@DaveKap:
Checking the YouTube page someone mentioned this:

"Stevedroid (44 minutes ago)

Alt-F4 is not a solution! It kills the process without giving a chance to clean up the resources and leaves elements of the games sound system running - which in turn screws up any other games until you do a system reboot."

Now, while that may not be a problem for everyone's computer, the fact that it is for some means that the amount of time it takes to quit is still absurd as some people actually have to use it.

Nirolak

@ OWEN - " I imagine it as an accompaniment to some poor bastard stepping on rakes and skateboards cleaning out his garage."

Hahaha! Hilarious. I was going to submit this, but I decided to just put it up in the last Assassin's Creed article that was up.

@DaveKap:

That's great that Alt + F4 works just fine for you, but not everyone really knows that. It's ridiculous that the game developers made it this much of a pain in the ass to quit the regular way. It takes 82 seconds to quit. That's excessive to say the least.

dead_red_eyes

@karasu is my homeboy: Ummm that wasn't a rushed mess of a port, that's about the same for the console exit procedure. Of course just like computer you can just turn it off and have your saved game data, nothing to see here really except the nice music.

Pornosaur

Reminds me of the stupid and absurd loading screens and loading times on the Orange Box for PS360.

globones

Typing of the Dead on the PC cloned the menu options perfectly from the console version. Want to quit the game? The only way is Alt-F4. From lazy appologeticists, I've heard this is "standard" in windows games. But I'll be damned if I had any idea how to exit the stupid thing.

Relying on the player to know about Alt F4 for quit is like relying on them to know F1 is usually help. If they knew enough to know that obscure key mapping, they wouldn't need help.

seishino

Best tag ever.

Sith_Librarian

Not the smartest thing to keep things as they were from the console version. Really did feel trapped in the animus when playing the game

Sandldan

alt+f4 exits this game completely, cleanly, and instantly for me. I played through the whole game using this method to exit.

Kobi

They didn't change anything from the console game, and it takes a few steps to move profiles in that one, so they just added MORE shit for the PC release.

Ashurahori

It is very friggin hard to quit, first you have to do something that will save your game and then doing all those steps, well they are like 2 steps fewer on ps3. but still i just turn off the system or quit game from the menu...

VeNoMmx

Here's the thing about Assassin's Creed on the PC.

Alt+F4 INSTANTLY closes it for me. Perfectly. There's really no need to complain.

DaveKap

@Mohican:

Well, there's no reason not to save and then use the dashboard command on the 360.

On a computer, you can corrupt files and stuff. You want to get back to your desktop safely.

The 360, after saving, you can do whatever you want safely. Eject, dashboard shortcut, whatever. I wouldn't do that on an expensive gaming PC (or any PC, for that matter.)

karasu is my homeboy

The most ridiculous thing about this process is that you have to login to a profile in order to exit the game from the first/startup screen.

Candlejack

Yeah it only got ridiculous when you had to re-select your profile. Other than that it wasn't that bad.

Seems like people are just looking for insignificant things to complain about these days.

ShirtGuyDom

@karasu is my homeboy: It's just as annoying on the 360. Exact same process unless you use the xbox dashboard override.

Mohican

@AverageJoes:

She ain't that cute. Just another lady in a sausage industry. *snicker*

Okay, growing up (a little), this is part of the reason I've moved most of my gaming to consoles. Plus, I don't dig any kind of 3rd-person action game on the PC 'cause I'd end up looking for a controller anyway. On the 360, you just quit to dashboard without having to worry about losing anything... Unless, of course, you're playing Condemned 2.

dunetiger : the mekuri master

@MasterDex: Daxter can't swim either and he's half otter. Swimming is hard in video games.

Kohath

Takes a bit long, but it seems there must be another easier way to quit beyond Alt+F4 (not Ctrl+Alt+F4, unless I'm missing something?).

Pheonix2og

To the people saying use alt-F4 or task manager): know that doing so doesn't close down the game properly. Elements of the sound system are left running which can screw up other games. Additionally, if you alt-F4 during an autosave, the auto save will be corrupted.

Doing the 11 step process is the only way to shut down the program properly. Using alt-F4 or task manager just kills the process and is asking for trouble.

Stevedroid

@Ryumeka: No, no spoiler. You find out all about that stuff in the intro.

Huxleyhobbes

Maybe the next time some cute chick is made producer, it will be because she has a clue and it won't be because she's cute.

Nah. Who am I kidding?

AverageJoes

@Stratovarius:
Yes, because quitting that way works 100% of the time with no lost data. We quit games properly because often there can be issues caused by closing improperly. If that's how you think applications are shut down, then I would be very hesitant about letting you near a PC that cost more than 50€

Theoban

Totally annoying and completely pointless. I just hard-quit the game now (I say now but I haven't played it since the third day I got it).

And speaking of Assasins Creed, Why the Fuck can't an "ace" assasin like Altiar not fucking swim! What if he was on an assasination mission in Venice?! He'd be fucked!

MasterDex

They really don't want you to quit!

Also, is that whole bed thing a spoiler? I've never played the game and don't want that to be some sort of ending or something.

Ryumeka

"BEEP, BEEP!"
Classic...

StupidityTries

@Stratovarius:
For real!

I am why do games even have exit buttons when you can just close them from windows!

-_-

Dumari

Thus the downfall of the hasty console port. I was sick to my stomach when I saw how The Club was done for the PC version. They went as far as keeping the menus from the console version EXACTLY the same... press the 'A' button to continue, etc.

chiablo

Omg. That is hysterical. That is beyond hysterical. Great music, text, and shocked @ the whole process.

Wow. How did that make it to release?

What a rushed mess of a port.

karasu is my homeboy

Or you could just save your data, hit the window key, and right-click, then quit.

Oh wait, someone wants to be a big baby about it. Okay.

Stratovarius

Definitely hilarious.

The love-it-or-hate-it discussions about this game have me confused as hell. This would have been a great title for a demo but then again... maybe not.

Gwog

God it's so true. I just Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get out of it now.

QualityJeverage

Are you trying to say they let a version of Assassin's Creed be released that still has problems with it? That's the most ridic- Oh wait. Did you say "Assassin's Creed"? Heh, nevermind.

rainking187

Hehehe.

Dear PC gamers, sorry you can't quit playing Assassin's Creed.

Sincerely,
360 & PS3

Salen

great game, but ya, exiting is a bit of a bitch.

funny clip tho it shuda ended with 'Thank You Jebus'.

Lanhoj

@Pornosaur: overall, the game was a rushed mess of a port, as it crashed and had a lot of difficulties and glitches.

And to make it worse, to not harm your computer and exit properly, this. They didn't change it what so ever to optimize it for computer(quitting.)

So, yes, it was a rushed mess of a port, and yes, they should have taken into consideration it was going to computer and adapted the quit method for the platform.

karasu is my homeboy

I didn't even bother reading peoples rants, but you must be the biggest paranoid freak ever to think you'd be "asking for trouble" when doing an alt+f4. I do this on occasion, and I've never stumbled upon any trouble what-so-ever. But thats also because i actually wait for the data to save first. Other than that, there shouldn't be anymore save file accessing other than that.

Pauro - Kun

Wow that was hilarious. GG Ubisoft.

Schoolimangooli

Haha, that's a riot. I like the beep beep. What were they thinking when they did that? I mean sure you can just ctrl alt del it but... man how could you possibly put that into a game?

Mpalm.

On my PS3, I just make sure I've seen the "saving icon" so that I know it recently saved while I was playing and then I hit the PS button and quit it. I never go thru all that process.

NESv1

@darthnader: Maybe he had a Mac. o_o

Ashurahori

Thank god for the Y button and 'Exit to Dashboard'.

CanaryWundaboy

@DONNYchiban:I think he meant how can you post on Kotaku or view the video if you dont own a PC.

JustinS

Quiting is like a point and click game in itself hehe. I wouldn't be able to wait. I'd Ctrl Alt Delete that sucker!

Orionsaint

@seishino: Well it is the standard hotkey for closing apps in windows....

Oyn

@darthnader: There's a rule that you have to have played a game to watch a video about it? Oh dammit...

DONNYchiban

"You know, I don't play Assassin's Creed, I don't own a PC..."

Then how the hell did you make this post, or see this video?!?!

darthnader

LOL funny video. ^^
Though ALT+F4 does work as well...well in most cases.
I dont remember what part it was, a cutscene or sommething, but it didnt worked. Had to Alt-tab and terminate the process to quit. :/
Anyways, it wasnt nearly as annoying as those frikken unskippable cutscenes...

@Stratovarius:
Yeah, you also could just press reset and restart your PC, whats the big deal! O_o
Seems like many people here are missing the entire point of the vid.

neojam

Haha, that's so funny! I want to play Assassin's Creed. :-(

Dopeski

@Nirolak: I didn't know that... I should have, I mean one of my teachers tried to sell me on the virtues of not multitasking and resetting the computer between applications... At home I often close programs via "kill process" because stuff never closes quickly enough...

bobtheduck

Glad some other folks noticed this...

PatMan33

Shit, I'm glad someone posted this. I have Assassins Creed for the PC, but I was too much of a "pussywimp"(like Truman refusing to let Mcarthur cross the 38th parallel), to ask if this is the norm, or if this was just something fucked up with the PC port.

'Cause I obviously didn't figure out something many others did. LOL

homernoy

@JustinS: Ahhhhhhhhhhhh........ my bad :(

DONNYchiban

Damn, internet reset and ate my post.

Anyway, the basic gist of it was that alt-f4 is the generic shortcut for close program, not terminate process. The program is supposed to intercept the command and run the section of code that shuts down the program, saving settings and stopping background processes if applicable.

It will only terminate if the program hangs, in which case the command goes straight through to the kernel. Also, if your programmers are lazy and forgot to write exit code, it will naturally go straight through to windows, which will terminate (because it thinks the program has hung, see?). Most exit code works properly now, probably because people kept alt-f4ing and crapping up their sessions.

Lov3

Was anyone else bored with AC after a couple of play throughs? I only just got back my sword and knife, and I'm already bored... shame, really, esp. for such a hyped up game.

Zero_

@Stratovarius: Pssh. I just rip out the power chord and cross my fingers.

ostartero

@MasterDex:

lol, yeah, that kinda pissed me off, especially that one mission, where you have to assassinate that guy, ON THE BOAT, ugh, I fell in the damn water so many times trying to get to him. It's the same thing in the first mercenaries, you can Hijack a fucking TANK, yet you fall in the water, and *PLOP*.

jello44

The game is so boring that in order to keep people in it, they had to make it hard to quit... LOL

dijuremo

@neojam:"No idea how AC got all those 9+ reviews"

I would almost bet it would be visuals. Also, I pretty much agree with everything you said there.

homernoy

If you think Assasin's Creed is difficult to get out of, I assure you, it's ten fucking times harder to get into.
Never has boredom looked so beautiful.

Cruithne

@Zero_:
i've barely managed to finish it...
Kinda sad what they did with the game.
On one hand you have those beautiful visuals and cool control mechanics,
on the other hand, there is this moronic pseudo-intellectual Sci-fi story with overly repetitive missions and boring "bosses/targets" that offer you no real challenge at all...

Go to a city, climb few towers, do some side-missions that you've already done before, watch an unskippable cutscene, kill your target, watch another unskippable cutscene. Thats pretty much it...
No idea how AC got all those 9+ reviews. I would give it a solid 7.0, but only because it was looking very pretty and i liked the cool climbing/fighting mechanics, otherwise the game is VERY shallow.

I think the author of this review is pretty much on spot with everything about AC:
[www.eurogamer.net]

neojam

@Zero_: "Was anyone else bored with AC after a couple of play throughs?"
YES.
But from what I have seen, there is hope and for me excitement for the next it itineration of this game.

homernoy

@AverageJoes:

well, maybe it has to do with his name (or code name).. Altair (in Arabic) = Bird, so he's probably one of those water hating birds (and why would you swimm when you could fly?)

iby777

I still have a nasty habit of judging games by the number of hoops I need to jump through while quitting. I believe The Witcher held top honours until Assassin's Creed came along.

Other notably anal retentive design considerations include presenting the populations of cities like Acre as approximately 44,974. Too funny.

godot

That's just insane. Nice UI, Ubi, you totally nailed it.

ca$h

That is a very nice way to make the gamer think twice before exiting, but it doesn't happen with me, just alt f4 and everything is fine.:D

goliathvv

@Zero_: YES, i only have a LOL moment when i pushed some caracter to a store, the man hit the store owner and the store owner hit a wooden column and the small roof fell on the two man and killed them, beyond that i found that you have to talk to a lot of people and that is a huge turn down to me, the only things i liked is to perform stunts aroud like jumping from a high roof...

TOCATL

Jesus that video made my head hurt.

Congrats UBI you win again.

Oh yes btw please please also if you are gonna get into fixing shit fix the FNC and P90 in RSV2 also.

Witzbold

@ShirtGuyDom: Insignificant? Have you played it? It is amazingly annoying to have to wait through loading screens and then clickclickclick through so many menus until they finally let you quit the game. I resort to ALT F4. Unless one is stupid enough to do it during a save, it does not really matter.

Yuki

The game has two rather curious choices. At least the DX10 version on Vista starts in a window mode, and you have to ALT+ENTER to put it fullscreen, and yeah, I never bothered to find how to shut it down properly. After the first time it threw me to profile selection when I tried to quit I just hit ALT+F4, and have continued to do so whenever I wish to quit. I'm a bit impatient with these kind of things. n_n;; Strange to rely on those commands, as they are not really used anymore. For old PC crowd they are second nature, but I doubt my girlfriend would have ever figured out how to enable the fullscreen mode. The game itself runs perfectly, at least with Xbox360 controller, but they really dropped the ball with those things.

ara

@neojam: Very true.

For anyone that has not decided whether they want to play it:

Do you have a great interest in the Crusades, as well as the cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre as they existed during that period?

Can you manage to get your hands on the game at an extremely low cost?

If the answers to the above are yes, then you may find it worthwhile to play this game, though you will still probably bore of it within a few hours. I managed to force myself through it because I wanted to see the story, but I highly recommend just seeing if you can find Youtube videos of the story instead and waiting for the inevitable sequel (provided it is better, of course). Hopefully it will offer a few more options for completing missions, a la Hitman.

Yuki

@Stevedroid: ALT-F4 does not kill the process. It sends the WM_QUIT message to the main window of the application which can then perform whatever actions it deems necessary and then should (but does not have to) exit.

Very different than killing the process in TM.

PreachingLlama

Alt+f4 might work but that is no excuse for absolutely UI terrible design. Most worrying is how such atrocious behaviour it could have sailed through QA without anyone doing anything to fix it.

DrXym

Well here's an honest look at the game.

Graphics are nice, but not much variety, landscape gets old quick

Climbing is awesome, but gets old and pointless after a while

The combat system is cheap, just equip your quick sliding out wrist knife and grab an enemy and throw him to the ground. Press attack. Stab in throat. Repeat the process with each enemy. I was surrounded by nearly 50 guards and easily killed them all this way. Combat is cheap in this game.

There isn't much to do in this game. climb a tower to save and get a new location point, ease drop, pick pocket, go to bureau and get your Assassin's mission. Repeat the process. Thats basically the whole game in a nutshell. Oh and you can save citizens, collect flags scattered through out the lookalike cities and be bored.

The best parts come when you have to actually Assassinate someone. You really feel like an assassin, but getting to and killing your target is fairly easy.

Rent it.

Orionsaint

Slightly longer than the 360 version which didn't require you to select a profile to quit from the main menu. (Although you could just use the guide button too. But I did manage to get an achivment when quitting out the long way.

Kafeen

Huh, I own the PS3 version and I thought one of the major pros of AC was it's very high level of polish. Seems they didn't spend much time on interaction design for the PC version.
When are devs gonna realize that ID isn't an unnecessary expense?

Vodun

Doesn't alt-F4 work?

KafkaTamura

Lol yes, when I tried exiting this game I just could not figure it out. I was forever in a loop. I didn't go as far as this video does, and simply kill it with task manager when I wanna stop.

KrisNaga

OR just alt+F4

last_dread

thats fucking ridiculas

dechire

And we wouldn't be having this problem if Microsoft implemented something like the command key Windows. (Unless explicitly overridden, ⌘Q will always quit a program.)

CyberSkull

Someone should be fired for that. There's a reason play testing exists and its not to make a check box on the form, its to actually test the whole process on people that are not on your team.

You can always tell what companies have put money into testing and what companies didn't. The design says it all.

Rebochan

couldn't figure out how to simply exit at first either. No denying it's a poor menu design, but think of how many poor menu designs you've seen before, console or PC.

forget the fact that on console you don't to exit out of the game to your desktop. you just hit the power button. (aka, hit alt+f4 and stop being a sensationalist douche)

getting a little tired of hearing about this game's PC port. Its exactly that, a port. Aside from not actually having any issues with the game whatsoever myself, a port of a console game is a port no matter what you call it. In other words, it will probably not be all that great (see: Gears of War PC)

Kayin

It was designed for a console.

"I want to quit"

Step 1: Turn off console

markocheese

@CyberSkull: That's the job of ALT+F4

MasterDex

Oh God... This is so pointless that it's aaawesome!

eskimo-bob

Why didn't he just press Apple+Q? Tee hee hee....

UndergroundT

"Buck" is not, nor will it ever be a euphemism for a minute, or any other unit of time. Dispel yourselves of that illusion immediately. The slang term is most probably derived from 'buckskin', which was a common unit of trade between North American aboriginals and Europeans during the frontier era.

So:

Deer - not a unit of time
Deer hide - not a unit of time
Dollar - not a unit of time
Minute - unit of time

k?

ludwigk

I simply eject the disk on the 360. Done!

What annoys me the most is not being able to save the game yourself. It only saves at very specific points, and most of the time I find myself backtracking quite a ways.

Kovitlac

AC is absolutely one of the best games of 2007, but yeah that exit process is a tad ridiculous.

How hard would it have been to add a "Quit to Windows" button from Altair's menu?

unmarkedone

Anyone try if Alt F4 works?

yashichi8bit

lol that sucks just alt+f4 out

Jangowuzhere

I can think of several PC games that *REQUIRE* you to press ALT+F4 to quit. To make matter worse, none of them say so outside the manual/documentation (I've always known/used the shortcut and didn't need them). They aren't all console ports guilty of it either!

CZroe