Assassins Creed 2

[MrGaribaldi]

Huh, I thought that was part of the new DRM.. Release the game, but don't make it available to anyone so it can't be pirated..
And it seems to be quite successful, 0 pirated copies 3 months after release, that must be some sort of record. Granted, no sales either, but that's not important is it?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Oh, it's already in the wild and cracked btw. Just saw it this morning and was reading about it, thought I'd share.

 

[tabs]

Be interesting to see if it really has been played to completion by people who have pirated it.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Be interesting to see if it really has been played to completion by people who have pirated it.

That's what I'm waiting to see, I have a feeling this will be like Batman: Arkham Asylum was with about 4-5 cracks released in quick succession.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

That's what I'm waiting to see, I have a feeling this will be like Batman: Arkham Asylum was with about 4-5 cracks released in quick succession.

It's always that way initially, and then the crackers get a handle on the new DRM and it's much quicker next time around.

 

[tabs]

With comments like that I'm reminded of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and how it took.. what was it? 2 years to crack or something? Ah, good old starforce.

As far as I know ARMA2 hasn't been properly cracked yet either. The FADE protection is still in effect in the supposedly cracked release, with pistols being wildy inaccurate and other strange behaviours.

 

[DennisK4]

I have posted some screenshots from the game in the screenshot thread. And before anyone asks - it came out in Europe yesterday.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That's what I'm waiting to see, I have a feeling this will be like Batman: Arkham Asylum was with about 4-5 cracks released in quick succession.

From what I've read so far it's just like SH2, you are able to play the tutorial and that's about it. You can't run any missions as that requires you to go online and download some data.

I'm very interested to see how things go and how long it takes for someone to crack the downloaded stuff (I'm assuming it's encrypted and keyed to the person downloading it) and then try to recreate the UBI servers for the game.

Regards,
SB

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The Xbox version was pretty good and engaging after the first 2-3 hours (quite a long tutorial sequence with no Assassin tools or skills available at all). Looks nice, sounds nice, and the story's good too. Highly recommended!

(and the CG is nice too... )

 

[nightshade]

I already played this game till death, even got the platinum trophy.Must resist......not give into the temptation of higher resolution & AA

 

[pjbliverpool]

For anyone that's interested this game is currently unplayable due to Ubi's servers being down. Seems that all those concerned about the DRM were right.

On another note, performance seems to be pretty poor. Is this game heavily CPU limited? It definately looks no better than the first one which ran much better despite being DX10.

 

[suryad]

For anyone that's interested this game is currently unplayable due to Ubi's servers being down. Seems that all those concerned about the DRM were right.

On another note, performance seems to be pretty poor. Is this game heavily CPU limited? It definately looks no better than the first one which ran much better despite being DX10.

Like you I felt the same. The game is horrible looking especially the character models when you look at them in the in-game cutscenes (not sure if those are pre-rendered or not) but the game definitely picks up in terms of visuals when in Venice. I had no performance issues but I do agree I think it is severely cpu limited. I played it absolutely maxed out at 2560 x 1600. The game is a port isn't it? It seemed a bit poor....surprise surprise.

 

[Malo]

From the screenshots I thought it looked really nice, good textures etc. I guess that's not the case?

 

[pjbliverpool]

From the screenshots I thought it looked really nice, good textures etc. I guess that's not the case?

It does look pretty good, it's just that it doesn't look any better than the first game on PC. That might not be the case for the console versions but the first game had DX10 (very subtle) goodness on the PC where as the second id DX9 only. As such the lightling looks a bit flatter on the second one and draw distances seem smaller.

I've only had very limited exposure so far though so may change my opinion down the road - if I actually get to play it!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Oh AC2 isn't Dx10 or higher? I guess that means it obviously doesn't have the VERY fast AA that AC1 had which came with Dx10.1 before they removed it at Nvidia's request. That's a shame as I figured we'd see a return of that with AC2 now that Nvidia has hardware that can handle it.

I guess that's just another case of a developer/publisher scaling back budgetting for extra PC goodness when porting a game over.

Regards,
SB

 

[suryad]

Oh AC2 isn't Dx10 or higher? I guess that means it obviously doesn't have the VERY fast AA that AC1 had which came with Dx10.1 before they removed it at Nvidia's request. That's a shame as I figured we'd see a return of that with AC2 now that Nvidia has hardware that can handle it.

I guess that's just another case of a developer/publisher scaling back budgetting for extra PC goodness when porting a game over.

Regards,
SB

Seconded!

 

[pjbliverpool]

I've finally started playing this properly. WOW! Gameplay is much more interesting than the first, I can hardly put it down. I'm loving the added roleplay element, engaging story and more varied gameplay. It's an improvement over the first in virtually every way which was itself a great game. The only minor dissapointment is the graphics which as I said above still fall short of the originals IMO. Although they still look good, sometimes great. I'd be playing it right now if my girlfriend wasn't hogging the main PC!

 

[suryad]

I've finally started playing this properly. WOW! Gameplay is much more interesting than the first, I can hardly put it down. I'm loving the added roleplay element, engaging story and more varied gameplay. It's an improvement over the first in virtually every way which was itself a great game. The only minor dissapointment is the graphics which as I said above still fall short of the originals IMO. Although they still look good, sometimes great. I'd be playing it right now if my girlfriend wasn't hogging the main PC!

Yeah I was disappointed with the graphics as well...but I did notice that when you get to a certain point in the game, the levels and everything just start looking much much better than the game did at the start.

 

[Alexko]

Sorry about the somewhat brutal thread resurrection, I figured it was better than creating a new one.

I've just installed the game, but I think my trusty old Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz) might be struggling. I get somewhere around 30~35 FPS with an HD 6950 in 1080p, and lowering the settings doesn't seem to have a very substantial effect. Going to 5760×1080 only lowers the framerate to about 20~25 FPS, which is below my personal playability threshold, but not that much of a drop for tripling the number of pixels that have to be rendered. Also, enabling MSAA 4X only seems to lower the framerate by 2~3 FPS or so.

So I'm thinking the game is probably quite CPU-limited, but I couldn't find any benchmarks online, only a few posts from people saying the game is indeed quite CPU-dependent, some going as far as calling it similar to GTA IV in this regard.

I was just wondering if some B3Ders could confirm this. No need to go through the trouble of launching the game again with Fraps, but if you happen to remember how it fared when you played it with the CPU you had at the time, that would be helpful.

Basically, I'm wondering if just getting a 7970 would enable me to play in Eyefinity, or if I need a new CPU, which would mean that I need a new MB, new RAM, and a new OS install, so I'd rather avoid that right now.

 

[Malo]

I think you're struggling to keep that 8400 going and it's time to let it die. I couldnt push my 6750 + P35 anymore no matter what gpu i threw in it and eventually replaced the internals with an i5-3570k + Z77 setup.