Assassin's Creed 3 - Liberation

[TCP]

I thought the controls were fairly similar to AC3, have you played that yet Ethan?

I only played one or two missions, it was good but I'm a little disappointed on the lack of story. While AC3 had about a 3 hour prologue, Liberation has you play as a child for about 1 minute and then it's off to assassinating. Just seems like they tried to hard to offer "bite size" Assassins Creed when I think a lot of PSVita owners want console style games on the go. Shorter missions would have been good, and of course, there's technical limitations of the device, but that shouldn't impact on story.

[TheMightyEthan]

I have not played AC3 as it is not out on the One True Platform until November 18.

 

The more I think about the new combat controls the more I think I like them though. The only thing I don't like is that there's no longer a distinction between run and sprint, which means that when on rooftops it's impossible to prevent her from spontaneously leaping into nowhere unless you want to walk super slow. Now rather than R to run and R+X or R+ to sprint, it's just R to sprint.

[TCP]

Hmm, tonight I'll play AC3 and Liberation and compare the controls, but I think they're almost identical, which makes me think this will be the series norm for now.

 

Has anyone tried multiplayer yet? Is it any good? If so you guys want to get some matches going in the not so distant future?

[TheMightyEthan]

Five hours in and the damn game finally seems to have opened up (beginning of Sequence 3). It's good, because I was beginning to lose patience with it.

[Strangelove]

Im loving it. I havent played it that much, but for the first time theres a real AC game on a handheld. It feels like a console AC game.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

w00t!

 

Having put about 13 hours into it now, I feel that I can express an opinion: It's definitely suffered from being a portable game, but not as much as one might expect. Interestingly, though I would say that in just about every way I don't think it's as good as Revelations, I'm actually enjoying it more than I did Revelations. Might be because it being a handheld game I'm not holding it to as high of standards, I don't know.

[TCP]

To me it's suffering from being an early game on a new system, sort of like Uncharted Golden Abyss. It seemed rushed and unpolished with system specific features that were pushed in where maybe they didn't need to be. Though I've been enjoying it, and I love how instead of taking the mechanics from AC2, they took the mechanics from AC3, which makes playing the two titles simultaneously great. I really hope Ubisoft does another Vita AC game and learns from this one.

Edited November 3, 2012 by TheCowboyPoet

[deanb]

 

It's coming to PC, PS3 and 360.

[CorgiShinobi]

Huh, and here I was surprised that sellers (online) reduced their price for the PS Vita bundle. Thinking to myself if I was ever in the market for one again, they became more affordable. Now I see this and I'm wondering if this is why, and even if not, I think I'd rather go for this version instead.

[Strangelove]

Just like RE Revelations before it and countless others(most of the good exclusive PSP games), it bugs me quite a bit when this happens. People are so against buying handhelds that theyll play a blown up version on their big screen instead. I don't get the appeal of that, even if you use better textures and make it full hd, handheld games always feel like handheld games to me. Theyre made differently and they dont ever gel right with their console counterparts, as hard as developers want to try.

 

Anyways, this is a really good game if you liked AC3, if not...then avoid it. Its about the same. The Vita version had framerate problems and the resolution was lower than it needed to be, but other than that it's still a very good standout title that now in HD will just seem like a lower budget AC3.

[TCP]

I loved AC3. The more I think about AC:L, the more I absolutely did not like it. Took about 4 hours to beat, was a graphical mess, sound was terrible, and worst of all, the story was almost non-existent. I mean it's great that a game had a black female lead, but it's hard to call her a "character", she's not fleshed out anywhere near as much as Ezio, Connor, or Desmond. 

[TheMightyEthan]

I wouldn't go so far as to say I didn't like it, but it certainly wasn't great, even as Assassin's Creed games go.  I'd put it about on par with Revelations.

[TCP]

Oh come on! Revelations had a 10-hour mission, with a variety of missions, good controls, and a goddamn storyline. Revelations might be the weakest of the Ezio trilogy but it's at least a full fledged game that runs at a competent level.

[TheMightyEthan]

I put 18 hours into Liberation, so I felt like I got my money's worth.

 

I mean, you're right, it's probably not as good as Revelations, but it's not all that much worse.

[Strangelove]

Yeah, Liberation and Revelations are on about the same level, not for the same reasons though. Liberation is good because its still a very true to form AC game on a portable with a lot of new ideas, just not executed very well.

where Revelations is very sleek and the gameplay is honed perfectly since its the third game in the same timeline, but thats also the problem. Been there, done that. Plus, the story kind of sucked for that game too. Good ending to the Ezio Ttilogy, but it could have been so much better.

That being said, aside rom AC1 and that one PSP game, I have yet to play a bad AC game. I understand the bitching about the game being the old shit, but I kind of like when AC does the same old shit.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm playing the Vita version at the moment, and I won't go into another rant about how badly it controls [deleted rant about countering] (though can I add a new terror to the list: It's managed to be the worst underwater swimming mechanics I've ever used which is saying something). Let's just say I hope for everyone's sake they really mean it when they say "refined controls".

 

If they fix the (many) major flaws in gameplay I think it's a decent game that's worth playing. I guess more powerful consoles will solve the issues with the graphics as well They should have cut out a lot of rats, butterflies, even townsfolk etc. assuming they were over just ambitious and it's not a problem with the engine.

 

I think the light story is a positive - it's enough to keep me interested and I'm sure if Aveline was used over several mainline games not just one handheld spin-off they would have made it into just as needlessly convoluted a mess as the rest of the series.

[TheMightyEthan]

The problem I found with the sorry is that it's so minimal it's almost not even there. You'll start a mission and the beginning cutscene will have them talking about all this stuff that's supposedly been happening that you will have had no idea about and that you just have to infer. I felt like I never knew what any of the characters were talking about half the time, and that was very off-putting.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm the exact opposite of you then, TME - I never knew what was going on in the mainline games because there were so many characters to keep track of I ended up just looking for the glowing golden man and killing him. and to me the plot was so overly convoluted and interspersed between bouts of action in-game and then a year between games that I struggled to stitch it all together.

 

I guess that's how I prefer my game stories - just enough to move the game a long and not bog you down. If I want a plot I'll watch a film, if I want characters I'll read a book.

 

I've never played a game that I've been bothered about or invested in plot/character wise. 

Edited September 10, 2013 by TheFlyingGerbil

[TheMightyEthan]

I won't deny that the main series plot is ridiculous and convoluted, but I've never had an issue knowing what was going on (except when things are supposed to be a mystery). I want my games to feel like there's a reason I'm doing what I'm doing, and the missions in this game were all so disconnected from each other that I never felt that.