Tag: Assassin’s Creed

Reviews

Let’s Talk About Games People Shouldn’t Play (AssCreed Liberation)

Posted on by taf

Oh, hi.  It’s been a while.  Almost 3 months, I think.  *checks watch*  Yeah, about 3 months.  A whole 3 months I’ve spent trying to play Assassin’s Creed Liberation.  And in those 3 months, I’ve learned one very, very important life lesson.  This singular piece of enlightenment led me to happiness.  Want to know what it is?  Sure.  Here it is.  Don’t play Assassin’s Creed Liberation.  Hey, cool, review’s done, I’m gonna go back to playing a good game, The Last Tink-

the_scary_door_tn

*Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak*

Oh.  Did.  Did anyone else hear the door open?  Has it always been like that?  I can’t remember.  Wait, it’s cold out and the cat could run away, why the fuck’s the door open?  Hold on folks, I’m gonna go shut-

CINNAMON

OH GOD CINNAMON NO

Ahem.  It has come to my attention I cannot write a review that is nothing more than a strong advisory against people playing a video game.  It has been advised that I write an actual review, or risk severe consequences.  Thus, without further ado, here goes the review of a game I actually could not complete.

You read that right, I actually could not complete this game.  I tried for several months but due to a combination of poor controls, frustrating mechanics, and a game ending glitch, my attempt to complete (much less enjoy) Liberation was doomed from the start.  Let’s start with the controls.  They’ve been ported over from Assassin’s Creed 3, so already we’re not doing so hot.  There’s the same janky free-running issues that make it nearly impossible to travel from one rooftop to another, there’s the same difficulty with trying to maneuver yourself appropriately for a kill, there’s the same frequent issues with unintentionally jumping off of a roof and disturbing the guards’ tea break… you know, the classics of any free-running-based game!  If we’re talking about classic mistakes, that is.

Whoops! An Accident!

Whoops!  An accident!

This feeds directly into the issues with the game’s mechanics; namely that the developers ignored the issues in Assassin’s Creed 3, and instead decided to made more issues with Liberation’s mechanics.  For one, the main character, Aveline de Granpré, has three personas: the socialite, the slave, and the assassin.  This is a neat concept, but there are issues with all three classes and the mechanic itself.  If you’re playing the socialite you can charm other people into letting walk behind closed doors, and you can even charm guards into following you and protecting you.  Pretty nifty, right?  Not so much; there’s very little you can do to defend yourself.  You’re extremely limited in what weapons you can carry, you cannot free-run, and your top speed measures in at about the same as a particularly lethargic tree sloth who’s just downed an entire case of sleeping pills.  So what about the slave persona?  You can free-run, but you also draw more attention in this persona, and you’re limited to the same weapons as the socialite.  The assassin persona is the best and the worst of the bunch; you have access to all the mobility and equipment you had in prior games, but you start off as notorious every time you assume this persona, and gather notoriety the quickest.  This makes the assassin persona a powerful weapon that requires judicious use.  Right off the bat, this is an issue.

The point of the AssCreed series is to adopt the persona of….. wait for it…… an assassin!  A stealthy warrior capable of blending in with the crowd!  And assuming this persona… draws attention.  Anyone else notice an issue here?  Hands up if you notice an issue.  That’s right.  The persona that should be the most low-profile of them all draws the most attention!  This makes no sense.

“But Aaron, what if the guards are on the active lookout for anyone dressed like an Assassin?”

Who said that?  Was it you, Babquez?  I’m watching you; don’t interrupt me when I’m ranting.

Back to where we left off: guards looking for you in the assassin persona.  There’s been established precedent that guards looking for assassins does bunk all to your ability to blend into the general crowd.  See: every other AssCreed game that came out prior to this game.  So why would it change in this game?  The answer is bad; it’s for the sake of the new persona swap mechanic.  I hate this mechanic.  I hate it for several reasons.  I hate that it changed everything about how you played AssCreed games (well, game.  Clearly the developers didn’t end up liking it either, since it’s yet to make a reappearance), I hate that it leads to making light of the plight of slaves in America during the 18th century, I hate that it perpetuates the idea that women’s main powers during that time were flirting with people and dressing up, and I hate that it perpetuates sexism when there was a chance to actually create a strong female character.  Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Nope

Nope. Not like this.

First, the slave persona.  Where to start.  Well, let’s start with Aveline, who is of the mocha skinned persuasion.  She uses the slave persona to blend in with the general populace when she’s in the actual town of New Orleans, and to blend in with the escaped slave population when she’s roughin’ it in the bayou.  There’s two issues with this.  One, it downplays the hardships slaves faced in America in the 18th century by portraying someone disguised as one being free to run around the deep South without being harassed.  Two requires a bit more background info.  When you make it to the swamp and begin encountering the freed slaves/free Africans, if they’re black, they’re all dressed in tribalistic gear and face paint.  Every one.  White people in the bayou tend to be dressed in sensible clothing, and this idea for sensible dress extends to Aveline’s personas.  So the second (and third, there are three now) issue(s) with the slave persona include whitewashing Aveline by, despite her skin tone, dressing her like white “civilized” people, and dressing up the black “savage” people in tribal garb.  Maybe Ubisoft has a good reason for putting the above issues in their game, but I don’t know what they are, because I couldn’t actually play their f*%&ing game.  More on that in a bit!

For now, let’s talk about the socialite persona.  Wow.  Where to begin.  First, all of the clothing options available for the socialite accentuate Aveline’s cleavage and hide her other physical features.  All the better to charm men with.  Because a woman who’s able to use her cleavage to ensnare the attentions of men and do little else is an empowered character, right?  Right?  *crickets*  No, really, that’s the extent of what the socialite can do.  That’s why this persona is in the game.  To “charm” people.  If there’s more to the persona, I wouldn’t know, because I couldn’t play the f*%&ing game.  Almost there!

The final issue with the personas system is you can’t switch between the personas unless you have a dressing room.  Code-wise, I can understand the need for this kind of kit switching location.  It means the game can process the change of persona, and change the rules it applies to the game world based on Aveline’s appearance.  This rationale makes sense from this perspective.  In practice it takes a character who’s supposed to be mobile, mutable, and adaptable, and ties them down to a specific type of location if the player wants to utilize one of the main abilities in the game.  This is not good game design.  Individually any of these things are bad, but not game-ruining.  Combined with Aveline being the first female protagonist in the AssCreed universe, it pushes the game into the “this is both bad and problematic” realm.  Kinda like a tractor that, instead of pulling heavy equipment, sprays nacho cheese all over the place.

Cheese Fields

Soon, the pepperjack fields shall be sown

Finally, we come to the biggest issue with the game, namely that it has a serious game-ending glitch.  This is a well-known glitch, and Ubisoft has acknowledged its existence and continual presence in their game.  Sometimes, Aveline will stutter when she’s swimming.  Then you get to land.  And you keep swimming.  People can interact with you, but you can’t interact with them.  Normally, you can fix this glitch by exiting the game and re-opening it.  But sometimes?  Sometimes the game just says no.  Sometimes the game decides it doesn’t want to be played.  Sometimes, you just wind up swimming through the streets of New Orleans, unable to interact with anyone or anything, unable to remove yourself from your land-filled half-life.  I spent literal months trying to figure out how to fix this glitch, and I couldn’t.  And when I couldn’t, I realized that I could not continue.  It was only act 3 of the game, but I couldn’t find a way to replay my way up to that point.  The game mechanics.  The inability to actually play the game.  The importing of a terrible free-running system and making it worse.  I couldn’t do it.  The game beat me.

 

0/5 Would not play again. Burn it with fire, and don't look back.
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First Impressions, Games

Exploring Assassin’s Creed 3 is Worse Than Syphilitic Corn

Posted on by taf

I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed 3 lately, and the phrase that best sums up this experience is “Why did I even bother”. The game starts off alright enough. You start off playing Haytham, who’s a man of mystery and parkour, and the controls feel tight, and the plot seems interesting right from the start. The first 2-3 hours are downright enjoyable: you get minimal Desmond, you’re in a cool ruin when you ARE Desmond, and you’re in a somewhat content-rich era of history, involving two present-day superpowers (British and France) and one future superpower (‘MURICA). The game feels like it has potential. It feels like maybe, maybe this game is a worthy successor to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. That feeling is a lie. A filthy, filthy toilet of a lie.

Like this, but after you’ve been to Taco Bell and eaten 12  under-cooked Gorditas.  You know, a typical Tuesday.

First, let’s talk about the environment.  Having a wilderness (easily the most expansive area of the game) to run around in is a wonderful idea.  The idea of moving from tree to tree is brilliant, and makes nature free-running actually possible.  No longer is horse-riding essential for getting around!  Ah, if only these words were true.  Alas, they are not.  You see, Ubisoft inserted snow into this game.  What’s wrong with snow you might ask?  Normally, there’s nothing wrong with it.  I like snow in real life.  It’s fun to ski over, or have fun snow shenanigans with friends and family in. Like that time I got turned into a snowman.

In this game though, it’s horrible.  When you don’t have a horse, you move at a rate approximating a turtle trying to outrun a particularly threatening banana.  When you do have a horse, the environment actually works against you.  There will be hills hidden under the snow you cannot see, and this means you will either run into an invisible wall your horse cannot climb, or your valiant steed will bravely fling itself off of a 5 foot high cliff and… die, for some reason.  I wasn’t aware horses were made of stained glass back in colonial times, but there you are.  So you’re forced to stick to the roads if you want to get anywhere quick.  Which kind of negates the point of giving the player a wilderness to explore, don’tcha think?

“But Aaron” I hear you say, lip aquiver, “it’s not winter ALL the time!  Surely, it can’t be winter for more than a part of the game?”  And you’re right, it’s not winter all the time.  Just during the interesting sections of the game that take place in the wilderness.  Now, I hear some folks waving their hands and blowing raspberries.  While this is a fun group activity, bear with me for a minute.

Wha- No, no, not literally!  Back in the closet, Cinnamon!

“Why not just do your exploring in the summer, and then stay on the roads for the winter story missions?” I hear you ask, lips flapping in your self-generated breeze.  Excellent question!  Because then, what’s the point of having an expansive wilderness to explore in the first place?  You either spend all your time wandering through it completing side quests while avoiding the main plot, or you’re prohibited from doing any meaningful exploration/using alternative travel routes to the main quest by the game’s actual environment.  The previously mentioned tree travel is hard to access during wintertime, due to the also-previously-mentioned snow cover that tends to cover up landmark areas where you’d access this network, and running through snow on foot feels like you’re running a mental marathon of boredom.  It’s like the game is testing whether your fingers or your attention span runs out first.  The inclusion of unlockable fast travel points (a la fort liberation) to move from point to point quickly is nice, but then we return to the original question: What’s the point of having an expansive wilderness to explore in the first place?  Especially if you’re either going to zip on by it when possible, or it actively discourages you from exploring.

The answer is simple, and actually hearkens back to Assassin’s Creed 1 (though done much worse).  It’s artificial gameplay extension, plain and simple.  Except instead of giving you a mechanism that’ll always work to help you move around the map more quickly (a horse), the map is designed to slow you down for the reasons stated.  Hidden hills, an environment that can only be explored when the main plot has nothing to do with it, treetop travel that’s either circuitous or hidden, it all adds up to gameplay that’s pointless, drawn out, and boring.  It’s a problem in the cities too, though it’s not as clear as in the wilderness.  The streets of towns have been moved closer together, making rooftop travel more viable than in older games, and horses have had their speed drastically reduced as well, encouraging you to free-run your way through Colonial Boston and New York.  No, seriously, you run faster on foot than you do on a horse, and there are many more alleyways horses cannot venture down than in prior games.  And yet, frequently, you’ll find areas of town where the game seems to intentionally screw with you.  Randomly, streets will widen for a couple hundred feet in either direction and you’ll be stranded like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Or you’ll hop from a roof to a town tree that can be interacted with in the wild, but unbeknownst to you, some merry prankster lubed the tree up with Vaseline and before you know it, you’ve fallen out of the tree and into a squad of British soldiers.

Handle the idiot George, I’ve tea to fetch.

This brings us to the second major issue: There are only 3 areas, and they’re all boring.  You have two colonial towns, and a massive wilderness.  Sure there’s history surrounding each location, but once you’ve pushed past that, who cares?  Boston and New York are functionally the same, and the wilderness has the previously discussed issues.  So when you get down to it, what’s there really to explore?  The sailing portions of the game are also basically nonexistent, and they’re some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing a video game.  Why cut them so short? Why fully explore New York when it’s just the same re-arrangement of buildings as Boston? Why go fully explore the wilderness when it has no bearing on the plot?  Why not break the wilderness up into several areas, all accessible through fast travel instead of one sprawling area you have to traverse for hours upon hours upon hours to fully explore (if you care to?) Just skip the whole thing. You’d be better served going to the real cities/wilderness and wandering around for an equal amount of time.  It’s a more enjoyable experience.

Except for Cinnamon.

Which brings us to the third major issue: Pacing.  The game’s fine through most of its plot, but the climax (arguably the most important part of a game) is paced horribly.  Caution, spoilers ahead!  First off, Desmond’s Dad gets captured, so you have to go and save him.  Yay, hooray.  Except this is modern day, so why doesn’t Desmond get shot by one of the several dozen security people you fight? Why does the counter-agent who’s been hounding you on each other modern day mission suddenly have a violent and unexplained crazy episode right when he’s about to take Desmond out?  Why does this whole segment last only 10-15 minutes, including loading times?  These are all excellent questions that, rather than answer, the final two Animus sequences instead chose to imitate.  The penultimate Animus Sequence has two missions, most of which involve walking and not pounding your forehead against one of the many brick walls in the game.  The final sequence is a disjointed, blurry series of events that are nigh-on impossible to relate to due to the lack of anything resembling plot structure.  For some reason, Charles Lee and not Haytham (Connor’s Dad) is the final villain.  For some reason, the only times you actually get to fight Lee are during cutscenes.  It feels like Ubisoft reversed the final two sequences for some reason and then cut out 50% of the content.

When you get right down to it, playing Assassin’s Creed 3 feels like watching an episode of Seinfeld.  It’s a game about nothing, that ends with really poor pacing.  Also, maybe something funny happened.

 

2/5, would not play again.  For more like this, stay tuned.

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