Assassins Creed III was one of the most anticipated games of the year. For a while I didn’t really care much about it. Unfortunately, these games burn me out relatively fast.
As for the first post on this blog, I want to address that this isn’t a review for the game, but just my own personal thoughts about my experiences with the game.
When I started Assassins Creed III, I was so pumped. Sure, I could have done without the cutscenes around every corner, but I think the mood was set up perfectly. However, from the start, we all knew that Haytham wasn’t going to be the main character, and we all wondered why we were playing him. Two hours later, I’m having a blast, and I actually start to like Haytham. He is a likeable dick that could actually be the main character of a game.
Let me just say, that the first five or six hours of this game are such a thrill ride. Even when you finally have control as Connor and get to explore the frontier and do some tree free running (which works great, by the way). You start to then connect with another character and understand his motives, but this feeling was soon stripped from me as the point of this game was trying to make started to get further and further away.
I ultimately feel that Assassins Creed II Brotherhood was the pinnacle of the series. It had everything right, the few added tweaks and mechanics to an already amazing game that was Assassins Creed II. I firmly believe that Ezio was a much more likeable character than Connor is. I don’t find him to be as dull as Altair was, but I don’t know how to really pinpoint it. There is just something about Connor that starts to bore me more and more as the game goes on. His outfit, on the other hand, is bad ass. Just wanted to put that one out there.
The voice acting for the game is done very well, with only a few exceptions. These exceptions killed the immersion for me though. The elder native American that talked to Connor, her voice made me want to mute my TV and just read the captions (I eventually did do this). I’m no expert, so if I’m wrong, then I’m wrong, but the voice acting in the Native American language sounded so monotone and emotionless that it sounded like I was using Google translate. Speech like that just doesn’t exist unless you’re Ben Stein or a fucking Elcor from Mass Effect.
One of the coolest things about Assassins Creed II was the amount of weapons there was in the game. The variety of weapons and combos you did with each of these weapons really added another layer of fun to the game. Like a big stabby bloody crunchy skull onion. Assassins Creed III promised to have plenty of weapons and even more than the sequel did. There is a large variety of weapons, but there is sadly only 3 types of animations. Sword, Tomahawk, and two-hander style weapons like maces and great axes. I was watching my girlfriend play her game and she had bought one of the best little blades you can get, it was some sort of dirk. In AC2 this kind of weapon had crazy little stabby animations with the combos that would make your insides literally hurt when you pulled off these combos. I watched in sadness as Connor used the little dagger as if it was a Tomahawk. All of the daggers use Tomahawk animations. Only swords use sword animations. This may be nitpicking, but this game was supposed to be taking steps forward, instead its only taking one forward, and 10 steps back.Hopeless, I digress.
Something is going on here….
The controls have also taken a turn for the worse. Ubisoft tried to simplify the controls by making it so you only have to hold in the right trigger or R1 button to do EVERYTHING. Freerunning, jumping, climbing, etc. All things that were considered “high profile” maneuvers in the other games. Which means those long stupid chase scenes (there are many) start to really get on your nerves when you have to restart them over and over because as you turned a corner, Connor decides to try and jump up a flat wall with nothing to grab onto. All the while, your target gets away. Again, and again.
Assassins Creed III is also more horizontal than any previous title. The cities hardly have much vertical play to them, and when you can get on rooftops, the guards see everything with their X-ray vision. The frontier is really cool, and free running through the trees like an ape is just awesome. But there is little to do in the frontier. Sure, you can hunt. But why? Which brings me to my other point, that the side quests are boring, and mean nothing to the outcome of the game.
I finished the game at 40% completion. This sort of standard should not be allowed for a game of this magnitude! For such an anticipated game, for a game that is considered a runner-up for GOTY(game of the year), why would anyone allow this? The side quests really don’t matter. I tell everyone who wants to play this game, to just play the main story and you’ll have a better time. The homestead missions are okay, but really don’t change your gameplay.
I feel like Ubisoft wanted to make a Grand Theft Auto game with an Assassins Creed skin overtop of it. That’s how a lot of the new mechanics work and it shouldn’t be that way when the previous trilogy was such a success.
The multiplayer is a joke, too. I can sum it up in one sentence.
“Got eyes on my target, I’m closing in for the kill but he’s running away and I just got killed again by someone else.” Repeat this sentence 50 times. You have played one multiplayer match. That was all I needed to play before I never went back again.
However, Something I absolutely love about Assassins Creed III was the naval missions. These seafaring adventures were the best part of this game, hands down. When I was able to play these in the first few hours of the game, I played every single one until there were none left to play until I progressed further into the story. And THIS is what the multiplayer should be!
Why didn’t anyone think of this?
I truly hope at some point in time, they either release that as a multiplayer mode in a future game, or they just release a new game with all those mechanics. Because I had so much damn fun. Could you imagine it? It could work just like any of the other multiplayer internet games out there. You could start with a shitty ship, and as you level up and get XP and unlock points you get upgrades, perks, new weapons and defenses for your ship, you could also buy more ships.
I honestly feel like the video game industry doesn’t understand the word of success anymore.
The last point I wanted to make was about Desmond. If his story is supposedly over, I think this is a good thing. Because I can’t name one person who gives any worth a damn about Desmond’s story. It was never needed. None of the apocalypse nonsense, none of the Animus nonsense, (which is a neat concept but it should have been put out to pasture a long time ago) and none of those awful missions as Desmond were needed in the series. I’m curious to see how it will go from here. But I wish the game was just about each generation of Assassins rather than Desmond playing Back to the Future 4 with his pals.SPOILER ALERT BELOW
So that’s it. The game doesn’t suck. It’s a fun game, and I had a good time playing it. But it wasn’t until I had finished it that I realized it was a major disappointment. I can’t really say I’ll be getting anymore Assassins Creed games in the future. Unless they release something along the lines of a Naval game where you do nothing but sail, shoot at ships, and board other ships to kill their leader.
Someone will make it, right?
