Creeds and Killers

Assassin's Creed has been a series that has packed a lot of surprises. Many of them are the kind none of us every expected. I'll throw out a quick spoiler alert here but since the game is half a decade old I feel like you're reading at your own risk here. The first spoiler was that the game was not straight historical fiction as some of the first trailers led us to believe, but instead a sci-fi heavy outing using genetic memory and a precursor civilization to tell an epic of human survival.

The second surprise was that Ubisoft would stop in the middle of their numbered trilogy to give Ezio his own trilogy. Most surprising to me at least is that at no point has it felt like they're playing for time. I've grown to really love Ezio as a character and his own trilogy-within-a-trilogy has done a lot to flesh out both his and Altair's characters and really set us up for a great finale.

I just finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. I took it down to the wire, of course. I'm now prepped and ready for Assassin's Creed III to drop on Tuesday.  I ended up really enjoying Revelations, despite some issues. The first issue is the fact that Ezio is like 60 and running around on rooftops and parachuting from towers to save damsels in distress. The second, is that by the end of the game you're doing all of this in damn-near full plate armor. The effect is so jarring that I ended up switching back to one of the early-game armors that was much lighter just so I could continue to suspend disbelief. It's not even believable for a man in his prime to lug that much weight across rooftops, let alone one of Ezio's...experience. The revolutionary setting gives me hope that Connor won't be swinging through the trees in full plate by the end of Assassin's Creed III.

The last problem I had with AC:R was that it moves a little slow for awhile. But boy howdy does the finish make up for it. The back third of the game is a treat. Some of the best sequences the series has offered up so far, including turning a carriage chase, generally one of my least favorite parts of the Assassin's Creed series, into one of the most fun AC moments to date.

I'm even more excited for ACIII now that I'm caught up. Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Some Notes: Ezio will probably go down as one of my favorite all time video game characters, and Connor has some serious work to do if he hopes to displace him as my favorite AC protagonist. Not bad for a guy that I didn't even like in his debut game.

Now That's Good Televison

Tonight I continued my time honored tradition of discovering a wonderful show long after most of the world has already discovered it.  Tonight's installment is The Newsroom, speaking of course of the HBO drama from Aaron Sorkin, not the Canadian comedy from the CBC.

Normally I wouldn't talk about just some new show that I liked, but this was the first show in quite a while that actually wowed me. I've enjoyed previous Sorkin shows, perhaps not as much as I should, but still found them to be entertaining and usually quite thought-provoking, especially considering the rest of the TV fair that's out there.  The Newsroom really grabbed me though, much moreso than his previous offerings. This is a little surprising for me. My gut says I should enjoy The West Wing the most, given my poli-sci background. But The Newsroom. Just wow. If the opening scene (which most people have probably seen on YouTube or around the web, it features Jeff Daniels detailing the decline of America as the supposed "Best Country in the World") doesn't grab you and get you thinking, good luck finding anything on TV that does.

It's the kind of show that will inspire kids to be news anchors. Or at least it might, if it wasn't on HBO and they were allowed to watch it.

Full disclosure, all of this gushing is following my viewing of the first episode. I'm at least level headed enough to get a few more episodes in before I write up a more thorough entry for the recommendations page. But I've got a good feeling that my feelings on it aren't really going to decline.

Some Notes: I'll just stop making promises about posts, okay? It should be clear that I'd really like to maintain this blog, but life keeps standing in my way. I'll continue to work on it. Hopefully we'll get there someday.