Assassin's Creed III Review

With the development cost of your average big-budget AAA game running into some $100-odd million, it takes great courage to pump that kind of money into a new intellectual property (IP), as opposed to a popular franchise with a well-established fan base. Even when you do get new IPs, it's generally the same clichéd cover shooter fare; any modicum of innovation existing therein is sterilised after several passes through the focus group nonsense.

Fortunately, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed wasn't like any other AAA title. It broke the mould when it launched in 2007. The game employed Thief's brand of stealth pivoting around parkour-based gameplay—all packaged in a compelling mix of history and science fiction. The rest is history, and it's little wonder why the franchise went on to become Ubisoft's most profitable property. Needless to say, Assassin's Creed III (AC3) sure has large shoes to fill. However, with obscenely large budgets and a large pool of development talent, it's a no brainer that the game is poised for greatness.

Someone's about to get a splitting headache

After visiting Jerusalem and Europe for the original and the sequel, the third installment brings the eternal clash between the Assassins and Templars to Colonial America. Think of this as a less cheesy version of Mel Gibson's The Patriot, albeit with a half-English, half-Native American protagonist with a decidedly unpronounceable name that's conveniently anglicised as Connor Kenway. Like all Assassin Creed games, the narrative pivots around real historical events. This time, it's an engaging ride spanning 30 years of Connor's life as he fends off invading British forces that are hell bent on assimilating his village. If you haven't clued in to it yet, all this involves the dastardly Templars who have a special interest in sacred grounds hidden within Connor's village.

Unlike the past games, the real life Assassin counterpart and main protagonist Desmond Miles gets a lot more screen time as the game segues between the Animus and present world. The 2012 apocalypse plot element introduced in the first game becomes the focus of Desmond's missions, which take on a stealthy role in a modern setting conducive to free running. The presentation, as expected, is rather slick, with excellent production values and impressive voice acting that does justice to various settler accents while also preserving the period feel. The entire single player campaign spans well over 30 hours and sees Connor transcend from a naive, angsty kid to a skilled assassin. Fortunately, AC3 consciously avoids the set piece porn evident in every AAA game these days. It instead opts for a subtle, nuanced narrative replete with great character development—all set against a rich, engaging plot based on a central theme of revenge.

Arboreal assassin

The large-team, big-budget pedigree of this game is evident in all the right places. This level of texture and mesh detail in a vast open world setting belies the hardware limitations of the console, and seems more at home in the PC version. Granted there is a bit of texture pop-in visible, but the overall texture size and model detail is unprecedented for a PS3 game. The game world is incredibly vast and spans the cities of Boston and New York and three smaller settlements, in addition to frontier landscape replete with forest, cliff, grassland and snowy areas. Each area comes with an intrusive loading screen, but the sheer magnificence of eye candy and attention to detail evident in each more than makes up for it.

The graphics engine is capable of excellent particle effects as well as volumetric fog and lighting. All this brings weather effects alive with consummate detail. Be it the sun-kissed splendour of the grassland, low-visibility during rains, or the tracks you leave behind in the snow—the redesigned Anvil engine creates a living, breathing microcosm that surprisingly runs just shy of 60 fps on the PS3. Water is rendered with a great degree of detail in the naval missions, while the storm and battle destruction effects are faithfully recreated. The character animations are fluid and loop seamlessly between complex combat moves and acrobatic parkour flourishes. This is easily one of the best looking PS3 games I have witnessed in the recent past.

The volumetric lighting looks downright gorgeous