The Hilarity of Ass-assins Creed 3

Assassins Creed is a very popular franchise and it's not hard to see why. Altair, Ezio, Kenway are all incredibly cool characters that do their jobs in style and the games combat system and storyline are both thoroughly enjoyable. That's pretty much the only thing that kept me going through Assassins Creed: brotherhood. After a while it all started to become stale and I had to rely on the characters being interesting and the combat to intensify to keep me playing. It almost didn't, but eventually I made it.

On to Assassins Creed 3. I got this 10 months ago and have only recently decided to play it. Why? Well it wasn't because I outright disliked the franchise for being boring and repetitive. I honestly enjoyed Brotherhood and Assassins Creed 2. I can partially blame the fact that I got Dishonored at the same time which I was glued to for several days. It made me forget that I even had Assassins creed 3. But no. It really wasn't any of these things that put me off. Allow me to explain my time playing AC3 so far.

Firstly, in the amphitheatre, you have to shuffle along people in a row of seats to get to your seat and sit down. There is a man in the row in front of you doing the same thing. If you watch him closely, he stumbles into another NPC and he glitches into his chair. He ends up standing on the chair and forgets everything. He becomes a statue. Why? Who knows but It certainly got my attention. Luckily this was only the first incident at the time and I decided to ignore it as a one off issue.

Then I played for another hour and arrived in Boston. Deciding that it was late and I was tired, now would be the best time to have some random fun. I ran up to some shouting NPC and tried to test my pistol on him. The game hadn't instructed me on how to do so yet but I tried anyway. 40 key presses later, I realised how to do it and accidentally shot a guy standing across the street to me. Shocked at my own actions, I turned to find a place to hide from the guards that weirdly never came. I just shot a man and the guards didn't care. The ones that were on patrol just walked past the dead body. The NPC I was originally aiming at was crouched by the victim, prodding him to check if he was alive. Guards? nope. They wandered by.

So I took it upon myself to show the guards the error of their ways. I found two guards standing by a queue of people and stabbed one in the back. The second looked at me for a moment, just to make sure I was the guy who had literally just stabbed his mate before pulling out his musket. Out of nowhere, 5 more guards ran up to me and in turn, I stabbed them all and ended up standing on a carpet made out of them. My plan was a complete success. Shame absolutely nobody in the queue noticed this was all happening. The guy at the front was waving his arms and making conversation with a guard now dead at his feet. The game wasn't exactly looking too good at the point. Flashbacks of stupid NPC's in previous games quickly reminded me that this was a convention of Assassins Creed games and I would have to put up with it.

Moving on, I attempted a stealth mission. Free the slaves and kill the officers. No problem. As soon as I noticed an Officer had spotted me, I leapt behind cover and he forgot I existed. One man however was fixated on my location. He saw me run into a hay stack and began to stare at me. The rest of his body though had different plans. He walked down the path, still glaring at a hay stack he just saw a man leap into until his neck couldn't withstand the strain. Following his patrol pattern, he turned back round, walked by the hay stack, still staring like a hawk until I leapt out and stabbed him to death. Good job random officer. You made your fellow guards proud.

Could the game get any more stupid? If it was just the AI being dumb then maybe I could ignore it and the game would be playable but the scene that occurs after freeing the slaves forced me to take a moment of time and laugh hysterically. A massive fight breaks out and you must run up to the commander of this camp and kill him. Half way up the hill, my legs decided they no longer wanted to be attached to my pelvis, but to my shoulders instead. I literally shrunk into myself. I ended up  looking like some creepy alien with long spindly legs thrust from my shoulders. I couldn't help but put the game on hold and soak up the hilarity of the situation. What would those guards be thinking as they saw this creature running up to them? I was supposed to be an intimidating assassin not a Necromorph from Dead Space.

Now don't get me wrong. I do actually like the game believe it or not. However there are some moments where we have to put down the controller, push away the keyboard, let go of the mouse and say to ourselves 'what on earth just happened?' Lets hope Assassins Creed 4 doesn't do the same thing.