 Ubisoft disappoints
Candice Jones
I can't remember ever being more disappointed in a gaming company than I am right now with Ubisoft, developer of Assassins Creed II – and this even before actually playing the new game.
Traditionally, Ubisoft has released some of the most amazing games, from your everyday shoot-em-ups to the cool quest adventures like the Myst series. Unfortunately, the company has gone and shot itself in the foot, and more than one South African PC gamer will want to steer clear of new titles from Ubisoft – at least until they get their act together.
What Ubisoft has done with all its new PC games (luckily, if you are a console gamer, you are immune), is fire up a security system to prevent people pirating the games. Nothing sinister in that, right? Wrong! The new security system requires all the company’s new games to have an internet connection to both register, and play.
If your internet connection is anything like mine, then you will know that these DRM servers, as they are called, have made playing Ubisoft games virtually impossible. Every time my ADSL line took a slight dip in latency, I was booted out of Assassins Creed II.
With some persistence, I did manage all of three hours of gameplay on the game, which only made my disappointment all the more intense. The game is a masterpiece, probably the best the company has produced in years.
Ubisoft listened to the criticism it received from the first release of the game and remade the game into something great - a richer story, more to do than the original four quests repeated ad nauseum and incredible settings.
Combine all that with easy game play and character controls, and far more intelligent NPCs, and this would have been the game of the year.
But until Ubisoft releases the patch to allow gamers on PC to play offline, I am going to avoid playing it due to all the frustration it brings.
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