So anyway, there is one reason and one reason only that Assassin’s Creed III was published before these reviews; I had absolutely no intention of ever completing Brotherhood because of the multiplayer. I don’t understand why a game series I really enjoyed decided to add a multiplayer mode when the single player along was perfectly fine, and I understand even less why people like it so much. More on the multiplayer later though.
I almost didn’t continue with the series such is my disdain for multiplayer and also the way the game was advertised led me to believe that the only function of the game was a multiplayer one and that it had no bearing on the Assassin’s Creed storyline. I can’t remember how I found out this wasn’t true but I sucked it up, purchased the game and actually quite enjoyed the single player experience.
It is essentially a continuation of Assassin’s Creed II only slightly better due t fact it was released a year later. The gameplay elements are the same as its predecessor with two notable differences. The first is that you have a new function to recruit young assassins into your mini club in Rome and send them out across continental Europe to complete missions that are completely unrelated to your main goals. You don’t actually do anything either, other than click on a location and get given a chance of success. If you fail, your recruit dies and you have to hire a new one and start again. It is fairly dull but a good source of money which brings me on to the next change.
Instead of having your own private villa to improve, you now move in to Rome and that apparently means that, as an aside to assassinating people, Ezio has also started work as a building renovator and big businessman in the area. Your goals are to buy up all of the shops in the city and rebuild many derelict buildings including the aqueduct. I haven’t read my history on this but I’m pretty sure that Rome didn’t get renovated by some bizarre rich guy with a white cape and I have to question why on Earth they’ve put this in the game.
In Assassin’s Creed II, city renovation was new and you could say it was fair enough as you were renovating a place you actually lived in. In Rome, you are just rebuilding the city for no real reason. It doesn’t make sense in its own context which is a bizarre area to fall down on.
Also, by this point we are moving away from the stupid ‘stealth’ requirements of the assassin from the previous games such as walking slowly to avoid detection. It seems that Ubisoft have accepted the fact that sometimes people run or ride horses quickly and this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are up to no good. Of course, Ezio still walks around with his giant ‘I’m an assassin’ sign, but he has been in Rome for so long now that the guards probably think he’s an eccentric. Especially when you factor in the fact that he fixed the aqueduct for no other reason that it was a broken. And at great personal expense too.
Achievements – 60 Achievements – 1,250 Points
First off, there are the single player achievements which again are mostly straight forward. There are two missable ones for doing stuff as future Desmond but if you do happen to miss these, it’s not too much trouble to reply until the point where you can get them again.
There are some quite interesting ones involving finding certain items and locations and they actually make the most of the various side stories they have set up, namely that of Subject 16 – but no spoilers here.
I found the single player mode to be quite entertaining, however completing the game was made a major slog and dragged out for several years due to...
Multiplayer
Earning these achievements was a huge pain in the ass. Firstly, I completed every other aspect of the game years before completing these bits and there are two achievements which were insanely difficult to obtain. The pick of the bunch for insanity is the Abstergo Employee of the Month achievement. This one requires you to get all of the multiplayer bonuses available, one of which is called extreme variety which you only get if you manage to perform fifteen different bonuses in one match, something that doing in a random match is reserved for those people who, at the time of online popularity, had enough time to play the multiplayer over and over again until they were insanely good at it. And even then, there is a still a massive element of luck to it.
This is Assassin’s Creed’s first venture into multiplayer and you can tell from the Assassin’s Creed III achievements that Ubisoft eventually learned that people don’t like having to complete challenges based on the randomness of other players.
Downloadable Content
There is one downloadable content set with achievements which lets you access an additional sequence where you get to play with all of Leonardo’s inventions. Part of this, involves having to get 100% synchronisation across the DLC, which is actually the most challenging aspect of the game. This is what you want from DLC, something that adds something a little different and an extra challenge – thank God there were no additional multiplayer achievements!
Despite many labelling this as an unnecessary addition to the series, I thought that there was enough content here to justify a full title. I still question the necessity of multiplayer but even if people like it, which apparently they do, there is no reason to have achievements for it. Surely leaderboards and bragging rights is enough for those that enjoy online multiplayer?
