Assassin Creed 3 – On the right track

I’ve always had mixed feelings towards the assassin creed series, whereas the game always delivered remarkable and unique gameplay served by gorgeous environment, I’ve always felt that the games were plague by bugs, their own ambition and the excessive amount of ramification in its story line, missions and gameplay.

Assassin Creed 3 fails to break this streak, while the story takes a welcome turn from the Italian Renaissance to the American Revolution, sadly the same story seems to repeat itself. Assassin Creed 3 is stopped clear in its track by multiple bugs and glitches, the stock release of the game was preposterously glitchy and I always have a hard time forgiving this kind of oversight.

Overall, the game suffers from poor camera angles, particularly in combat, tree branches and other pieces of the environment seem to enjoy finding their way into your line of sight, the HUD often fails to indicate when additional enemies are about to open fire on you, in other occasion the camera simply refuses to align itself behind your character for long enough to trigger disaster, collisions also seem to be a major issue once again, which is cause for serious concerns for a game involving so many combat and climbing, these setbacks are simply adding to a game which mechanics were never quite perfected, even thought they keep being improved and remain satisfying. 

Despite those technical issues, the main problem of the game lies at its core. An effort always seem to be made in order to add multiple ramification to the storyline, objectives and also gameplay, the fact that I was still being provided with tutorials more than an hour in game is pretty revealing. So many feature results into confusion while the same issue is felt on the missions objectives, the additional homestead management and allies tasks assignments are not helping either, there is simply far too many elements that will not be used and just confuses the experience into a maze of in-game menus. Furthermore, the storyline of the descendant, Desmond, is beyond interest at this point, only adding even more unnecessary details, despite some improvement and further gameplay with him.

Aside from those  issues, the game looks amazing once again, the challenge presented by the frontier’s wilderness was tackled brilliantly by Ubisoft and is well served by the gameplay, tree climbing, hunting, baiting, ambush and tracking, the encounters with predator will also keep things interesting.

The towns were once again well realised and feel as lively as usual, the architecture is gorgeous and running on rooftops is still as enjoyable, despite all the issues mentioned earlier. The game also added naval warfare in this title, which is definitely one of the highlights of the game, those battles are lively, brutal and extremely satisfying, it's a shame that they are not used more often.

The story of Connor is also one of the best of the series thus far, to see this young boy growing up and becoming a warrior is used efficiently and definitely creates a bond with the player, well helped by the hero’s mentor and other supporting characters. I genuinely cared about the story and despite the many setbacks and challenges.

For all it’s fault, I found myself compelled to come back into the game, the story, action, naval warfare and environments are just to good an offer to be refused, particularly with the effort deployed into the visuals and execution however glitchy and infuriating they get. That alone is a feat for any game and Assassin Creed carries itself well into the range of titles that should absolutely be played.