Ubisoft, We have a problem

Written by Adam Dodd

Monday, 16 February 2009 09:42

A few days ago I was enjoying some playtime with the new Prince of Persia when I noticed several similarities between three of Ubisoft's key games: Prince of Persia, Far Cry 2, and Assassin's Creed. They all suffer from the same problem: a lack of variety. This is keeping these great games from becoming potentially amazing games. And besides this, I also noticed a pattern, a pattern I wish to discuss.

In Assassin's Creed you travel a beautifully rendered open world assassinating people while collecting flags. In Far Cry 2 you have the same gorgeous open world but there's a little more variety in the missions: now you can assassinate people and help your buddies with various quests. In Far Cry you also collect diamonds, but they actually serve purpose in the game unlike Creed's flag collecting. In Prince of Persia you have very few enemies, no variety in the missions, and you travel a huge world to defeat various bosses in any order you choose. You also have to collect light seeds (which again serve a purpose).

Altair + Prince of Persia

I love exploring large worlds and completing missions in any order I choose, I'm not a big fan of running around trying to find items; I think Far Cry 2 did it well in that you aren't forced to find the diamonds but you are rewarded for going out of your way to get them. In Prince of Persia collecting light seeds seemed like more of a way to pad the game's relatively short campaign by making you re-explore the world to collect the seeds. I didn't even bother trying to collect the flags in Assassin's Creed because there was no point (unless you're an achievement junkie).

Sandbox games are great too but the key element that makes them fun is the variety in the missions you have to complete. If all you can do in the world is assassinate people, no matter how beautiful or realistic that world is, the game is going to get dull quick. Each of these games I've mentioned have a lot for you to explore, and I praise the developers for creating such amazing places to roam around in, but I also resent them for giving me almost nothing to do in these worlds that I genuinely want to spend time in. I want to hang out in Prince of Persia's beautiful cel-shaded environments, but since all I can do is run around collecting light seeds and fighting the occasional enemy, I get bored after only playing the game for a short time.

Far Cry 2

I have either played or beaten each of these games, I enjoy them all and I'm a fan of Ubisoft, but this is getting really frustrating. Each of these games are great, they do something new and they do it well (especially the parkour mechanics in Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia), but they also share the same design: A lack of variety in missions, a big open world to explore, and collectible items. I realize many games have big worlds, similar missions, and collectible items, but it seems like Ubisoft is using the same outline for each of these games. I'm hoping this changes, because I love these games, I want to see them do well, and I want to be able to play them for more than an hour before getting bored of the repetition. So Ubisoft, if you're a long-time fan of theBBPS (and I know you are) and you are reading this, please do something about this problem.

Comments (2) Add Comment

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written by Mark Peachey, February 17, 2009

It's funny that you bring this up, because it's the other library of Ubisoft games that I feel all blend together: the Tom Clancy and Splinter Cell series.

Honestly, there are about 15 borrowed gameplay features you could identify across all games, to the point of wondering whether you're actually playing something different than just the title.

They're typically solid games, but I think the teams at Ubisoft need to stop fraternizing so much.

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written by Eudaimo, February 17, 2009

Wow, you've echoed my sentiments very closely. I played through all three of those games in 2008, and was impressed and disappointed with each one. Each game applied the open world approach to different genres/mechanics with differing results.

Of the three, it was Assassin's Creed that left me wanting most. It felt a world in search of a game. The highlights were the scripted assassination setpieces, but even they were too bland and too few to make up for the painful monotony of eavesdropping, pickpocketing and flag collecting. Worse, the "open world" was too transparent an illusion. The player could have no affect on the world and the world no affect on the player. I did not need an "Oblivion" level of interactivity, but when the only way for a player to "progress" is the arbitrary granting of new abilities, the game feels much less "open" than it claims.

Prince of Persia fared better, in that the core mechanics were more fun. But PoP left me wondering what the open world was in aid of. Much effort appeared to go into making a world that *worked* as an open world, and much less into the usual bread and butter of platform/adventure games: setpieces and ambitious tricks. While many criticized the game as too "easy," that was not quite my issue. Rather, I felt robbed of a "feeling of progression." The last few rooms and enemies felt like they might as well have been "Level 1."

Far Cry 2 was the greatest success of the 3. It had flaws, mostly in the form of broken AI and some controversial design choices (I happen to like the degradable weapons, and was not as angry as some about the respawning checkpoints, but I agree with those who criticize the Malaria mechanic). I think the game would have been improved by a light touch of scripting (a tough balance in an open world game), especially during its redundant second half. How exciting would it have been for an attack helicopter to appear during a mission? Or if the AI offered to drive once in a while, letting you shoot "on rails" for a few minutes?