Assassin's Creed III Review

We've blasted through every front of World War II, pointed-and-clicked our way through the trenches of World War I, and have fought countless battles that haven't even happened yet. Yet we've never stepped foot in the Revolutionary War. Are the alternate realities of the animus fertile ground to experience the ultimate uprising in Assassin’s Creed III?

Just like in prior games, Assassin’s Creed III features several stories that intertwine. First you have the present day with Desmond Miles and crew. Continuing immediately after Revelations, the group has set up camp inside a lost temple, hoping to find a way to unseal a massive door that will lead to the answers to centuries-old mysteries. Once Desmond drops into the animus, he lives out the life and times of Connor, an Iroquois who is only concerned with protecting the interests, and lands, of his people. The massive temple door needs a key, and Connor is the conduit for Desmond to find it.The story inside the animus starts out almost painfully slow as it seeks to develop the characters, circumstances, and locales. This pays dividends later on as major plot twists come with the appropriate impact. Connor has no dog in this fight, and regularly plays off both the revolutionists and British to ensure his tribe's safety. Mix in the ancient rivalry between the assassins and the templars with the plight of the first civilization and you have a maze of intrigue that manages to go well below the surface. As Desmond struggles to come to grips with his father’s neglect, Connor also grapples with his heritage.

The prose has its share of implausible moments and it shares some common elements with a certain sci-fi movie franchise, but to have so many conflicted people all mingling with the American Revolution takes no small amount of ingenuity. You’ll be asked to make some tough decisions with extreme repercussions, and you’ll be forced to do some things you’ll regret. It's a satisfying tale with plenty of closure.

Assassin’s Creed is known as an open-world series, and while you get that here, it takes several hours before things crack open. Essentially held to a restrictive story track while things are established and Connor grows from boy to man, it comes out of the gate marauding as a typical action adventure. Eventually the lands are opened to Connor's travels and it becomes obvious that the areas outside the cities hold much more sway than before.

Labeled the frontier, these wooded locales provide a lot of opportunities to get into scraps with roving companies and hunt wildlife. Any pelts that you procure can be sold or used to craft items, and any enemies that you fell can be looted for coins and goodies. The forge system where you would rebuild each city has been removed in favor of the homestead; a small tract of land that includes Connor's home, his assassin trainer Achilles, and any weapons and tools that he's acquired. As you adventure you'll come across folks who need help. Help them and a new shop will spring up in the area. Recruiting and training assassins is still present, but it's much more subdued and rarely pops up organically throughout the campaign. The cities themselves are much smaller and shorter, but there’s still plenty of towers to climb to synchronize areas and unveil densely-populated objectives. Mission variety is great and they're mixed up pretty well--keeping the pace brisk after the sluggish first act.

Back in present day, Desmond is challenged with collecting artifacts from around the globe that can be used to power up the temple. The temple itself is a level that he must navigate between trips abroad, and you spend a lot more time under his hoodie in general. You can drop in and out of the animus at will, giving you some flexibility in how you balance Desmond's present day objectives with those from the 1700s.

Ubisoft has really gone all out to improve the multiplayer, with the big addition a hybrid of horde mode and Resident Evil's mercenaries dubbed wolfpack. Here, you and three pals join forces to try and assassinate as many targets as possible under a time limit with more time awarded for each kill and bonus time achieved by synchronizing kills with teammates. While it's refreshing to play as a squad within the AC framework, the time limit inspires a lot of reckless abandon.

The rest of the multiplayer essentially mirrors that of prior games. Which is to say, it's a completely unique experience that wears thin a little too quickly. Aside from the series' take on capture the flag, each mode plays out basically the same. Players slowly walk around the map waiting for their target meters to fill. Once it does they try to take out their target before they get wise and try to counter. Unlocks happen at a glacial pace, and while there's a certain amount of mind games to it, results still feel too random. While the social options and leveling system are deep, they're mired by a messy interface, and some of the modes take away the compass and special abilities Whether you've loved it or loathed it in the past, there's nothing here that's going to alter your opinion.

Assassin's Creed III is a massive game. You can finish the campaign in around 20 hours and before even experiencing 60 percent of its content. Completionists will obsess over every Ben Franklin almanac page and feather, but it rarely forces things on you--allowing you to uncover its depth at your own pace. The smaller cities ensure that there's something to see or do around every corner and the hills are truly alive in the frontier. Its fast travel system is a little clunky and loading is a bit excessive, but these are just nitpicks of a game that is great at giving you as much or little as you want.

The combat in Assassin's Creed has always been about methodically thinning out herds of thugs with counter kills as they stand around waiting for their turn to taste your blade. Some enemies are still a little reluctant to enter a scrap, but they're much more apt to block and force you to adapt. This ensures you'll experience the exhilarating two-handed combat that lets you string together multiple kills about as fluent and cinematic as possible. After we finished the campaign we dropped back into the world just to buy weapons and see what they could do. Using the new rope dart simply never gets old.

Parkour and free running return, but this time you can take on the uneven terrain of the frontier. Vaulting through trees is just as easy as clambering buildings thanks to plenty of context-sensitive animations to keep things flowing. Large trees can be confusing to climb and there are a few too many right angles for a forest, but for the most part, it handles an irregular job with regularity. Weather patterns and seasons come and go, with snow depth affecting navigation.

The most surprising addition to the gameplay is undoubtedly the naval element. Giving you complete control over the steering, sails, and weapons, it's far more deep--and fun--than we ever imagined. Simply navigating dangerous waters in a wind-driven ship supplies its own rewards, and the free-roaming battles with other craft are some of the best moments in the entire game. Manipulating the wind to get the drop on an enemy boat or using bolo shot to disable a ship's sails so that you may board it are extremely rewarding. You can even upgrade the vessel to make it more formidable.

Hunting on the frontier is the final main gameplay element. Using your eagle vision you can find clues to help you track your prey, but knowing where they are and actually killing them are two entirely different things. The larger grazers take two gunshots to fell and just getting close enough without spooking them is like a chess match. Larger carnivores practically require that you complete quicktime events to finish them off. Just trying to track and slay every species in an area is a game unto itself. Aside from the fundamentals, ACIII is loaded with side activities. There's a little bit of everything, and pretty much all of it is accessible and intuitive. One minute you're commanding troops on horseback, the next you're dumping tea overboard into Boston Harbor. The game finds clever ways to interact with historical moments without making Connor seem out of place.

There are nerve-wracking stealth missions, bombarding formations of soldiers with a cannon, board games, and many moments that will stick with you long after you've stopped playing. Some of the eavesdropping missions are a drag and enemy pathfinding could be smarterF, but otherwise, we enjoyed just about every gameplay style we encountered.

Assassin's Creed III is running on a new revision of the Anvil engine, but the parts of the presentation that impress the most have nothing to do with tech specs. As always, the animation is absolutely stellar, and walking through the formative stages of major US cities with bustling citizens chattering about the concerns of the day will teach you more than any history book. Coming topside after a 70-day trip across the Atlantic to find the entire crew hacking and coughing reminds you of just how brave these pioneers were. Small touches like this permeate every pore of the game.

There are some hiccups, however. The voice actor for Connor doesn't turn in a particularly strong performance, which is a shame because the rest of the cast is great. There's also graphical draw-in, a camera that has problems following some skirmishes, and other blemishes like poor lip syncing and missing sound effects. Yet the game should be commended for its authenticity, and if anything, it demonstrates that we've probably reached the technical zenith with the current generation of hardware for these types of games.

While it's a little slow to get going, Assassin's Creed III is a rewarding, elegant game on many levels. It understands that everyone plays open-world games differently, and provides plenty of incentive for players to tackle its quandaries how they see fit. The sheer variety, overall quality, brisk pacing, massive amount of content, and satisfying story make it easy to forget its few rough spots. Heady and well-informed, Assassin's Creed III is the polar opposite of a guilty pleasure.

Source: http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/3q6b21/assassin-s-creed-iii-review