Assassin’s Creed III Liberation occurs during the 18th century in New Orleans before and during the American Revolution. As the beautiful Aveline, an assassin of French and African descent, you are recruited into the Assassin Brotherhood by an escaped slave named Agate while investigating the disappearance of your mother.
The story is not seen through the eyes of Desmond Miles like in previous games and the details are fairly sparse.
Aveline’s lead as the main character marks a milestone in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. For the first time ever, players can experience 18th century America as a female of etiquette. Her mastery of stealth and skill with weaponry are only matched by her charm and modest nature. When she isn’t scaling walls and sneaking across rooftops, she’s out on the town in proper dress.
Aveline can take on three different personas – the Lady, the Slave, and the Assassin. When dressed in her lady persona, Aveline is not capable of stealth or engaging in combat. Since she has a reputation to uphold as the daughter of a rich merchant, she must act very lady-like. The assassin and slave personas are very much alike. When infiltrating a stronghold as the slave, the persona can blend in with other slaves by mimicking their yard activities.
These activities can include, but are not limited to, carrying crates to different locations and raking up leaves. Aveline can also scale walls and kill her adversaries in her slave persona. The assassin persona really doesn’t need an explanation. It’s a ruthless character that kills without prejudice.
Gameplay utilizes both the Vita’s touch screen and physical controls. Standard actions like interacting with people and climbing and attacking are assigned to the PSVita’s face buttons. Everything is conveniently configured and feels natural as you play; even the analog controls feel smooth. By holding the Left shoulder button while approaching an enemy from behind, you can slit their throat by pressing the Square button.
Most missions are stealth based, and like previous Assassin’s Creed games, you must use the environment to your advantage by hiding on rooftops and using trees to reach checkpoints. As you progress through the game, you acquire a poison dart weapon. This changes the game dramatically as you poison guards and murder acolytes indirectly. You can easily fail a mission if you miss poisoning a guard patrolling the outer parameter of a mission area. Accessories like poison dart ammo and smoke bombs can be purchased from smugglers located throughout the game world.
The PSVita’s Touch Screen is used to access the world map, equip weapons from your inventory, and to navigate the in-game menu system. It’s unfortunate that Ubisoft didn’t utilize the Touch Screen for more functions. It would have been perfect for shooting poison darts at your enemies.
Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation’s only fault is its AI (Artificial Intelligence). When you climb a tree to reach a guard post perched high above and kick the guard off, his body will sometimes land in a group of guards, causing no reaction. The remaining guards will continue their patrol like nothing ever happened. This occured more than once during the False Mackandal mission.
Despite this small issue with the game’s AI, Liberation offers an engrossing gaming experience with rock-solid game mechanics. Among a selection of game titles that vary greatly in quality, Assassin’s Creed III Liberation is one of the best games available for PS Vita this Holiday season. No gamer should be without it.
Mike Pittaro
Platform: PS Vita
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
ESRB: M (Mature)
Price: $39.99
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Graphics |  |
| Extraordinary graphics; they look incredible on the PSVita. | |
| Sound | |
| A cinematic soundtrack and professional voice acting enhance the experience. | |
| Gameplay | |
| Assassin's Creed III Liberation is one of the best games currently available for PSVita. | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
