I never really hopped onto the Assassin's Creed bandwagon when the first one was released in 2007. The historical setting and gameplay concepts were intriguing and I wanted to play it, but I wasn't sure if I would like it enough to warrant an outright purchase. And since Ubisoft never bothered to release a playable demo on the PlayStation Network, I never played the game.
So I missed the first two games and their various spin-offs. But when I started seeing information about the third game, and its setting during the American Revolution, my curiosity piqued. The trailers made it look as though parts of the game were played during large-scale battles, and I thought that would be really cool to play. So when I found that a friend (Huh?Mr.Box!) was willing to let me borrow his copy, I decided to give it a chance.
And boy was I disappointed!
My core complaint with Assassin's Creed (and many other games like it) is that I don't like how dumbed down the controls are, and how little actual control the user has. The run button is also the "climb" button and sometimes the "jump" button (even though there is a dedicated "jump" button). I've always held that when a single button does everything, then it really does nothing. Assassin's Creed regularly feels like I am not playing the game; a procedural function created by the developers is playing the game.
Instead of the game just doing what the player tells it to do, it has to determine which of several pre-determined context-sensitive actions the developers decided to pre-program. You might want to try to sprint through a narrow alleyway between two close buildings to chase a courrier, but if you're just a few pixels off, you end up jumping up the side of the wall and climbing to the top of the building. And then it's a pain in the ass to get back down, and the courrier is now two blocks away.
Because I wasn't lined up perfectly, the free run forces me to climb up this building,
when all I really wanted to do was chase the courier through this alley way.
Maybe I want to jump off of a building onto a nearby tree branch in order to stay above a group of enemy Redcoats that I'm trying to stealth past. But for some reason, the game decides to make my character leap past the tree branch and right into the middle of the group of bad guys. Now my cover is blown, I'm stuck in combat, and maybe I've even failed a bonus objective or two.
These sorts of problems could be avoided if the "climb" and "jump" commands were their own buttons separate from the "run" button...
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ae52b9af-d384-46f5-b50f-c751d6ac7cf6|1|5.0
Tags:Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed III, Ubisoft, historical fiction, history, assassin, parkour, colonial America, American Revolution, United States, minuteman, minutemen, Britain, Boston, sailing, Achievement unlocked, John de Lancie
This review was originally published 09/14/2010 on Game Observer (now defunct as of 5/13/2014). It has been republished here for archival purposes.
An artistically inspired, very fun, but rough-around-the-edges game.
The Saboteur is a very novel game. For one thing, it is a fresh and appealing take on the stagnant genre of World War II-themed games. Essentially GTA in Nazi-occupied France, this game is pretty to look at and a lot of fun to play, even though its features aren’t as fleshed-out as one would like. The game is also surprisingly risqué by EA standards, offering actual nudity, plenty of F-bombs, and loads of gratuitous violence. While I don’t mind seeing more adult content in a game, it is disappointing that Pandemic didn’t find interesting gameplay functions for it. Instead, it’s all just for show.
Franz Liebkind disapproves!
The big draw for this game is going to be its unique art style. Areas of Paris that are under the control of the Nazis are rendered in black and white, with yellow, red, and occasionally blue highlights and complete with rain clouds and thunder and lightning. Areas that are under the control of the Resistance are rendered in full pastel color, in full sunlight and with birds singing. It’s a cool effect, and adds a bit of variety to the game’s otherwise uninteresting visuals. However, the colored areas of the city don’t look nearly as interesting as the black-and-white areas, and it’s almost a shame you have to free the city from the Nazis. On the other side of the spectrum, the black-and-white areas are just too dark at the recommended brightness level, and make it hard to see where you are going. But it’s nothing some tweaks to the game’s or TV’s settings can’t fix.
Your base of operations is in a secret room in the back of a strip club, complete with peep-hole.
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bbe6c09b-af78-412b-ad1c-69ae3051533c|3|5.0
Tags:The Saboteur, review, Pandemic Studios, Electronic Arts, EA, action, adventure, open world, parkour, GTA, nazi, World War II, PC, PS3, XBox 360