Assassin's Creed 3!

It's been about one week since I picked up my copy of AC3 and Holy crapoly! What a game. What a game. If you've played the first two or three games and not Revelations, then you will not go wrong with picking up the third err, forth wait, FIFTH installment of the Assassin's Creed series. Go get it. Do it, do it now! If you haven't played the first few games, no worries, the developers have given enough of the back story that you won't be lost just diving right into AC3.

Let's get on to the game.

The beginning of the single player missions, might seem a little slow. There are some escort missions and I don't me the nice kind of escorts that sad middle aged divorcees pick up to take out and then bring back to their hotel room and have sad sad I hate myself sex. Okay maybe it's not that nice. Anywhooooo. The escort mission is back in force and it's all up in yah AC3. Well moving past the annoyance of escorts, the beginning you don't start out as Desmond in the real world. He with the help of his techno buddies and his father are looking for a way to stop the 2012 apocalypse, so they are again using the Animus to go back into Desmond's ancestor's past and find all the pieces they need to do so. It just so happens that Desmond's ancestor is a Native American by the name of Ratonhnhaké:ton aka Connor. DNA is fun!

Do we start out as Connor our plucky hero? Nope, you start as some British dude. I won't give anything away. Then you move on to young Connor or Ratonhnhaké:ton umm yeah go ahead and try that one on for size. These missions are a way of getting you use to the gameplay. Then Connor grows up and his world is turned upside down by the American revolution and the Templar plot to take over the world, cos' they do that. Then you meet Achilles, a former assassin guild member. He takes on Ratonhnhaké:ton as an apprentice type assassin student. Then they change his name to Connor so that he doesn't stick out like a soar thumb (right, names help with that). Oh and since he is a lighter shade of brown they say he's Spanish, even though it NEVER comes up in the game.

So we are now Connor! Let the badassery begin! You get a Tomahawk and Bow and Arrow and other assorted items. Now you can kill Templars and help the founding fathers in their seeking of revolution. Adams, Washington, Revere are just a few. Franklin is in there for a minute.

GAMEPLAY!

Out of all of the AC series I'd have to say that gameplay wise this is the best in the series. It feels smooth jumping from tree limb to tree limb, diving off of houses and cliffs. going from tree to rooftop and back. You do get the parkour feel in AC3 more than any other AC game. Having said that, you will get frustrated while holding down the R trigger which is used for running and parkouring. Say you want to chase down a guy and there happens to be a group of barrels randomly in the street (there are barrels randomly laid out in the street). You want to jump them? Well nope. Connor is going to climb up them, giving the guy you are chasing a few seconds to get further ahead. Luckily you are faster than most people in the game. Don't try and climb straight up while in a corner, you will be aimed in one direction and jump in another. Don't ride your horse into a corner either, it will get scared and never want to turn again. I've heard horses do that. 

Fighting is pretty good. One button attacks, one counters, another disarms, and another shoots your firearms. Timing counters gives you the chance to do some badassery and trigger an instant kill type thing. Shooting is either aimed with the L trigger or highlighting the guy you want dead and just pushing the shoot button. 



Hunting. Hunting is a new gameplay element to AC3. While in the frontier, you can set up traps, throw bait and wait in hunting perches to kill all manor of wildlife, which you can skin and sell the meat and furs for money to buy new threads, weapons and armaments for your ship! YOU GET A FREAKING SHIP.

Sea warfare. Yup AC3 now on the high seas! At one point in the game you get a ship. The ship battles are intense and down right fun to play. The gameplay mechanics aren't anything new to seasoned players, but they are fun and look amazing. The ocean has a mind of it's own and being a not so small ship coming up against a giant rouge wave is just awesome to look at. The ship missions are probably my favorite part of the game. 

Negatives. There were only a few things that went wrong. 
1. Glitches. floating guns, floating bodies (not on water), sinking bodies (not on water, in the ground) and in one case during a homestead mission I walked away from a NPC too soon and the screen went grey and would not come out of it.
2. Frustrating chase missions. Like before, having one button for running and parkouring...prakouroring... parking...eff. this is just the type of thing to make you want to rage quit, which I almost did. ask Kaydee.
3. Not enough war scenes. I know that Connor is an assassin and not a soldier, but this was the Revolutionary war. There were more than just three battles and how Ubisoft handled the battles made me want more and more. I wanted Connor involved in every major engagement. so it's not a negative, just a request.

I didn't play through the multi-player, so I can't comment on that and I won't, because why would I.

So far this is the best game in the series by far and probably one of my nominees for game of the year. This is definitely a buy. There is so much to do and so many places to explore. I finished the single player missions and I have only finished 58% of the game. The side missions and the downloadable content have given me that much more to do. If you like third person action adventure games, then this is the one to get, weather you have played the other AC games or not.

Go get it.

Thanks