The game play flow of Assassin's Creed compared to Tony Hawk: The similarities and differences.

Hello interwebs, Let me start off with saying I haven't played the new Assassin's Creed Origins. I have played a few not all the way through but have played a fair chunk. Although I did finish the one on the psp and ps vita.

Assassin's creed is a very popular game that many have come to love. With its biggest draw being the parkour and movement mixxed with assassinating enemies with out anyone noticing. Although this may be a very popular and profitable franchise born from the Prince of Persia series it is not free of faults. In a game that is known for it's movement and traversal it has some hard contrasting points for good and bad. In Assassin's creed the combat is very much relatable to the Batman Arkham series. Where you wait for a prompt and counter to kill your enemies. The problem is that these battles are long and dragged out, its hard to land your own hit with out the enemy blocking and it can take a while before the enemy attacks so you can counter for the kill.

This is one of the hard contrasts I find brings the game down. In a game that has a focus on movement flow, that I can relate to the Tony Hawk series, the combat tends to be a flow breaker. In Tony Hawk games you ride along on a skateboard going over jumps, hip transfers, vert transfers, grinds and do tricks to complete a sick run. This is similar to Assassin's Creed as you climb, run, and jump from building to building and basically anything else climbable. While pulling off assassinations as you run past as your sick trick. But when you are halted into a long and dragged out combat your flow of running from one end of the district to the other, hitting all the sweet jumps, going the most efficient and cool looking path, is halted. It becomes a head ache to do battle when your focused on your run. It's as if you hit a wall in Tony Hawk and have to walk back up a set of stairs to continue. One can see this as a punishment for messing up a run or getting caught doing something your not supposed to but I see it as a drastic flow killer. It takes too long to battle it out when there are multiple enemies which there does tend to be and it can be punishing to constantly have your flow broken. This is one reason why Assassin's Creed Origins looks to be more appealing. To have a faster and more frenetic combat system it helps to keep the flow of motion going with you being able to move much more than normal in combat.

The combat should be more open for you to be able to attack, and not boil down to the best option always being to wait for the counter prompt and hit the counter button. It should have allowed for more action on your part. Instead of countering you should be working on dodging (keeping the movement up) and crowd control (trying to get into the right spot so you aren't being grouped up on.) Then you should be able to attack, if your a trained assassin I don't see why 90% of your attacks are blocked. If they do block it would be nice to break their block after 2-4 attempts, or use guard breaker style attacks. Grabbing the enemy and pushing/throwing them into a group,wall, or another enemy. This would cause a stagger and opportunity to attack. If your up against a sword with hidden blades there is no way you could hold out, this is where you should be able to focus on dodging and movement. This would also make the player feel powerful but being able to take down larger threats (sword being a larger threat than small knives attached to the wrist) by feeling untouchable dodging attacks and closing the gap, to essentially punch the enemy for massive damage. This could lead to a small combo then into an execution. If you had a polearm it would be for keeping your distance and poking the enemy for a little bit of damage. Focusing on distance and crowd control. Large sweeping attacks and spins. The pole arm would be best used to help keep distance for an escape. A sword would be more technical with blocking and counters but still let you over power an enemy into their defeat. Would also have more combos than other weapons that can be used for overpowering your enemy.

Another flow killer is having to climb large structures to reveal the map. Every now and then is ok but when it comes to be every time it gets boring. Climbing a tower can be like a puzzel, trying to climb up fast and finding all the right places to hold. But climbing is slow. It is also fairly shallow. Just push in a direction you want to go. It would be cool if they changed this. Have areas you have to run through that give you a view of the place, travel enough in the area and the map will fill up after half is traveled, or even assassinate a person to get a map or just steal one. These would be good variations to make each area a little different. Stops the player from always saying "I climbed towers" when asked what they did in the game. It's like the NASCAR joke "HE'S MAKING A LEFT TURN, LOOK HE'S MAKING ANOTHER LEFT TURN, OH MY GAWD HE'S MAKING A LEFT TURN!" Assassin's Creed is akin to Tony Hawk with it's easy to use and free flowing movement and execution. While games like dying light (more akin to Skate) are more technical on it's flow and execution. If Assassin's creed is such a free flowing game why do we get hit with flow halting combat or the slow and shallow climbing of structures as a need and not a want. There could have been much more thought put into the combat, working on keeping the flow up while keeping the anxiety, difficulty, and a decline in the flow for the game, but not as drastic. The need to spend time climbing building's to unlock portions of the world to be visible on the map is an unimaginative system. They could have spent more time coming up with various ways to do this that would add variety for the player. Flow and level design should be like a roller coaster. It should have it's ups and downs. Game's need variation. We get board of repition and ruts in life, so why make the player endure that in the game. Know every version of the game has this makes it a chore instead of a fun game people want to fork out money for. Assassin's creed may be a loved franchise, a highly profitable one too, but it has faults and has yet to find it's perfect flow. Maybe in the near future this will get better. Till next time, game hard! Have a good day/evening! Byeeee!!

#Assassinscreed #Design #Mechanic #flow #gamplay