The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Rogue

Context

In terms of Nostalgia, Assassin's Creed Rogue has an odd status for me. Whilst I vividly remembered some of the details of Black Flag before I recently played through it again, with Rogue, all I remember it that I quite enjoyed playing it last time around, but couldn't actually remember any specific detail of the game: who the main character is, the setting and time period, any of the missions, anything!

Therefore, when I started playing through it again, it was somewhat of a voyage of discovery all over again.

The Setting

The "Rogue" reference in the title refers to the fact this time around, you are not actually playing an Assassin, but rather someone who was trained to be an Assassin, but then rebels against them because of what he sees as the Assassin's playing at being God, willingly putting human lives in jeopardy in pursuit of their goals to ensure power stays out of Templar hands.

The fact that Shay Cormac, our hero (or anti-hero) is trained by the Assassins, dispenses with the great curiosity of Black Flag, in that Kenway has the abilities of an assassin and yet received no training at all. So it's nice to get the story back into some kind of logical arrangement.

Irish character + Canadian voice actor = dodgy Irish accent

The location for Rogue is a continuation of AC3 and Black Flag. New York reappears as a location, alongside the other two main maps, which are the North Atlantic and an area called "River Valley". River Valley is essentially like the North Atlantic map, except much more land and more developed settlements. It's a bunch of locations larger than we see in Black Flag, all tied together by sailing through a surrounding river environment. It's a bit of a stretch as far as whether it translates to anything in the real world, but it works very well for the game.

The River Valley map is a hybrid of the open ocean map and large settlements

Time-wise, we have a continuation of sorts from AC3 and Black Flag as well. Rogue is actually set before the events of AC3 and after the events of Black Flag. We get rooted firmly into the timeline when very early on we see a young Achilles (in AC3, Connor's mentor as an old man) and an old Adéwalé talking together. This firmly sets the events of Rogue as being after Black Flag and before Assassin's Creed 3 and effectively sets up Rogue as being the third of a three part series. The difference between this and the Assassin's Creed 2 trilogy is that each episode of this trilogy focuses on a different main character, and really the continuation is more due to convenience than story telling, because the actions of Edward, Connor and Shay don't really affect each other more than setting the background of the world the characters operate in, but to explain what I mean by that is to give away spoilers, so I'll let you work out how it is all stitched together.

The Gameplay

The short version of Rogue's gameplay is that it is a huge copy and paste of the Black Flag game engine, to the extent that even the main character animations are exactly the same, but with the different model for Shay instead of Edward. However, some of the surrounding dynamics of the game are different. For a start, there is a much much bigger focus on "on land" gameplay rather than being at sea, which is hugely welcome because Black Flag massively over-rotated on the seafaring to the point of ad nauseum repetition. There are a few tweaks to the gameplay mechanics as well:

• The "swivel gun" from black Flag is replaced with a "puckle gun", which is essentially an automatic version of the same gun, making it much more useful in a fight.
• A renewed focus on hunting for upgrades, similar to AC3 but not as complicated.
• The "Cormac's Fleet" subgame now relies on standard currency for repairs and docks, rather than the completely unique "precious stones" currency in "Kenway's Fleet" in Black Flag.
• Mission challenges tend to be less random and more relevant. There are not completely manufactured and ridiculous challenges like the "air assassinate from a rope swing" challenge that completely ruined Black Flag's 100% synchronisation efforts.
• The random collectibles on "uncharted" i.e. random strips of land is much reduced. Also, those strips of land are no longer barren featureless landscapes but tend to have their own interesting features.
  

Unfortunately, some things that were crying out for tweaks got no improvements at all. In this case, the elephant in the room is the parkour. It remains completely unchanged from Black Flag and it just as broken. In Black Flag it was forgiveable because there was so little emphasis on climbing around. However, Rogue is somewhat of a return to roots of the series, there is much much more on-land gameplay, which makes the unpredictable and sometimes outright broken parkour the biggest and single most game-destroying aspect of Rogue.

I believe the story for Rogue, the development of Shay as a character, the general balance of gameplay, are all better in Rogue. The potential for these positives to place Rogue as the better game than Black Flag gets completely blown out of the water by the parkour. It is no exageration to say the parkour in Rogue is a constant frustration and annoyance that permeates throughout the entire game. Any element of gameplay which is time based is essentially a fight to try and get Shay to do what you want him to do, and then try again when he doesn't.

I cannot overstate quite how much the bad parkour of Rogue lets the entire game down. If Ubisoft had made any effort to improve it then Rogue would without doubt be considered a better game than Black Flag.

Parkour so bad that it turns fun into frustration throughout the game

As well as the appaling parkour, other bugs creep its way into Rogue as well

• In one mission where I had to protect an ally and his unit of soldiers, after a checkpoint, the soldiers started attacking the main ally, who started fighting back, but none of them were doing any damage. The mission was stuck because the main ally was supposed to lead the way for the next section. I had to restart checkpoint to fix this, which luckily didn't lose any progress at all.
• I finished one mission and then turned invisible during the cutscene, where Shay is talking to another character. When the cutscene ended, Shay died on the spot.
• When exploring a settlement for the first time, I got told the warehouse was emptied like I had abandoned an attempt to raid it, but I was only only on the settlement for 1 minute and nowhere near the warehouse.
• After a fairly large naval battle, I went to board the last of 3 ships, went to the eagle's nest to kill a scout and glitched off the side of the platform and fell to my death, thus undoing the entire effort of the battle.
• I was capturing a fort, where I had to destroy 2 powder stores and kill 2 captains. I destroyed 1 store, killed both captains, went to the marker for the other powder store and it wasn't there. I had to quit and restart and begin the capture mission again.

Summary

Perhaps Rogue isn't as bad as my above focus on the negatives makes out. Even though Rogue is somewhat of a copy and paste of the Black Flag game, there seemed to be a huge focus on building all new original content, which could have made Rogue stand out as a much better installment in the series than Black Flag.

Unfortunately, the focus on genuine content seems to have been at the expense of improving the guts of the game engine, and although there are a few tweaks, these are completely undone by the broken core of the parkour. The other newly introduced bugs aren't great either, but the bad parkour essentially guts the enjoyability of the entire game.

It does strike me that Ubisoft is blatantly starting to "cash cow" the series at this point. They seemed to think they could churn out the same technology and just invest in new content and this would work. Perhaps it's as a result of Rogue's development having a similar timeline to Unity, which I understand was a complete rewrite of the game engine on next generation hardware. Maybe Ubisoft decided to focus most its development resources on Unity as the future, leaving Rogue as a husk for content creators.

The Ubisoft Cash Cow

I don't know what the reasons behind it are, but I do know that Rogue is a potentially good game neutured by technical issues that should have been solved.

Review Score

Rogue is a copy and paste of the Black Flag game engine. The huge plus is that the content is all new and much more complete throughout all the game activities than Black Flag. Side quests are more relevant, tedium is reduced, even the collectibles maintain more interest. If we just had these improvements to consider, the game would definitely deserve an improved score over Black Flag.

However, all the positives are completely gutted by the "worst in the series" parkour, which completely undoes all the positives Rogue brings over the previous game.

Even with the appalling parkour, I still think this game is better than Black Flag. However, it is certainly not as good as Assassin's Creed 3. I don't do half scores, and for me the parkour relegates this to getting round down. Therefore Rogue ends up with the same score as Black Flag, two out of five.

Post Review Thoughts

If you look at the scoring trend, the series has been on a steady decline since the wonderful heights of the Ezio trilogy. Ironically, with the release of the third Ezio game, Ubisoft was accused of churning out just enough content to justify asking gamers to cough up the cash, rather than working on anything truly brilliant. Assassin's Creed 3 went in a whole new direction with a lot of new ideas and yet, somehow, still didn't stack up as well as its predecessors.

Black Flag is the case in point, because the seafaring was truly an epic departure as far as the series gameplay went, and yet Ubisoft completely squandered this by tacking together the basic gameplay elements and then piling hours of tedious repetition on top of it to stack up the game hours.

And then they literally copy and paste the game engine, ironically (again) actually build a better game overall, but gut any positivity by completely ignoring the most basic gameplay element, the parkour, which was badly in need of some care and attention.

So it turns out that the accusations levelled at Ubisoft after Relevations were true, Ubisoft had very much shifted gear into churning out the next episode, putting just enough innovation in to say there were new features and then leaving other parts of the games desperate for improvement.

At this point in the series, the hope had to be that with the switch to the next generation of consoles and a completely new game engine, Ubisoft take the opportunity to do a proper job of making an Assassin's Creed game and move away from taking the approach of just making it good enough to shove it to release.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag + DLC

Context

Assassin's Creed 3 came out in 2012, and just one year later we see another installment in the series churned out with Assassin's Creed 4, Black Flag.

At this point, my reminiscing about playing through the series the first time around somewhat blurs together, and I stop losing track of how excited I was or not for the next game to come out. That being said, I do distinctly remember playing the first missions of Black Flag when it first came out, and some of the big differences in this installment, most notably locations being broken down it much more numerous but smaller areas.

However, I don't remember the ending of Black Flag, which is the first game in the series where this is the case. That doesn't bode well for playing this through again, but let's see how we go second time around

The Setting

Black Flag is set during the time of the height of piracy, and major historical pirates are present in the game, the highlight of which is Blackbeard himself! Our protagonist this time around is a chap called Edward Kenway, and it is somewhat of an Enigma with how how he fits in the Assassin-Templar war.

The eagle eyed (or brained) among us will note that Edward shares the same surname as Haytham, and although it is not remarked on in the game very early on, I believe the build-up to the release of the game mentions that he is Haytham's father.

So that explains how Haytham ends up mixed up with the Assassins and Templars, but not Edward.

His introduction into this world of Assassins and Templars is by sailing with an Assassin turning defector. After the ship ends up destroyed by a storm, this Assassin and Edward end up being the only survivors (conveniently) and Edward ends up taking the Assassin down out of a sense of injustice. Edward then begins impersonating the Assassin to complete his delivery to the templars and then get some pay for his troubles. Thus we begin to discover the main thrust of Edward's character, which is that he is largely driven by opportunity and profit.

However, prior to the start of the game, Edward is completely unaware of Assassins and Templars, it's not explained that he has any ancestry in relation to them, and yet he has the full range of abilities of an assassin, can parkour around the place and air assassinate enemies like a fully trained assassin, even though he's only a pirate. It also remains unexplained how, for the most part, his developing relationship with the Assassin's is mostly one of uneasy truce, and yet he ends up doing a bunch of missions for them anyway.

The story of Edward himself, and the development of his character, is actually quite good, but his association with the greater story of the series is convenient to say the least, and I have to say I don't like that. As a sneak preview ahead, the main character in the next game is fully trained by the Assassin Order, so Edward's abilities here are a complete aberation. It doesn't make any sense. This pathway of contrived convenience for the sake of the game continues elsewhere as well.

Regarding the location, Black Flag is set around the Caribbean seas and associated port towns of the time. However, with the design of the locations, really you could be anywhere. You get the sense that you are somewhere around the Americas in colonial times, but other than that it doesn't really matter. The larger towns are a blur of sameness, the small port towns and settlements all basically look the same, and the million random little island are literally copy and paste designs to a great extent.

The Gameplay

The first hour of play is pretty good fun and brings a new direction and feeling from previous installments. You begin chasing down a rogue Assassin on a relatively small and undeveloped island. There is only sand, palm trees, basic wooden platforms lashed together with rope, rock formations to climb up and the like. Not a building in sight to parkour up as you chase down your target. There is a lot of island wilderness in Black Flag, I guess this is not a completely new development in the series with the Frontier in AC3, but with the island and seafaring setting, it feels new and means the start of Black Flag is quite exciting.

It's not long before you being enjoying what is, by far, the biggest new feature of Black Flag; the Naval gameplay. The seafaring aspects of the game are hugely expanded from AC3. Seafaring is no longer a strict mission-based affair and is now central to the open-world gameplay. Moving from one location to the next is originally only possible by sailing to where you want to go, although you unlock fast travel by synchronising the viewpoints in each place.

Also, the seafaring gameplay mechanics are hugely expanded. AC3 saw the use of the side cannons and swivel guns, but now we also have mortars, a tremendously powerful weapon, and battering rams. In addition to the new ship weapons, you can now also incapacitate ships and board them, which serves to bring additional options like using boarded ships to repair your own, to reduce your wanted level (somehow, no idea how that works) or to add to your own fleet for the sub-game.

Naval battles: Tremendous fun for the first 50 times.

To begin with, all these new gameplay mechanics are tremendous fun. And it is very fulfilling to go through the process of upgrading your ship and taking on bigger enemies, to get to the point where you essentially rule the seas.

The problem is, as seafaring is around 50% of the game, and I've essentially explained the most of what there is to it, you end up doing the same thing over and over again well past the point of doing it for fun.

Boarding ships gives up twice the cargo then destroying them and collecting the flotsam. As you need this cargo to upgrade your own ship, expect to be boarding ships ad nauseum. In the middle of a major battle with multiple ships but want that booty? Have no worry, the battle will conveniently go on pause whilst you board the one ship to pillage it.

By the end of the game, I reckon I must have boarded ships at least a hundred times. It wears thin, to say the least.

There's another new type of gameplay in Black Flag as well, which are the underwater areas. Once you get a particular upgrade to your ship, you can investigate and swim around underwater wrecks for yet more collectibles. There's actually a lot of original design throughout these levels and no one location is really much like another. However, these sections of the game have a fundamental flaw. A lot of locations have you dodging sharks and, in principle, you can do so by keeping out of line of site or keeping within clumps of reeds on the sea bed. The problem is that you move very slow and the sharks quite fast. Also, unless you can keep them on screen, which generally you can't because they'll be above you and you'll be on the sea bed, you have no idea which way they facing, which doesn't really matter much anyway because they'll have turned around long before you get to the next hiding spot. In the end, the sharks become largely unavoidable, and you'll have several chomps taken out of you as you move around. The best solution is to use the air barrels for health as well as air rather than worry too much about avoiding the unavoidable. Great stealth mechanics, these are not!

The excessive tedium applies to the collectibles as well. There is something like 80 collectibles in "uncharted" locations, of which the vast majority are tiny strips of sand above the waterline or a tiny strip of accessible land stuck on the side of a larger island. These areas have no defining qualities at all, and only exist so you can sail to them to pick up a collectible. These uncharted collectibles are the ultimate of contentless, empty gameplay. Just spend your time sailing to the next island, jumping off your ship into the sea, swimming to the island and grabbing the collectible. Then if you are lucky there'll be a moored rowing boat you can use to fast travel back to your ship, or more often then not there is no sailboat, so it's back in the sea and swim back to your ship. Literally Ubisoft added 10 hours to the game with this crap.

Visit an endless number of barren locations like this just for the collectibles

This repetition persists into the on land sections as well. The 50% of the game which is on land is much like previous installments. In AC3, we saw the parkour mechanics simplified, somewhat to the detriment of the gameplay. Unfortunately, in AC4, the parkour takes an additional turn for the worse. There is no change in the controls, but a huge change in how it works. Edward, will get stuck between different height stones on a fort wall instead of leap over the edge into the sea, this enabling him to get spotted by a guard and break the optional challenge for a mission. He'll frequently climb up the side of a building and when he gets to the edge of the roof, just stop there rather than climb up onto the roof. When running across rooftops, he'll also often opt to drop down to the lower platform you can't see, rather than make the leap to the next rooftop you can see.

The really bad parkour ends up not being too much of a big deal mainly because there's much less need for it in Black Flag. 50% of the game is at sea and even when you are at land, the locations are much smaller, tend to be relatively simple in terms of buildings. The most annoyance I had came from an early mission where you have to sneak around a fort undetected, I had to change my plotted course around the fort three times, not because of any intentional design or device in the game, but because the bad parkour means what should work, doesn't, and you have to change your course once you accept that Edward is not going to be able to go this way because he'll opt to drop down a deep crevice rather than just up on the roof right next to you.

And to top it all off, the ultra-dumb floating page collectibles returns in Black Flag as well, so you can have great fun running after those whilst Edward does the opposite of what you want him to.

Summary

From the perspective of the average Assassin's Creed fan, Black Flag seems to hold a lot of appeal for many gamers. I guess I understand why, because on the surface of it, the sea battles are a blast. However, considering Black Flag as one of the better Assassin's Creed games overlooks an incredible amount of endless tedium. The game had huge potential to add to the series, especially with the seafaring gameplay, but it all completely drowns in a sea of generic design and empty content-less filler. Boarding ships becomes tedious after the literal 100th time. Although Edward's character development is pretty good, the convenience of his full-on assassin abilities even though he's apparently never heard of them before is the height of plot convenience, Edward's abilities are unexplained.

For me, Black Flag is the worst of the series so far.

DLC1: Aveline

The Aveline DLC is a self-contained one to two hour episode where you step back into the shoes of Aveline de Grandpré, from Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. Quite what the relevance is of Aveline popping up again in AC4 is not clear, especially as the mission she is on is at the request of Connor, from AC3. Maybe it was a left-over mission from either of those that didn't quite make it, so Ubisoft stuck it onto AC4.

The Aveline DLC returns back to the normal basics of Assassin's Creed on land, and to be honest, after the soulless repetition of Black Flag, it is a welcome change of pace. It's not particularly spectacular, completely linear and the parkour issues of Black Flag persist, but somehow the issues do not overcome the welcome change of pace, and this DLC is fun for the short time it lasts.

DLC2: Freedom Cry

The second DLC is more like a traditional DLC. Similar to AC3's DLC "The Tyranny of King Washington", Freedom Cry is more of a mini-version of Black Flag itself. It comes with its own collectibles, upgrade system and game mechanics. Unlike Tyranny, however, Freedom Cry is not linear in that you are free to explore the open-world in parallel to completing the main story missions.

Freedom Cry sees you playing Adéwalé, an ex slave who was Edward Kenway's Quartermaster in the main game. As an ex-slave during the continuation of rampant slavery in the Americas, Adéwalé's relationship with the world is obviously much different to Edward's, and it is reflected in some of the basic game mechanics.

Firstly, Adéwalé is essentially constantly under suspicion by the guards. They won't react to his mere presence, but if Adéwalé does anything against the oppression of his people in sight of guards, they will react aggressively, regardless of what that action is. Alongside this, there is obvious oppression and cruelty against slaves all the time. Adéwalé can act to free his brothers and sisters in many of these situations. Not only is one of the upgrade paths based on the number of slaves freed, but some main missions are locked off until Adéwalé has reached certain milestones.

Some "everyday" situations will result in the death of the slave if Adéwalé does not intervene, which may make the player feel compelled to act. However, these situations are commonplace, and so you get to the point where you think "Should I risk the mission I am on to kill this slave's pursuer, knowing that if I don't, the slave will die?" It's a very effective way of getting Adéwalé's situation to resonate with the player, he sees oppression and cruelty all around him, but if he takes the time to help every person, he puts at risk his efforts to combat slavery at large.

Treating humans as property. Do you intervene at the risk of your main objectives?

The plantations are transformed in the DLCs as well. For Edward, they were seen as a way to loot resources from the authorities if you can dodge the guards and find the key that opens the warehouse. If Edward was spotted, the only risk was to him. For Adéwalé, plantations are basically slave camps. Adéwalé's goal is to kill enough overseers (guards, basically) so that the slaves can break free and make a run for it. However, if Adéwalé is spotted, not only will the guards start coming after him, but they will start killing slaves out of spite as well. The overseers would kill slaves rather then see them freed.

Personally, I feel Freedom Cry does an excellent job of inviting the player to see slavery from the side of the oppressed rather than the oppressors. I find this actually quite fitting given the current day situation with the Black Lives Matter movement, the roots of which stem all the way back to slavery and how the same racism persists today.

Adéwalé manages to capture a ship, which gets crewed with slaves he has freed, thus continuing the sea-faring elements of Black Flag. However, in Freedom Cry, much more time is spend on land than at sea, which eliminates a lot of the repetition of the seafaring parts as well.

In terms of size, Freedom Cry's map is a mini-version of one of Black Flag's hub maps, maybe a quarter to one third of the size. There are around 13 main missions, an upgrade and collectibles system just for the DLC and all new everyday events. It's a well considered, insightful and enjoyable add-on for Black Flag, completely unlike the relative stale King Washington add-on for AC3.

Review Score

I feel like this will be my first controversial score, because so many folks seem to have Black Flag as one of their favourites in the system. For me, the foundation of what could have been a great Assassin's Creed game are there, but it has been completely ruined by piling repetition upon repetition on the basic gameplay. The main missions and Edward's character development are fairly well written, and Edward's role is quite a major one as far as the overall series goes. However, outside of the main story, everything you do in this game, you'll end up doing again and again and again until by the end of it, the initial fun of the first few hours and relatively little time spent on the main missions will get swallowed up by the hours and hour of repetition you'll face if you try and 100% complete the game.

For me, Black Flag is not only not a highlight of the series, it's actually the worst game in the series so far for me. I have fonder memories of playing and finishing Liberation then I do Black Flag.

It's a 2 out of 5, the worst score so far.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation

Context

Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation is unlike any of the previous entries in the AC series. This installment was originally released on hand-held devices only, and as one may expect, is a somewhat slimmed down version of the full Assassin's Creed experience. Later on, however, the game was "remastered" for release on main consoles, with upgrades to the graphics and game engine to fit the more powerful hardware.

Of course, "upgrade" is in the context of the graphics being simpler in the first place, so relative to the other regular installments, the graphics and gameplay remain simpler even with the upgrades.

I only ever played the main consoles releases first time around, so I was interested to see what kind of experience Liberation would bring.

The Setting

The setting of Liberation is also somewhat of a departure to the rest of the series. The link of the main protagonist, Aveline de Grandpré, to the modern day is only by story, there is no actual gameplay in the modern day in this game. Also, we are not really made privy to what relationship Aveline has with being relived in the Animus. Who is she the ancestor of? We don't know.

That being said, the game is no lesser for the modern day element being absent. In fact, the slimming down of the some of the usual Assassin's Creed tropes ends up make the game better for its simplicity.

Aveline is the daughter of her ex-slave mother, Jeanne, and her mother's benefactor, the French merchant Philippe de Grandpré, who freed Jeanne. Aveline's mother went missing when Aveline was still quite young, so she continues to live with Philippe, and Phillipe's now-wife Madeleine de L'Isle, who acts as a kind step mother to Aveline.

Considering her childhood trauma and her membership of the Assassin Order, Aveline ends up being an amazingly well adjusted young woman.

The main location of the game is a very simple rendition of New Orleans. As this is an originally hand-held game, the compexity and size of the city are much reduced from previous installments, but this is not a particularly bad thing.

The other main setting is the Bayou, which is a swamp like area. The limited size here is thankful, because traversing around the bayou, with its canoes, alligators and over-dense vegetation is somewhat of a pain in the arse, kept in check by the fact that actually one end of the map to the other is not that far.

The bayou area: Swimming, canoeing, treetops, alligators, impassable vegetation...

The Gameplay

With Conner in AC3, we were led to believe that due to Connor's mixed heritage, he was equally as accepted by his tribe as well as the Colonists. With Aveline we go a significant step further in being led to believe that she can pass either as a slave or as a noblewoman, which leads to the main new feature in the gameplay, the "persona" mechanic.

Aveline has 3 basic guises that she can operate under:

• Dressed as an assassin. Aveline can use her full repertoire of weapons and parkour up buildings, but attracts suspicion on sight with any guard.
• Dressed as a slave. Aveline can wander around largely ignored and even infiltrate some guarded areas by blending in with the other slaves. Aveline can parkour up buildings but attracts suspicion if she is seen doing so. As a slave, Aveline can use some weapons, but not the full assassin repertoire.
  
• Dressed as a noblewoman. Aveline can wander around without suspicion and use her beauty and elegance to charm some men and guards into doing her bidding. Initially she is weaponless, but after a while is given a dart gun disguised as an umbrella, which is actually somewhat of an overpowered device. Dressed like this, Aveline cannot parkour and can't even run, limited to a fast walk only.

Aveline's three personas: The lady, the assassin and the slave

It's an interesting idea, but one that proposes as many problems as new interesting features it brings. In the end, the impact of the personas somewhat blends into the background, as the game contrives to make any persona change extremely convenient, which somewhat reduces the impact of playing as one persona over another in any mission. Most of the time you'll either start in the correct persona already, or will saunter along to a conveniently located changing station before you proceed any further. There are only a very small number of times that you'll want to change gears and switch personas mid-mission.

In keeping with the rest of the game, missions tends to be very straightforward and short, and somewhat easy. For me, this presents a welcome change of pace in the series and is mostly quite enjoyable. However, one of the very last missions in the game gets piled up with the worst of the complications and mechanics we see in AC3. I don't know why game developers think they need to spice things up right at the end of the game with changes like this, it's quite annoying when you go through 95% of the game doing the same thing and then for the last missions have to forget how you've been playing the game previously.

However, the worst thing in Liberation is the collectibles. Luckily, the "moving collectible" like the almanac pages in AC3 is gone. To replace it, we now have collectibles that only show up if you are in the right persona. They won't show up on the map or be visible in the game, although sometimes you do get a message on the screen hinting that there is something around here if you switch to the right persona.

To make it worse, even when you are in the right persona, collectibles don't show up on the map until you are close to them, and they don't all persist when you move out of the area. To put the icing on the cake, there are no trackers for how many of each collectible type you have, of what is remaining, making it an absolute chore to keep track of them unless you are manually maintaining your own list.

The parkour mechanics in Liberation are not too bad, probably due to the simplification of the terrain. The main annoyances are the slave persona running up walls when you don't want her too, thereby increasing her notoriety and making guards taken an interest in you. The main issue is that there is a much increased sensitivity in identifying parkour targets, and Aveline will often jump to the point next to where you wanted her to go. Make sure you don't aim just to the side of the plank sticking out of the side of the building, because Aveline will happily jump there, miss the plank and sail through the air.

There is just one checkpoint race in the game, and thank god for that because it's completely moronic with the sensitivity of the parkour. It must have taken me close to 50 attempts to complete that checkpoint race, tweaking and tailoring the course I take to maximise the chance Aveline will actually jump where I want her to.

The checkpoint mission: A nightmare thanks to the oversensitive parkour

Lastly, there is no fast travel in the game to speak of. Actually, it does have points at the edges of maps it calls fast travel, but you have to actually go there, and all it does it take you to another map, so it's not actually fast travel at all.

Summary

Despite the issues, the simplicity of the game is what makes Liberation a fairly enjoyable romp. It's not overly difficult apart from one or two ridiculous missions and the relative lack of complexity makes this a much more laid-back game to play.

There are links to other Assassin's Creed characters in Liberation. At one point Aveline turns to Connor for assistance and, bizarelly, Assassin's Creed 4 has a short self-contained DLC that has you controlling Aveline again on a mission for Connor (even though nothing else in AC4 has anything directly involving anything to do with AC3, apart from the story continuity).

Therefore, playing Liberation does fill-in some minor pieces of the Assassin's Creed history, and the game itself is largely good simple fun. If you end up not playing Liberation as you go through the series, you won't miss out on any key pieces of the overriding story. Aveline's story is quite self-contained and, although she does have some involvement with precursor relics, it doesn't relate to any storyline in any other game.

But I'd still recommend playing Liberation because it is a generally unique and laid-back experience.

Review Score

There is some difficulty in assigning a score to Liberation, which is down to the roots of the game as original for hand-held consoles. It's clear that Liberation is essentially a cut down version of a "normal" Assassin's Creed game, everything is simplified including the plot, the game mechanics, the size of the maps. Therefore, if you want to try and be fair to score the game in relation to the other "main" installments, you might want to knock a point off for the simplicity.

However, I don't believe that is really fair, because Liberation is an enjoyable experience. Therefore, I will score the game in context of the fact that it is a simpler version of an Assasin's Creed game and therefore I'd expect a player to either buy it for maybe half the price of a regular entry in the series, or actually Liberation is a freeby if you buy the remastered version of AC3. Therefore, against these considerations, I give Liberation the same score as AC3, 3 points, even though that doesn't mean you are getting the same depth of experience.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed 3 + DLC

Context

The release of Assassin's Creed III brings us to 2012. Assassin's Creed II was very well received, as were the two follow up releases. However, with three games being released in fairly quick succession based on one character, there were accusations that Ubisoft was churning out the releases without doing any more work then they had to. A harsh criticism, as every iteration of Ezio's series did bring new mechanics with them, and the third was set an in entirely different locale. However, there was a feeling that a change was now due, if not overdue.

Assassin's Creed III sets out to deliver that, with a brand new character, a brand new location and point in history, and brand new features that are unlike anything previously seen in the series. AC3 was quite an ambitious project, so can it deliver on the promise of this ambition?

Ratonhnhaké:ton, a.k.a. Connor

The man himself

The main protagonist of AC3 is an indigenous American called  Ratonhnhaké:ton by his own tribe, but chooses the Western name Connor in order to aid his dealings with the colonials. Connor's link to the Assassin order comes twice over, from his maternal ancestry, essentially in relation to his tribe's sacred duty, and also from his paternal ancestry as his father is not from the tribe but is mixed up in the Assassin/Templar feud.

A lot of Connor's character is honest to the point of naivety, as a half-British half-Indigenous American he is accepted by his tribe without question and brought up the same as any of his peers. However, we are led to believe that his half-British heritage means he can pass for a colonist as well as a member of his tribe, and this means he can just take part in Colonial society whilst only being a minor and occasional victim of racism, normally restricted to name calling and chest-beating aggression. It would be much more likely that his half indigenous heritage would be completely rejected by a nation of people still in the grip of industrial-scale slavery, but I guess this convenience is a requirement to make the story work.

Ultimately, Connor is a much less relateable person than Ezio. He is honest and virtuous to a fault, and surprisingly naive about dealing with the colonists. He gets involved in the push for independence and laments the machinations of politics and the telling of lies in order to aid one's cause, but ends up going along with it all anyway. In the end, Connor comes across as a bit of a whiner and although he ends up cutting a somewhat powerful figure as a result of the change he leads, once you've finished the game, you won't really care much about him, unlike Ezio.

The Setting

In contrast to Connor, the location and setting of the game is quite interesting, taking place over the course of the American push for Independence from Britain in Boston, New York and the Frontier.. Maybe it's because I'm a Brit, but I find this particular point in America's history to be quite fascinating, and many of the events that unfold in the game are based on heavily on real events, like the Boston Tea Party. After each mission, I was looking up the new information in the Animus database to see the details that the mission was based on, then looking it up separately in Wikipedia to see how much of it was true.

In AC3, Connor is a key part of the Boston Tea Party.

The modern day setting for AC3 is the next chapter of the story of Desmond Miles. The team of assassins make their way to a precursor site hidden in a cave, that they identify the existence of at the end of the previous game. The progression of this story alongside Connor's progress culminates in a major moment in the history of the series. I won't say any more about the plot in case you haven't played this game before. Suffice to say that in some AC games, the modern day plot is little more than a sideshow, this is definitely not the case in AC3.

The Parkour

Essentially, the two main additions to the game are the new types of terrain you can free run through, and the Naval missions.

Parkour is no longer limited to climbing up buildings, but can now also be used to move around the frontier, especially climbing up trees and running across tree tops. One might be skeptical about how the game's parkour would cope with such free-form structures as trees, but generally it works surprisingly well and it is not really difficult at all to move through the frontier at quite a pace across the tree tops.

Trees also make appearances in Boston and New York and can be used to switch from one building to another or perch on in order to make an air assassination.

Connor can run across treetops with surprising ease.

Unfortunately, there is another change to the parkour in AC3 which is not nearly as welcome. In previous games, you could press a button to parkour and then press an additional button when you want to climb up or drop down. In AC3, there is only the one parkour button. I believe the reason for this change is related to the climbing across trees. With the parkour button held down, Connor will only make safe movements between branches, so you can be sure he'll make the jump to the branch on the adjacent tree. If you want Connor to make a risky move or just move fast, you can press the jump or drop button and he'll make the move even if it kills him.

However, down on the ground, this change is all negative. In the AC2 trilogy you could run around safe in the knowledge that Ezio is not going to start jumping on anything until you press the right button, but in AC3, Conner will now leap on top of the small stack of crates that you meant to run past, or start climbing up the corner of a building rather than turn round the corner. These issues are especially prevalent during time sensitive missions, as far too often you'll be cursing Conner making a wrong and time wasting move rather then going where you want him to.

The glitchy parkour combines with another dumb addition to the game, which are the Almanac page collectibles. When you get close to one of these collectibles, they will magically catch the wind at that point and start flitting through a pre-set path at some pace. Generally, the only hope you have to catch them is to be approaching one deliberately and then run after it, across buildings and tree-tops, without making a single wrong move. The annoyance is tempered a little by the fact that each page has two possible paths based on what direction you approach it from. Be prepared to be trying to catch some of these on a second or third attempt!

Aye, Aye, Captain!

The other major addition to the game, and one that is all joy, are the Naval missions. Connor gets himself a ship which enables him to embark on a lot of quests, almost exclusively sidequests, but some of the best fun to be had in the game.

Command and upgrade your own ship in the naval missions

Your ship, which is upgradeable, basically consists of side cannons and a pair of swivel guns, the cannons are for major damage and the swivel guns are for precision shots and smaller targets. I’m someone who is not really into all-out action-packed games, particularly button mashers, which is why the AC series suits me very well for the most part. However, the Naval missions definitely are action packed, and they are a tremendous amount of fun. Outside of general ship combat, you’ll need to navigate narrow straits and push back against devilish cross-winds. In some of the best sequences, you’ll be battling in major storms and having to brace against freak giant waves as well as dodging cannon fire. The naval missions in AC3 are a complete departure from anything before and hugely entertaining to play.

Summary

Overall, AC3 has a very different feel to it than the AC2 trilogy. It does come with some sizeable baggage that has to be patiently managed (and sometimes with forced calm), but overall it does enough with the American Independence setting and particularly the Naval gameplay to be completely worth it. Plus, as an aside, you’ll miss out on the modern day story in a confusing way if you jump straight from the AC2 trilogy to AC4.

The DLC: The Tyranny of King Washington

The story of the DLC is based on a "what if?" scenario that is meant to take place right after the end of the main game. The title is well crafted, as the player is left thinking ,"How can George Washington be a king?" and indeed, at the start of the DLC, Connor finds himself in a world that makes no sense, and interacting with people that he knows are dead. It's only when you get to the final quarter of the story that you can start to guess what is going on, and right at the end it all gets stitched together.

Unfortunately, the intrigue of the story is the best part of the DLC, the rest of it doesn't have much going for it.

The DLC is broken down into 3 chapters, which each taking part in one of AC3's major locales, the Frontier, Boston and New York. You are restricted to the locale this particular chapter is set in, so if/when you want to clean up the collectibles, you have to "free play" the chapter you want to go to.

This leaves the DLC to be incredibly linear, with it essentially being a "one mission after another" type of affair. The story fails to capture interest, it overplays its hand of "what the hell is going on here?" to leave the player with the resignation of just waiting for when the next character is going to die. Interactions with the arch-villain, King Washington, are meant to be epic, but are then rendered meaningless by the fact that such an all-powerful villain can't even complete the basic task of killing key people. King Washington laments how useless people are whilst he continually relies on them to do his bidding, it doesn't make any sense.

The DLC ends up as a bit of chore. If you are a completionist then you'll want to complete it just to get all the achievements, but I believe my very first thought after finishing the final mission was that I wouldn't have lost out if I never played it.

Absolute power..... turns you into an arrogant lump, apparently

The Tyranny of King George is forgettable, play it if you get it for free, like you do in the remastered editions of AC3, but don't pay any money for it.

Review Score

Assassin's Creed III doesn't seem to get a lot of love from fans of the series. Whilst it's true that it can be slow paced at times, especially so in the first two to three sequences of the game, I believe that all round it stands up well as an installment in the series that brings a lot of new ideas with only a few negatives.

For me, the particular highlights are the building of the homestead and the various side missions and craftables that come with that, but mainly the naval missions, which are fantastic, and left me wishing there were more of them in the game.

These positives are only somewhat tempered by the changes in the parkour system. The main negative of the issues introduced when running along city streets are tempered by the fact that the parkour works exceedingly well in the frontier.

The DLC, on the other hand, is a tremendous let down.

So Assassin's Creed 3 doesn't reach the heights of the Ezio trilogy, and the overly long introduction sequences will put some off, but I remember AC3 quite fondly and, probably against the general consensus of the series' fans, I'd give AC3 a solid 3.

The Assassin's Creed Series: AC Brotherhood and AC Relevations

Direct Sequels

Whereas Assassin's Creed 2 is by any logical suggestion a sequel to the original Assassin's Creed game (the clue being the "2" in the title), Assassin's Creed 2 bore 2 further sequels that are direct sequels of the AC2 setting as well as the game series. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed Revelations continue the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and his battle against the Templars

Brotherhood

AC Brotherhood begins directly after the events of both the modern day protagonist Desmond Miles and our historical character Ezio. Ezio's world was blown wide open at the end of AC2 and he has a lot to understand. Despite his victory, Ezio's familial enemy, the Borgias, remain at large. The Borgia let Rome sink into delapidation and disrepair, so Ezio oversees efforts to bring Rome back to its rightful glory.

Ezio returns for AC Brotherhood, a little older, a lot wiser.

AC Brotherhood brings us the new mechanic of.... The Brotherhood. Ezio can save people from their oppressors and in gratitude they will join the local Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Despite the name, women can be recruited as well as men. Once recruited, Ezio can call on the Assassin's at almost any time to assist him in his missions. Furthemore, Ezio can send his compatriots on their own missions in order to increase their experience and level, which in turn makes them more powerful and less likely to die when Ezio asks for his assistance himself. The Assassin missions are accessible from the pegion coops dotted around the city as well the headquarters. Each machine takes a specific amount of time to complete and has a precentage chance of success, which you can increase by sending more than one assassin on a mission, or by sending higher level assassin's.

This subgame element of time-based missions, which rewards you with benefits in the main games, becomes a staple in the AC series for quite a while. The basic premise of what the subgame is about changes,but in general they are always time-based machines and give you tangible rewards if you complete them. They are an interesting side-attraction which can bring a useful benefit if you invest in them, but ultimately can be ignored if you find them boring.

Desmond and his colleagues are forced to escape at the end of AC2 and in Brotherhood, set up shop in modern-day Monteriggioni.

The setting for Brotherhood is also a continuation from the previous game. The main "hub" is Rome, which on its own is larger than any two cities from AC2. Additional locations include the Colloseum as well. After the wealth of history in AC2, Brotherhood servers up another helping of the same.

Brotherhood retains all the qualities of AC2 and builds a few additional bits and pieces on top. It's not particular evolutionary, but simply by serving up more of the same, AC Brotherhood is another wondeful romp in the Assassin's Creed world, and it is a joy to see the further development of Ezio.

Revelations

To a great extent, Revelations is yet more of the same from AC2 and Brotherhood, but there is one major difference, which I guess is the attempt to keep things fresh enough for a third installment to avoid just being accused of cranking the wheel and just churning out more of the same.

Revelations is actually set in Constantinople (in present day Istanbul, Turkey). As a result, the environment and characters are different. There is brand new architecture to climb over and now, instead of having to watch out for Borgia guards, there are two factions of city police to watch out for, which you can actually turn against each other for your own benefit.

The characters around Ezio are all brand new as well. Ezio is now starting to move past middle age in to what would be his retirement years if he was like most people. However, as a still-active assassin, he is more like the wise mentor character to the local Assassin Brotherhood he works with. His interactions with the youthful Yusuf Tazim, who is the leader of the local order, is fun to watch. Yusuf originally and somewhat playfully treats Ezio as an old man who can learn a few tricks, and indeed some new mechanics of the game come apparent this way. The main one is the hookblade. Taking the place of the second hidden blade, the hookblade can serve all the functions of its predecessor but can also be used to traverse the many zipwires in the game, which can greatly speed up exploration as well as add new opportunities for stealth and taking out enemies.

Constantinople features ziplines, which makes moving around the city a lot quicker!

Another large addition to Revelations is the expansion of bombs. Smoke bombs are still there, but now we also have flash bangs, poison bombs, caltops, fake blood bombs and more. You can craft your own variations to suit and the new bombs are genuinely worth taking the time to master for the tactical benefits they bring.

As well as the continuation of the overall Assassin's Creed plot, Revelations brings yet further development to Ezio's character, and we start to feel like we've been with Ezio for a lot of his life. The third game in the AC2 trilogy brings further warmth to our love for Ezio along with some moving spiritual and uplifting moments.

Overall, Revelations does just enough to justify their being a third game in this series. The setting is very different from Italy, which makes things interesting but at the same time makes the third game feel a bit disjointed from the other two. What keeps this disjointment from becoming jarring is Ezio himself. With the additions of the new features in the hookblade, bombs and so forth, Revelations is interesting enough.

Overall, AC Revelations is probably the weakest of the three games, but if nothing else, interest in the continuations of Ezio's story is a great reason to persist in playing this third installment. Weakest of the three it may be, but Relevations is still a great game to play in its own right and in fact, if you continue on to play Assassin's Creed 3 afterwards, you may reminisce about the AC2 trilogy, all of them, and wish AC3 was a bit more like it.

Assassin's Creed: Embers

If you have played through the AC2 trilogy, you've now been with Ezio from pre-adulthood to the beginning of the senior years of his life. You absolutely should close his story by watching Assassin's Creed: Embers, which is freely available to watch on Youtube.

Embers is an animated short film that lasts around 21 minutes, which chronicles the retirement years of Ezio's life and brings his story to a close. I challenge anyone who has played the AC2 trilogy and invested this much time with Ezio, not to be moved by the short film and to feel a sense of satisfaction in knowing what happens to Ezio after the last game.

I don't think there is any other game series where I've been so interested in finding out more about the life of the character I've played, and where he ends up as a result of all his hard work.

Review Score

To an extent, although Brotherhood has a few new tricks up its sleeve, particularly the Brotherhood feature itself, it does not show the same kind of development over its predecessor as AC2 does over AC. However, AC2 got so much right, Brotherhood is successful in its approach of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The relative lack of innovation in the game might be an issue, if the richness and depth of the story and setting wasn't so great. Running around as Ezio for a second time is great, it's a joy to continue the story from the first game as well as see the development of Ezio and his peers. I believe Brotherhood deserves the same top score as its predecessor, so it gets a 5.

For Revelations, the main "concern" with Brotherhood is also apparent here, in that again, there are a few new tricks, but nothing even as major as the Brotherhood feature itself. Also, I feel that whilst the continuation of the story of Ezio's life remains a joy to follow, the stark change in the setting to Constantinople does leave the player with somewhat of a disjointed feel as far as the wider story goes. The complete change in setting is probably Ubisoft's attempt to keep some freshness in the game, with this being yet another story about Ezio, and it is a successful attempt to a great extent. However, it does leave Revelations as feeling like it is not quite up there along with its two predecessors, and for this reason I give Revelations a 4.

Next Up

With Revelations played and Embers watched, we move through time again to play Assassin's Creed 3, set during the time of the American Revolution.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed 2

Context

Assassin's Creed was released in November 2007, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews as a game that brought new levels to the phrase "open world" and essentially defined a new genre of gameplay in the parkour/stealth mechanics.

Sales were hugely successful, so it was fairly obvious that there would be a sequel. AC1 had a few flaws, most notably the side missions were widely considered to be repetitive (as explained in my previous review). But with general success making a new style of gameplay, there was a lot of excitement about the sequel. Would the excitement be lost with the release of the second game? Would it seem like just more of the same? How could Ubisoft build upon the great legacy created with AC1 and expand upon it to keep things exciting?

Would AC2 be a hugely enjoyable improvement, or a massive disappointment?

The Setting

The first thing we have to discuss when talking about AC2 is the setting, because it is the foundation of the entire story.

The location is set in Italy, in the late 15th century and at the height of the Renaissance period. The game revolves around the Tuscany and Romagna areas, including highlights such as Venice, Rome and the Vatican. This setting provides a tremendously rich backdrop for the game, with lots of key historical locations, people and works of art. As such a highlight of human history, any person with even a casual interest in history can't resist getting sucked into the historical information available in this installment. One of the major changes in AC2 over AC1 is how much historical information is provided. The history of locations, even ones that no longer exist today and information on key figures, such as Leonardo da Vinci. Of course, there is artistic licence on how these all come together, but a lot of the information is historically accurate.

Young Ezio, as depicted right at the start of the game.

And then we come to our protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a purely fictional character who epitomises this period in history. Ezio is in his late teens at the beginning of the game, and is a playful,  good hearted lad, if overly carefree and distracted by the ladies. However, serious events unfold which force Ezio down a hard path and threaten to darken his character with plots of revenge, but his family and newly discovered friends keep him on the right side of the path. In the first Assassin's Creed game, there was nothing wrong with Altaïr has a protagonist, but with the game opening at the height of his arrogance and with the setting relatively alien to the modern day, it provides a cold relationship between character and player. With Ezio, on the other hand, he is immediately sympathetic and identifiable even to us in the present-day world. Ezio demonstrates anger fuelled by injustice and yet warmth for humankind in general, on top of an overall strong sense of right vs wrong. Playing Ezio in AC2 is beginning the life journey of what is widely considered the best protagonist in the entire AC series and arguably even across all of gaming.

With the backdrop, characters and general writing, Assassin's Creed 2 has a world that the player can get engrossed in, right from the opening sequence of the game!

The Game

The graphics in AC2 are definitely a step up from from the previous game, although it does help that any AC2 version you buy today are actually remastered versions, with a lot of textures and some graphical effects updated. Even on the remastered versions, it's still clearly PS3-era graphics, especially in the somewhat simple-featured faces of most characters, but you won't see garish pixellated textures for the most part, and terrain distance is managed quite well.

The soundtrack in the gameplay is iconic of the early Assassin's Creed series, although in retrospect this might be because the AC2 trilogy really defined the early series itself.

The gameplay is really the highlight of Assassin's Creed 2, however, and the highlight of the early series. The parkour has been improved since AC1, Ezio is slightly faster climbing up buildings, features have been added that allow fast access to rooftops and the general flow of free running is generally smooth and predictable. Continuing from AC1, you have the ability to generally indicate if you want to free run up, down or across and so traversing balconies and canopies on the sides of buildings is overall a frustration free experience.

The parkour in AC2 is really the best of the early series. True, AC2 doesn't feature the complexity of landscapes in later games, especially trees, but it just works, and it is a pleasure move Ezio around.

AC2 brings other new features that persist in the AC series as well:

• Upgrade paths for armor and weapons, to improve your chances against tougher enemies.
• More weapon types are added, such as the poison blade, dual hidden blades for double assassinations, and a pistol for remote insta-kills, at the expense of loudness
• Based building mechanics. You can unlock and upgrade vendors at your base to enable the purchase of items and increase your bases money-making rate. Also you can invest in artwork to also increase your base cash generation.
• There are more opportunities for blending in and stealth mechanics. Ezio can submerge underwater for short periods to remain hidden when swimming. Also, Ezio can blend into essentially any group of people, rather than being restricted to certain types.

Monteriggioni, your base in the game and, like Masyaf in AC1, a real world location.

However, the other single largest improvement that AC2 brings on top of the general gameplay is the writing and the missions. The mission have a huge variety, especially compared to AC1 and develop the story well. The side missions are all extremely relevant and enrich the main plot, and are not just "filler" to add hours to the game. Even the collectibles have a relevance to the story development and have a reward that brings warmth to Ezio's character.

The modern day story of Desmond Miles continues in AC2, although it is not particularly revelatory in AC2 and, in essence, just a continuation of the events of AC1. The satisfaction of completing the game comes from how the discovery Ezio makes at the end of the game ties in with the current day.

Summary

AC2 is a huge improvement on AC1 and a game where every effort to build upon the previous game is done right. The story and main character is much richer and relateable to the player, the game world more gorgeous, the lore more interesting, the gameplay itself expanded and more satisfying and is in every way an improvement on AC1. AC2 is a tremendous accomplishment of building upon the base you have in richness of experience and depth of writing, every feature added is thoughtful and relevant.

Assassin's Creed is widely considered to be one of the best games in the entire series, if not the best. Also, Ezio's character is considered to be the most loved and well written character in the entire AC series, and across gaming in general.

Assassin's Creed 2 is truly a highlight of the series.

Review Score

Assassin's Creed 2 does a phenomenal job of taking everything that was in Assassin's Creed and adding more depth and ingenuity on top. Everything in Assassin's Creed 2 adds to the story and immersion into the world, even the collectibles. Nothing in Assassin's Creed 2 feels like it was just thrown in there to add length to the game. Assassin's Creed 2 is widely regarded as one of the highlights of the entire series, and so is the character of Ezio. In my opinion, this regards is absolutely justified, and I give this game top score within the series.