Assassin's Creed III The Redemption Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/assassin-s-creed-iii-the-redemption-review-5cfcb4304e3b

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the finale of this little trilogy. It did a lot of things right that the first two missed out on. Right off the bat they started you off on the Aquila doing the most fun thing from Assassin's Creed III: naval battles. They even threw in a nice connection to Assassin's Creed IV, with Connor telling Faulkner a little about his grandfather. I kind of wish that the naval battle had lasted longer, but we have a plot to move along.

Speaking of plot, I liked it alot more than the first two DLCs. We finally get to see King George for an extended period of time, experience the direct effects he is having on the American people. Before now I had to trust that other characters were telling me the truth about how bad Washington was. Now I get to hear him make a stirring speech and see starving people in the streets.

You also get to explore the King's new pyramid, which gave the game a feel much more similar to Assassin's Creed II.

I really liked that door, in case you couldn't tell.

They also managed to find a way to make the little side-quests found throughout the city worthwhile. In order for there to be enough civil unrest in the city for the rebellion to succeed I had to do things like beat up heralds, assassinate officers, and break cannons.

As with the previous two entries in the trilogy, you get a new spirit animal power. This time it is the power of the bear, which allows you to smash the ground and deal tons of damage to those around you. Of course, it takes away a good chunk of your own health as well, so use wisely. They also got clever and created situations that could only be solved by combining the different spirit powers in order to progress.

Time for some pet peeves.
I didn't really think about it until now, but it was very lazy of them to just reverse the bluecoats/redcoats roles. Once they gained independence you'd think that the American Army would get nicer uniforms, and the people rebelling against King Washington wouldn't just have a bunch of British uniforms. In fact I can't think of a worse thing for them to war. But hey, the developers couldn't be bothered to make new character models.
There was a scene where Connor's voice sounded weird, as if the mic they were using to record the lines was having issues. Seriously, this is a AAA game, don't they have nice equipment?
Ubisoft's credits strike again! I spent a couple of hours actually playing the DLC, and then I sat through over 20 minutes of credits. Ridiculous.
They ended with a long cutscene that connected the story to the real world, and it looked worse than the in-game footage. Seriously, I think they made this in 480p or something.

This DLC is definitely worth its $8 price tag. If you haven't played the other two, that is fine, they have a nice cutscene at the beginning telling you what is going on (and honestly you didn't miss much.) I wish that the other two had been similarly priced, but oh well.

Assassin's Creed III The Betrayal Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/assassin-s-creed-iii-the-betrayal-review-17fddee64c53

Oddly boring title page.

The Betrayal is the second episode of three in Assassin Creed III's alternate timeline where Washington finds a Piece of Eden, gets corrupted, and declares himself King.

Unlike the main game, these episodes do very little to try to be open-world, which makes them much shorter, but they also stay much more focused. I appreciate that, but when there is nothing but story that story needs to be good. Don't get me wrong, the premise is interesting from an intellectual perspective, but I didn't really connect with any of the characters I was interacting with. I guess the fact that I know that none of this really happened (even within the historical fiction context of the original game) doesn't help me to care about them.

This blacksmith was the most interesting person I met, and I only had one conversation with him.

As with the first episode, you gain a new power that pretty much breaks the game. This time it is the power of the eagle, which allows you to fly short distances and assassinate people from afar. Unlike the first episode, there isn't really a mechanic that acts to counter your new power, so you are basically unstoppable.

There was a pretty cool boss battle against Washington where you have to figure out when to use your two powers in order to get around his defences.

Unfortunately the game is still pretty buggy, and for me it manifested itself by not triggering the final cutscene when I finished, so I had to go back and fight the last battle again.

If you are really interested in seeing what things would be like if Washington had seized power, you can pick this up for $10, but it isn't an essential buy by any means.

EDIT: you can now read my review of The Redemption DLC.

Assassin's Creed III King Washington Episode 1 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/assassin-s-creed-iii-king-washington-episode-1-review-97f3c469c23

I've been looking forward to this alternate story line ever since I first heard about it. Every time I think about it the Washington Rap starts playing in my head. Wonderful stuff. As I'm sure you have guessed, in this DLC George Washington has gotten his hands on a couple of Pieces of Eden and has declared himself King.

12 stories high made of radiation

It's good to be king.

Coming back to a game after a couple of months away is always a little funny, because you've almost always forgotten a few little details. In this case I had reinstalled Windows since last time I played, so the controls were all back to their default settings. I changed them back to what I thought they had been, but I couldn't figure out how to block people in combat, which is REALLY important. Turns out it is the same as the "use" button. Crisis averted.

Like the player, Connor is thrown into this alternate timeline with his memories from the real world, and he is really confused. In fact, by the end of the episode he still hasn't fully gotten over his confusion. This guy needs to learn to roll with it.

Because this is an extremely story-focused DLC, it is extremely linear. It took me a couple of hours to get to a point where I had an open map to explore. Even then there weren't any real side quests to do; sure, every once in a while I came across a convoy of prisoners to free or a starving citizen to feed, but they didn't seem to have any tangible affect on the world.

The world was pretty different from the real-life colonial America. Dead horses, frozen corpses, people hung on the side of the road, wolves all over the place attacking people. Pretty gruesome.

Things got interesting when Connor gains some new powers. They're pretty awesome, but at the same time they are pretty darn cheap and they kind of break the game. Later on they introduce a new enemy that helps to counter your new super powers, but it still felt a little cheap. They also make up for it by throwing even more special enemies at you at a time, which made the combat a lot more challenging.

I was really surprised when I got to the end of the episode. It only lasted 3.5 hours, and a fair portion of that was me having to do a few missions multiple times due to the game not letting me get on that stupid horse.

Overall I definitely would not say that it was worth $10. It was short, and despite being story-driven, I didn't really feel connected to the characters. It was also way too short. If you want to see how far Washington can fall, I would recommend waiting until the DLC goes on sale ($5 is the maximum I would recommend paying for it) or just watch the cutscenes on Youtube. I'm sure that somebody will put them up soon.

Screenshots!

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Kill the mannequin-man!

That guy over there was stuck in midair and his legs are extra long.

EDIT: you can now read my review of The Betrayal DLC.

Assassin's Creed III Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/assassin-s-creed-iii-review-ecda9ddc4fa8

Raise your hand if you were looking forward to this game's launch for months before it came out. Those of you with your hands down are liars. This game broke Ubisoft's preorder record (previously held by Assassin's Creed Revelations) and I know several people who bought it; unfortunately none of them got it on PC do I don't have anybody to play multiplayer with. What I'm saying is that there was tons of hype for this game, and I don't feel like it delivered on its promises.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game a lot; but based on the improvements that each game in the series has made, I was expecting more. They promised a huge, open-world game and I was expecting Skyrim with hidden blades. As it turns out there are only four areas total for you to run around in: Boston, New York, the frontier, and the homestead which serves as your home base. I know that there was plenty of side stuff for you to do in each of those areas, but none of them really seemed meaningful; they didn't add to the lore of the game and they didn't give interesting rewards. Hunting is kind of fun on its own but most of the animals I killed were opportunity kills. The homestead had several buildings and craftspeople that you could do missions for in order to get higher quality goods from. But getting more money wasn't something that I was concerned with; I had my hidden blades, my tomahawk, and my pistol. What more could I need? There aren't any armor upgrades or even medicine to buy like in previous games (regenerating health). I quickly stopped exploring altogether and only focused on doing the main story missions.

The story wasn't a disappointment. It had plenty of twists (some more unexpected than others) and I enjoyed the return to the epic decade-spanning narrative style similar to the one in Assassin's Creed II. It is much easier to understand a character's motivations when you have been following his story from before his birth through his childhood and into early adulthood.

You might notice that I said that the story started before Connor's birth. That is because throughout the first few hours of the game you play as Haytham, Connor's father. Many developers have gotten good at sneaking tutorials into plot-critical missions, and ACIII is a great example of that. Haytham and the other characters from the prologue are great; I appreciate Haytham's frank Britishness, Charles' door-kicking enthusiasm, and Hickey's idiocy. As my friend Katie said after he said something especially ignorant, "I wonder what it feels like to be that uneducated."

Haytham

Charles

I'm not sure why Ubisoft enjoys filling my screen with someone's face, but it happens rather often throughout the story.

I have always found the American Revolution fascinating, and I loved the missions that happened during major historical events like the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the midnight ride of Paul Revere. However, after those early events you stop interacting directly with the revolution. The trailers made me think that you were going to be running around on battlefields, dodging musket balls, and assassinating generals on a regular basis; that happened a grand total of once. George Washington also didn't appear very often. I had been given the impression that he and Connor were going to become friends but he only appeared about four times throughout the game, and they were very brief encounters. All of the other characters seemed to have something to say about him (usually "he's a great man!" or "he is an indecisive leader") but I never got to see him in action and decide for himself. I am looking forward to the King George alternate history DLC.

"Hi there. My name is George Washinton. Now I'm going to disappear for the next 3/4 of the game."

Assassin's Creed III is of course the climax of the "the world is going to end on December 21st!" arc and thus you get to spend some time outside of the animus learning more about the first civilization. Desmond's father is one of the people there with Desmond, and their rocky relationship comes up quite a few times.

I thought that the ending was a little weird. Desmond was given a choice, but the player didn't get to affect that choice. I personally would have chosen differently, but it's not like player choice has ever been something that Assassin's Creed did anyway.

I haven't played any multiplayer, partly because none of my friends own the game and partly because I want to get through as many games in my backlog as possible this winter break. Speaking of which, if there are any games that you want me to review let me know (preferably ones that I already own) and I'll try to fit them into my schedule this month.

The final thing that I found disappointing was the graphics. Every single entry in the series has been significantly better graphically than those that came before it, and I remember them telling us that the textures on the PC version were going to be twice to four times the resolution of the console versions. So imagine my surprise when I find myself face to face with the most pixelated bushes I have seen in quite a while. The game didn't look bad, it just wasn't nearly as good as I was expecting.

I am worried that I am sounding way more negative than I mean to here. I had a blast playing this game, and there are some significant additions and improvements that Ubisoft made. My favorite was the naval missions. These missions were so well done, so fleshed out that they could have been their own game. The experience of being at the helm and shouting out commands to my men so I can line up the perfect broadside is unparalleled. I really hope that someone takes note of it and makes a game that is primarily ship combat of this type. And if anyone knows of a game that is already like this, tell me now.

The other significant addition was much more subtle. The clues system was first introduced to track animals in the forest, but it makes its way into many other missions as well. The idea that the more clues you find, the possible area that whatever it is you are looking for narrows. It extends the idea of eagle vision quite nicely by making it interactive and less arbitrary. Haven't you ever wondered how Ezio is able to see everyone's intentions just by looking at them?

Combat has also been vastly improved. Whereas with Ezio it was often necessary to hold down the block button and slowly take everyone down one by one, with Connor it is much easier to attack and simply block each incoming attack as they came. Many of those blocks would then turn into counterattacks, sometimes even scripted combo kills. Connor attacks with a lot more ferocity and violence than Ezio or Altair ever did, and it feels awesome. It is often much simpler to just stand your ground and kill all of the guards that get alerted to your presence. It ends up looking something like this:

So yes, Assassin's Creed III is definitely worth getting, but make sure that your expectations are realistic before you play it.

As always I leave you with a few more screenshots, and you can see my full gallery on Steam.

EDIT: You can now read my review of the King Washington DLCs.