Assassin's Creed 3

Assassin's Creed 3 is by far the most controversial game of the series, and in the conversation for most controversial of its generation. The game was unveiled to a thunderous reception. The choice to set the game during the American Revolution and the striking artwork that accompanied it generated tremendous positive buzz for what was already a AAA franchise. I know I personally, as someone who is passionate for history, was extremely excited for it, and I broke my Assassin's Creed rule, where I always wait for a sale. Not this game. I knew immediately I'd have to get this day one.  I remember seeing the game, but not being allowed to play it at PAX Prime on Labor Day weekend, just two months before the game released. Looking back at that now, it was very strange that a game releasing that soon didn't have a playable demo. I played demos for a lot of games that came out after AC3, so I'm not sure why the decision to only show one of the developers playing it was made instead, but it seems akin to the decision to not let a movie be reviewed in advance. This may have been the first hint that Ubisoft knew this game wasn't going to be as well received as AC2 and Brotherhood. When the game released it debuted to mostly solid scores, but was getting mostly 8's instead of 9's. That seemed to get the ball rolling and it became very in vogue for the game to get trashed on internet message boards. To this day the game is treated like a bad game by much of the internet, something not supported by it's 85 meta critic score. Once again the internet has over reacted.

In my time with this game, I really can't say why it isn't held in the same regard as AC2 and Brotherhood. To be fair, I haven't finished Brotherhood yet, I stopped playing it because I couldn't wait to start AC3, but I'm at about the halfway point. I've had trouble pinning down an explanation from others as well. Reviews seem to be vague about what they don't like. The most common complaint I've heard about the game from people on message boards is that it starts off too slowly. I loved the way it started, I won't give it away as it's a bit of a spoiler, but I thought it was a terrific way to start. Every game doesn't have to begin with you about to shove a knife in an enemy's back. I appreciated the slow build up as we are introduced to Connor. And really any time people complain about how a game begins, it always makes me suspicious that that's as far as they got.

The game isn't without it's flaws. I encountered a few glitches that required me to restart my mission to get past them. The option to play through each mission with 'full synchronization' returns to this game, and I didn't much care for it. Full synchronization mandates 2 or 3 optional conditions you can satisfy while doing the mission, such as kill all the enemies without touching the ground, or kill 5 enemies with counter attacks, etc. Often the synchronization list would flash by so quickly that I didn't see what was on the list. I would be playing through and out of nowhere be told that I failed one of the synchronization options, without knowing that I was supposed to be doing it. On occasions where I was actively trying for them, they sometimes would have very strange success conditions that were not obvious without trial and error. But since these are optional, they didn't bother me too much. I just can't see a scenario where jumping through all these hoops and completing every single mission with full synchronization would actually be fun, which I think is supposed to be the point of a video game.

The game has a lot to do. You can plow through the game quickly because the game recognizes how massive the world is, and now offers a fast-travel system letting you instantly go just about anywhere on the map instead of having to travel there. I appreciated this system, as it let me go straight from mission to mission, but part of the charm of this series is there is always something going on that inevitably distracts you from your next mission. A lot of that is mitigated now, and a huge part of the world can remain unexplored by utilizing the fast-travel system. That's not a complaint, just an observation. I suppose it's good that a player can do what he wants, but it's a bit of a shame that by leaping from mission to mission he kind of cheats himself out of some of the fun of the game. I think the developers could have kept the system but been smarter about where to place the fast-travel spots. There are 3 main areas in the game, so maybe have the player able to travel to each area, but not anywhere within that area. And since the developer knows where he's going to be, they can place things specifically between the fast travel point and the mission start to tempt the player into a side excursion. The game offers 3 board games that were around during that era that you can seek out and play and gamble on. They're all really hard though. I thought checkers at least, I'd clean up at, because I have always considered myself a good checkers-player. Apparently not. I got destroyed in checkers and most of the other table games I played.

Much has been made of the sailing in the game. It's an aspect considered the best part of the game, and it was kept and fleshed out more for this game's sequel: Assassin's Creed 4. I played AC4 before coming back to this game, and prefer the naval combat in AC4. But it is a good addition, it's something AC games have always been good at, each game always introduces a major new element, which is an excellent way to keep the series from growing stale.


Completed: 1.25.2014