Arbitrary Animus

Assassin's Creed had a problem right from the get go (beyond even the snivelling pleas to not be offended because some of Ubisoft's best friends are black/Muslims/Templar/British) in that the "present day" was always linked in the most tenuous way to the actual story.

Outside of one rather clever moment at the end of Ezio's story, there's nothing to elevate the Animus beyond an increasingly irrelevant framing device. With the original trilogy concluded and the world saved, it seems little more than an after thought now - indeed, perhaps in line with the fact these games are now on a conveyor belt... there's not much of anything at stake anymore.

The much hyped (and then relentlessly slated) Unity wasn't even an artifact hunt, you were just looking for a body and (spoiler alert!) you could just have stayed at home but then, that's been a problem since the start. The denouement of the first game is finding the piece of Eden after a big ol' boss battle... and then you're back in the real world and everything is terribly anti-climactic.

It's also a problem because as is often the case, the Animus presents vast opportunities but ends up only being used to find the artifact of the week. Obviously, these searches tend to conveniently tie in with some historic struggle but... well, you somewhat undermine those events when the ONLY reason to experience them is to find the McGuffin.

Whereas AC1-3 let you go around and talk to people, check you e-mails and so on - and in the case of AC3, get a whole mess of backstory about the Precursors - AC4 bumped you down to a silent protagonist, who wandered around an office block between sessions and Unity does away with that entirely... you just get prompting from the Assassins on your mission objectives and occasionally the mandatory banter.

It's clear that the Animus has become an after thought, if not an active impediment to the way the franchise is proceeding. While Desmond was pretty flat, we had at least SOME investment in him and it meant we were invested in what was happening in the present day... It seems pretty obvious that this change of direction is a response to Ubisoft's desire to pump these games out but if that's the case, it seems like abandoning the framing device of the Animus and JUST telling the story would be far more sensible than demoting them to "peace of Eden hunt seven".

Wolfenstein: The New Order

If there's one thing that gaming has done to death its WW2 and particularly Nazis because... who can resist killing Nazis? They're about as close as you get to pure evil in the real world but Wolfenstein: The New Order puts a new twist on things. Your protagonist is involved in a last ditch attack to try and stop the Nazi warmachine, gets knocked out - (actually, it's the third time he's KO'd but this time he's in a coma) and wakes up in the 1960s to find that the Nazis won.

The art design of this Nazi run alternate future is genuinely impressive - mixing the futuristic tech with the retro-60s look... Everything from the big clunky robots to the space shuttle, it all seems nicely coherent... and contributes nicely to that continuous oppressive feel the game has, although the subject matter helps in that regard too. This game doesn't shy away from some of the obvious issues when it comes to the Nazis - one of the missions even takes you to a labour camp but it doesn't really out-and-out confront it either but that works for it.

In this world, the Holocaust is only one of many atrocities visited upon the world by the Nazis - who nuked America, have ongoing labour camps (that are cremating people too weak to work) and are enacting genocide against Africa - the last real place to hold against Nazi rule but that's never really thrust in your face. It's a bit like Half-Life 2 in that respect, although it lets you read full news clippings and get actual audio logs - also, cutscenes.

As far as FPS go, this is rather old school. There are sections where stealth is possible and even advisable but there are other parts where the game flat out says - here's a bunch of Nazis, gotta kill 'em. That's actually entirely fair, you're not in Splinter Cell... you're a soldier, not a ninja... but the game does reward you  for different play styles, as well as giving you successive upgrades to guns... and shockingly, NO TWO GUN LIMIT!

Speaking of shocking - regenerating health is done rather different here. It's not just getting jam on your face or the screen going grey or red or whatever - you lose a wodge of health, it's gone until you get a health pack... of course, the game follows the recent trend of having protagonists who walk through firefights getting injured in cutscenes - in one scene, you're STABBED REPEATEDLY AND LEFT FOR DEAD... but you're fine. The next time that happens (yes, really - it's as bad as getting KO'd) it kind of cripples you... for a few seconds.

So, overall - a pretty fun game. It's a wonderful treat for old skoolers. It doesn't QUITE go back to old skool gaming but it at least pays homage and really, it's just a fun FPS. Which in this age of dull and dreary ones, is sadly exceptional.