The Oxford English dictionary describes a bug as: "a sort of computer oops". It is the result of errant coding, mismatched texture, wonky physics or (sometimes) a briefcase. Developers must fight bugs day and night to safeguard the digital realms we call our playgrounds. Sometimes they lose that battle and a bug comes stomping ravenously into our game, ready to upset us. But sometimes that bug is not an annoyance or a game-breaker, but instead the funniest thing to ever happen. Here are 9 of the best bugs in PC gaming.
]]>Is Assassin's Creed Unity a better game now that the real-world cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris has been gutted by fire? That's the question I've had rolling around the back of my head for a few weeks. Ubisoft gave away their open-world murder simulator, which visits a virtual Paris circa 1789, for free in April after the fire and soon received a spike of positive player reviews on Steam. This caused store owners Valve to mutter about the idea of "positive review bombs" and how changing context can a game seem better. So, has Unity become a better game because it lets us visit a pristine Notre-Dame while the real one is caked in soot and scaffolding? What can we destroy to improve other games? And who can we MURDER?
]]>When Valve implemented Steam's anti-review-bombing policy in March - manual exclusion of "off topic" review clusters from a game's overall score - they'd not given much thought to what a 'positive' review bomb could look like. Just one month later, Notre Dame cathedral goes up in holy smoke and Ubisoft bring in a flood of positive press (and reviews) for Assassin's Creed Unity through a Uplay giveaway and a half-million-dollar donation to help rebuild the landmark. This has led Valve to a rare bit of public introspection on how they should even define "off-topic", shared in this official blog post.
]]>Notre-Dame cathedral is closed for renovation for the foreseeable future, but Ubisoft are offering everyone the opportunity to appreciate it (and clamber around it) free in Assassin's Creed Unity. From now until next Thursday, April 25th, the game is free to grab and keep forever here. Set in Paris, 1789, it offers a more co-op focused spin on the series, but was plagued by bugs at launch. Credit where due, Ubisoft did well patching it up, so if you skipped it then, you get the best version free now and all it took was a famous landmark burning down. The publisher are also chipping in a half-million Euros for repairs to the building.
]]>It wasn't fair that last year's Assassin's Creed: Unity became the fall guy for an entire industry's reluctance to make its digital people diverse. Unfortunately the apparently contradictory excuses, rather than acknowledgement of oversight, for cutting playable female characters from a game whose headline feature was co-op play with customised avatars made the situation much worse. In any case, the series now seems determined to be more inclusive, starting with the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Syndicate [official site].
We already know that you can switch between its male and female protagonists, twins Jacob and Evie Fry, and now it's been revealed that the supporting cast will include a trans man.
]]>Once a week most weeks, the RPS hivemind gathers to discuss An Issue. Sometimes it’s controversial news, sometimes it’s a particular game, sometimes it’s favourite things and least favourite things, sometimes a perennial talking point. This week, off the back of most of us being obsessed with Metal Gear Solid V, we're talking about open world, or sandbox games. Big map, go where you please, kill or don't kill - the GTA, Assassin's Creed and Far Cry formula. And it's very much a formula now. How do we feel about that? Has the promise of earlier open world games such as the first few Elder Scrolls been lost? And just why are we apparently giving MGSV a free pass given we often roll our eyes as Assassin's Creed?
]]>Rumour has it that the decrepit Arkham Knight port beat a retreat on account of Steam refunds. After all, what better way to get a dastardly developer to blush and shuffle its hooves than to reverse its cash flow? Until June, when no-questions-asked refunds came into force, such a feat was impossible. Perhaps, after years of pro-consumer jabs at Microsoft and other corporates, Valve sought to make a material gesture that player interests are truly the heart of the Steam empire. Or perhaps they dislike being sued. Hint: they are currently being sued.
By now, you’ve likely encountered a shop and have a reasonable feeling about how refunds should work: if it doesn’t do what it’s meant to, you take it back. Nothing could be simpler. Refunds for digital products – or, as is often the case, licenses for digital products – are a legal hellscape of false assertions and misinformation, in large part a product of outdated legislation that no one is keen to test in court. To sift through the muck, I got in touch with Ryan Morrison, founder of the New York law firm by the same name (and no relation of mine this side of the 17th century). Whether you’re European, Stateside or in the wrong hemisphere altogether, here’s the plain English version of where and through which service your purchases are best protected and why some retailers still risk refusing refunds.
]]>There has been a lot of discussion recently in games about historical accuracy. We’ve seen a number of articles debating the absence of people of color in The Witcher 3 as well as essays criticizing Apple’s decision to remove games featuring the Confederate battle flag from the App Store. Most of this discussion treats historical accuracy as something close to gospel, beyond reproach or change. "There were never people of color in the medieval, Eastern European milieu from which The Witcher is drawn." "There were always Confederate battle flags in the American Civil War." For most people, using “never” and “always” with regard to history seems natural. If any field of knowledge can offer such certainty, it must be history, right?
]]>The pitchforks came out for Assassin's Creed Unity's bugs and performance problems, but I can't say I ran into many of the former and the latter was never bad enough to make it unplayable. (It was worse on console, as I understand it). For me, the problem was that whatever soul the game might have had was obfuscated by its ostentatious partitioning into external systems. Sign up for this nebulous player-tracking service, install this tellingbone app, grind/play/grind, hunger hunger hunger for more. Whatever you do, don't just play the game.
Belatedly, the situation is improving. Ubisoft are removing the need to have Unity companion app thingamywotist if you want to open certain chests (containing various loot and even an Altair skin) scattered around Paris.
]]>The Assassin's Creed movie, starring Michael "elephantine" Fassbender, has finally been actually properly genuinely greenlit, and production's already in swing for jumpy-stabby silver screen action in late 2016. Given that the misfortunes of earlier Ubisoft adaptation Prince of Persia panned out resulted in Jake Gyllenhaal turning away from ultro-budget action movies, if this struggles similarly we might see the Fass slope off back to arthouse for a while. I might be OK with that.
]]>The city and catacombs of Saint-Denis will open up to Assassin's Creed Unity players on January 13th, Ubisoft have announced, and it'll be free for everyone as an apology present for releasing the game in such a poor state. Here's a thing I know about Saint-Denis: during the Revolution, the royal tombs in the Basilica were cracked open and their contents tossed into pits in the yard and oh no over the course of telling this story I realise this'll be the setup for Dead Kings. Of course it will. They have to Assassinate all of history don't they, those people. You can see a little of this fanciful retelling in a new cinematic trailer.
]]>If you're one of those whose bought Assassin's Creed: Unity's DLC Season Pass at launch, you're getting a big fat Sorry from Ubisoft whether you felt you needed it or not. They need your forgiveness. They burn for it. The publisher's apologies for Unity's many and various bugs and performance issues comprises a choice of one of the following: Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, The Crew, Rayman Legends, Watch_Dogs or Just Dance 2015. We already knew that! But now it's actually happening right now go go go go
]]>An odd phenomenon of the last month or so is the disappearance of Ubisoft's end-of-year gaming bonanza from the UK version of Steam. While Assassin's Creed: Unity, Far Cry 4, and The Crew are all available on the US and other international versions of Valve's blue-grey shop, in Her Majesty's The United Kingdom, they are conspicuously absent. The games can be bought, at surprisingly huge prices, through the convoluted bizarreness of Uplay, and through other portals like GamersGate or Greenman Gaming, but the most popular and widely used digital distro has an empty shelf. So what's up?
]]>I'm disappointed in Alec for not having a more wacky experience in Assassin's Creed Unity. While folks across various platform found bugs from horrifying missing faces to people on invisible minibikes, he only had performance problems. Try harder to get funny bugs next time, Alec.
Ubisoft have apologised for launching the game in such a sorry state, and are trying to make amends by offering everyone its first planned big DLC pack, Dead Kings, for free. And as that was supposed to be part of the DLC Season Pass, they're trying to make amends to Season Pass holders by offering them a free game from a selection including Far Cry 4 and The Crew.
]]>Assassin's Creed Unity is the latest in Ubisoft's series of historical-set open world action-adventure games. It stars a French nobleman named Arno Dorian, who becomes an Assassin (stealthy free-running dude battling against an evil conspiracy theory) in 18th century Paris, around the time of the French revolution. It adds co-op and gear customisation to the seven-year-old formula. It's been out for three days now, and I've been playing it for much of that time.
]]>Now that I've a) got code and b) got said code to run after a ton of tinkering, I've spent a couple of hours with gaming's latest whipping boy, Assassin's Creed: Unity. Given yesterday's web brouhaha about its shonky performance on console, it seems worth sharing my technical experiences with it on PC too.
Below are a bunch of numbers, if you like that sort of thing. TLDR: it's not disastrous, but something sure ain't right.
]]>...Well, primarily because we didn't receive code until today. It seems some multi-format sites have had console versions ahead of release, but no dice in PC-land, at least not here. Though folk in the US have been able to buy the game since 12am. Maybe I should have moved to America and pulled an all-nighter just for this.
Whether this is related to various reports today that Ubisoft jumpy-stabby sequel has a number of performance issues, particularly with regard to framefrate drops and pop-in, we can't know. Just wanted to tell you why we won't be holding forth one way or another for a few days yet, basically.
]]>Update: "We are looking into it at the moment," an Ubisoft representative has told us about the later vanishings outside the UK. Meanwhile, two dear readers in Finland and Germany comment that the games have disappeared from Steam for them too.
When Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Unity, The Crew, and Far Cry 4 all vanished from Steam in the UK earlier this week, the publisher made cryptic mention of being "in discussions with Valve". What's so weird or special about the UK that our Steam wouldn't get Ubisoft's big fancy Christmas lineup? Turns out, we're not so special any more. These games are vanishing from the US and Australian stores too, VG247 noted, suggesting something bigger than a regional quirk is afoot.
]]>U-boo-soft, more like. It looks like the developer of Far Cry 4, The Crew and Assassin's Creed Unity won't be releasing any of those games through Steam in the UK.
Speaking to PCGamesN, the publisher confirmed that they have been in discussions with Valve about Assassin's Creed Unity, "but for the time being the game is not available via Steam in the UK. In the meantime, UK customers wishing to purchase the game digitally can do so by visiting the Uplay store, our retail partners or other digital distributors." The Crew and Far Cry 4, meanwhile, are listed on Steam throughout the world but not in the UK, suggesting they might befall the same fate.
]]>With a title like its own, it would be dreadfully inappropriate were Assassin's Creed Unity not to have co-op. So fortunately, it does. And Ubisoft wants to prove this to you, via the motion picture excitement of a trailer. Featuring much man walking slowly away from camera.
]]>Today, I give thanks that there is yet another trailer for Assassin's Creed: Unity crouching in a corner of my inbox, hidden hype-blades snarling somewhere within. I'm genuinely grateful for this one because it manages to contain all of the reasons I'm excited about a new Assassin's Creed alongside most of the reasons that I'll probably stop playing after an hour or two. The good stuff first - Ubisoft's gargantuan CreedCrafting studios make big budget pop culture history that I'm always delighted to explore. The bad is the cloaked figure leaping from a rooftop, doing the same old things in another city, in another time. Following, jumping, stabbing, killing. Where's the mystery?
]]>I always think music is a better model for videogames than film: individual series of games can be thought of as performers, reaching a feverish apex of popularity before settling into comfortable grooves and hoping for the rare, Kylie Minogue-like creative resurgence.
What's unusual about music is that most of its critical discourse revolves around pop. It's not because pop music is what's popular - though that helps - but because pop is obsessed with the new. It's an eclectic, hybrid genre, grabbing new sounds, new ideas, new fashion from wherever it can, subsuming what it needs and discarding the rest. When pop finishes with an idea, that idea either dies or it calcifies as its own genre and people stop talking about it.
In short, Assassin's Creed is now the adult contemporary of videogames. Assassin's Creed: Unity is Michael Bolton.
]]>Assassin's Creed's history with PC tardiness is about as well-documented as the Templars' involvement in history isn't. Almost annually, the story is the same: Ubisoft is non-committal about a PC date, release gets close or close-ish, and then the publisher suddenly announces a delay of a few weeks. It's nearly as much of a tradition as annual Assassin's Creed releases themselves. But will it happen again this time, or has Ubisoft finally kicked its inexplicable (or at least thus far not well-explained) delay habit to the curb? Well, if nothing else everything's going according to plan so far. Ubisoft told me that it's trying really hard for a simultaneous release of Assassin's Creed Unity.
]]>I'm afraid this is going to be a long one, because the debate around Assassin's Creed Unity not inculding any female avatar options in its co-op mode didn't half snowball overnight. Ubisoft are now backtracking on their initial defence that this was a workload issue, and instead claim it's a deliberate narrative-based decision - however, this only opens up more questions.
In the meantime, a former Assassin's Creed animation lead has called foul on the original claims that animating a female character results in an unbearable workload increase, while elsewhere at E3, a Far Cry 4 dev claimed that excessive animation needs are why there are no playable women in that game. Who to believe, eh?
]]>There are four playable characters in the upcoming, co-op-focused Assassin's Creed: Unity, and all four of them are blokes. Glowering blokes most probably, but that remains to be seen. It's a real shame not to have a glowering lady amongst that line-up. This is, unfortunately, not at all uncommon in the mainstream games industry, with its precious demographic targeting and fearfulness to depart from the proven profitable path, but in this instance Ubisoft has exacerbated the situation by arguing that the decision to go chaps-only is purely down to the additional work needed for the likes of animation and costumes.
It is worth observing here that that no less than nine studios (ten, according to some reports) are working on Assassin's Creed: Unity. Every single employee at all those was apparently too busy already to create a female character model. Presumably they were all working on the game's six different special editions instead.
]]>For a series about supposedly being in a brotherhood, Assassin's Creed could feel awfully lonely. Though I did enjoy having a magical button which made murderers rain from the skies, stab everyone then run away, they're more like human knife-grenades than people I could plot, scheme, and murder with. Huzzah, then, that Assassin's Creed Unity is making friends. It'll have four-player co-op, Ubisoft have announced at E3.
They've also shown off their impression of what you'd see if your head were lopped off then popped atop a stick, which certainly is a thing to create for a video games event. Oh E3!
]]>When you look at the Assassin's Creed series from a standpoint of raw numbers, things gets a little preposterous. I don't mean sales, either. It's well-documented that Hoods and Handspikes is basically this generation's Shoots and Ladders. No, I'm referring to less publicized stuff, like the number of people who work on these ceaselessly cascading historical murder romps. Assassin's Creed IV had all of its ships crammed into a single bottle by 900 some-odd people, the series' latest main entry, Assassin's Creed Unity, is apparently being put together by ten studios working in conjunction. Unity indeed.
It'll be out this fall alongside another, still-unnamed series entry aimed at the previous "gen" of consoles. I wouldn't be shocked if that ended up on PC as well, though.
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