CP3S said:
Mm, so after playing several hours of ACII, I am realize that it is really about story and making you go through the motions more than anything else. There isn't really any challenge involved whatsoever (except for those damn frustrating tombs)*, it kind of just tells you do to such and such a task, you go do it, and it gives you another task.
When you get down to it, all games are about "pushing the same buttons over and over again." Hopefully, there's context surrounding those button presses that make them seem more than they are... but sometimes the illusion fails and you realize exactly what you're doing is just pusing them over and over again. It's a little like when lip-synch fails and you realize that the sound isn't coming out of a character's mouth, but rather from a speaker near your display device of choice. Or, say, when you play a game and the voice-overs just stop. ;)
Whenever I hear a complaint that a game is "repetitive", I realize it's really a complaint that the game isn't masking the repetitiveness. All games are repetitive. It's whether it feels repetivite- whether it is able to distract you from that that matters.
I think your observations on "challenge" and "it just tells you what to do and then you do it" to be on a similar level. Isn't that true of almost all of the games we play?
It may interest you to know that in ACB they give you the tasks, but they also give you a higher goal. The task might be- go assassinate this guy, but the higher goal is- and do it without taking any damage. Or the task might be "finish this race in 90 seconds" but the higher goal will be "finish it in 45 seconds". If you complete the task, but miss the higher objective- you get 50% synch on the memory. You can go back and play them again later to get the higher rank, if you'd like. Sometimes it involves completely rethinking your strategy... other times it's just doing it a little faster or a little more carefully.
Ah, but obviously I am forgetting one very important key element here: its a game. And a fun one too.
Amen.