Is it just me, or does Assassins Creed do bad-ass better than anything else?

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The subject says it all, but what other games achieve that good old feeling of badassery?

I (having just played Uncharted 2) feel that the Uncharted series and the Prince of Persia Series do an awesome riff on sarcastic humour badassery.

Assassin's creed plays it much more close to its chest...

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

Megaman 2

Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

Seconded.

Kirby's Epic Yarn. No need for further discussion.

AC makes me feel like Ezio is a super badass, but also reminds (via Desmond) me that I'm a chubby nerd sitting in my PJs living vicariously through him.

No, if I want to feel badass I pop in Monster Hunter Tri. The game requires player skill the way new games rarely do anymore. Give a new person to the game my character and they'd get their ass kicked. MW2 scratched the same itch for a while.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

Seconded.

Thirded.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

Seconded.

Thirded.

Fourthed.

The combat system was so easy to use (and get halfway decent with) that it made you feel like a badass. I would love to see a Spiderman or Captain America game with similar mechanics.

Another game that did that was the Hulk : Ultimate Destruction game on the original XBox. (Or I think that was the name.) The one where the training ground/tutorial has you playing as a "simulated hulk" as a member of the military's Hulkbuster unit.

We don't really need someone else to vote for Arkham Asylum, but IT'S HAPPENING ANYWAY.

(it's the first console game I played after the travesty of boredom that is FFXIII, and it's absolutely fantastic to actually enjoy playing a console game again)

mudbunny wrote:
Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

Seconded.

Thirded.

Fourthed.

The combat system was so easy to use (and get halfway decent with) that it made you feel like a badass. I would love to see a Spiderman or Captain America game with similar mechanics.

Even though I said no further discussion was needed, here I go.

I could not have felt like more of a badass as I played though that game on normal difficulty. But lately, I've been trying to nail it on hard, and it is killing me. But as I work at it, and really get the combat mechanics down, it does provide even more satisfaction. So it works on both levels. There is a true art to playing it on hard, but normal allows you to really feel like you are king of the world.

Splinter Cell: Conviction did it pretty well, which leads me to believe the "stealth combat" hybrid is a good one to make you feel bad-ass.

I suppose the secrets are to make the player somehow perceive the game as harder than it actually is, and to balance enemies so that they are tough enough to feel like an accomplishment but weak enough that they don't pose a significant threat.

At the risk of over-analyzing: Assassin's Creed does this through the very cool counter-kill (and now killing streak) systems, and by giving you a bunch of "cheats" (like smoke bombs and medicine) that you don't have to use but can pull you out of the fire if you're overwhelmed. You know these enemies are "tough" because they're blocking blows and jabbing you from behind as you wail away on them; but one graceful moment, and you've turned the tide or avoided a fight altogether.

Duke Nukem

Batman: Arkham Asylum definitely made you feel like a badass, especially in the stealthier parts.

I'll have to throw in Prototype though. Less personal than Batman, but more power.

Just my opinion, but to me, Batman AA has no flaws. I'm on my 3rd play through the game, and there is no part that I dread replaying. For my money, it's as close to perfection as I've ever seen in a video game. I've bought the damn thing on three different platforms.

My only negative about B:AA would be that the tension only works while it's elevating the situation, as Joker's plan unravels. The last few hour or so, from Croc onwards is just wrapping up the game and doesn't really feel like a big crescendo.

Far Cry 2. It's hard not to feel like a bad ass when you're using wild fires as a combat tactic. Plus, there's hang-gliding. hangliding? hanglieding? hangerliding?

Yonder wrote:

I'll have to throw in Prototype though. Less personal than Batman, but more power.

2nded. That first time you rip the guts out of the bottom of that helicopter and throw it to the ground is a whole power-trip in and of itself.

I saw that first Hulk game on the Xbox mentioned above, and that was a good one too. They implemented the destruction moves and the environment really well, and grabbing a power pole or a bus and just running around town playing baseball with cabs and copters is just intrinsically fun.

Another really old game that I'm probably the only person on the planet who liked was an original Xbox game called Nightcaster. Once you got your spells leveled up, throwing down a light spell felt like you were calling down the rain. Oh, for that matter, calling down the Hammer of Dawn in Gears of War also has it's points.

I'm going to have to throw in Metal Gear, particularly Solid. Vulcan Raven was an awesome fight.

In Farcry 2 I feel more like an evil asshole that's raping Mother Africa than a bad ass. It's odd because you'd think in a game called Assassin's Creed you'd also get the same feeling, but I actually find joy in killing all those bastard archers on the rooftops. No YOU shouldn't be up here, now die!

Metroid: Other M. Every defensive maneuver you make creates an opportunity to counter-attack with force. There's nothing that makes you feel like a bad-ass quite like dodging an opponent's attack and using it to your advantage.

LarryC wrote:

Megaman 2

Yep.

Super Meat Boy - I get that badass feeling when I finish any of the punishing levels

In Assassin's Creed 2, I got a hug from Leonardo DiVinci, rolled with Machiavelli, screwed Katerina Sforza, and still found time to beat up some punk who thought he could put hands on my prostitutes.

Hell yeah that's bad-ass.

Well, maybe not the hug, but he later made me a little wrist cannon dealie so I can bust caps in asses, and that is bad-ass. I'm about 90% sure he wouldn't have done that if I hadn't hugged him.

Kratos have mercy upon these posters.

No love for Ninja Gaiden? Sure, it is emasculating the first dozen(hundred) or so times you die, but when you finally hit your rhythm? It is like your enemies just explode in fear of you.

Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Because badasses don't have to sneak around in ventilator shafts and attacking people from above.

Coldtouch wrote:

Kratos have mercy upon these posters.

Werd.

Dirt wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Batman: Arkham Asylum. No need for further discussion.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Because badasses don't have to sneak around in ventilator shafts and attacking people from above.

They do if they want to be efficient and if they want to live. Part of being a bad-ass is having the quality of vulnerability. Batman is human, and vulnerable, which is what makes his skills so badass.

Kratos have mercy upon these posters.

See that's just it. Kratos is a god, not a badass. There's a difference.

The crawling around and stealth segments of Batman were the most badass of all. You are focusing too much on the "has to hide so bullets don't pierce his frail human flesh" and not enough on "picks off increasingly terrified enemies one by one, giving no warning of his arrival, and leaving no trace other than the body of his victims"

Just like monsters in the movies, Batman is the scariest when you can't see him.

How about Just Cause 2? In my most recent play there was a helicopter strafing me. I used my grapple to pull myself up to the helicopter, threw the pilot out, then strafed the runway destroying the planes trying to take off to fight me before using rockets to take out the general I was supposed to be assassinating. All in a day's work.

Jeff-66 wrote:

See that's just it. Kratos is a god, not a badass. There's a difference.

He becomes a god after killing one. If that's not badass, I'm not sure what is.

I've found that Vanquish gives me many "Damn, I'm bad-ass!" sequences.

LobsterMobster wrote:

In Assassin's Creed 2, I ... screwed Katerina Sforza,

Whoah, did I miss a side-quest?

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