As always after throwing a podcast out the door like an orphan child hoping that they would star in in a musical about being an orphan, we are now throwing out the orginal text from the Assassin’s Creed review hoping that it takes flight and makes us money in some silly fashion. Enjoy!

Assassin’s creed is a game by Ubisoft, in which basically you go around killing people and run around big places, larking about. We could call it a day there but that wouldn’t do it justice.

You play two people through the game, Desmond, the name of whom conjures up the Channel 4 sitcom with the same name and then there’s Altair, the ye olde man who crafts his living by making sure other people aren’t living. There’s the evil Takazuki Corporation who wants to explore your mind to find a shiny thing and that’s basically what everything you do throughout the game leads up to.

Over the course of the game you do find out more what the shiny thing is, the state of the world in the future present and also in 1191, and of course where would we be without a couple of plot twists along the way? Sounds good so far? Let’s press on then.

The story is one that actually is rather good, and the premise with the sci-fi angle is something I am more than happy to praise Ubisoft for. It keeps me hooked to find out what happens at the end, having avoided YouTube from spoiling that for me, and the bizarre behaviour from the good doctor in the future time is bizarrely watchable, a man who believes what he is doing yet is constantly troubled, perhaps in fear of failing in the overall task.

You actually have to give both Ubisoft and the voice actors credit for creating characters who seem to be believable despite the entirely premise of the story.

The main bulk of the game takes place in one of three cities, with you visiting each three times, each time, more of the city is open to you as your memory allows you to progress. Each one has its own distinct look and feel to the place, with dozens of people wandering about the streets, carrying various things, going about their business. Clearly effort went into the production of the environments.

Just a bloody shame about the huge number of “special people” Ubisoft slotted into the cities who all push you around constantly annoying you, but you push back or hit them in response to just having enough of this dilly dallying, you’re the bastard.

Same goes for those women who stop you and moan about wanting coins, sex, or whatever they aren’t getting, I’m sorry it really will get to the point where you figure “What the hell?”, kill them and never mind the fact you lose some of the mental health bar in game.

So after hitting the numptys and scroungers in a city, you will have a range of missions to complete before moving onto killing the evil baddie such as eavesdropping a conversation, integrating a man about where the evil baddie is going to be, beating up guards who are harassing innocent people, escorting a fellow assassin to someplace without him being killed, baking a cake for Mrs Miggins, no wait, that’s not in there.

But in any case you do have a bit of le way in terms of what you do to complete the objectives before being allowed to assassinate your prey, which we will approach later as there is a big question I wish to pose in terms of the level content first; what exactly is the point of the horse travel in-between the cities?

Because to me, the humble reviewer, there was no reason to stick around there whatsoever aside from the silly flags, and I really do wonder, how can galloping on a horse in-between two far places make the authorities mad?

You would surely have to think that to travel so slowly as to not make them miffed, you would take hours to reach the city of your choice. Surely riding fast to not prolong the wandering shouldn’t be penalised?

Or it is girl, that it’s rude in general to ride really fast when all you want me to do, is to take it nice and slow? Arrrr yeah!

Thankfully after you’ve been to each city, the game gives you the option of skipping ahead to the assassin’s bureau in the city you want to go to. Since that came about, I have not had the need to venture back onto that landscape except when needing to go after a bloke after it turns out he really is doing naughty. See, gave away story without saying who it was I was referring to. Genius.

Now after you completed the objectives for the man at each Assassin’s bureau they give you a feather to go and kill one of the 9 victims you were sent out to kill. And off you go.

The Problem I guess is that the art of assassination is always a big foul-up worse than the bloke who shot from the Texas book depository hoping not to get caught.

Because no matter what you try, they see you coming and try to run in most instances with 500 guys all chasing after you wondering why you were trying to introduce the man to Mr. Knife.

There has been the odd exception when you are able to do a one hit high profile kill, when you jump up in the air, pounce on your target and achieve victory. That was a fantastic plus, but one that was very hard to pull off, making it even more enjoyable when you do.

As you go on further into the game it appears that the “stealth” element which has been sold as a feature of the game goes out the window but in some way it makes sense.

At first, you can go about your business as required, blending into the background, using the crowd to get around un-noticed. As time goes on, if you so much as fart out of place, the police-type people are onto you faster than when a fat person spies an all you can eat buffet.

When they do start chasing you, it becomes immense fun, it truly does, scaling up buildings, grabbing hold of ledges, running over the rooftops, hiding, basically making use of the city any way you can, it actually shows you why there was so much hoopla about the game in the first place.

You maybe just a fat bloke sitting in a chair from the outside world, but in here, in Assassin’s creed you truly can get to a hell of a lot of places and scale great heights, and this audio doesn’t do it justice.
The combat unfortunately does become a bit crap and repetitive later on: Get into a huge fight with lots of people surrounding you all taking their time to try and murder you one by one with you holding them back with your big sword, or as mentioned earlier your lovely hidden blade which is close to impossible to use.

This is a great shame, as you hope that you would be able to find a hidden way in and out of an area like, in Hitman for instance and maybe blend into the background a lot more, perhaps even changing clothing to avoid the authorities. Perhaps that will make an appearance in the sequel we all know is coming.

After you complete a kill, it all changes around so the picture involves just you and the murdered naughty person dying. What is rather confusing is that when you’ve finally killed your target, blood running from their soon to be corpse, they proceed to read you a novel about why they did what they did, all without croaking. How the hell can that happen when they’ve been stabbed in the throat and dying?

I’m surprised they don’t say to you on their death bed: “Ah yes, that reminds me of the time I was Budapest for my mate’s stag doo” and they spend another 7 hours reciting the details, while you’ve already ran off 3 hours earlier because your mum called you back home for tea.

Worse still, you can’t skip it. There is no way you can move on unless you sit there and watch. Don’t get me wrong, they forward the story in a good way, just if you are replaying the game, it would be a nice touch to have that ability to move straight onto the running away from the fuzz.

The control system for the game does show up its console roots, however the way it works on the mouse and keyboard is not overly bad, it just takes some getting used to. The right mouse button gives you extra context options to do like running or killing, while move your finger off, the same options are move covert. Pretty simple.

The graphics engine showing the whole city at once is quite an achievement in itself with a great little addition of the scaling certain heights to get an overview of an area, you just get a grand view of the place and again is worthy of mention. There is the added reason of finding missions from these heights so it’s not just for looks.

I would like to also say to Ubisoft, that thank you for at least putting some effort into the graphics for the PC, with far less glitches visible than the previous effort I played known as Splinter Cell: Double Agent. That was a good game let down by bad coding for the PC, and at least there have been less issues, although of course there are people out there who will beg to differ judging by the postings in recent times. I can only say for certain from playing the game on my uber beast of a PC.

Assassin’s creed at 1900×1200 with everything turned on, is very nice. Some stuttering to be had which you could say is a result of everything running on full, but it seems the issue was down to internet polling mentioned in another post somewhere on the digital landscape, and disabling the net connection solved that issue.

It was a similar experience from Guitar Hero 3 on PC, where adding DNS entries to the local host file stopped the polling to advert servers and thus did improve the game. Once again, a bit of a shame that issue exists but that would lead to a whole discussion on the piracy / advertising in game issue when you’ve already paid money for the product etc and that’s best left for other people for the time being.

And as a surprise, Assassin’s creed system specs maybe high, but it’s not as bad as you think. Yes it needs a powerful machine, but it runs alright on the 4 year old laptop with the single core 1.8GHz processor and the geforce 6800 256MB card built in, granted at 800 x 600 and there is still some big slowdown when lots of people are on screen, but it does suggest that it may be more scalable than people think, you may be able to get away with it on an older machine. Just give it a go.

I have been actually pretty balanced so far in terms of what Assassin’s creed does but there is a sour note to end on and I had saved it to last on purpose because despite this next bit, there are things the game does very well.

The sad fact overall from Assassin’s creed is that after 3 hours it becomes a one trick pony. The same thing over and over again, just with different baddies, and after a certain point it does lead you down the narrow story corridor with no stealth or using the area to avoid the authorities it just comes to the big fights and how you can best them again despite the odds. It’s the story that will keep you going to be honest beyond that, once you done the first mission in the first city, you have got the jist of the entire game.

Perhaps that’s why there was no demo released, fearing people would only want the demo as that would be what’s in the full game just rinsed and repeated. And that harms the game the most, that one single point while short, is the most significant.

We all know there is a second game on the way, the story leaves that gate wide open, and perhaps the issues will be sorted out then. But for now, we have this PC version and we shall judge it on that.
 
So to sum up:

• Good story and characters, certainly one of the more original to appear in years
• Variety in side missions leading up to main assassination
• Game repeats itself after a few hours
• Assassination’s are often botched with huge crowds of guards after you, which adds to the fun strangely.

• Game repeats itself after a few hours
• Horse riding bit is rubbish and pointless. Would be nicer not to have the speed cameras about.
• Game repeats itself after a few hours
• Appears to have greater scope of systems to run on despite high requirements and runs quite well.

• Combat despite being well executed, becomes repetitive and narrow.
• Game repeats itself after a few hours
• The ability to run around huge cities is too much to pass up, you have to love that!
• Those cut scenes are like Marmite, you either love them or hate them.

So using the crystal ball of fortune telling and a pulley system designed by the Greek gods to send Hercules to the underworld, we now pluck out the score for Assassin’s creed, it’s out of 10 or indeed could gain the score of twelve if it’s a game that you must drop everything else to play right now.
What do we have then?

Oooh, not sure about that, it was enjoyable, liked the story, the free running was great fun. Must be the fact that you do the same over and over again through the game. Whatever you draw from the review, it is most certainly worth a go.

Regretfully, since the release of the podcast and finishing the foundation degree one way or another on Thursday, the Lord of Leisure has being doing various amounts of naughty out and about with all creatures great and small.

Nothing to do with bestiality, It’s been the time to celebrate and drink copious amounts of alcohol designed to destroy all digestive functions and result in costly and life endangering surgery, while being in the company of people we know and occasionally talk to.

There will be more details after the bank holiday weekend that Broken Britain is currently enjoying at the current segment of time. After all, it must be said that some people will be fascinated at the lack of attention paid at the England vs New Zealand cricket match on Friday, complete with pictures showing men bending over on a pitch. Now we’ve satified the equal opportunity commission by including things that other people may like, we will leave it there for the moment.

So whatever you are doing, have a good one and don’t have glue, it’s best left for making glitter pictures for your parents to be proud of you. At the age of 29…..

 

 Episode 3: Shocking! [41:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Shocking the world we live in now, everything is just foul and filthy and that Grand Theft Auto 4 doesn’t help here. Be prepared to be shocked.

As usual you can subscribe to the show via the feed URL: http://www.oohsometimes.com/podcasts/feed.xml which you place carefully into your program of choice such as the free programs Juice or Doppler.

You also have the choice of searching the iTunes store, searching using either Paul Hughes, or Ooh Sometimes and subscribing using the software.

If you like what you hear or you don’t then please let us know at: podcast@oohsometimes.com and we’ll respond at some point.

Links:
These links have been provided to you so you can know the true legends of where these feasts of yeast came from…

Marmite
Bovril

Music:
Kyoshi – Bang (Band’s Website is located at: http://www.kyoshiworld.com)
Between The Trees
“A Time For Yohe” (mp3)
from “The Story and The Song”
(Bonded Records, Inc)

Buy at Amazon
Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

Credits:
Paul Hughes – was still shocked after this episode
S.L. Slaughter – Mr. Voice Over Man (He was shocked too)

Background Music used was by Kevin McLeod (Kevin’s Website) and CJacks from podsafeaudio. The title music was by Seismic Anomaly who also feature at Magnatune. Some SFX have been used from The Freesound Project. Excerpts from the Assassin’s Creed Soundtrack Copyright Ubisoft 2007, and has been used for the Assassin’s Creed Review.

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

It’s been a fair while since the bombshell news was announced during the weekend and so far the news has still been trickling down with random phones calls being taken with many congratulations. Nothing to do with moving, apparently I was selected as a winner in a special lucky dip. All I had to do was mail £5000 as a security deposit to receive the prize.

Methinks the spammers have gotten desperate.

But while this dialog of communication is open, perhaps an update of epic proportions is best as to what evil the LOL (yes, we can use acronyms here too) has been creating.

Work has been rather interesting this week, a sense of lull, mixed with Lemsip and euphoria has come in, where now it is at the point that consequences are out the window. You can say and practically do what you like without fear or reprisal, granted you wouldn’t drop your trousers and leave a brown present on your boss’s desk at this point, but all the while the one thing you have at the back of your head is:

What can they do? Sack me?

It’s a rather refreshing and joyous feeling to have, and to have it without the aid of hardcore drugs or indeed just standing up really fast is a nice bonus.

You start just goofing around, talking to various people without feeling guilty, saying even more what you want and basically it seems that if you just turn up every day, that’s all you have to do. No pressure to perform to anyone requirements, no more having to deal with people’s silliness if you don’t want to. Perhaps this is the feeling of what rich people feel all the time?

Wednesday was an interesting affair, as once again The Lord of Leisure was away from the current workplace, actually sorting out a fair few things for a change, taking some rubbish out, sexually provoking ladies of the day with banter, some of which you can hear on certain films with German plumbers.

But the real reason was to revise and finish off all the work that has been coming for the last 3 months. Yes, the end is near and frankly after next thursday, it will reach the point where you need a cigarette afterwards. It’s that good.

All this rush of good feeling surely is bad for your health? But then again, why not take it while it lasts?

It is rather gratifying to know that no matter what, it will be the last time visiting Wolverhampton University, yet another place where Darwin’s theory of evolution was challenged and defeated on a daily basis. Sorry, but the horror of seeing those monkeys on that stage on the night before Tukazon played has forever scared my head.

And speaking of horror scarring you for life, today I face an exam I am ill-prepared for, but ironically I may be saved by my gift for waffle. That life skill which allows you to talk to complete strangers without any frame of reference, first by starting on the weather as our way into the void of small talk before questioning whether or not badgers are suitable to work as barristers.

Though that one time it came in conversation, it must be said there was a fair amount of liquid consumed on licensed premises.

We shall see how it goes, but until The Lord returns, have fun kiddies and remember setting things on fire may look cool and is cool but may upset people. Don’t try this where you would get caught.

Here is the big announcement which I’ve been leading up to all day, and have been thinking of the best way to break the news which practically everyone knows already, however our international readership may be interested as it involves London, and as we all know, London is the only place in Britain. Nowhere else exists.

There was some deciding over whether the BBC should break the story, interrupting tonight’s episode Doctor Who and therefore we have to wait to find out about the Doctor’s Daughter. Perhaps distributing flyers on people’s windscreens. Or at the Wedding mass in Westminster today, as a “and finally notice”, the 700 married couples would be told there, thus making the day even happier.

But I don’t have any money. So a crap fudging of the Ooh Sometimes header logo and a blog post here will have to do.

I’m moving to London.
(Just in case you failed to notice the banner above)

Yes, that’s the news that has been kept secret until recently and which had been taking up a lot of time in sorting out, when after a long stint in Telford, I guess the time has come to push the envelope further and try something new.

It wasn’t an easy decision by any stretch of the imagination, I will miss the people still there and considering where I am going to, there are some people thinking: What the bloody hell are you doing?

London’s full of chavs, gangs, guns, idiots, various religious arseholes who want to blow things up, people work night and day just to get by and lastly there’s Boris Johnson, the man who everyone is hoping fails at his task being Mayor. What could possibly compel you to go there?

Well, in truth, London, despite the fact that it’s ridiculously expensive to get decent sized accommodation and even live, it’s easy to get lost and killed in, and you can feel so alone in a place like that, London is the major place, in front of Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, where the most opportunities exist to do anything you want. It’s going to be one of those experiences we all have to do at some time in our lives.

By day, you can do your normal work, and by night, you could take a course at one of the many institutions available who specialise in various areas not found elsewhere, or get caught up doing something you would never think about doing in a million years. (Note, previous statement doesn’t include running from the fuzz for drug trafficking.) Or if you are me, actually get time to do the bloody podcast! Though, at least it’s now clear as to why it’s being delayed.

London also has the most to do in terms of night and indeed day-life. So many places to visit, and so many free things too. It would be nice to actually see some of the people I hear and see in the flesh more often, and well, a lot of them are down London, let’s see who we can annoy and scare with badly crayoned pictures showing how much I love them!

There are people down and back up here who have already said they would help if asked, and I wish to state on the record I am very grateful for their help in whatever shape or form it took. In fact, some people down there in London, are a hoot to talk to and there are just so many people, there has to be some good eggs there among the b******ds who want to bugger things up for the rest.

Of course, it may go horribly wrong. I may be rubbish at the job and they throw me out. I may end up in a bad situation from which naughty all flows forth. That’s the risk we have everywhere these days. But that’s no reason not to try.

So for how ever long it lasts, let’s rock!

Warning: Most of the text on this post has been embellished to be funny. Or at least, a bad attempt at being funny. Enjoy!

Some of you may have been wondering what the Lord and Lady of Leisure did over the bank holiday weekend. Some of you of course, will not really care, as long as there wasn’t too much blood shed and the police weren’t asking questions as to why you were named as a suspect in a violent weeing up the wall incident.

No fears on that front of course dear readers, We were down the capital city of the nation called England, as the last post will attest to, as writing on the blog has been most absent, almost as if I wasn’t here to write….

The main reason was to attend a reasonably upper class affair in an art gallery on the Sunday, where the Lady of Leisure was attempting to swindle people out of their hard earned cash by using an elaborate pulley system and some beans, or we could even stretch it to a plot from Hustle from the BBC, where she flickers her eyes at some old man with expensive clothes, and Danny would seal the deal by promising Canary Wharf for $125,000. Why dollars and not pounds, I just don’t know.

Either that, or she was there to sell her paintings.

Below you will find a few of the photos taken during the celebrations where a bit of free alcohol and nibbles were to be had, you would look at some of the paintings on the wall and decide that they were rubbish and move on, while pretending to like it.

Now the above image needs a little extra text to cover why Natalie would be painting instead of wandering around various people stealing their wallets and ruining their dreams. There was a blank canvas there for any one to come along and paint, which if it was any good as a result of everyone contributing, I dare say the gallery would proceed to sell it for 14 billion roubles, claiming that Fidel Castro himself vomited on that very canvas.

Here there were various levels of society all talking about various topics while paying no attention to each other. It was a rather interesting experience, as I learned the art of “talking about things” to complete strangers without having the comfort of the USB mic connected to the PC at home.

The organisers were most personable, and the ability to impress someone with stupendous amounts of technical waffle which more than likely is incorrect cannot be underestimated. There was also an Australian woman who painted various images which at first were hugely confusing, and you would think that some magic substance was consumed at the time. However, there were stories underneath said paintings, which enlightened us all and we all put our phones away, not wanting to call the funny farm people.

Here we have two people standing in front of some of the work.

Don’t worry, it’s not just a case of taking random pictures of people for the purpose of contract killing, it’s Maria with her new shiny boyfriend friend.

The Lithuanian contingent was quite strong at the opening, with someone from the embassy turning up, more than likely hoping for a PR opportunity to change people’s perceptions of the country, that there is talent there and not just a lot of potatoes and frogs. We had a good chat with a number of people there and it was most interesting to compare art with music for example.

During one conversation, it was agreed that a painting with just three colours colouring in some wallpaper from B&Q was a load of rubbish. Another artist from Norfolk, was just exhibiting his work, and it turns out he thought a lot of the work was rubbish too. The one main thing to take away from the experience truly was, that many people in the art world are pretentious. In a bad way.

They smile etc, but they seem to be hiding the fact that they all hate anyone else’s work. And also modern art appears to be hated a lot too. I happen to agree with them on that for a lot of it.

Video Taken at the far,far,far party

And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen, for your rabid lust, a small taster of what an art exhibition opening can look like.

We in fact left after 8pm to have some drinks with the aforementioned Maria and said boyfriend friend, whose name escapes me at the moment, but I’m sure that someone will email in saying it’s Dave. In fact we wandered through Soho, where the impossible happened. At long last, we found the naughty shops.

Yes the places of ill-repute, selling various things designed to arouse and confuse you at the same time, such as inflatable dolls and cut-price DVDs which frankly doesn’t leave you wondering that much why they are so cheap.

And then this happened…..

Indeed as the name on the store suggests, it was a spank-o-rama. After that X-rated picture was confiscated by the police for them to “review” down the station, we enjoyed some uber nice Chinese food, and proceeded to drink far too much Pimms and Coke in a local pub, where it was discussed what music would you want to have a poo to. Flight of the Valkyries was an obvious choice.

We skipped over Saturday and Monday, as that was mainly taken up by huge coach journeys as the Train system was broke that weekend, this time on purpose by Network Rail. However I will say this: If you get the chance and the money to do so, eat at Adam’s Rib near Piccadilly Circus. Once you have some of those ribs in BBQ sauce, you will want to take it to bed, finish off and have a cigarette afterwards.

Bonjour from the capital city, Yes, I’m not in the Arctic tundra right now, just taking a small break away from various amounts of silliness and hijinks, although so far there has been lots of dilly dallying happening down here already, I guess you can call it a realisation of what’s going on at the moment with myself and what the future may entail.

Sounds vague and serious again, doesn’t it?

But rest assured, it’s probably me just wanting to cast wild rumours about the place and get people talking about you. After all, that’s the key of creating awareness, whether what people are saying about you is good or bad, at least they are talking about you. That’s a sign you’re making an impact.

Nevertheless this weekend so far has been a very strange one and that story I guess will remain for another time when all us old folks get together, and start remembering when it wasn’t a criminal offence to fart in someone’s toilet or something else, who knows what’s allowed these days?

I’m sitting in one of those handy internet cafe things, typing this, and there is a fair amount I wish to write but I’m aganist the clock at the present moment, so it will have to be briefer than I would like. Also, no pretty pictures to keep you all from falling asleep but there will be some other ones later on this week, after our return and triumph over Lord Sucky of the Mongoose horde.

In any case, this evening of course brings the opening in the posh place down mayfair, and it is the Lord of Leisure’s desire to make an impact later on this evening on the various people and other entites, pretending to talk utter rubbish, well, actually behaving as normal and perhaps dropping the odd pointless remark about what a poop stain on a canvas reflects about society.

Alas, my time is up, so from the Lord of Leisure in London, back to you in the studio. And now the weather sponsered by a evil empire bent on telling you all is well in the world.

The image used is from: http://deardeadbeat.blogspot.com/

It’s been a hell of a week for the Lord of Leisure, with the promise of a great new adventure now on the horizon, which when going forward, will certainly complicate many great things such as sleeping, sneezing, and snatching various things (various things which I have only been sued for on three occasions) but more news on that miracle will be forth coming over the days ahead. I promise it will be a doosy.

Things dried up on the writing front once more, simply because of the lack of material steming from hiding and typing of various other documents which are silly, the podcast still remains in limbo incomplete, the bovril and marmite sitting there, waiting to get their teeth in each other like Mike Tyson and anyone else who happens to be next to Mike when he feels hungry. The answer to which is better on toast remains a huge issue, greater than the local elections happening across Britain today.

Fear not, you will know soon enough.

The problem has been once again, that the various work amounts have been pressing down on the Lord like a sack of genetically disfigured potatoes. Doesn’t sound very hopeful does it?

But on the plus side, Levkovska.com was put online, ready for the exhibition in London on the weekend at the ArtSpace Galleries in Mayfair and so far, there has been positive feedback for the material shown. And yes to appease the rugged beast that is my friend Glyn, who quite rightly pointed out that I failed to acknowledge his massive effort, if you want a website as good as that, please drop our friends over at Plastic Mongoose for a nice quote and a friendly service.

Well…..sort of. Maybe. Ish….

Over the weekend, we will all be down in the capital city, having various levels of fun on all sorts of endeavours, and possibly having a drink for the first time in…..um….someone help me here? There will be some pictures, some pornographic for my use and some others will be available here for your rabid consumption before moving onto the rest of the humans.

In less than four weeks, the degree will be over and afterwards there will be much rejoicing with various products as mentioned on more than one occasion here, but potential naughty afoot as well. In some ways, it’s a bit of a bad time but in others, it’s damned good!

Hugs and Kisses!
BYE!!