Dead Island: Riptide launches April 23 in North America, April 26 worldwide

Dead Island: Riptide will launch on April 23, 2013 in North America, with a worldwide release to follow on April 26. Publisher Deep Silver has also announced pre-order bonuses for the soggy zombie sequel, namely an "exclusive pack of weapon mods." A special edition will also be available – specific retailers to be announced soon – and will include a special character skin "not obtainable anywhere else."

Dead Island: Riptide is set to feature an improved engine, a new weather system and character continuation from the first Dead Island. Also zombies.

Assassin's Creed 3 review: Declination of independence

The pig herding segment in Assassin's Creed 3 is probably the best one this year. If you play these games for the thrills of pudgy livestock redirection, it's the number one reason to buy Assassin's Creed 3. For everyone else (is anyone even still reading?), the recommendation must be more reserved.

Animal control is an optional activity on your sprawling homestead, but an essential rite in grasping the confused composition of Assassin's Creed 3. As new protagonist Connor mutters to himself about the things he does for his people, it becomes a little too easy to relate to such a banal chore. The things I do for this game, you'll think – this bold, uneven, occasionally brilliant, often frustrating action game.


Still, it has the brazen novelty of being a historical action game hinged on the American Revolution, and populated by figures like George Washington, Charles Lee and Paul Revere. The Boston Tea Party is a relatively recent point of interest for the franchise, and that goes some way to explaining the more sophisticated techniques of new assassin Connor (or Ratonhnhaké:ton to his Native American pals). As with Ezio, there's a personal injustice that drives Connor to assassinate conspirators, bears, bunnies and tea. Especially tea, you leafy, aromatic bastard.

The extravagant story is to blame for some of the game's unsteadiness, despite being one of its highlights. Indeed, Assassin's Creed 3 is filled with well-acted scenes that entertain, bristle, and understand the comedic value of a nervous nod over a spoken line. The opening will be savaged for being slow, but it's an elegant introduction to the 18th century and a fine primer on Connor's eventual intersection with the Revolution. His personal drama is an intense treat, and a reliable antidote to the daftness of what happens in the present day.

Though slavish devotion to the story's integrity is admirable – to the point where Ubisoft Montreal will build an entire theater just to set the stage – it tends to commandeer your role as assassin in a time of upheaval. The current course of Assassin's Creed is in line with a chilling deterioration of agency, evident every time the game floods your view with a list of optional objectives, or throws an intrusive navigation marker on the screen. You can turn the latter off, but you'll also lose QTE prompts.

When it comes to the main missions, you tend to feel like a neutered killer with your path plotted for you, or a glorified stuntman who has to hit the marks in his big action sequence, lest he repeat it over and over. There's no sense of empowerment in connecting the trivially spaced dots, or walking from one cutscene to the next, or chasing a man in a circle until you take the correct path and tackle him. By the time you get to the assassination, it's been robbed of any planning or sense of accomplishment.

The primary objectives are all over the place in terms of quality, but they seem to succeed whenever the director pulls back and gives you some maneuvering room. A better example can be found in the Templar-controlled forts, which can be approached as ingeniously or as clumsily as you can manage. You might lay down traps, systematically eliminate guards from above or below, or simply barge in with a loaded pistol. This is when Assassin's Creed 3 shines and when its components bump together in exciting ways. Even a failed plan can devolve into something unexpected, be it a last stand on the edge of a chasm or a fist fight in a storm. Oh, yes, there are weather effects now.

Once you get over the oscillating mission design you can enjoy the classic strengths of Assassin's Creed, as augmented by the gorgeous AnvilNext engine. The sense of scale and nearly palpable life in Boston and New York has the capacity to stun. The cities feel authentic enough to deter fact-checking, and impart that sense of being there – even if you've never been and never will be. These streets are nearly worth the price of admission alone, and they come with the implied promise that you'll never have to do something as boring as driving a car up and down them all day.

Beyond the cities you'll find a massive playground of rivers, cliffs and trees in the Frontier, an ideal testing ground for Connor's feats of free-running. His impeccable movement, uninhibited by hills and fallen logs, is as captivating to watch as it is to command. That effortless flow carries over to the redesigned combat, which breaks out of the franchise's staccato loop and lets you dispatch enemies without losing momentum, counter several incoming blows at once, and inject any equipped tool into the fight. It's tempting to fall back into the old wait-and-counter routine, but the animations are so flamboyant it's always worth experimenting with different finishers.

The artificial intelligence governing the Redcoats is a poor match for you, still, and with time it requires a strange, distracting suspension of disbelief. You'll have to believe that guards tend to forget your permanence as soon as you walk behind a wall, and that they can barely see you behind a shred of pixelated shrubbery. The civilians wandering the city also seem to have little reaction to murder in broad daylight. There weren't any video games back then, so we know they can't be that desensitized.

It's possible they're being distracted by the glut of goodies to investigate, collect and press B on throughout Assassin's Creed 3 – Ubisoft still seems deathly afraid of irking the people who said there was nothing to do in the original game. So, there's a lot to do in Assassin's Creed 3 outside of stabbing, but not much of it is fun. In fact, one of the game's biggest problems is that so little of it feels essential.

That isn't to say you shouldn't meet the game halfway but, man, why did it bring so much stuff with it? Some of the activities fall under grinding (leveling up your fellow assassins) and others are strings of superficial interaction (press B on a highlighted area to track an animal). The side missions that tie into your murderous repertoire are best, while those that tie into the economy smell like progression-porn traps from a mile away. And once you've recruited artisans for your homestead, you can craft items from recipes and send them out via convoys that you can oh my goodness this is boring.

The one exception here is the naval combat, which could be broken out into its own downloadable game after some further refinement. It's not particularly cohesive with the traits of an assassin, but Ubisoft has made a genuinely exciting time of going to sea. The ships lurch across the beautiful ocean, barely in your control, and shatter into smithereens when cannonballs find your broadside. The camera-shaking presentation and elegant interface tie it all together, fit to present as an apology for that tower-defense minigame in Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

If excess is becoming an issue in Assassin's Creed, we might rely on the multiplayer mode for a purer, more innovative approach to social subterfuge. This year's revision improves the interface and accessibility, and adds Wolf Pack, a must-play co-op mode. Now, four of you stalk assigned non-player characters that grow increasingly more paranoid and alert. Each kill extends the time on the clock, but only coordinated assassinations will give you enough bonus points to push it far enough to make it to the end of the round. In other words, you're encouraged to form a tiny, aggressively anti-social flash mob.

I expect most will come for Connor's story in Assassin's Creed 3, and they'll find that it's well told but detrimental to player agency. It's sad to see the game lose sight of its assassin role-playing ideals in favor of bombast, bomb blasts and pig herding, so I hope this is but a momentary stumble while the franchise regains its balance. Trim the excess, remember the central thrust (hint: it's with a knife) and then you'll have a great game again. Assassin's Creed 3 is the kind of game that's just good enough to make you wish it was better.

Assassin's Creed Liberation Review: Good Ideas Squandered on Troubled Play

Assassin's Creed Liberation signifies the first time a portable entry in Ubisoft's history-simulation franchise has managed to go toe-to-toe with its console siblings. For all intents and purposes, Liberation is a faithful (if smaller) rendition of Assassin's Creed. Herein lies its greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses.

Let's focus on the good first. Liberation's game world presents the same sense of openness and scale as its HD counterparts. Set primarily in French New Orleans shortly before the American Revolution, it focuses on a chapter of U.S. history that tends to be overlooked in light of all that was happening in Philadelphia and New York around the same time. It also includes one of the few female protagonists to have appeared in the Assassin's Creed franchise. This brings more to the game than just a feminine sway to the hips; heroine Aveline is not simply a girl skin over Ezio and Altaïr's bodies. The social ramifications of Aveline's gender and social standing -- she's the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy merchant and a former slave -- play an integral role not only in Liberation's story but also its mechanics.

Aveline doesn't enjoy the same freedom to strut about the city as the previous heroes of Assassin's Creed, but she uses her role to her advantage. We've made joking comparisons between Ezio and Batman, but Aveline is the real deal: Wealthy socialite by day, costumed assassin by night, and not afraid to go underground in disguise to snoop. More than a costume, each of Aveline's "personas" comes with its own special abilities and limitations.

As a lady of high society, she wears a corset, bustle, and plunging neckline that prevent her from engaging in wall-climbing shenanigans or any real combat. Dressed as a slave, she can climb and fight, but can only carry small weapons easily concealed about her person and has to avoid drawing attention to herself. And while the assassin guise represents her at her most capable, she's permanently "notorious," so guards will immediately recognize her as a criminal and attack, forcing her to choose her routes through the city with caution.

Yet with each of these drawbacks come boons as well. The slave is essentially anonymous and can blend into the background most easily, slipping past guards by being too unremarkable to notice. The lady persona allows Aveline to go anywhere in society, bribe guards, and charm gentlemen. This last feature is particularly interesting, as it functions not unlike Ezio walking around with courtesans in the ACII trilogy, except inverted. Aveline doesn't stroll around with an entourage of men who coo and giggle at all around them; rather, a single courtier will tag along behind her like a smitten puppy and fight off anyone who troubles her.

And, of course, there are plenty of people who will trouble Aveline, because Liberation employs the same annoying, contrived elements as every other Assassin's title. That means you'll constantly encounter things like the knots of three men who stand around talking and ignoring everyone else in the city, yet who are drawn to Aveline like iron filings to a magnet the instant she walks past. Rather than asking for money or strumming a lute like the beggars of yore, these guys take a more disturbingly aggressive approach by physically assaulting her, grabbing her by the arm and shoving her back and forth. And, as in previous games, it could be a convincing game element -- an unnerving, sexually tinged assault -- if it happened in moderation. The problem is that the exact same trio of thugs appears all over the place and does the exact same thing over and over, and always only to Aveline, revealing the utter artifice of the entire thing and rendering it a tiring nuisance.

Therein lies the problem with Liberation: Despite its fresh new setting and thoughtful application of the social dynamics of the colonial-era South, it's still the same old game that we've played four or five times already. It runs on the series' essentially automated engine in which playing basically consists of pointing yourself in a direction and running while holding down X and R. As usual, this allows you to effortlessly navigate the environment but comes at the expense of making fine controls unreliable at best. Anyone who has played an Assassin's game knows what's up: You'll have missions blown by the game's decision to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. My most mind-boggling Liberation moment came when I attempted to perform a ledge-grapple on the guy standing a foot away from where Aveline was hanging unseen. Even though I had my victim highlighted, the game interpreted my attack on him as a command to perform a plunging assassination on the guy 150 feet below. All those automated moves look cool, but I don't need awesome scripted bullet-time cutscenes as I go about my business; I just want to play, and Liberation's interface hinders that effort at crucial moments.

Like all Assassin's Creed games, Liberation is incredibly fun to play until you actually start participating in the story missions. Simply roaming the city and swamp offers a wonderful exercise in exploration, sight-seeing, and generally goofing around in history's sandbox. But once you jump into a memory, you'll follow a breadcrumb through some of the most rigid yet poorly explained examples of poor game design clichés in the industry. Aveline's first few quests consist of awkward stealth missions, escort missions, and tailing missions. It's almost as though Ubisoft Sophia carefully studied the game tropes that people hate most and said, "Yes, let's do all of those." I half-expected an ice level or auto-scrolling mine cart stage... though come to think of it, the infuriating reprise of Revelations' god-awful runaway carriage scenario midway through the story is the Assassin's equivalent of a mine level. Oh, and there's the mine escape sequence, which is one of the most sloppily executed pieces of video game I've ever had the misfortune to suffer through.

The problem with Liberation is that it's content to dwell on the same old game design ideas that have come to define the franchise in a year where it's up against two top-caliber games about sneaking and assassination. The almost-revolutionary social stealth of the first AC has largely been forgotten, and the assassination missions are basically just a matter of following a marker to the next waypoint for an almost instant win. Compared to the exquisite tension of Dishonored and the genuine freedom to slip invisibly into a crowd of people and chose one of any number of methods for completing a hit in Hitman: Absolution, the Assassin's Creed style feels disappointingly flat and automated. The series has only grown more restrictive and hand-holding over time, rendering its famous creed -- "Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted" -- an increasingly empty promise.

ability to control an Islamic holy warrior against armies of Catholicism. Despite being set in the plantation-era South, its take on slavery comes off as bizarrely antiseptic. You won't hear a single racial epithet or (outside of an auction in the opening cinematic and a very tiny number of random beatings that Aveline can interrupt in town) even see the wealthy white looking down on their slaves. Slavery definitely exists in the game; the mysterious disappearance of slaves is at the heart of Aveline's quest. But the writers' apparent reluctance to depict the true ugliness of the American slave trade ultimately serves to weaken the heroine's vigilantism. This is the Saturday morning cartoon version of the antebellum South.

The game would also be much better without the stupid Sony-mandated Vita gimmicks, many of which simply don't work. Even with a bug-fixing day-one title update, I had to reset my system several times when the game stopped recognizing rear touch-panel input, leaving me incapable of advancing beyond these distracting sequences. The touch nonsense was a figurative game-stopper in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, but here it's much more literal in nature.

Despite all of this, I love portable gaming, and simply having an authentic take on Assassin's Creed to play on the go helps makes up for the flaws. I can't give Liberation a glowing recommendation, but between its small-screen ambition and thoughtful take on navigating the social waters of its setting as a woman, I see a real glimmer of creativity here. Liberation doesn't live up to its potential, and in many ways it amplifies some of Assassin's Creed's longstanding issues, but how many games let you play a high society spy pretending to be a French-American plantation slave in order to topple a plot by the Templar Knights? And while you're on the bus, no less? For better and for worse, Liberation condenses the true essence of Assassin's Creed -- its strengths and weaknesses alike -- into portable form.

Need For Speed Most Wanted Review: Pastime Paradise

Need For Speed: Most Wanted is, in every sense of the word, a playground. Think back to those carefree days of your childhood when you wanted nothing more than to feel the crunch of woodchips beneath your sneakers. Instead of leaping off the swing set and clambering across the monkey bars, NFS has you soaring off ramps and drifting across highways. It's not the playground attendants you have to worry about in NFS, but rather an ever-growing horde of law enforcement agents. And like the playgrounds we populated as kids, there's no real sense of danger to be found. Your cars suffer some minor damage, but nothing any more severe than a few scraped knees thanks to the presence of licensed cars. Burnout's use of fictional analogues allowed Criterion to engage in all manner of destruction porn, but the studio had to reign it back now that they're playing with names like Maserati and Porsche.

Your digital recreation site this time around is Fairhaven City, a coastal amalgam of Boston and the Bay Area. The city is vast and filled with enough urban and rural spaces to speed on by. It's fitting that after a brief video showcasing your arrival in Fairhaven, the game simply lets go of your hand and allows you to explore the entirety of the city at your leisure. Most Wanted exudes the same sense of freedom as Burnout: Paradise, which inevitably becomes the game's main point of contention. Those who love the ability to meander around a world and pick up stray challenges whenever they feel like it won't be able to remove themselves from NFS. But anyone who needs a bit of structure to their games may find the sense of freedom to be a bit overwhelming.

While the boundaries of Fairhaven may be expansive, Criterion seems to have focused on vastness over density, as the city too often feels strangely devoid of activities to participate in. Don't get me wrong, there is no lack of content in NFS. Between dozens of cars to hop into, hundreds of races to indulge in, and countless billboards to smash through, you can lose quite a bit of time in Most Wanted. But when you boil it down, there's a distinct lack of variety in the activities present across Fairhaven. The fantastical Rube Goldberg challenges of Burnout are nowhere to be found, with a focus instead being placed on minor variations of standard the standard race formula.

For a game built upon the notion of allowing the player to create their own quest structure in a fluid and intuitive manner, Most Wanted stalls a bit too long whenever you want to make a change. Entering a given race leads to a loading screen that outstays its welcome. After the load, you're treated to an intro cinematic that sets up the mini-narrative behind each race. But want to retry that mission because you made one poor decision (which will happen quite often)? Well, prepare for that loading screen and intro movie combo once again. And while the dynamic structure of missions might make sense in the context of the world, it really takes away from what could have been an arcade-like flow to the whole package. Burnout 3 and Revenge provided an experience more akin my own personal play style than Paradise did. Had there been an option to either play Most Wanted as an open-world experience like Paradise, or in a more structured checklist style akin to Revenge, Criterion could have made sure that no player was left unsatisfied. Again, your opinion on this form of presentation really just depends whether you're more a fan of structure or freedom.

Thankfully, every time my frustrations with NFS start to rise, it delivers a moment that makes me fall in love with it all over again. Many of these come in the form of your races against Fairhaven's titular car deities. Once you've accumulated enough points, you're allowed to challenge one of the city's Most Wanted for a chance to move up in the rankings. It's during these vehicular boss battles that Criterion's vision for Most Wanted comes across most clearly. Going head-to-head against a single AI opponent with the wits and skills to match even the most abled drivers is an absolute treat that challenges without ever becoming frustrating. Couple this with an ever-growing army of law enforcers who'll stop at nothing to protect the sanctity of Fairhaven's streets, and what you're left with is a series of missions that become an interactive version of some of the all-time best cinematic car chases. Blasting through barriers, boosting across bridges, and slamming your opponents into oncoming traffic provide moments that are some of the year's most satisfying.

While these Most Wanted challenges may be the highlight of the single-player campaign, Need For Speed is absolutely meant to be played online with a handful of buddies. Once your version of Fairhaven is populated by other drivers, you're free to simply roam city and cause a ruckus, or engage in a more structured manner of sport. Players have the option to build a playlist of events that range from standard street races to more insane jump competitions. The multiplayer provides a great outlet for cooperative driving as well as some healthy competitive griefing. It's all too satisfying to watch a buddy prepare for a run at a ramp, only to slam into him moments before he's ready to take to the air. With the right group of people, Fairhaven has the potential to become a place where gamers go to hang out while deciding where they want their night of gaming to eventually take them.

Anyone with intentions of treating Most Wanted as a single-player outing might find the city to be an awfully lonely playground. But if you have buddies that will be online and tearing up the streets of Fairhaven on a fairly regular basis, you'll be able to create ample amounts of your own fun. Honestly though, it's telling that I'm more than willing to put up with some of the game's design flaws all due to the fact that the actual act of driving in NFS is so damn satisfying. While there are certainly some changes that I'd like to see, there's no denying that Most Wanted is a big, gorgeous playground that has the ability to absolutely eviscerate your free time, especially when paired with a handful of friends.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted puts the 'car' in carnage

There's not an iota of Tonto in this non-live-action launch trailer for Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but we'll forgive that oversight just this once. But we'll never forget.

 

Check out the touch controls in this Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation trailer

This trailer for Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation shows off some of the game's touch controls, which allow players to pick-pocket and perform chain kills with the swipe of a finger. Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation is coming to Vita on October 30. 

 

 

Zynga’s Bringing Farmville to Online Gambling

Shortly after firing about 150 people, Zynga has even better news for investors. It's getting into a sure-thing moneymaker, online gambling.

Gamasutra said on Thursday that Zynga saw a decent bump in its stock price after revealing plans long hinted at. They're getting into a partnership with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, an Austrian online gaming operator. Plans include "a slots simulator based on [Zynga's] Farmville," says Gamasutra, and that it's just one step toward a bigger presence in gambling for Zynga.

Considering how many people just straight up don't come back to play a social game after the first time they try it, and that 90 percent don't last a month, this is probably a shrewd move. Still doesn't mean they make anything I wanna play.

 

Brutal Zynga Update: 13 Games ‘Sunsetting’. More Studio Shutdowns. 5% Workforce Reduction

Following a day of bad news for the embattled maker of FarmVille and CityVille. Zynga chief Mark Pincus just sent this note to his company:
 
 

INTERNAL NOTE FROM ZYNGA CEO AND FOUNDER, MARK PINCUS
Team,

Earlier today we initiated a number of changes to streamline our operations, focus our resources on our most strategic opportunities, and invest in our future. We waited to share this news with all of you until we had first spoken with the groups impacted.

As part of these changes, we've had to make some tough decisions around products, teams and people. I want to fill you in on what's happened and address any concerns you may have.

Here are the most important details.

We are sunsetting 13 older games and we're also significantly reducing our investment in The Ville.

We are closing the Zynga Boston studio and proposing closures of the Zynga Japan and UK studios. Additionally, we are reducing staffing levels in our Austin studio. All of these represent terrific entrepreneurial teams, which make this decision so difficult.

In addition to these studios, we are also making a small number of partner team reductions.

In all, we will unfortunately be parting ways with approximately 5% of our full time workforce. We don't take these decisions lightly as we recognize the impact to our colleagues and friends who have been on this journey with us. We appreciate their amazing contributions and will miss them.

This is the most painful part of an overall cost reduction plan that also includes significant cuts in spending on data hosting, advertising and outside services, primarily contractors.

These reductions, along with our ongoing efforts to implement more stringent budget and resource allocation around new games and partner projects, will improve our profitability and allow us to reinvest in great games and our Zynga network on web and mobile.

Zynga made social gaming and play a worldwide phenomenon, and we remain the industry leader. Our success has come from our dedication to a simple and powerful proposition – that play is not just something people do to pass time, it's a core need for every person and culture.

We will all be discussing these difficult changes more with our teams and as a company. Tomorrow, Dave and I will be hosting a post-earnings webcast (details to follow) and next week we will be discussing our broader vision and strategy during our quarterly all-hands meeting. I'm confident this puts us on the right path to deliver on the promise of social gaming and make Zynga into an internet treasure.

If you have any immediate questions, I hope you will talk directly with your manager, Colleen, or me.

I look forward to talking with you tomorrow.


Mark
 

Hitman: Absolution cinematic trailer is pretty much shooting everyone

This cinematic trailer for Hitman: Absolution teases the game's story while flashing guns around. It makes us wonder: Can't they just talk it out? Talkman Hitman: Absolution is set to launch November 20 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.


 

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 arriving Nov. 13 ?

Source: A supposed Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 box art photo posted to the unofficial Modern Warfare 3 Twitter account.

What we heard: Gamers will have a new Call of Duty game to play this year. That's a certainty. New evidence today suggests that game will be Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and will arrive on store shelves on November 13, 2012.

Is Black Ops 2 coming November 13? Photo credit @MW3Updates.


The box art appears to be for a European version of the unannounced game, but if the past serves as precedent, November 13, 2012 is likely an all-regions launch date. The most recent Call of Duty games Modern Warfare 3 and the original Black Ops shipped in most major regions on the same day.

A November 13, 2012 release date for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 wouldn't be a stretch, as new Call of Duty games have shipped on the second Tuesday in November since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The image is muddied by a lens flare, which blocks out the gun-toting character's face, and the box itself appears to be a standard DVD case instead of the 360's signature green plastic. Additionally, the font for "Call of Duty" appears to be slightly dissimilar to materials used to promote past games.

Despite these issues, the character adorning the box art appears to be a crisper version of the figure highlighted on the Black Ops 2 rumored poster as well as the official GameStop teaser website.

Over the weekend, Activision updated the Call of Duty website with news that the next Call of Duty title will be revealed on May 1 during the NBA playoffs on TNT. Two Call of Duty titles have been confirmed thus far for release this year: a new console installment and a PlayStation Vita game.

The official story: As of press time, Activision had not responded to GameSpot's request for comment.

Forza Horizon Review

The Good

• Sprawling open world is a blast to explore
• Stunning vistas highlighted by a full day-night cycle
• Flexible difficulty welcomes a wide range of drivers
• Plenty to do outside organized events  
• Terrific competitive multiplayer. 

The Bad

• Awkward storytelling
• Disappointing online free-roaming.

There's something oddly romantic about Forza Horizon. Gone are the real-life circuits of Motorsport, replaced by a gorgeous stretch of the American West. Sweeping praries and looming peaks set a grand stage, and a persistent sense of competition keeps the vast expanse from feeling lonely. Add in Forza's famously stellar driving physics, and you have a game that makes it a joy to hit the asphalt and roam wherever the road takes you. The experience isn't as refined as its predecessors, but Horizon is an exciting and adventurous spinoff just the same.

Horizon's setting is a fictional interpretation of the Colorado countryside, with the Rockies on one end of the map and an imposing desert on the other. In between is a rolling mesh of highways, dirt roads, and small towns. It's a beautiful landscape, where varied geography and a full day-night cycle combine to create some impressive vistas. Moments like cresting a hill at 150mph just as the sun begins to rise are a frequent occurrence, leading you to throw your car around one corner after another in a fit of automotive wanderlust.

Of course, it's not all free-form exploration. Horizon's story--yes, this is a Forza game with a storyline--revolves around the titular Horizon Festival, an event that attracts 250 gearheads to compete in a slew of events spread throughout Horizon's version of Colorado. The story unfolds through cinematics depicting your rise through the ranks of the competition, hitting a few awkward notes along the way by focusing on a cast of desperately hip 20-something drivers and their penchant for forced trash-talking. Awkward though it is, the story never becomes invasive or obnoxious; it's merely forgettable fluff that serves to explain your place in Horizon's collection of events. 

The structure of these events should feel familiar to anyone who has played a Forza game. Races largely fall into themed categories with performance caps that scale according to your progression. You might begin the game by facing off against C-class muscle cars before eventually moving on to a competition against S-class Italian sports cars. Horizon has inherited the smooth difficulty curve of previous games, so building up your skills from one tier to the next remains a nice, gradual process. It's unfortunate that so many of these cars are carryovers from previous games, and the overall selection isn't quite as expansive as Forza 4's, but the process of working your way up the performance index remains as enthralling as ever.

Where Horizon deviates from Forza's past is in its mixed-surface events and point-to-point races that take advantage of the expansive, sprawling terrain. This version of Colorado isn't all asphalt; you often find yourself tearing through winding dirt roads on your quest for victory. These surfaces don't feel as chunky and volatile as a rally racer in the vein of Dirt, but adjusting your driving style to handle varied terrain is a refreshing challenge. Events like these, as well as endurance runs that send you clear across the road map through constantly shifting geographical terrain, help to set Horizon apart from its circuit-based predecessors. 

One of Horizon's great strengths is that, even outside of organized events, the sense of competition is all around you. At any point you can pull up behind other festival drivers (distinguishable from regular traffic by the name above their car) and challenge them to a race on the spot. Speed trap cameras are placed on just about every road, capturing your high speed as you pass through them, registering your pace on a leaderboard and, if you're good enough, sending a message straight to your Xbox Live friends that they've been outperformed.

Throughout all this is a real-time feedback system that functions as a natural extension of the one found in Forza 4. Only here it's not just stylish drifting that's rewarded, but also narrowly avoiding head-on collisions, knocking down stop signs, and catching the occasional bit of air. The rewards aren't massive--you're granted credits when you perform such-and-such number of dangerous maneuvers--but they function as a persistent form of positive feedback, letting you feel like you're never wasting your time by just driving around at your own leisure.

Despite Horizon's newfound focus on style and flash, sim enthusiasts need not be alarmed: this is no arcade racer. Like in previous entries in the franchise, vehicle handling is determined by a modular collection of driving assists, such as traction control, that let you fine-tune the experience to your liking. With all the assists enabled, Horizon is an accessible racer that doesn't command expert-level driving skills. But disable all those assists, and the cars are short of lively and demanding. You need to be wary of the Hennessy Viper's penchant for skidding around like mad when you've hit the throttle too hard in the low gears, just as you need to respect the Ford F-150's habit of flipping over on fast corners like a dog who wants its belly rubbed. But, as in previous Forzas, taming these beasts is a deeply rewarding endeavor.

You'll want to invest some time in your driving skills, too, because the AI competition has done its homework. Whereas Forza 4 suffered from an issue where opposing drivers would frequently overshoot sharp corners almost at random, there are very few of those mistakes in Horizon. The Forza AI's occasional aggressive streak remains intact--which you can have fun exploiting on the highway by luring anyone drafting you into oncoming traffic--but overall, the competition's intelligence feels somewhat improved.

Car customization is one area where Forza veterans may find themselves disappointed. You can still combine your own vinyl decals with new paint to create custom liveries, as well as upgrade your stock parts to become more competitive at higher racing tiers. But these systems are virtually identical to those found in the last few outings, and beyond that, Forza 4's advanced tuning system (where you could tweak tire pressure or brake bias, for instance) is a complete no-show in Horizon. On the plus side, the process of photographing your car and sharing your artwork is far more rewarding here than it has ever been thanks to the natural beauty and varied lighting of Horizon's virtual Colorado.

Those who invest time in designing their own vinyls and liveries will be happy to hear that the online storefront makes its return in Horizon (where you can import and sell your old vinyls), as do the vehicle-sharing car clubs introduced in Forza 4. Of course, Horizon's online offerings also extend to competitive multiplayer, where you can easily jump into a match using an intuitive and relatively effortless matchmaking lobby system.

At its best, Horizon's multiplayer is either incredibly intense (like gunning toward the finish line at night in a 20-mile point-to-point race) or ridiculously goofy (like eight cars careening around a golf course all trying to smash into one driver in the king-of-the-hill mode), but it's terrific fun throughout. And in a very nice touch, there's a slot machine system that rewards you with a random car or pile of credits every time you level up in multiplayer (which happens fast and often in the early goings).

While Horizon's competitive multiplayer is entertaining, its cooperative free-roam system feels like a missed opportunity. This is where you can get a bunch of players together in the same world and either wander around on your own or band together to complete co-op challenges such as combining for 100 near misses or having four players pass through the same speed trap at 200mph within five seconds of each other. Some of these challenges can be wonderfully entertaining, but the way they're communicated to players is clunky and obtuse. Only the host can select a challenge, and by default the game fails to tell you where a specific speed trap is located on the map. On top of that, you constantly have to pull up and scroll through a lengthy menu to remind yourself of the details of each challenge, sending your car coasting down the road without a driver to steer it.

It's a shame that outside of rivals mode challenges, which let you race your friends' ghosts after each festival event, single-player and multiplayer are kept at arm's length in Horizon. You have to exit out of the former to get to the latter, because there's no way for a friend to simply drop into your world for some free-roaming fun while you're taking part in festival events. With some tighter integration between single-player and multiplayer, and the sorts of customization opportunities found in car modification (there's no way to create your own race by selecting waypoints on the map, for instance), the free-roaming could have been an absolute blast. As it stands, though, it's fun for a little while, but that novelty wears out quickly.

Horizon may not be as socially capable as some open-world games, but it's still a terrific racer. It's hard to overstate just how beautiful the world is that Playground Games has created. From the foothills of the Rockies to the winding roads that scale desert cliffs, it's an absolute delight to put your car through its paces as you explore every last inch of asphalt. Horizon's occasional missteps may clash with the machinelike precision of the Motorsport games that preceded it, but its ambition and untethered road map more than make up for those faults. This is a game that understands the thrill of the open road, and in delivering that thrill it's an unqualified success.

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Should Assassin’s Creed III Be Your First Assassin’s Creed?

With the impending launch upon us, it can be tempting to go back and play through all the other games before stepping up to Assassin’s Creed III. But if you managed to make it this far without playing any of the others, it might not be worth your time. Assassin’s Creed III has expanded upon the successful formula and is undoubtedly the biggest game in the series to date, making it the perfect entry point for players new to the series.

The Story So Far

Assassin’s Creed has always placed a heavy emphasis on narrative, but despite that, it hasn’t really pulled the threads together in a coherent way... yet. So far, our story follows the path of Desmond Miles as he uses the Animus to relive the memories of his Assassin ancestors while protecting them from the Knight Templars -- both in the Animus and the real world.

This all might sound a bit confusing, but thankfully there’s a “previously on Assassin’s Creed” wrap-up at the beginning that summarizes the story so far. It doesn’t cover everything, but it summarizes enough to get the main point across for new players. It also helps that each game in the series works as an independent experience. Sure, they might be better as a whole, but they can stand alone, both in terms of story and mechanics.

Assassin’s Creed III is the perfect place to jump in, as we saw the conclusion of the Ezio trilogy with Revelations. The clean slate means that there aren’t any unanswered questions hanging around like there were with Assassin's Creed I and II -- with the exception of some of the Desmond stuff. That has always taken a backseat to the ancestral action though, so it isn’t that critical.

Assassin’s Creed III has the advantage of historical accuracy (with the exception of the assassin running around killing everyone), with each of the major events in the game corresponding to actual real-life events that took place during the Revolutionary War. The setting of the Revolutionary War allows for more context throughout the game, giving players a frame of reference for their actions in relation to major historical events.

Change of Scenery and Tools

One of the biggest gripes with the last few games is that there weren’t any drastic changes and it felt like you were still roaming around the same environment two games later. In previous games, it was all about the big cities, but Assassin’s Creed III focuses on shorter, more underdeveloped areas. It takes place in a time when the colonists were still settling and forming new areas of development.

This isn’t a bad thing though, as it actually allows for more free-form exploration and discovery. You can spend less time climbing to get to a roof and more time running from building to building. Assassin’s Creed III mixes things up by presenting not only a new environment, but a completely new style of terrain for Connor to explore with the inclusion of the Frontier -- an open-world forest area that relies on movement through trees rather than city buildings. This is the first time that something like this has been done in Assassin’s Creed before. Between the open Frontier and small cities like Boston, Assassin’s Creed III has the largest variety of locales for players to explore.

With this new environment comes some new tools at Connor’s disposal, most notably his tomahawk and rope dart. His tomahawk is much better than any of the daggers or swords from previous games at close range encounters. This is partly due to the more fluid combat system that is much faster due to the abundance of black powder guns during the Revolutionary War. The rope dart also speeds up the flow of combat and leads to some exceptionally brutal kills.

Side Quests

The Assassin’s Creed series is known for its side quests, both bad (Assassin’s Creed) and good (Assassin’s Creed II). Luckily, Assassin’s Creed III tends to follow in the footsteps of the latter, even taking things up a notch with the inclusion of naval missions. Gone are the days of painstakingly hunting through the city looking for flags and feathers in hopes of completing a quest (though there are still feathers scattered throughout the Frontier). Instead, Assassin’s Creed III focuses more on the bigger events of the time that might not fit into the main story but are still extremely relevant for the time period and present an optional narrative line to explore. This gives the player a larger variety of missions that aren’t just collectible hunting or assassinations, which can’t be said of past titles.

Naval battles are of particular interest, as nothing of the sort has ever been attempted in an Assassin’s Creed title before (unless you count the horrible tower defense sequences in Revelations). They give the player control of a large naval vessel in the biggest open area that the series has ever seen. It isn’t some on-rails sequence either because there’s actual strategy involved as you navigate the waters, line up your targets, and destroy them while avoiding incoming fire.

These translate to some of the most intense action sequences in the series and have a large variety of objectives that aren’t just “shoot the other boat”. Some of these sequences even translate into on-foot combat as Connor boards enemy ships after disabling their weapons and returns to his boat, usually leaving the enemy ship in a fiery wreckage.

The simulated home management from Ezio’s villa in Assassin’s Creed is back in Assassin's Creed III with Connor’s Homestead. The Homestead is Connor’s sanctuary in the Frontier and a focal point for a large portion of the combat in the area. It still isn’t a major part of the game, but it does play a more involved role as you’ll actively start building it out early on in the story. It continues to be a great way to spend time while not focusing on the main quests or if you need to take a break from all the stabbing.

Multiple Assassins

Multiplayer has been done before in the Assassin’s Creed series, starting in Brotherhood, but it was never really much more than different variants of a deathmatch format. Assassin’s Creed III changes that by introducing new competitive and cooperative modes that are worlds better than any of the previous iterations.

Wolfpack is a new cooperative multiplayer mode in Assassin’s Creed III and is unlike anything in the series so far. It doesn’t rely on individuality or betrayal, but rather how well your team can communicate and work as a singular unit to take down groups of AI-controlled enemies in an allotted amount of time. Domination works roughly the same way, though it's more competitive rather than cooperative and tasks you with using your teamwork to capture certain points on the map.


So, Should It ?

While there’s plenty of reasons to go back and enjoy the previous Assassin’s Creed title, it’s a busy holiday season for games and you might just not have the time. Assassin’s Creed III makes a compelling case for why it should be your first in the series come October 30th, and we can’t help but agree.