November is the big time of year normally when it comes to the gaming industry. Christmas is just round the corner, and it’s the perfect time to make people feel guilty for not buying things for you, thus not loving you enough. So it’s the perfect time to release the big guns to make it tough for everyone to decide on what to get.

It’s also normally at this time that we seemingly get two particular games as regular as your bowel movements; Call of Duty: Whatever Subtitle it’s meant to be now, and of course Asshanded Creed: Subtitle Here. Fifa also occurs every year, but everyone knows it’s a pile of balls and only those who haven’t had Sky Sports hardwired into their heads tend to pick that up.

Ah merde.

These franchises are released year after year, and in general it’s a case of being stuck in Groundhog day, with only minor changes, lick of paint here, redone voice acting here to show for all the effort. Last year, Assassin’s Creed found itself in the Caribbean, floating on a big pretty ship, blowing the crap out of everyone else on the high seas and making every day into “Talk like a Pirate day”, YARRR, twas more fun than catching the clap from a wench who had seem more action than Davy Jones’s underpants. In a strange sort of way, they decided to bring something new to the table, and sailing around freely, was a very welcome change to the whole go somewhere and kill someone thing which had been it’s bag since the very beginning. Call of Duty: Ghosts at the time was released, because Activision wanted money to tide them over, and the game pretty much tanked into history as something to easily forget, as it ran badly and there was nothing new at all which made it better than Black Ops 2.

Oh how it’s turned around this year.

OMG…there’s a sale on, must dash, toodles!

It appears that this year, Call of Doody decided to try something new with bouncing around higher than before because you’re wearing machine bits like a Borg Drone wannabe and chucked in Kevin Spacey being a bad guy, because Kevin Spacey can make reading the phone book seem epic.

The best highlight of the game simply had to be pressing a button to pay respects at a funeral. Yep. May as well as been flashing on the screen “Press B to laugh at the dead guy, and to drop your trousers to give everyone a show”. Ultra classy gameplay there. Yet, it also ran very very well by all accounts on all systems, and the feedback has been a lot better remarkably despite the same gameplay being very much on display.

Ubisoft decided to throw everything out the window and go back to the same formula of Assassin’s Creed 2, but throwing in incredibly bad performance, clipping issues where you merge with walls and other characters, and oh, if you had the cheek of playing the game when it said you could while downloading, be prepared to see the below screen;

How Ubisoft intends to make you feel dead inside….

This occurred too much during the opening parts of the game and for a significant period of time while the internet pipe was being destroyed by Uplay trying to grab the game as much as possible, the entire game took over 5 hours on a 17MB connection to get hold of and 7GB only allowed you to play the opening 10 minutes before an hour’s pause. An hour, without I might add, being able to escape from the loading screen at all, save killing the game altogether.

Most of the UK has a far slower service, so if you do download and it tells you it is playable, no, no it isn’t.

In fact after it’s installed, there is a debate on how playable it would be. The cutscenes with our sexy french naughty man Arno, seem to stutter about so much that most of the characters look like they are suffering from Parkinson’s disease. You cannot get a decent frame rate to keep running at and therefore you have to drop all the options far lower where other games who are more demanding do not require such an action to be taken. The fact that you can actually fall through the floor and get stuck, is just a WTF.

It’s like you end up in a place where the laws of time and space don’t apply as you’re viewing the world from underneath it with no way out. Basically the same feeling is had when you’re listening to someone talking about golf.

It’s a great shame as despite a lot of it being a recycle, it’s a wonderful setting that’s been created. Wandering around Paris during the revolution is a great idea. Far better than the idea I once sent in, Assassin’s Creed: Hammersmith where you drink too much in the all in one bar before killing the target with a kebab which only touched the floor twice.

Watch Dogs, released earlier this year, also had various performance problems, but none that actually completely broke the game forcing you to start again. It was however, an Ubisoft release, and it does appear to be a pattern which is forming. God only knows what Far Cry 4 (or Far Cry 3 with elephants) will be like when that releases in a couple of weeks.

The issues around the game, appear to have had an impact. Ubisoft’s share price has dropped, and the developer actually lauched the Assassin’s Creed Live Blog, where Ubisoft’s next patch will address a few “common” issues. It appears that the marketing was far more important than performing any quality control, and this does smell a little bit like it was rushed out. Watch Dogs was delayed and was still badly received on the result of overhyped marketing as it was a decent enough game, but really not was promised.

Perhaps in the pursuit of the hard earned cash, Ubisoft will just need to slow it down and take the time to deliver fewer but better quality products. Yearly cycles of games is just a bit too much and sooner or later, people will get tired of this trick, only to spend their money on something better like cocaine and hookers. Hopefully Assassin’s Creed: Francais will get the fixes it so desperately needs, and people will be enjoy to enjoy it a lot more. For what it costs everyone, you only hope so.