I kinda don't see the point.  It's like asking a starving man if he would rather have limitless free meals at a nice restaurant or an oven.  Sure, one way you can make your own meals and be proud of it but who really cares?

And as I said before, why work so hard to make money when there's no reason to buy anything.

*********************  SPOILER  *****************************

Now let's go onto the plot.  Yes there are spoilers here, so skip it if you want.  Look for the other crazy ** like thing at the end of this section, loser.  Go, hide from the truth!  COWARD!

Come on, Connor, what the hell?  Your mother is killed by Charles Lee.  He was sent by Hatham, and you finally meet the dick who was responsible for your mother's murder and you let him convince you to work with him after a 15 second conversation?

To me, there was no development.  Ezio went from bratty kid, to a skilled assassin.  He saw there were things bigger than himself, and became involved in them, started a guild, and eventually was monumental in helping set up Desmond's chance in present-day.  He started off a little twerp and became a dignified leader of men.  Even in each game, there was improvement along that path.

Connor was a bratty kid who got mad because his mom was killed, then got mad because his village was in danger.  He found out that his mom was killed by Hatham, and his village was in danger because of Hatham and his men.  You hear about the templars, but never anything more than the few men Connor learned about when he first started his training.  There was no development, there was no growth.  He set out to kill the men who hurt him and he did.  He never got involved in the "bigger picture" like Ezio did.

I saw him as a punk in the beginning, who somehow was already able to kill better than most soldiers, then he became a slightly better dressed punk that can still kill better than most soldiers.  I mean hell, other than the rope dart I can't off the top of my head think of anything I can do at the end of the game that I couldn't do the first time I could control Connor.

Yeah, the story said that Connor's mom was trained like an Assassin, but if all the character growth happened before the game started, where's the story?

*********************  SPOILER END  *****************************

There are a couple final things I wanna say, call them last nails in the coffin.

You're a god damned assassin, what happened to ASSASSINATING PEOPLE!  Ezio had to sneak into crowded rooms, wait for targets, end them quietly then slip out before guards saw.  Altier would evesdrop, sneak and pickpocket, gather information, then find his target be sure he had to die, and end key Templar players before vanishing into the shadows.  Connor sees someone he wants to kill and just walks over and kills him after fighting his way through men.  I think maybe three times in the game a mission had me kill someone subtly, and even then it wasn't required to do it that way.

I realized something else after I beat the game.  Just look at some trailers for the games.  Go on, I'll wait.  Watch Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.  Ezio walking through a crowd, calm, quiet, shifting from group to group as his assassins take out the guards as they notice him.  Everything is perfectly skilled, and subtle until the last moment when he clears the crowd and has to face the target.  Now look at the Assassin's Creed 3 trailer.  He grabs a horse and charges across a battlefield towards enemy lines.  Charging the enemy lines?  What half-witted assassin leads a solo frontal assault.  Even worse, if you watch, his success on crossing that battlefield inspires troops behind him.  Not assassins, revolutionary troops.  He's a general, not an assassin.  Assassin's don't inspire, they do what they have to do and leave quietly.

And for those of you that are wondering, yes, I actually did like the ship-piloting stuff, but it was so disparate from the rest of the game I would almost enjoy it more as its own game rather than as a side-mission in this one.

So, my final thoughts... I just feel this game really missed the mark. It was fun at first, but I had to make myself finish it so I could see the Desmond side of things, and when a game becomes a chore, then it's time to finish it and put it away.  I am, however, still looking forward to see if AC4 redeems the franchise in my mind.