Fan’s View: PlayStation Access – Part 2

[drop2]Now here’s the biggie. Any of you who know me (barely any of you) would know I rather like a certain open world, ninja-like, killing franchise with a wonderful plot, adorable graphics and which is just generally incredible. I spent about an hour on the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations multiplayer, it was good, but was it really worth it?

The skin is sort of the same as Brotherhood, if I didn’t know better then it would probably have been seen as an update to the Brotherhood HUD. Most of the features that already exist in the current multiplayer carry forward into Revelations, faults included. However, there have been some changes to modes; more characters, more maps, more options for customisation, basically just more of everything.

The mode does feel more story-centric this time, with nice touches like screensavers that give more information into the history of Abstergo and such. I played a good number of sessions, lost a few, came second in a few others and won quite a lot. I was especially good at beating the staff; they seemed to be pretty impressed with my assassin abilities, but it wouldn’t be my favourite franchise ever if I was rubbish at it.

I suspect that we were playing an ‘advanced’ mode as there was no map type featured and the overlaid HUD was very sparse. The way to choose your abilities set has now altered so instead of picking before you launch into the game, a transparent box appears in the bottom left corner when you spawn and you have 10 seconds to select left or right to decide on the abilities set you want, allowing you to jump straight into the action and have another thing to stress over whilst trying not to die.

The respawn time doesn’t seem to have changed, indeed it seems to have lengthened, averaging at around ten to fifteen seconds. Annoyingly, although the abilities selection has been removed from your wait to respawn it still takes the same amount of time, leaving you staring at a white screen.

As there was no visible map, it seems a new detection mechanic has been employed. A small bar sits next to the face of the person you are after in the top right corner of the screen. The bar moves higher and lower depending on the distance you are from the target, a basic hot or cold system. if you get more than 15 metres away from your target the bar won’t move at all, making it more strategic and harder to play. This has been compensated for (hopefully) by the maps being smaller, at least the one on show was significantly smaller than those in Brotherood. Hopefully this will only be in the mode I was playing, and other gametypes will feature larger play areas.

Now, the one thing that always irritates me; stuns. They are still as laggy as ever, I sat there several times hammering the circle button in front of onlookers, we all collectively sighed in despair as the game ignored my commands and let me die, despite the protests coming from my thumb on the controller. There is, however, a new system called ‘honourable death’ where if you hit stun a fraction too late, you’ll stab your killer as you die. This does only award you 100 points but it’s better than nothing. It also slows your pursuer down for a short period afterwards.

Points in general have been tweaked, with even rooftop silent kills only giving me 400 points. This has made the game obviously harder online, and whilst I found it more fun, it may put off new players. For those with no experience it will seem incredibly hard, and may push them away completely as there was no way of easily understanding everything.

Don’t let that phase you though, as I don’t know what mode I was on, and only got to play one map repeatedly for an hour against other people.

Whilst at Access there was an Assassins Creed multiplayer competition. Two rounds of 5, traditional Assassins all versus all, then the top 5 played each other with the winner getting an early copy of Driver : San Francisco on the day. I was determined to win, and knew that I stood a good chance after playing for a while as I was easily beating everyone else who stepped up to the consoles. Unfortunately I didn’t count on my friend Ranj being at Access (didn’t even know he was there up until the day) as he is the only person I know that can wipe the floor with me online. He won the competition, which was competitive and awesome all at the same time, and I came third. 1st place won Driver & a limited edition LP of the soundtrack, 2nd and 3rd just won the LP. Hey, a limited edition LP is still awesome, even though I may never get the chance to listen to it.

I finally used my 2 drinks tokens after the competition, drowning my losses in Budweiser and at the same time feeling incredibly happy and exhilarated after coming off AC:R. Just before leaving, we decided to have a go on Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One. The multiplayer element was really good, best ‘4 players on one single console’ that I’ve seen in a while, since ‘Buzz’ was first released I think. The concept is the same old Ratchet and Clank, but just improved, which works really well.

On the way out everyone got a goodie bag, a simple black tote bag with PlayStation on both sides, inside was a Resistance 3 T-shirt and a Sackboy keyring dressed as the Chimera. It was an incredible day, the best gaming one I’ve experienced recently, or even the best gaming day I’ve had. I really hope there are more next year, and that more people have the chance to attend. I just hope Eurogamer is much of the same, as PlayStation Access was easily the most awesome event that you can get into for free.

We’d like to thank Posem for his thoughts and congratulate him on his Assassin’s Creed prowess.