Rushed, sloppy, underwhelming
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Wii U | 7.20 |
| Overall | 7.20 |
|
I'm going to make this short and sweet. First off, the score as many of you would wonder about. I really want to like this game, but it feels like its fighting against itself. If you have never played an AC game before I would give it an 8.2. If you have played some or a lot of AC before this can only be viewed as an underwhelming game, enjoyable despite many flaws. The biggest problem with this game is interface and mechanics, you want to get into this tale and explore and enjoy everything it has to offer. But everything is shrouded behind a fairly archaic control scheme, that should have been improved by now considering that this is the 5th game in the series. The aiming for projectiles is horrendous, the stealth is somewhat broken and so below Splinter Cell you would think that it was from a completely different publisher. The combat is basic QTE spamming, somewhat more challenging but still on the same level as the Batman games - only stiff instead of flowing. The small buildings do not help the platforming in the game at all, instead of designing a game designed about platforming it feels like they just stuck down buildings randomly with invisible grab points for your character to animate over. The "fast" travel can be inexplicable, sometimes meaning that you have to endure 4 loading sequences to get from point to point. Things like having to abandon your horse because there is a stream, swimming across than pressing the horse whistle to summon your horse back is retarded. Missions are fairly boring, go here, kill this person. The only real highlight is the sailing sections and ship battles which are great fun but rare. The side missions are still limited by the design and interface, walk around find a group of dudes, kill them, find the next group etc. Run a letter from point A to B. The story is fairly interesting especially if you are an American history boffin - I am not. Compared to AC2 it seems like a downgrade, details here: http://thevgpress.com/#!/forumtopics/from-assasins-creed-2-to-3-what-happened_2484.html Technically, the things I value about game visuals are a decent framerate and crisp edges - I need relatively little and am happy with Wii visuals in HD. This game is the antithesis of everything I value, the shadows are blocky, even in the cutscenes there is this weird shimmering shadow on the characters faces which breaks immersion. The framerate in the cities drops to 25 FPS or less, that wouldn't be much of a problem but there is noticible pop up which should be hidden by corners, higher buildings or a decent DOF effect. The game can be ugly at times but when in the wilderness almost all the problems disappear and it looks fairly decent. Oh and there are sections set in the present day which are fairly fun but there is this catacomb section where you have to navigate this labyrinth with no map and install these batteries. Very frustrating as the visual cues for what you can and cannot platform off of are muddied. I like AC and I want to play more but at this point it needs faaar more polish and an interface overhaul. The credits sequence is like an hour long and has more people working on it than any other game I have seen of its type. Looking at the end product it's bewildering why? |
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Posted by gamingeek Mon, 20 May 2013 13:18:37
Mon, 20 May 2013 16:17:16
Good review. Sounds in line with what I have read.
Mon, 20 May 2013 16:40:47
Don't know why it got great reviews. Maybe they didn't have more time to play it before the review deadline. I kept reading GAF and thinking that they were overstating things, but they weren't it's just not great.
Mon, 20 May 2013 16:44:10
The stealth is just.... ahhh they seem to stop you from nowhere as you can be surrounded on all sides by redcoats and there are groups who travel around in groups marching about. So you get spotted and have to randomly run miles away to get away from them and the haystacks and safe zones are not marked on the map. Then you cool off and go in for another try and rinse and repeat 4 times. It can be insanely annoying.
Mon, 20 May 2013 16:47:17
I may just steer clear of this even though I originally planned to get it when the price became reasonable but I'm not sure it's worth it.
Mon, 20 May 2013 17:32:51
If you can get it cheap it's worth it, the story right at the end makes me want to play 4. But I don't think I'll be getting it at full price.
Mon, 20 May 2013 17:40:55
It's about £15 online now
Mon, 20 May 2013 17:42:57
For £12 with free postage it's solid.
Tue, 21 May 2013 02:38:04
You know what sucks, when you are like "damn I will stay away from that one" but then you realize you bought the game 5 months ago.
Tue, 21 May 2013 10:30:05
Wed, 22 May 2013 19:36:44
So I started the side quests in the game, was sort of enjoying more freedom outside the main game. Then the reality set in that you just go towards an icon on the map and kill someone/a group of guards.
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