5 things I hate about Assassin's Creed III

[c0vert]

I feel I need to vent about this game to warn others and to share an experience. But I'll try not to give away spoilers for those who are waiting for the PC release.

5 things I hate about Assassin's Creed III:

1. Vague Instructions - When playing ACIII, you'll often find yourself scratching your head over what exactly Ubisoft intended to mean. For example, in a certain mission, the directions are as vague as: "Chase him." And under "optional requirements" it'll state, "Do not bump or tackle anyone." And that's all you get...

If you don't chase him, you fail.

If you knife him, you fail.

If you shoot him, you fail.

If you bump into him, you fail (the optional requirement)

If you fight him, you fail

If you fight others, you fail

If climb up a wall, get stuck in a haystack or get pushed down, you fail

If you think you've figured out what to do by now, you fail

In other words, you fail, you fail, you fail, YOU FAIL.

What's the fun part you may ask?, he won't ever stop running at full speed. And he'll eventually run in one big ass loop over and over and over and over. So, what the hell are you supposed to do? I'll... uhm, just let you figure that one out.

2. Optional Requirements - I understand that Ubisoft wanted to give the gamer a more labor intensive game by placing optional requirements (making you work for the 100% sync), but it's when the optional requirements state, "Preform an air assassination on X," and you look around and see that there's only ONE way to do it, then it no longer becomes just an optional requirement, but a linear gameplay experience. What's worse is that the optional requirements will often conflict with the main objective (as demonstrated above). Again, making the whole experience rather confusing, frustrating and ultimately... just damn boring.

3. Cinematic Overload/Quick-time events - I read a comment over on a game forum, where the guy said, "I've been playing ACIII for the past 2 hours, but why does it feel like I've only been playing for 20 minutes?" Because the hour and 40 minutes you just thought you spent on playing, were spent watching a long cinematic. In the past, Ubisoft has been pretty good about their length for each cinematic. Now, they went overboard. You're likely to spend what feels like ages watching two or more characters talking on-screen in a movie-like format. The worst part? Even if you skip one, there's another that follows. Even worse!, there could be a THIRD cinematic that follows the two you just skipped! The cost of all this cinematic stuff? Of course, a sporadic game play experience.

I've never heard someone complain and say, "You know what this game needs? Quick-time events."

Why hasn't anyone stated this? Because quick-time events are boring as shit, 'nough said.

4. Odd Controls and Odd UI - For the past 3?, 4? AC games, we've seen a few additions to the UI and a few change ups to the controls. But most of them were well integrated and thought out.

Ehh, not so much for ACIII. The one control change I hate the most is the change to the "Synchronize" button. The problem? It's the same button as "drop." There are certain times when you can not see the ground (a haystack) from the viewpoint. So instead of taking a leap of faith, you instead want to drop down. But... you can't if you press the drop button more than twice, because you'll trigger the synchronize cinematic and your position will be reset. The only option? Take a leap of death and/or hope there's a haystack waiting below. A few times I did a leap of faith, where one would think a haystack would strategically be placed, but wasn't!

The second is the blocking button. Normally, it's right trigger (xbox360), now it's B. WHY!? No sense. Just more confusion.

The UI, in the past, has seen minor changes, but they made sense. The changes in ACIII, make little sense. The icons for wanted vs stealth are confusing the first time you see it. The icons above your head are confusing and don't make much sense until you've played the game for 5-6 hours. Everything on the UI is just too symbolically unfamiliar. What's worse is that when you want to turn this feature off, you have to guess what Ubisoft calls it (in case you're wondering, they called it SSI, whatever the hell that means). I guess UI or on-screen hints was too clear.

5. Glitches and Bugs - Too many glitches and bugs pop up in this game. Unfortunately, most are game breaking. For example, I've been stuck in walls, stuck in a constant state of a falling animation while enemies attacked me to death, stuck in the "do not turn off power, it's saving your game" screen (it froze), and stuck hearing a god damned AI saying this line over and over and over: "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse." "We can't travel by foot. That'll take forever. Find a horse."

Try listening to that with directions that state, "Find where X's building is located" and the only thing on your mini-map is a big ass green circle the size of Russia.

Final thoughts:

Save yourself, your sanity, and your blood pressure, and just pass on this game. You won't regret missing the ending if you've been following the series. Make one up. Hell, I bet it'll probably it'll be more entertaining and interesting than what was presented in-game.

[Pedrito]

If you only hate 5 things you're lucky! :tooth:

[Alanon]

Been looking forward to playing this game when I upgrade my ancient rig...

Really looks like they've shit the brick on this one.

AC has always been repetitive with no regard for us lunatics who wanted 100% (I still remember chasing the flags in AC1, or the feathers...), but at least it had decent instructions...

I didn't want to watch ANY youtube videos in fear that I'd get hyped about the game more than it's healthy, but now I'll have to see some posts just to check how bad it is.

[c0vert]

If you only hate 5 things you're lucky! :tooth:

I had to edit it way down. I figured a wall of text would be too much.