My final impressions:
Well, moderately disappointed with this game. That's two AC in a row games that I haven't liked all that much. Revelations was fucking terrible and though AC3 doesn't quite sink to those depths it is still extremely uneven, with some sections being truly breathtaking and others a chore. I loved everything about the Frontier, first time I reached it I just messed around it for 4 hours straight, it is quite simply gorgeous. I had my doubts that another AC game might be able to reach the beauty of Venice but AC3 really does get close. It's just beautiful. However I don't think the game exploits that scenery properly. If you don't take the time to do the side stuff you won't really see much of it.
In contrast to the Frontier you have New York and Boston, which might as well be one city called New Boston because the two of them are virtually interchangeable with nary a thing to make either stand out from the other. What a goddamn waste of a setting for an AC game. Boring ass cities with ZERO personality, crappy parkour possibilities and just shitty, flat, dull, all-around poor design. It's what everyone feared a game set in this era would be like. The shittiness of these two places is only compounded by how awful the game runs in them. Not just content with having a terrible and unstable mess of a framerate, the game is ripe with stuttering when you are in New York or in Boston.
To expand on the crappyness of these two places, the side missions inside them are also pretty poor. Take the assassination contracts for instance. In AC2 and ACB the side-assasinations you could engage in were fairly elaborate and even came with a little story to them. The ones in AC3 are just nothing. You find a guy walking around the street and shank him. That's it. Lazy as all fuck.
The main missions are mostly okay, except for the stupid war ones. Again, devs simply not getting what the series is about. Frankly, I don't understand the idea behind sticking so relatively close to the chain of historical events. In previous AC games it was just backdrop, you were in a particular era but the stuff that went on was mostly an original story. In AC3 you're virtually the Forrest Gump of the American Revolution. Why? To better sell the game to American audiences? As a non-American I felt little from doing the whole Boston Tea Party thing and riding with Paul Revere(doesn't help those missions were shitty). Nevermind that Connor being such a staunch supporter of the patriots makes no sense at all, and it makes even less sense that he still helps the douches after their true, knwon by all intentions are revealed regarding the indian population. Wat? There are some good sections to Connor's story and I almost kind of felt for his plight, and he is pretty badass at times, but overall it's uneven plotting. The devs were more concerned with throwing you into events in the American Revolution than crafting a plot that made complete sense. And the Desmond stuff is just garbage, from top to bottom.
You know, I can't write at length about this game without pointing out how horrible the first several hours of the game are. Forced to play as another character, feels like an ultraextended tutorial with shitcakes missions and taking exclusively in a shitcakes city. I was just wanted to leave Kenway behind ASAP as I knew Connor was the real main character. I really couldn't stand it. For five hours it felt like the game hadn't even began. What the fuck? Seems to me the entire point of this idea was to "shock" the player with the twist at the end of Sequence 3. Seriously messed up priorities. The 30 minutes you spend playing as child Connor are better than all the hours you waste playing as Kenway.
Frontier aside, I also liked the Naval missions, which seems that have gotten universal praise. The graphics and productions values are really impressive as well, it's almost a generational leap over AC2 and ACB, it leaves them completely in the dust. Undoubtedly one of the best looking games on the PS360, even with its framerate issues. I was also glad to see a return to the more realistic character proportions of AC1, the cartoonish characters of AC2 and ACB have always bothered me.
Anyway, Ubisoft needs to think long and hard about what to do with the future of this franchise. Despite all the crap they've added and changed in AC3 it still felt extremely repetitive and way too familiar to the previous games. It's not the change-up AC2 was, it is merely an extension of it, almost a side-step. I still consider ACB to be the ultimate realization of the AC experience. AC3 is filled to the brim with cut-scenes, non-interactive sequences and lots and lots of dumb, dull, shitty set pieces. They might as well ditch the open world nature of the franchise if this is what they want to do, a linear game. Might be better off, even. Some of my favorite parts in AC2/ACB/AC3 are the linear dungeon-like levels, they remind me so much of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, I always thoroughly enjoy them. I was going to write something like "whenever we get AC4..." but I'm not sure if I'm going to give a shit anymore by that point.
Oh I didn't even touch on the noobified controls, I'll just say this is the easiest AC game out there, and it barely feels like you're even playing it.
Ubisoft has really ill-treated this series.
Well, moderately disappointed with this game. That's two AC in a row games that I haven't liked all that much. Revelations was fucking terrible and though AC3 doesn't quite sink to those depths it is still extremely uneven, with some sections being truly breathtaking and others a chore. I loved everything about the Frontier, first time I reached it I just messed around it for 4 hours straight, it is quite simply gorgeous. I had my doubts that another AC game might be able to reach the beauty of Venice but AC3 really does get close. It's just beautiful. However I don't think the game exploits that scenery properly. If you don't take the time to do the side stuff you won't really see much of it.
In contrast to the Frontier you have New York and Boston, which might as well be one city called New Boston because the two of them are virtually interchangeable with nary a thing to make either stand out from the other. What a goddamn waste of a setting for an AC game. Boring ass cities with ZERO personality, crappy parkour possibilities and just shitty, flat, dull, all-around poor design. It's what everyone feared a game set in this era would be like. The shittiness of these two places is only compounded by how awful the game runs in them. Not just content with having a terrible and unstable mess of a framerate, the game is ripe with stuttering when you are in New York or in Boston.
To expand on the crappyness of these two places, the side missions inside them are also pretty poor. Take the assassination contracts for instance. In AC2 and ACB the side-assasinations you could engage in were fairly elaborate and even came with a little story to them. The ones in AC3 are just nothing. You find a guy walking around the street and shank him. That's it. Lazy as all fuck.
The main missions are mostly okay, except for the stupid war ones. Again, devs simply not getting what the series is about. Frankly, I don't understand the idea behind sticking so relatively close to the chain of historical events. In previous AC games it was just backdrop, you were in a particular era but the stuff that went on was mostly an original story. In AC3 you're virtually the Forrest Gump of the American Revolution. Why? To better sell the game to American audiences? As a non-American I felt little from doing the whole Boston Tea Party thing and riding with Paul Revere(doesn't help those missions were shitty). Nevermind that Connor being such a staunch supporter of the patriots makes no sense at all, and it makes even less sense that he still helps the douches after their true, knwon by all intentions are revealed regarding the indian population. Wat? There are some good sections to Connor's story and I almost kind of felt for his plight, and he is pretty badass at times, but overall it's uneven plotting. The devs were more concerned with throwing you into events in the American Revolution than crafting a plot that made complete sense. And the Desmond stuff is just garbage, from top to bottom.
You know, I can't write at length about this game without pointing out how horrible the first several hours of the game are. Forced to play as another character, feels like an ultraextended tutorial with shitcakes missions and taking exclusively in a shitcakes city. I was just wanted to leave Kenway behind ASAP as I knew Connor was the real main character. I really couldn't stand it. For five hours it felt like the game hadn't even began. What the fuck? Seems to me the entire point of this idea was to "shock" the player with the twist at the end of Sequence 3. Seriously messed up priorities. The 30 minutes you spend playing as child Connor are better than all the hours you waste playing as Kenway.
Frontier aside, I also liked the Naval missions, which seems that have gotten universal praise. The graphics and productions values are really impressive as well, it's almost a generational leap over AC2 and ACB, it leaves them completely in the dust. Undoubtedly one of the best looking games on the PS360, even with its framerate issues. I was also glad to see a return to the more realistic character proportions of AC1, the cartoonish characters of AC2 and ACB have always bothered me.
Anyway, Ubisoft needs to think long and hard about what to do with the future of this franchise. Despite all the crap they've added and changed in AC3 it still felt extremely repetitive and way too familiar to the previous games. It's not the change-up AC2 was, it is merely an extension of it, almost a side-step. I still consider ACB to be the ultimate realization of the AC experience. AC3 is filled to the brim with cut-scenes, non-interactive sequences and lots and lots of dumb, dull, shitty set pieces. They might as well ditch the open world nature of the franchise if this is what they want to do, a linear game. Might be better off, even. Some of my favorite parts in AC2/ACB/AC3 are the linear dungeon-like levels, they remind me so much of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, I always thoroughly enjoy them. I was going to write something like "whenever we get AC4..." but I'm not sure if I'm going to give a shit anymore by that point.
Oh I didn't even touch on the noobified controls, I'll just say this is the easiest AC game out there, and it barely feels like you're even playing it.
Ubisoft has really ill-treated this series.
