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Assassin's Creed 2 restored my faith in open world games. I've played every one of the AC games and each title has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Out of the entire lineup, Assassin's Creed III has some of the best characters and delivers one of the best stories in the series but not enough thought was put into so many important areas of gameplay that Assassin's Creed III turns into a flawed disappointment.
**THE GOOD**
-The characters are memorable. Here's the thing: Connor isn't Ezio, nor should he be. If you're looking for a wild, charismatic guy who flirts with ladies and does whatever he wants, then Connor is the exact opposite of that. In fact, I'd say Connor's personality is very true to his culture. If he acted like Ezio as a young boy, I'd imagine his people would have thought something was seriously wrong with Connor. His quiet and humble nature suits him well. The side characters have their moments as well. The interactions between Charles Lee and Thomas Hickey, as well and Haytham and Connor are very fun and keep the player in guessing what happens next. The characters on your Homestead are also very funny and a delight to help out from time to time.
-The story is also engaging. Seeing what you read as a kid during history class in elementary school brought to life and getting to play in that environment is amazing! Being a part of the Boston Massacre and The Battle of Bunker Hill seriously gave me a special feeling inside. I'm not a history buff or anything, but the amount of research involved with both story and characters is done exceptionally well. For non-Americans, I've noticed a large disconnect with the events that happen in the game. A few of my European friends that played the game have stated this and found the story pretty dull. So a person not familiar with early American history may find the story a bit boring.
-The naval battles are so much fun that it should have been the entire game. Just sayin'.
-Wolfpack mode is perfect for those that don't like the competitive modes in multiplayer. It's pure co-op and it can even be completed on a solo run if you have no one to play with. The player can earn all the multiplayer trophies/achievements strictly playing that mode if they really wanted to. I think it's a wonderful addition to the online portion.
-The Desmond stuff isn't bad this time around and he finally feels like an assassin for once.
**THE BAD**
-Gameplay is a mess. It's not bad, but it could have been much better. The free-running is the same as it always has been, but Ubisoft has never fixed the issue of running up things you never wanted to climb in the first place. This becomes a hair-pulling experience when it accidentally happens during chase portions of the game. Another problem is sometimes when you walk casually past some Red Coats, they become aware of your presence and will come after you for no reason! It doesn't matter if incognito is your status, sometimes they will go to full alert and chase you for no reason. Sometimes I'll be chased by Red Coats and will run by Blue Coats. Guess what? They start chasing me too! Why?! They're two opposing forces and they should be fighting each other, not acting like buddies and chasing me! Lastly, the guns feel like it takes a lifetime to reload during fights. I know it's more realistic that way, but when you really need to use something other than your fists in a fight, you'll most likely choose other options before picking gun due to the reload speed.
-Tutorials aren't really helpful. The fighting could have used more of an explanation and the gameplay involving the Assassins you recruit by liberating areas of NY and Boston could have been more thorough. The mechanics will be familiar to people that played Brotherhood and Revelations, but individuals that haven't picked up the game since AC2 may feel a bit lost.
-Fight mechanics should have stayed the same. The Batman games by Rocksteady are amazing when it comes to fight mechanics and it's understandable why Ubisoft have stated that the Arkham games were a big inspiration for the overhaul. Honestly, it's not good in AC3. I'm not even sure why the slowdown animation during the failed parry attack exists, because even if Connor doesn't press anything during the animation, he pushes the enemy back automatically so you're able to try your attack again. If your looking for cool Arkham style fight mechanics, go with the game Sleeping Dogs. Otherwise, this just feels dumbed down and makes me miss the fantastic fluid fights I had in the past AC games.
-Not enough climbing points in the frontier. Sometimes I'd want to perform a hanging attack using my rope dart, but unfortunately, I would rarely find a climbable tree near an enemy for me to do this with. Like, there are soooo many trees. Some of them are like a puzzle to find the exact beginning climbing point. Then there are other trees that are just there to take up space for design reasons and aren't climbable. It becomes annoying, especially when you're looking for a way to get the upper hand on taking down an animal or enemy from the above position. Finding crevasses to climb in the mountains can become equally frustrating for the same reasons.
-The bugs cripple the experience. Even with all the flaws I've listed, I still would have been able to recommend this game to fans of the franchise. However, there are too many random bugs that make me wonder if Ubisoft were too concerned about making the Fall quarter release date that the Assassin's Creed series is known for, that they also managed to forfeit the quality of their product. I've seen so many random bugs and glitches. I can't tell you how many times I had to restart my checkpoint just to fix some of the issues. Sometimes even markers on the map don't show up like they should, so it makes finding objectives harder. I'm sure over time Ubisoft will patch a lot of the issues that exist in the game, but until that day comes, I'd gladly recommend Brotherhood and Revelations over AC3.
**OVERALL**
Assassin's Creed III isn't a bad game by design. It's the glitches and bugs that make it a bad game. It also feels like a poor effort was put into some of the gameplay elements. Even though the influences from Batman: Arkham Asylum/City to Red Dead Redemption turnout to be lackluster, the originality found in the naval battles is something completely new and maybe should be looked at in future releases of the franchise. They really have something special going on there. I thought this would be my Game of the Year for 2012. Even after playing a great game as Borderlands 2, I still believed AC3 would take my top spot. Yeah...Assassin's Creed III doesn't even come close to my Top 5 this year. AC3 is an okay game, but it feels like a disappointment over what the past titles did as far as gameplay and it should have been much better.
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AC3 had a huge amount of potential, a great story, and tragic flaws that made it more irritating to play than fun.
After Ubisoft milked Assassin's Creed 2 into 3 games, I said to myself that I'm not going to pay for this game. As luck would have it, I was able to check this title out at my local library... boy am I glad that's the case. I can't believe people actually had to pay $60 for this half baked game! It REALLY could have used several more months of development to iron out some of the game breaking bugs.
Pros:
1. Great story.
There's no way around it, this franchise has some of the best stories ever made for the gaming world. Although it's easy to see that there was never a mysterious Native American running around and influencing every major event during the period, the story of Connor is quite entertaining and interesting.
2. Excellent characters.
The voice acting for all the characters was very well done. I enjoy that they actually developed the Desmond story a little bit and let you run around quite a bit in the current time as Desmond.
3. Huge world.
There is a lot to explore and a lot to do in the world of AC3 and it looks amazing when the choppy frame rate isn't nauseating you.
4. Lots of side quests.
In AC3, you won't run out of things to do. There's always a side quest and they are well varied. You can trade, do ship missions, save citizents, go hunting, etc.
5. Naval missions are very fun.
The new addition of naval missions was well played and well executed. I enjoyed this facet of AC3 almost more than I enjoyed the actual game.
6. Frequent autosaves.
When the game freezes because of a bug and you have to restart your system, it at least remembers where you left off if you were in the middle of a mission.
Cons:
1. Frequently poor frame rates.
A lot of other reviewers said that this issue wasn't so bad for them. For me, it was a different story. The game would get choppy quite frequently and I often had to walk away for a few minutes because it made me dizzy. I never get any kind of motion sickness from visual stimulation, so this is a first for me when it comes to gaming. Maybe Ubisoft bit off more than the hardware can chew... but as experienced developers, they should be well acquainted with hardware limitations.
2. Riddled with bugs.
There is no doubt about it, even after patches, that this game has a ridiculous amount of bugs. If I didn't see this game on the shelves and played it, I would be convinced that it was a beta. I've had it randomly freeze on me about a dozen times, most often while on a mission. A few times, I tried to mount a horse next to a bush and got stuck inside the bush. Once, I fell through the ground and died. Needless to say, Ubisoft should not have released this game with this amount of bugs. I understand that there are a lot of challenges to overcome when making a game of this size... but that's why the consumer pays $60. No one is asking for a perfect bug-free game, but come on! This is just down right shameful.
3. Combat system has been ruined.
Previous AC games had a really good combat system, this one is irritating button mashing. Maybe I just haven't figured out how it works yet, but what I do know is that as long as you're holding circle you are invincible to everything but projectiles. Understandably, they have to make a lot of changes in a game to keep each new release fresh and innovative, but in this case they broke what didn't need fixing. I read an interview with one of the lead developers in a popular gaming magazine several months ago that they were re-thinking the combat system for AC3 to make it more fluid... I was genuinely excited to see all the cool combos, but all I got was a clunky button mashing experience that left a lot to be desired.
4. Menus are tragic...
The menus are confusing and difficult to navigate. It's often frustrating to figure out how to do something because there's no explanation as there was in previous AC games. Maybe I missed something...
5. Slow pace in the beginning.
The first several hours of the game are very slow paced and made me lose interest. There was too much tutorial that didn't teach you anything, left you confused, and didn't add much to the story.
6. Still running up random walls.
This has been a problem in previous games and there's been a lot of complaining about it, it's really irritating. I need not say more.
In all, this could have been a great game if it had more time in development. If Ubisoft wasn't so bent on milking us for our annual 60 bucks, I would have gladly paid for this game and would be eager to do so with the next iteration. Sadly, I will not pay for the next one either because it will also be a half done mess. Quite frankly, I don't think I'll even play the next one. I've been a fan of this series since the beginning, and they've finally lost me for good. I was disappointed by Revelations because they didn't really reveal or add a whole lot, and I'm disappointed with this one because it was just an expensive and messy beta (for those who bought it). I'm sure Ubisoft will go ahead and milk Connor until he's as dried up a skeleton as Altair was and only the quality of the franchise will suffer with everyone that forks over their cash...
Buy Assassin's Creed III Now
First, I have not completed the game yet. I'm about halfway through. I am both incredibly pleased and impressed with parts of the game and mildly annoyed at others.
Here's the nerdy history guy's take: If you like history -particularly the American Revolution -you have never had a chance to experience such an accurate and detailed deception of life in colonial America. As someone who has been obsessed with everything related to the American Revolution, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Granted, you don't seem to actually participate that much in the actual events of the revolution, but you still get to experience the environment, architecture, etc. And you get to meet some influential Americans from the time. And take part in a couple battles (at least). The historical accuracy is both surprisingly great and stupidly wrong. Tiny details, like the humid horrid battle of Monongahela during the French and Indian War are surprisingly spot on -even down to steaming earth and soldiers grumbling about the weather. The flags in all the battles are represented accurately, as best I can tell. This is historically spot on -unlike the ridiculously inaccurate (but entertaining) movie The Patriot. However, the depiction of British and Colonial soldiers is not right at all. British dragoons lead foot soldiers on foot patrols with bright red uniforms? (Dragoons are mounted cavalry troops and wore bright green and white uniforms) British Highland troops did fight and wear kilts, but they fought in independent groups, not generally interspersed among random other troops. Also, every "musket" I have seen so far appears to be a Pennsylvania or Kentucky Long-Rifle. This is totally inaccurate. The Brown Bess was the primary musket used on both sides. Rifles played a very small (though important) part of the war.
So maybe that is nit-picking, but I promise that I'm actually omitting many of my other thoughts on this topic. All in all, for a popular mainstream game, this is a super valuable change to go beyond Johnny Tremain and The Patriot and get a more immersive feel for the tension and style of the time. (Just ignore all the Templar/Assassin mumbo-jumbo)
Also, for those of you on here complaining about the flintlock pistol being slow, its actually about twice as fast in the game as the best re-loaders of the time could achieve. Not too mention it never jams, misfires, blinds you, burns your hand, explodes, and always works, even if you fire it right after swimming around in the ocean. I know games take liberties, and I think this one is reasonable for the sake of game play. Still, all you whiners need to understand that tactics change. A pistol was typical only fired once in a battle with wicked inaccuracy. Even musket volleys in a full battle would generally only last a dozen rounds of so (if that). These battles were still won largely in hand-to-hand combat. The same goes for people complaining about the game becoming more Warrior's Creed than Assassin's Creed. I get it -it's called what it is for a reason -but you have to understand that this was kind of like the wild west only less developed. Somebody could commit a crime in Virginia, move to Connecticut, and no one would be any wiser. Assassinations out in the open was much more common than the clandestine periods depicted in the earlier games.
However, I am not just a historian, I also enjoy playing historical games. I've been a fan of the series and I think this game both delivered tremendously in certain respects, but also made for some really horrendously boring and tedious game play choices. The game also suffers from a small amount of gliches. I hope that they do continue to expand this series a little longer. While I'd love to see the war of 1812, I suspect they will move to France for their revolution. While I enjoy the American Revolution the most, I think the French Revolution might be slightly more conducive to the assassination nature and climb-on-roof tops style of the games that many fans have come to expect.
4 out of 5 stars for historical accuracy
4 out of 5 stars for game play
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WARNING: This review is being handled differently from my previous reviews in that there will not be an overall score and I won't be going into many of the overall game play and story. This will mostly just be a list of issues I've found with this game. This will probably piss some people off but this is based on my experience with the game. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from playing this game but if you know any of the things that I talk about in this note tend to piss you off, you might want to reconsider this game.
So yeah, Assassin's Creed 3 is the game I have been looking forward to all year long. The trailers have been amazing; the setting of the American Revolution is rather original for a game like this, an interesting new character to the Assassin's Creed series, and a time in history most Americans should be familiar with. This game had so much potential. Also it's been getting near perfect scores from several game review magazines and sites. I have to ask, what game have they been playing? Because the AC3 I've been playing is not a perfect scoring or high scoring game. I was so sure this was going to be game of the year material for me and it makes me so sad that I cannot even recommend it for a top 5 slot for games of the year. For me, this game is just not very fun most of the time. It's been mostly frustrating and stress inducing. That's not why people play video games and if that's why you play games then maybe you're a masochist. Very rarely have I had fun with this game. There is a lot to it, I'll give it that. It is a very big game and it is impressive in that aspect and it is a very beautiful game. Something like it hasn't been quite done before. Sadly, that comes with a price.
The graphics in this game, while beautiful, run into a lot of frame rate and slow down issues. There are times I've noticed in the cities where things just don't move so smoothly. You see slow down here and there in these massive areas. Not always but sometimes. Glitches are another issue. Granted, I've run into glitches in all the AC games (AC had some of the worst) but AC3 had some game stoppers. One involved me just running along and then I suddenly just fell through the ground and died. Another I hid in a pile of hay and got stuck in it, forcing me to restart the area I was in. More minor glitches include odd clipping, animals getting stuck in trees, and other silly things that you run into in open world games. Only a few of these glitches really hurt the game play but they were on the rare side. I can't help but feel that this game is just pushing the PS3 to its limits but the minor visual errors are minor compared to other problems in the game. UPDATE: A friend of mine experienced a glitch that prevented him from beating the game because a cutscene would not start.
Probably the biggest issue in the game is the new combat system. Wow! It sucks! It is a huge step back from the combat system from Assassin's Creed 2. The first thing I noticed when I got into a big fight was the camera: It doesn't follow your character. It just doesn't. You have to adjust it manually. When you got so much shit going on around you, you don't have time to adjust the damn camera. Something always seems to get in the of the camera too, be it a tree, wall, part of a building, ect. The combat itself feels less skill based. Every now and then, Conner will pull off some of the awesome finishing moves we saw in the trailers but I have no idea how I did them. I still have no idea how to use someone as a human shield and it is an almost mandatory move to know if you want to survive firing lines. The majority of the time you are hacking at the enemy's defenses and countering them whenever prompted. It becomes a button masher. A lot of times I would press triangle to try and counter because I am so used to the combat from Arkham City but that's my fault. There is also no real lock on method in this game. It seems to want to try lock on automatically in combat but it does a poor job. You end up missing your target or accidentally running up a wall or something. It's very frustrating and takes awhile to get used to especially if you are familiar with the combat system from the previous games. It took me about 10 hours of playing the game to get a hang of combat. There is no place you can go to practice like in AC2. You pretty much just have to go pick your own fights with British patrols and learn the hard way. Shooting and firearms have been added to the game which makes sense but the shooting mechanic is trick to get a hang of but once you do, it's pretty handy even though you have to deal with the slow reloads of the time.
The story is another issue and the one I have the most mixed feels about. I won't go into details or spoilers or anything but I will talk about the pacing. The first 5 hours of the game is very slow paced but does have a good pay off with quite the bombshell of a plot twist. Then it bounces around from being fast paced, to slow paced, and just jerks around a bit too much for my liking. Other people don't seem as bothered by it as much as me. It does have some good moments like some epic battlefield scenes and the naval battle missions that, thankfully, actually live up to the hype! You could make an entire game based around the naval missions and naval combat system. It's fun. But there are only three mandatory missions where you control a ship on the seas. There are side missions for this in addition the many, many, many diverse side missions you can find though out the game. There is over 70 hours of content in this game, so it's not short. You do get your money's worth in terms of content with this game. I usually had more fun just running around doing all these side missions than the actual main missions.
The next major issue I felt that goes along with the problem of the story's pace is that the first 7 hours feels like a very long and slow tutorial that spans out over this time. If you're a veteran of the series, some of this stuff isn't new to you but things like learn out to use the shooting mechanic could have been handled in a better way. You learn how to actually shoot your weapon in combat simple enough but right after that you have to shoot these powder kegs to blow open a door. Okay, simple enough. At this point you think pressing the triangle button will let you shoot at anything and L1 is what you use to manually aim. There is a wagon with these BIG barrels on it and the game just told you to shoot at the barrels so naturally you aim at try to shoot them but nothing happens. I sat there for like 5 minutes pressing every button on the controller trying to figure out why the shooting button just no longer works. Then I notice that if I drag the little aiming cursor over these small barrels below the big barrels, the small ones light up and I can actually shoot them. It doesn't tell you to shoot the little barrels that light up. WHY NOT?! I know for a fact I am not the only one who has had this problem! It's turn into a little meme on the internet, I think. The game has several moments of poor conveyance. It introduces new mechanics poorly such at the Battle of Lexington and Concord where you have to run back and forth between ranks and order Colonists to fire on the British. This is a really cool mission but when it starts they don't tell you how to give orders and it took me a few minutes to figure this out and ended up failing the mission a couple times. You have to stand in little circles that appear in order to give the commands. They could have made that much clearer. A lot of things could have been made clearer on how they work and this goes back to the combat system. You can't just equip whatever weapons you want when you want. You have to go to a general store (the place you most likely bought your weapons and equipment) and you can only equip things there. These general stores are not common you will only find two or three in the two main cities of the game, New York and Boston. If you know how to equip weapons in a different way, please let me know!
Every mission has sub-objectives to complete each synchronization and I HATE THESE THINGS! They are completely optional but if you're looking to complete this game 100%, you're going to have a bad time. Some of these are nearly impossible and half the time I end up failing them before I even know what they are because they only flash on the screen for a brief moment on the corner of the screen. They make missions unnecessarily difficult. If you want that kind of challenge, go for it. There is one where the game expects you to chase someone through a crowd without pushing anyone. Ha! Good luck with that. Speaking of chasing missions, they make for some of the MOST frustrating missions, especially this one near the end of the game. All of this stuff together ultimately leads to this game being very frustrating and just not as fun as it should be. There is nothing wrong with a challenging game but that challenge should be fair and not based on issues with the overall game play.
Now like I said this is all based on my game play experiences. Maybe you have or will have better experiences but for me, ultimately this game is a big letdown. Assassin's Creed 2 was just so much better in just about every way and was way more fun to play. If you are not familiar with Assassin's Creed, AC3 is not game to start with. Now I can't stress this enough, this is all my opinion. Maybe I just suck at the game and there is something I just completely missed and I am playing it wrong. Don't let this review completely steer you away from the game as it is something that should be experienced to a degree. This game is an impressive technical achievement in many ways and it is a HUGE game. It's just too frustrating and ultimately unenjoyable to me overall which is very disappointing as I was really looking forward to this game.
Want Assassin's Creed III Discount?
If you're a veteran of the series, this game feels off.
Many of the gameplay mechanics were changed from the earlier games. Some good (free run is automatic), some unusual (block using Circle button), and some beyond frustrating (rotate the camera to control your direction). If you rotate the camera to get a better view of the upcoming obstacles, Connor will cheerfully free run into a wall or off a cliff.
Since AC3 was in development prior/during the AC2 games, it's missing all those great little improvements that were added in AC2 Revelations (automatically walk with NPCs, bomb crafting, etc).
While it's cool that the AC3 voice actors are native speakers of the various languages, it doesn't mean they can actually act. Except Haythem, he could read the phone book and I'd be happy.
The main story line is forgettable at best. Connor may have helped win a few key battles, but it's hard to tell how much impact riding a horse back and forth between 3 circles had on the actual outcome. If you turn the camera to watch the actual battle, your horse runs into rocks/trees and the guys depending on you to reach their little circle just stand there patiently getting shot while you try to maneuver around the impenetrable bushes of the Boston wilderness.
The side quests are designed to turn you into a tourist, literally walking to designated spots just to get an animus journal entry. The architecture of the time didn't have towering cathedrals or crumbling ruins, so this game doesn't have the same visual impact as the earlier ones. It also means many of the free run paths are ground based, unless you're in the forest.
Thank god for the naval missions. These side quests have the best characters and story arcs of the entire game. I often find myself grinding through the main story just to unlock the next set of Privateer Contracts or pirate treasure hunts.
If you can, wait for the price drop. There's some cool moments but this is hardly a must have game.
