So glad you have the Vita now. Love my system but it seems like the only time people want to discuss it is when they need something (more?) to ridicule sony about. That said, for me, the inverse applies for every point you made about this game. I thought the story was completely absent and Aveline definitely needed a lot more depth. Get some Gravity Rush, Tom!

I was at a meeting of game developers recently. Believe it or not, the name “Tom Chick” came up. After a brief discussion, someone in the room said: “Oh don’t you worry. There are going to be repercussions for that.”

It’s kind of amusing in a worst-movie-you’ll-see-all-week sense to see what idiots think sounds threatening and plausible.

It’s even more amusing to think about what a developer would consider “repercussions.” You think they’ll throw a slice of pizza in Tom’s general direction, or just make derisive Monty Python references under their breath?

What’s funny is that, yes the visuals suffer, but not very much. It’s a pretty impressive piece of hardware

I would very much like to play this game. On My PS3. Or preferably my Xbox. I cannot justify buying a Vita for it. Especially with so damned much GW2 to do.

I disagree with Tom so sharply here that I’m not sure how to express it without being mistaken for one of the churlish fanboys that crowd the site anytime one of his reviews strays outside the median. All I can say is that his experience with the game was very different from mine.

Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation is a dim, tedious, and broken game, technically and conceptually speaking, in practically every regard. The highest praise I can offer is that it never crashed during the 7-8 hours I fought with it, though given the number of times I was forced to reset due to scripting errors or invincible assassination targets, that’s a minor distinction.

As Tom says, Aveline can use changing stations to switch between three different personas: The Lady who can beguile useless guards and be fatally obstructed by shin-high platforms; The Slave who can blend into crowds until her notoriety explodes for any random infraction; and The Assassin who would be able to fight really well if the combat system functioned the way it was supposed to. This means that under absolutely ideal circumstances, the player might have access to as much as one-third of the tactics that Ezio gained within an hour of starting Assassin’s Creed II, but is battling three notoriety bars instead of just one.

These are not ideal circumstances. Trying to kill a witness is a coin-flip on whether the character model will lock into a freakout pose and become immune to damage. Step down onto a pier or tumble into the water as The Lady, and she’ll happily drown rather than violate her prohibition on climbing. Enemies pop into and out of the world at an arm’s length. Proximity and timing seem wholly unrelated to whether melee attacks connect. In one “boss” encounter, I hacked the guy in the arteries for a sustained three minute combo, yet he wouldn’t keel over until I gave up and accidentially countered his next attack.

But even in a game where traditional, iterative controls only work some of the time, it’s kind of amazing how poorly the Vita-specific elements work. Some of it is just silly busy work, like pinching your fingers across the front and rear touch screens to rip open a letter. The real trials come when Aveline needs to hold a letter up to a light source, as apparently a light bulb, a flash light, and the Earth’s sun are insufficiently bright for the game to recognize through the system’s camera. Also, God bless anyone who can make pickpocketing or chain killing work consistently.

Tom is absolutely correct that New Orleans and the surrounding bayou has a distinct appearance compared from anything I’ve seen in Assassin’s Creed III. From an aesthetic standpoint, the designers should be proud of what they were able to accomplish on a handheld. It’s such a shame the visual fidelity comes at such a steep performance cost: Aveline sprints and climbs and tumbles with a gentle leisure, as though the whole of colonial Louisiana were suspended in a thready gel.

Is Liberation really a self-contained mystery about Aveline? I earnestly don’t know, because at a point in the game where Ezio was avenging his murdered family and Connor was fighting to protect his home, Aveline was still meeting with people of uncertain importance towards an end I couldn’t comprehend. Something about shipping irregularities, Cajun accents, and a cultish mystic? That wasn’t worth sitting through when it involved lightsabers.

I never played that PSP Assassin’s Creed game, Bloodlines. I did force myself all the way through the first 360 game though, so it still means something when I call Liberation the worst game in the franchise. Altair’s adventures were just repetitious and boring. This one actually takes all of the improvements the series has made since then, brainstorms ways to make them off-putting and high maintenance, and then gives it all compression fractures on the way into a portable platform.

I recommend against it.

I know of only one developer who might do more. Let’s just hope Tom’s beloved Coke vending machine is well protected.
Pete’s threat would have sounded marginally less ridiculous if he had said “PR” or even “publishers” instead. It’s hard to imagine a developer, much less “developers,” who have the time, energy, money, or interest in going after Tom for anything.

I agree that this game hasn’t had any of those issues for me. There were definitely some technical issues like people disappearing or acting weird, but those happen in the big boy console version. I am really enjoying this game even with the unnecessary Vita junk thrown in. I also like that Aveline starts out as an assassin, without any pretext of learning her skills.

Maybe we’ll get to see such a lead in one of the “core” entries of the series? One can only hope.

Corrections:
“The virtual history sim– called an animus — still comes into play” (Different dash types, spacing)

“where you have to play some whiny douchebag assassin [descendant]” (Rowling made the same mistake in one of the Potter novels.)

“a mysterious hacker running and [sic?] the city and environs”

Excellent corrections! I’m honored to be in rarefied company with Miss Rowling! :)

I noticed but didn’t mind that “thready gel” as I can sometimes grow impatient with her more lumbering, male AC counterparts. The light-source kerfuffle is very real though, and I found the persona system more hassle than in any way compelling.

The Lady persona did lead to one of my favorite in-game moments, however. Brooch collection involves a series of puzzles (and I use the term loosely) where Aveline, unable to climb in her dress (but strangely still able to climb ladders) must find ways to ascend and sometimes descend to a precious stone possessing gentleman hanging out on a second floor balcony somewhere, whom she can then charm, gaining the gem in the process. I was mildly notorious when I made my way up to one such fellow, when suddenly I was beset by no less then ten city guards, who I murdered in turn. To the gentleman’s credit, he was too spooked by the display to succumb to my charms, but that did not stop Aveline from flirting hard amidst a pile of bodies, cornering the skittish gent until his path-finding at last led him down the stairs and fleeing into the streets below.

You barely play as Desmond in Revelations at all. I don’t understand why people don’t like him, and he’s definitely been in the series less and less.