Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Assassin's Creed 3 Multiplayer and Dark Souls on PC

Two stories of particular interest (for me at least) have begun circulating the internet over the past few days involving two very popular game series: Assassin's Creed and Dark Souls. Granted, Dark Souls isn't a series but a sequel to the extremely popular, extremely difficult Demons Souls game for the PS3, but I digress.

The first announcement is in regards to Assassin's Creed 3. Everybody knew that a new Assassin's Creed game was slated for release in the Fall of 2012, though nobody knew if it was actually Assassin's Creed 3 or yet another chapter in the Ezio Auditore sub-series which began in Assassin's Creed 2, continued in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and (we now know) concluded in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Thankfully, the new game is, in fact, Assassin's Creed 3 (even though it is technically the 5th game in the series).

There were a lot of rumors recently regarding Assassin's Creed 3 which led to leaked box art images as well as screenshots from an issue of GameInformer magazine. Ubisoft has confirmed that all those were real and even released a lot of Assassin's Creed 3 details, as well as a trailer, confirming that the game would take place on the American frontier during the Revolutionary War. However, one of the biggest additions to the Assassin's Creed franchise, multiplayer (which started in Brotherhood), wasn't talked about, until now.

According to an update on the Twitter and Linkedin accounts of designer Tim Browne, Browne has recently been given the job of Lead Game Design on Assassin's Creed 3's multiplayer. In addition to that, Browne specifically added that he will be working with Ubisoft Annecy. Ubisoft Annecy is the same team behind the multiplayer features of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as well as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the team which also assisted on the multiplayer in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Browne has worked as a designer for Codemasters for games like Dragon Rising and Operation Flashpoint: Red River.

Unfortunately, little is known about the multiplayer of Assassin's Creed 3 aside from it being a confirmed feature in the game. A product listing for the game on Xbox.com listed the game as having 2-4 player co-op as well as 2-8 player online multiplayer. That listing has since been taken down and no further details have been revealed.

The second bit of gaming goodness comes in the form of a possible PC version of Dark Souls. In case you missed it, Dark Souls is the highly popular sequel to the PS3 game Demons Souls and is literally the hardest game ever created, ever. This game will make you scream things at your television that you were previously unaware you were capable of screaming, especially when you try so hard to get past a certain part, taking as little damage as possible and saving all your consumables for that unimaginable boss battle ahead only for some random player in Japan 80x as powerful as you to invade your game and kill you in one hit...

All bitterness aside, a PC version of the game is coming, despite no official statement. "But how can you think the rumor to be true?" you might ask? Well, an early pic of next month's issue of PC Powerplay magazine shows the back cover of the issue with the words "YOU DIED" in the exact same style, font and color of the text that appears when, well, you die in Dark Souls.

If that isn't enough to convince you, a newly launched announcement on the game's Facebook page is also teasing a reveal about the game coming soon, or after enough people "Like" the Facebook page. In addition to that, all this comes after Namco Bandai, the creators of the game, cryptically commented on a Dark Souls PC release petition back in January. The game is rumored to be coming to the PC with added features that will be available for Xbox 360 and PS3 owners as DLC later, similar to what The Witcher 2 is doing on consoles.

Assassin's Creed 3 multiplayer and Dark Souls on the PC? Sounds like a pretty good year for gaming indeed.

Source: IGN - Assassin's Creed III Multiplayer Dev Revealed
G4TV - Dark Souls PC Release Is Coming, Probably

SMBnow.com is news of, for and by SMBs!
SMBnow.com... The Small & Medium Business Magazine!

No comments:

Post a Comment