At Alex Myers’ excellent suggestion, we’re going to play Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood this week. Walk through the streets trying not to give yourself away as you stalk your prey, only to be backstabbed yourself when you begin to get within striking distance! Give up on subtlety and resort to ridiculous acrobatics, only to accidentally target an innocent bystander with your death-dealing leap, and then get stabbed yourself as you contemplate your sins! Mesmerize your fellow VGHVI participants with your discursion upon Huizinga’s Magic Circle, delivering a brilliant summation of your argument with a blow of your dagger! And, best of all, backstab a certain somebody who claimed that he was trading wood for a promise not to attack me with the robber in our recent Catan session only to double-cross me fifteen minutes later! (I kid, I kid, I’m sure it was an innocent mistake…)
Our usual place and time: Xbox Live this Thursday (December 12) at 9:30 EST / 6:30 PST. Please send a friends request to “malvasia bianca” if you haven’t done so already. Also, if you haven’t played the multiplayer mode before then, you might want to set aside 15 minutes to go through the game’s multiplayer introductory mission.
Video Games and Human Values Initiative 
And if there’s anybody who, like me, hasn’t played any of the Assassin’s Creed games, you might want to go through the introductory mission a few times just to experiment with the controls. The right trigger seems to be your friend (at least when you’re not trying to blend in): it lets you run, climb up buildings, and (together with A, I think) jump. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to play with bots to experiment with that in a controlled space.
By the way, anybody have an opinion as to how interesting the single player game would be for somebody who hasn’t played the previous two? I’m toying with the idea of taking a break from Dragon Age to go through this one.
I’m in! The opening scene of AC:B single player is meant just for you–recapping the last game. The initial gameplay does seem to assume you don’t need training on how to play though. I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts, since you’re new to the franchise.
Oh, and I’m going to do my best to join in on Thursday!
Glad you’re going to be there; sounds like we’ll have a good crowd! (Of the non-VGHVI regulars, Nels also said he’d show up, so hopefully seven or eight of us.) Thanks for the info about the single player; sounds like I should at least dip my toes into the beginning, then. I’ll take it as a sign that I just finished a major Dragon Age plot point last night, so won’t have too much to remember if I take a week off from that game…
Can’t wait, although my glorious plan of finishing 2 before I start Brotherhood seems doomed. . .
I’ve been playing it on the PS3, but I’ll finagle a 360 copy for Thursday, although my loud-out will be weak.
I’ll be there with bells on. Or at least, I’ll be there. Bells would probably give me away.
Picking up AC on the way home from work!
Gotta say, When are we gonna get back on PC games? Or did we and I had a brain lapse?
We did Thief: Deadly Shadows three weeks ago; so actually we’ve done a PC game relatively recently for us, but if you have suggestions, we’re definitely willing to consider it. If you have a wave address, we can invite you to the planning wave there.
Also, we’re thinking about doing Minecraft next week, though we don’t yet have a volunteer for a server host and one person said that the latest update was quite unstable for him.