QCF: Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

From the moment I booted up Assassin's Creed: Liberation, and for the majority my play through, one word kept popping  into my head: Wow. To say that it wowed me from the very beginning might make you excited at the prospect of a full Assassin's Creed title that you can take with you on the go. And it is a full AC game all the way through; with pointless side quests and rhythm based combat both being a part of the package. Sometimes when you say wow it’s not always a good thing.

So let’s start this off by saying "Wow," this game sure is good looking. When you stand still and take a look at the scenery you'll realize how powerful the Vita really is as a system. And then, 

while you’re standing there marveling at how great it looks you’ll notice a few of the npc’s stutter-stepping  around. And then you’ll notice them walking through solid surfaces. Maybe you’ll think, “OH SHIT! A G-G-G-GHOST!”  and you’ll dash away to make an escape up to the roof tops of New Orleans. Then the frame rate takes a nosedive. Yes, whenever the engine attempts to process multiple things at a distance the frame rate drops. It isn’t much of a problem when you’re doing missions in the bayou, but when in New Orleans it’s really noticeable. I was able to get used to the frame rate issue but the combination of bad npc animation and poor frame rate can really take you out of the game.

Ok so let’s say that you have finally adjusted to the frame rate drop when running on the roof tops and you decided to just ignore the ghost people down in the city. So you decide to jump down and get in a fight with a few guards to try out the combat system. You’re having fun, the combat works well, there is a little bit of a timing discrepancy for the counters but you adjust pretty well. You land a solid hit on a guard in front of you, but the sound for the hit takes about a second to happen. Then you’ll be like “Wow, it’s like I’m in a Hong Kong kung fu flick.” Other guards come and you get about a good five or more onscreen and the frame rate starts to slow down again. Besides the delayed sound during combat there is also a hollow feeling to pretty much every sound in the game, from the voice acting to the music, I was playing with headphones and the sound still was lacking, I had better sound quality in Hot Shots Golf.

Okay, so you’ve adjusted to the frame rate issues and the sound problem is more annoying than anything, but the story is the real reason you play these games. As you’re going through the story you’ll say to yourself “Wow, I don’t know what the hell is going on.” And that's how the story will pan out through the majority of the game. It's disjointed and difficult to follow at points, and if you want to know everything that’s going on you have to assassinate hidden npcs to unlock deleted scenes from the story. A good example is the very beginning of the game: the movement tutorial has you starting as a child, and once the tutorial is done you're unceremoniously flashed forward almost 15 years. Suddenly you're an assassin and the adopted daughter of a wealthy businessman. What? How? Sometimes Why? Very little explanation is given throughout the course of the game.

If your'e reading this review and thinking to yourself, "What about all the good stuff about the game?" well there isn’t much here. For all intents and purposes it is an Assassin's Creed game, but it's executed very poorly on both a technical and narrative level. It almost seems like they didn’t give it as much care as one of the main titles in the series, which is really a shame because the setting and character had a lot of potential. If you're a diehard fan of the series then you may get some enjoyment out of it, but this is definatly not a must buy for anybody.