Re: Assassin's Creed III Liberation
Game Informer - 7.75
IGN - 7.2
Gamesradar - 3/5
1UP - C
Game Informer - 7.75
When Liberation follows the lead of other Assassin’s Creed titles, it excels. When it tries to carve out its own identity, it stumbles. Aveline’s unique hook is her three personas: the assassin, the lady, and the slave. In theory, the abilities of each encourage you to swap them frequently. In practice, the interplay between three personas’ characteristics is poorly thought out. For example, the lady can charm guards, but can’t climb anything – no scaling buildings, leaping fences, or clambering onto the dock if you fall in the water. Every persona has some sort of handicap like that, making them each seem like one-third of a true assassin instead of giving Aveline access to her full range of abilities.
Apart from the single-player campaign (which took me about 12 hours to complete), you can participate in an asynchronous multiplayer mode – but the less said about it, the better. It’s shallow and boring and should be avoided. Another low point is the Vita-specific features; they occasionally feel gimmicky, but more often they are just plain broken. The camera doesn’t detect a bright light even when held directly up to a bulb, the tilt function turns a simple ball-rolling maze into a disaster, and pickpocketing with the rear touchpad rarely works. Liberation serves as a case study in tragic implementation of the Vita’s unique capabilities – probably not what Sony and Ubisoft were hoping for from a system exclusive.
Despite the issues, fans of the series should still seriously consider playing Liberation. None of the worst problems are embedded into the core gameplay. Combat is fun, climbing and navigation works well, the story feels like a natural part of the AC universe. The tie-ins to Assassin’s Creed III are minimal (mainly one mission near the end), but Liberation may hint at what areas the series is exploring next. It isn’t a required piece of the puzzle, but I had fun with Aveline and enjoyed seeing her part in history unfold.
Apart from the single-player campaign (which took me about 12 hours to complete), you can participate in an asynchronous multiplayer mode – but the less said about it, the better. It’s shallow and boring and should be avoided. Another low point is the Vita-specific features; they occasionally feel gimmicky, but more often they are just plain broken. The camera doesn’t detect a bright light even when held directly up to a bulb, the tilt function turns a simple ball-rolling maze into a disaster, and pickpocketing with the rear touchpad rarely works. Liberation serves as a case study in tragic implementation of the Vita’s unique capabilities – probably not what Sony and Ubisoft were hoping for from a system exclusive.
Despite the issues, fans of the series should still seriously consider playing Liberation. None of the worst problems are embedded into the core gameplay. Combat is fun, climbing and navigation works well, the story feels like a natural part of the AC universe. The tie-ins to Assassin’s Creed III are minimal (mainly one mission near the end), but Liberation may hint at what areas the series is exploring next. It isn’t a required piece of the puzzle, but I had fun with Aveline and enjoyed seeing her part in history unfold.
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation is a simplified version of the Assassin's Creed franchise. The moves and kills you'd expect are here, but the story is boiled down to be easy to jump in and out of. That takes away some of the excitement in playing through it.
Liberation is definitely a bite-sized Assassin's Creed in more regards than just its price of admission. Aveline's a great character, but she's given too dim a spotlight. The gameplay feels right and contains most of the core tenets of what makes us love this series so much, but the whole experience is wrapped around a disjointed frame that's almost as off-putting as it is inviting. Die hard series fans and Vita loyalists will find some enjoyment here, to be sure, but Liberation's all over the place--and only some of those places hit the right notes.
Simply roaming the city and swamp offers a wonderful exercise in exploration, sight-seeing, and generally goofing around in history's sandbox. But once you jump into a memory, you'll follow a breadcrumb through some of the most rigid yet poorly explained examples of poor game design clichés in the industry. Aveline's first few quests consist of awkward stealth missions, escort missions, and tailing missions. It's almost as though Ubisoft Sophia carefully studied the game tropes that people hate most and said, "Yes, let's do all of those." I half-expected an ice level or auto-scrolling mine cart stage... though come to think of it, the infuriating reprise of Revelations' god-awful runaway carriage scenario midway through the story is the Assassin's equivalent of a mine level.
The game would also be much better without the stupid Sony-mandated Vita gimmicks, many of which simply don't work. Even with a bug-fixing day-one title update, I had to reset my system several times when the game stopped recognizing rear touch-panel input, leaving me incapable of advancing beyond these distracting sequences. The touch nonsense was a figurative game-stopper in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, but here it's much more literal in nature.
Despite all of this, I love portable gaming, and simply having an authentic take on Assassin's Creed to play on the go helps makes up for the flaws. I can't give Liberation a glowing recommendation, but between its small-screen ambition and thoughtful take on navigating the social waters of its setting as a woman, I see a real glimmer of creativity here. Liberation doesn't live up to its potential, and in many ways it amplifies some of Assassin's Creed's longstanding issues, but how many games let you play a high society spy pretending to be a French-American plantation slave in order to topple a plot by the Templar Knights? And while you're on the bus, no less? For better and for worse, Liberation condenses the true essence of Assassin's Creed -- its strengths and weaknesses alike -- into portable form.
Despite all of this, I love portable gaming, and simply having an authentic take on Assassin's Creed to play on the go helps makes up for the flaws. I can't give Liberation a glowing recommendation, but between its small-screen ambition and thoughtful take on navigating the social waters of its setting as a woman, I see a real glimmer of creativity here. Liberation doesn't live up to its potential, and in many ways it amplifies some of Assassin's Creed's longstanding issues, but how many games let you play a high society spy pretending to be a French-American plantation slave in order to topple a plot by the Templar Knights? And while you're on the bus, no less? For better and for worse, Liberation condenses the true essence of Assassin's Creed -- its strengths and weaknesses alike -- into portable form.
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