You are a half English, half Mohawk Native American Ratonhnhaké:ton, but you quickly get the name Conner from a sweet old chap named Achilles. When you start the game you play as Conner's father Haytham Kenway. I really love the setting. There is something about early America that has a charm to it. Playing as Haytham is kind of like driving a clunky car that has no cool features. You can't really do anything as him. You do anything too assassiny After you play as Haytham you get to play as young Connor. I thought this was a cute way for the audience to connect with him. You play hide and seek with your fellow tribe members. This is the way they familiarize you with the controls. Finally you grow up and are living with a man named Achille's. He lives in a cool house that overlooks a small lake. He teaches you everything you need to know to be an assassin. This is your homestead. I will discuss more about your homestead later. You travel from Boston to New York doing assassin missions and being part of events that shaped a new America. Your goal is to bring down the templars (as always) and try to find out what the meaning of right and wrong is. Connor is naive and often finds that the things he believes in, no matter how impassioned he may be, may not be what is true and right for the greater good. I love that Connor is so pure and stands by his beliefs.

My Favorite Part Of The Game

 You are introduced to missions in this game called homestead missions. From helping a man woo a woman, to helping the doctor get to a pregnant woman, these are the warming and fun missions that made this game fun for me. When Connor settles into the homestead, it is a bare and desolate place void of many humans, but Connor brings people to settle there and we are along for the fun missions. These missions change the homestead around you. In the final missions of the homestead missions you are surrounded by friends and settlers of this lively and wonderful place.

Counter Kills and Attack.. Maybe I am Missing Something

        This has been by far THE BIGGEST adjustment I ever had to make in a game. According to the game makers, killing people is easier than ever. Yeah maybe if you don't want to get cramps in your hands. I have little tiny hands. I know the XBOX 360 controller is pretty small, but I had the hardest time killing people. My hands would start to cramp up from the constant mashing between A and B. It's fine when all you have to do is keep pressing A to attack and B to counter in consistent intervals, but when they are erratic like they are in this game, I actually have to pause the game sometimes when I am fighting more than 5 enemies. My hands end up hurting so bad. Maybe there is some magic way to do this, but for me it's a real task. It was AMAZING when Ezio could consistently take down one attacker after another with minimal effort and the right combination of Attack and Counter would chain together in a glorious heap of bodies. In this, your attackers keep getting up and up and up and up... You could be going to do the final killing blow, when an attacker behind you hits you (if you miss the quick icon to counter). This throws off any fluidity that you could have had in the fighting. I asked my husband if his hands cramped when he played this game, and even he said that they did.  I have read tons of reviews that say the fighting is effortless and fluid, but for me it was not. I mean maybe I was doing something wrong. I will admit that is possible, but it felt really disconnected to me. When you actually CAN get into a rhythm you feel like the biggest bad ass on earth, but the feeling of any true rhythm really dampened my gameplay experience in that sense. I may just have the worst hand eye coordination on earth, but I didn't have a problem with any other Assassin's game.

*Update*
I have been writing this review as I have been playing and now that I am done with the game, I have mastered the controls. I wanted to leave my ranting about the controls because they were a huge discouraging part of playing this game in the beginning. Once I got used to the controls they weren't that bad.

Damn You For Jumping on Everything, But Damn You Make It Look Good

I swear Conner wants to jump on everything. I alert the guards so many times by accidentally jumping on stuff. The free-run is SUPER EASY and streamlined in this game. You jump from tree to tree so effortlessly that it's like a dance in water. Yeah, it's that smooth.

Lockpicking

WTF GAME? Seriously I think there is some cosmic joke being played on me. This is the most inconsistent piece of crap I EVER tried in a game. This is by far the worst lockpicking mechanism in a game I ever experienced. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes I want to throw the controller at the TV for sitting there for 20 minutes trying to do it. Just let me open the effing chest. I would rather be sitting there breaking lockpicks all day than this sh*t. *Update* As of completing this game, I have only opened 3 chests because it is so annoying.

Naval Missions

Naval missions are some of the most fun and frustrating missions in this game. You get to man a huge ship and blow up other ships. You can't really go too wrong with that! I find that if your ship isn't upgraded enough that later naval missions can be hard to complete. I would suggest anyone who play this game to save money to upgrade your ship.

Final Thoughts

I had no idea what happened at the end of this game. I really don't. I played it through twice to try to figure it out. Nope. I guess I just don't get it. While there were many aspects of this game that I loved, this wasn't my favorite AC installment. Make sure you look up how to sell and trade items. This will help greatly. Also, my regards to you for the 20 minutes you will sit through credits waiting to continue playing after the ending of the game. You can't skip it. Trust me I tried.

Labels: 4 stars, Assassin's Creed 3, game review