xt1me

So I finished AC3…

And well …

I have some things to say.

So I can't really say much about the plot.
These games are pretty old and I only started playing in the first place 'cause fandom anyway. Which means I basically had all the plot points spoiled for me well before started playing the games. So I petty much knew the rough beats of what was gonna happen. That said, I can see why people got so annoyed at the ending.

Spoilers btw.

I knew Desmond was gonna die but I figured that it would be at least make narrative sense. There's lots of times when in a piece of fiction they have a character die and, even if you really like that character, from a narrative standpoint it makes sense. Or at least you can see what they were going for.
So while I can see why maybe they got rid of Desmond to make some kind of finale, and Desmond was never the most popular character in the franchise anyway, I think they kind of forgot that Desmond was never supposed to be the most popular. He’s the player insert. Of course his ancestors supposed to be more badass, that's like the whole point.

But whatever.

I was kind of disappointed though about the way it happens. Never mind the fact that it seemed to happen really fast, that happens with video games, the pacing can get weird, but the fact that Minerva basically said ‘OK fine die then’ is a bit annoying. I would have really liked, if they had to have gone in this direction, they could have put in one line about something about ‘if you choose this path I can't foresee what's happening’. You know, tie it back to the whole freedom versus control thing they were doing the entire game. No wait, the entire series.

It doesn't make it any better that I know they end up doing nothing with Juno. The fact that they solved the Juno problem in a tie in comic book that most people are never gonna read is very disappointing. But whatever. The plot doesn't matter that much, it's only an excuse to string the action along anyway. Not every game has to have a fantastic story for you to enjoy playing it.

Which, unfortunately, brings me to my next point

This was the most frustrating game for me in the series for me to play.

I mean I was trying 100% in these games because I could take my time, I wasn't in any rush. I was there to enjoy these. But there’s challenging and then there’s this.

In previous games, since they brought in the 100% mechanic, sure there's been one or two missions that I've had to redo but usually there's only like 1 maybe per game that's so immensely frustrating that I have to redo it over and over again. The majority of the times when I had to restart admission it was because I didn't understand what the thing was or I missed something obvious or messed something up. The rest of the time was usually the missions where you can't get hit once, which are very irritating, but I never had a really big problem chugging along getting 100%.

Until now.

The amount of times I to restart a mission trying to get the optional extras!
And for stupid reasons as well. The optional targets you need to hit sometimes pop up so fast you can't even register them when you're playing and then only when you finish that section do you find out oh you should have done this thing and that you didn't even see that you're supposed to done so if you reset it again.
There's also the fact that you can't just do mission get one of the optional actions redo it and get another optional extra. In order to get the full 100% you have to get all the optional extras in the set in the one mission. Which means if you muck up a bit at the end or the middle you have to do the whole thing again. And while I appreciate the fact that you can like reload from the last checkpoint if you mess up there are times, like for example on like a timed thing, that you won't find out until you reach the next checkpoint that you've messed up which means you have to redo the thing again. And that's not even taking into account the stupid glitches and like times where the computer itself is fighting against you.

There's one mission where you have to stealthy sneak up and then air assassinate the final guy. Before this you have to run through a battlefield did not get hit. (Thankfully if you know how to do it it's not too hard but unless you looked up a walk-through good luck with that.) The problem with the mission though is that when you air assassinate the final guy you go into slow-mo mode but the alerts on the NPC's do not go into slow-mo and since you can fail the 100% if any of them see you it is ridiculously hard to get in a position where you can assassinate the guy fast enough that you being in slow motion won't tip over the alert system on the NCP's.
I have no idea if this is gonna make sense to anyone who hasn't played the game but just trust me and I say when I say it’s incredibly frustrating.

And the amount of things I had to Google during this game!
Now I've had to look up stuff in previous games. A few of times it was stuff just to make my life easier, like I wasn't gonna sweat being frustrated about something if I wanted to find say one feather in the entire map.
And there's been one or two things I've had to Google because of glitches like the whole thing with Assassin's Creed Revelations that practally didn't work until you went in and deleted a file. There's also that glitch in the last game where the bomb achievement had a really weird way of getting it.
There was also one or two things that just were explained obviously like the fact that throwing a weapon and throwing a dagger was actually two different things, so I had to look up what the difference was get certain achievement in that game as well.

But all that was kind of magnified for this game.
There was so many things I had to Google because I was absolutely stuck and stuff they never explained. One thing that really annoyed me was when I was trying to get 100% in the naval missions and it turns out you can change weapons after you bought the upgrade. I thought they were just upgrading the weapon, not buying new ones. But no, you could change weapons and they don't tell you until one naval mission near the end of it all where it prompts you to complete the mission. It made it so much easier to 100% the navel mission once I knew I could do that. Before this it was starting to get almost impossible.

Now I understand that might seem a bit nit-picky because, honestly, I should have probably gone through all the narrative missions first and maybe then gone back and done all the optional missions and then tried to 100% things. Or maybe done all the missions first and then worry about 100 precenting after finishing the game.
But that's not what I wanted to do. It’s really is annoying it gives you the option to do this at any pace you want and then it kind of screws you over if you do do it your pace.

And then there’s the pathing.

I think it may have been a graphical thing. They got the trees done OK, possibly because it's a new feature, so it's no problem figuring out what parts of those you can climb. Everything else things get fuzzy because trying to figure out exactly which places you can climb which you can't get difficult. Especially on rocks, where it looks like the features and one rock which you can climb are exactly the same features on another rock you can’t.
This can get annoying, especially when you're on a timer or have some other constraint to try and get 100%, and you're barrelling along only to suddenly stop because it's not clear where you should go next.

AC games previous to this were actually very good at this, there were very few places where I had to stop and think about where I had to go next, it was very easy to flow through the games. Not so on this one. There is two separate occasions where you have to escape a cave that's falling down on top of you and you are basically running in the dark. Googling it there was a tip to turn up the brightness on your screen to help which I didn't do 'cause thankfully, with pure luck, I did manage to find the exit after a couple of tries but the fact that it's so badly pathed is not a good thing.

I'd like to compare two parts of two AC game for an example of this.

In AC2 there is a bit that introduces a variation on the jumping mechanics. It's the run up and wall and jump sideways. You didn't have to know this jump to do any part of the game previous to this. In fact, other than this part of the game, a treasure in the room just before hand (which you can go back to as soon as you learn the move), and 1 feather, you don’t need this move at all for the game. That’s not to say that you couldn’t use it before this, but playing the game for the first time you really only need to know after you get introduced to the mechanic. You know, like in a proper video game

Compare this to the part in AC3 where you're underground in New York and there’s a bit where you can tell you need to jump across a gap. However at no point, no matter what you do, can you get it grab onto any part of the wall once you jump. Before this there was a part that prompt you to do the back jump but at this bit there’s no direction that seems to work. You can try forward, backwards, up, down. Any direction you press and jump you'll end up careening off and having to climb back your way back up. I had to Google this and it turns out you have to press up and right and jump in order to get to the place where you can grab the wall and proceed on. At no other point is this made clear there's no prompt. There's no visual cue because the flipping wall looks the same no matter where you look and where you grab onto is off screen anyway. It's kind of indicative of the entire games pathing problem as a whole.

But there's other stuff. Like the fact that having stuff happen when you approach, like the conversations you can overhear, is cute and all but the fact that some things don't appear unless you're nearby on a map it's really really annoying.
There was one delivery request that I was missing at the end of the game and I had to Google to where it was and it was like around the corner from a fast pass that I had used but because I just wasn't close enough it didn't pop up on the map so I couldn't find it.
And at this point I had uncovered the entire map I had gotten the achievement for all the areas for uncovering everything. The fact that you have viewpoints at all when you still have to physically run around to uncover them up it's also extremely annoying. At the very least the viewpoints being unlocked should open up all the little options around on the map. I mean surly that just makes sense. Not to mention if you're trying to get the convoys of stuff you have to be nearby for them to register and that can be really annoying when trying to get some achievements but whatever.

Some of the achievements can be a bit annoying just to figure out how you can unlock them. I mean the frontier you speak to the frontiersman that's fine, their icon appeared in the map so you knew where to go. Brawler’s is the same. But the thief missions just pop up if you pick pocket enough which of course you don't know in advance if you're just playing the game, which means I didn't unlock the thief missions until I was think I was in sequence 11, which is the second last one, because I wasn't doing that much profit pickpocketing (since it’s not the best way of getting money anyway). That said at least it was retroactive so I only like had to do one or two things just to finish it off, 'cause that would have been a nightmare if I had to start from the start.

But the last straw when it comes to all of this, is the glitchy unintuitive interface that they had for the Assassin's missions.
I'm playing on a PC. I understand this is made for a consoles originally, but good grief! I was giving this the benefit of the doubt up until this point but the fact that if you're playing on a PC when you go into the assassin menu you have to click one specific point on the screen in order to bring up the menu is ridiculous. You have to level up your recruits into assassin and the easiest way to do this is to do the assassin missions but the only way to get the assassin menu is to click a point that it's never explained in the game. Even when I googled this all it kept giving me was the console instructions. I finally found a YouTube video of someone on a PC that showed the exact pixel you had to click to get you onto the menu.

That's ridiculous!

It's not to say this was unplayable. There was some good points. I did like the homestead missions. It was cute that you're building up these people in a community. It's nice that these are characters even though they're minor ones. The assassin recruits are all characters as well & you can have little conversation to felsh them out a bit if you want.

I will say though trying to get the Almanac completed was highly annoying because, again, never explained in the game what scanning means. Apparently it involves eagle vision and aiming at them with your range weapon which, of course, I had to Google.

As for the controls. Llisten. I understand this is made for consoles originally and I understand that maybe if you've been playing the games around at that time you probably have a better handle it. I don't know, I'm getting these years later on a PC who's to say. But of all the AC games I have played this one is the one that took me forever to figure out the controls. I'm really glad I could change things because the way it was set out was just annoying as heck. The last game I did change where eagle vision was located on my keyboard just 'cause I found it easier. This game I was fiddling with the different controls the entire way through the Haytham section just trying to get to something that I conceivably could play. Like I tried to get used to their original controls and it was just not working for me.

Things that are designed to be annoying, like that chasing the Almanac pages and stuff like that, that's fine. That's just a bad decision. There’s usually something that you figure they could've dropped but whatever, you do whatever you do. But there were bits where I felt like I was missing something. Like conversations would stop when I'd finish start or finish missions and made me feel like I was missing plot points. There was a number of places that I felt like did I miss something or something not trigger but whatever again, that's more plot and pacing whatever.

But would it kill you to maybe stick with midshots in the cut seems. Stop with all the closeups of you characters, your graphics aren’t that good.
It was nowhere near as bad as say, the Avatar the last airbender movie, but it was still noticeable.

There is one thing that actually did really annoy me.
The whole premise of the 100% thing is the fact that your ancestors were like unimaginable badasses and they were so amazing that they could just finish all these missions without being hit or under a certain time or whatever but you (as Desmond) can make it through the bare minimum of the memory to get the next one. If you wanted to be as amazing as your ancestors you had to fulfil all these tasks just how they did. Thus having 100% synchronisation with said ancestor.

This is the first time that that premise doesn't hold water.
There was one mission where you're tailing this group of people and there's a cart that you can hide in. But in order to 100% it you have to tail them without being caught and without using the cart. Only the next section of that mission it starts with Connor in the cart which means, according to their own premise of the game Connor hid in that cart the first part of the mission. Therefore, in order to 100% it you're not doing Connor’s memories anymore!
They're just more difficult for the sake of it.

It's a minor thing maybe but the fact they're very invalidating their own premise sticks my as incredible short sighted.
The whole concept of the Animus and wondering around you ancestor’s memory is what makes the AC game so interesting. Having the whole why-is-it-acting-like-a-video-game thing be because well it's because it pretty much is one is such a neat excuse for things and you just tossed out the window.

OK, this rant has ended up pretty long.

Let me just end with this.
Did you have to end it so bloody depressingly. Yeah, Desmond’s end there’s not much to do about. Killing off audience POV character is always going to be a bummer. But you could go back in as Connor after the end credits and, you know, type your loose ends like in the other game (though it make a bit less sense here seeing as there no one left alive to be in the Animus, but whatever) and there's one or two little bits that they give you as a kind of epilogue. And like, I understand this period of time is not exactly joyful. What we know is going to happen to the Native Americans is obviously depressing and this whole series is hardly gonna be bundles are happy joy. I mean the Edge-Lordyness of it all is pretty much evident in the title of the series. But would it kill you to have some kind of happiness thrown in there somewhere at the end. The only good thing that seems to happen at the end of this game is the fact that the world didn't get destroyed and it's kind of presented like, well that kind of sucks for you as well since Juno escaped.

All in all yeah, I see where some people can like this game but I can also see why this appears to have been the least liked game in the franchise for many, especially up until this point.

Whatever I've ranted about this enough. I got that tyrant king DLC free when I bought this so I’m gonna have a go of that. Maybe it’ll be more fun