The Assassin's Creed series is not a franchise I am a fan of. I have been pretty vocal about how overrated I feel the series is since it has existed. It isn't that the games are really that bad, actually they're not bad at all. The original game in the series has always left a bad taste in my mouth due to the respective nature of the gameplay and the dull mission design. Assassin's Creed's successors have greatly improved upon the original game, but I still could not connect with the story, characters, nor stick with the game long enough to finish any of them. Assassin's Creed III changed all of that for me... kind of.
Now that Ubisoft has taken the franchise somewhere new and interesting, my interest in the series returned, giving Assassin's Creed III a shot. Taking place in America in the late 1700's before the Revolutionary War, ACIII introduces a new character named Connor, a Young Native American boy who trains in the arts of the assassin to avenge his mother's death, yet gets tangled into a much larger ordeal. This time around, the characters are much more interesting, have better motives for their actions, and get involved in much more interesting situations than ever before. I personally connected with Connor more than I ever did with Ezio or Altiar from the previous two games. The player does not even see the main protagonist of the game until roughly three or four hours into the single player campaign, in which the player takes control of a whole different character completely. Normally this would be an odd decision for a game, yet Ubisoft pulls it off greatly by giving the character plenty of backstory on this mystery character who plays a huge role in the story, thus making the game's story even more grand and epic in scale.
The story and setting really are the heart of Assassin's Creed III, because the gameplay has changed little from the past game. You still travel from mini-map beacon to mini-map beacon, stealth killing and sword fighting goons in your path and ultimately assassinating some major player in the story's plight. In order to uncover the full map, the game requires you to still climb on top of towers to get a view of the surrounding environment, and then jump into a hay pile. Aside from the new hunter/gather mechanics in the forests outside of towns, this is still the same ol' Assassin's Creed. Normally this would have turned me off, but the story and characters are so strong here that it kept me going through the game to see what happens next, and rarely are you disappointed. The game's multiplayer hasn't had any kind of drastic overhaul or anything, but it still includes a fairly unique multiplayer experience that some will love. The multiplayer really did nothing for me personally, though.
Assassin's Creed III is an odd choice for me, because the game still includes the same gameplay intact that always put me off in the past. However, this is not a game that I can scoff at lightly due to how well Ubisoft tells a story and sets the player in situations that allow me to forgive any issues I have with how the game plays. I honestly believe any Assassin's Creed hater should still give the game a shot regardless of how they feel about the series. Ubisoft has attracted what seems like many haters with this title, but maybe whatever they changed that turned people off on this year's game are the changes that got me on board. Assassin's Creed III is my #8 game of 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment