Effectively finished Assassin's Creed 3 yesterday. Main story done, most of the side quests done. Still a few minor side quests outstanding, and I've not tried multiplayer at all (I don't have a uplay pass for the game but I believe you can still play multiplayer for a few levels without a pass). Enjoyed the game, and think it deserved higher ratings than it seemed to get. Most folk seem to dislike Connor, the main protagonist in the game, and I can understand that, but personally I liked him.
The voice acting for the character wasn't the best, and the character himself was annoyingly naive at times. But the way he got around the frontier was fantastic fun.
20 minutes of end credits with no way of skipping or stopping them other than ejecting the game is nasty. I tend to sit through end credits on most games (the music is part of the celebration at completing the game, I read a fair amount of the credits, and sometimes there's a cut-scene or achievement) but left the room in this instance. I'll watch the credits if I choose to - not if you try to force me to.
There was a short epilogue after the credits, and a fairly frustrating mini-mission, but once the story was done the game's time in my machine was pretty much over.
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Next to go into the 360 was Dungeon Siege 3. I've never played a Dungeon Siege game before, but I know the first two were highly regarded, the third was considered a bit "meh" - and most importantly I picked it up very cheap. Metacritic has them as:
DS1 (2002 - pc only) 86% (7.5 user)
DS2 (2005 - pc only) 80% (7.6 user)
DS3 (2011 - all platforms) 72% (6.2 user)
It's a very linear action-RPG. Linear as in there's rigid set paths to follow - but if you're doing the side quests there's a fair bit of backtracking too. You pick from 4 characters, all with their own set of powers/attributes, and apparently the game is best played coop 4-player online. If playing solo, like me, the other characters join you after a few missions, controlled by (rather questionable) AI. There's lots of treasure/equipment to find or buy, each with different attributes, and you can improve some of your character's attributes and abilities - though, as with the map, it all seems a bit rigid.
Combat tends to be a case of approaching a group of enemies until they see you and give chase, retreat whilst spamming attacks at them with the A and X button until you reach some invisible line whereupon they all return to their start position, repeat until all are dead - which will surely get boring after a while, but I'm not far through the game yet and haven't quite reached that point.
Story line seems reasonable, if a little clichéd - an evil aggressor has invaded your country and killed most of the armed forces - your small group is all that remains. The script, however, is horrendous. Not sure if it's just weak translation from Japanese, or if it was a bad script over there too, but if the antagonist's name is said in full one more time I may well scream.
Every bloody sentence is "Jeyne Kassynder" this, "Jeyne Kassynder" that.
Jeyne Kassynder can kiss my arse.
Will stick with the game for now at least. It's not the greatest, but it's not awful. How long I'll be able to resist before either putting COD back in or dipping back into the stack I'm not sure, though...
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COD: Black Ops II - LAST PLAYED 07/02/2013. Blimeh. Nearly three weeks without playing COD! Will go back to the game at some point, for the multiplayer and zombies. Never did play the campaign on that (other than the first couple of levels, when my internet went down for an hour or two), despite a lot of folk saying the campaign is one of the best the game's had, thanks to the slight branching in the story depending on how you act/perform at certain points.
