I’m not following closely and haven’t gamed on PC in a while but:
Denovo is a technology that is supposed to prevent copying games (DRM). Not sure what it’s current state is or might be mixing it up with other DRM, but DRM is known for causing headaches for paying customers. Using excessive system resources, refusal to launch for legitimate paying customers, spyware/excessive data collected and sent to a corporation, etc. In some games, volunteers will patch bugs out of a game, and this will cause the game to think it’s cracked and refuse to launch.
Some DRM is “phone home” and can’t be played offline, so people in remote areas can’t play. And sometimes the company doesn’t want to keep servers online when the game has been out for 10 years, so people that purchased the game can no longer play.
In this case, the company let reviewers rate the game and got the initial scores and sales, then pushed the unpopular DRM update. It’s scummy. If you’re using it, then use it. Don’t bait and switch.
Before and on release date, most sales are to a minority of highly engaged gamers that then create reviews and hype. Ubisoft needs that hype as they know the majority of the profit they will make is from sales after the release when the general public reads those reviews and then decide to spend their dollar on the game because the reviews were good. Also the majority of the general public won’t pirate anyway…
But once it’s out it’s out. I at least understand the logic of DRM from launch because it delays cracks, but once you’ve released without DRM it’s out there lol.
I don’t know how the launch went but these days the release version of games is usually a buggy mess with half the content stripped out of it so they can sell it later as DLC or a season pass
The sad part is that tomorrow they could release “Assasins Creed: Reflection”. And people would make the exact same mistake all over.
You know Ubisoft has a shit reputation. You know Bethesda is famous for broken, buggy, glitchy games. You know Blizzard Activision isn’t the same as old Blizzard. Don’t you guys have phones?
I didn’t buy this game. I didn’t buy Starfield, and I didn’t buy Diablo IV.
Anyone not blinded by hype could see this coming to all those games from a paid pre-alpha deluxe collectors gold season battle pass track booster mile away.
they are going to run out of words in the dictionary to name these fucking games, they will start using words in a different language for the codenames.
Origins was first AC game I played. 3 months after completing origins, which had bored me to death, I tried my hand at Odessey. The gameplay was exactly same. It felt like I was playing the same game again. Exact same mechanics and combat style. Uninstalled within half an hour.
Then I tried Unity and Syndicate, because people praise them so much. And I realised that Ubisoft has been remaking the same game over and over for more than a decade now. They just change the setting and rehash everything. The animations in Unity look exactly same as Odessey.
I had the same fear when I picked up Miles Morales, that it would feel the same as previous Spidey game. But they quickly introduced a few new mechanics which made the game feel ever so slightly different.
It was OK when the games were a bit smaller (and also makes more sense when played in the right order).
Going from 1 to 2 was a huge improvement, as 1 felt more like a tech demo. Then they added two more 2’s, and frankly they were the exact same.
3 was a bit shit, and lost the city charm. It doesn’t really work in the countryside.
Black Flag was massively popular at the time, because the pirate ship stuff was cool, and it also featured the least amount of Assassin’s Creed gameplay. I think the more recent games still haven’t matched that feel with any of the ship gameplay.
Unity shoehorned in multiplayer, and managed to annoy both single player fans (who don’t want multiplayer) and multiplayer fans (because there’s like 4 missions you can do in co-op).
I didn’t play Syndicate because I was bored to fucking death of AC by this point.
Origins tried turning it into a massive RPG, with levels and choices that don’t really do anything, and stopped assassinations from actually being a guaranteed kill if your stats weren’t high enough.
Odyssey did more of the same, added the boat back in, and made the whole game ridiculously big. Like, there’s good stuff in there (the Minotaur tourist trap is a favourite, along with some of the fantasy elements), but you’ve genuinely seen most of the gameplay the game has to offer before you’ve even got off Tutorial Island. It doesn’t even really get harder. There’s just more of it. It was in serious need of an editor to bring it down to about a third of the size.
I’m still so burnt out on finishing that like 3 years ago, that I’ve not played Valhalla either.
3 was great in the forest and old timely cities/towns
It also had better ship combat than 4
But like you said; it shouldn’t have been in the IP
I think Odyssey has comparable ship combat to 4
I tried Valhalla (on console so I pirated it) but I have no idea how long the game is. At the start of the game you’re told to wait “there” so I left the console on for an hour and it was still just waiting. Haven’t touched it since
I’m kind of the opposite side of the spectrum for at least some parts. If anything, I’ve been wishing the games would go back to the old formula. I felt like as the games progressed, they added just enough to keep me interested, and I liked the story. Black Flag was really great, despite the fact that it had less traditional AC game play in it. But I did like it when it was there, and the ship stuff was cool.
Then came Oddysee, which, I liked, but kind of wish it had more AC stuff. Played a decent bit of Odysee, but didn’t ever get around to finishing it.
When they said they were going back to their roots, I thought that sounded awesome, but for obvious reasons was a bit hesitant to get excited.
That’s funny because I hated everything they changed. If I’m playing a Spider-Man game why would I want to have a super punch (and metre to fill it)? And they showed that in the teaser for the next game so I feel they didn’t learn any lessons about spider man being spider man
Hardly anyone is streaming it. It’s the same cringy dialogue with the same boring game as its predecessors. I haven’t seen anything in any of the streams that would change my mind.
They rat-fucked Kojima towards the end of development of MGS5 and then raped the corpse of the FOX engine with that shitty MGS zombies game. When that didn’t work they decided to take a break from making video games and transitioned most of their development resources into making gambling house games for casinos. All their IPs went away for a while but I think they’re trying to get back into making games more recently.
Interesting. I guess one good thing about them not giving much of a crap about their IP is that we got the Netflix Castlevania series (although, Nocturne, so far, is kinda meh despite its Rondo / SotN era).
Denuvo doesn’t prevent games working on Steam Deck, but depending on how it’s implemented it can cause other problems like preventing a game from launching if it hasn’t been able to connect online in a while, or weird performance issues. It varies from game to game.
Good to know. I haven’t run into any issues, but I dunno if any games I’ve played had it. I had considered getting Mirage for Steam Deck, but I really don’t want to own it on ubisofts app.
This misconception with DRM making it unplayable on steam deck I think stems from 3rd party anti-cheat software flagging Linux players. Denuvo “works” fine on steam deck and Linux as a whole, same goes for anti-cheats. Developers always have the option to tune the anti-cheats to allow Linux players, but only some of them do.
If you’re the only reviewer that doesn’t get one then you won’t have a review up for when people read them most, right on release day. So game companies can threaten to exclude you if you write something they don’t like.
Imo they should be an everyone or no one deal, probably even by law.
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