Game Info
Game Name: Assassin’s Creed III
Developer(s): Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher(s): Ubisoft
Platform(s): PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One/Wii U/PC
Genre(s): Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): October 30, 2012 (PS3/Xbox 360)/November 18, 2012 (Wii U)/November 20, 2012 (PC)/2019 (PS4/Xbox One)
ESRB Rating: M
Red-Coats? Turn-Coats? No problem!
Desmond Miles has reentered the Animus with hopes to find a means to access the Temple’s inner chamber. Finding himself first as Haytham Kenway and then as Kenway’s illegitimate Native American son Ratonhnhaké:ton, Desmond finds himself in Colonial New England. The Templars seem to be plotting against the Revolution and Ratonhnhaké:ton (renamed Connor) could be America’s only chance at freedom, but Connor is about to discover that not everything is black-and-white…and Desmond himself could find he must make a decision that could shape the world.
Assassin’s Creed III is an action adventure game by Ubisoft. The game follows the events of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations from 2011 and was released to mostly positive reviews.
Assassin’s Creed II was a lot of fun. I played the game into the ground and enjoyed every minute of it. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations kind of created a block for me. Without finishing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, I decided to try Assassin’s Creed III. While I found the story interesting, I found the game frustrating in many aspects.
Just what I want to play Assassin’s Creed to do…run around in the frontier for hours and kill bears…
The story has some genuine twists, emotions, and reveals, but the gameplay doesn’t lend itself to it. The Italian countryside of Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II was getting tired, and the United States seemed ripe for the story…but it leads to boring landscapes. You find yourself running across the frontier (literally) over and over again. You can fast travel, but it doesn’t help with the collection of all the items available in the game. A majority of the time you play feels like you are running location to location, and the story feels incidental.
Part of the fun of Assassin’s Creed is the controls, but it is also a hindrance. The first game really got the freerunning spirit down and it felt like the sequel improved on it. Here, the game seems to struggle. The character might be running and accidentally run up a wall to be caught or jump in a well or haystack. Likewise, the fights are irritating, the climbing (a favorite part of mine) is largely missing in comparison to the other games, and the new ship battles are rather tedious at points (and yes, so is the horse riding). The games since Brotherhood have had a multiplayer option is available (plus, you can always send your assassins on missions all over the East Coast to grow them).
How ’bout them apples!
The game’s setting is quite beautiful, but it also hasn’t aged entirely well. I always love how the series builds glitches into the story…if there is a graphic problem, it is a malfunction with the Animus. In that sense, the Animus has lots of problems. The graphics glitch all the time and your character can fall into an endless void or your horse can disappear into a rock.
Assassin’s Creed III takes hours and hours to finish and despite its problems, I played it for hours and hours. While I was often bored, I kept playing which does say something about the game and the series. The series was remastered for Xbox One and PS4 in 2019. Assassin’s Creed III was followed in 2012 by Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (originally for the PSVita) and the much better received Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag in 2013.
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