Assassin's Creed Mirage

[Grogan]

I am weak. It's on for the introductory price of $30 (ish), so I bought it, despite being pretty pissed about Valhalla having no New Game+. This one does (they added it recently). I just bought the Standard game, because the Deluxe and Master editions just have gear, outfits, artwork, sound track etc. and no season pass or game play. They want a lot of money for it too... I don't pay for shit like that. If I wanted to be milked I'd get a hooker.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3035 ... ed_Mirage/

I mainly bought it because it's the story of Basim, from the Valhalla game. He's a young man, a thief and a trickster in 861 AD Baghdad. We already know he's the incarnation of Loki (but doesn't know it), so it fits.

So far it's been sneaking around, pickpocketing (there's a setting for "guaranteed pickpocket" so it always succeeds at least), knocking out guards etc. He's not a "Hidden One" yet, though he's trying to get attention from this assassin he did a job for. (it's Shohreh Aghdashloo! That unmistakable, gravelly contralto voice from the Mass Effect games, Star Trek Beyond, and The Expanse and stuff)

The game works well at least. I'm not sure how far I'll get though, it's the old style, mostly linear Assassin's Creed game (not RPG) full of parkour and sneaking. I've never finished one of those, but I'll try. It's probably not difficult on the easiest setting ("Apprentice"). I hope I get some bloody weapons soon, I hate this sneaking around and knocking out isolated guards type gameplay. I had to take out two of them, but I was able to strike from above and surprise them and then get the second guy before he had his wits... but you can't count on that always being an option.

[Zema Bus]

Only $25 here, I think I can deal with that. I've been looking forward to Assassin's Creed Shadows which is set in Japan. It's supposed to be out late November.

[Grogan]

Shadows will be the RPG style that we like. If Ubisoft doesn't piss me off too much in the meantime, I'm looking forward to Shadows.

P.S. Assassin's Creed Shadows has been delayed to February, for more polish. Their Star Wars Outlaws RPG should be on Steam in November though. I'm going to get that one just because it's a Star Wars RPG, despite the shitty things I've heard about it.

[Grogan]

It's a nice game, but it's a lot of irritating sneaking. It's a fairly weak character, so you can't fight hordes of guards... and you get serious heat fast. To get rid of your heat ("notoriety"), you have to find wanted posters and rip them down, or bribe an official with "power tokens" (of which I just recently got one).

You can't just climb anything in this game, it's more like the first one where you have to find footholds and climbing pegs etc.

This is what Baghdad looks like, once you get there. These games are good at creating intricate cities, that's one thing that makes them good. This is similar to the way Damascus was in the first game, a walled city with streets of shite.

(right click and view in new tab to see non-scaled image)

mirage_baghdad.jpg (604.74 KiB) Viewed 64032 times

[Zema Bus]

That does look good.

[Grogan]

One thing that does make this more do-able is that there are manual saves (which wasn't the case with previous games using this formula). You can't save in a hot area, but you CAN leave it, go eat some food etc. and save and go back without losing any progress. You can also go find some wanted posters to tone your heat down and then leave the area and duck in a bush or something and save, even if they are looking for you.

[Grogan]

miragewarning.jpg (186.03 KiB) Viewed 64007 times

I've never seen warnings that extensive. Note the one that says

"Avoid playing when you are sick, tired and/or under the influence of medication or drugs"

For me, it should read Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to play while NOT under the influence of medication or drugs

(The sneaking gets on my last nerve)

[Zema Bus]

[Grogan]

Well, this is a miserable game. They are deleting forum threads too, I had one disappear. My post was still there before I went to sleep this morning but it's been removed. Congratulations to Ubisoft's moderators, they turned my post into a negative review, by doing that. (I doubt the publisher would be allowed to delete reviews they don't like... probably moderated by Valve's people)

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... 1_5_9__402

Not Recommended
6.7 hrs last two weeks / 6.7 hrs on record
Posted: 24 Oct @ 3:33pm

I will start out by saying that I find this to be a MISERABLE game at every turn.

I only bought this because it was the story of Basim, but the story isn't great, the voice acting is poor, the facial mechanics are poor.

You're playing as a weak character where you can't fight very well when you get caught sneaking. The combat mechanics are terrible, with seemingly millisecond sensitive key presses that often don't register on time. I mean, wait for an enemy to come around the corner, press the Assassinate key when prompted, and it fails and draws in more enemies than you can fight. To me the combat feels like one big quick time event.

In combat, the game often automatically starts climbing me up on things and I get slashed trying to get out of it.

There are also map bugs. After an aggravating sneak to get in this compound to steal a package, I dropped it down over wall and then jumped down and fell outside of the map. I was confined by transparent walls with no way to get back out. I could see my package outside the wall where I dropped it, but the quest was ruined and I lost the progress.

I knew going into this that it was an attempt to bring back the old Assassin's Creed formula but I managed to play the first game back in the day and it wasn't as poor as this. I mean, it's not my favourite style of game, to be fair.

The graphics are nice, and they portrayed ancient Baghdad intricately, but this game is not fun... save your money. There is enough free aggravation in this life.

[Grogan]

Look at this, Ubisoft wrote me up for a "Spam warning":

steamspamwarning.jpg (143.46 KiB) Viewed 63931 times

So according to Ubisoft, it's "Spam" to be unhappy with their games.

I think fuck Steam too, nobody "needs" to buy games. This wouldn't have happened if Valve didn't give these assholes free reign to censor posts.

[Grogan]

I can guarantee you're not going to like this game after what I went through with it. You only bought it less than a week ago and haven't even played it, so you can get your money back.

It's too late for me, but I've uninstalled it, as after that progress that I lost, I'm not going back to it. That was the last straw.

[Zema Bus]

Wow, they have a very different definition of spam than I have. Yeah from reading your experiences with it I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have played it for long. I submitted a refund request with the reason "It's not fun".

[Grogan]

I'm not a spammer, and I deeply resent that. That's essentially an infraction for spamming.

This game is in stark contrast to Odyssey and Valhalla (there's some tedium, but an incredible amount of game play in unique areas for your money... what a waste having no New Game+ in Valhalla though).

I'm mortally pissed off with Ubisoft, but those are fantastic games.

[Zema Bus]

It was refunded in only an hour, at 2:24 AM my time.

Aside from the graphics it must have been a cheap money grab. Cheap DLC too, and a low initial price to prime the sells, something you don't normally see with new triple A games, or games you expect to be triple A games.

It's kind of like having a surgeon or a mechanic who's a total A-hole but he does excellent work.

[Grogan]

Valve is good with no questions asked refunds, within the 2 hour gameplay period. GoG is better, with 30 days.

Mirage wasn't actually a new release, it's been out for a year (Oct. 2023). It's just new to Steam (and it's common practice to offer games for a time limited sale after they come out of Epic store exclusivity). The full price is $69.99 for me for the base game. The DLC is just gear, outfits, sound track and artwork, it's not any game play or "season pass" or anything. It actually IS expensive for what it is (doubles the price of the game for all of it).