Assassin’s Creed 3 continues with the Desmond story line. This time Desmond may hold the key in his ancestor’s memory to save the world from a catastrophe.

Desmond jumps into the animus and goes back to a character called Haytham. You play as Haytham for a bit until Connor whose real name is Ratonhnhaketon; is born and starts to grow up. You play as Ratonhnhaketon and learn to move through the forest and hunt various animals like bear, bobcat, and even small things like rabbit and beavers.

As Ratonhnhaketon you meet Achilles who will change your life forever by teaching you the way of the Assassin. Throughout the game you will find people in need of help of one form or another; by helping out these people Connor finds out that they are people with skills and he asks them to join his colony around the manor. Assassin’s Creed 3 has brought in a new feature that requires the skills of the people Connor saves to make different items so Connor can put them on a convoy to stores to increase Connor’s revenue.

There are a lot of new items brought into this game like traps and bait for hunting, and one of my favourite the rope darts. Rope darts are silent and depending on how you use the dart they can be reusable. If you are in a bush and you rope dart a guy just in front of you then you pull him into the bush finish him off and you still have your rope dart. But if your up on a branch and you rope dart a guy and hang him from the branch you will lose your rope dart. They switched out the crossbow for the old fashioned way of the bow and arrow. Still have the smoke bomb, trip mine, and poison darts.

Connor’s recruits have been given some new tools. You can setup an ambush or make a riot, or even have some of Connor’s guys escort him as a captive. Of course there is the original call in a hit and have a recruit take out a guy. Unfortunately there is no more arrow storm from the previous game. AC3 came back with the metagame to level up your recruits to master assassin however this time you can’t choose how you want them to upgrade which weapon to use or any of the smaller finishing touches. AC3 has beautiful looking graphics with all the fine details showing that the company took the time to make it a great looking game.

Countering attacks in AC3 takes some time to get used to. A lot of the time I kept blocking, then pushing the guy out of my way. Instead of countering his attack and killing him and then bounce to the next guy, then the next guy, and the next guy and so on. This time around it takes quite a bit of practice with timing to get just the first guy, and then the next guy if you get it just right.

The previous few Assassin’s Creed games brought in the double assassin where you walk up between 2 guys and take them both down with a hidden blade from each arm. In AC3 Connor has both hidden blades but it seems that the only time you can do a double assassinate is from a roof top; anytime I’ve tried to walk up to 2 guys and assassinate both of them I end up only killing one guy and then I have to turn to kill the other guy before he realizes what happened to his friend. It’s really frustrating when your trying to take out a bunch of guys and make a silent approach. AC3 doesn’t have doctors in the game, you don’t buy medicine to heal yourself you just have to get away from the action for a bit and your health will regenerate back to full.

Money doesn’t come as easy in AC3 as it did in the previous games. It’s no longer a matter of buy weapons, paintings, and repair the estate; get a chunk of money every 20 minutes. Now you have to sell animal pelts, hearts, claws, use the convoys to generate money, and use the assassins metagame to level up your assassins and earn some extra cash.

Multiplayer has all new characters, and levels, and some of the old tools of the trade like the trip mine, smoke bomb, disguise. Bringing new tools like wipe, poison dart, and animus shield.

One thing I noticed is mute has been removed but at the same time replaced by wipe which disables a person’s abilities if they are within the range for a certain amount of time. They can still stun you if you’re after them or kill you if they are after you. Wipe just doesn’t allow them to drop a smoke bomb or poison you for a brief period.

Multiplayer has a few new features like events: which is exactly like it sounds. Its an event that is free to play and you have more people in the events which is still the multiplayer part of the game but has been setup with a storyline and has some extra bonuses you can earn by playing the event over just a regular round. Another nice feature for Multiplayer is Wolfpack. You can play by yourself or with up to 3 other people by invite only or open to the public and you work together as a team against AI to earn points by performing high point kills within seconds of each other. There are 25 levels to battle through with each location and each level requires more points to make it to the next level before the time runs out.

The biggest downfall for multiplayer is the fact that you can only invite 3 of your friends. They removed the ability to invite a full party of 8. Also there is no LAN or offline setting other then wolfpack single player.

AC3 multiplayer has some spectacular kills like smashing a person’s face off a wall or lamp post. Use an assortment of weapons that different characters have with their own style of kill.

If you liked any of the previous Assassin’s Creed games then this is worth playing. It has more of the multiplayer that is loved by all Assassin’s Creed fans and even if I think the single player game play took a step backwards its still a solid game to get.

Reviewed By: Booker140