(Word limited review for this site.)
Console:
Playstation 3
Genre:
Third person 'stealth' action
Setting:
Constantinople; The Animus (virtual world)
Story:
The final (?) story arc concerning the assassin Ezio Auditore, who is now middle-aged (see previous reviews).
Graphics:
Very good. The colours look a bit bleached though, which is no doubt a design choice...perhaps reflecting the faded appearance of Ezio. That design choice makes the artwork less impressive visually than its predecessors which featured Ezio.
Gameplay:
Good about the game:
* Less of an emphasis on the PITA puzzles of the previous two games which required looking up the answers on search engines or video sites.
* It was fun being able to charge about the city on foot, bowling over anyone who got in your way! This dealt with an earlier frustration in the series...running about the city on foot but being impeded by other citizens. The sounds that the citizens make when you charge them is also amusing.
* Creating your own mini-games, which are more fun than the game's! E.g. I had a little bit fun of charging civilians near the water's edge into the water. They sank like stones! The trick was to not fall into the water yourself! One similarly amusing incident occurred when Ezio hired some allies and one of them just plunged to their death from a great height...for no apparent reason! Bad A.I., but hey!
Bad about the game:
* The assumption by the devs that players would just want to walk every square centimetre of the city...literally. i.e. trophies, 100% synchronisation or other collecting "quests" really require you to go through the tedious process of walking every square centimetre of the city. What's nearly as annoying is that it can often be quicker to sprint around the city than to take the "shortcut" through the tunnel system!
* Related to the above point is the fact that I'm just sick of games exchanges gameplay which is fun to do again with "incentives" to replay the game...like trophies, 100% synchronisation and other "challenges" where you have to do something "x" number of times or find all instances of an object or whatever. E.g. I thought I was done with those stupid challenges when I had the misfortune of discovering that the devs thought uncovering wells was a "fun" thing to do! I really couldn't be bothered walking every square centimetre of the city to do that. No thankyou! The sooner that devs ditch the stupid PITA trophy system and other "incentives" to replay a game the better!
* To expand on the point above...I played the game trying to be as completionist as I could. That entailed putting the story LAST. i.e. I just focused on "completing" as many of these "challenges" etc. as I could. That really knocks my score down considerably. Story first, please!
* Once again, skipping cinematic cutscenes takes as long (or longer!) than actually sitting through (but not watching) the cutscene!
* I also left the entire Desmond-in-The-Animus stuff to last as well. Fortunately this stuff was not as bad as the previous games' "puzzle" solving, as comments I'd read online had led me to believe. However, it was annoying that in one of the "puzzles", the "hint" that is provided was not visible...unless you were ALREADY on the right track! That's the first puzzle sequence that you had to choose. Of course, I chose the wrong direction to explore, so I just ended up looking for the solution online...again, because I'm not the kind of person who just luuurves to explore every square centimetre of a map for "the fun of it"! Life's too short.
The ugly:
* Having returned to this franchise after many years (I posted my last review on the series around 23/06/2011), I was reminded of the God-awful character control movement in some sections of the game...e.g. "The prince's banquet" sequence was abysmal...a massive grind. This section might even induce ragequit on some. Like with all previous games in this series, it's possible to kick backwards (and so lose ground and time) when trying to move ahead. This sequence required you to beat some others in a footrace...so, losing time and ground will just force you to have to restart the sequence. Adding insult to aggravation is how other NPCs such as guards will impede you. Worse, if they bump into you, they can knock you down from the rooftops, killing your chances of getting 100% in the race. So to for your footrace competitors. However, if you bump your fellow competitors they never fall...but you can, or be slowed down! The another annoying factor for this sequence is the "leap of faith" points where you can unintentionally dive off a rooftop (slowly, I might add!) and thus have no hope of getting 100% for the section. I'm guessing that I entered double digits in the number of attempts I took to 100% this part of the game. Absolutely hated it!
* Related to the previous point, the on-screen advice provided on how the controls work can also be false, thus frustrating attempts to get 100% for certain sections. E.g. for "Hagia Sophia's secret" you get into a rhythm for leaping backwards from a hanging position. It works every time. However, right towards the end of that sequence, for some mysterious reason, that backward leap method will see you plummet to your death! To make matters worse, the on-screen instructions aren't even helpful...they're irrelevant to the actual correct procedure that you must use (in that final instance)...it just sucks that the "rules" for backward leaping arbitrarily change in this way during the course of one sequence.
Conclusion:
After vowing to ditch the series after the previous game, this game didn't change my mind about the franchise.
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