Tuesday Notes

- Assassin's Creed 2 comes out today.  I'm not as excited about it as I was the first game.  I might still pick it up since I will be at Best Buy getting Star Trek on bluray, but the anticipation is not there.

 

While on the subject of AC2, what is up with all these review embargos on big name games lately?  MW2 had a review embargo right up to its release and it looks like the same is true for AC2.  Typically a review embargo means that the developer knows the game is crap and they don't want early reviews up, but I know that's the not the case with these games (at least I hope it is not with AC2).

 

Reviews don't really affect my purchasing decision, but I just like reading them.  I'm curious to see if they addressed the repetitive mission structure of the first game.  Hope it all feels more organic.

 

- Been playing MW2 multiplayer (of course) and while I absolutely love it, that love is usually reserved for when I have a decent ping to the game.  This happened all the time in CoD4 too.  Your performance is greatly determined by your current connection to the host.  If I have four little green bars, I am golden.  What I see on the Kill Cam is what I experience during live action and I typically do very well.  If however, I have 3 green bars (I never go below 3), then things get ugly.  I then typically play terrible and the Kill Cam shows something very different from what I saw.  It is all a latency issue, but it can be very frustrating.

 

In games with 3 green bars, I'll typically finish with a 1 to 1 kill/death ratio.  If that!  In games with four bars, I'm usually 3 to 1 in that department.  That is a HUGE difference.

 

I hate that my enjoyment of the game depends so much on this.  I hope it is something that Infinity Ward can at least improve in a patch, since I know it can't go away for good.

 

I don't have a problem with playing poorly, as long as the reason I am sucking is because of my own doing, and not because I have a disadvantage because of latency.  When I have 4 bars and get killed, I know it was my fault, or the other player just beat me.  When I have 3 bars and get killed, something just feels off.  The Kill Cam confirms that both I and the player that killed me did not see the same thing.  It is frustrating.  And annoying.  And at times enough to make me turn the game off in anger.

 

But when the game is clicking, and the connection does not interfere, there is no better multiplayer game on consoles.