Assassin's Creed 3 takes place in...

[Paelos]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

[Hawkbit]

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.   

[Xanthippe]

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.

[Hawkbit]

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. 

[Morfiend]

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.

[Hawkbit]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.)

[UnSub]

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

[Hawkbit]

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.)

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. 

[Kageru]

Yahtzee / Zero Punctuation was pretty amusing. General summary is bland character and boring additions to the inherited game-play.

[Morfiend]

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.

[kildorn]

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.

[90Proof]

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.

   

[Minvaren]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

:-->

[Minvaren]

Well, managed to finish this one.

[Venkman]

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

[jakonovski]

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.

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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

[jakonovski]

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.  

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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?

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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!

[jakonovski]

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...

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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

...too close.

[jakonovski]

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.

[Paelos]

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

[jakonovski]

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.

[jakonovski]

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?