Reviewed on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
→ January 17, 2014 When Assassin’s Creed Liberation was released on the Vita, the series’ ever-growing ambition and scope seemed watered-down and constrained, despite Sony’s powerful hardware. Sadly, seeing it on a bigger screen has only placed a spotlight on its lackluster design. If before it came off like a favorite shirt that got shrunk in the wash, here it looks like someone tried to stretch it back out by pulling on every thread. It’s definitely the best way to experience Aveline’s story, but after Assassin’s Creed III and Black Flag, Liberation looks and plays like a bush-league imitation.
Liberation HD can, at moments, look like it belonged on the PS3 and 360 from the start, particularly when you roam New Orleans in the comely glow of daylight. Building textures and lighting effects got a lot of love, but not nearly as much was furnished on things like water effects, foliage, or skin textures. For every minute I spent soaking up the sun and the 18th century ambiance, I spent two more slogging through the blurry, colorless bayou. This visual inconsistency made it difficult to ever truly lose myself in Liberation’s world the way its unique setting begged me to.
Despite featuring a unique, admirable protagonist, the story suffers a similar fate. Both the scene to scene transitions and the overall structure of Aveline’s tale are severely disjointed. Story threads are chopped into little morsels and doled out piecemeal, never weaving together into a coherent narrative. It’s a clear mark of Liberation’s portable origins, and while it’s somewhat understandable, it keeps some potentially explosive themes from being explored in the way they deserve to be. The toothless writing and uneven vocal performances finish the job, effectively killing any potential gravitas the major story beats could have otherwise had.
These growing pains are only the beginning of its problems, though. Liberation was rough and buggy when it hit Vita, but aside from the more stable framerate, none of those imperfections have been smoothed over. Guards still get confused about how to navigate the environment, and fail to credibly respond to you while you’re slinking about. The free-run system is even more prone to random freak outs than in other Assassin’s Creed games, sending you up walls you didn’t want to scale, or down a bottomless pit to an infuriatingly early grave.
As it stands, Assassin’s Creed is already a busy melting pot of different mechanics and ideas, and the way Liberation is structured and designed places a lot of emphasis on what hasn’t worked for the series. You know those trailing missions that have become less and less a part of the series, because of how staggeringly unfun they were? You can look forward to a lot of them here, as well as plenty of checkpoint-free missions where you fail instantly if you’re seen even once. *There’s no finding creative ways of dealing with the complications that arise from subtle mistakes you might make, just droning repetition until you don’t make any. It’s a nit-picky, binary measurement of success *that makes being an assassin feel strangely akin to taking a road test.
Mercifully, Liberation’s standards for perfection are lower than the average DMV test proctor. Missions are, with rare exception, narrow and straightforward, and the number of banal fetch quests boggles the mind. Around half of your 12-hour life as an assassin is spent running painfully long stretches from point A to B only to talk to, pick up, or interact with someone or something. Some of the more tedious escort checkpoints from the Vita version have been thankfully excised, but nothing has been done to spruce up the combat. Your would-be assailants still predictably telegraph every attack, and politely wait their turn to take a swing so you can counter, and instantly kill them in an orderly fashion. It’s like watching a troupe of actors rehearse the same stage combat scene over and over in slow motion.
You can at least partially thank the costume-driven persona system for the tame objectives. The kernel of the mechanic has potential, asking you to don different guises to tackle missions in a variety of ways, but the problem is none of the possibilities are fun or fleshed out. The slave persona lets you blend-in by carrying crates around or standing by other slaves, but is otherwise functionally similar to the core assassin persona. The high-class lady persona is the worst of all though, removing nearly all combat options and the entire free run system, while adding the problem of random thugs pestering you as you walk the streets. These could have been, and rightfully should have been liberating subversions of racism and sexism, but instead, they wind up limiting players where they should have been creating possibilities for them.
Looking its best.
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→ January 17, 2014 When Assassin’s Creed Liberation was released on the Vita, the series’ ever-growing ambition and scope seemed watered-down and constrained, despite Sony’s powerful hardware. Sadly, seeing it on a bigger screen has only placed a spotlight on its lackluster design. If before it came off like a favorite shirt that got shrunk in the wash, here it looks like someone tried to stretch it back out by pulling on every thread. It’s definitely the best way to experience Aveline’s story, but after Assassin’s Creed III and Black Flag, Liberation looks and plays like a bush-league imitation.
Liberation HD can, at moments, look like it belonged on the PS3 and 360 from the start, particularly when you roam New Orleans in the comely glow of daylight. Building textures and lighting effects got a lot of love, but not nearly as much was furnished on things like water effects, foliage, or skin textures. For every minute I spent soaking up the sun and the 18th century ambiance, I spent two more slogging through the blurry, colorless bayou. This visual inconsistency made it difficult to ever truly lose myself in Liberation’s world the way its unique setting begged me to.
Despite featuring a unique, admirable protagonist, the story suffers a similar fate. Both the scene to scene transitions and the overall structure of Aveline’s tale are severely disjointed. Story threads are chopped into little morsels and doled out piecemeal, never weaving together into a coherent narrative. It’s a clear mark of Liberation’s portable origins, and while it’s somewhat understandable, it keeps some potentially explosive themes from being explored in the way they deserve to be. The toothless writing and uneven vocal performances finish the job, effectively killing any potential gravitas the major story beats could have otherwise had.
These growing pains are only the beginning of its problems, though. Liberation was rough and buggy when it hit Vita, but aside from the more stable framerate, none of those imperfections have been smoothed over. Guards still get confused about how to navigate the environment, and fail to credibly respond to you while you’re slinking about. The free-run system is even more prone to random freak outs than in other Assassin’s Creed games, sending you up walls you didn’t want to scale, or down a bottomless pit to an infuriatingly early grave.
As it stands, Assassin’s Creed is already a busy melting pot of different mechanics and ideas, and the way Liberation is structured and designed places a lot of emphasis on what hasn’t worked for the series. You know those trailing missions that have become less and less a part of the series, because of how staggeringly unfun they were? You can look forward to a lot of them here, as well as plenty of checkpoint-free missions where you fail instantly if you’re seen even once. *There’s no finding creative ways of dealing with the complications that arise from subtle mistakes you might make, just droning repetition until you don’t make any. It’s a nit-picky, binary measurement of success *that makes being an assassin feel strangely akin to taking a road test.
Mercifully, Liberation’s standards for perfection are lower than the average DMV test proctor. Missions are, with rare exception, narrow and straightforward, and the number of banal fetch quests boggles the mind. Around half of your 12-hour life as an assassin is spent running painfully long stretches from point A to B only to talk to, pick up, or interact with someone or something. Some of the more tedious escort checkpoints from the Vita version have been thankfully excised, but nothing has been done to spruce up the combat. Your would-be assailants still predictably telegraph every attack, and politely wait their turn to take a swing so you can counter, and instantly kill them in an orderly fashion. It’s like watching a troupe of actors rehearse the same stage combat scene over and over in slow motion.
You can at least partially thank the costume-driven persona system for the tame objectives. The kernel of the mechanic has potential, asking you to don different guises to tackle missions in a variety of ways, but the problem is none of the possibilities are fun or fleshed out. The slave persona lets you blend-in by carrying crates around or standing by other slaves, but is otherwise functionally similar to the core assassin persona. The high-class lady persona is the worst of all though, removing nearly all combat options and the entire free run system, while adding the problem of random thugs pestering you as you walk the streets. These could have been, and rightfully should have been liberating subversions of racism and sexism, but instead, they wind up limiting players where they should have been creating possibilities for them.
Looking its best.
More...
