Assassin's Creed 3 takes place in...

[Miasma]

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

[Venkman]

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

[Miasma]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[Paelos]

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?

[jakonovski]

Reading all that makes me so happy for some reason. 

[Paelos]

Reading all that makes me so happy for some reason. 

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.

[MisterNoisy]

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.

[Venkman]

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 

* And holy crap, Stratics is still around?

[Paelos]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[MisterNoisy]

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

$7.99 on Amazon

[CmdrSlack]

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.

Rope dart allows you to be pirate Batman in ACIV.

[Kail]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[jakonovski]

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

[rk47]

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

[Fabricated]

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

[Kail]

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.

[Rendakor]

ACIV was like $20 during the summer sale.

[Venkman]

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. 

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...

[Kail]

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

[Paelos]

Tried to warn you.

[Paelos]

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.

[jakonovski]

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

[Paelos]

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

[Yegolev]

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

[jakonovski]

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.

 

[Ruvaldt]

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.

[Paelos]

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

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

[Kail]

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.

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.