Assassin's Creed: The American Saga (2012-14)

Assassin's Creed III (2012)  |  Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)  |  Assassin's Creed: Liberation (2014)  |  Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (2014)  |  Assassin's Creed: Rogue (2014)

Assassin's Creed III (2012)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 / Multi | Developer: Ubisoft

Ass III is the third fourth fifth home console entry in the protracted series and is a direct sequel to Ass Revelations (2011). Desmond continues his attempt to avert the apocalypse by connecting to the memories of his ancestors in the deux ex machina known as the Animus. This time he's freeloading in the mind of his half-English and half-Mohawk ancestor Ratonhnhaké:ton, helpfully also known as Connor, during the American Revolution.

It was released just under a year after Revelations. Was it rushed? The brokenness of the experience answers that question. In just three sessions (on PS3) I experienced such delights as doors refusing to open, doors that are open but impassable, mission objectives disappearing the instant I reached them, people stuck inside walls and floors, sound effects happening a week after the event they're designed to accompany, slowdown during FMV and three freezes requiring a console reset. (It went into meltdown once. The picture faded to the colour of winter slush, followed by some kind of demonic voice booming from my amp louder than anything else, as if Pazuzu was in my TV.) A patch was released that fixes some of those bugs but introduces others. If you're not in a position to patch it, then it'll be frustrating.

Ironically, there's a hell of a good game beneath it all. The new additions are broken but the concept behind them is to be applauded. Some of the ideas are pilfered from Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption (2010), but having them in the Glitch Creed series offsets the tired formula with something that seems fresh. If more time had been allowed for coding and Beta testing then Ass Glitch could've been even better than it managed to be in its patched state! When it works it's a definite series highlight and a genuinely thrilling experience.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 / Multi | Developer: Ubisoft

Pop or feed the disc into your machine, allow it to install, get the huge (over one gig) patch to fix all the things that should've been fixed before it was released, sign in or skip the Ubisoft registration and you'll finally be ready to play Black Flag, a prequel to the previous game, Ass III (2012).

It takes the seafaring aspect of III and expands it, giving you full access to your very own upgradable pirate ship and a huge ocean environment in which to jolly and roger around in. Navigating is as simple as turning the bow of your ship in the direction you want to go and instructing the crew to drop sails.

There are occasional hazards and enemy fleets to contend with, but unlike, for example, TLoZ: Wind Waker (2003), the actual journeying from place to place isn't dull. Along the way you can pick up flotsam and jetsam, go whaling (nasty, nasty business), engage other ships in combat and even have the crew sing sea shanties to fill the silence. The shanties are excellent; so good, in fact, that they even got their own soundtrack album.

Once you've discovered a location and synced with it by climbing to specific high points you can fast travel there at any time without having to set sail. Fast travel comes in very handy for side-quests and gathering collectables: Animus fragments, maps, buried treasure, hunting, crafting, upgrading (self and ship), and collecting sea shanty pages are some of what the world offers.

The menus are packed with additional info relating to all aspects of the game-world, from actual historical records of people and locations to transcribed song lyrics.

The story is better than anything Desmond ever had. As Edward Kenway you'll make friends, lose friends and even bury a few. I loved how they deepened the layers of interaction through him: you're an Abstergo employee playing around inside the genetic memories of someone who, at one time, is a pirate masquerading as an Assassin who's masquerading as a Templar. Bravo!

The modern day sections of the game are more colourful than usual, but are still generally crap in comparison to the Animus adventures. Searching for sticky notes is a pain in the ass and playing a variation of Frogger to hack a computer is a stupid premise.

The music has always been one of the best things about the series. In that it excels again, this time courtesy of Brian Tyler. It's been replaying in my head for weeks.

I'd rather not end this review on a downer, but Ubisoft leave me little choice because in order to access small but crucial parts of the game (parts that are on the actual disc when you buy it, not DLC) players are required to create an account with their UPlay division. If you want to acquire all ship adornments and fill your inventory in the one player game, then you need that stupid UPlay account. Consequently, my Ass IV inventory remains frustratingly incomplete. To whoever decided upon such underhanded tactics, I'd keelhaul the bally lot of ya!

What's next? Ass Creed tie-in novels with blank pages? If I sign up to your mailing list will you email me the end of the book? And will it be riddled with spelling errors (like a kindle file)?

Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD (2014)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Ubisoft

Ass got its first playable female protagonist in Liberation. The creation of Aveline de Grandpré, an assassin of African and French heritage, may well have been to address criticisms from gamers up to that point, but to Ubisoft's credit (I give it when it's due) both aspects play a key role in the game. It's not just a quick and cheap cosmetic change.

It uses the Ass III game engine but does interesting things with it. Aveline can change her clothes to best suit the task at hand. Hold back the cries of Women + Video Game + Clothes = Sexism for a second because there's a good reason for her frequent visits to the clothing store. The 'guise' she wears gives her a persona that makes it easier to infiltrate certain areas and affords to her a level of camouflage; e.g. few people will look twice at a slave carrying a box into the servant's entrance of a rich Lord's house. But once in the house the box can be dropped and the hidden blades revealed.

The same play on prejudices applies to the opposite end of the societal spectrum. When dressed as a lady of leisure Aveline can gather information from people in power during their rich-folks garden party, etc. It enables the player to get right into the heart of the action instead of having to constantly hide some place and eavesdrop like a creep.

It takes place in America during the second half of the 18th Century. The astute among you will notice that that's the same era that Ass III is set. Indeed, while Ratonhnhaké:ton was fighting Templar control in the colonies, Aveline was doing her part in New Orleans amid the transition from French to Spanish control of the city. However, while Ass III was from the perspective of Desmond and his useless cohorts, Ass Lib is a virtual environment provided by Abstergo Industries, so the legitimacy of events is questionable - the assassin might not be perceived as the good guy (or gal) all the time. Is it enemy propaganda?

Some good: being on the HDD means it loads quickly. Aveline is a better thief than anyone that preceded her. Play the trading game properly and money will roll in easily. It's much easier to avoid detection from enemies; it's arguably too easy. Chain-kills are fun. Another returning feature from previous games is the glitches; I had to reboot the game four times, which was the second-lowest ever (hey, it's a kind of improvement, right?). And best of all, no Desmond!

Some bad: you can't skip FMV. The emptiness of many handheld games is carried over (see NOTE below). The autosave sometimes doesn't work. It feels short in comparison to the others in the series. It tempts you with the idea that missions can be approached differently depending on which guise you adopt, but that rarely happens; it more often than not restricts you to one specific persona, even going so far as to automatically change it at mission start, meaning the game has a lot less freedom and certainly less replay value than it could've had.

NOTE: Liberation was originally a PS Vita game (2012). The PS3 HD version was a port with additional missions added to compensate for the absence of some Vita-specific touch screen missions, so the firsthand review is relevant to the PS3 version only.

Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (2014)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Ubisoft

Our introduction to Freedom Cry's protagonist Adéwalé was in Ass IV (2013) when he served as quartermaster aboard Captain Kenway's pirate ship, the Jackdaw. FC is set fifteen years after that time, with the former quartermaster now a fully-fledged assassin and Captain of his own vessel.

Things go tits-up at sea and Adéwalé gets washed ashore after a shipwreck. The place he lands is Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In Saint-Domingue black workers are kept as slaves by cruel white masters. Adéwalé empathises with the working men and women, having once been held in similar chains, so he chooses to stay and liberate them using his assassin skills.

No, it's technically not set in America, so why include it in a post named The American Saga? Because it was originally a DLC-only addition to Ass IV, and it continues the story of one of its characters.

It was subsequently released as a standalone title minus the IV prefix in the title. That means if you own the Ass IV disc, you can choose the original partial download. It's the full FC game but makes use of your existing Ass IV install files. If you don't have the disc, you can download a larger file enabling you to play the full FC game in its standalone guise. At full price, when compared to the amount of gameplay that IV gives you, FC is piss-poor value.

The biggest addition to gameplay is the ability to free slaves from plantations. It's your currency while on land. It sounds odd, but guns and ammunition are free as reward for selfless services rendered. The better items can only be purchased once you've freed enough people.

There's an important social message at the game's core that's deserving of wider attention, but most of the expansion feels rushed, from the story to the poorly thought-out progressions and limited number of upgrades. Whereas Ass IV had more in it than it first appeared, FC has less than it first appears. The majority of the locations are nothing more than a tiny beach area with two or three visible treasure chests. You'll visit them once, with no need to ever return. Worse still, the sea shanties are absent, meaning sea journeys feel longer and are mirthless.

The few larger areas that make up the bulk of the game are well-designed and would've fit nicely into IV. It's a shame there isn't more to do within them and that the missions on them are so broken. Of the nine missions available I had to restart six of them because of glitches. One in particular had to be restarted four times because the same glitch made it impossible to complete! That's the kind of thing I'd expect in a beta, not a final product. Well, except a Ubisoft product~.

Assassin's Creed: Rogue (2014)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Ubisoft

I'm never in any hurry to play Ass games (ahem), but I didn't even know Rogue existed until last year. Its launch was overshadowed by that of the first PS4 title (Unity) and the subsequent reaction to the abominable state it was reportedly in. I can't comment on the Unity fiasco, but I'm guessing that anyone who enjoyed Ass IV will feel similarly about Rogue. (Wiki mentions that it's a sequel to Ass IV, a prequel to Ass III, and the final mission is a prologue to Ass Unity.)

It's set in 1752, progressing through the era of the Seven Years' War. You're Shay Patrick Cormac, a (supposedly) Irish assassin who goes rogue, hence the name. Shay believes that by helping his onetime enemies (the Templars) to do 'good' he'll be able to make up for his fellow assassins' bad deeds. It puts the player into the shoes of the series bad guys, even though you're mostly doing the same things as before.

The main differences are that instead of trying to kill Templars you're now trying to survive being hunted by the Assassin Order; it's a real pain in the ass while on foot in NY. And instead of carrying out assassin missions, you're now intercepting the pigeon messages and attempting to protect the intended target. The tools available to you are also the same as before, including access to a ship. But because you're in the North Atlantic a lot of the time, there's a restriction on swimming: stay in the freezing water too long and you'll die.

You won't be able to do all of the objectives from the very beginning, but it's not long before you're free to sail wherever you want, hunting for collectables. Depending on your preferred play style, you can net a ton of stuff before you've even finished the first few memories.

The glitch report: I didn't use myself as a guinea pig this time. I took the patch before I'd even begun. Except for one occasion when buildings went pink/purple, the breaks weren't too bad. Mostly it was NPCs popping in and out of existence. Sometimes I needed to interact with an NPC but he/she was invisible, making it impossible to complete the missions. I discovered that if I quit to the Abstergo building and then went directly back into the Animus I'd be in the same memory, at the recent checkpoint, but with all enemies and NPCs reset, enabling progress.

As was the case with previous games, you'll need to have a Ubisoft account if you want to fill your inventory to 100%. —| U-Play: Give Us Your Soul and We'll Give You Digital Finery. |—

There's a "story expert" listing in the end game credits. I laughed so hard I almost shat myself. But the credits lasted for over thirty damn minutes! I didn't laugh at that.