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Ubisoft survey gauges interest in Assassin's Creed, Ghost Recon films
A survey floating around seems to suggest Ubisoft is entertaining the idea of bringing some of its franchises over to the big screen -- specifically, Assassin's Creed and Ghost Recon. The above image was submitted to Evil Avatar, which says the survey is geared the toward finding out what would most make those taking it want to see movies based on the franchises -- Ezio, Subject 16 and the like. While we feel the world would probably be just fine without another war flick, we'd be all for an Assassin's Creed movie, granted that the project wasn't entirely about making money but also making a good movie. We're probably being a bit naive, though.
PSN Tuesday: Mortal Kombat demo, AC:B Da Vinci Disappearance
The PSN update delivers the fatalities this week with the Mortal Kombat demo for PlayStation Plus members. If you're looking for a dash of the ultra-violence without the requirement of a subscription, enjoy some happy stabs at $10 with the "The Da Vinci Disappearance" for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Sneak on past the break for this week's full update. Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list: (Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)
AC: Brotherhood 'Da Vinci Disappearance' multiplayer trailer
Oh, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, you really do know how to turn murder into art. This trailer for the "Da Vinci Disappearance" DLC, available next week for $10 on Xbox Live and PSN, shows off the multiplayer stages, four new characters and lays out the rules of the two new modes.
AC: Brotherhood 'Da Vinci Disappearance' DLC preview: Art snob
The Da Vinci Disappearance is an ambitious piece of DLC for Ubisoft, granting players access to a large chunk of single-player content, but also some new modes, skins and a map for the multipayler side. At the February Games Showcase in San Francisco, I was able to play through two missions in an Xbox 360 build. %Gallery-117567%
AC: Brotherhood murders always-on DRM, stalks PC on March 22
Ubisoft has confirmed with Joystiq that the PC version of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood will be playable in offline single-player mode after an initial login, quelling fears that Brotherhood would employ the same restrictive DRM as Assassin's Creed 2. Additionally, the PC version of Brotherhood will arrive on March 22 (a few days later than the previously suggested date). You may want to use those few extra days to sharpen your cutlery and brush up on your Italiano -- or, like, go to the Olive Garden for dinner or something. Ubisoft has also detailed the technical specifications (posted after the break) required to play Brotherhood on a PC, as well as two retail versions of the PC release: a standard edition for $50, which includes the two multiplayer updates and the Da Vinci Disappearance DLC; and a digital-only "Deluxe Edition" for $60 that adds two extra multiplayer characters, two single-player maps, an extra skin and "additional multimedia content." %Gallery-117334%
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood getting 'The Da Vinci Disappearance' DLC next month
Ubisoft has announced a new, massive-sounding DLC pack for its well-received manhunter, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. The pack, titled "The Da Vinci Disappearance," is centered around just that -- following the events of the single-player storyline, Ezio's helpful, crafty companion Leonardo Da Vinci is kidnapped by the cult of the Hermeticists, who hope to pick his brain to bend the world to their seedy will. Ezio will have to locate his stolen painting across two new areas while exercising two new, undetailed "gameplay features" in order to emancipate the renowned inventor from his captors. The DLC also includes a metric ton of content for the title's multiplayer component, including four new characters: The Dama Rossa, the Knight, the Marquis and the Pariah. The game's roster of maps will be expanded with "Alhambra," a lush quarter of a Spanish city, providing hunters and huntees with a multileveled indoor and outdoor environment to slink through. Also, two new modes will be added: Escort, where two teams of four players must assassinate the opposing team's VIP while protecting their own; and Assassinate, a straightforward, ten minute round of Deathmatch. See ya, subtlety! The pack will be released at the "beginning of March 2011," and will run shoppers 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360 and the equivalent $9.99 on PS3. Check out some screens of the new map and its violent inhabitants in the gallery below, or check out the trailer after the jump for a preview of the new single-player missions! %Gallery-117027%
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood hits PC March 17, Steam pre-orders include bonuses
PC-based assassins eager to join the Brotherhood will finally get the chance to unsheath their high-resolution, realistically lit blades next month. Ubisoft forum manager Mr_Shade announced the release dates for the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on the game's UK board: March 17 for the US (and "certain EMEA territories") and March 18 for the UK. Pre-ordering the game from Steam will earn you a free upgrade to the "Digital Deluxe Edition," which includes playable Harlequin and Officer characters, the "Trajan Market" and "Aqueduct" maps (they're similar to the linear "Lairs of Romulus" sections), the Assassin's Creed Lineage movie, and various other bonuses. Along with the full list of freebies, Steam also posted the required specs -- be sure to check those out before you place your order.
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Black Ops rack up BAFTA nominations
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced the nominees for its GAME British Academy Video Games Awards, which manage to be prestigious despite the inclusion of a sponsor's name in the title. Even before any winners are announced, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is representing well, with nominations in seven categories including Action, Artistic Achievement, Gameplay, Multiplayer, Technical Innovation, and, of course, Best Game. Call of Duty: Black Ops is also nominated in seven separate categories. Other nominees include Heavy Rain (six nominations), Mass Effect 2 (five), and XBLA favorite Limbo, receiving nods for Audio and Artistic Achievement. Best Game nominee Super Mario Galaxy 2 is also nominated for Technical Innovation, an area in which that game is not typically lauded. In addition, the first Social Network Game award includes Bejeweled Blitz, Farmerama, FIFA Superstars, My Empire, Zoo Mumba, and Zuma Blitz as nominees. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 16. Until then, you can vote for the GAME Award winner online.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood reaches 6.5 million shipped
Ubisoft announced that it has surpassed its projected third-quarter sales performance -- partially due to its uber successful dancing-centric games, which sold-in a collective 10.5 million units in this past quarter alone, but also due to the strong performance of its historical murder title, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. According to the company's latest financial report, the game has reached 6.5 million units shipped to various and sundry retailers across the globe. Time will tell how many of those units will be sold-through to consumers, but we don't foresee sneaky stabbings going out of style any time soon. Nor do we see random spurts of la bella, la lingua ricca d'Italia becoming any less fashionable.
Jade Raymond optimistic of new studios, IP development
Ubisoft Toronto Managing Director Jade Raymond's presentation at DICE expressed her belief that despite the current upheaval in the industry, she believes now is a great time to start a studio. Referencing EA Sports boss Peter Moore's speech about the industry being on a "burning oil platform" -- the idea being that it only changes when it has to -- Raymond believes it's more like a burning oil tanker that can course correct. One would hope she'd be optimistic about current core development being viable, considering she manages, what will become in time, one of the biggest studios in the industry. In terms of IP development, she explained that the Ubisoft team spent a year of pre-production building the foundations of the Assassin's Creed franchise. "We spent quite a bit of time during conception thinking about the franchise metastory and story arc. And, most importantly, thinking of how to make sandboxes that future game teams and future teams in other media would be able to experiment and come up with their own stuff in this franchise." Regarding the ability to do Assassin's Creed comics, TV or a movie down the road, "You'll never get the best out of people if you just hand them this stone tablet." Clearly showing her roots working on The Sims Online, it's quite obvious Raymond is a disciple of Will Wright's ideas about fan involvement in franchises. "I think you need to rely on fans," believing that the fan community will identify the best ideas to work from. She Iterated a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson for the video game industry: Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small franchises. Raymond made clear that Assassin's Creed was designed as a franchise that could be handed over to professionals to expand the world, she said that the next IP Ubisoft is creating in Toronto will hopefully be "handed over to fans."
Assassin's Creed: The Fall comic issue three is out
The third issue of Assassin's Creed: The Fall concludes the story arc and is now available in stores and on Ubisoft's website for $5. What will become of Daniel Cross? And of the results of the Tunguska event? We're not telling! We do have a pretty image from it after the break for you, though.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for PC gets 3D, multiple monitor support
Ubisoft Germany has posted a video detailing the new features included in the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. German site GameStar (translation) has also posted a breakdown of the unique features and improvements. Apart from some graphical enhancements over the console releases, the PC version will also add support for 3D displays and multiple monitors. Specifically, the PC release will support Nvidia 3D Vision and AMD's Eyefinity tech. The latter allows players to link together multiple monitors for some really widescreen views of Renaissance Italy. Presumably, the technology also helps you feel better about purchasing so many monitors. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is slated to pounce onto PC sometime this quarter (before April). [Thanks, Wlodi; image credit: GameStar]
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood wins Writers Guild award
The Writers Guild of America awarded Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood with the 2011 award for best video game writing -- which you may or may not agree with, but considering the nominees, at least Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 didn't win. The prize was given to Ethan Petty, Nicholas Grimwood and Matt Turner for Script Writing; and Jeffrey Yohalem, Corey May and Patrice Desilets for the story (hopefully someone at Ubisoft has Desilets' forwarding address over at THQ). Past years' winners were Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Uncharted 2. The WGA stood up for itself this year regarding its nomination process, saying it can't nominate writers if a developer doesn't bother putting a name to a script. Hopefully we'll see more publishers and developers giving their game writers credit, so future nominees won't have us scratching our heads in utter befuddlement.
Free Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer map when Facebook page hits 1m fans
Accept enough charity and, eventually, you're going to be asked for a favor. After handing out two free DLC packs in the forms of Animus Project Update 1.0 and Animus Project Update 2.0, Ubisoft is asking fans to give something back if they want another new multiplayer map in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: simply "Like" the official Assassin's Creed Facebook page. Once it hits 1 million Facebook fans, Ubi will release a new t-shirt to "commemorate the event"; share a "THANK YOU" all-caps video, featuring AssCreedBroHo devs; honor a 24-hour, 15% discount at UbiWorkshop; conduct special giveaways on the Facebook page; and (finally!) release a new multiplayer map titled "Venezia by Night." Right now, the Assassin's Creed series Facebook page has 952,177 fans. If you're not mathematically inclined, we'll do the hard work for you: 47,823 of you need to head to Facebook and give that Like button a real working over. Or don't. Simply take and take and take and never give anything back. Is that how you want people to think of you? [Thanks, Josh]
Dead Space 2 engineers top entry on UK sales chart
Isaac Clarke's Necromorph nightmare is a dream for EA, as Dead Space 2 reached the top spot on the all formats UK sales chart last week. According to Chart-Track, launch sales of the intense sequel were up 70 percent from when Dead Space debuted at sixth in 2008. Sackboy took a 48 percent sales tumble, dropping LittleBigPlanet 2 into second, while FIFA 11 enjoyed the top-seated action in third. The peanut-butter-and-jelly goodness of stabbing and shooting round out the top five with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Call of Duty: Black Ops in fourth and fifth, respectively. The week also saw the return of the original Just Dance into the top ten, meaning Ubisoft had the original and its sequel in the top ten just cha-cha-chinging away. Check out the top ten in UK sales after the break.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 'Animus Project Update 2.0' coming today
Despite some recent hiccups in the multiplayer service for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, we have quite a serious crush on the game (as evidenced by our nod to it in 2010's GOTY list). And that's why we're so glad to hear of today's impending "Animus Project Update 2.0," said to add a new team-based multiplayer mode ("Chest Capture") and the Pienza map. It appears that the free download isn't available just yet, but should be popping up on XBLM and PSN in the coming hours. In the meantime, we've got a trailer of the update's content in action. Join us just after the break ... but watch your back!
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Xbox update glitch fixed [update]
Good news, Abstergo Agents -- you've got the day off! Your rigorous training exercises on the online multiplayer portion of the Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have been interrupted. That's not due to the current national holiday; rather, it's because some players seem to be having trouble downloading the game's latest title update, locking them out of any and all of Brotherhood's online offerings. Ubisoft has acknowledged the error, and is currently working to repair the damage. We'll let you know when you can get back to your regularly scheduled murder and stuff. Update: Whatever was causing the update hiccup has been remedied, according to Ubisoft. We just downloaded the patch with no problem, and would wager that you can now do the same.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2010: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood took the single-player mechanics of one of our top games for 2009, Assassin's Creed 2, and sharpened them to a fine point; but that's not why Brotherhood clambered so high on our best of 2010 tower. The sequel is here for blindsiding us with a panic-fueled, engrossing multiplayer component. Like many of you, we've grown cynical watching companies cram unnecessary multiplayer into games with solid single-player experiences. Upon its announcement, that's exactly what Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's stab-or-be-stabbed multiplayer sounded like: typical padding to a cash-in sequel, still riding high on the last game's wave of success. Wrong. Not only did Brotherhood's single-player campaign offer a focused, distilled romp through Rome, but its multiplayer gave us a unique experience that, refreshingly, didn't have shooting at its heart.
AC: Brotherhood 'Rome by Night' map variant to be unlocked after 25M collective kills
Rome is a beautiful place to sneak around, covertly murdering targets and avoiding pursuers, but perhaps you find the scorching Italian sun too much with that silly harlequin outfit on? You'll be glad to hear, then, that Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's Rome multiplayer level will be cloaked in darkness when a nighttime variant is unlocked as soon as the collective player base reaches 25 million kills (though it's unclear if the goal is platform-specific or truly collective). How's that for a brotherly bonding exercise? Progress toward the unlock is being tracked on Ubisoft's Assassin's Network under the "Events" tab. While Ubisoft Germany claims that tracking has already begun, the count currently appears to be hidden -- as of publishing, the counter reads a single donut (pictured). That's okay though! It's only more incentive to hop back into AC: B's addictive multiplayer and sneak-stab some fools. Update: Ubisoft confirmed that the 25 million number is across both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood patch to correct 'Animus bug'
Ubisoft has announced an upcoming title update for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood that should spur stalled multiplayer matchmaking, restore PlayStation 3 Trophy acquisition and give the notorious Animus bug the boot. And that one's a detrimental glitch, mind you. If you've played Brotherhood's online component, you'll know that a lot of the bugs, cheats and exploits used by Abstergo employees in Animus simulations are features, first and foremost. Due to arrive "very soon," Title Update 3 aims to free players who get stuck either during the match search process, or in the Animus seat when they visit the 2012 timeline in the single-player campaign. It'll also address a fast travel glitch in Rome and a bug that can prevent PS3 players from unlocking further trophies after a certain point in the game. You can see a more detailed list of fixes after the break. We'll let you know as soon as the update becomes available on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
