Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a 2010 action-adventure stealth video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft forPlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the third major installment in the Assassin's Creed series, a direct sequel to 2009's Assassin's Creed II, and the second chapter in the 'Ezio trilogy'. The game was released worldwide for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, beginning in North America on November 16, 2010. It was later released for Microsoft Windows in March 2011, followed by an OS X version in May 2011.

The story is set in a fictional history of real world events set in two time periods, the 16th and 21st centuries. The main portion of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood takes place immediately after the plot of Assassin's Creed II, featuring 16th-century Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze in Italy and his quest to restore the Assassin order, and destroy his enemies: the Borgia family. Intersecting with these historical events are the modern day activities of series protagonist Desmond Miles, who relives his ancestor Ezio's memories to find a way to fight against the Assassins' enemies, the Templars, and to prevent the 2012 apocalypse.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is set in an open world and presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on using Desmond and Ezio's combat and stealth abilities to eliminate targets and explore the environment. Ezio is able to freely explore 16th-century Rome to complete side missions away from the primary storyline. The game introduced a multiplayer component to the series, portrayed as a Templar training program.

The game received positive reviews and received multiple awards including a BAFTA award for Best Action Game. It was followed in November 2011 by Assassin's Creed: Revelations, a direct sequel that served as a conclusion to Ezio's story and continued the story of Desmond Miles

We’re ramping up to unveil our overall E3 2013 Game of the Show winner, but first we’re breaking down which games shone brightest on each platform this year. The PC has by far the biggest selection, as pretty much everything that isn’t a Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony platform exclusive will come out here as well, so there’s a ton to choose from.

Here are the play4you picks for this year’s best-in-show PC games

Best PC Game: Titanfall

Titanfall looks absolutely spectacular, and the astonishing, breathless pace of the demo battle Respawn showed left us slackjawed. The smooth transition from jetpacking sci-fi soldier combat to 40-foot-tall mech suit slugfests and then back again is enough to make shooter fans’ mouths water - that constantly changing tempo might just be the shot in the arm the genre needs.

One of the biggest surprises is that Titanfall runs on a modified version of Valve’s Source engine, which is right at home on the PC. Because of the existing modding tools, that potentially opens up a world of possibilities (though nothing’s been confirmed on that front). Also, due to the Xbox One’s dedicated server multiplayer architecture, we’re hoping to see the same treatment on the PC version.

Best Reason to Upgrade Your PC: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt


The Witcher 3's seamless open world and stunning visuals may be coming to next-gen consoles as well, but CDProjekt Red is building Wild Hunt for PC. When it comes to serving the hardcore PC crowd, CDProjekt Red has a proud history of repaying loyalty with the best looking, best supported version of its games. You'll get the most from its spectacular particle effects, detailed environments, and terrific character models if you're willing to put your rig over the top. Plus, CD Projekt has confirmed that Wild Hunt owners will receive free updates on PC -- and if its add-on content is half as good as it was for The Witcher and The Witcher 2, playing on the PC will pay dividends.

Best PC Exclusive: Total War: Rome II


It’s obvious why Total War: Rome II is a PC exclusive: it simply couldn’t work anywhere else. To this day, grand strategy and real-time strategy games are a big part of what defines PC gaming as a unique platform. Rome II continues that tradition by bringing back pretty much everything we love about the classic 2004 original and pairs it with magnificent scale and detail that take advantage of PC hardware and the mouse and keyboard interface.

The E3 demo showcased a battle on the Nile, where Caesar faced Ptolemy. Flaming boulders and chariots smash through legions, war elephants barge across the field, while trebuchets rain down heavy projectiles. And for the first time, we see a naval battle playing out on the same map. Seeing it all come together - particularly from the perspective of the new over-the-shoulder camera that puts you right on the battlefield - is a sight to behold.

Now that the blinding glare of every major publisher simultaneously projecting marketing at us has dimmed, we have a clearer picture of what E3 2013 revealed, what’s important to us, and what we expect to be playing on PC within the next couple years. And here it all is.

In this list, we’ve compiled every game announced—as well as a few which were shown again—and their PC release statuses, with a few exceptions. We left out games already released on PC, like Diablo III and Planetside 2, as well as long-running console exclusive series and other accepted PC no-shows, such as Kinect Sports Rivals, Super Smash Bros., Killzone: Shadow Fall, Infamous, Halo, and so on.

Alright, so it’s actually a list of almost every game shown at E3, but even when you cut E3′s Nintendo, Halo, Killzone, and Madden announcements, there’s a ton to see, and it’s all alphabetized here. We’ve also color coded each entry: GREEN means confirmed for PC, BLUE means it’s a maybe, andRED means we doubt the topic will be discussed anytime soon, but hey, anything can happen.

It’s been a good year for AMD. After becoming the sole video card manufacturer for next-gen consoles, the company is touting its hardware as the optimized platform for Battlefield 4, though IGN reported that statement as encompassing every Frostbite 3 game. EA was quick to soften the statement:

“DICE has a partnership with AMD specifically for Battlefield 4 on PC to showcase and optimize the game for AMD hardware,” an EA spokesperson told IGN. “This does not exclude DICE from working with other partners to ensure players have a great experience across a wide set of PCs for all their titles.”

AMD issued a statement as well, saying, “Our relationship with DICE and EA is exclusively focused on Battlefield 4 and its performance optimizations for AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs.”

I detest exclusive video card optimization deals. It’d be one thing if certain features (like Nvidia’s Physx or AMD’s TressFX) simply didn’t work as well on other platforms, but sometimes it leads to the other side struggling to make the game not look like a screenshot gallery. Or, you get games like RAGE, where no one is happy.

BioWare’s biggest sci-fi franchise will be taking a cue from its biggest fantasy franchise, with BioWare studio director Yanick Roy revealing that Mass Effect 4 will share “core systems” with Dragon Age 3.

Following Roy’s tweeting yesterday of a fat binder—which he said made up the “first pass” of the Mass Effect 4 design document—he answered a few fans’ curious questions, revealing some of the things we can expect from next game in the series. Of course, our biggest question is “How soon are we going to see ME4, anyway?” While the document’s only in its first iteration, Roy revealed that development will be sped up by the fact that they’ll be using the Frostbite 3 engine, the same engine that will power the currently-in-development Dragon Age: Inquisition.

“Yes, since we share engine, we can start from some of DA3′s core systems instead of from scratch,” hetweeted to a fan.

Does this mean that Mass Effect 4 will be sharing some of that open world and broader customizationgoodness that BioWare has been promising for DA3?

Maybe. While the studio’s been fairly chatty about the fact that ME4 is a thing, we’re still very scant on basic details such as plot, protagonist, and setting, meaning that any revelations we may have about the mechanics are likely to be a long way off.

The Ignite engine is currently being used to make FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14 and EA Sports UFC for Xbox One and PS4.

Andrew Wilson, executive vice president of EA Sports, told Polygon that the average hardware specifications of PCs used by those who would buy the company's sports titles aren't capable of playing games on par with the next-gen console versions.

Wilson said Ignite has been designed around Xbox One and PS4 components as well as the specific architecture of those systems, "how the CPU, GPU and RAM work together in concert in that type of environment".

He added: "So could I see the potential for EA Sports Ignite to make it to PC in the future? Yes, I think it's possible, but a couple of things need to happen.

As well as a rise in the average hardware specifications of PCs used to play EA Sports' games, "there needs to be some adjustment in terms of how EA Sports Ignite works to facilitate the open nature of PC architecture, rather than the closed nature of console architecture."

During Microsoft's E3 press conference in early June, Wilson said next-gen FIFA, Madden, NBA and UFC games will "launch in the next twelve months".

The present-day sections of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag have a subtle opt-in multiplayer component.

During those portions of the game in which the player takes on the role of an Abstergo employee, other players will be able to influence the game somehow.

“The biggest thing that we were getting into with Assassin’s Creed 4 is the concept that even in a single-player story – we still have multiplayer, to be clear – but even in the single-player, that you’re connected. “You [will] feel that there’s other people also playing the game and somehow you can interact, or somehow you can take advantage with each other,” director Ashraf Ismail toldEurogamer.

“The coworkers with you – we want you to feel that your friends are co-workers. So other people playing Black Flag are also research analysts. So when they can find stuff in the world, they can share it with you. When they do research, and when you’re doing research, you can share that information and you get a boost for it. Even in a single-player story where there’s a narrative, this is a really big strength of next gen.”

Happily, if you really don’t want your mates mucking about in your single-player campaign, you can go offline.

Ismael clarified that during the modern day segments the player character is supposed to be the player – which is probably why it’s presented in first-person. As a research analyst working for Abstergo, the player uses new Animus technology which allows for anybody to explore a genetic history – much like in Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation. The developer said the “feeling and mood” of these sequences “will be a big surprise for people”.

“We’re pushing the narrative of the Assassin/Templar feud both in the present day and in the past. The reason you’re researching Edward Kenway is he did something very special in the past, very specific. Fans, especially people who know the deep, deep details of the lore, they’ll see what his purpose was. He did something very significant that actually touches upon the other games. If you’re not into that kind of stuff it’s OK, they’re just details,” he continued.

“Imagine when you exit that [Animus] workstation, you have this building that you can explore and you can find stuff. So we really push it. For us, that part is an homage to our fans.”

Some of the extra content that fans will be able to uncover will reveal more about the fate of Desmond Miles, erstwhile franchise meta-protagonist, ismale added.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag will release on PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 at the end of October and early November, with a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launch dependent on hardware release dates.

FIFA 14 is heading to PC this year, but it won’t be powered by EA’s next-gen Ignite Engine. The reason, the publisher says, is that too many people still have low-spec rigs that can’t handle the PS4 and Xbox One version of the game.

Speaking with Polygon, EA Sports executive vice president Andrew Wilson said “Even though there were some PCs on the marketplace that could run that engine, the lion’s share of PCs on the marketplace could not,” and added, “The majority of the gamer base that was playing the game on PC did not have a PC spec that would work with that.”

Although FIFA 14 will launch in its current-gen form on PC, Wilson didn’t rule out the next-gen Ignite version further down the line. He said, “So could I see the potential for EA Sports Ignite to make it to PC in the future? Yes, I think it’s possible, but a couple of things need to happen.”

In order for it to happen, EA Sports would need to see the average spec of FIFA PC players increase across the board.

So what do you think? Will this rise happen in time for the next-gen FIFA 14 launch, or will it be a while yet?