Revolutionary Revelations?
The Assassin’s Creed series has been one that has had its share of highs and lows, the concept of reliving your ancestor’s memories through a machine is a work of genius, even if it does feel slightly Matrix-y in its execution. Ezio’s story might be over, but Desmond’s has not and AC3 puts you in the boots of a new protagonist by the name of Connor who is a Native-American stuck in the middle of the American Revolutionary-War. It’s a setting that has been underused in gaming and it’s a mystery as AC3 does wonders with it.
The game oddly doesn’t start with Connor, but with a man called Haytham and you play as him for a few hours to discover a nice twist, the game doesn’t really open up until you play as Connor so playing as Haytham is more of an extended tutorial. The story itself is really clever, but Connor is a bit whiny and not nearly as suave as Ezio, which is a shame.
Mission variety has been an issue with past games, but AC3 changes this with a nice mixture of things to do, as well as secondary optional objectives, hunting animals in the wild and of course, collecting hidden items like feathers and Almanac pages. There are also naval missions where you control the vessel and defend/attack ships on the high seas, which is almost like a game within itself. Finally you can play mini-games like checkers and variants of it.
There aren’t as many shops as in past games and income doesn’t come in quite as fluidly, instead you’ll gain money from opening chests, completing missions, sending other assassins on missions or sending convoys to shops for profit. You can also craft items with the items you gather from animals or from people living on the Homestead.
Combat is still fluid, but you can’t carry tons of health potions as before. You actually can’t carry any, but you can also gain new items like rope darts which can capture enemies from trees, you can still air assassinate enemies and animals. You can also use a crossbow, pistol or rifle to dispatch them.
The game isn’t flawless though, some of the missions are quite repetitive and there are a number of glitches that hinder progress, some mission icons don’t display on the map when they should and on one naval mission, I somehow turned my ship upside down and the camera went all weird and disorientating, there are other bugs as well but hopefully a patch should fix them. Multiplayer returns and hasn’t changed much, if you didn’t like it before then you probably still won’t now. It does have its good points though, it’s a nice distraction nonetheless.
Visually, AC3 has its ups and downs. The locations are spectacular to look at, but the character models are average and lip-syncing is hit and miss, the voice-acting is great although Connor’s voice actor isn’t very convincing while the music is superb.
The Verdict
Assassin’s Creed III may not have been the revolutionary game I hoped it would be, but it does have its good points and its story is memorable from start to finish.
