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Thursday, 3 October 2013

Assassin's Creed III Gaiden. With a chick. In the bayou.


I got this for Christmas 2012 but am only just getting around to playing it now. This was touted as another "full-fat console game" on a handheld. It was the recent announcement, much to my irritation, of a HD version of this game being released that reminded me about it again and spirred me to finally play it. Followers of this blog may recall this exact same thing happened before with Resident Evil: Revelations. I was given the game as a gift when it was still exclusive to it's original platform and then shortly afterwards, it was announced to be releasing on pretty much every other platform under the sun. Rage.

The Assassin's Creed games are all starting to get a bit samey to I went into this knowing what to expect for the most part. This entry's unique mechanic was to have 3 different outfits: Lady, Slave and Assassin. Unfortunately, this seemed to be a bit of a forced gimmick in that the slave and assassin personas were not very different (except that the slave one can blend in easier) and the lady one is just a great hinderance because of the huge gown meaning you can't run fast of climb or carry many weapons. But thankfully, this entry in the series seemed to have more actual assassinating in it that most recent ones which was a good change of pace. It reminded me most of the original Assassin's creed in that most sequences would involve you finding a big target, trailing and spying to try and find a plan of attack and then carrying out that plan. Which was a good formula and it's a bit dissapointing that the newer games are drifting from it so much. Also some of the touch screen gimmicks thrown in were kind of annoying especially one where you had to shine a bright light into the camera which did not seem to work very well.

The visuals looked very good on the Vita itself due to it running on a trimmed down version of the same Anvil engine that Assassin's Creed III used. However, when I transferred the screenshots to desktop, they looked a bit grainy and lumpy sadly.

All in all, a fairly by the numbers Assassin's Creed entry. Main points of attraction being that it can be played on the go and you get to do quite a bit of assassinating. As the Assassin's Creed games are all getting so similar with their yearly entries, and this one launched last year along with Assassin's Creed III technically making 2 entries in 2012, meaning they are mostly just being played for the story now. But as the title of this post suggested, it felt more like a side-story just made to tie in and feature a small crossover with it's bigger brother console game. Definitely worth it if you're a big fan of the series. Probably not if otherwise.

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