f13.net

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2akmss7.jpg)

(http://i.imgur.com/AKwca.jpg)

The American Revolution!

Major retcon from the looks of it, apparently Ubi was not confident enough to make George Washington a bad guy.

edit: linkity link http://kotaku.com/5889489/is-this-the-star-of-assassins-creed-iii

At first glance I thought this was a joke.  If you want to move that far forward from the last few games why not just set it during the french revolution?  It would've been more fitting, and running around Paris would've been a lot more fun.

I agree, 17th century France would have been an awesome setting for this series. Assassins Creed: Musketeers? Hell yes.

Perhaps they just want to bring the series up to the present/near-future in fewer iterations.

If I'm not mistaken, this game is supposed to finish off Desmond's story arc.  After that, I would think they'd have more freedom to jump forward or backward in time as needed to whatever setting they feel like doing next.

Edit:  Or at least it's been the rumor that Desmond's story will be completed, which would be nice since I've already grown sick of that plot and I still haven't even played the last two games.

(http://i.imgur.com/tjIDd.jpg)

In all their metagame stuff, there's a really big point of lore that has yet to be explored in (i think) upstate New York.  They even had GPS coordinates for it; it is a farm or farmhouse IRL. 

I suspect they'll explore that, maybe.  I played and liked AC1, loved AC2, only made it halfway through AC:B and haven't even tried AC:R. 

I wouldn't say it jumped the shark, just based on their metagame stuff from the last three years.

I wouldn't really know.  I played AC1 and thought it was alright, never finished due to getting burned out on the repetitive objectives and missions, and that basically kept me away from the rest of the series.  When I saw the American flag and musket, jumping the shark was the first thing that came to mind, as if they were just trying to squeeze whatever content that's possibly left in this franchise.

S0 they're the ones who killed Lincoln!

AC1 was an excellent climbing simulator.

I liked AC1 right up until the final boss where the entire metagame changed from stalk-and-kill singular enemies to ZOMGHORDE!!!!!! And then the whole Desmond arc just... stops. ... the fuck? I haven't even bothered with 2 or the later ones because of the Ubi DRM shit (meaning I'll never buy 2 on the PC) and I have more interesting games to play. But the American Revolution?

Weak sauce.

I have never played Assassin's Creed.

Washington not being a badguy seems to go against all the lore. That said, AC2 and AC:B are really solid games. AC1 is a bit weak on the gameplay side. AC:R I've yet to get through because it just feels like AC:B to me. And some of the set pieces are just frustratingly stupid.

I dunno, based on just one picture, I don't think we can say they've done a retcon.  There are lots of ways it could play out. 

Anyway, while the first game was pretty rough to slog through by the end, I've greatly enjoyed every game since, though I wasn't much of a fan of the tower defense part of Revelations.  I'd been guessing we'd be going to France based on some of the clues, but I have no problem with it going to the American Revolution instead.  There's still plenty of stuff they can utilize for their conspiracy threads. 

Ubisoft released the official cover art:

(http://i44.tinypic.com/v43yow.jpg)

Signs point to milquetoast patriotism ruining a good conspiracy. Coz America was supposed to be the Templars' grand experiment, but somehow it's now about Ezio Gibson stabbing redcoats.

edit: me pessimist? Never!

The hood looks ridiculous in the American setting. He needs a hat over the hood!

I honestly thought this was some more image macro bullshit from 4chan when I first saw this thread.

So...any bets on whether slavery exists in the AC3 world or not?

I've really enjoyed the AC games, in particular because the Desmond storyline plays out in AC2, AC:B and (I hope) AC:R (which I have yet to play).

Granted, I play them on a console, because they feel more like console than PC games to me, so I've never had any DRM issues.

Yeah this. I don't necessarily mind the setting in general though, the American Revolution is practically untouched territory for gaming.

I'm actually pretty excited about AC3 after hearing this. They spent too long in 15th century Italy and I lost interest in Ezio's story after AC2. It didn't help that they were doing yearly sequels. I think it's great that they're getting far away from Ezio's story and Europe for the next main-numbered sequel.

They should have made Natty Bumppo be the assassin.

In the first game the outfit matched what at least SOME people in the world seemed to be wearing. In Italy, you at least looked like some sort of street performer. In Revolutionary America? My disbelief doesn't stretch that far. Also, yes: I think they're missing a great opportunity to turn it into a conspiracyfest against the Freemasons.

I haven't played Revelations, but I'm so god damn glad they're moving out of that time period that has dominated the last several years.

Guessing Benjamin Franklin will be filling in for Leonardo, then?

prefer my american revolution games with more point and click, though

(http://delac.es/juegos/day_tentacle/img_juego/day_tentacle_screenshot2.png)

And with more Spanish apparently.

It was either that, or german.

Next up, Assassins Creed: kill Hitler.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/111434/hitler_ass.jpg)

Seems like a risky period to choose (American revolution I mean, AC: Kill Hitler would be all sorts of  :why_so_serious:) from a PR point of view. I mean, America is the land of "history seen through politically-tinted specs" - a country where the past is changed so frequently that you even invented a word for it! You guys nearly retcon as much as Stalin did!

I can foresee all sorts of nutty groups deciding that the representation of whoever in this isn't to their liking and kicking up a fuss about it.

I've only played AC2, but this thread has reminded me that Brotherhood & Revelations may be reduced to sensible prices by now so I shall go have a browse on Amazon.

That sort of controversy would probably lead to more sales in this case. I'm willing to bet that this game will do extremely well in NA compared to AC2/Brotherhood/Revelations, regardless of what controversy it sparks or does not spark.

So Assassins are native indians huh.
Can't wait to climb trees and canyons.

lol.

Yeah, bearing in mind that the US Seal is a Masonic(/Illuminati/Templar) symbol and a significant number of the Founding Fathers were Masons themselves, having Altair running around stabbing Redcoats is a little...odd. He should be helping the rightful government of the colonies put down the Templar-led terrorists instead.  :awesome_for_real:

Clearly, unlike you guys Altair didn't get fooled by obvious decoys and is onto real conspiracy :why_so_serious:

Who the heck says 'milquetoast'?

I think I recently saw some movie where it was used. It's :awesome_for_real:

All of my knowledge of the AC universe is from the games, but isn't the Desmond storyline based on genetic inheritance? The images make the new main character look like a Native American, which I would think makes it highly unlikely he was descended from Ezio. Maybe his ethnicity is just an assumption based on the tomahawk, though.

He could just have a baby with a descendant of Ezio to enter the bloodline, simple as that. But I think he is actually half-native so he might be a descendant himself too.

Mohawk First Nations were trading with the Dutch in the area now known as New York by the early 1600s, iirc.  That would be nearly 150 years of possibility for one of Ezio's ancestors to 'make contact' with their tribes.

I give the writers of AC a lot of credit.  They create a very hard line between fact and fiction, and stick pretty close to it.  Their historical timelines and settings are remarkably accurate to our history.  However, the Animus/Progenitor storyline is obviously not. 

The protagonist being a Mohawk whose familiy is attacked by colonists, and who then joins the American side even though other Mohawks fight on the British side because of encroachment by colonists, makes me really wonder what sort of a plot they've cooked up.

Game protagonist supposedly has an English father and Native American mother, and is then raised by the Mohawk. So it works i guess, with father's lineage tracking down to Ezio etc.

One where they're terrified of showing the Americans as the bad guys, looks like.

One where the plot is a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories, bad science and a shaky grasp of history. Just like all the others.  :grin:

(http://pawsru.org/pawsX/dis/src/132533216956.jpg)

Ezio Gibson, George "Freemason" Washington's trusted war counselor. This better be just a clever/retarded marketing campaign.

(http://i42.tinypic.com/qp4e2p.jpg)

Probably be something like Washington and the others found out the grand conspiracy and the main reason they lead the rebellion is to fight back against it, making them good Freemasons because making Washington into the bad guy = treason (sadly this is what I've been told by some, I didn't argue it for reasons of sanity). As such, Ezio Gibson and the Mohawk assassin cadre can ally with them. Or something.

Stuff like this makes me glad I don't buy Ubisoft games due to DRM.

This looks dumber with every screenshot.

So they give the guy the last name "Gibson" and they make a piece of in-game art that is basically an exact replica of Mel Gibson in The Patriot wearing a hood.

This can only end well.   :awesome_for_real:

The dude's name is actually Connor, I just like to call him Ezio Gibson.

Yah; Connor or Ratohnhake:ton (pronounced Ra-doon-ha-gay-doo) whatever that means.

You can have more than one ancestor in a given time period.  If you need a reason to hate, that's not it.

Apparently Hitler was Haplotype E1b1b.  Man would that jaunt into the Animus ever be awkward.

Speaking of awesome (native american) names, some of the local Ojibwe have the last name "Wendigo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo)."

Oh, don't get me wrong, there's no hate. My only knowledge of the AC universe is Desmond, Ezio, and Altair so I was curious about the jump to Native American.

I knew it was hyperbole as I was typing it.

I've only played the first game, so I'm not up to date on the pseudoscientific reasoning behind the frank impossibility of storing entire lifetimes of data in DNA.  But really, the explanation is as easy as his Iroquois grandma and his Italian grandpa meeting at an all-assassin's mixer and hitting it off.

This demands a "Hitler finds out" video.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eol0Uadh90

Still riffing heavy on the Gibson.

Fucking pussies. If they are too cowardly to piss off Americans, they should just have left this era alone. The lore of this game series was always suspect at best, but this is beyond retarded.

The hood really couldn't look more out of place.

So, supposedly

As I said, cowards.

Because the only possible story to tell is one that would piss off Americans?  :headscratch:

Also there are a TON of conclusions being jumped to here. It isn't like this series has a habit of trying to pull good-guy/bad-guy switches on you or anything, am I right?

Suspiciously vague.  They don't say who you are fighting WITH against tyranny and as just said above I fully expect Connor to NOT know Washington is a mason until near the end.  This whole thing reeks of "rah rah americuh!....just kidding, you were working with that bad guys, what a twist!"

If that was the case I wouldn't wait till the 75% sale to buy this game.   :awesome_for_real:

Edit: It is a story about Assassins fighting Templars, Ingmar. You really would have to ignore every Freemason conspiracy theory ever uttered by anybody to not see the Founding Fathers in the Freemasons corner. For fucks sake, there even is a George Washington Masonic Memorial.

Its like making a game about a Jaguar Warrior fighting for the Conquistadors.

That could be a sensible way to work around that whole idea of the States being all templar doing and whatnot, yah.

Actually I don't think it has happened since the first one. If anything the villains have become stupider in every iteration.

No, it's like making a trailer about a game that looks like it might be about that, and getting all angry without knowing what is actually in the game at all.

http://tubedubber.com/#amAVgQ8ef3g:IhnUgAaea4M:0:100:0:0:1

Truly the version they should have put out  :grin: :awesome_for_real: :drill:

101% agreed. I wanted to do it over too but you beat me to it.  :drill:

I've never played any of the Assassin's Creed games before. My birthday is around the corner, and I was asked for a birthday gift idea. I'm noticing that these are all the previous editions pretty cheap these days, so does anyone have an opinion on where to enter the series? If this first one is decent and sets the stage well, I'll start there. If one the later ones is just head and shoulders above anything that came before, I'd rather pickup that one and read spoilers on what happened previously. (Im looking to play on  ps3, if that matters at all.)

AC1 is a little unpolished, but a couple of patches help with that.  For $5 to $10, it's definitely not a bad place to start.

side rant : What the heck is it with the bombs in AC:R?  They're amusing and occasionally helpful, but the emphasis on them seems a bit over-the-top...

I'd call AC 1 worth playing, but keep in mind that the later entries improved a lot of the suckier aspects of AC 1, so if you find yourself bogged down and about to give up altogether, read the plot online or watch some Youtube videos, and jump into AC 2.  The gameplay was much more fun from AC 2 forward. 

As to the bombs, yeah, after I got the tutorials done, I didn't use but one or two varieties.  They were neat, but not as neat as they obviously thought they were.  They had to have been someone's pet project for awhile, because they were asking about the bombs in surveys to people I think after the original AC2. 

I'd say skip AC1 and start with 2. I hated the first one for how repetitive it was and had written the series off entirely until a friend all but forced me to play AC2. It's head and shoulders better, imo.

Awesome!

edit -

I played and enjoyed Assassins Creed 1 when it came out. Finished it, even. Worth giving it a shot for sure.

I just saw an ad for this during March Madness basketball games.  It was at least 20 seconds... for a game that comes out in October, it seems a bit early.  They must be sure they have a real gem on their hands.

Let the record reflect that you also really liked Borderlands.   :awesome_for_real:

stolen from Reddit

(http://i.imgur.com/2oyiQ.gif)

So did lots of us. Though in the end, I played Borderlands on it's native format: XBox 360.   :grin:

Humanity had more gruesome wars than the American revolution before lunch. That statement is retarded beyond comprehension.

I think once we saw the front cover was him tomahawking a redcoat you could pretty much bet this entire game was going to be retarded beyond comprehension.

As hokey and silly as it was I quite liked the AC universe and storyline, but this game just seems dreadful. The Patriot was a shit enough film as it was without being turned into a game.

The American Revolution wasn't even more gruesome than the Civil War. Much less the crazy wars in the rest of the world.

Assassin's Creed, now with Kinect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NufHsmITjM)

second half kinda makes me wish it was real :grin:

Second half made me twig to the fact that it was a gag. It was well done, though...

That's the part that bothers me too. They just blew their chance to use that line for the inevitable Civil War setting.

They had a 15 minute walkthrough video of the game at Pax East. I barely played AC1, but have played all the others since and really enjoyed them. The changes coming in 3 though look as good as advertised. Even just watching the video, it "felt" different enough to refine some of the dumber stand around and watch/limited NPC count/limited cover issues.

The latest Mel Gibson's Creed trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EiVJG_mrtFo

That setting really really clashes with the whole Assassin's Creed vibe.

The parts with the solders looked cool, the parts with the main character looked cool, but when they were intermixed in the same scene everything just felt off.  Running through buildings looked awesome though.

Agreed, climbing then running through a building looked  :drill:.

...though the wanton slaughter of redcoats in the middle of a lush green field with -0- cover would be more plausible if every single one of them didn't have a gun...

I'm a little confused. How can they have that much "gameplay" and it still be pre-alpha?

That video was slightly over 2 minutes long and most of it wasn't gameplay.  They usually aim to make these things what, six hours at least?  They could be a very long way from a fully functional "alpha" version of the game.

A better question could be how they're planning to release it in November when it's supposedly in pre-alpha less than six months from that date... but maybe that's old footage by now and they're already in "alpha for real" or whatever.

Call the footage "pre-alpha", use it to deflect any criticism of how things look.

Sorry, all I could think during this video was "Way to blend in there, dumbass". Assassin school standards have gone down since the old days obviously.

The assassins didn't blend in very well in earlier versions of the game earlier, that I recall.

But the people certainly had a way to ignore that hooded stranger in their midst, while this video made a point how out of place the character looks to the others.

Its easier to ignore this disconnect if the NPCs do as well is all I'm saying.

The whole thing would have made about 10x more sense and been about 50x cooler and still used 99% of the same art assets to put it in London & Paris during the Napoleonic wars.

It wasn't as bad in the first one since a white hooded robe wouldn't be too out of place. But in the second [and on] no one dresses at all like he does. Its a big fat "Me, i am the assassin, its me" sign.

They modified the garb to look better for the time but didn't remove the hood. If Ezio Gibson was wearing a tricorne that was curved downward and pointed in the front like the hood is. Then i could see it working, but it just becomes even more garish each time I see it.

I always dye my outfit ASAP in AC games. The Assassin outfit just doesn't blend with the crowds and it breaks my immersion that the guards don't just stab anyone wearing white head to foot on sight.

And then there was the Romulus armour. Jesus, it's like they started out designing the ugliest armour they could, then added fur accessories. And again, very conspicuous.

(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101111214833/assassinscreed/images/thumb/3/3d/Armour_of_Romulus.jpg/343px-Armour_of_Romulus.jpg)

Michael Fassbender To Star In ASSASSIN’S CREED, The Movie (http://badassdigest.com/2012/07/09/michael-fassbender-to-star-in-assassins-creed-the-movie/)

Oh my. I like him...really hope he isn't going the Liam-Neeson-sellout-for-money-route.

So he won't be stabbing them with a wrist-mounted blade anymore?  :drill:

Just watched the new trailer for this and impressed by how the developers have gone completely against the lore of the first two games - its absolutely being advertised as 'slaughter the British for FREEDOM! With George Washington extra' despite the fact the earlier games had Washington as a Templar and the entire American revolution being a Templar project to give them a more direct control over a country.

I dunno, I guess it's to be expected from a game series that had you punch the pope, but on one level I was hoping it would challenge some of the myths the USA has about the war of independence. The main character is a Mohawk and they fought on the side of the British for goodness sakes!

iirc the newest trailer was created to air during football games.  Aiming to sell as many copies to the meathead crowds as possible.  I can't say for sure, but I don't think it was meant to fly in the face of the lore.

This is still day one purchase for me.  I can't wait to see what they've done with this era.

This.

Since the (full) ending of AC1, I've been itching to see how the story ends.  Day 1 for me as well, especially given the deprecated DRM.

I'ma wait for the reviews.  I liked AC2, but I'm not entirely convinced yet that this isn't going to be free of Team America: World Police wankery, or at least low enough that I can stomach it.  The story has already been one long tease/cliffhanger after another, and assuming they don't Bioware the ending, I can wait for a GOTY edition or something if there's too many "we must save America... FOR FREEEEEEDOOOOOOM" bugle solos in it.

Nothing against Ubisoft or the series, really, this just seems too politically charged for them to have their usual brand of "George Washington got his magic powers from a set of enchanted dentures once worn by alien Jesus" fun with it.  But we'll see.

I'm not especially worried about that, given the game is being made by a studio in Montreal, owned by a company in France. But I guess they were on our side during the Revolution.  :why_so_serious:

The ending of AC1 made me want to punch monkeys in the solar plexus. Talk about a fucking tease.

I think their current allegiance is to "don't alienate the money."  :oh_i_see:

The ending to AC2 was amazing. I got to punch the pope!

Plus the end section when Minerva looks directly at the screen and addresses Dresmond directly was fantastic.

I dunno, I thought it was pretty much the same as the ending of AC1, a dramatic revalation that doesn't reveal much when you think about it but drives you to buy the sequel by not actually resolving anything and implying that some of the weirdness will be explained in the next episode.

I'm hoping AC3 won't have the same problem, with Desmond's story allegedly reaching a conclusion, but I really hate "buy next game plz" cliffhangers.

Although I think the overall gameplay of Assassin's Creed: Revelations was a bit tired, the in-game narrative was fantastic at the end. Altair gets some actual character and Ezio draws a suitable end to his time as an Assassin.

The aliens stuff is just ridiculous though.

So I picked this up last night. I played for a few hours and got through the second memory sequence. So far, it's been a longish "opening credits" piece with a bunch of missions  that start to introduce new abilities.

Obviously, being someone who got the game at midnight meant that I got to get interesting feedback from the game with regard to my stats compared to the other morons who were out late to get this game. At one point, I'd officially used a human shield against a musket line more than some large percentage of players.

The setting works well so far, but I've been in Boston 99% of the time. So far, the assassin hood/cloak looks works within the context of the period dress. We'll see how it goes once I get further in towards what the screens and trailers indicate is coming.

Am I going to spend most of AC3 thinking "I miss Ezio", or is the new assassin suitably interesting?

I'm going to be hard pressed to wait for the PC release on this, I like the AC games :(

Quick q about AC1 (because it's on my "to finish by end of year" list) - what compelling reason do I have to do the optional side missions? Do they give me some bonus or not or are they just for completionists only?

No value add to the game.  Just for achievement whores.

All I need to know: is it as dumb as the trailers would have us believe?

So far, not yet. I'll let you know once I've gotten further into it.

So far, it's a nice change to the old mechanics of the previous games -- the controls are a bit more streamlined.

Giant Bomb just had a live quick look, game looked and played like complete ass.

360 version looks shitty compared to PC AC:Rev. I presume this is just a PC thing, and the PC version will be pretty again. Play wise though, it plays like every other AC game. I can't imagine anyone who enjoyed the prior gameplay hating this one's gameplay. It's the same thing, with slightly more realistic guns.

Early game plot twist is <3

edit: I will say the QTEs against wolves are completely out of place for the series imo, and stupid.

I played an hour on PS3.  The character models are decent, but the environment textures are 2006, and the object textures and models are PS2 era.  The scope of the game appears enormous, so I can forgive it a bit.  However, it's not exactly a pretty game.

AC3's metacritic ratings are sitting around 85-87 range, which does not bode well considering the combination of their advertising budget and how worthless the gaming media is.

A few honest reviews and some devs aren't getting bonuses!

If you're working in the gaming industry, the first question in the interview should be "is my pay and/or bonuses tied to metacritic?"

Because  :uhrr:

Whole industry's in a real fucked place right now.

85-87 isn't a good score? I sort of hate Metacritic so I'm not really familiar with how they rate things, but that seems solid to me particularly from some sort of reviews-aggregate site.

I love Metacritic, mainly just so I know how much critics are "in the bag".  the A titles with 90+ Metacritic scores but 70 player scores? and the 70 metas with 90 player.

The player scores are even more useless than the reviewer ones.

For some reason it seems that bonuses (or possibly everyone not being fired) at devs these days is now based on metacritic scores. Obsidian missed out on getting bonuses because their metacritic score for New Vegas was 84 rather than 85 or higher IIRC.

That's reason #2 why I didn't hesitate to throw money at their KS. It's refreshing to see someone come off a giant FU like that by bypassing the juggernauts and going right to the fans.

The funny thing about the communication age is you really shouldn't listen to most people. The talk rarely matches the walk, and even when it does it's rarely walk worth listening to. Or something.

Metacritic's user reviews are indeed pretty useless, considering there's a seemingly high troll ratio that use it to spike ratings for unrelated reasons.

The idea of the demo just needs to come back. Not the "we made a demo six weeks after the game was released and had a bunch of preorder exclusives to tempt you into buying before it was out", same with review embargoes ending the day of release and shit.

Gaming media and game companies folks.

Idiot media flak in charge of the AC3 twitter feed gets snippy with GiantBomb guys, not knowing who they were, back pedals furiously.

(http://i.imgur.com/LgfoX.jpg)

Note: never mind that the AC3 guy would've gotten my support if he had said, "who gives a shit who you are, internet reviewer douche". Pfft, like I'm kissing the ass of ANY game reviewer.

I retype things I write to customers before hitting send about 25 times a day.   

Buddy is a bad word now?

Sure is, pal.

I don't care for your tone, friendo.

I'm not your friendo, guy.

Can it, champ.

Sure thing, sport.

Yeah, I didn't read it as idiot media flak at all.  My first impression was asshole talking shit and media guy responding with "buddy."  Which I thought was good work on his part as my first choice would have been "fuckweasel."

The other part that stood out to me was the "you gotta be more deferential!  Even to jerks" line.  I guess this is one of my pet peeves.  If you are being an asshole, it shouldn't matter what my job is.  YOU need to stop being an asshole.  I know that's not how it works, but yeah.

While I didn't find the Buddy line upsetting in the least, I'd never do it professionally. When someone says something like 'you need to get your shit together', they get a terse summary of their issue and and possible solution/reason and the conversation is over. I love people who expect me to help them after they act jerky.

I've been playing this on the PS3, but I don't think I'll be finishing it.  Maybe if they patch it up a bit, but I've never had so many bug issues in what's supposed to be a flagship series for a studio.  Missions not loading, characters not loading, mission markers/objectives not loading correctly, and spotty controls.  Additionally, whether it's the writing, the VA, or both, I don't like Connor, at all.  This will be the first AC game I didn't finish ASAP. 

Common complaints I've seen are the following:

- The glitches are ridiculous. Horses getting stuck on houses, guns missing from parts, NPCs stuck in walls, camera issues galore, falling through the floor, NPCs shooting you through walls.
- Notority is inconsistent. Certain actions get you killed immediately, the same actions net nothing in different areas.
- Horse riding is horrible.
- The game starts incredibly slow and tedious. Too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay.
- Connor isn't likable. The story is too rigid, scripted, and dictatorial.
- Controls are bad. Combat has been changed, and not for the better. Guarding and countering are spotty. Dodging doesn't work.

The most common praise is that the game is graphical eyefeast.

My son played this over the weekend, but he did not sound like he was having fun. He said AC2 is much better. He's probably 6 hours in.

I'm only a few missions into AC3, but I like the very early parts with the guy who isn't Connor. 

And yes, so far I feel that AC2 is the high water mark for the series when comparing all of Ezio's story.  Sometimes more stuff isn't quite needed.   

I started to play this today. Haven't played the other Assassin's Creed games.

There is very little in the way of tutorial. I had to ask my son how to do practically everything.

Probably should have played AC2 first.

AC2 is a really good game, and the best so far in terms of balance of collectibles vs story.  It also controlled the best out of the series, too.  AC3 threw the controls out the window and feels clunky and unresponsive.  It's a good game, but I really fight with my opinion of it at times.  In many ways, the quality of the base game suffered so they can try to do a lot of extra things in this version. 

I got really frustrated with this game. It was one of the first missions where you have to use a rifle, and it wont let you move, or do anything until you shoot a barrel, apparently my aim was just a bit off, and the game wouldnt even let me fire the gun. I spend about 15 minutes stuck and trying to figure out how to shoot until I moved the thumbstick at one point over the tiny target and it lit up.

Really horrible design there.

I know exactly what mission you're talking about, because I failed or restarted it at least three times.  It was really lazy, and the whole game comes off as not have any new QA/QC techs on the team.  There's too much assumption that the player will know how to accomplish the goal. 

I put this on hold until the patch hits next week. I really, really want to like this game, but there's this part of it that just isn't fun.  Can't tell which part will win out yet.

That mission totally sucks. I was yelling "Fuck this! What the hell am I supposed to do? Fuck this!" and then my son came in and said, "you have to aim at that barrel" meaning the one under the wagon, not the ones on the wagon.

I stopped playing AC3 and started AC2. The difference is like night and day in terms of getting the player involved and doing FUN THINGS right off the bat.

What the hell were they thinking when they made AC3? It's as though they never gave any thought to the fun part for the first few hours. (At least the first few; that's all I lasted.)

Everything I've heard about ACIII says to wait for a patch or two. NPCs getting stuck, mission triggers failing to go off, etc.

Scope creep, I have a feeling.  The core of the game is there, but I think they got so wrapped up in making the Revolution cool that they lost sight of the reason they were making it.  You know, the game.  Then project launch date hit and that's that. 

I'm hoping that the expansions built off this engine are better. 

Yahtzee / Zero Punctuation (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6516-Assassins-Creed-3) was pretty amusing. General summary is bland character and boring additions to the inherited game-play.

Gah this game is so frustrating. I feel like im fighting the controls more than any enemy in the game so far. The first mission where the wolf jumps you is horrible. I am now on the mission where you have to sneak through some fort listening to two soldiers, and it seems completely random on if my character is actually in cover or not. I am about to shelve this game in favor of something with more fun. I just keep hoping that the game is about to become fun, cause it seems like it might.

It doesnt help that the complete lack of any sort of history or anything with the main character. Here you go, you are a generic unlikable english gentleman who just happens to have all this training and skills, but its never mentioned how. At least to the point if the game I am at.

That changes after an hour or two. He's not the main character, you're essentially in the most boring and excessively long tutorial ever.

Sadly in the prior games they used the Animus concept to just make the tutorial phases in the white empty space instead of forcing you to play 2-3 hours of really slow tutorial in the main game.

I purchased the Limited Edition version of AC3 for xbox 360 yesterday.  I really like the interactive cinema aspect of the intro, reminds me of SWTOR.  The embedded historical minigames are a nice touch.  I have never played any of the other AC titles.

So far so good.

   

I'm about 3/4ths through this game so far.

So far there have been a few "fuck yeah!" moments, significantly more "kill me now" moments, and many "why the hell did they change all the controls around?" moments.  The prevalence of daddy issues is also irking me.

Also annoyed that my 6790 chokes on running the game with much more than default settings at 1920x1080...   But it is quite visually appealing.

One of my buddies is playing through the game, and he's complained of a section where his horse kept sneaking up behind him, knocking him out of cover, and alerting the guards. The horse wouldn't go away and you couldn't kill it. This would happen over and over. We've since had a running joke about the horse that causes him to get raped by guards, or "rape horse" for short.

He even has his own chat logo now.

:-->

Well, managed to finish this one.

Only a few hours in. Have yet to see the Connor they marketed the shit of, though I don't hate the generic Englishman. He's had some good lines.

I don't know why they felt compelled to change all the controls. Not that II was perfect, but after three iterations, they got it pretty down. Granted, this title was developed separately, but they ignored some of what was working well over the last few years.

On that note, it really doesn't feel very different, not in the way they were PRing it anyway. But maybe that picks up once I start fltting through trees and doing motion assassinations and whatnot.

Not hating it. Not loving it either. Playing this off and on with Mark of the Ninja, which I finally picked up for $7.50. A good offset :-)

I'm a few hours in as well, past the Haytham bits but not quite into the game proper yet. The worst thing has got to be how they made different seasons, yet nobody bothered to make winter clothes skins for the character models. It's ridiculous.

Oh god, the game just more or less spouted that British rule was just as bad as slavery. And it wasn't expressed in character either. Damn.

edit: specifically, Connor was saying that the colonists shouldn't equate their plight with being a slave. To which the game responded by cutting to a scene where British tax collectors try to kill some dude.

edit2: and now instead of taking down my target, the game is having me murder dozens of random tax collectors and soldiers, for reasons that are rather unclear to me. Haytham is a saint by comparison, jeez.
 
edit3: wth, all that random flailing about and it turned out to be your first assassin recruitment mission. I'm now friends with a lunatic who likes to run around the streets attacking people with a hatchet in broad daylight. Prime recruitment material right there.

Let me know if you get to rapehorse. My friend quit the game at that point.

Will do.

This whole game just seems incredibly lackluster. Guard aggro is opaque and side missions are beyond generic. I just did my first assassination contract, something you'd think would have effort put into it. Not so. I clicked on the questgiver, he said "I shall be grateful to you sir." Then six generic templar dudes appeared on my map as targets. I killed them, money counter ticked up. That's it. Completely context free.

Funnily, while killing those targets I discovered it doesn't matter how I do it. I stealth killed one, then accidentally knocked one over with my fists, he was left squirming on the ground. He counted as a kill. Then tried shooting one. Welp, turns out people don't give a fuck if you shoot people on the streets. No need to put any thought to it, just do whatevs and it'll work.

edit: just tried to take over a fort. Got caught outside the walls. Killed the patrol, but the guards inside on the courtyard formed a firing line and started shooting at me through the fort wall.  :uhrr:

Righto, time for Boston Tea Party. Start off by killing 15 guards! No you can't devise a non-lethal solution!

This game is offensively stupid.

Well it is the American Revolution, not the American Negotiation.

I'm amused that shooting people in the streets draws no ire. Are there difficulty levels? Which are you playing on?

Indeed, the follow up to killing the guards was to protect your tea dumping dignitaries while hordes of redcoats swarmed the boat. I think I killed about 50 in the end. In the cutscenes there was no sign of this open warfare, nor did the crowds react at all. I guess the devs didn't have any gameplay content planned and had to figure something out at the last moment.

No difficulty levels that I could find. The combat is basically parry-riposte, the only challenge is kill animations that sometimes take so long that enemies can attack without you being able to do anything about it. You can take a musket volley to your chest and lose less than half your health.

Ugh, that's one of the things I hated about Witcher 2 combat. You could be attacking something in mid-combo and just get fucking owned from the side or back while you complete your slow animation.

So now one of the story missions bugged out. Native dude comes barging in asking for help, after that nothing. Only side missions on the screen and travel options disabled. Time for something else I think.

Noooooo, not yet! So much horrible plot to go!

Managed to get it working, actually assassinated someone! The target's mesh went all mr. Fantastic spoiling some of the spectacle, but at this point I'll take what I can get...

Went on a stealthy ride with Paul Revere, who apparently has trouble ADJUSTING THE VOLUME OF HIS VOICE. There were shades of rape horse, as Paul Revere's equine friend followed right behind me whenever I had to dismount.

I truly felt like I was in an AAA game when the same guy answered the door in three different houses in three different towns.

Yep, you're getting there. That was the complaint about horses following close.

...too close.

The game picked up a bit with actual war brewing up. Then I made the mistake of trying to inflitrate a Templar fort. I assassinated half the base by luring them one by one to a haystack (lots of room in there!), then the whole thing bugged out as a guard got stuck inside a wall and kept the alarm going, even though everyone else in the fort was just doing their chores. At that point there was no way to complete any further objectives so I bailed. What a POS.

Can't you reload without the bugged guards? You're depriving us of the excitement!

It was just a side thing, so no worries I'm still on track. I'm learning that none of the side stuff works, so just stick to the main plot. Which is really sad as I loved all of that in previous ACs.

The one good thing people are telling me is Captain Kidd's treasure, so I'll probably do that though.

Oh my god now I'm an assassination mission where cover randomly stops working and Connor just stands up like an idiot, attracting guards that don't even see him. Does anything work in this game?

The mechanism for taking your money.  :why_so_serious:

Is your horse causing you to stand up? That was my friend's problem with rapehorse. In cover and then, HEEEEYYY WILLLLLLBURRRR.

I finsihed Revelations last night so I can go back to 3's story at the midpoint.  It is very interesting to see them almost exponentially burying the game in sidequests and features since AC2.  Revelations simply had too much side stuff to do; I couldn't finish it.  Unfortunately, the main story was weak outside the telling of Altair's life. 

On to AC3 now, I guess.  Let the rapehorse begin.

And this is after they've done two patches or so to fix bugs from the release client.  It sounds like I won't be bothering to finish this thing anytime soon.  What a waste. 

Overall, in terms of quality, I could forgive a lot of sloppiness if this was the first in a series.

But as the sixth game, this feels like they decided they absolutely needed a new engine for I-don't-know-what*, thought they had enough time to work on it in parallel the the Ezio series, and then had to slap it together with way insufficient QA and bugfix time to rush it at the end after all.

* New engine for the free-running in trees? It's pretty cool, but not nearly fluid enough that I couldn't imagine them replacing all of Constantinople with trees.

A lot of "AAA" games in 2012 suffered from a very high level of jankyness - bugs, technical issues like rampant screen tearing, horribly designed missions, etc. It seems to me that the wheels are starting to come off a bit in that these productions have gotten so massive that turning them into coherent working wholes is almost impossible.

Yea I'd agree with that. Next year is gonna suck worse with the new consoles coming that nobody possibly has enough time to fully get right for launch titles  :awesome_for_real:

Someone on Neogaf was speculating that maybe some of this years big games that turned out horribly optimised (AC3 and Farcray 3 in particular) may have originally been developed on the test kits for the next round of consoles. They then had to be scaled back when it became clear the new machines weren't out until next year (remembering that a lot of people were originally thinking we would see new machines this year).

Not sure if there's any truth at all behind that or if Ubisoft are just flat out bad.

Holy poop, I actually found a spot that is really good! Bugs remain everywhere (eg. during a boarding action I was completely unable to use a pistol and then the camera decided to lock on empty ground), but there's some excellent story going on right now in Sequence 9.

Gonna be bad when it ends, I just know it.

The stuff around Sequence 9 was pretty good, I must admit.

The game has exacted its revenge, I'm now in a sewer maze with a horribly bugged camera and the same water reflection bug that is found in WarZ.

..and it is done. The final sequence bugged out on me a few times (the correct path is very narrow and if you stray, chances are you'll get stuck in geometry), then a complete anticlimax of a Desmond happened.

There were 2-3 places on that final sequence where the "one true path" was completely non-obvious.  I lost my cool with the game a couple of times during that bit as a result.   :tantrum:

And yeah, anticlimactic is an understatement.   :uhrr:

When asked if my friend could sum up the game in 2 words, he chose "butt fumble"

Does this game work on the PC without a controller?

Yes, the whole series works fine with KB and mouse.

Oh man, I got shitty ending syndrome from this. I wanna play something new but can't muster the energy, and then all I do is read forum threads about AC3. The worst part is that there isn't even any lore to obsess over, they just fucked up the whole thing.

There's absolutely no way this is true. The timing doesn't work out at all. The only way AC3 would be developed on a 720 test kit would be if they expected it to be a launch game for the 720, which does not work at all with the release date of the game.

assuming ac3 has BOATS in it, how is being CAPTAIN of BOAT in BOAT FIGHTS: 1700's EDITION

It's a spectacle for sure, and fun for a time. However the whole thing of being a SUPER ASSASSIN BOAT who blows up a million other BOATS with impunity makes the whole thing nothing more than a shooting gallery in the end.

One piece I don't understand and finding pitifully documentation for is the entire harvesting and crafting system. I can get animal stuff easy enough, but I've got this one Caravan which is marked as "attacked" and then a bunch of empty slots on this crafting UI. The whole Homestead thing is a mystery and the ingame documentation is a farce.

I miss the really well put together training modes from AC2.

Yeah, most of the homestead stuff is an obvious afterthought, unlike the totally awesome city building stuff in AssBro and the other AC2 titles.

I could never figure out how to FIND my under attack caravan to defend it. Lost some good pelts that way.

Lol "AssBro"  :awesome_for_real:

I'm having trouble getting past sequence 7.  The lack of fun keeps me from actually playing it.  I'm sure I'll finish at some point, but AC3 was my second worst gaming disappointment of 2012. 

It's a huge open world, but the missions require such a narrow, linear way to complete them. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E2w8TFBAI0

The game is full of that shit, I lost count of how many weird bugs there are like that.  Hell, Skyrim had fewer AI bugs.

Also, I like how rapehorse makes an appearance in that movie at the 1:10 mark.

Connor the lion molester.

Bugs haven't been too bad for me, once I remembered I can't play the AC series games with all four processors. I don't know what it is. Through all five of the titles I've played, I need to set it to two CPUs only. And if I want to be posilutely certain, I only use one. No other game gave/gives me this problem.

I will say those goddamn almanac pages though: I gotta stalk the damned things like I would a panther. If I can't guarantee to jump right on it from some hidey-spot, I'll end up chasing it around half of Boston and lose it anyway.

Still only on Sequence 6. There's no as much logical flow to them as in the other games.

Which is just adds to the list. This seems to have been developed by whoever wasn't on the a-team for AC2, with those poor folks being brought in probably for a polish phase or even to save it, which really is just ending up getting the blame. They couldn't just skinned that AC2 engine. I just don't see much difference in how it plays.

I just started playing this after the sale on Steam. I've done almost all the AC games back to back to back, so control changes are jarring to me from game to game.

They completely overhauled the controls in this one. It's really annoying. I'm not sure people would notice it as much if it wasn't so obvious, but moving my block/parry key to E from my right click makes no sense, and I can't remap it because it will fuck up my running.

Also I thought I was playing a guy named Connor, and I'm spending my first two hours so far as a British dude. It's a long tutorial I guess. Side note, if you haven't read the database entries, they are written by "Sean" and many of them are hysterical in a dry British way.

I look forward to further impressions.  :grin:

Pael - I found the lore entries really annoying.  there'd be good info then a smarmy remark at the end which ends up being a random contemporary pop reference which breaks the immersion for me.

I had some bugs but not THAT many, agree that 2 hours playing as haytham was inordinately long (i actually liked haytham better than connor, but knew my playing of him was on borrowed time so...) and my other main annoyance was actually playing as desmond.  what a waste of time.

if they brought out an AC game with the blurb "100% of the stabby goodnesss, no modern day bullshit" i'd pay a premium.  especially the bit  .

I'm going back to finally finish witcher 1 and 2 before diving into ac4.  maybe i'll squeeze bioshock infi in as well, i'm pretty excited about ac4 but want to savour it.

That's part of the reason I like it because normally I hate lore stuff. This theatre was home to first production of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Snarky makes me read what I normally wouldn't even bother with. I don't play these things to get a first class history lesson inside my fictional mind machine that helps me summon my long dead ancestors.

I'm into Sequence 4 now. The combat is wretched. Absolutely wretched. I'm literally doing nothing but mashing the left mouse button and occasionally countering. It's like they completely dumbed it all down to the "I win" key. I mean there's a happy medium between this and Witcher 2, you know?

Anyway the early twist got me. Now I'm a kid. That's when I turned it off and downloaded a mod for Warband so I can play something that doesn't have shitty combat in between session of this. I can already tell I hate this game.

I gave up on 3 at about Sequence 4 iirc. The ground combat in 4 isn't all that different, but it's less annoying because you have more environmental objects to try some fun things with (like air drops). Of course there may be things about 4 combat that were already in 3 but I never noticed them for not having gotten very far.

4 is greatly helped by the ship combat. Like, I'd like 4 no more than 3 if it didn't also include ship stuff to this level.

Yep.  I couldn't finish 3; played to sequence 7-ish.  Ironically I stopped playing BF on the sequence they added the diving bell minigame.  That was just so uninspiring.

The controls for the diving bell missions were idiotic, once you got the hang of it it was doable though.

Yea, that has been the one and only time I used the diving bell. It's definitely a pretty environment and all. But not having any weapons when the sharks appear is just dumb, especially since the environments are so unforgiving.

But if they stick to form, AC5 will be awesome because they evenly balance ship combat with a really awesome diving bell minigame :-)

You can't kill anything underwater in ac4, you can merely survive them with quicktime events...  The sharks/eels/urchins are all things you are supposed to avoid or hide in sea weed/barrels until they lose track of you.  It was shit.  I hope they get rid of all that tedious crap in AC5.

I don't like eavesdropping. So far everything they've added as a "feature" is pissing me off.

Actually I take that back, I sort of like playing Nine Man's Morris even though I'm awful at it.

I'm now into sequence 5. I've convinced an elderly black gentleman that I deserve training. I still have not received the traditional hood or my hidden blade. I have, however, managed to waste a couple hours being forced to hunt with snares and find eagle feathers for no reason.

THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

Reading all that makes me so happy for some reason.  :why_so_serious:

Yep the tables have turned. I've read back through the whole thread and forgotten all the complaints at the time of release a year ago. It's all still there.

Just gonna say that I fucking love the Sea Shanty album from AC4 and play it in the car all the time as of late.  It's absurdly amazing for something tied to an AAA video game.

There's an album? I'd buy that. I love them.

But I'm no judge.

Back before Tabula Rasa went to sci-fi, they gave away a CD of songs at E3 whatever-the-year it was (maybe 2004?) I loved it so much I negotiated permission with NC Soft to post those tracks to Stratics*. Only ended up being able to post 5 of them though.

Jeezus, that whole paragraph should been in the Brad Secret MMO thread  :geezer:

* And holy crap, Stratics is still around?

Finally got through Sequence 5 and I have a hood. New things!

- Holy shit the side stuff is confusing. I have an accounting book, 3 pages of crafting, convoys, attacked convoys, people living on my land. The fuck is going on. I'm a CPA and this doesn't even make sense. Remember in Rome when you bought businesses and got money every 20m? Was there something wrong with that model?

- Connor's voice actor is bland bland blandy blanderson. How did they let this get by the management? Who did he fuck to get this job? The character wouldn't be so disliked if the voice wasn't so horribly delivered.

- I'm on a boat. I'm on a boat. Take a good hard look at the motherfucking boat.

- I killed a beaver and then felt really bad about it. They are slow and make cute noises.

Why does Achilles on the homestead not care about all the people suddenly showing up on his land? We're in a time where land is wide open, but here comes half of Boston to settle on our shit. Nevermind we're supposed to be a secret society.

I'm knocking over tea in Boston. Combat is still garbage. There are times when you have no idea why you're being attacked, and times where you can't kill people without being really obvious. I'm an assassin. How am I supposed to murder 5 tax collectors in broad daylight in front of a door? This is a dumb mission, I would wait for them to go home and murder them in their sleep.

I got something called the rope dart. I can already tell it's basically useless unless you are after one guy. Which never fucking happens because the missions make me take on cadres of goons.

$7.99 on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Creed-Edition-Original-Soundtrack/dp/B00GATDL7O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389987179&sr=8-1)

Rope dart allows you to be pirate Batman in ACIV.

Necro!

I know I'm a bit behind here, but can someone explain the crafting in this goddamn game?  I think I broke it or something.  I did the "tutorial" fine (and by "tutorial" I mean the bit where you hit A over a menu screen while it doesn't explain what you're doing or why) but when I try to trade in the actual game I think I'm maybe fucked?

I got some wood and made some barrels, loaded them on my cart, sent it off.  Later I get some message about it being attacked or something and I have 5 minutes to respond, I have no idea how or WTF that even means.  Apparently, though, it means my entire convoy is gone.  Not just the goods, the actual convoy, because now I can't trade shit.  I could make another convoy if I had some wood, which I don't, because I used it all to make barrels and I can't find anywhere to buy more.  It's not in the stockpile, I can't see anywhere to buy more on the map, I can't talk to anyone that I can see or harvest wood myself (I tried assassinating a log but it didn't work) I don't know what's going on.  On the up side, I can't find anything to spend my money on, either, so maybe it's not the end of the world, but ughhh.

I spent about 10m with crafting, realized it was mostly fucking pointless, and went on with my life. I still don't think I've finished the game. It's so so horrible from a voice acting and controls perspective. Ugh.

http://www.giantbomb.com/assassins-creed-iii/3030-37494/forums/is-the-crafting-a-mess-or-am-i-just-dumb-571343/

Just take a look at those forums, they tell you what you need to know, it's fucking pointless to craft.

I like how AC3 keeps touching lives as the years roll by.

it's like aids. but less life n death.  :awesome_for_real:

Uninstall AC3, install Black Flag and play that instead since it is actually something resembling a good game.

Hah, I wish, the sailing in this game has me kinda hyped for AC4.  But I got AC3 for like $10 on sale, and AC4 is still something like four times that.  Even the spinoff games (Liberation and Freedom Cry) are $20, so AC3 is probably the last I'll see until the Christmas sale.

I finally got the trading thing working, I know you were all on the edge of your seats worrying.  Eventually played through enough of the main storyline that I got a side mission that leveled up my lumberjack guys (and while I'm at it, here's a minor "fuck you" to games that arbitrarily gate content like this), bought a stick of wood, and made a new caravan.  As far as I can tell, it restocks your supply whenever a caravan makes a successful run, so if they all get jumped, they never complete their run, and your supplies never restock.  Anyways, sent out my new caravan and now I'm in the top 50% of all players worldwide for trading.  So I guess there's more than a few players who just said "fuck it."

Though I still think it's an obnoxious way to implement the system.  In previous AC games, you'd send your assassins out or you'd buy a shop or whatever as part of the gameplay.  It would be a short stop on the way from point A to point B, so why not.  You can focus on it if you want, but you can always do two or three things at once in that case (traveling towards somewhere to buy + waiting for assassins to finish + waiting for rent + looking for collectibles on the way).  In AC3, you have to stop what you're doing, travel all the way back to Assassintown, load the caravans up (one... item... at... a... time....), send them off, and wait around doing nothing for ten or fifteen minutes in case they get robbed.  It completely kills the flow of the game.

ACIV was like $20 during the summer sale.

True but definitely grab it. Your gripes about 3 are addressed in 4, the ship combat is even more fun, and the whole experience just hangs together much better.

The one piece i didn't quite get about 4 was the ending. But that's another thread...

Me: So, I heard Naval Caravans are the best way to trade, is that true?

Assassin's Creed 3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: How do they work?  Is it a new thing I have to do a mission for, or what?

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: Okay, I spent like five minutes looking through this gigantic table of useless craftables and I found Naval Caravans buried like halfway down the "special items" section.  How long has that been there?

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: Apparently I can't build them, it says I need some ingredient that looks like a blurry square, what is that supposed to be?  None of this shit is named.

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: Is it something I craft?  Something I buy?  Do I need to to more homestead missions for it to unlock?  Do I need to advance in the main storyline?  Or unlock some new side quest?

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: I spent like ten minutes looking through my crafting table and I can't find anything that looks like what I need, why is like 95% of the junk in this goddamn list completely pointless?  Why would anyone ever want to spend time crafting buttons and window frames and stuff in this game when you can't do anything with it but sell it and it's all got a worse profit margin than the furs you unlock at level one?

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: And why in the hell is like 90% of my crafting locked behind level 3 craftsmen?  I can craft like ten things out of the eighty or so recipes I have, even stuff I found in the first area of the game ten or twenty hours ago.  Haytham talks about getting a double holster as one of the first conversations in the game, in the tutorial section, why the fuck am I still unable to craft it like twenty hours later?

AC3: I cannot help thee with that.

Me: Who designed this goddamn system!  This is the most convoluted, poorly implemented, cumbersome heap of uselessness I've ever seen in my life!  AAAAAAARGH!

AC3: ...

Me: I need to calm down, maybe take a break, do some town stuff.  I know, I can unlock some of those fast travel points in town for a bit.  That should be straightforward.

Two hours pass...

Me: THIS GAME WAS MADE BY SATAN

Tried to warn you.

I picked this back up after a year and finished it because it was staring at me in my backlog. I'd completely forgotten exactly how bad the controls were and how much shitty story they packed into this game. I thought I'd reached peak stupid about mid-way through when I quit.

I was so very wrong.

This is without a doubt the worst story in a big-budget game I've ever played. It would be hilariously funny if it wasn't actually trying to be serious. And the controls didn't suck butt.

Man this thing just keeps on doing damage. A true masterpiece!  :why_so_serious:

I'm finished with it now. No more. On to AC4 which is supposedly much better.

I read somewhere that it is a characteristic of sociopathy that one is unable to learn from mistakes.

AC4 isn't quite as offensive as 3, but there still plenty of derp in there. The open world will entertain for maybe a dozen hours, but after that the Potemkin village is laid bare and you won't be able to play any AC game ever again, because the content is identical.

 

AC4 would've been a lot more fun if it wasn't an AC game.  It's great sailing around listening to sea shanties and the piratey bits are excellent.  Then you have to parkour up a ridiculous number of walls to defeat the illuminati and all of the fun gets sucked out.

You're thinking of stupidity. And yes, I have that in my gaming choices in spades.

I've thought for a while that you could make a decent legitimate educational game of this type if you cut down on the swarming bullshit guard slaughter bits and excised the "Pope Alexander VI was actually an illuminati agent trying to control people's minds with the power of ancient aliens" stuff.  There's a lot of good historical information in these games, and I think they do a better job of portraying what it was like to live in these eras than just reading about them, but it's so hard to untangle that from their "it was all a Templar plot, now murder a hundred policemen" storyline.