Assassin's Creed III Review

[JoesshittyOs]

I don't think you mentioned it in your review, but one thing about this game really bothers me.

There's only one "heat" meter. It doesn't matter if you kill only the British guards or only the Patriots. They're both gonna be mad at you. Like, I never killed a Patriot guard, but if you go on a killing spree in British occupied town, they'll still come after you. It's actually a pretty big glaring issue.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Final words, escapist, please improve the quality of your reviews. Make it more professional like it was coming from someone that played games for years and not someone who's just starting out and are awed by moving pixels alone.

I really enjoyed your videos and news, this site got the potential to be a one stop website for geeks......if you would only improve your reviews. If you want people to take you seriously, you must first be serious about your work. Even if it's about games.

 

[maninahat]

The irony of these AC3 threads is that there's always a massive "UK fuck yea!" vibe. Every. Single. One.

The hypocrisy is practically palpable.

If you say so. All I hear are accusations of American jingoism. UK escapists just don't want to be painted pitch black. I'm glad to hear that AC3 actually went for shades of grey.

 

[Greg Tito]

I liked the review. I agree with it but I am fraustrated in some parts and such, but it doesn't really matter sice it was related to the secondary objective (Which I made a habit to get all of them or reload from checkpoint). Also I like Connor...don't know why...

I'm sure Ubisoft wanted you to experience the forest they created and that is why they drag you through the forest. xD (Least there is easy and free fast travel this time)

Also I didn't see the mention of the Navel missions. I found them incredibly fun, and I felt like a captain too.

Would of liked to see more detail in the review, but still hoorah for the review. (I got AC3 yesterday and I love it. ^.^)

The naval missions are both mentioned in the written review and the video. Not sure how you missed that, but I agree, playing as captain is absolutely amazing.

 

[Greg Tito]

Final words, escapist, please improve the quality of your reviews. Make it more professional like it was coming from someone that played games for years and not someone who's just starting out and are awed by moving pixels alone.

I really enjoyed your videos and news, this site got the potential to be a one stop website for geeks......if you would only improve your reviews. If you want people to take you seriously, you must first be serious about your work. Even if it's about games.

I take my work very seriously. Thank you for assuming I don't.

I've been playing games for 25+ years, man. I reject the notion that playing games for a long time means you need to be cynical twat. I'm still enthusiastic for games, and if I find a game that truly entertains me on every level, why the fuck shouldn't I give it 5 stars?

The only answer I could come up with is to satisfy people like you, which honestly is no reason at all.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Final words, escapist, please improve the quality of your reviews. Make it more professional like it was coming from someone that played games for years and not someone who's just starting out and are awed by moving pixels alone.

I really enjoyed your videos and news, this site got the potential to be a one stop website for geeks......if you would only improve your reviews. If you want people to take you seriously, you must first be serious about your work. Even if it's about games.

I take my work very seriously. Thank you for assuming I don't.

I've been playing games for 25+ years, man. I reject the notion that playing games for a long time means you need to be cynical twat. I'm still enthusiastic for games, and if I find a game that truly entertains me on every level, why the fuck shouldn't I give it 5 stars?

The only answer I could come up with is to satisfy people like you, which honestly is no reason at all.

I apologize if I offended you in anyway, I'm only trying to give feed backs that may improve the site. It was never intend as a personal attack, only a criticism towards the review (regardless of who reviewed it).

I actually do agree with you that AC3 is a very very good game, my other post said as much. In design it's close to perfect however the game is also marred by technical issues at least for the x360. Slow downs, frame rate spikes, graphical and mechanical glitches just to name a few.

I only feel that as a reviewer it should be more analytic than emotional, even if we absolute enjoyed and love the game we should also be aware of it's flaws. A 5 stars is a perfect score, indicating that the game is perfect with nothing needs to be added or subtract and nothing to improve upon.

Realistically and logically we know that's a very hard thing to achieve, therefore a perfect score should be equally rare to reflect that fact.

Again, I meant no offense and if I was taken as such I'm truly sorry.

 

[RadioactiveMicrobe]

What's the problem? Greg gave the exact same score to Dragon Age 2

Hopefully 3 deviates from the formula that 2, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 ran with and isn't basically another expansion pack.




And here you are. Note the game, author, and score.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

Sorry to deviate, but what's 2.3? I've got ACII, AC:B, AC:R, and...

No, totally. I was just sitting there for a while like, "...WHAT DON'T I KNOW ABOUT?"

Ah, I added one, my bad XD

But the idea shines through, right? 2, and then some expansion packs.

 

[Greg Tito]

Again, I meant no offense and if I was taken as such I'm truly sorry.

Apology accepted. The only thing I hope you take away is that 5 stars does not imply a perfect game, as you keep insisting. There's nothing perfect in this world, no movie or book in which every page is perfectly written or every shot perfectly composed. A 5 star videogame just means that it is superlative when compared to other games out there. It's not that AC3 is flawless, but it's an excellent game that I think will be fun for years to come.

 

[Voren]

I'm on the xbox 360, installed on hard disk, lots of graphical glitches and slow downs. Maybe everyone's standards are different but for me anything below 30fps is unacceptable, I rather have textureless graphics at 60fps over photo realism at 15.

And that's why AC3 runs on most of the time, 15 to 20 fps with the occasional drop spikes down to 10fps.

Strange. I didn't notice that at all and I didn't even install it on the hard drive. Perhaps it is just a difference in perception. I notice framerate more on my PC when I'm sitting a few feet from the screen, but when I'm on the couch on a console, I usually don't see it.

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring framerate on your Xbox? I've never heard of a app or tool that lets you do that but it might be useful in the future.

For the record I agree with your score of the game, but man this game IS glitchier than hell! Either the copy they gave you was excellent or you lucked out because he's not the only one having problems:

Textures shooting off the lamp lights
Skin colors changing during cut scenes to green and orange
Massive screen tearing when running through a city
Characters going on odd loops
I saw a gun flying in the air
and here I made a video of this one, pardon the shitty quality

TREES shooting texture! what the hell? Did they really not bug test the game? I love it so far but it is irritating seeing constant textures changing colors or shooting off of objects.
There's a bunch of posts about this on gamefaqs, so it's not just a few people.

 

[Saviordd1]

Still hugely disappointed at Ubisoft for deciding to set the game during the gawdem American Revolution. Really it is NOT as big a deal to the rest of the world and it seems to me the French Revolution would have provided a far more interesting (and far more morally grey) storyline.

Though I'm curious to see how "equal opportunity" the plot is as the review was fairly spoiler free, it seems to me that painting the British as the "bad guys" seems far to simplistic and doesn't really fit the more politically neutral tone of the rest of the series.

Actually the American Revolution is up there with the French Revolution and the War of the Roses in terms of "interesting history" across the globe.

OT: Hmm, maybe I will pick it up then.

 

[dystopiaINC]

I'm on the xbox 360, installed on hard disk, lots of graphical glitches and slow downs. Maybe everyone's standards are different but for me anything below 30fps is unacceptable, I rather have textureless graphics at 60fps over photo realism at 15.

And that's why AC3 runs on most of the time, 15 to 20 fps with the occasional drop spikes down to 10fps.

Strange. I didn't notice that at all and I didn't even install it on the hard drive. Perhaps it is just a difference in perception. I notice framerate more on my PC when I'm sitting a few feet from the screen, but when I'm on the couch on a console, I usually don't see it.

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring framerate on your Xbox? I've never heard of a app or tool that lets you do that but it might be useful in the future.

For the record I agree with your score of the game, but man this game IS glitchier than hell! Either the copy they gave you was excellent or you lucked out because he's not the only one having problems:

Textures shooting off the lamp lights
Skin colors changing during cut scenes to green and orange

Massive screen tearing when running through a city
Characters going on odd loops
I saw a gun flying in the air
and here I made a video of this one, pardon the shitty quality

TREES shooting texture! what the hell? Did they really not bug test the game? I love it so far but it is irritating seeing constant textures changing colors or shooting off of objects.
There's a bunch of posts about this on gamefaqs, so it's not just a few people.

Huh, my copy is pretty normal, played it for 13 hours so far and only had a few odd character glitches, once a elk got stuck in a tree which is fine Because I wanted to kill it for the pelt anyway. and every now and then when i kill a guard with stealth his body will twist and contort weirdly but those things have only happened a handful of times in 13 hours of game play none of what your describing

 

[Arkhangelsk]

My biggest problem is the fact that the Order of The Assassin's is spoken of often, but unless you play the side missions and train all the assassins yourself, there's not much to show of the Order. And the story is a bit hard to follow if you don't pay attention to EVERY sentence they say. I couldn't honestly follow who I was fighting against most of the time, and who the Templars defend.

The stealth was present, but was mostly optional, my problem with that is that in this game it's kinda unrefined. How to hide is most often not showed without extreme amounts of trial and error, and the controls fuck it up. So many times I tried to jump into cover only for the game to interpret that as me wanting to jump the guard next to the cover thus blowing my cover.

 

[Voren]

I'm on the xbox 360, installed on hard disk, lots of graphical glitches and slow downs. Maybe everyone's standards are different but for me anything below 30fps is unacceptable, I rather have textureless graphics at 60fps over photo realism at 15.

And that's why AC3 runs on most of the time, 15 to 20 fps with the occasional drop spikes down to 10fps.

Strange. I didn't notice that at all and I didn't even install it on the hard drive. Perhaps it is just a difference in perception. I notice framerate more on my PC when I'm sitting a few feet from the screen, but when I'm on the couch on a console, I usually don't see it.

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring framerate on your Xbox? I've never heard of a app or tool that lets you do that but it might be useful in the future.

For the record I agree with your score of the game, but man this game IS glitchier than hell! Either the copy they gave you was excellent or you lucked out because he's not the only one having problems:

Textures shooting off the lamp lights
Skin colors changing during cut scenes to green and orange

Massive screen tearing when running through a city
Characters going on odd loops
I saw a gun flying in the air
and here I made a video of this one, pardon the shitty quality

TREES shooting texture! what the hell? Did they really not bug test the game? I love it so far but it is irritating seeing constant textures changing colors or shooting off of objects.
There's a bunch of posts about this on gamefaqs, so it's not just a few people.

Huh, my copy is pretty normal, played it for 13 hours so far and only had a few odd character glitches, once a elk got stuck in a tree which is fine Because I wanted to kill it for the pelt anyway. and every now and then when i kill a guard with stealth his body will twist and contort weirdly but those things have only happened a handful of times in 13 hours of game play none of what your describing

Well here's another picture I took of it, it seems quite a few people have issues like this one and some like you got only minors :

That's only one, at times in certain places like in Boston you'll have like 7 of those destroying the sky or buildings

 

[Greg Tito]

if I find a game that truly entertains me on every level, why the fuck shouldn't I give it 5 stars?

I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem many are having is that the review sounded more like a press release or an advert than anything else.

It's even harder to accept the "oh, I just didn't notice" explanation in relation to all the graphical glitches, game breaking bugs, sloppy controls or frame rate issues - especially when even the critics that have been all luvvy duvvy with the game have pointed these out. It's either willing blindness or blatant disregard. But seeing as the Escapist at (convenient) times tries to appear as one entity where the opinions are in somewhat in unison, it strikes me as funny that you take numerous potshots at games like Medal of Honor for said glitches, bugs and mistakes.

Having said that, is it a damn good game? Yes, course it is. It's the first actually playable and fun of the Assassin's Creed games, but there shouldn't be a reason to act all up and offended when people question certain points of validity in a review that can't muster to point out a SINGLE thing wrong in the game.

Oh, I pointed out things that weren't perfect. Connor's not a really well-written or sympathetic character, and the stealth missions can break up the pacing if you're more accustomed to fighting your way through enemies. I've seen a few glitches in the hours I've put into the game so far, but not anything that was game-breaking or more noticeable than any other AAA game out there.

I'm sorry if you think I praised the game too much, but even you agree it's a fun game that should be praised. You just don't like the manner of which I praised it? Now we're just splitting hairs.

In any case, I'm glad you're liking it too. I look forward to ignoring the election results and delving into some naval missions tonight.

 

[Extragorey]

So far, I'm really loving the game. I found the opening with the other character bearable because they were able to draw me into the story. And more than likely, you're going to love this guy more than Conner or even Altair. That first big plot twist of the game made me go "Whatthefuck! But why!"

For some reason though, the combat feels nerfed. I can't seen to pull off multi kills as easy as I did in the last two.

Sorry, mate.

Spoiler

Desmond's already dead. That ship has sailed.

Anyway, I'm still not sure whether Brotherhood or AC3 is my favourite in the series. Revelations was where it started going downhill for me, but AC3 has so many new systems (and renovated old ones) that it really revitalises the whole formula.

 

[ResonanceSD]

5 stars? Doubt it deserves it. How much the escapist gave to AC, AC II and AC Brotherhood?

You haven't played the game.

I'm playing it now, a buggy, incoherent mess, with no respect for the player's time. Mind numbing segments of exposition, with no real free climbing and running in the overworld, small cities, idiotic combat and a SEVEN HOUR introduction.

1/5 would be more accurate, but I think Ubisoft might advertise on the site.