Jay’s Internet Log

I haven’t played much of the ACB single player story, which is the reason I bought the game in the first place.  I’m probably about an hour into the story, and so far, what I’ve seen has been very fun and cool.  I have however played a few hours of the multiplayer, so this writeup will focus more on that side of things.  When Ubisoft announced that ACB would have online competitive multiplayer, I thought “Great, here’s another tacked-on multiplayer experience that doesn’t need to be there and just took resources away from polishing the single player story”.  I still can’t say if the previous statement is true, but what I can say is that the multiplayer in this game is vastly different than any I’ve played before, so for that, Ubisoft wins.  I’ll try to explain it here, but I wasn’t able to understand it until I played it for myself.

Like other multiplayer games, you rank up as you earn XP.  XP is earned by making assassinations, but more is earned for doing so with style.  Each time you rank up, you earn new abilities and custom classes, and these new abilities really help you get an edge over your foes.  An example of an ability is to be able to change your character skin to another one, so when you are being pursued, you can round a corner, throw on a disguise, and be incognito for a few seconds.  Another one is a smoke bomb, which can get you out of a difficult situation more quickly.

I’ve played two game types so far, and I think there are four total.  Both of the gametypes I played were very similar, the only difference being one is free-for-all, and the other team-based.  Here’s my best description of how the games play, though as I said earlier, it’s tough to describe in words.  8 human players start a match and choose what character skin they want, be it male or female, a nicely dressed Captain or a long-nosed Doctor, it doesn’t matter.  They all play the same.  The map is then populated with AI robots in these same skins and you’re set loose in it.  You are given a single person to assassinate, and another human is given you to assassinate.  You follow a compass of sorts around the map, looking for your target while trying to stay incognito in order to hide your location.  Incognito is the important word here.  You should be trying to blend in with the AI robots, especially those that resemble your character skin.  The AI robots tend to just walk around, so if you see somebody climbing onto rooftops or sprinting around, you can tell that they are a human player, so that’s what you’re looking for.  It’s very slow-paced, but when you get a kill and the target has no idea beforehand, it’s very satisfying.  You get bonus points for staying hidden whilst killing, so running around to your target is generally not suggested.  Once you kill someone, a new target is given.  You can have up to four people vying for the same target or following you as a target, and it can get pretty crazy.  The pacing is extremely slow as you’re trying to blend in with a crowd while looking all around for someone who’s not walking in the same pattern as everyone else.  It’s a lot of fun and I hope to level up all the way, though I’m not sure how difficult that will be.

The multiplayer is by no means perfect.  It would be nice to be able to customize your classes after ranking up without having to drop the whole party and go back to a menu.  This effect is a double-edged sword.  Not only is it aggravating to me, but when dropping me back to the menu, it breaks up the party which requires them to find another player.  The fact that higher ranked people are effectively stronger than lower ranked people is a balancing issue that seems like it was an oversight in the design phase.  I have little chance as a level 7 player to compete with a level 30 player, and this was proven a few times yesterday.  An ability that you unlock at level 14, which allows you to morph NPCs around you into your character skin is extremely powerful, and I look forward to using that when given the chance.

Overall, I’m really liking ACB.  I think that I’ll need sessions of a few hours with the single player in order to experience and enjoy it fully, and the multiplayer is nice if I’ve only got 20 minutes to invest.  It isn’t perfect, but for a first shot at multiplayer with this franchise, I think that Ubisoft did a wonderful job with it.  Overall, the game appears to be top-notch.