Assassin's Creed III (PS3): You know what? Fuck this series.

No.

I've had enough of this. Back in May of last year I spat some serious venom about this franchise. I complained that the game continues to get away from what I felt made the game awesome.  I complained that they keep dragging out the story without letting it come to a logical closure. I complained that I keep shilling out money to continue to be disappointed. I told myself I wasn't going to do it anymore.

And as if I have no fucking sense of pattern recognition, I picked up and played it anyways....

ASSASSIN'S CREED 3: (PS3)

Assassin's Creed 3(5) picks up our never ending story after closing the tales of Ezio and Altair. The scooby gang of Desmond McDerpydoo, British Von Angstydouche, Unimportant Whatsherface, and now Desmond's grumpy dad are closing in on the location of a shrine of "Those who came before" to hopefully find a way to put an end to the impending global disaster and put a rest of this conflict between the Assassins and the Templars. But as they try to enter they find that the temple is locked away. So in order to find the key to entry Desmond has to, you guessed it, go into the Animus to relive the life of a past ancestor as his team tries to find the keys Abstergo (the templars) have already found.

You pick up as what appears to be an English Nobleman by the name of Haytham Kenway. He is attending an opera in the hopes of finding an amulet that will act as key to the Temples inner chambers. Here you take control and make your first assassination of the game. After completing his mission he takes a ship over to America to locate the temple and takes in a protege in Charles Lee. While in Boston he kills a slave trader and saves a Native American woman named Kaniehti:io. They find the temple but can't enter, and a relationship beings to blossom.

Shortly after this, the perspective jumps several years down to the line, as you take the control of the love child of Haythem and Kani, Ratonhnhake:ton. After a brief hunting mission he returns to find his village on fire, and finding the culprit to be Charles Lee. Raton is unable to save his mother as she dies in the fire.  After a meeting with the village elder and a spiritual journey with a piece of Eden, Raton goes to find the training to avenge his mother. He meets a retired assassin Achilles Davenport who reluctantly trains in how to be an assassin. After Raton is renamed Connor to travel through the cities with more ease, the hunt for Charles Lee begins.

Haythem was actually very interesting character.
That s why the big twist with him is such a punch in the gut.

Usually I stall to write my Assassin's Creed reviews usually because I get it around the holiday time and its one of the last few I get around to playing of my holiday list. This time I tried to get it out of the way early, but I have never been moved to write it. Why? Because really if you have played this Assassin's Creed then you've probably played all of them. I just remember when they announced this game at E3 and the various other gaming conferences how they were going to rebuild the franchise and make things drastically different.

I guess that means all they were really changing is how the hud looks. Because frankly to be honest that's the only thing I really noticed as different. Same style of control, same boring wait to be attacked combat, same hud. Only real changes to the game that I saw was setting, time period, and maybe a little bit of difference on some of the weapon animations. You may notice some significant changes if you played the first Assassin's Creed and then jumped to this one, but if you've followed along it feels like an expansion with no major change to it.

The one major change to the game that kind of felt out of place was the naval battles. Fairly early on you can get a ship and there are a series of missions you can do with them which lead to open sea pirate combat. At first I found this very annoying because they have you trying to navigate shallow waters without destroying your boat and its very intimidating to do. Not to mention, I'm not assassinating anyone so why should I give a shit?

I will say though, that after a few spins on this and figuring out the controls, it was actually pretty fun to learn and play. Although getting money in this game was incredibly tedious so I never got to upgrade my boat, i was still able to take the high seas in calm waves or crashing storms and fight with the best of em. If they wanted to do some kind of pirate themes offshoot game, this would be a great base to start with.

As mentioned building money is tedious. You can save people around the forest to kind of build a small community around your homestead, which then you can use their services to make supplies that you can use for trade and build money, which is then used to upgrade the homestead and your ship. The main problem is its tediously boring busy work. I basically skipped it because it didn't seem to help me progress in the story in any way.

I thought the forest was a nice change of pace for the setting somewhat. You still have a number of cities like Boston and New York for you to parkour around, but I thought using the forest to introduce some of your hunts and kills would be a refreshing change of pace to the usual Assassin's Creed cannon.

That's what I thought, anyway. Much like I complained about at the end of my Assassin's Creed: Revelations review, I feel this series is just getting further and further away from what makes the game fun. Every new edition of this game seems to be a distraction from actually assassinating people. A number of missions that I remember, You basically watch a cut scene and then guards attack. Either you kill them or break after your target when they run to kill them.

What happened to giving me a target, then just sicking me loose into the world after him? Again I go to the Hitman Series or even fuck'n Skyrim for how to do assassinations. Give me a target, give me a location, allow me to use the open sandbox environment, let me follow my mark around and see if there is a moment when they are vulnerable. Perhaps a time of day where the target is without their guard, or in a location where I can make my move and quickly escape into the confusion? Don't just drop me from clusterfuck to clusterfuck.

And really, Assassin's Creed 3 had a great opportunity to really switch up the usual formula to something better catered to that. In a very early stage in the game, Connor is shown a wall of all the targets in the story who need to be killed. Instead of making follow a linear path to kill them one at a time, I think it would have been better served to allow me to go after them as I pleased, and allow me to learn information about the rest as I do.

Or if they didn't want to break up their precious story as they had it written, allow me to go after a few contracts at a time, that way when that group of them died you can proceed with the story in a fashion like you wanted to while still providing me the freedom to actually feel like a fucking assassin. But of course, this isn't how it happened.

Shit like this is what I want to do. Not giant muskety warfare.

And really, it was really hard to feel like an assassin playing as Connor to begin with. For some strange reason despite his background, I found him to be an incredibly dislikeable character. He has the tragic past and the desire for vengeance so I have no problems with his motivations. But every single conversation he has he comes off as an aggressive dislikeable shitdick. He alienates those who try to help him constantly, responds to differences like a spoiled child, and I don't even think the guy smiles once during the course of the game. I never thought I'd ever say this in this series, but I wish I was playing as Desmond.

Thankfully, that is the other aspect of the game that I liked. There are a number of missions where you actually got to play the game as Desmond. Periodically through the game you take a break from the Animus to go on missions to find more of the keys to unlock more areas of the shrine, in this missions you actually get to do a bit of assassinry with Desmond. These are actually probably the closest missions to how I think the game should be played.

Since these parts of the game are done in the real world, and not the Animus, there is no hud for you to use either. its very subtle change that I didn't even realize at first. Some of them require a bit of stealth, sneaking, hiding, and climbing. I can't just charge in. Almost as if I have to approach things as an assassin. Crazy right?

It all comes to a head in one spectacular segment where Desmond actually takes the fight to Abstergo and you get to see some really innovative and stylish kills that Desmond gets to do. My problem is that they didn't last long enough. Now I know what you're thinking, "If they aren't letting you do that many as Desmond, that means they are setting it up for the next game."

Unfortunately, that isn't the case and it brings up the biggest problem I have with the game. This is something I complained about in the Assassin's Creed: Revelation review, and I'm gonna do it again here: The game has no fucking ending.  I don't mean in the shitty "Go buy Assassin's Creed 3.5" way of things.

I'm gonna be a massive prick here and spoil the ending, but Ubisoft basically spent 5 game teaching me that the experience Desmond gets in the animus will make him an assassin.  For a few missions I get to experience this effect in blissful violence. As the game comes to a close the story gets muddled even further and BAM, Desmond is killed off.  They literally tease that the world can end one of two ways, and they just wipe out the main character without rhyme or reason.

They give some very lack luster epilogue while the credits roll before dropping you back in Connor's time to clean up any side missions you have as well as a bonus mission. Don't care, Didn't do it. Fuck this game. I had to sit through this soft science premise for 5 games, all the while thinking that I was training this character to be some elite class of assassin. Before I even get a chance to wet my pallet with this character, he is abruptly taken away from me with incredibly minimal explanation.

I guess I could say this opens up a new path for the story take, with a much more modern sci-fi-ish bent. But the problem is, I don't fucking care anymore. You can't keep taking customer base for granted. People want fucking closure, and just wiping out the main character you've been building for 5 games was not the way to do it. So now we have this new all powerful threat coming threat, and with the way the game ended there is no new hero to take up the fight.

So you know what Assassin's Creed? Fuck you. I'm done. Each release I see more and more of the game I love get squeezed out of this property for arbitrary side bullshit, unintuitive samey combat, tortuously poor story telling, and an overall lack of direction for the series as a whole. I'm not doing it anymore. I've sat back and watched this game get stellar reviews heralding its great story telling and how it accomplishes so much as a franchise that it deserves it praise.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I am not a backwards thinking neanderthal that thinks games can't change, but there is certainly a point something has lost its direction, and Assassin's Creed 3 has definitely fallen into the latter with me. Change the time, change the setting, change the characters, yet at the same time is hasn't changed anything. Same old Assassin's Creed. Feels like all the games that came before it and I'm still no closer to seeing the story end. You want to play Assassin's Creed, go play the 2nd one then quit.

Part of the game I love is in here, but it keeps getting pushed aside for new crap I can barely see it anymore. Until they publicly state that "This is the last Assassin's Creed game" I'm not buying another.