Every generation of consoles have games that define that generation. This generation alone we’ve had the likes of Gears of War, Uncharted, Bioshock and more. Whether you’re a fan of the games or not, the Assassin’s Creed series has been centre stage with the other AAA releases since the first game came out in 2007. From that release we have seen the series explode. And here we are in 2012, at the end of the Desmond story, with Assassin’s Creed 3 (the fifth main game). What Ubisoft have created with Assassin’s Creed 3 is a huge game, in both ambition and size. And along with it came huge expectation.
Assassin’s Creed 3 is based during the America Revolution from 1753-1783. There are a few characters that you control during the game, but the main one is Connor Kenway (who you play through the animus with Desmond – naturally). You control Connor from an infant, through his teenage years, his training as an Assassin and then on his main quest. To kill the men that destroyed his Native American village – The Templars. Desmond is using his ancestral link to Connor to find a crucial key to saving the world from imminent doom.
If you have played the previous instalments, you’ll know what to expect of the game. If you haven’t played them, I urge you to do so first, or at the very least watch a catch up video online. Without knowing what happened previously, you will be lost. While there is a walkthrough of the games mechanics to put you at ease with how to play the game, the story itself carries on, and without previous knowledge it will be difficult to figure out the overall plot. There are some great twists and turns throughout the story which kept me hooked. The beginning of the game is a bit slow though, and you’ll have to persevere for the first couple of hours before it really gets going. Desmond missions are not avoidable this time, and you’ll see yourself taken to the modern day for the duration of the game, you do get the option of what to tackle first though, either a Desmond task, or head back to the Animus for more time with Connor.
Gameplay wise, it is all very familiar ground – lots of free running, fighting and cutscenes. There have been some nice additions though. With the inclusion of the American frontier, and your own homestead trees are now a prominent feature to the free running mechanic. And while it’s tricky at first, you’ll soon be leaping through, up and from tree to tree along with the usual building play in Boston and New York. There are still those frustrating moments where you’ll find yourself randomly jumping in the opposite direction from where you want to go and falling to your death, or strangely not being able to conquer a small pile of timber just after you’ve scaled the biggest tree in the game. I found myself shouting ‘why the hell are you doing that?!’ on a number of occasions. The combat has been tweaked, and is a bit easy at times. There are big red symbols above enemies heads when they are about to attack, quickly counter and attack back and they will be defeated, with some enemies requiring you to break their defence first before you move on the offence. But it never really gets boring due to the great and various fight and death animations, some of which are absolutely brutal! There is something quite satisfying about driving a tomahawk into someone forehead.
As previously mentioned this game is massive. It will take hours upon hours to do everything on offer. The main story is long enough on its own. But with the vast open world areas of Boston, New York, the Frontier and the Homestead there is so much to do and find. You have viewpoints to find, Forts to find and liberate, feathers to collect, trinkets to discover, treasure chests to unlock (with a pick), assassination contracts, areas of the cities to liberate, homestead missions to improve the homestead, hunting challenges, naval battles and more. Each of these comes with their own section on the DNA to fully synchronize, and it’s easily possible to spend hours on each one. Even something as small as finding all animals in an area and hunting all of them to get their pelts, claws, teeth etc. to sell could take up an afternoon. All of these are also optional, to add a bit of extra meat to the already stocky body. And there isn’t one that I would consider ‘boring’ either, and even if you do grow tired of one, there is always something completely different to take up your time. If you’ve just found and liberate a Fort in the wilderness, you can hop off and take to the high seas for a naval battle. It’s impressive stuff. The cynic in me thinks that there is just maybe too much to do, and maybe Ubisoft could have cut a few of these side quests out of the game to focus more on getting the niggling things right.
The aforementioned free running issue would be one of the niggling things. Another would be the graphical issues. Don’t get me wrong, there are times where this is a beautiful game. But when you are riding a horse and you see a cape disappear into Connor’s back, or during cutscenes seeing characters disappear completely to you have floating crates or walking sticks, you get the feeling that it has been rushed to a degree, which is a shame. Voice acting on the other hand has always been a strong point for the series, and Assassins Creed 3 is no different. Each character is acting brilliantly, from the mains through to the small parts. That being said, there seemed to be plenty of repeating lines by NPC’s in the streets during mail delivery missions in particular, with each and every one on some of them saying the exact same line, not even with a different accent.
I’ve always considered Assassin’s Creed to be a single player experience, and have always treated it that way, despite the recent introduction of multiplayer. But, for the review’s sake, I delved into the multiplayer option, and I was soon prompted to make a disk change. I was glad to be met with a tutorial to begin with, but after the third tutorial (I had already been told to take part in an online match half way through) I had grown tired of it. Some of the instructions were basic gameplay mechanics which I felt weren’t needed to be walked through a second time after doing them in the main game. Anyway, I was soon into the online mode, and as I feared, I really didn’t enjoy myself. I’m not saying that there aren’t some great and innovative game modes here, and some fantastic takes on things like deathmatch. The pacing really does suit the game and how you are meant to go about assassinating and avoiding being assassinated, but the pacing doesn’t suit me. I only want to play Assassin’s Creed as a campaign, and I couldn’t get the thought of ‘I just want to do this sort of stuff in my own game, rather than with others’. There is a good mode called ‘Wolfpack’ where you work in a team of 2-4 to kill NPC’s during a time limit, which was a bit more up my street.
Assassin’s Creed 3 then, is a highly ambitious game, which is overall a success, but falls over its own feet at times with what appears to be a rushed approach in some areas. And I have yet again come away from an Assassin’s Creed game thinking they could have easily created these games without the overarching Desmond story. I’m sure many have happily played through games and Altair, Ezio and now Connor without needing Desmond to push the story forward. I could have happily played this without ever knowing a Desmond existed. If you are an Assassin’s Creed fan, you will enjoy this game, there is so much to do you could easily put 100 hours of your time in for the fully synchronized game (by the way, some of the full synchronization objectives are unfairly difficult). Fighting is as fun as always, exploration through some beautiful areas is great, and the story is fun from start to finish. If you’ve never enjoyed an Assassin’s Creed game before, this will do nothing to change your mind. This is a very good game, which was so close to being such a great game. 8/10