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jcmarchi · 2 years ago

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Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex Is A Viking-Centric Graphic Novel Out Next April

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Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex Is A Viking-Centric Graphic Novel Out Next April

Game Informer can exclusively reveal Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex, a new graphic novel from Dark Horse Books that brings players back into the world of assassin Eivor, a medieval Nordic land, a new hidden order, and more. It will be released as a hardcover graphic novel on April 30, 2024, in retail stores and online, for $19.99 (and it hits comic book stores on May 1, 2024). Mathieu Gabella is the author, with art from Paolo Traisci.

The Hidden Codex follows Edward, a scribe and reluctant monk after he escapes from a kidnapping performed by a clan of Vikings. After securing his freedom, Edward finds his brother missing and strange documents “blackened by a language he innately understands.”

“No one knows where these occult-looking symbols came from, but Edward has seen such writings before: in the workshop of an enigmatic wise man among the Vikings who is part of a secret order: Those Unseen,” a press release reads. “An order that could offer answers to Edward, and guarantee his aspirations of freedom and knowledge. But with that knowledge, can he find and rescue his own brother before it’s too late?”

Ubisoft senior transmedia content manager Etienne Bouvier says the company is lucky to work with Gabella and Traisci as they are two long-standing fans of the Assassin’s Creed franchise who infused their love of it, and knowledge of its lore, into this book.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex hits bookshelves and online retailers on April 30, 2024, before it hits comic book stores on May 1. It is available for preorder now and costs $19.99.

For more about the series, read Game Informer’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla review and then read our Assassin’s Creed Mirage review. After that, read Game Informer’s ranking of every Assassin’s Creed game.

Are you interested in checking out Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex? Let us know in the comments below!

#2024 #Art #book #Books #codex #Dark #game #it #language #One #Read #retail #review #Securing #Vikings #work

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m39 · 5 years ago

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History of the Creed - Part 1: Assassin’s Creed 2

So… I’ve decided to do a marathon of my favorite game series, Assassin’s Creed (minus [probably] the first one) because Valhalla (which I’ll not buy until one year after its release) and some part of me decided that I should review them.

But wait a minute… I hear one you saying. Don’t you have over 250 Doom WADs to check?

Well, yes. But then again we kind of like to pile on new idea after another to do when there’s an opportunity. There is still the Galaxia WAD in make for one of you who liked my WAD reviews but I believe that the AC reviews will take a lead for now.

Also the reason that I’m not reviewing Assassin’s Creed 1 is because now when I think about it, it doesn’t sound that good as it was.

You are having a PTSD attack over flags, Templars and “side missions”.

Okay, let’s talk about something else. What I’ve decided to do is to play these games in a semi-completionist style, in other words: if there are some side activities in missions, I am not expecting to replay them to get it all 100% because I would go nuts restarting the mission/control point every time I failed this one, specific side activity. But the rest as in: all collectibles, side missions and places to clear? I’ll do my best to do them all… Even Odyssey…

…

I’m fucked.

But enough of that. Let’s talk about the game that is proclaimed to be the best game in this series.

ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 (The original PC release in Europe: March 5, 2010)

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PLOT

It is Italy in the early Renaissance times. You are Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young lad from a family of nobles who’s head of the family, Giovanni, is an Assassin. One day you find it out when your father and brothers are imprisoned and the next day they end up executed so you swear revenge on those Templar MoFoes for what they did.

Ah, revenge, the good, old plot device that never gets boring when it’s done right. And by being done right I mean when it has a nicely written characters. And that character is Ezio. I mean, who doesn’t like him? This motherfucker oozes with charm and personality. And Roger Craig Smith only solidifies it. He even gets a good character development. Example: When Ezio kills the guy who betrayed his family, his next goal is to run away to Spain with his mother and sister. After living two years in his uncle Super Mario’s villa, training under his eye and reading about Assassins and Templars, while still wanting to escape Italy, he’s now having a doubts about this plan and not until the harsh talk with his uncle decides that he’ll help destroy the Spaniard’s band of goons and get a revenge on him.

The secondary characters are fine but that’s it. They are perfectly okay with few of them standing out like Leonardo da Vinci (seriously, your best friend is Leonardo. Fucking. Da Vinci.). The villains are also just okay. Some of them have a personality of a Saturday cartoon villain, some of them are more dimensional. Rodrigo Borgia however goes to the former group. I mean, I don’t find him terrible at all, it just I wish he were better. But props to Manuel Tadros for playing him. He did a very good.

Oh yeah there is also some stuff in the modern times. It’s not bad but it basically exists only to move the plot forward and give us a reason why you can see the stuff from the past. But hey, the Desmond Saga is still better than this Initiate bullshit of the modern days plot.

GAMEPLAY

Assassin’s Creed 2 is basically the first game on steroids. You assassinate targets, you sometimes run using your parkour skills and sometimes fight with the enemies. There are some new stuff when you care this to Assassin’s Creed 1 like: Being able to use two hidden blades at once, healing yourself with medicine, shooting enemies with your loud hidden pistol, using smoke bombs, throwing money on the ground (LEAVE ME ALONE YOU BARD HYENAS!) and poisoning people, making them go apeshit (which I used only once in this run, in 13th sequence to be exact). Asides from the regular guards and archers there are three new types of enemies: Brutes, the heavy armored fatsoes, Agiles that can dodge your regular attacks and Seekers, who have a long ranged weapon and can easily find you in a haystack. You can also buy new, better weapon/armor and a bigger sacks for your knifes/medicine/poison. There is also a notoriety meter. When you fill it to 100% the guards will automatically be suspicious when you are in their line of sight. You can decrease it by ripping off posters, paying off heralds and killing the witnesses.

However, in spite of all of this crap that was added, this game feels easier than the first one. It’s not like it’s somewhat major con for me (I would rather play the game that is too easy than too hard) but I can understand some of you have a big problem with that. Imagine this: in theory, when you are spotted, you must use your abilities to run away from the enemies and use combat only as the last resort. But then I ask: why should you do that?! You are so powerful, you can destroy the entire Venetian army in 10 minutes! You are getting more durable and powerful with each sequence! Agiles can die by one counter attack! You can steal Brute’s/Seeker’s weapon, then one-shot them and then use their weapon to one-shot another fool who’s stupid enough to attack you! The fights are that easily! Sure it’s kind of tougher than I remember but still! Even if you don’t want to fight, smoke bombs helps you tremendously in both running away and fighting. Not to mention the enemies being stupid and that they couldn’t catch you most of the time.

Changing slightly the subject, you can also hire mercenaries/courtesans/thieves to help you distract guards. They are pretty helpful in missions, both the main ones and the side ones but outside of them they are rather useless because... well... I already explained you that.

Remember how in the first game you couldn’t swim? Well, now you can do this and use gondolas. Personally, however, I felt like I was faster on my own than on a venetian mini-boat.

ACTIVITIES

There is many stuff to do in this game. Like much more than you think. You can for instance buy paintings, collect money from chests/codex pages/feathers, find glyphs and solve their riddles, (like in previous game) you can climb on viewpoints to reveal a huge chunk of map, deliver letters, race to beat the best time of members of the guild of thieves, beat up unfaithful husbands, collect 6 seals to get Altair’s armor and fund for renovations of many buildings in Monteriggioni. Most of this stuff gives you more and more money every 20 in-game minutes by increasing the town’s status (which you have to withdraw from your villa).

In other words, the predecessor of your typical, modern, Ubiconic game. Personally I enjoyed doing these stuff but be warned; if you want to go after feathers, check a guide on their locations (same with Monteriggioni’s roman gods’ statues). I know at least one guy who went insane after trying to find the last one in Tuscany.

Liquid Bogan (in the background): F̴e̸a̴t̸h̶e̵r̵e̵s̷ ̶a̴r̷e̵ ̵l̴i̸f̵e̶,̴ ̶b̶r̸o̷t̷h̸e̸r̶.̸ ̶W̷e̵ ̶m̵u̵s̴t̴ ̸c̷o̸l̴l̴e̴c̸t̵ ̷a̸l̸l̷ ̸f̸e̸a̶t̷h̴e̶r̴e̵s̵,̶ ̷y̵i̵s̵?̶

He’s definitely fine.

THE GRAPHICS AND SOUND

This is where it turns into mixed-bag. While the sound effect are still very good, the graphics however, didn’t age well. Sure, the landmarks still look awesome and I love some of the details like the fact that some dust from buildings comes off when you climb but the character models… I don’t think they survived the time after the game’s release. The textures look sometimes blurry as shit, facial animation looks from time to time wonky, it looks especially bad in cutscenes. Then again, I don’t think people liked how they looked even in 2009 since I remember watching a review from my native country and the reviewer said that the character models lack polish when you take a closer look.

The soundtrack though… Jesus. Like, what can be said about it after so many people said earlier? There is a reason why people are calling it one of the best soundtracks in video games of all times. I would choose you three of those worth a listening but asides from the first three in the official soundtrack (for obvious reasons) there is too much to choose. So, here’s the whole bloody soundtrack.

STABILITY

Even though I played the PC version (and I heard that the PC version was a mess at the beginning) I didn’t really had many problems. Framerate was constantly smooth and I didn’t notice any drop in it. There were however 2 nasty bugs. The first one crashed the game when you have to choose if you want to play the memory or not; it happened at least 3 times. The second was when trying to assassinate Antonio Maffei and that monk fucker decided to noclip himself into the tower. Like- What the- WHAT THE FU-

Technical Difficulties.

Maybe it was because I paid the nearby herald. I don’t know.

SUMMARY

Despite its graphics getting somewhat dated and the game being kind of buggy, Assassin’s Creed 2 is still a fantastic game and I fully recommend it to you. Check it for yourself (if you haven’t already) and while at it, tell me your opinion about this game.

Thank you all for reading this long-ass review and I’ll see you next time.

Bye!

#history of the creed #assassin's creed #review #assassin's creed 2

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