Assassin's Creed

The free Xbox Live Games with Gold lineup for July has been revealed and players can get their hands on some of the July games right now. Some of the games will be made available half way through the month.

Excitingly, Xbox has announced a new change to the Xbox Live Games with Gold promotion and this comes as part of a celebration for the two year anniversary of the promotion, which began in July, 2013. Starting this month, there will now be two free Xbox One games available each month for all Gold members.

Starting at the beginning of the month, players will be able to pick up Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the Xbox One - AC:IV will remain available for the entirety of July. On July 16th, So Many Me, an arcade style game will also be made available on the Xbox One.

The Xbox 360 will also be getting one full game and one arcade game this month. To start it off, Plants vs. Zombies has become available for free on the Xbox 360 and it will remain free till July 15th.

Unsurprisingly, Ubisoft is gearing up to announce a brand new Assassin's Creed title. Last week, invitations for a world premiere revealing for the next Assassin's Creed title were sent out to the press. The new Assassin's Creed game will be revealed on Tuesday.

Previous rumors suggested that the new Assassin's Creed game was going to be called Victory. This seemed like a fitting name at the time - the next game in the franchise is expected to be set in Victorian London. However, new rumors are suggesting that the new Assassin's Creed title will instead be called Syndicate.

We're not sure why Ubisoft would choose this name over Victory but we're bound to find out more at the world premiere revealing. If you think back to the last Assassin's Creed game, Unity, the name Syndicate seems more fitting, even though it may not have any real correlation with the actual game content or story.

Unity was released last year and it was met with a lot of distaste from critics and

Ubisoft made a big mistake with AC: Unity - the game was tacky, not prepared properly, and fell apart on many people's consoles. Of course, when it came to story and actual gameplay content, Unity was actually pretty impressive, and this is why I'm quite excited to hear about rumors for Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed game.

There are two reasons why I am excited, the next Assassin's Creed game couldn't possibly be launched in a state anywhere near as bad as Unity was, unless Ubisoft are purposely trying to murder the franchise.

The second reason is because, according to some rumors, the new Assassin's Creed game will be set in Victorian age London. We've seen plenty of revolutions in the Assassin's Creed universe now, but taking things back to the Victorian age will open up some interesting possibilities.

If the next AC game is set in Victorian age London, we can expect dark London streets and plenty of opportunity for great assassinations thanks to the great buildings

With all the recent talk surrounding games that support 60FPS, it's become quite a shock to hear that Assassin's Creed Unity is actually suffering from frame rate drops that dip below 30 frames per second.

Whilst frame rates in the less intensive areas do reach a nice, smooth frame rate, in some areas, both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 struggle to provide this smooth frame rate. Whilst many gamers have been unnecessarily angry at the lack of solid, smooth 60FPS in many next gen games, not being able to achieve 30FPS in a game is something to get angry about.

After frames start to dip below 30, or more specifically 24 frames per second, the game becomes incredibly choppy, and this is a frame rate that the human eye can easily pick up on.

Although the frame rate can be increased with a few tweaks on the development side, unfortunately, the frame rate may not be able to be improved to the golden 60FPS standard we've all been dreaming about.

We do hope however

I've personally never really owned any Game of the Year edition games, but they are typically released at a cheaper price to their original counterparts, and are a great alternative for anybody looking to buy new games at a discounted price. Microsoft have released Xbox 360 GoTY titles for years, but it's now been revealed that they plan to release a bunch of Game of The Year first party games for the Xbox One this year too, to help bulk up the current game portfolio.

It has been confirmed that the new Game of the Year edition titles will come at a cheaper price than the original versions, however the price has not yet been revealed. Interestingly, gamers may be able to pick up a new Xbox One SKU that bundles together a bunch of different GoTY titles at a reduced price.

Microsoft are still waiting to see how many third party publishers are interested in re-releasing their Xbox One games into the Game of the Year title list, but it's possible games like Assassin's Creed Black

It's been pretty clear at this point that Ubisoft is eager to keep pushing out new Assassin's Creed games each year, however there hasn't been that much information on the next entry in the series. The last game, Assassins' Creed Black Flag saw a breath of fresh air into the series, and I'm hoping that the next game manages to be unique and original enough to keep things enjoyable.

This week, after an image was leaked Ubisoft have confirmed that the next title for the Assassins' Creed series will be called Assassins' Creed: Unity.

So far, not much is really know about the next upcoming game in the series, however it's likely that the title will be directed at current gen consoles, whilst the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 will get a different title instead.

In a press release, Ubisoft stated that they have actually been working on the upcoming Assassin's' Creed game for more than three years. "We have been working on the new Assassin's Creed for more than three years

Well I don't think fans would really mind if Assassin's Creed took a year off. The fact that a lot of them were not happy with the idea of Assassin's Creed 4 coming out so quickly was subdued because the game was good, but fear is rising that this franchise is turning into Call of Duty.

But lo behold, recent rumors suggest that Ubisoft might not be just coming out with one, but two Assassin's Creed installments for 2014. One of the games are supposedly being developed just for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U while the other is being developed for the PS4 and Xbox One. In addition to that, the franchise is supposedly attempting a "massive re-scope"

Whilst all of the downloadable content for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was announced at it’s launch by Ubisoft, full details and pricing outside of the season pass was not given.

This week, Ubisoft has released the first DLC pack for Assassin’s Creed IV. The first pack is the previously announced character pack that includes three new characters that will be playable in the game’s multiplayer.

The first character is Blackbeard, one of the main characters in the story campaign. The second character is the Orchid, a deadly Assassin that grew up in China, and the third character is the Jaguar, an Aztec warrior from Mexico.

I could imagine each three characters would have a different playstyle, with Blackbeard being the most in your face, strength based character, the Orchid being the weaker, but more subtle assassin character, and the Jaguar being a mixture of the two.

The DLC pack is called Blackbeard's Wrath and will also add new achievements and trophies

It looks as if historical accuracy is something that really matters to Ubisoft, and to show that, they have made a brand new video showing off the various types of in-game weapons you'll be able to get in Assassins' Creed IV: Black Flag.

On top of this, the video gives a quick preview of the port of Genoa, a location that will probably play an important part in the story.

The video includes a rather energetic historical weapons expert discussing the variety of weapons available to the pirates at the time. He makes a mention of guns, knives, swords and even grenades, but also talks about psychological warfare, a method used by pirates to scare and intimidate their enemies into surrender.

The whole concept behind pirates is a scary one, and if you were out at sea, pirates would be the worst thing you could bump into. It will be interesting to see what kind of options we have open to enable us to scare our enemies into submission.

Along with psychological warfare,

It has been revealed that Ubisoft will be developing extra DLC content for two of their most anticipated games and that the content will be a timed exclusive for the PlayStation 4.

Both Watch Dogs and Assassins' Creed IV: Black Flag will have DLC released on the PlayStation 4 before the Xbox One, forcing users to either purchase a PlayStation 4 to get the content early or wait it out for longer to receive the same content on the Xbox One.

Despite Sony not having made an official statement on this matter, a new Sony video showcasing both Assassins' Creed and Watch Dogs has suggested that the timed exclusive DLC content will be available on the PlayStation 4 six months before the Xbox One.

This information was found within the small print of the video, but even with the internet now aware