Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation Review!

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberations is another installment in the Assassin’s Creed series that brings the gameplay to your hands anytime and anywhere. From the announcement of this game, eyes have been fixed to see if a great Assassin’s game would be delivered onto the Playstation Vita. A new story combined with new features developed specifically for the Vita, comes a new unique take on Assassin’s Creed titles.

Story:

The 18th century is a place full of war and change and this is shown in Liberations. The game drifts from the others by not having it based off the original bloodline, but instead the game starts off by Abstergo giving the player access to Aveline de Grandpé’s memories using a product that contains Animus technology, giving the game a fresh new twist from the start.
The player will quickly learn that Aveline has had some tough times due to her mother being an African American slave and her father being a rich French man. This fuels her willpower and sets her goals to freeing slaves. Throughout the game it focuses on slaves and their freedom due to her past, but when introduced to an assassin’s life she must not only live a double life, but face a greater threat.
The overall story is presented in a cloudy way to say the least. The start of the story starts off really slow, but does start to pick up towards the end. Throughout the game you will be asking why you are doing this objective or how the story jumped from one subject to another subject. There is a good story with some big moments and twist, it just has some rough edges.

Gameplay:

Everything you’ve come to expect from an Assassins Creed game is here in full effect. Everything from fighting, climbing, buying new weapons, equipment, and more, all return and really do shine throughout this game. The fighting and climbing feel closer to Assassin’s Creed III’s style, but a little less smooth. Occasionally you will experience a drop in frames when you are climbing rooftop to rooftop, but it’s not to the point where it is unbearable.
The gameplay takes the basics that you would expect from an Assassin’s Creed game mixed with some new features utilizing the Vita’s unique functions. This introduces some new ways to play without being completely unfamiliar with the overall controls and gameplay. Sometimes these new features for the Vita feel a little tacked on, but you only stumble upon these a few times.
The game also has the ability to change her outfits to take on missions in different ways. Aveline has the ability to switch into a slave outfit, the lady outfit, and the famous assassin outfit, all having their advantages and disadvantages. This provides more tactical approaches on missions and a unique style of gameplay from the other titles in the series.
They also introduce a trading system which gives the game more to toy around with. The trading system is fairly simple, all you do is buy goods and ship them off to a different location to sell them for a higher price. It may sound simple but be prepared to lose some time to this feature.
Another aspect of the gameplay is the multiplayer. At first I was upset to see the multiplayer was not the same as its big brother in any way, shape, or form. The multiplayer is an attack and defend game with two factions fighting for the globe. The gameplay of this is just sending an assassin to locations to fight the opposing faction for that location then waiting a certain amount of real time to repeat. When you attack, you get points which add up and whichever faction holds the most points on that location after a certain amount of time claims it. The multiplayer consists mostly of this with a few other options like items to boost attack, placing defenders, and setting beacons so other players can see points of interest on the globe. Later I realized that I started to put a few hours into messing around in this mode and found it to be a little more addicting than I thought it would be.

Graphics:

The graphics are really good if you remember you are playing on the Vita, if you compare to the systems to the pc you will find a huge difference in the graphics, but that’s to be expected. I found myself stun to see how nice the world was on a handheld. The many different environments you travel to you will see beautiful works of art, from Mexico, New Orleans, the bayou, caves, and many more locations.
The game does have some problems with the A.I.s on screen. When the A.I.s is far away, they walk awkwardly and go through walls. It’s a minor problem but it helps the game run at a faster rate. I also found that the textures throughout the whole game were not the greatest, but the games camera never tends to show up close shots of anything in the world besides characters during cut scenes, which you can tell the textures are not the greatest. Overall the world looks stunning for being on a handheld device and often you will find yourself exploring the beautiful open world.

Sound:

The sound in this game is a little awkward all the way through. I found that the game had this weird muffled sound to all the audio, like the voice acting and even the soundtrack. This was a big problem when I first picked up the game because it felt like it took away from the game’s setting and mood. Eventually I got use to the awkwardness of the audio; until I played a different game then came back to this one. Another problem I found is that during a few spots throughout the game audio sounds were missing. One example was that a boulder started to fall and there was no sound to this small clip.
A good thing about the sound is the soundtrack. The soundtrack helps pull you in the game during fights, chases, and parts of the story. I felt like this was a saving factor in the games sound department, as it was much needed. The sound suffered but the soundtrack helped pick up where things failed.

Verdict:

Overall the game is an alright game to add to your Vita collection if you really want it. It has its full shares of ups and downs and is greatly out shined by its bigger brothers, but still holds up strong. The main character and the story are forgettable but still interesting to play through. If you’re a really big fan of Assassin’s Creed and you happen to have a Vita, it might be worth a pick up. For the other people who own a Vita, I suggest not to go out of your way to pick up this title.

Written By Guest Reviewer: JJKrizzle