I like mission 14 in theory but I can’t do it
Well yeah, if you have played the PS2-era AC’s, that mission… brings at least one or two tears to your eyes. That, or i’m just getting old and sappy, who knows!
It’s where i am right now, i am taking it a bit slow and try to enjoy each mission…
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I definitely felt something flying towards that massive symbol years after it was relevant to anyone.
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I wish they’d found a way to ship the fan localization of AC3 as a preorder bonus instead of AC5/6
other than that I increasingly hate PS2 rendering (with few exceptions) as much as I do the early 360 look of AC6, AC3J was so clearly the best game in the series before this one (and it’s like the only one that’s still more interesting in some respects).
I think the industry right now is in the middle of realizing just how much better PS1 game design was than PS2 the same way everyone had to go back to the NES a decade ago but this is a big one. the japanese games industry looks just as badly hamstrung in 2002 relative to 1999 as it did in 2007.
would’ve been trivial to emulate in native 4K too
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i went into a retro game shop a few months back and got into a conversation with the guy working there. at one point he asked me what my favorite console/generation was, and i told him PS1. he was totally surprised/didn’t get it, so i did my best to explain.
PS1 just went so hard.
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PS1 benefited from:
Games for it being cheap to make
Games for it being cheap to distribute
Competition that was not so cheap to develop for
Midst of an economic boom (at least in the US)
Peripheral requirements were low - you don’t need a fancy TV or nice sound
A huge new possibility space for developers and players to explore (3D! Shoulder buttons! Interactions with other discs! Interactions with other saved games!)
Multiplayer was local-only, and so there are no online communities to die and render a game unplayable
There was no expectation that games would generate continual revenue, or could even be changed after release
I don’t know that we’ll ever see that confluence of circumstances ever again
the PS1 era was magical
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also just barely not software 3D
this was a huge huge factor relative to underpowered successors
like hindsight is 20:20 but the PS1’s hardware was incredibly perfect and just affordable enough relative to every 3D console released five years before or after
you’ve got the equivalent of a 486 with an FPU, a good amount of memory and a big framebuffer, an MPEG decoder, and nice cheap storage media
go nuts
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I think new tech has been pretty good at creating the weird & low-budget side of the PS1; compare the realms of neat VR stuff. What’s really different now is all the big-money has gotten so conservative.
There’s something meaningful about a retail-released oddity that you know had to go through a lot of veto points to make it to you that’s lacking from a strange cool indie, even if it’s only a budget difference of $1m or so.
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BULLS EYE
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AC Infinity had Problems mostly concerning numbers but also sweet little details, like the fact that the Delphinus came with the AC3 UI & sounds
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PS1 graphics were wobblier than a drunken pirate with a pegleg during rough seas but I love them all the same
They were just beautiful enough to love but no beautifuller
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all other 3D hardware pre-1998: “OK we get 10 polygons and mom says not to spend them all at once”
PS1: “you can DRAW with MATH and – hmmm, close enough”
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just picked this back up after a week or so and did missions 15 and 16
the last act is pretty good!! they’re really exhausting everything they can do with this game, good on them
4 more to go
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Played through Campaign twice, once each on Normal and Hard. Currently halfway through a third run on Ace. Narrative-wise I’m a bit eh on it even though it has some lovely moments (the Stonehenge defense, the space elevator run, lol belka at it again, and pretty much any mission that takes place on a map with clouds and canyons). I’d probably place it over AC6’s cringefest, though.
I’m picking away at some of the hidden Aces as well, but to find some of them I’ve had to refer to a guide. Thankful that they appear on Normal because god damn I can not imagine finding some of these on Ace, or even Hard.
I was pretty sure I missed one on 14 as I saw it getting away but that was the first time I even glanced one (on hard)
btw since we’re all sharing my achille’s heel is Mission 9. I love going fast, doing flippy shit and flying with style, so putting an altitude limit on me and lowering my visibility to near-nil is gross discrimination.
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Yep same
I’ve S-ranked everything on every difficulty by now but that mission took me at least a dozen tries each.
I know I can be overly effusive when I like something but I’m about to finish this and I really want to praise the variety of level design here. Especially in light of how every other would-be flight sim revival over the past decade has been a multiplayer-only or a tedious persistent world thing and half the response to those always seems like it boils down to “if only they’d just given us a real campaign to go with it,” the number of kuribo’s shoe one-off mechanics in this – pretty well all of which are great – feels super generous. For a not-quite AAA it really bares mentioning how much this game does with its budget.
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