henke on 23/2/2013 at 21:08

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Picked this up today for the 360, a few hours into it now. Off to a bad start when the game decided I must want all the menus and objectives to be in Finnish because I live in Finland. Nope! I want them to be in English, or at least Swedish (because my Finnish is atrocious). The settings lets me change the languages for dialogue and subtitles just fine, but not the menu/objective language! Googling around I find out that I have to quit the game, go to the XBox settings>Profile and change my location to United Kingdom. Starting the game up again everything displays in English. Phew. Ok, on to the game.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST 2-3 HOURS)

Right off the bat I have barely any idea of what's going on. I kill a guy at an opera and then hop on a ship headed for America. There's a storm but we survive thanks to my mad mast-climbing skillz. Next up we arrive in Boston and I'm apparently recruiting dudes for some kind of mission. Once I have a bunch of seedy characters recruited we sit down around a dimmly lit table at an inn. This is nice. It feels like I'm part of a conspiracy. A conspiracy so convoluted even I don't know what it's about. I know we have to find some indians because they might know something about this amulet I have, but that's about it.

So the story is a bit of a confusing mess, but I'm happy to report that the gameworld and the gameplay are rather nice. Both the opera, ship, and Boston are beautifully realized with a lot of detail, and tons of characters milling around going about their own business. The swordfighting is stylish and there are some fantastic setpieces. An early mission where you infiltrate a slaver camp with your crew of assassins is particularly thrilling.

I was hoping this game would be more Red Dead Redemption-ish though, and so far it has felt firmly Assassins Creedy. Up next I'm heading into the countryside to find the Indian tribe. Hopefully out in the wilderness I might finally get some RDR-vibes.

henke on 12/3/2013 at 20:28

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Has anyone figured out how the trading is supposed to work? (Hell, is anyone else PLAYING this thing? Didn't realize it was such an obscure title when I made the thread!) As it is the trading seems to be a lot of work for very little reward. I set up a trade and send a convoy which takes 12 minutes to make it's trip and what do I get? 95 dollars. I could pickpocket twice that amount in half the time! I can only imagine that the unweildy trade is included to serve as commentary: "Crime pays".

That stuff aside, the game has finally hit full steam for me. I've made it to this quaint little seaside town called New York and I'm having so much fun with the sidemissions and bonus stuff that I haven't played a storymission in hours. All the historical trivia is fun to see and experience as well. Walking through the neighbourhoods ravaged by the great New York fire of 1776, riding along with Paul Revere, throwing a tea party in Boston, etc. Managing your crew of assassins and henchmen is great as well. When I was playing ME3 recently I was wishing you had more of a leadership-focused role in the story, but I wasn't exactly sure how that would look. AC3 knows how it should look. It makes you feel like a savvy rebel leader, ordering your troops around and making things happen, while at the same time not sacrificing the more "hands on" gameplay.

henke on 14/3/2013 at 19:52

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Just made a sad discovery. This game has the same problem Red Dead Redemption had. DUMBASS HORSES THAT WONT LEAVE ME ALONE! :mad:

I'm about to infiltrate a fort, so I ride up to the perimeter, jump off my horse, and skulk into the area. I take down the guards outside the gates silently and make my way to the back entrance. As I lean against the wall next to the door I hear a clopping sound behind me and turn around. My horse has followed me all the way over here instead of staying put. "Well, it probably won't follow me inside the fort" I figure. I sneak inside, climb up to the wall walk and dispose of a guard. Then the alarm goes off. "Did I get spotted? I can't have, there are no other guards around!" I think. A moment later I find out why the alarm has gone off when my dumbass horse comes clopping up the stairs. It has ran through the main courtyard just so I could follow me up to the wall walk. However, despite the alarm having gone off the guards don't seem to know where I am. I decide that the only way I'm gonna be able to salvage the situation and continue sneaking is putting this dumb beast down for good. So I pull out my bow and fire at the horse. It staggers, falls down, then gets back up. "I guess one arrow isn't enough!" A short while later I'm all out of arrows and instead of a horse I now have a walking pincushion following me around. The damn thing is immortal. :nono:

Thirith on 17/4/2013 at 07:11

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I've just started playing this, and I'd agree with all the reviews that criticise the game's opening/tutorial section, which goes on *forever*. The whole thing feels a bit like a Westernised Metal Gear Solid, though more earnest than quirky, in that there's little actual *gameplay* and way too many cutscenes to begin with. And I agree with you, henke, the storytelling at the beginning doesn't work particularly well. In comparison, the Ezio games did *much* better IMO, developing the character first and foremost and getting us interested in his plight.

The Assassin's Creed games are weird. You'd think that the games are just a cash cow, churning out one instalment after the other - but then the individual games are all ambitious in the worlds they create and in adding new things to the franchise. On the other hand, some of the new things don't fit in particularly well and many of the additions make the games feel bloated and badly paced. You can't fault the series for a lack of ambition, but the approach they've taken of throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what sticks doesn't serve the games particularly well.

Thirith on 22/4/2013 at 09:26

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I thought the twist at the end of the Haytham bit was very effective, but from what I've heard and read the game doesn't really put it to very good use.

[spoiler]Going back to the first Assassin's Creed, I liked the series best when it presented the Assassins/Templars conflict as more ambiguous. AC3 would have had a fantastic starting point for this, having us play and sympathise with someone who turns out to be a Templar. It seems that they're going back on this, though, e.g. with Charles Lee turning into a racist, power-hungry git.

I'm curious to see how the game develops this, but everything I've read so far suggests that they dropped the ball or lost interest in a more nuanced story. Which would be a shame - the material is there, setting up e.g. a parallel between the two father-son relationships (Connor and Haytham, Desmond and his dad). If the blog posts I've read can be trusted, it would seem that Ubisoft decided its audience didn't want nuance after all but would be more interested in clear-cut good and evil.[/spoiler]

Anyway, I'm still intrigued with the game, but I definitely think it's too bloated for its own good. Rich gameplay, fine, but there is such a thing as spreading yourself too thin.

Has anyone been playing the "Tyranny of King Washington" DLC?