Assassin’s Creed – A New Game Plus

This Booty Is Ripe for the Picking (and the Kicking)

As another summer slowly fades, we sit on the precipice of a huge autumn for gaming. Marvel’s Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and (of course) Grand Theft Auto VI are all on my play-ASAP list, and there are others that I’ll probably buy and play at some later point. It’s been a solid year for gaming so far, and I’ve been spending time playing through some recent releases and short games to pass the days before the flood gates open. I’m trying to make sure I don’t have too many lingering must-plays before I find myself stumbling from one big release to the next. The highlight has been Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game I am thrilled finally saw release after years of fan begging and desperate rumors, but I’ll save that for last. Until then…

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls

I was around nine or ten when Street Fighter II first came out and like a lot of kids back then I became obsessed with it and, a year later, Mortal Kombat. I would go to my local arcade or corner store, wait patiently for my turn to play against a stranger or friend, and proceed to get my ass kicked (half the time, anyway). I bought the home versions for SNES and eagerly awaited new fighting games like ClayFighter, Primal Rage, Rise of the Robots and more. Most of them ended up lacking the polish, balance, and personality of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but my friends and I ate them up anyway. I think of it as my only real fighting game phase. I periodically become obsessed with a single fighting game (Street Fighter Alpha 3, Soulcalibur II, Street Fighter IV, Injustice 2), but I haven’t been quite as immersed in the scene since the ol’ golden days of fighting games.

So I feel very lucky to have done the copywriting on Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and I could tell from the earliest briefing that I would like it. The art style is a bright blend of colorful Marvel characters and slick anime coolness, and I love all the character animations and background cameos/easter eggs. One of the first things they mentioned in the briefing was that it was a team-based, 4v4 deal, which was the only element that concerned me. Arc System Works makes great games, the art looked amazing, the inclusion of Marvel characters was exciting… but when I was younger I found team-based fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom to be a bit overwhelming. They were still fun and had incredible animations, but I always felt unprepared to effectively swap between characters, learn synergies, all that. It was hard enough learning a few character’s moves, but a bunch of moves plus team combos and balancing? Young me was stressed.

Lucky for me, the character switching in Tōkon is constrained and feels much more natural (at least in single player, I don’t have much interest in playing online matches). You don’t even have access to all of your team members right away, so that limitation helped ease me into the tag team shenanigans, plus I didn’t even feel like it was necessary to master that system. I happily played through all of the story mode and some other modes mostly using my first two team members (and the natural team-based combos). Speaking of combos, another nice thing for a casual fighting game fan like me is how easy the combos and special moves are. As much as I appreciate a good half circle fireball or down down back forward something-or-other, some of the flashiest, most useful combos in Tōkon are easily performed by landing a few of the same hits in a row or pressing a two button combo. There are plenty of more complicated combos for the hardcore fans, but I was happy to keep it simple and still feel like I was doing cool, powerful moves. So, yeah, overall I loved my time with Tōkon. I think my favorite fighter was Spider-Man. He felt very fast, fluid, and fun. I was also surprised by how much I liked Magik. I didn’t know much about her as a character, but I might have to pick up some of her books. I love her attitude and she seems like a badass. Carnage was also fun, especially in some of his story mode scenes. Deadpool was very funny. And I really liked the Promoter. She was a fun, quirky new character with a great voice.

Halo: Campaign Evolved

I was an Xbox hater in the very beginning. Not long before the first console’s announcement, I had finally given up being an exclusive Nintendo fanboy and embraced the PlayStation, which I also previously dismissed. So I wasn’t ready for yet another new company coming in with another console and exclusive games I couldn’t play. And the fact that it was Microsoft, the biggest and most powerful tech company in the world at the time, made it worse. I was convinced they were just going to come in and try to buy everything up and ruin gaming. And, well… I guess my fears weren’t totally unfounded. Regardless, I did eventually get an Xbox, tempted by exclusives like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and, yes, Halo: Combat Evolved.

I did appreciate how fast and smooth the first Halo felt, but I didn’t really fall in love with it until Halo III, which I played an absolute metric buttload of. It was a lot of fun revisiting the original with Halo: Campaign Evolved, though it felt a bit odd. It looks great, so the nostalgic blast of the amazing music with the first mission on the Ring was powerful, but then playing some of the missions, designed over 25 years ago, it felt its age – especially later, when the stupid deer-tick-looking flood enemies kept pouring through doors and vents, making me waste all of my ammo. But it still felt great to play, looked slick, and of course there was a unique kind of thrill to be playing the original Halo on a PlayStation console. Wild times we live in. And, yes, the pistol still feels pretty broken.

The Isle Tide Hotel

I was sold on The Isle Tide Hotel based on the cover art, for some reason. It gave me Knives Out vibes, plus I’ve been fascinated by FMV games recently (as we’ll see more of below), so I got it a while back and finally got around to trying it out. It’s… odd. Maybe too odd for my taste? It feels more David Lynch than Knives Out in the sense that it introduces a lot of strange characters doing strange things and explains very little. Some of it is surreal and fantastical, too, which is fine, but ruins some of the mystery solving for me. I can’t really try to use logic and reason to understand and attempt to solve puzzles and mysteries that aren’t actually based in reality. And the story also felt caught between grounded in reality and obscured in fantasy, so I just ended up disengaging halfway through without anything to really feel invested in.

There were some colorful, odd characters that were fun to meet, though I do wish I’d had more time with them. This might be one of the best-produced FMV games I’ve played, but the “seams” as I call them (indicators of budget, like ill-fitting costumes or generic props/set dressing) are visible, a constant reminder that I’m watching/playing a low-budget visual story and not living in this world. Ultimately, that’s the allure of an FMV game, right? The feeling that you’re truly living and moving in a movie/reality? So, I feel bad criticizing The Isle Tide Hotel because I see the vision and I think they pulled off something very interesting (with some solid performances), but it fell short of what I think could be something truly great.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

When they showed the announce trailer for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds at Summer Game Fest 2025, I posted this to Bluesky:

“Me watching the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds reveal: Yeah, thanks, but I think I’ll be playing Mario Kart World for the forsee-

*Persona music starts playing*

Me: *sigh* Where’s my wallet?”

I did, indeed, play a ton of Mario Kart World, but I was very intrigued by CrossWorlds and its inclusion of other Sega characters and music. Nintendo seemed to be going in that direction with the Mario Kart 8 DLC characters/worlds, but it seems they’ve pulled back from that for some incredibly confusing and mysterious reason. So a new kart game that I could play on my PS5 and had Joker from Persona, Pac-Man, Minecraft characters, Spongebob, Hatsune Miku, and more? Plus I heard some people saying that it was actually better than Mario Kart World. Despite at least a few people saying that about every kart game since Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing (and always being wrong), I was in. Maybe it would be better!

It’s not. I mean, I have my problems with Mario Kart World, but it’s still an incredible Mario Kart game. And while I did have fun with CrossWorlds, it has a few things that I couldn’t quite get over. I didn’t love that the last course of each circuit was just the first three courses mashed together. The powersliding also felt very loose and hard to control, though maybe I would have gotten the hang of it if I’d played more (but I did beat all of the grand prix and played several time trials). The biggest offender, however, was the rubberband AI. Yes, I understand that all racing games have rubberband AI. But a good racing game balances the rubberbanding with skill. Yes, CPU racers can keep up with a wide swath of average players, but if you’re really good and are racing very well, you should be able to pull away usually. It’s supremely frustrating nailing power slides, boosts, items, stunts, and then a CPU racer cruises past you doing nothing particularly impressive. My least favorite Mario Kart, Mario Kart Wii, suffered from the same problem. Nintendo was so preoccupied with their Blue Ocean strategy with the Wii that they increased the rubberbanding in Mario Kart Wii so that any grandma or distant uncle who’s never touched a Mario Kart game could effortlessly sail past a seasoned racer who is bringing all of their tricks to the track. Can you tell I’m a little bitter?

So, yeah, I was quite frustrated by the unbalanced AI in CrossWorlds and ultimately didn’t play it as much as I thought I might, but I can see why people really like it. It does borrow a lot of solid elements from Mario Kart, and it has the very cool benefit of mixing in characters, carts, and music from Persona, Yakuza, Super Monkey Ball and more. Maybe I’ll return to it some day, especially if they end up adding more Persona characters (and with Persona 4 Revival coming, it seems possible). But more than that, I hope they take these good elements and improve on the weak points for a sequel in the next few years.

Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble is the kind of classic NES game where the mere mention of its name instantly triggers the music in my head. When I saw that this week’s installment in the Console Archives series was this amazing game, my brain went de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni-ni niiii, de ni ni ni ni ni ni niii de ni ni ni niii niii niiiii do you hear it? in your head? I’ll continue, de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni ni ni niiiiiii no? Nothing? Okay, fine, well, get whatever song you want stuck in your head.

The point is, the music in this game, as limited as it is, is a banger. And the game is also very fun. For a while, anyway. Upon revisiting it now, it does get a little boring after a while, but hey, I didn’t have much else to do when I was a kid playing this in Chicago. The colorful art, cute characters, fun level designs, and catchy music had me and my sister hooked. It was one of the few multiplayer games she was into, so we played it a lot. Good times. de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni-ni niiii, de ni ni ni ni ni ni niii de ni ni ni niii niii niiiii Still nothing? At all?

Speed Dates Summer Edition

I continued my recent foray into the FMV world with Speed Dates Summer Edition, a dating sim where you have three rounds of “dates” with your choice of five different beautiful… Turkish women? I think? I was basing that on language and vibes, but I just checked and the developer is Icarus Interactive Entertainment, and they’re based in Turkey so… I am basically Carmen Sandiego. Please clap.

Anyway, this was a very simple, very short game. I played through two rounds of dates in less than an hour. The women are indeed beautiful, and it was fun playing through these short encounters, but ultimately you only have to answer a couple of very obvious questions each round (she’ll say something like “I really like chips.” And then you’ll have the options “Give chip” or “I don’t like,” stuff like that), so it’s very easy to advance with the girl you like. There’s no real story, no particular reason to come back to it very much. I’m not mad that I played it, though, with how short it was.

Heroines Through My Lens

Aaaaand another romance-themed FMV game. This one had much higher production value than Speed Dating, and reminded me a lot of the Chinese FMV games I’ve played (though this one is from South Korea, I think). In Heroines Through My Lens you play a young man who is thrown into a new job as a photographer at a fashion company because of debt incurred in a bad business venture. You end up having to take photos of several young women in very simple QTE segments where you just press a single button at the correct time. You also make some dialog choices to try and advance your relationships with the women, who all seem to want you, of course.

Though the budget for this was seemingly still small compared to something like a feature film or TV production, it was (like the Chinese games) impressive how many sets, costumes, and props there were. I realized as I was playing this one why I’m so fascinated with FMV games recently. It’s not the sex appeal, as even the most risque of the ones I’ve played have been PG-13 at the most, with some cleavage or a clothed butt shot being the most sexual things we see. It’s not the stories, characters, or writing, which are all a bit cheesy and silly. I think it’s the fact that they exist at all. Like, there are casts and crews behind these. As I’m watching/playing, I’m constantly wondering about who these actors are, what a production day is like, who comes up with the ideas, who writes the lines and all that. And that in and of itself is kind of fun. Heroines Through My Lens wasn’t the best, most engaging game ever (I was especially frustrated that they do that thing with dialog choices where they give you “safe” options that end up actually being bad, so it started feeling like I was guessing at random to try and woo these women), but I had a decent time playing it and going along for another fascinating FMV ride.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

The year is 2013. I am a poor, stressed out grad student. After two years of mostly putting gaming in the backseat to focus on my studies, I am hyped to get a PlayStation 4 at launch and get back into the hobby I love so much. The PS4 is launching just before Thanksgiving break, so I’ll have a whole week to play my shiny new console. There is a sale to support the launch. Buy two games, get one free. The two paid games I pick are Killzone Shadow Fall, because I want a first party game, and Call of Duty: Ghosts, because that seems like an obvious, safe pick. I’m not thrilled with my third pick, as I mostly have sports games and PS3 ports to choose from, but I take a chance on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I’d never played an Assassin’s Creed game and I guessed it could be fun. I barely touched Killzone and Call of Duty that week. It was all Black Flag, all the time. I fell for it so hard, despite being “just” a PS3 port/upgrade. It would have been my very first platinum trophy if not for the required online trophies that I refused to get. I 100%ed the single player content and wanted more.

I was, of course, among the many fans calling for a remaster or direct sequel to it in the ensuing years. Video game discourse is funny because generally I hear people complaining about remakes and remasters, but there are a few exceptions that everyone seems to agree merit one. Black Flag was one of them, and I think the remaster does it justice. Like other good remakes/remasters, it nails one of the most important features of a revisit in that it feels like the original, but it looks like a brand new game. They’ve refined things like stealth, ship combat, sword fighting, and more, but it all still feels fantastically familiar.

I was weirdly worried before diving into the game, though. What if it wasn’t as good as I remember? What if it felt dated or I lost interest after a few hours? Silly me. I stepped right back into that pirating world, ready to get my Jackdaw back and sail the beautiful crystalline seas of the Caribbean. That is still one of my favorite things about this game. Sailing around, the sun sparkling on the waves, small clusters of mysterious islands begging to be explored. I did end up spending money to get the fiery ship and outfit DLC, where I look like a demonic captain set on revenge. And that’s kind of how I roleplayed this playthrough. In 2013, I felt like a new sailor, just getting my bearings and earning my sea legs. Having played many Assassin’s Creed games (and tons of Sea of Thieves) since, I felt a lot bolder and more willing to indiscriminately cut my way through as many slavers who dared exist in my presence. And it was a lot.

I did have fun reliving the story, too, and upgrading my ship, sending my fleet out to gather materials and money, fully furnishing my pirate mansion, and embarking on side missions to collect cool gear or upgrade my lieutenants. Anne Bonny is still a hottie and I had her with me as much as I could. I was a little sad that I only discovered the skeleton crew cosmetic right near the end of my playthrough. It would have been so amazing to have a deck full of skellies on my flaming hot demon ship, but alas. Also, the harder legendary ship battles are annoyingly difficult. Overall, though, I absolutely loved my time returning to the Caribbean. And I finally got my platinum trophy.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

When I pre-ordered my PlayStation 4, I took advantage of an offer from Sony where you got three launch games for the price of two. Like most launch lineups, it was slim pickings, but I went with Killzone Shadow Fall (because it was one of the only made-for-next-gen choices), Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Black Flag was my first AC game and I absolutely fell in love with it. I spent many hours over that winter break clearing every icon on the map and wishing I could pirate around the Caribbean forever. I was so into the game that I’ve since bought and played Assassin’s Creed, AC 2, AC 3, Brotherhood, Revelations, Syndicate, Origins, and Odyssey. I’m not as into the Vikings theme as many others seem to be, but I liked Origins and Odyssey enough that Valhalla was still a definite day one purchase. What complicated matters, though, was the fact that the game was originally slated to launch just a week before Cyberpunk 2077, a game I knew I wanted to play at launch alongside my friends. Well, when Cyberpunk was delayed by three weeks, I felt like a month would be enough time to finish Valhalla before I found my way to the streets of Night City. I was a few days off. [Some spoilers ahead]

I’m framing my experience like this because those last few days of finishing the game felt torturous. I have a very hard time putting games aside without beating them, especially if I’ve already sunk many hours into them. I wasn’t about to stop playing Valhalla when Cyberpunk came out because I was, I thought, right near the end of the game. Except I wasn’t. The game’s narrative structure is a bit loose, because like the last couple of AC games there are multiple branches of the broad, overarching story, each with its own quest lines. You have Eivor’s storyline, the Brotherhood storyline, the present day (Order of the Ancients) storyline, and the Asgard storyline, all independent yet woven together to form the “whole” story. This isn’t necessarily different than Origins or Odyssey, which had similar structures, but the game isn’t exactly clear about how these elements fit together. When I reached the “end” of Eivor’s storyline, I was legitimately unsure if I’d “beat” the game. Further, even after I’d finished the other storylines, it didn’t feel like the storylines had converged in a satisfying way. I think this was, in part, due to the way the last several stretches in Eivor’s story drag on and on. Just when you think you’ve done the last thing, they open a new area that you’re required to conquer. And that word, “required,” is what I think is to blame for my annoyance with the last chunk of the narrative.

Before I get into that, let me say that I understand pacing is a very difficult thing to nail in an open world game. When you give your players the freedom to explore an open world, complete side quests unrelated to the main quest, and finish segments of the narrative whenever they choose, you are essentially leaving the pace of the game and the narrative in their hands. You can include things to remind the player of the main narrative or incentivize main quests over side quests, but the more you do so the more you risk making your players feel more restricted and less “free” in this open world you’ve set up for them. So, it’s a balance, but even when you get it mostly right, players can be their own worst enemies. I have to admit that when I hear people talk about an open world game having “too much side content” or “poor pacing” (due to the aforementioned side content), I want to snap a controller in half. Not really. They are so expensive now. Anyway, it makes me angry. Because side content is, if a game is pretty well designed, optional. You don’t need to participate in any of it. So, if you do, and if that makes you like the game less or feel that the narrative is paced poorly, that is explicitly on you, right? You had a choice to go through the narrative at your own pace or to ignore side content, and you chose not to. How is that the game’s fault? We should celebrate open world games that allow for varying experiences, where one person can mainline the story in a manageable amount of time and another can spend many more hours with optional side content.

My problem with Valhalla’s pacing is that much of the content is not optional. Even if we leave aside the grinding (of side content) that seems required to be high enough in level to complete main missions, in order to “truly” complete the game, you have to go through all of the above mentioned storyline quests. You have to go through all of Eivor’s missions, all of the Asgard missions, all of the present day missions, and all of the Brotherhood missions. In addition to this, the game leads you to believe you’re approaching the climax several times, only to then introduce a new area that you must go through all of the steps to conquer and move the story along.

If I was playing this game in isolation, during a slow summer, maybe I wouldn’t have been quite as irked as I was by it. But we are in one of the busiest release windows in recent memory, and I have a new console and several new games to play. And I stand by my complaint that the interweaving of the four narrative branches is loose and unclear, and I think that played directly into my issue with the pace as well. When added to a few very irksome bugs (which seem laughable now that I’ve also just completed Cyberpunk, but more on that in the next post) and confusing “world events,” which have replaced side quests (so they’re essentially side quests under a different name and with a worse tracking system), I was left somewhat disappointed in Valhalla. Does that mean I disliked it? No! I decided to start with my negative impressions because the crush of new consoles and games to play is clearly affecting how I consume media, so it all felt very relevant and timely. But there was a lot to like about Valhalla, too.

I know there are some people that are annoyed at the series’ move away from stealth and toward open combat, and I have mixed feelings about it. I thought that by the time they got to Black Flag, Ubisoft had gotten very good at designing forts and other areas that required you to find one of several stealthy ways to infiltrate and topple. But sometimes, in my impatience, I wanted to just rush in and murder a bunch of bad guys and move on. Where it was very difficult to do that in previous games, it is very easy (and, in fact, preferred) in Valhalla. Especially as I gained levels and became more powerful, it felt very cathartic to vent my frustrations by running straight into battle, an axe in each hand, flinging myself into hordes of enemies and severing limbs and heads with relative ease. Returning to a previously challenging area later in the game, when I was very powerful, was particularly satisfying, as I felt I was exacting bloody revenge on the foes that had once given me such a hard time.

The game is also gorgeous. As with Origins and Odyssey, I spent a whole lot of time in photo mode, mostly capturing shots of the game’s incredible lighting and atmospheric effects. As I was sifting through my screenshots after playing Origins I remember thinking “how many shots of the sun did I need?” Then, with Odyssey, I had the same problem and thought “hah, I did it again.” And, now, well… I just have to resign myself to the fact that I will always walk away from a new AC game with dozens of screenshots of the sun. Rising. Setting. Behind a cloud. Behind a building. By the water. By a mountain. By itself. I have a problem, okay?

In addition to the graphics being great, Ubisoft continues to be masters of the physicality of open worlds. They are so good at creating topographic and geological environments, and I don’t think they get enough credit for it. I get it. With so much content in a game, how often do you have time to slow down and appreciate the way a river flows from a glacial peak, down to a small lake that feeds into a waterfall that has shorn jagged cliffs into the mountainside and created a system of caves? I found myself taking time to appreciate these things pretty often, but if I had time (and incentive) I would love to spend hours just travelling around the intricately designed worlds of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, just looking for interesting and beautiful geographic features. A small example that I stupidly did not get a screenshot of: I saw a small tree that was set into an outcropping of rock in a hilly field. The rock on that side of the hill had crumbled, leaving a cleft in the hill, and where the ground became soft and probably mineral-rich, a small tree had been lucky enough to take root. It wasn’t special. There was no particular purpose to it. But some designer had thought about the environment closely and with such care that they added this small detail that most people would probably never even notice or think about. This kind of environmental detail is why, for whatever flaws they might have, I will probably always love these kinds of AC games.

Though the setting of ninth century England wasn’t quite as iconic as Ancient Greece or Egypt, there were some fun places to explore and odd allusions here and there. One of my favorite things to do was find and explore abandoned Assassins bureaus around the country. In fact, I wish there was a bit more to them than a brief environmental/platforming segment and a few scrolls. But I did like them enough as-is, and reading the scrolls left behind was a nice way to tie the long-standing Assassins’ story in with the current history of the region.

Some of the allusions and Easter eggs I ran across seemed very appropriate, and some just seemed… odd. Robin Hood’s band of merry men? Makes sense! A side quest that is based on and directly named after one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? Duh! A character made to look like The Prodigy’s Keith Flint, who asks you to beat up a bishop while he and his band sings “Smack My Bishop”? Yea- wait, what? I mean, yeah, they’re an English band, but what an odd choice. There are tonnes (see what I did there? With the British spelling? Because it’s a game set in England? I should delete this) of very famous British bands that they could have used. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. The Spice Girls. That one with the dumb, unoriginal, angry brothers. Why The Prodigy? One of my favorite side quests/allusions was obtaining Excalibur, though. I waited until I was pretty much done with everything else in the game before embarking on that particular journey, and I kind of wish I’d sought it earlier. I definitely liked the dual axe thing, but the journey to find Excalibur was very satisfying and using it as a weapon was fun.

And to cram in a few more scattershot thoughts, I will say I thought the depiction of three religions (Paganism, Old Norse, and Christianity) trying to coexist was interesting. At one point, Eivor says “their soft god,” referring to Jesus, which I thought was very amusing. I loved that you could not only pet and cuddle the cats in the game, but you could have a ship cat! A cat! On your ship! Speaking of ships, the naval stuff was meh. Nothing will beat pirating on the open seas, but I guess I wasn’t expecting it to. I did love my rainbow ship decorations, though, with matching happy, smiling shields. Very tonally appropriate. The three witch sisters (the Daughters of Lerion) might have been my favorite quest in the game. They were super hard and reminded me of the Valkyries in God of War, but beyond that I loved their backstory of fallen family, betrayal, and vengeance. The fishing kind of sucked. But you do get into a rap battle with a squirrel at one point, so you win some, you lose some. Overall, I did like the game, but the pacing issues, seemingly sloppy mission design in some areas, and bugs, kept it from being among my favorite AC games.

This Magic Moment

When I was writing my top 20 list for this site, I was constantly wavering between games that I thought were objectively great and games that I had a special, personal experience with. I struggle with that every time I make a list or share my favorite video game/movie/book with people, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I make my way through Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.

Syndicate

So far, Syndicate is as good as I’ve come to expect from an Assassin’s Creed game. The graphics and dedication to environmental detail is superb, the controls are fluid and intuitive, and the combat feels like a well-choreographed dance (when I get in the groove, anyway). With two years and as many AC games between it and Black Flag, it should be a better game. It is, arguably. The graphics are a bit better, the interface is slightly improved, there are some new features. It’s not hitting me as hard as Black Flag, though. I can play Syndicate for a couple of hours and be satisfied with putting the controller down. With Black Flag, I didn’t want to stop playing. Like, ever. I would play for hours, convincing myself I needed to sleep and maybe shower before jumping right back to my swashbuckling adventures. I thought about playing it when I wasn’t playing it. I dreamed about it. I was legitimately sad when I approached 100% completion.

So what is it that’s so different? Black Flag does have the advantage when it comes to setting. As gorgeously rendered as Syndicate’s Victorian London is, it’s, well, Victorian London. Dim, dirty, and drearily urban. Black Flag had some urban areas, but it was the vast, bright, sparkling Caribbean seas and islands that I most vividly remember. I could do all of the same building hopping and street stalking I can do in Syndicate, but then I could hop on my very own pirate ship and sail into the eye of a vicious tropical storm.

But can setting really impact my experience with a game that much? It could also have been when I played Black Flag, which was the winter break just after buying my PS4 at launch. So it was an exciting time, because I had time to devote to games and Black Flag was one of my first of the new generation of consoles. Sometimes I can feel pressure to rush through as many games as I can during the breaks between semesters, but I only had a few PS4 games so I gave myself plenty of time to dedicate to playing them. How much does this ‘right place, right time’ factor affect my reception of games? A lot, I would venture to guess. When I reflect on games that I’ve had a strong reaction to (Dragon Quest VIII, Fallout 3, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), I remember the actual act of playing them in addition to the games themselves. The time surrounding their playing seems special in some way. There was a sense of freedom and excitement, despite what my life was like surrounding the game. If I had played any of them, or Black Flag, at a different time, with different expectations/priorities/distractions, would I have become as invested? It seems impossible to know, but the logical part of my brain says that I probably wouldn’t have been ‘pulled in’ or immersed as deeply in some situations. I probably would have liked them, sure, but if I hadn’t had hours to spend playing Dragon Quest VIII while I was on leave, or Fallout 3 when I was job hunting, or Black Flag when I was on break, I probably would not have become as obsessed and overwhelmed by the worlds they presented me with.

Much of this is pointless, I understand that. Who really cares what makes a game a favorite? But it’s interesting to think about, and I do so pretty often, especially as I age and talk with younger gamers about experiences they might not be able to fully appreciate (the transition from 2D to 3D games, for instance). Someone could play Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart: Double Dash back to back and make the obvious judgement that Double Dash is a better game. It’s a much smoother experience, thanks to improved frame rate, the graphics are much improved, there is more diversity in the gameplay, etc. And I would agree with them. Double Dash is a better game. But there is too much magic surrounding the time I spent with Mario Kart 64 for it to be that simple. I liked Mario Kart 64 more in the moment. If I hadn’t played it when it came out and played it just before I tried Double Dash, I’m sure I would had a completely different opinion of it.

Mario Kart 64

I don’t have a point that I’m working toward here, I’m just sort of talking (or, uh, typing) to myself. The question that often spawns these types of thoughts for me is “what is your favorite game of all time?” Will any game ever unseat my current favorite, Chrono Trigger? I have played better games, probably. I will play better games. But time and nostalgia and that nameless sense of timeless magic will likely prevent me from ever ‘liking’ a game more.