Assassin's Creed III
The Assassin’s Creed franchise by Ubisoft is arguably their flagship title and one of the biggest and most well received games the current entertainment industry. And now they have a sequel to what has been overall a very riveting series.
A little background on the franchise in case you aren't familiar with it. When they released their first title people ridiculed it for boring presentation and repetitive gameplay, and while I saw some potential, I thought the project would end there, or they would release a second one that would last 10 hours and fail on just about every level. However, I underestimated the perseverance of the AC team and when Assassin’s Creed 2 was released it touched on just about every single thing the first one got wrong. It offered a well developed story told by likeable characters, varying and interesting gameplay and an absolutely stunning world. The few small improvements that could be made on Assassin’s Creed 2 were made in the Brotherhood sequel, which really felt more like a pricey expansion pack. Brotherhood continued the story and added several gimmicks and forced you to participate in them, no matter how annoying you found them. And this is where I think the series went wrong. It strayed from it’s assassination roots to present you with an action-rpg of completely fantastical proportions. The next “expansion” was Revelations, and it continued with this theme, having only two or three assassinations and the rest of the 12 hour game was filled with puzzle solving. And worst of all, it was a slap in the face as the big “revelation” was that there would be a revelation in the next game. I hated it.
So along comes Assassin’s Creed III. The things I knew about the game going in were few in number. I knew they would include more Desmond. Most people started complaining at that but it was welcome news for me, I’ve always preferred the modern plot to the historical plot. And I knew it would also feature the historical era that I found more interesting than any other time in history – the American Revolution. So when I finally got the game, I decided to devote my little free time to playing it as much as possible. The first thing I noticed was that the plot wasn’t quite as fleshed out this time. It felt a lot more like the original game. You’re thrown into the shoes of a character who know nothing about, and forced to undergo a bunch of boring missions that mean absolutely nothing to you. Well done Ubisoft, it was an incredibly boring and painful experience that never should have been in the game. I can’t think of a worse way to start of a game and engage the player than that. Yet they managed to top it. As it turns out, the character you start off the first few hours playing isn’t even the main character. No, you then get to do a few pointless missions as a small child, that have again, absolutely nothing to do with the plot. And then more pointless missions that simply force you to run through the routines of the stupid minigames that should have been blacklisted from the very beginning. Like the hunting minigame. If I wanted to hunt, I would take my gun and my tags, and go hunt. I want to kill people, which I can’t do in real life. Yet here were are in the first few hours of Assassin’s Creed III, hunting rabbits and deer in an obligatory quest with a character that we know almost nothing about and have no attachment to at all. I don’t think I can stress this enough. It was boring.
Kill me now...
Once you make your way past all the obligatory quests to feature some stupid gimmick of the game that doesn’t need to exist, the game makes you do more of them. Like the sea battles ones. They’re boring as hell. It’s got no real purpose at all except to show off unneeded gameplay features and get you really frustrated. And when you make it past the sea battles, you have to command a few squads of revolutionaries. That was great. I spent twenty minutes riding a horse back in forth in a line pressing shift. Whoever invented that minigame should be shot, it’s absolutely horrendous and requires no skill, and went on for far too long! The game is all about those pointless gimmicks that serve no purpose except for back of the box advertising. And yet surprisingly, it gets worse from there.
My biggest complaint about Revelations was the lack of assassinations. There was two or three, and I was hoping that AC3 would really improve on that. Few things can challenge the thrill of stalking your prey on the rooftops. Strategically eliminating guards and causing distractions. Clearing out your path of escape and evaluating you other options just before you drop from the roof onto your target. And if you miss, that thrilling three or four second chase before you tackle them and finish them off with the hidden blade. Then finally you jump up and rush off, fleeing the guards with the bells tolling and the people screaming. It’s what made the Assassins so badass, and the games so much fun. Yet Assassin’s Creed III maintains the status quo in that regard. There’s more annoying eavesdropping missions than there is assignations. About 10 hours into the game I unlocked the achievement for 25 hidden blade kills. Let that sink in – 25 hidden blade kills in 10 hours, and not through any lack of aggressiveness on my part. There is almost no opportunity to use them as there’s practically no assassinations or any type of stealth-infiltration missions where it’s a viable tactic. You either can’t fight at all, or end up fighting 30 enemies. To me, this was a huge disappointment.
Oh look, more boring gimmicks
Then there’s the plot. There’s more segments with Desmond, and the Revolution theme is pretty fun but just about everything good ends there. The main character has no back story, you don’t feel emotionally attached to him. And the side characters are the same way. The story has no real purpose or goal, you kind of wander around randomly killing the Templars at your discretion, and their plots never accumulate. One second they’re backing the Empire, the next they’re trying to help the rebels. It made no sense at all, and was terribly inconsistent. And the sudden turnarounds don’t just end with the Templars. There’s a random meeting with an enemy (I won ‘t go into detail as I don’t want to spoil it) and just when you think the characters are going to flesh out a little, they end it for almost no reason at all and the game returns to it’s same old same old.
In terms of gameplay the game has improved a little, though the keyboard control scheme had three separate buttons combined into one, which is annoying as all hell, and Eagle Vision is now only in the game at specific times. That didn’t stop me from appreciating the slightly more realistic combat though. For instance, there’s no more brute enemies that you can’t hit regardless of what you try, and the moves are a little less ridiculous. And despite the addition of “Rope Darts” which are absolutely insane in every way, the hook blade is gone so that’s a reason to celebrate. The parkour is roughly the same, but you won’t be using it as much anyways, and I only did a leap of faith about four times in my entire playthrough. They also got rid of the perfectly functional weapons reel and added a new weapon menu that was undoubtedly designed by the most terrible person in the world. It’s so bad and counter-intuitive that it made me want to go hurt something small and cute and furry. The map is also almost entirely useless, I’d say it’s a distant cousin of the weapon menu, and the fast travel had to have been thought up by a fully retarded person. In fact, every single part of the in-game navigation made me grind my teeth.
That said, the game has added an updated graphics engine that is just gorgeous. I found myself taking screenshot after screenshot because it just looked so good.
It really is quite gorgeous
To summarize I’d have to say save your money and wait until the game goes on sale. The fact is that Ubisoft spent so much time focusing on the gimmicks and visuals that they completely forgot about the meat of the game. The plot fell through, the characters were dull, the control scheme and menus were the product of monkeys, the core gameplay is almost never used, and well for lack of a better phrase, the game is so caught up in it’s own style that it has almost no substance whatsoever. When you finish it you’ll be sitting there wondering if you just played a game, or a compilation of minigames serving no discernible purpose. I'm not going to give a score because it would be so low I'd probably get relentlessly flamed, but let me just sum it up with this final thought:
Assassin's Creed III had so much going for it. It was set in an amazing time period, it could have had an amazing plot, and amazing characters. It even had an amazing pre-existing franchise to learn from.
Yet, instead of capitalizing on all of that...they added quick time events.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Bolkonsky
Unless you meant the CPU requirements, I was just referring to my own PC.
. Combat was fun but the game itself got old real fast. I hope AC4 uses a different character, Connor had so much potential but Ubisoft just botched this one.
