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-

*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-

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!

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. 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.

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.