The following is being written at 5:30am on a Saturday
while in the delirium of personal issues.
THIS IS GONNA BE FUN. I’m being fairly
spoiler free, but I might make an mistake.
So, AC3 is something that I have been freaking all out
about since the first promotional image ‘leaked’ all those months ago of a new
assassin all America’d and patriotic. I
was really looking forward to this game.
I’m sad to say it wasn’t all I expected it to be.
First, I’ll cover the positives.
There is an incredibly interesting line of original
characters. From Connor’s parents to his
eventual mentor, even to the characters running the sidelines in Connor’s
homestead and his recruits, they each have vivid personalities that I wish
could have been delved into a bit more.
We saw the start of this idea in Revelations with the few recruits Ezio
helped in actual mission form, so it was nice to see it the case for all Connor’s
recruits.
The graphics are, for the most part, beautiful. The ideas behind the game mechanics were
solid, and really played to the scenery.
The background noise was great to hear, as it always is for these games
because of the amount of audio-study they do.
I also highly enjoy the naval combat scenarios. I didn’t think I would when I first saw them,
but they are very enjoyable.
My favorite part of the game—beyond getting to kind of
really play Desmond Miles—was watching Connor interact with his father. The dynamic the AC writers gave them was amazing. The snarking, the intuitiveness, the
subtleties. All of these made for a very
incredible dynamic that I appreciate more than anything.
But then we get to the negatives.
GLITCHES/BUGS
Warning: This game has bugs. A lot of bugs. And what boggles my mind is that the AC team
boasted about how AC3 was built brand new with shiny new codes and such, yet
there are glitches there that have been in prior games. I had a feeling things were going to go south
when I researched the first-day update I received on my 360, and it was for……..
bugs.
We have weapons disappearing, AIs getting stuck in things—I
had one mission where I needed to catch a man involved with tax abuse. However, I had to abandon it and return later
because he was stuck in the peddler’s cart and getting dragged around
Boston. Connor’s body couldn’t reach him
because he was PART OF THE CART.
People are disappearing and reappearing all over the
place. There’s a bar in Boston where a
man at the actual bar counter is always sitting on a floating stool above it
until you’ve been looking more than five seconds and suddenly the invisible stool
is right next to a perfectly solid and visible stool.
The camera repeatedly swings behind walls, trees and
other barrier-like items during battle.
Because of the literal onslaught of guards that tend to appear, you have
to use your chin to turn the camera. Why
didn’t they program it to roll around the favorable side of the item? Other games, including in the AC series, have
done this. This is awful for the nature
of the battle system—no health replenishing items and requirement for a kill
streak or else you stand a brilliantly high chance of dying—and I want to
scream every time I encounter it.
Oh yeah, and let’s mention that sometimes the game won’t
register that you’ve done something you just did (such as with Liberation
Missions), forcing you to leave the area entirely and hope you can find your
way back to the situation once it respawns.
TUTORIALS
I don’t have much to say on this, other than the
tutorials left a lot to be desired, and to be learned. I thought it was just the painkillers, but my
non-sedated, far more intelligent friend advised me that no, both she and her
equally intelligent brother were left astonished at how poorly done these
tutorials were. I just had to skip all
of it (well, quickly navigate through because there is no skip option) just to
get a chance to learn the convoy money-making system myself.
PIVOT POINTS/ANIMUS HACKS
Speaking of bad tutorials…
After concluding a full playthrough, you gain access to
Pivot Points. Because the tutorial
system is awful, you will likely be left staring at the screen, wondering if
you took a hit of something. So, allow
me to spoil it for you:
Pivot Points, also referred to as Animus Hacks, are interactive
pieces. You start with three random ones
(they are labeled after the Greek alphabet).
What you do is you take these and plant them by going to a location >
access map > scroll to Pivot Points > tell the map to set the pivot
point.
These then show up on your game looking like floating,
blue crystal unicorns.
Every fifteen minutes (so I’ve heard), your game uploads
to some servers Ubisoft has running, and your planted pivot points are copied
to another person’s game at random. Same
with your map, you receive some in your game in locations other players planted
theirs. You want to collect them
all. They also unlock gifts like
unlimited health, or unlimited recruit tokens (previously known as assassin
signals). Really handy things.
BUT. AND YOU
BETTER READ THE FOLLOWING.
IF YOU ACTIVATE A PIVOT POINT/ANIMUS HACK (found in
Settings at the bottom of the list) YOUR GAME WILL NOT SAVE. YOU MUST REMEMBER TO TURN IT OFF AND THEN DO
SOMETHING TO CAUSE A SAVE TO OCCUR.
I hope they patch this, but thus far, they have not.
The ‘tutorial’ doesn’t mention this.
I think I’ll actually be a little okay with the idea of
the Animus Hacks and Pivot Points if they fix the saving thing.
GUNS
When you come out of Revelations with the experience of
Ezio’s wrist gun, where he has a speedy chambering even though he had limited
ammo, AC3 is hard. The AC team was
clearly going for realism, and I can respect that, but we’ve kind of gotten to
a point where we expect our assassins to come equipped with something that
doesn’t actually exist, or at least not in that time.
Connor’s reload time with any weapon is ridiculous. I appreciate that the enemy has the same slow
load time, but when there’s ten of them and one of you, oh my God. I hate the kill streak system to begin with,
why would you do this. Sad face.
SOUNDTRACK
Soundtrack’s awesome when you can hear it! I heard about the reason multiplayer was put
on a second disk—the disk kept ‘blowing up’ on them—but did they remove some
music audio files too? It’s really
absent in a lot of places music would normally be continuously (such as the
cities themselves), so I was disappointed.
I really wanted to hear Lorne Balfe’s work in action to set a mood in
the environments Connor visited while doing recruit missions and the like.
OVERALL
Overall, it’s an AC game and I appreciate it for what it
is. I wish Ubisoft would have sucked it
up and said the game needed an extra month in development. I do, but if Ubisoft can fix even half of the
glitches alone through an update patch, I can live with that.
Please, AC Team, please send a fix. I beg of you.
PLEASE.
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