Vicarious Assassin's Creed 3

Rating: 1 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Stab People; Sub-genre: Stab Animals, Stab Boats with Cannonballs
ESRB: M (gratuitous stabbing)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): unavailable
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Wiki page

Not every person plays every game. And neither does every professional critic. Nor should they. Some things just don't interest everyone, no matter how hard a player may try to get into a new game. But I'm not a professional! So this is a VICARIOUS review!

I've never been sure what this whole Assassin's Creed business is. Apparently everyone and their brother plays it. I played the first one and had a hell of a time being a crazy mad man, terrorizing some random city in Crusades land... or whereever. It kept telling me to, like, do missions but those were so boring! Wait around, pick pockets, walk slowly, talk to people, bleh! Then I played the second one. I lost my comedy power of "pretend to be innocent" but gained the ability to murder people with a broom. And now everyone was speaking Italian off and on. I guess Italian was like some kind of high school required course during the Italian Renaissance? I don't know. It made no sense. And then the second game had two expansions or something, but those had the same cost as a full game. Uh, bullshit?

Three and four? Nope. Fuck numbers!

Obviously I gave up on this game series a while ago, so I really can't bring myself to play this third one. Luckily, a good friend of mine bought a copy and I watched him play it for a little bit. Not enough to see every minute detail, like I generally want with my reviews, but I think I got the gist of it. In the first game, the player controlled a middle eastern dude. Cuz the middle east is all about ninjas and shit. In the second one, the player controlled some spaghetti-eating white guy. Again, cuz Italy is all about ninjas. Finally, in the third game, the player gets to go to the birth place of ninjas: America. Which only makes sense because everything should be about America somehow. I don't care if the story takes place in pre-historic China or a galaxy far, far away: America! 

American.

So the dude you play as is this half-white and half-injun fellow. If he wasn't at least partially white, the audience would be incapable of understanding him. God help us all if there was ever a game where the main character was non-white. Seriously though, I don't know why this bugs me. Why couldn't they just make a story about a full-blooded Indian dude? Whatever, I don't know what the story is anyway. And he doesn't ever scalp people or use mystical Indian powers, so it seems to lend nothing to the gameplay. He can't use brooms as a weapon or pretend to be innocent... this guy has nothing going on for him! But wait! He can pilot a big ass boat!

Look out! Injuns!

What does this have to do with assassinating people? Uhhhhh stuff! In Revelations, you could command people to go to war, too. Nothing says "stealth assassination" like blowing up boats with cannons and war! I will admit, this is a very interesting addition to the game. Mostly because swashbuckling on the high seas is always a welcome addition to anything. My friend playing the game seemed quite taken with it as well. Personally I wish they would have just spent their time developing a version of this game only without the franchise name and WITH a competent developer. But obviously they didn't want to make a game that completely revolved around naval warfare and spice trade and shit; this is just a "mini-game" to all the assassinating and intrigue. I still say they could at least give the player the ability to board the enemy ship to duel the captain.

Add appropriate music and ADVENTURE!

But apparently this guy isn't as much of a fighter. I remember Ezio, from the second game, being able to forego stealth most of the time in favor of an outright rumble. I have read reviews where players have different comments on the combat, but my friend found it frustrating and clunky. I advised him to pick up a broom to see if that helps, but Connor (the player character) can't pick up brooms! Conversely, beasts are no match for him. Grizzly Bears? Charging Elk? Piece of cake. Turns out this fellow has the strength of like five dudes. Must be his Injun powers shining through! Or maybe Bears aren't so tough after all.

Look at this pussy. I could take him, no sweat!

Conclusion:
Despite all the pro's and con's of this game the bottom line is that it looks BORING. Don't get me wrong, it's worth a chuckle here and there. But I still can't be assed to play through the damn thing.

Oh, were we not supposed to let the heavily-armed-clearly-not-a-British-soldier into the camp? Oops!