I mentioned in a thread earlier in the winter about my 'mission', but I feel like updating my story.

This is a rant/props/opinion thing. There are probably going to be a LOT of spoilers for the series. If that's going to be a problem, I'll give you the TL;DR at the beginning (why isn't this a thing? TL;DR's should be at the top - should we make this the new thing?)

TL;DR: I played AC2 through Origins over the past 4.5 months. It was awesome. If you haven't played them, stop loitering on Reddit and go play them.

Over time I acquired Revelations and III for free through xbox gold but slept on them. 3 or 4 years ago I intermittently watched friends play the Ezio trilogy at my work camp and dug the concept, but never picked the series up myself. I mostly gravitate towards rpg style games but always enjoyed the action-adventure/rpg/fps hybrid's (enjoyed Farcry 3/4, big fan of Borderlands, etc) but always felt late on the trigger to tackle the seemingly endless world of Assassin's Creed. Origins changed all that. It had all the elements that make a game that I can get into. 'Problem' was, I didn't want to jump into the 10th game of the series, so what's a man to do but play a game of catch up.

A little about me. I am 33 and was introduces to video games at the very tail end of Atari, but really my journey started with NES. Been an avid gamer since. I live in BC, Canada and have a career in forestry which means that I don't work during the winter. I have a wife and a skiing addiction so winter isn't just about video games.

After Origins came out I came up with a goal of banging the series off during my off season. Luck had it that sales aligned and I picked up everything except AC1 for dirt cheap. Started with AC2 in mid November - Brotherhood, Revelations, III, Black Flag, Rogue, Unity, Syndicate, Origins. I don't start work for another 4 weeks and I just 'unofficially' finished. Unofficial because I still have to play Origin DLC.

AC2 - Origins in 4.5 months.

Venice is a masterpiece.

Brotherhood ages amazingly well and I wish I had experience it when it came out, because wow.

Revelations felt very special to me in the sense that it's very rare for a video game series to invest that much in character development. RDR got me in the feels for Marston, but how I felt for Ezio at the end of Revelations is going to be very, very hard to top. Also - because I skipped AC1, I really enjoyed the subplot that revolved around Altair, making me get a better understanding of the beginnings.

III pissed me off at first. Felt like half the damn game was intro/tutorial. Combining that with the horrible decision of trudging through deep snow... that was a very painful first (and second?) act. In the end though I was smelling what they were cooking. Sure the voice acting was lame, and the map sucked,... actually - ACIII sucked.

Black Flag was dope. I know it, you know it, your grandma knows it. Hell, the pigeons in GTA 5 know it. One thing that I realized most with Black Flag was the booty! Every open world game has chests with [whatever] in them that you are coaxed to find but with most games they are just... there. Playing as a pirate in Black Flag it makes very logical sense to go out and find the chests because you're a freakin' pirate. BOOTY!

Rogue was great. I loved how it was basically more Black Flag but with the twist of playing for the other team, but what really made the game for me was the map. The river map was a work of art. Landing my boat at one spot and by the end of my exploring I'm a 1/3 of the way across the map on the other side of big island. It took the awesomeness of Black Flag and refined the map for more enjoyable land based gaming. Shit yeah.

Unity... oh Unity. Yeah the map WAS a masterpiece, but when that's all the game has to offer, who cares? I hated Unity and almost quit at least three times. My wife actually gave me props for sticking with it when I was very obviously not enjoying myself. Combat sucked, difficulty was hard - which would be fine, but it was out of line with the rest of the series so it felt off - and I wish I was playing the chick instead of buddy because at least she understood the big picture and wasn't a little bitch.

Syndicate felt like a bigger outsider to me than Black Flag in terms of what a Assassin's Creed game means. 'Black Flag isn't an Assassin's Creed game', blah blah blah. The motive was there though and the story made enough sense to go with it. Unity sucked hard, as I previously mentioned, but at least it showed that the Creed isn't 100% cowboy - there are repercussions to your actions within the Creed. This brings us to Syndicate. The game starts with the twins blatantly disobeying the Creed, and I guess we are to just ignore that? On top of that, they try and pull a GTA:SA gang turf war thing that doesn't really make sense. The Creed is about shutting down the Order sure, but the whole child labour thing was more a socioeconomic thing. The whole game felt so... unCreedy (unCreedie?). Starrick didn't even give me a Templar vibe, instead he more just felt like a capitalist. The whole game felt off.

Origins... ORIGINS! I just finished it tonight - except for the racing. Did one race and nope'd out of the Hippodrome right away. Good to know they didn't improve on that. /s . The 3rd act was truly spectacular. Here I am thinking it's over, but nope - here I am in Rome feeling like a true assassin. That being said, I do feel like the 3rd act did feel a bit, dare I say, rushed. What I consider the best part of the map (the whole northwest 1/4) felt very unutilized. I am nit picking here - but they could have played more on the Greece/Rome/Egypt clash a bit more to add even more depth and length to the story. I'm most likely going to partake in the new game , which is rare for me. RDR, GTA(all of them), Borderlands, Skyrim, Goldeneye, and Mario (1, 3, 64) are the only games I've played multiple times in my gaming history that I can remember.

In conclusion:
For years I felt like I should have been playing AC, but at this point, I am very happy that I waited and binged on the series over the winter. I feel connected to the story in a way I haven't ever felt with any video games since I was playing NES as a kid (possible exception would be FF7 - I was a teenager and it was the first proper RPG I played and it forced me to truly understand what gaming is. No, I never got into Zelda as a kid.) . To go from a young innocent Ezio all the way through to a vengeful Bayek that unintentionally started the Creed over a few months was just awesome. Sure, some games were more miss than hit, but marathon playing allowed me to ignore my completionist nature when the going got sucky (Unity's map was the busiest, most chaotic mess I've experienced ever) and focus on the end game goal I set for myself. Where will Ubisoft take us next? As much as I'd love Japan, I feel like it would be a shame to Bayek and Aya. The story that is Origins did such an amazing job at building up both characters, with Origins ending having the feeling like it's actually just a prologue of so much more. It's probably too controversial, but with Aya in Rome, Bayek in Egypt, and the date being as it is... Jesus. Literally. Sure, they'd be old so maybe it won't work, but Aya and Bayek helping shape catholicism. As I said - probably too controversial.

Until the next AC does come out, I am going to catch up on my backlog. Watch Dogs (1 and 2), finally finish Witcher 3 DLC's, I got Just Cause 3 sitting on my hard drive collecting dust, as well as all the Fallout 4 DLC's. If I can smash those out before the new AC I guess there's Far Cry 5, RDR 2, and most likely Forza Horizon 4 which is a whole other can of worms.

If you made it this far, I commend you. If you're hungry, I'd recommend tuna melts - and pre toast the bread before putting it in the oven.