I've been waiting for something to topple God of War: Chains of Olympus from the top of my list of favorite games to play on Sony's portable. Could Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines be that game?

I still haven't had a chance to spend any time with it, so I'll reserve all judgment.

Don't forget, you need to be 18 to watch this video... or your head will explode.

Says the publication:

Our reviews are tough, but fair. We will not give up our independent scores for the sake of a timely review. This holds true for "Assassin's Creed 2″. The publisher asked us to guarantee the score 'sehr gut' [very good], otherwise we would not receive a review copy, thus we will publish our review in next month's issue. We'd be more than glad to give the game a 'sehr gut', but only if it deserves it.

I've sent an email over to Ubisoft's PR to give them the courtesy of a response. Any that comes will be printed here.

But despite the fact this behavior has strong precedent, keep in mind this boils down to he-said Ubi-said. And it boggles the mind, from what we've all seen so far, that Assassin's Creed II would need such strong-arming to get a good score. But who knows. There is a ton of money riding on a game's Metascore, providing motive enough.

Ed's note: Kotaku received an early retail copy of the game and the note it came with only mentioned a feature of the game and the embargo date. No mention of review score at all.

Ubisoft Demanding High Scores for Early Assassins Creed 2 Reviews? [wearetheinternetz, thanks Lorand K.]

The novel is titled "Assassin's Creed: Renaissance," and is written by Oliver Bowden. I couldn't find a book description on either Amazon or Tower Books, but Play.tm says it will be an expansion of Ezio's tale. Whether that means a prequel or continuance is anyone's guess. The book has a release date of Nov. 26

"Penguin are hugely excited to be publishing the novelization to the second Assassin's Creed game," Alex Clarke, the Penguin editorial director, told Play.tm. "This partnership presents at last a way for traditional book-publishing to cross-over with the ever growing and increasingly exciting world of gaming media."

Penguin to Deliver Assassin's Creed Book [Play.tm]

Connected Consoles reports that, at the Eurogamer Expo, an Ubisoft rep told them straight up the game will not be getting a demo. Your only opportunity to try before you buy is if Ubi brings it to a public expo near you.

No Demo for Assassin's Creed II [Connected Consoles via Game Stooge]

This is the first in a series of short movies that are being developed by Hybride Technologies, the visual effects studio behind 300 and Sin City, which Ubisoft bought last year for just this sort of project.

Thanks Svenohair!

On Friday, Azaïzia Aymar, the Ubisoft community developer for Assassin's Creed II, tweeted this fun fact: "AC2 will feature 7 spoken languages for a total of 87,206 lines of recorded voice dialogue."

Of course, driving up the total is the game's multilingual support, but even at one-seventh of the total, that's still more than 12,000 lines per version. Impressive, but sounds like a spit in the ocean next to The Old Republic's script, said to be the equivalent of 40 novels.

87,206 Lines of Dialogue in Assassin's Creed 2 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

• Master Assassin - Unlock All Trophies (Platinum)
• The Birth of an Assassin - Be reborn as Ezio Auditore Da Firenze. (Bronze, 20G)
• Arrivederci Abstergo - Break out of Abstergo. (Bronze, 20G)
• Welcome to the Animus 2.0 - Enter the Animus 2.0. (Silver, 20G)
• The Pain of Betrayal - Complete DNA Sequence 1. (Silver, 30G)
• Vengeance - Complete DNA Sequence 2. (Silver, 30G)
• Exit the Son - Complete DNA Sequence 3. (Silver, 30G)
• Bloody Sunday - Complete DNA Sequence 4. (Silver, 30G)
• Undertaker - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside the catacombs under Santa Maria Novella. (Silver, 20G)
• The Conspirators - Complete DNA Sequence 5. (Silver, 30G)
• An Unexpected Journey - Complete DNA Sequence 6. (Silver, 30G)
• Bleeding Effect - Complete training and reenter the Animus. (Silver, 30G)
• The Merchant of Venice - Complete DNA Sequence 7. (Silver, 30G)
• The Impenetrable Palazzo - Complete DNA Sequence 8. (Silver, 30G)
• Masquerade - Complete DNA Sequence 9. (Silver, 30G)
• Bianca's Man - Complete DNA Sequence 10. (Silver, 30G)
• The Prophet - Complete DNA Sequence 11. (Silver, 30G)
• The Vault - Complete DNA Sequence 14. (Silver, 30G)
• An Old Friend Returns - Escape the hideout. (Gold, 100G)
• Myth Maker - Find the 8 statuettes in Monteriggioni. (Bronze, 5G)
• Vitruvian Man - Unlock all 20 pieces of Subject 16's video. (Bronze, 20G)
• Street Cleaner - Hide 5 dead bodies in a Bale of Hay. (Bronze, 10G)
• Fly Swatter - Kick a Guard while using the Flying Machine. (Bronze, 5G)
• Messer Sandman - Stun 4 guards at once by throwing sand in their face. (Bronze, 10G)
• Doctor - Perform an Air Assassination on a Poisoned NPC. (Bronze, 20G)
• No-hitter - Kill 10 enemies while remaining in conflict without being hit. (Bronze, 20G)
• Kleptomaniac - Pickpocket 1000 Florins. (Bronze, 10G)
• Lightning Strike - Sprint for 100 meters. (Bronze, 10G)
• Sweeper - Sweep 5 guards at once by using a Long Weapon. (Bronze, 10G)
• Venetian Gladiator - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside Santa Maria della Visitazione. (Bronze, 20G)
• I can see your house from here! - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside the Torre Grossa. (Bronze, 20G)
• Hallowed be thy name - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside the Basilica di San Marco. (Bronze, 20G)
• Prison Escape - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside the Rocca di Ravaldino fortress. (Bronze, 20G)
• Choir Boy - Discover the Assassin's Tomb inside Santa Maria del Fiore (The Duomo). (Bronze, 20G)
• Assassin For Hire - Complete your first assassination mission for Lorenzo Il Magnifico. (Bronze, 10G)
• Macho Man - Defend a woman's honor. (Bronze, 10G)
• Steal Home - Win a race against thieves! (Bronze, 10G)
• Show your Colors - Wear the Auditore cape in each city. (Bronze, 10G)
• Handy Man - Upgrade a building in the Stronghold. (Bronze, 10G)
• I like the view - Synchronize 10 View Points. (Bronze, 10G)
• High Dive - Perform a Leap of Faith from the Top of Florence's Giotto's Campanile. (Bronze, 10G)
• Mailman - Intercept a Borgia Courrier. (Bronze, 10G)
• Tip of the Iceberg - Use your Eagle Vision to scan a Glyph in the environment. (Bronze, 10G)
• A Piece of the Puzzle - Unlock a piece of Subject 16's video. (Bronze, 10G)
• Art Connoisseur - Buy a Painting from Florence and Venice. (Bronze, 10G)
• Podestà of Monteriggioni - Reach 80% of your stronghold's total value. (Bronze, 30G)
• Perfect Harmony - Tint your clothes with those colors: Wetland Ebony and Wetland Ivory. (Bronze, 10G)
• In Memory of Petruccio - Collect all the Feathers. (Bronze, 30G)
• Red Light Addict - Spend 5000 florins on Courtesans. (Bronze, 10G)
• Man of the People - Toss more than 300 florins on the ground. (Bronze, 10G)
• Victory lies in preparation - Get all Hidden Blades, Item Pouches and Armor upgrades for Ezio. (Bronze, 10G)

Assassin's Creed 2 Achievements/Trophies possibly leaked [Dtoid]

The agreement has given Atlanta Cutlery and Museum Replicas to make wristblades (aka the "Assassin Extension Knife"), throwing knives, swords, boots, belts, tunics and more, all based on the in-game items that Assassin's Creed Altair wears. For Altair's hangers-on, the Crusader Priest Robe, William of Montferrat Tunic and Lionheart Gambeson are also available.

Price? Not cheap. A full Altair get up with every available prop could easily set you back $1000 USD.

According to the official announcement, gear based on the original Assassin's Creed is shipping now. Licensed goods for the sequel will hit sometime in Q2 2010.

While we can't see ourselves playing Altair or Ezio dress up any time soon, we greatly look forward to someone being non-mortally wounded by the new Atlanta Cutlery and Museum Replicas, just for the ensuing mainstream media coverage.

Assassin's Creed [Museum Replicas]

It's very well shot and builds to a nice climax with Da Vinci's glider launching from the rooftops of Venice. Enjoy.

Raymond will be working under the "governance" of Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft's Montreal and Toronto development studios, at Ubisoft Toronto which is said to be home to some 800 jobs. As of right now, Raymond is toiling away as executive producer on Assassin's Creed II and "other Ubisoft projects" according to the release.

Jade joined Ubisoft's Montreal studio in 2004 as a producer on the original Assassin's Creed, but has kept a lower profile during the development of the sequel while still impressing the powers that be at corporate. We wish the Ubisoft Toronto team best of luck and godspeed to new executive headshots.

On a call to address the company's financial performance and explain the delays of four upcoming games, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was asked to describe his company's game line-up for next year.

Responding to a financial analyst who asked about the coming year's games, Guillemot said:

We have a very good lineup for next year… We have lots of products that are coming from the brands we own. You will see lots of follow-ups to the brands that are already established. We think you will also be able to see some elements concerning the Assassin's Creed license.

Assuming the question referred to Ubisoft's next fiscal year, this plan would kick in in the 12 months starting on April 1, 2010.

No clarification on what those "elements" will be was provided.

The original Assassin's Creed launched in late 2007. A DS game was released in 2008. A console sequel and an original PSP game are slated for release this year. From Guillemot's comments, it appears that Ubisoft intends to continue delivering some sort of Assassin's Creed product annually.

[PIC]

Today Fred Zeleny, one of the Bethesda Softworks crew who worked on Fallout 3, created three more games for playing outside. These modern backyard classics are inspired by Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia and, of course, Fallout 3.

Here are the rules for Mutant in the Middle, Prince of Playground and Tagsassin's Creed.

Mutant in the Middle
Objective: Toss a water balloon between the vault dwellers without letting the supermutant get it.
Need: At least two friends, and some water balloons (full, but not too full!).
To Win: Keep the water balloon from breaking for as long as you can!
Inspiration: Fallout 3

Set-Up:
1. Pick two or more players to be the vault dwellers for the first round.
2. Pick one or more players to be the supermutants for the first round.
3. One of the vault dwellers gets a water balloon to start.

Rules:
1. Vault dwellers cannot stand closer to each other than 5 feet.
2. Supermutants can move wherever they want, but cannot touch vault dwellers.
3. Vault dwellers take turns tossing the water balloon to each other. Remember, vault dwellers cannot be closer than 5 feet from each other.
4. Supermutants try to catch or burst the water balloon, but they cannot touch the vault dwellers.
5. If a supermutant catches or bursts the water balloon, they win and can be a vault dweller in the next round.
6. If the water balloon bursts when a vault dweller throws or catches it, without a supermutant touching it, then all of the vault dwellers swap with all of the supermutants for the next round.
7. Keep playing until you're out of water balloons, until you're thoroughly soaked, or until nuclear armageddon!

Tagsassin's Creed
Objective: Tag your target and get back to a safe hiding spot before they catch you!
Need: At least two players, and anyplace that has a lot of hiding spots. A hiding spot is anyplace between two similar objects within arm's reach - between two trees, two bookshelves, two swings, etc.
To Win: Catch the Tagsassin when he tags you.
Inspiration: Assassin's Creed

Set-Up:
1. Pick a player to start as the Tagsassin.
2. Everybody else goes to a hiding spot and "blends in."

Rules:
1. At a hiding spot, you can "blend in" by taking a pose like the two items you're hiding between - if you're between two rocks, you might curl up like a rock; if you're between two trees, you might stand up straight with your arms out like a tree.
2. The Tagsassin sneaks up on someone who is hidden and tags them, then tries to run to a different hiding spot and "blend in."
3. Whoever is tagged must try to catch the Tagsassin before he blends in and hides again.
4. If you catch the Tagsassin, you win, and can pick a new hiding space to begin again.
5. If the Tagsassin gets away, you are the new Tagsassin, and must pick a new player to tag.

Prince of Playground
Objective: Take turns jumping, climbing, and balancing your way along a path without touching the ground.
Need: A playground or other suitable series of large objects for climbing and balancing, like tree stumps, logs, large rocks, sturdy furniture, etc.
To Win: Successfully travel from the start to the finish without touching the ground, or successfully catch someone who falls to the ground.
Inspiration: Prince of Persia

Set-Up:
1. Each player takes turns playing as either the jumper or the catcher. If there is only one player, they are the jumper.
2. Players pick a Start (where jumpers will begin) and a Finish (where jumpers will try to reach without touching the ground.)
3. The catcher waits on the ground near the starting point, and the jumpers get in position at the Start.

Rules:
1. The jumper tries to travel from Start to Finish without touching the ground - jumping over gaps, balancing on beams, climbing on monkey bars, etc.
2. A catcher isn't allowed to interfere with a jumper unless they're touching the ground (or about to hit the ground).
3. If a jumper touches the ground, they have to run back to the Start before a catcher tags them. If they make it back to the Start, they can begin again from there.
4. If a catcher tags a jumper who's touched the ground, that jumper becomes a catcher.
5. If a jumper reaches the Finish without touching the ground, they win.
6. If the jumpers are all caught by the catcher, the catchers win.
7. Play again, taking turns as jumper and catcher!

Now that I've egged Zeleny into whipping these up, when can we expect to here from David Perry, David Jaffe, Dylan Jobe and John Drake? Though Drake sorta did come up with something on Twitter.

Backyard Adaptations of Video Game Classics and Modern Backyard Classics

Courtesy of a report from the LA Times, there will be 3 films in total, each running around 10-15 minutes long, all of which were shot at Hybride, the special effects house Ubisoft bought out around a year ago.

That name, Hybride, certainly seems apt in terms of the production, because around 70% of the "sets" for the short films (all of them shot against green screen) are ripped directly from the art assets for Assassin's Creed II. And it's not just the sets being shared between the two projects; most of the actors used worked on both the films and the game as well, meaning it's the same people providing the motion-capture and voice-acting for the game as are doing the acting in the movies.

As far as the release of these things, Ubisoft say they'll be put out individually in the months leading up to the release of Assassin's Creed II, with hints they'll later be bundled and sold as a DVD as well.

Video game publishers Microsoft, Ubisoft invading Hollywood's turf [LA Times]

Obviously, you're getting Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines when the PSP game ships this November. But you'll also get the standard Entertainment Pack stuff, included an Altair-white PSP and ample storage. The official bundle includes the following, with one item still to be determined.

• White PSP-3000 system
• Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines PSP game
• UMD Movie (to be announced shortly!)
• 2GB Memory Stick PRO Duo

Sadly, not a replica wrist-blade, but still a fair deal at $199.99 USD. Who wants to place bets on the UMD movie?

NEW Limited Edition Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines PSP Entertainment Pack [PlayStation.blog]

Whatever it is, it's part of Academy of Champions' charm right from the menu screen. The cartoony soccer game opens with a giant castle where soccer legend Pele beckons youngsters to join is academy and master the fundamentals of the sport. He's got an effective sales pitch, too: if soccer's cool enough for Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher to play, why shouldn't you? Other Ubisoft characters also appear though out the game, like the Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed's Altair. If you stare at that opening menu screen of the academy long enough, Rabbids start popping out from behind the towers.

What Is It?
Academy of Champions is a soccer game similar to Mario Strikers Charged as opposed to a soccer sim, like FIFA. Players can jump right into multiplayer quick matches or spend time building a team in story mode. In story mode, players can choose to be a boy or a girl – though it doesn't make much of a difference – and plow through an entire academic year of soccer training. Different days of the week and terms of the school year determine what kinds of things you do in a day – it might be a mini-game to build fundamental skills like shooting, a dialogue tree to recruit new players, or a scrimmage game against another team – and throughout the year, you can buy skill upgrades and special items to bulk up your team in multiplayer mode.

What We Saw
During Ubisoft's UbiNintendo press junket, we were given about half an hour of hands on time with the title plus some Q&A with product manager Carsten Myhill.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out September 2009.

What Needs Improvement?
Separate Tutorial Would Be Nice: For players that just want to jump into a quickmatch without fiddling around in story mode, it'd be nice to have an optional tutorial mode that just walks you through the basics. For the most part, the game is intuitive, but there are things that need explaining and maybe a little bit of practice. For example, each characters have special abilities that can only be triggered with a specific button under certain conditions and there's a tussle challenge during games where players have to press a sequence of directions on the Nunchuck's analog stick to steal or protect a ball from another player. These subtleties aren't the kind of thing you can really pick up while you're playing and they can totally turn the tide of the game once you master them.

There's No Dating Sim: Some of the 30 characters you can recruit in story mode require social interaction. Maybe you have to successfully navigate a dialogue tree or maybe you have to win a certain number of games before you join. The social interaction definitely feeds into the school feeling of the game – like a primordial version of Persona 3's social interactions – but without a more detailed friends system like maybe a dating sim, I wonder if it won't get dull after a while.

What Should Stay The Same?
Saving Throw Versus Sexy: There's a power meter that builds up the longer a player is in possession of the ball. This meter fuels both the special attacks – like Sam Fisher's stealth mode or Altair's flying hawk kick – and the basic dodge or sprint controls that you need to get from one end of the pitch to the other. This creates a sort of endurance contest whenever you get control of the ball where you're trying to see how long can you go without dodging or sprinting. It's a subtle, but spiffy game mechanic.

It's Fun: Once you get the controls down and start seeing Ubisoft characters in story mode matches (Pele vs. Jade from Beyond Good and Evil – so awesome), Academy of Champions evokes both a sense of gameplay satisfaction and nostalgic fondness for familiar Ubi characters. Even better, the story mode appeals to the collectors by offering a ton of unlockable characters, items and upgrades over the course of the academic year.

Final Thoughts
I get the feeling a lot of hardcore soccer fans with sniff with disdain at Pele's character model and other types of gamer will steer clear of Academy out of apathy. But this is pretty fun game that's well put together. I was sold after my second match and I recommend it for anyone who enjoyed Strikers or is just quasi-obsessed with fantasy British school systems like Hogwarts.

The Bureau's mission: To needlessly expose the wide gulf between video game physics and the laws of the real world; to pursue, to a pointless degree if necessary possible, the logical extremes of any mathematical given; to ask the questions that do not really deserve to be answered; and as an ultimate, Quixotic pursuit, to finally define the real world value of one hit point. We do this in the name of science for all mankind.

Our first journal of study is hereby submitted, dealing with three metrics - weight, speed and momentum.

Dr. Owen S. Good
Director, Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures

WEIGHT
Game: Fallout 3
Test Subject: Vault Dweller

In an RPG, you'd expect to have some distorted encumbrance measurements. Players have been hauling around a full cabinet of arms, plus full plate armor, plus a spare set of armor, plus dual-wield crossbows, plus 500 bolts, plus turkey dinner, since this kind of game was played on paper. It's why D&D invented the Portable Hole.

Fallout 3 measures weight in vague units of "WG." Of any RPG that caps carrying weight, it seems to let you carry a lot. Like a U-Haul's worth. In my latest game I deliberately created a guy with 4 strength because I wanted him to travel light and carry only that which was useful. But as you can see in this recent loadout below, I'm still stowing a spare set of recon armor in case a Glowing One makes me dump in my Brotherhood suit.

Weapons: A3-21's Plasma Rifle, Combat Shotgun, 28 Frag Grenades, 15 Frag Mines, Mesmetron, 3 Plasma Grenades, 4 Plasma Mines, Plasma Pistol, 9 Pulse Grenades, Scoped .44 Magnum (56 WG)
Apparel: Enclave Officer Hat, Power Armor, Power Helmet, Recon Armor. (71)
Aid: Blood Pack, 9 Buffout, 3 Dirty Water, 14 Med-X, 15 Mentats, 2 Nuka-Cola Quantum, 4 Psycho, 17 Purified Water
9 Rad-X, 25 RadAway, 6 Stealth Boy, 79 Stimpak, (sue me, I'm a HP whore), Sugar Bombs. (28)
Miscellaneous: 16 Bobby Pins, Carton of Cigarettes, Cherry Bomb, Conductor, Fire hose Nozzle, Ink Container
Leaf Blower, Pack of Cigarettes, 5 Pre-War Money, 12 Scrap Metal, Key ring with 14 keys on it (29)
Ammo: 202 rounds .44 magnum, 20 darts, 285 Energy Cells, 50 Mesmetron Power Cells, 493 Microfusion Cells, 280 Shotgun Shells. (0 WG)
Total WG: 184

What bothered me about Fallout was not so much that the heavy weapons, like a Flamer, weighed only "15." Maybe they're made from futuristic lightweight metal. No, it's more that a pair of freaking TWEEZERS was equivalent in weight to a motorcycle helmet. It's not even that the WG figure represents a total encumbrance factor – that either the item's size or fragility makes it difficult to carry - because a pool cue has the same WG figure: 1.

So I chatted up Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks, Fallout 3's game director, about this. First off, is "WG" equivalent to anything?

"Not really," Todd said. "It's sort of close to pounds, but we intentionally don't really say what it is. It actually started based on the weights we used for The Elder Scrolls, which most people don't know are the also-amorphous ‘stones.'"

OK, fine. If they didn't peg WG to something, I will. And I'm going to base it on the weight of beer. A bottle in Fallout is 1 WG. In real life, a bottle of beer, depending on how stout it is, will weigh roughly three-quarters of a pound when you figure in the glass. By figuring my total burden as it relates to at least one item in my possession, I could start imagining how large a load I was carrying around.

But what I couldn't measure is ammo, meds and chems, which have no weight value - and I wasn't going down to the local needle exchange to weigh whatever approximates a Jet syringe. Why didn't Bethesda give them a weight? Because in the game, these are very valuable items. Why wouldn't an RPG, which is more based in realism and more dependent on choice-making than other genres, also require players to be more conscientious about what they're carrying?

"In regards to ammo and money, it's just too granular a decision for the player, if they had weight," Todd said. "You don't want to make that a choice for the player; he already has to manage so much in his inventory and you need things he can find that are an instant win - ammo, money, drugs, etc, things that help keep him alive and playing. It would just bog the game down too much to find ammo and be thinking, ‘Do I want to pick up two of these bullets or the whole stack?' We felt that decision should be on [which] weapons to carry, not what ammo."

Yes, but when a Gatling Laser weighs the same as a frosty 18-can fridge pack of Miller, your decision to carry two is not because of their combat utility but the resale value in Rivet City. Todd said that's entirely valid reasoning, and strength is meant to enable it.

"Much of your character's power comes from his stuff. The more he has, the better he is. Even if he's not using it, it becomes money," Todd said. "Players get pretty good at the value versus weight game quickly."

You might figure that, in the long run, it all balances out. Tweezers are overweighted, bazookas are underweighted, and everyone gets along. But my previous loadout would weigh 138 pounds (1 WG = 0.75 pounds) and still fill up a Public Storage room. Todd insisted that developers discussed the question of how much a player should be able to carry, "right until the end. … We kept narrowing and narrowing what a low-strength versus high-strength gave you, because it was too powerful."

Was too powerful? In the finished game, a Fallout 3 character with the bare minimum strength of 1 can carry 160 WG. I searched for a real world comparison, and this is the best I could do: The Improved Load Bearing Equipment in use by the U.S. Marine Corps since 2005 can carry - ready for this? - 120 pounds. If beer is our unit of measure (and why shouldn't it be?) that converts to 160 bottles of beer (or WG). In other words, any vault reject a notch above total weakling - a 2 strength or better - will out-lug any Marine, even the one assigned to carry the mortar and shells.

Partly to spite Bethesda, I created a character with 1 Strength and assigned the rest of the points to more useful attributes. I never use melee weapons, anyway. I also manually assigned weight to my ammunition and chems (1 for units of 10). I quickly saw how right Todd was.

In Fallout, your ability to meet more difficult challenges depends a lot on the equipment you have, and it's usually items you build or buy that prove the difference. Financing that comes from the resale of surplus items, not the discovery of treasure. Realistic strength would leave you endlessly grinding before starting the next job.

As for ammo, I gave up on that shortly after a raid at the Super-Duper Mart. I was robbing Raider corpses for spare rounds to fight off the survivors and writing down the totals. It was indeed too granular a decision, and got in the way of more pressing challenges.

So, even though with a 5 strength, you can run from Megaton to the Arlington Public Library loaded down like a Peruvian donkey, let's just say the future is made of super-light plastics. And the radiation turned everyone into Lou Ferrigno.

[Images from the Fallout Wiki]

SPEED
Game:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Test Subject: Carl "C.J." Johnson

Originally, I wanted to test the scale speeds of the Team Fortress 2 characters, especially Scout, who could probably outrun Carl Lewis like a Porsche outruns Stephen Hawking. The problem with this, as with other games, is measuring the distance those guys cover in real world units. I'd have to know, say, Heavy's IRL height (6'5?") and be able to lay him end to end over a straightaway to get its real distance. I'm not a modder, and I wouldn't have that kind of time anyway.

So I then looked to the Grand Theft Auto series. From Claude to Niko, you've always had the ability to overtake a moving car on foot and jack it. I really wanted to know these guys' running speeds, and they live in cities with structures based on real world ones. Unfortunately, everything in Liberty City is a compressed distance, so running Niko across the Broker Bridge still wouldn't tell us much.

But in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there's this Easter egg, which identifies the specific dimensions of the Gant Bridge, including a length of 159.7 meters. During the first few tests, something seemed way off. First, 159.7 meters isn't even a 10th of a mile, and C.J.'s runs - at a sprint - were keeping up with traffic and returning mile times of 17:41. So I had to measure this bridge for myself. If I knew the actual scale speed of a vehicle in the game, I could derive its length. This database lists all such attributes.

Thus aboard an NRG-500 motorcycle running at its top speed of 118 mph, I made five maximum-speed trips across the bridge, at a flying start, with a median time of 18.15 seconds. If the Gant Bridge really was 159.7 meters, the bike would have been doing 20 mph, not 120 mph. It's possible they're talking about a distance shorter than the one I was using - toll booth in San Fierro to concrete strip at Tierra Robada - but at top speed, the bike should be able to cross 159.7 meters in just under 3 seconds. Either way, 160 meters is a fraction of the bridge's length as it relates to C.J.

So, at top speed, the bike is traveling at 173.16 feet per second. Multiplied by 18.15, we discover the length of the Gant Bridge is 3,142.85 feet, which is nearly 1 kilometer. As another control, I went back and rode with traffic, matching its speed. We crossed the bridge in 1:09.16, which is 30.98 miles per hour. I damn for sure could see a developer setting standard traffic speed to something round, and 31 mph is almost 50 kph. So, I'm pretty confident the sign is incorrect, and I got this measured as close as possible.

Now, back to running it. C.J. has five paces on foot: a walk, a "brisk walk," a "jog," and then two sprints, one with the A button held down, and another that provides a burst of speed by rapidly tapping it. The C.J. I was playing had maxed all of his physical stats, so he could achieve top running speed and not tire out, at any distance. Back at the bridge on foot, I took him through the five paces.
Walking
At his slowest C.J. covered the distance in 8:22, which equates to 4.2 miles per hour. Frame of reference: 4.0 is the fastest most walk on a gym treadmill. At the "brisk walk" pace, C.J. covers the distance in 4:44.03. Remember our treadmill? This "walk" is more than a jog, it's 7.54 miles per hour. It's equivalent to a 7:57 mile time. My best time in the mile - running - is 8:21, five years ago.

Running
Now it gets good. At the third pace, "jogging," C.J. crossed the span in 2:43.16. If he held that pace he would run a marathon in under two hours, which is unprecedented. Holding down the A button, C.J. crossed the bridge in 1:38.11, or 21 miles per hour. That's a mile in 2:44.84, which is inhuman. Remember Roger Bannister? The first mile under 4 minutes? C.J. would run the first one under three. He would beat the world record holder by a larger margin (in seconds) than he would have lost this year's Kentucky Derby.

Sprinting
Rapid-tapping the A-button gave C.J. just a 16- second advantage, which means this loses its effect pretty quickly. Still, at minimum one can assume some world-class sprint times. How world class? Try torching Usain Bolt's records in the 200 and 100 by two and one seconds, respectively - 17.1 and 8.58 seconds. Granted, that speed figure is derived from a running start. Real-life sprinters have to react to a gun and get up to speed. But, remember, C.J.'s sprint lost effect, I'm not sure exactly how far in, so most of this time was derived from a run at the standard "A" pace.

Incidentally, C.J.'s motion capture actor was Eddie Goines, a star wide receiver at North Carolina State University and a classmate of mine. I knew him pretty well, as well as a sports writer knows one of the team's stars, anyway. As a flanker, he set all the receiving records that Torry Holt and Koren Robinson would later break. As a freshman, Eddie was the fastest on the team, clocking a 40 yard dash in 4.35. A 4.09 is thought to be the NFL record. CJ's time is 3.15. I'm sure Eddie would be delighted to know that, at least in a video game, he's by far the fastest human alive.

MOMENTUM
Game: Assassin's Creed
Test Subject: Altair

No one would expect to fall 40 stories onto the top of a parked car and survive. However, at least it stops the body from crashing all the way through to the ground. Now imagine falling that height into a pile of hay that's roughly 2 meters wide by a meter and a half tall.

That's the first "leap of faith" in Assassin's Creed, from the tower at Masayaf. Holy catfish, that poor bastard who jumped with Altair at the beginning was lucky to get off with just a broken leg. And it is far from the steepest drop in the game. The infamous steeple on the cathedral at Acre is nearly twice as tall. Fresh off our victory in San Fierro, the Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures set out not only to fix its height, but also to calculate how much hay you'd need to land safely.

Ubisoft verified that Altair's height and weight, for purposes of the game's physics, was 6 feet and 190 pounds. This would be useful in calculating his stop. But that's all we got from them. However, one of the locations in the game is Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, whose dimensions are known. The structure's walls are 11 meters tall. Putting all this information in the hand of a trained scientist - devoted reader Matt M. - we were able to come up with some good estimates.

Matt worked up all three heights, but let's use Acre's as it is the most impressive. We were able to time the drop from the top of the steeple -4.1 seconds - using this video (which I downloaded and measured frame by frame). Working backward, we found that its real-world height would be 82.37 meters - about 270 feet. In the game, Altair is accelerating to 39.69 meters per second, acquiring a momentum of 3,420.48 kilogram-meters per second.

That's certainly a large number, but what does it mean? Matt breaks it down:

Basically, whatever catches him has to has to reduce that momentum to zero in under 0.05 seconds, which is the difference in time between Altair falling 82.05 meters and falling 80.05 meters at that speed. That means in the space of 2 meters - which is a little lenient since the floor of the cart is, what, half a meter off the ground? - the hay has to provide 68,298.25 Newtons of force. It's 136,596.5 Newton meters of work, which is a ridiculous thing to ask of hay.

Certainly, Kotaku Weights & Measures does not want to be unreasonable in its dealings with dead vegetable matter. And I'm not sure what could provide that kind of stopping power in that space, other than Kevlar. Or pavement. So I asked Matt if he could figure how large a haystack would be required to cushion a fall from such a height. We used the elasticity of military-grade bungee cords as a guide (using specs found here).

In the case of Acre, the haystack would be so big it would dwarf most other buildings in the game - 40 meters (131 feet) at its point, 67 meters (219 feet) wide at the bottom, if the dimensions conform to the original tiny pile. The freefall into such a mass of hay would last only 2.87 seconds. In terms of volume, it's more than 2.7 million cubic feet of hay - 2,695 times greater than what Altair is leaping into. I kept picturing Phil Hartman sitting atop the amazing mountain of Colon Blow cereal.

Alongside this you can see comparisons, to scale, of the heights Altair falls at the Dome of the Rock, Masayaf, and Acre, and of the size of hay he hits in the game relative to the size he would need to survive. "Leap of Faith" indeed. Sounds more like Altair's in a suicide cult.

The Kotaku Bureau of Weights & Measures gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Matt M. to this post. Follow him on Twitter.

Called the "Black Edition", the limited edition box set will ship in "black packaging", and come with a "unique authentic holographic signature". Whatever that means.

Included will be a "64-page finely crafted leather style hardcover and parchment-finish" book, which has stuff like concept art and developer interviews, a copy of the game's soundtrack, an Ezio action figure (pictured), some "behind-the-scene interviews" and 3 "in-game bonus quests".

As far as price goes, currently it's only being listed in PAL territories, at £69.99 in the UK (USD$115) and AUD$149.95 (USD$121) in Australia. Since most games cost around AUD$100 here, you can probably expect the US version to come in at around $80-90.

While these two screens don't really show how the game will function mechanically, they do at least show that it's a full 3D title, with Altair stalking the streets of what look to be much smaller (and for the PSP more easily-managed) medieval cities.

For the record, Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, as the game is known as, is no port; it is instead an all-new game, bridging the events between the first game and the upcoming sequel.