Imagine, if you will, a video game in which you play as an orphaned hero whose whole hometown was burned down by a dastardly villain. After years of combat training under a wise old hermit, he returns to society to join a secret resistance movement of freedom fighters to help them overthrow the evil empire that is trying to take over the world.
Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Well you need not imagine, dear reader, for this amazing video game is real, and I have played it.
I am speaking, of course, of Assassin's Creed III.
"That is not what you expected the guy to sound like" -- videodonkey.com, Mess Effect
Here, I'll give you a nice unrelated picture to space things out in case you need time to recover from the epiphany I just gave you and gather up the bits of your blown mind:
Ay fam, you good? Aight, I'mma letchu finish.
In fact, one could easily point to the American Revolution as the main reason that these tropes have become such worn out cliches in the first place. So don't think of this as a stereotype, "playing it straight" or a cliche storm. Think of it as our entertainment culture coming full circle. Or something like that.
Anyway, you actually start off playing as Haytham Kenway instead. This is fine because Haytham is a pretty cool dude, aside from his uncanny resemblance to Judge Claude Frollo from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Or wait, that's not quite the beginning, I think there was something else... some generic guy running around a cave?
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| i dunno lol |
Meh, close enough.
As per usual there's the hours-long prologue; in this instance you're doing some suave secret agent stuff shooting fools and stabbing sods. I had already cottoned on to what the first major twist was going to be after noticing the conspicuous lack of hoodies and Charles Lee specifically yelling FOR THE ORDER!, like aren't you leaving something out there buddy, it couldn't possibly be important could it?
Stuff happens, and we transition to the main chap, Ratohnhaketon, and I think the romanization is somewhat imperfect because the Ks sound a lot like hard Gs. I'm klad though that the memory begins when he's a young child, and not as a newborn infant, because that would be really awkward and very painful to sit through, especially if you were running it on a below-spec computer which ran at four seconds per frame at the lowest settings even on the cutscenes. Haha, what a funny hypothetical situation. Childbirth. Haha why did I say that I can be so random sometimes ecks dee.
As a small child Ratohnhaketon is still fairly helpless, possessing no weapons, armor, or clothing dye of any kind. Pressing the run button makes him skip instead. This childhood scene introduced me to the traditional Native American game of "hide and seek", an integral, unique part of their culture. Unfortunately being the clumsy paleface that I am, I had to use his superpowers to cheat my way through.
The resulting segments of Conna's childhood will be recited in poetic meter.
So mote it be:
Iiiin west New York he was born and raised
On the treetops was where he spent most of his days
Chillin' out hopping, droppin like a scamp
All collecting some feathers outside of the camp
When a couple o guys who were up to no good
Started making trouble in the neighborhood
He got one little threat and his mom was dead
And said, I'm moving in with some guy at the Davenport Homestead!
Not entirely accurate I suppose, but it's in the same way that this game was accurate to US history. Turnabout is Fresh play, as they say.
So I found myself running about this generous tract of land, performing mundane errands when suddenly:
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| I get the feeling he doesn't want me going this way. |
WHOA-HO-HO there, Ahkilleez! That is one mighty long piece of wood you're working on there. Maybe we ought to let those lumberjack bros handle this instead? Oh wait, we can't because they're too busy fighting each other and when I try to stop I somehow end up just standing there uselessly for eternity.
For real though, that "break up the fight" homestead mission is a total crapshoot. The first couple times I tried to do it, the control bars didn't show up at all and I was given zero indication of what was supposed to happen. After exiting the mission and restarting multiple times I resorted to looking up guides on gaymefax and youtub, which described some bizarre dual-stick tug of war minigame. This still didn't solve the problem because the game was literally not responding to any of the proscribed button/key inputs. What eventually got it to work was the rather strange process of force-quitting the whole application in the middle of the mission and then relaunching it. This shouldn't be necessary. Ubishit needs to stop treating all their non-microtransaction projects like disposable cash cows, this gayme is turning 5 years old and there are still so many BUUUUUUUUGS.....
It's not all bugs and glitches though. There are indeed parts of the game that frustrate you entirely on purpose. Take the most recent Homestead mission I started:
Norris the miner wants me to stand guard over him while he does some mining stuff.
"It's not far, just outside the property," he says. Okay, so I start following him. Then the dreaded screen fade to white occurs and he has suddenly vanished into thin air.
The quest prompt tells me to "Meet Norris in the Frontier."
The Frontier being outside the Homestead, which is already like a couple acres or more across. Kinda segregating gameplay and story a little here, but fortunately I can use fast travel to get to the entrance. He said "just outside" so it should be close by, right?
Nope! It's a kilometer and a half away in the middle of nowhere wilderness. No fast travel4u.
That's enough of the negativity, let's look on the bright side. For one, adult Connor is a serious hunk. This incarnation of the assassino outfit is rather lacking in swag, but his brawny beefcake build sort of makes up for it. Eazy-O always seemed scrawny compared to the mercenarii and armor bros, but as Connor it feels like more of an even match against the jaegers and big kilt boys.
There are plenty of gimmicks to distract you from the plot and characterization like:
- Naval combat
- Lesser known European board games
- The bow counter
- And my favorite pastime, AIR ASSASSINATING ANIMALS
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| PREPARE YOURSELF, VERMIN! |
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| That hare put up a good fight, but my blade was superior. Yama, motha nature. |
I also gave the multiplayer mode a fair spin - it's not a gimmick. It's a legit PvP game that could have had eSports potential, if Ubisuck gave a damn about competitive balance(For Dinner). Only problem is that not too many people are on the servers these days.
It's like that song goes - we all need someone to lean on.
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| A view askew |
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| Pioneer X Independent confirmed |
Well, there are multiple songs that say that, but you get the idea.
