Video Game Review: ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ is a Cruel Mistress

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CHICAGO – About a year ago, after a particularly fruitful perusing of my OkCupid quiver, I started up a conversation with a very sweet girl named Maria. She was in law school, liked cats, bad reality tv, drinking heavily, and wearing heels that made her appear about a foot taller than she actually was. Sight unseen, she invited me to a bar for a drink the very night we started chatting online, and fully prepared to say goodbye to my kidneys, I agreed. My pudgy little heart was smitten, but trepidacious. Two hours later, I was in her apartment and under her covers. Her only rule: Pants stay on. This was fine with me because she had plenty to enjoy above the belt, and my bonzi-tree esque man shrub probably wouldn’t be impressing anyone that night, anyway.

HollywoodChicago.com Video Game Rating: 3.0/5.0
Video Game Rating: 3.0/5.0

Of course it turned out she was bonkers. Her cat had a little cat bed, her bathroom was the sort of mess that deserved its own episode of hoarders, and she really only seemed to enjoy seeing me very late at night after she’d been boozing hardcore with her law-school buddies. As our pants-on relationship grew, I invited her to a party, only to watch her flirt with a guy I’d never met the entire time, in front of all my friends. This, I thought, was the last straw.

It wasn’t; a man’s libido has a habit of circumnavigating things like pride, common sense, and basic decency, eagerly silencing that little voice in the back of your head that looks out for your well being but goes ignored far too often in the face (and legs, and bosom) of physical beauty. I bring this up because “Assasin’s Creed 3” stirred up a lot of the same feelings I had toward Maria.

For the uninformed, “Assasin’s Creed III” is actually the 5th installment in Ubisoft’s historical/sci-fi action adventure series that’s essentially “Avatar” meets “Masterpiece Theater” - except this time Ubisoft has traded Middle Ages serfdom for Colonial angst. The historical story finds you in control of Connor, a Native American by way of cardboard voice actor, as you find yourself entangled in all the trials and tribulations of the Revolutionary War. The modern story is, well, there.

Assassin's Creed III
Assassin’s Creed III
Photo credit: Ubisoft

First and foremost, the visuals are majestic - and they’ll get you. The frontier presents you with a topiary wonderland eager to be explored. There are animals to hunt, feathers to collect, trees to climb, the cities of Boston and New York are equally awe-inspiring in their visual mastery, with more nooks and crannies to explore than a ye-olde English Muffin. As seasons change and time progresses you’ll notice changes to all the major locations. Be it snow, extra buildings, or increased military presence, everything is pretty astonishing to look at. And the animation, oh God, the animation. To watch Connor run and jump and swing is a sight to behold. Graphically it may very well be this console generation’s swan song.

I figuratively dive into games like this, and don’t come up for air until I grow feathers and quack. There’s mini-games, meta-games, resource gathering and management goals to complete, You can get lost hunting angry (or cuddly) animals, earning money to upgrade your pirate ship for the awesome naval battles, and about a half dozen other things that increase the dollars-to-gameplay value exponentially - and that all excludes the main story.

Assassin's Creed III
Assassin’s Creed III
Photo credit: Ubisoft

But none of these features gel particularly well. The resource and crafting games are done largely in text based menus that make “The Oregon Trail” look like a graphical tour-de-force. The hunting and gathering mini-games seem a bit mundane once you get an entire pirate-ship at your disposal about a third of the way into the game. You may be a captain, but those beavers aren’t going to skin themselves, Connor. There’s also assorted board games to play, but somehow spending 15 minutes playing virtual checkers seems a bit…stupid.

AC3” has this terrible habit of making the extraneous content (which is like 55 percent of the game) seem unimportant, rarely giving it direct results on the campaign or properly explaining it to you. It’s like the game is only interested in having you do one thing (the campaign), but figured it should have all this other stuff so it doesn’t look one dimensional or slutty or something.

By comparison, a game like “Mass Effect 2” (or 3) pretty much demanded you take part in some of the side quests unless you wanted the ending where everyone died. “GTA IV” made you take part in the side quests by providing you with excellent dialog in the car as you took a buddy with you to go bowling, or see a show, and “Saints Row 2” made the side quests eye-catchingly bizarre, and still rewarded you with extra awesome guns, vehicles, or outfits. “AC3”’s stuff is just sort of there. Virtual hard work is its own virtual reward, I guess?

What it does do well is give you a pretty compelling story where the main character is the least interesting of the lot. The MGS2ing of Haytham to Connor aside, you run into Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Sam Adams, and a few other folks you may have heard about, fight in revolutionary battles, and help decide the fate of the nation - blah blah blah. I guess my only concern with the story is that if you know anything about Native American History, you know going in that Connor will be getting screwed over by the white man with regularity. But it’s better to experience then read about, because the game does contain subtle nuance and attempts to have things like subtext, which are often times missing from games that are desperate to be like movies.

Assassin's Creed III
Assassin’s Creed III
Photo credit: Ubisoft

Playing “Assassin’s Creed 3” is the gaming equivalent of an emotionally abusive relationship. It will consistently disappoint you, frustrate you to no end, but for whatever reason you can’t help but give it a(nother) second chance. So in the early missions, when you find yourself confused by an obtuse goal, or accidently attracting the ire of soldiers and being unsure of how to get rid of them, you tend to blame yourself. When you’re chasing after a bad guy and accidently climb a fence post you assume you weren’t accurate enough with your control. When you come to an epic battle scene, alert all the guards, and the entire game becomes a big boring melee, you just weren’t patient enough. “I must be doing something wrong” was such a common thought during my time with the game I considered putting on a Lifetime movie.

AC3” never peaks in story or gameplay. It jumps around in it’s time-line, it’s pacing alternates between blisteringly fast and painstakingly slow, and like clockwork, every time the game reaches a truly epic crescendo, it pauses to load, taking you out of the story, and time period, and making you care less and less about the characters and story because you know it’s just going to tease you along until you simply don’t care anymore. It’s a pants-on, not-quite-romance for the ages.

“Assassin’s Creed III” was released by Ubisoft on October 30, 2012. The version reviewed was for the Xbox 360 but it is also available for the PS3 and PC.

By Paul Meekin
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com

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