The developers at Ubisoft have once more opened up the history books and sharpened their blades with their recent release of Assassin’s Creed 3. This game continues the story of protagonist Desmond Miles reliving the lives of his Assassin ancestors. This time, the player steps into the world of the new character Ratonhnhaké:ton – better known as Connor Kenway – a half-British, half-Mohawk Assassin living in the tumultuous time of the American Revolution. Though the game has its share of shortcomings, it remains incredibly fun to play, and it proves itself to be a fantastic sequel in the scope of the series as a whole.
Controls
Assassin’s Creed as a franchise has always prided itself on the fluidity of its controls. From the first game, the main appeal of the series has been the player’s ability to blend in with a crowd, stab a hapless guard and then scale the nearest tower to freedom, all without breaking their stride.
Assassin’s Creed 3 takes this fluidity to a whole new level. The controls have been dramatically streamlined, making the transitions between hiding, climbing and combat much smoother. Ducking from hiding spot to hiding spot is now fun and effortless instead of the labor it was in previous games. This also makes the gameplay out more like an actual assassination, quietly stalking your target before finding the perfect moment to strike, as opposed to assassinations in previous games when frustration with the hiding system inevitably led to charging full speed at your enemy out in the open. Not very sneaky.
The combat system has also gotten a facelift, making fighting more fluid and accessible. At the same time, though, combat has become more elegant. It’s a little more complicated than the “Tap Square repeatedly to mow down 50 guards” mechanic found in previous games in the series, but it’s still accessible enough to make combat fun and exciting. You still feel like you’re a highly-trained assassin capable of taking down impossible odds, but in the end you still know some skill came from you, the controller.
For the most part, though, the control scheme follows very closely to the established controls of earlier Assassin’s Creed games. So for veteran players, it’s fairly easy to grasp the new stuff with just an hour or so of practice. The game does an adequate job, though, of going through the basics of the game, so newbies to the series can pick this game up with relative ease. Not every control is described in detail, but part of the fun of the game is experimenting and discovering cool hidden things that Connor can do.
Gameplay
In terms of overall gameplay, Assassin’s Creed 3 doesn’t deviate much from the established mold of the series. Connor moves from sequence to sequence, city to city, killing high-profile Templars and leaving an impressive trail of bodies in his wake. What has changed, though, is the setting. The world of AC3 is incredibly expansive, with enough content to keep you occupied for hours on end without even touching the main storyline.
One of the best new developments in this game is the Frontier, a massive forest map that serves as a hub of sorts, connecting the game’s other locations like Boston and New York. While the original Assassin’s Creed had something similar in “The Kingdom,” you typically wouldn’t explore it until you had to travel to a new city for the first time. The Kingdom was a way of getting to your location instead of a location in and of itself. The Frontier, however, is an integral part of the game, with missions taking part throughout the expansive wilderness. It’s a beautiful level with tons to discover and accomplish. It’s also insanely fun to explore, running through the trees and scaling cliffs to discover new areas in Colonial New England.
The game also includes a huge amount of side quests and minigames, so when your spree of indiscriminate murder becomes a bit too mundane, you can choose to sail the seas, hunt some animals, deliver some mail or play a rousing game of Nine Men’s Morris. This expansiveness, though, is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Some of the side quests seem half thought out and haphazardly thrown into the mix, and because the game doesn’t have time to explain and introduce every single side quest and minigame, it can easily become overwhelming to begin to navigate your way through this huge pile of extra content. If you take the time to delve into these little distractions, though, they can offer you hours upon hours of fun gameplay. And if you don’t want to bother, the main storyline by itself is more than enough to occupy you for days on end.
The final addition to the gameplay this newest iteration of the series offers is a couple much-anticipated Desmond levels. Ever since his impromptu assassin training in AC2, fans have long waited for the chance to tackle some missions with our modern-day protagonist. And now with these new levels, we’re able to see just how well these ancient techniques work in the digital age. Hint: They work very well.
Story
The main storyline follows Connor Kenway during his adventures in the American Revolution. Throughout the story, you’ll meet legendary heroes like Ben Franklin and Sam Adams and become a part of iconic historical moments like the Boston Massacre or the Battle of Bunker Hill. All those things you learned in 8th grade American History will play out before you in glorious high definition. In true Assassin’s Creed form, though, nothing is ever cut-and-dry. The storyline will make you question who really was in the right during the American Revolution: It isn’t the romanticized tale you learned in school. The historical gloves are off and a compelling layer of realism pervades the whole experience. To top it all off, everything is beautifully written – It’s funny when it means to be and dramatic when the situation calls for it.
Unfortunately, the main character isn’t as compelling. One of the biggest upgrades between the first two Assassin’s Creed games was the exchange of the cold, emotionless Altaïr for the warm, lovable persona of Ezio Auditore. Ezio had everything Altaïr lacked. He was funny, engaging and, above all, likable. Connor seems to be a step backwards in this department. He’s certainly got more character than the original Altaïr, but his general moodiness is off-putting, and he often reaches Hayden-Christensen-as-Anakin-Skywalker levels of angst.
In addition to Connor’s story, the game includes some much-needed character development for Desmond and his crew. However, with the Desmond scenes comes the overly complicated macro plot to the series as a whole. If you’re new to the series, the Revolution storyline will be easy enough to follow without any background knowledge. Unfortunately, there’s little to no way to keep up with the Desmond storyline without any prior familiarity to the games. Hell, you can be a series fanatic and still end up watching Desmond scenes with a glazed look in your eyes wondering what in the world is going on. The Connor story is the main point of the game, though, and that self-contained storyline is easy and fun to follow.
Graphics
Assassin’s Creed games have always had passable graphics, but they’ve never quite been top-of-the-line, and AC3 is no exception. The visuals received a definite upgrade from the disappointing graphics of Revelations, but it’s certainly not the greatest graphics the newest generation of games has to offer. Little graphical bugs and glitches appear every so often. The lighting will reflect weirdly in a scene, giving Desmond’s eyes a healthy black glow. A texture will glitch, putting some black spots on to a piece of clothing during a cutscene. That being said, the visuals are certainly nothing to shake a stick at – big cities and forests are beautifully rendered – but they don’t stand out as the best of the best either.
Overall experience
Despite all of its shortcomings, where Assassin’s Creed 3 really shines is in the general experience of playing it. No matter how many times the graphics glitch or Connor jumps to his doom rather than into the pile of leaves three feet to his right, you’ll never want to put down the controller because there’s always something exciting to do. The scale of the game is truly epic. You’ll never forget the first time you scale a tall church tower and see the city of Boston unfold before you. You’ll hold on to that feeling of when you first learned how to leap from tree to tree, finding out you can run for half a mile in the forest without ever touching the ground. This game is, simply put, incredibly fun to play, and ultimately, that’s what’s most important.