Hello welcome to the the newest format to the Thespian Hunter shenanigans! I'm (if you haven't figured it out already) Thespian Hunter. I chat shit about games, films, table top games and a whole bunch of useless crap we call entertainment. Today we'll ("I'll", however for some reason people like to feel like their involved in the processes.... their wont be much 4th wall breaking a promise) be looking at Ubisoft Montreal's latest offerings in the form of Assassins Creed 3. Put on some music, some stylish reading glasses and some comfy socks (had to make some sort of list of three) and let's get to it!!
!!!!!!!!!!WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!
The game begins with a lovely little throw back to previous games while being narrated by Desmond's father an apparent big shot in the Assassins a secret group of smart minded individuals who have dedicated themselves to preserving freedom and battling the EVIL Templars! An organisation who have dedicated themselves to preserving order and battling the EVIL Assassins! ... standard plot. The difference is in the form of the Animus; a machine that can allow certain individuals to relive their ancestors lives as if they themselves were living it. Desmond (our main character) must travel (kinda) back to live the life of his ancestor Ratonhnhake:ton, which apparently no one can pronounce so his name is swiftly changed to Connor (pictured above.)
I wont mention too much of the story and I'm going to assume that most of you know the past events of the other games. For those who don't Desmond must find the resting place of "the key" (really fucking original name) so he can save the world from being burnt to a crisp by a solar flare. And guess what day its supposed to happen. Yes! You guessed it kids. 20/12/2012 I shit you not! Before I get onto the gameplay I would like to make it aware that the modern day story is such a pile of crap it makes me want to throw my controller at whoever wrote it! I mean seriously was the story written by a couple of students who loved watching crappy films on the SyFi channel ? The reference to the 2012 prophecy is tacky and cheap and serves no really purpose other than "HEY GUESS WHAT WRITERS, WE CAN LINK IT TO THIS HERDERP!" I mean please, writers, stop doing this!
The Animus story itself is good for the most part, you first play Connor's father who is a total bad ass and has some of the coolest lines and situations in the game. There's also a HUGE spoiler related to his character, which even I don't want to spoil (you need to check it out, it's such a good twist M. Night Shyamalan would INSTANTLY steal it to make a tacky film. It very much catches everyone off guard.) His segments involve doing the classic stuff in the past games, killing people from roof tops, recruiting people for your personal hit squad of awesome and being a nice guy to the unfortunate Indians (native Americans.)
Speaking of which after the "OMG THE SPOILER" moment we then live the life of Ratonhnhake:ton who learns how to do assassin-y things in the style of his upbringing (like hunting and playing hide and seek.) The two character play-styles compliment each other kind of well. Connor can do all the things Haytham (Connor's father) can, however only Connor can climb in trees and use weapons like rope darts and bows-and-arrows. It seems that some back and forth play could have suited well however it wasn't to be in the actual game, however there is a mission where the two fight together against evil mercenaries which leads the way for some interesting dialogue.
BUT! Connor as a character is so FUCKING boring. it combines the inability to act of the likes of which would make Kristen Stewart a likely award winning nominee, the segments in which he speaks native american ,although seems kinda cool at times, feel contrived and forced it just slows the the pace of the game to a crawl. And he also seems such a bloody idiot. I mean, do I really have to explain to you how knocking on a door and waiting for "some guy" to let you in over the space of three days is BAD game play? Do i really? Connors early missions are boring and very slowed pace. There's a mission of which the objective is to walk from one side of the in game map to the other. It's boring and feels like filler (you can of course fast travel but I'll get to that later)
Said "some guy" is the awesome and crippled Achilles Davenport, Grand Master of the Assassins in the new world. He's kinda cool, but his death is kind of pathetic when compared to his title.Take a minute to think about the cool scene that could be have between a Grand Master vs the Templar and the awesome fighting scene that could happen. Now imagine that all that happens is one night Achilles gets sick. Now realize THAT'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS! And this is my second problem with the game. It misses opportunities like a blind guy misses a target with a shotgun! There is SO much potential with this game. Achilles could be a total bad ass of which the world has never seen, instead he's a moany old bastard who spends his time complaining about the problem instead of getting off his crippled ass and doing something about it! Instead it's left to Connor to do everything.
The game takes parts in 4 locations on land and pretty much 1 location at sea (I'll get to it) The first two are Boston and the frontier. Boston being the port home of the revolution and over flowing with red coats and the frontier being... woodlands ... lots of them. Then there's Davenport estate, being a small woodland with a river going through it (which the player gets to build up and allow people to live there so they can do shit like making barrels and making axes made out of beaver teeth with which Connor gets to assassinate bears with) and then New York ... a port town overflowing with red coats. This is my next problem. Yes the areas are as big, the frontier equivalating to the size of Rome in AC:Brotherhood, but they're so unvaried it beggars belief. Instead of giving us newly developed cities, plantations owned by slave runners or even towns run by pirates (which were around at the time) we're left with 2 by 2 directly similar areas with very little going for them. The outer areas are interesting, taking place in hunting grounds allowing the player to chase rabbits for hours and roads so you can ambush red coats with trip mines (if they're not set off by a goat before hand) or use a rope dart to hang them from trees, but in time these areas become a bore to travel through and become a pain in the arse to traverse. ( I will get to the problem with quick traveling I swear)
The locations on sea are interesting. For those who are currently going "WHAAAAAAA?! SEA YOU SAY!?" yes sea I do say. Connor being the lucky little native american he is, gets to requisition a battle ship and can sail the ... 1 tiny stretch of coast line to battle pirates 'n such. Which sounds awesome doesn't it. Well... I'm sorry guys. You wanted Sid Meier's Pirates with Assassins and Red coats. We got a horse shoe'd in game mechanic that kinda get's boring after about 5 missions (only 3 of which you need to do to complete the game, I'll get to that later too) there's no boarding mechanic, apart from ONE mission where you get to do it on ONE ship and its so mind bogglingly simple it makes you wonder "what was the point of that again?" You seem to destroy most ships with one volly of cannon fire (which i will admit is quite satisfying) and then other ships you can sink by doing the classic naval maneuver of ramming it... BECAUSE RAMMING WOODEN SHIPS IS SAFE!
After these missions are done you feel wanting more, but never getting what you wanted, there's ship customization but most are direct upgrades, not "side-grades" that make your ship more interesting, and you're stuck with the game constantly acting as a tutorial on every mission. There's also no free roam ability with the ship and instead you're stuck in these fixed small areas with objectives like "sink the ship" and "defend the ship" and "ship the ships and defend the ship" and every so often there's "destroy the port" which is really frustrating first time round.There was so much potential here and only 40% of it was actually met. Its a fun Mini game but doesn't add much.
And OH BOY are there mini games. Ever wanted to save the world via a game of checkers, Assassins Creed 3 is the game for you! I mean, who thought that was a good idea, you don't have to do them (unless you want to get 100% completion in which case, have fun playing bowls against someone who can defy the laws of physics by throwing a ball) but there's never any attraction in wanting to do them ether. It's like going out on the town and seeing a guy outside a club with a sign saying "Don't go clubbing! read the Torah instead!" It slows the pace and becomes a nuisance.
On that note, the game really does have a problem with pacing itself. (finally back to fast traveling) The obvious way to get around most of this is to fast travel. However by doing this you risk in losing (and I'm really not shitting you here) 50% of the game. Yes ladies and gents by not spending 50 minutes walking from Davenport to New York you risk losing half of the game. Fast travel is supposed to make it easy for players to get to what they want to go, which is play the game. So you know what is a bad idea, having a fast travel system that makes you miss a majority of what you want to be doing. And what is the fast travel system? I can literally explain it in 2 short sentences - "press start got to the map. Once there's click A twice on where you want to go" and that's it! You can go to ports and carriages instead but these are so few and far in between they take away the point of having a fast travel system in the game. When you're not running from point A to point B you can be ether running after pages caught in the wind (which is really fucking fun, I joke really, its like running around the front room trying to be an airplane) or doing other pointless and non interesting shit like trying to find big foot, which is actually one of the more interesting side missions.
This takes me to another point. Fighting.
For an ASSASSIN, you really do a lot of fighting. And this time round, it's really good! It takes lessons from Bat Man Arkham "enter place here" games, allowing players to take down 3 guys at a time, use bottles during bar fights and strangle people with ropes lines only to turn them around and use them as a shield against musket fire. When its not people you're fighting, there's the wildlife. Which is actually quite bad. It reduces your ability to fight to a quick time event which if you fail, you get eaten and die. So I recommend you keep your wits about you when fighting bears.
The weapons are pretty much the same as before, however replacing the sword (although if you really want one you can still have it) with an axe which functions exactly the same as using a knife and it shows. In fact fighting with a knife is so awful its animations are the exact same as if Connor had an axe in his hand. Disagree ? Since when did you see someone impale a man through the skull by hitting him with the SIDE of a knife? Muskets make their way into the game, and they are quite fun to use, even the Duckfoot pistol with 3 chambers is fun however good luck trying to keep a rifle with you. Connor really doesn't like holding rifles and will drop it at the closest opportunity, which is a real shame since they're the most fun to use. Combat is still pretty easy though, you can still kill most guys with to presses of a button and kill entire squads in seconds. Bigger guys can cause trouble at first however once working out there are two types of attacks its back to being simple "press X to kill world population" Jagers will be a pain the arse however, unless you run away shoot them. In which case, they will die really quickly.
But why do you want to fight, I mean you're an Assassin after all, not "mass murdering machine" What about the stealth mechanics?.
This is by far the weakest part of the game in my opinion. Stealth is ACTIVELY DISCOURAGED IN MOST CASES! Yes most missions you must avoid detection for 1 minute however as soon as that minute is over, you can start shooting people with your guns without ANYONE hearing. As soon as you try to go on a roof, you're instantly detected and you're met with rifle fire reducing your health to a puddle on the floor. You try and ambush targets rather than charge into them? They notice you in the trees (as there are no decent ambush sites other than climbing a tree) and open fire, killing you instantly unless you charge them. But kill people in the streets with grenades and use rifles instead of bows and arrows, and you can be like fucking Jack the Ripper hardly being noticed. The game is so backward it actively awards you being fearless and charging in all guns blazing like its November the 5th, and punishes you for your attempt to kill people in a sneaky manner. ITS NOT HOW ASSASSINS ARE!
Also in terms of the assassin's arsenal there isn't really much of note, you get cool weapons like the beaver axe and the rope dart and using smoke grenades and trip mines is fun. But yet again the player is wanting more and never getting. After my second play through I managed to collect 2 rare weapons and I had apparently completed over 80% of the game, when ignoring having to go back on yourself to get perfect scores on missions.
As for the Desmond sections of the game... *sigh*
I'll talk about the final mission and you can gather what I think of it from there (there will be no spoils don't worry) You managed to kill the guy with the gun, now you have to make your way through the offices killing people with one bullet each, you never have to reload, and the firing output is so effective no one can get close to you. You do this for 10 minutes and then get to the boss and shoot him in the head, You head back to the Bat cave and jump back to Connor for a bit. The pacing is horrible and it's no where near as fun as the Connor Game play!
As for the bad ass battles like in the trailer ... yeah... there's none of that, instead you get to run to the side and miss the thousands of badly animated troops in front of you and do heroic things like, telling men when to shoot at the right time, and basically playing a tower defense game with cannons. It's a sad moment when in a review you have to say " the big battles are some of the dullest moments in the game" You have so little to do with the outcome its laughable and, of course, Connor takes ALL the credit and replies with lines like "This is the last victory I deliver to you!" Because God knows what Washington would have done if the native American hadn't jumped from the rocks like he did and killed that one guy like he did. Honestly its laughable, it makes ET the game look like a hardcore strategy game. Its disappointing as hell!
Also the game encourages NO exploration at anytime. There ARE things to do on the side like side missions to get people to live in your estate and finding big foot but the game is possible to complete with ONLY doing the main story line, at least Assassins Creed 2 had the codex pages, here there's nothing, you can accidentally complete the game with only playing about 40% of the missions. Naval missions are a joke in the sense that that you don't have to do any of them and you don't have to upgrade your ship at all. They're all the same as the last mission and act as merely something to do if bored with killing thousands of people with three X presses. You can instead do it in one.
But even saying this, why would you want to play the side missions? The majority of them are so piss poor in their design and execution you'll want to go back to chasing Templars at the nearest chance you get rather than pissing about finding buttons in chests.
The following are other good and bad points about the game that I feel need to be discussed however do not warrant an entire paragraph.
- Shit ending - like, really shit, think of it like Mass effect 3 but with only ONE decision (which may or may not open the way for more Assassin Creed games and does it in a shameful fashion if so)
- There's not enough things to craft - Your Crafting and selling involves most of the time making barrels and selling them to one of three stores in the game which the only difference between them is time it takes and chance of being attacked (which is really tedious to remedy, it involves running across the map, finding your caravan and killing red coats around it, in all the space of five minutes)
- Game does well in making you hate the British AND Americans - my fears of the game being "YAY AMERICA" are put to side by having both British and American governments being total arse holes (which they are) Washington is a bossy winy jack ass, and British troops act like they did at the time, shooting people at the first sign of riots. They also do a good job in liking them too. You really feel like you're doing what the world needs rather than what any faction needs.
- Animus Database is a pain to read - turns out getting Danny Wallace to read extra lines isn't financially sound. Which means that if you don't like reading you're going to miss out on a good history lesson.
- Hunting is a pile of crap - You get two choices, sneak up on the deer and wait for it to get close, maybe even spend £20 on some bate to get it to walk close to you faster or chase the rabbits as fast as you can. The latter being more profitable? what sort of hunting mechanic is this?
- Voice acting is at times pretty good - excluding the main characters the voice acting is actually really good (but don't get me started on the shocking French and German accents!)
- Animation quality is improved - you feel more like a free runner darting in and out of tight corners and easily traveling over objects like fences and under objects like washing up lines
- Connor REALLY wants to free run - having all the free running controls on one button means that Connor will run up walls when you don't want him to, dive into rivers when you wanted him to jump to the next tree and having what you would think to be simple movement across an area turning into an acrobatic display.
- Glitches oh the glitches - some non game braking like having men walk on the spot rather than around the camp or shop sells not being able to talk to unless you re enter the shop, and some game braking, like hunting a deer that's stuck in a tree having Connor fall through the world to his death or the ONE bonus objective impossible to complete if you retry the mission on a later date or at the time if you don't have at least 3 arrows in your bow
- The brotherhood mechanic is awful - you can compete the game without even having to use it ONCE the missions you send your team on are boring and cant be replayed there's a set path each time, there in game fluff behind them is poor
- AMAZING graphics - Best looking game on the market as of yet
- AWESOME MUSIC - The best soundtrack in a series full of good sound tracks
So, what do I think in final thought? Well the game is a fun game, it improves on the previous games in its presentation, as well as its game mechanics. The story is mostly fun making you cheer for the main character (even though he's annoying) and care about the people your fighting with and against. It's by far the best Assassins Creed game to date.
However the game is flawed is so many respects, especially it's side quests that are so dull, uneventful and unrewarding you often wonder why you're doing them, only to remind yourself (it's for the 100% completion, which doesn't seem worth it) The combat is still too easy however they've somehow made sneaking harder to pull off when you want to do it and easier when you're running around mass murdering the city. It's a game that could have been SO MUCH MORE and seems to give you what you've waited for, only to then see the final credits. There's a few missions to do at the end, but they're not what the player is looking for! Naval missions are disappointing but fun for a little while and the lack of variety makes replaying the game a chore.
Thank God for the Multiplayer?... I'll get to next time...
Thank you everyone for reading this review, if you have a positive or negative response please let me know in the Facebook comments. Please forgive any spelling or general dyslexic mistakes I try my hardest. I'll be posting the Multiplayer review as soon as I can. I'm also sorry for the delay of posting this review, I said i was going to do it weeks ago but things came up... I've gotta eat after all!My name's Thespian Hunter, I sometimes wish I was a squirrel. And ill catch you next time.
Don't get me started on that C###
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