Assassin's Creed III

If you were like me, you probably loved the crap out of the Assassin's Creed II trilogy. The controls worked well for the most part, and as the games progressed the control scheme was refined and improved. Ubisoft introduced tons of new mechanics and assassination tools. And despite perfect synchronization, there were a lot of ways you could approach a situation. How could Ubisoft mess up a franchise this bad then?

Let me begin with this: Assassin's Creed III is not a bad game, however, that doesn't mean that it's a good game either, or a game that lives up to the potential of its predecessors. Also, I haven't really dug into the multiplayer, so consider this a review of the single player.

I'd like to start off by talking about that control scheme, the one I said was really great in the Assassin's Creed II trilogy. For some reason, Ubisoft starting shifting the controls all around and wound up making them less precise. For starters, free running and sprinting have no clearly defined toggle. It used to be that you could just hold the high profile trigger and push A and you'd switch from running to free running, allowing for extremely precise control of your speed. They decided that it would be better if they made the game run by making a run a half-depression of the trigger, and a free-run/sprint a full depression. However, this usually just winds up leading to huge issues, especially in chase situations. I often find myself jogging along when I want to be running for my life. This makes free running a huge hassle, one that doesn't feel as fun as it used to be.

In addition to this, it seems like your character can have severe issues while trying to climb. Often he will just start climbing in a completely wrong direction, or just get stuck on the wall. This is not useful when bullets are flying through your skull. The climbing worked so well in Assassin's Creed Revelations, what happened? I could ascend a building in seconds, in this game it feels like a chore.

Bugs are plentiful in the single player game, and it seems Ubisoft has made no real strides to fix them. I see character models getting stuck in, on, and between objects constantly. There was a mission where you try to approach a house without being detected, and a man was stuck inside of a tree. And if you fired a gun, he'd keep looking for you no matter where you went, so your hiding would be disabled. And because he was in the tree, he's nearly impossible to kill. These are inherent design flaws and bugs, why weren't these addressed? The worst part is that these bugs can be fixed through the magic of digital distribution, yet it has been released for two months now and the most obvious bugs have not even been addressed, and a huge patch just came out too, what are they doing over there in Ubisoft?

And then there's the return of perfect synchronization. I know some people view this as adding to the "content" or giving "additional challenge", but I just view it as restrictive and a method for padding the game. And they made it even more intrusive in this game, because you'll often find yourself with two to four different objectives you MUST complete in order to "complete the game". What if I didn't want to sneak up to the house? What if I wanted to just rampage up the road, huh? Oh, so now I MUST defeat 20 enemies? Why can't I focus on the objective at hand, why are you making me sit here and wail on grunt soldiers? This system is inherently flawed and removes freedom from a game that's supposed to be about approaching situations the way you want to approach them.

Finally, we have hunting. This seems like a great system... at first. It's very well fleshed out, there's a lot of methods for killing game, it's fun. But then you cannot really do anything with it. Yeah, you can kill some animals, but you can't make any craftables or cook the meat or do anything of the sort. No, you just sell it all away. It feels like lost potential to me. This system could have been thoroughly expanded on, but it just isn't.

Despite these major flaws, the game can still be fun when it wants to work. Enemies are more alert and more difficult to take down, making combat more intense and chases longer and more interesting. The combat system has been adjusted, so it's not (as much of) a counter-fest anymore, and it flows really nice. Health was completely redone, but I'm not sure why, I liked the old system. The new system isn't necessarily bad though. Gunplay is slightly expanded, and the game places a lot of emphasis on using firearms to your advantage. The combat and enemy AI, all-in-all, is fairly well improved.

In addition, side quests are not nearly as intrusive or annoying anymore. When you activate a sidequest, it becomes more of a passive goal than an active mission. So you could accept a courier mission and then you'd get targets you need to deliver to, but you don't need to feel like you are rushed or anything. You could activate the mission, deliver a letter on the way to a story mission, do the story mission, go back to delivering, take up an assassination contract, and it all makes the game faster paced and less broken-up.

The frontier is also a great addition of a map. I was wondering how this game would pull off a revolution-era America, seeing as huge cities are not a common trait of this era and location, but the frontier was handled with an astounding level of finesse. I find running through the treetops exhilarating and fun. The addition of seasons and weather is also a nice touch. A summer frontier can be traversed by foot rather easily, while a winter frontier has deep snow drifts that are difficult to walk through. It's quite an elegant way of doing things.

Naval combat in this game is a nice change of pace as well. You have access to two main types of weapons and your own ship that you can customize. It could almost be considered another game in and of itself, and it almost reminds me of "Sid Meier's Pirates!" ocean combat.

To conclude, I'd like to restate that Assassin's Creed III is not a bad game. However, the issues the game presents often put me in a state where I try to scrape the joy out. They have so many good things in this game, but then the bad often equals or outweighs them because they're so intrusive. I suggest a rental. This is not a game you would want on your shelf, or to revisit any time soon.