Assassin's Creed II (Part 2)

Well I beat AC2 last night and I am impressed enough to warrant another blog. The first game had that "plot twist" I told you about (that you learn about in the first three minutes of playtime). AC2 also has a plot twist, but this time it is very skillfully done. The story is truly viewed through the eyes of Ezio who is the main character. The game never stops the story to explain itself to you the gamer, which is a huge plus. Personally, I hate games and movies which assume the viewer is so stupid that they have to slow everything way down and explain it all to you when it is much more stimulating to figure things out on your own. AC2 definitely assumes that you are not a moron and instead of being condescending ends up being extremely rewarding to the player. There are literally tons of stories, clues, and puzzles that can be skipped entirely during the regular playthrough that substantiate and fill out the story, and missing them would be a huge mistake. For those of you who are playing I refer to the hidden glyphs, and reading the codex pages. As you find these scraps of information a huge and foreboding worldwide conspiracy begins to take shape which does a pretty good job of accrediting major wars (contemporary and ancient) to a certain factions trying to assert a New World Order. The game culminates during and just after the last boss battle where the curtain is literally ripped away and the basis for everything in the game is explained in a way that gave me chills. It was like a hundred shards of information were floating about in my mind and I was trying to make sense of them and suddenly all the answers clicked beautifully into place so that the plot twist was really more of a revelation.

In addition to the above it should also be mentioned that the music in this game is awesome, the graphics are leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor and all the varied mini-missions really keep the game going right through to (and beyond) the end. Another new addition to this game is finding the Assassin's tombs and removing critical artifacts from them. What makes these so much fun is that while much of the game involves finding a way to get from point A to B, these normal movements are not specifically set up to be puzzles. Each of the tombs are set up as a miniature level that must be conquered in a way that draws on platforming skills and requires on-the-fly problem solving skills as many involve timed elements. This really felt like Ubisoft going back to its venerable Prince of Persia series and really ended up feeling like a big shiny present in a game that is already outstanding. You really should consider buying or renting this game.

Assassin's Creed II

So guess what I have been doing lately?

When the first Assassin's Creed came out I jumped all over it. It had its drawbacks and shortcomings, most notably of which were the monotony of the smaller 'missions' such as tailing someone, picking someone's pocket, or beating information out of someone's sorry hide. While each of these tasks were fun the first few times, the game made you do them over and over for each mission. This is such a perfect example of how realism does not equal fun. If you were a real assassin of course you would need to do all those things many times in order to learn your target's habits and haunts. But it doesn't really matter what is realistic or not to a gamer. We want variety and panache. If a game becomes tedious or boring a gamer is liable to just insert one of his other games and let some dust collect.

This problem has been completely solved in AC2 by simply removing the whole thing (I haven't finished the game yet so I don't know for certain if it pops up later). Your character simply finds allies (a simple matter of getting to a location) and talks to them; they have already done all your leg work for you. There are still plenty of mini-missions, but they are completely voluntary now. The closest thing to finding your own information now is getting a bit of information from your primary targets.

The other major problem with the first game (for me) was collecting all thousand or so flags if you were a completionist. Collecting these had no positive impact on the overall game and since they didn't show up on the map (or mini-map) they were a complete pain in the hiney. This game still has plenty of things to collect but most of the show up on the maps (once you buy treasure maps) and they all have import, such as collecting treasure chests which give you money to spend on upgrades. I always felt that the challenge should be GETTING to a location which has a collectible, not so much FINDING it. The game, at its heart, is a free-running platformer, so moving around should be tantamount.

Where both games really shine is in movement and combat. Both can be muddled through by a clunky player, but if you hone your skills you turn a good game into an excellent one. The whole combat system becomes this dance of death against multiple opponents where timing and weapon choice are critical. There is a counter-attack system which involves striking just before their attack lands, but incoming attacks vary in strength and speed and timing it just right to get through a fight against a dozen guys without them touching you always leaves a good feeling. AC2 has really ramped things up by adding lots of new combat tools into the mix: smoke bombs, throwing money on the ground to incite the crowd, and being able to pick up any weapon that an opponent drops really adds depth and flavor to an already great system. As for movement, even small differences in directional input result in a different interpretation by the game and it doesn't really care if you leap to your death. Most of the time this doesn't hamper the player but it really pays off to figure out your path before you start jumping around like an idiot. The pathfinding for climbing could be a little better. A couple times I have been climbing and my character stops because he cannot go up anymore and the next handhold is just a bit off center from him and I need to slide right or left to continue my climb.

The game picks up exactly where the first left off. If you haven't played the first game then the major plot twist is that you are a modern descendant of an Assassin and you lie on a machine that can help you relive your ancestor's memories which are stored in your genetic material. Kinda hokey and they tell you all this during the first cutscene so it's not a surprise. The problem is that the game would probably have been better without any of the modern stuff; it was confusing to try and keep track of two main characters and what they were doing, and every time you were the modern-day guy you pretty much just got out of the machine and went to your room to sleep, woke up and went back to the table. The game was intended from the beginning to be a series so hopefully this second game will have more stuff to actually do in the 'real' world. As for the memory stuff in AC2, once you go in you stay in until most of the missions are done. I am probably halfway done with the game and I am still in for the first time. This really helps the game because the player isn't forced to switch gears every 20 minutes.

The bottom line is that Assassin's Creed II is compelling and fun, as well as being extremely rewarding to the more dedicated player. If you want the whole story you had better play through the first one but don't make me twist your arm as that was an outstanding game as well.

3x3x5

As promised here is some info on the 3x3x5, which behaves exactly like a bandaged 6x6x6. It will always turn along its inner slices (behaving like a normal 3x3x3) but an entire hemisphere (hemicube?) must have properly oriented half-pieces to turn along an outside slice. This makes me want to try a solve from two different approaches. First, I want to try and pair up all the half-pieces and solve as a normal 3x3x3. Obviously the edge pieces will be easier to pair as each center-edge piece (cedge?) can be paired with two face-edges (fedge?). The inner corner pieces each have two colors meaning they only have one mate. I think I will pair up all the edges and then I can put two same-colored edges on one face along with the corners to be paired so when I align the corners the edge pieces change position but are still in a solved state. Rinse and repeat and then I can solve as a usual 3x3x3. This method will be time-consuming as I will need to position and orient corners and edges with each attempt at pairing the half-pieces.

The second method I want to try is a top-down method which I know will give me headaches as all the algorithms I know will be difficult or impossible to adapt to a bandaged cube, making me try and invent or find new ways to deal with new problems. I would only try this method for the learning opportunity, as logically the first method will work just fine.

Here are some pictures...




You can see clearly how it would be impossible to turn the outer slices at this point.




This cube was purchased from Cube 4 You along with my Teraminx. The quality of this cube is excellent. The plastic seems to be a lightly textured nylon making turning extremely smooth. There are easily removable caps in each center allowing easy tensioning. The cube was very loose when I got it so I had to tighten it quite a bit. The stickers are high quality Oracal. Some people have complained about shipping times from C4U (from China) but I ordered UPS Saver on the 29th and it arrived on the 1st which was even over a weekend. Hard to complain about that. I will definitely buy again.

UPDATE: As expected, method one worked perfectly, without any surprises. There were some critical-thinking problems to work out to pair up all the last pieces at once similarly to the final solve on the Dogic. Overall, this puzzle (especially from C4U) was excellent and challenging. It feels great in your hands and is pretty unique. If you know how to solve a 3x3x3 and are looking for a bit more of a challenge this is a puzzle I highly recommend.

Uber-twisty!

A while ago I saw a guy who had created his own version of a Teraminx, a higher order megaminx where each of the 12 sides has three layers instead of the usual one. He was charging $2000 for them and if I had won the lottery I certainly would have scooped one up. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly tripping over piles of loose cash around here so I shed a few tears and moved on with my life. Then I found out that a site called Cube 4 You is mass producing these suckers at a much more reasonable price and had to jump on one. It came without stickers attached...




I spent the better part of the night applying them. The Teraminx has 555 pieces (not including washers, springs, and screws), 732 stickers, and 1.7989 x 10^571 possible positions. Assuming the universe has a radius of 13.7 billion light years and each uniquely patterned teraminx has an edge length of 5.5 cm, they would fill the proposed volume of the universe 1.4043993*10^85 times! Holy crap! I don't know if I wanna touch this thing anymore...





Uhhh... I got a little bored... :)


Here is the finished project as well as a comparison with a 3x3x5 and a regular sized megaminx. I will blog on that 3x3x5 soon...





Honestly, I am a bit scared to mess this one up...

Any Start Must Have A Beginning...

Where to begin? Over the years I have picked up so many different hobbies and projects. A non-comprehensive list would include:

• Origami
• Twisty puzzles
• Furniture design
• Card magic
• Writing
• Inventing
  
• Reading
• Videogames
• Collecting Batman comics
• Cooking
• Duct tape crafts

There are plenty more but these are most of the big ones and as my hobbies tend to be cyclical (recurring) any I haven't thought of will certainly come back to me. The purpose of this blog is as an outlet for my thoughts, for future reference (mostly by me), and to appease my lovely wife who, along with my daughter, represent my lifelong career.
This blog will be a general hodgepodge of whatever happens to be junking up our dining room table at the moment. Bear with me.