Assassin's Creed vs. PlayStation Vita

[wraggster]

In a continuing series exploring the power of the PlayStation Vita, Digital Foundry talks to Ubisoft Sofia - developers of Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. This Vita-exclusive title is a remarkable piece of work, successfully translating the full Assassin's Creed experience and the AnvilNext engine that powers it onto a mobile platform.It's a fascinating game for many reasons - not least of which is Ubisoft's commitment to producing an all-new franchise title built from the ground-up for the handheld, with brand new locations and a fresh cast of characters. Where other studios have downsized their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles to run on Vita, Ubisoft Sofia made the most of a remarkable opportunity - to shape their game entirely around the strengths and weaknesses of the Sony hardware, at the same time giving PS3 AC3 owners a companion purchase entirely separate and distinct from the main game.That's not to say that the game is an unmitigated triumph, as the Eurogamer review (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-05-assassins-creed-3-liberation-review)explored. Resolution takes a hit, there's no anti-aliasing and frame-rate is highly variable to say the least - as you'll see in our video assets below. From a conceptual standpoint, it's also safe to say that some of the ideas - including multiple "guises" for heroine Aveline - misfire somewhat. In a game but relies so much on its free-running traversal mechanic, large sections of gameplay become a little frustrating when the parkour is taken away from you. But where it matters, this is indeed a core Assassin's Creed game and despite its faults, it remains one of our favourite Vita titles.In this deep dive interview, Ubisoft Sofia technical directors Mikhail Lozanov, Ivan Azmanov and Stefan Dyulagerov along with lead artists Biser Parashkevov and Borislav Bogdanov talk us through the creation of one of the most technologically ambitious mobile games on the market today.Digital Foundry: What was your technical assessment of the PS Vita hardware when you first started work? What were your procedures for putting the hardware through its paces?Ubisoft Sofia: Sony did a great job extracting performance from mobile hardware, with well-written software. Performance improvements from their libraries were substantial compared to other mobile vendors running on similar hardware.At the start of the project we tested the Vita with a version of Anvil used in a previously released Assassin's Creed title, but soon realised that AnvilNext from AC3 presented far greater capabilities and opportunities when combined with the Vita's hardware. Thus we switched to that engine at the earliest possible moment.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-assassins-creed-vs-playstation-vita