Recent reviews by RetroNaut

Amazing utility and ease of use. Amazing all around, really.

Low stress, deeper than expected abilities and power-ups, and works great on the Steam Deck.

Great game, but severely punishing. Easy to quick restart though, so no worries.

Does what it says it does. Plus, you can run this while running steam games. [ ]/10.

Fantastic frantic fun with friends where you can beat a crab to death with a wrench AND get motion sickness and throw up, all in the span of five minutes.

This game is an amazing achievement. A game that creates an innovative, entertaining yet intuitive control system is rare. A game that creates a consistent deeply moving emotional experience in its players is rare. A game that does both? Epic.

I will not go in depth into the detailed mechanics or the story itself because doing so would ruin your individual experience. I am not referring only to story spoilers, but your experience and growth in using the "single-player co-op" control system. Don't watch a video. Don't read commentary. I started playing this game on a whim in my office when my family was asleep. Speakers on low, door open, lights on, email up on my second monitor. 30 minutes into the game I had headphones on, door was closed, lights and second monitor turned off. It commanded a degree of attention and immersion that I have rarely experienced. Buy it now and play it. I give it an 11/10. No kidding.

In fact, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It is well worth the $15, and certainly worth the $3 it is right now on the Steam Fall Sale when this review was written.

Please play it.

You will never forget it.

The AC franchise has been built on a model of innovative gameplay, including fluid free-running, fast-paced combat, fascinateing story elements and intriguing and challenging puzzles. AC III takes a huge step backward in many of these elements, presenting a puzzling combination of frustrating circumstances that leads any fan of the series to wonder "WTF?!" Out loud. While yelling.

First, the good. AC III is the first game in the series to change the combat system from the original counter system found in AC I. Aside from a poor tutorial, the new counter system actually seems even more fluid once you get the hang of it, and I did find it quite fun to fight scores of lobsterbacks at once (usually as a catharsis from the game's other elements). Not all moves worked on every enemy, and using defense breaks and disarms provided some interesing depth to an otherwise two dimensional combat system. The addition of naval combat was welcomed and was quite fun. I didn't quite understand why my huge cannonballs wouldn't have destroyed those powder stores rather than just exposing them, but the strategy was appreciated for its progression and seeing those ships explode did bring a smile to my face. The overall story and voice acting within the game were also relatively pleasing, keeping the player engaged during the intermittent cut scenes and expositions.

Next, the bad. AC's "sync" system has been something of particular interest to me since it was introduced. While I am not a completionist, I have always wanted to get 100% synchonization on all missions. It was a feeling of accomplishment, achieving a level of mastery of those missions to the degree the original legends had done hundreds of years prior. What made all those extra requirements intriguing was that they elevated the tactics needed to complete the mission those that would be seen in an action movie or comic book. They made you awesome becuase you could do it like a badass ninja. AC III took those requirements and threw into the trash and lit them of fire. They instead replaced them with tedious requirements that weren't challenging but annoying and frustratiing. They didn't make you badass. They made you do stupid tricks. They didn't force you to master the system. They forced you to game it. A perfect example of this would be the requirement that you not shove pedestrians when chasing a target through the streets. Does daintily walking by pedestrians in between sprints make you badass? No. Does it provide you with ample opportunities to shout at your screen and punch the nearest breakable surface with your ragefist? Yes. If these requirements weren't tedious, they were unreasonably difficult. Don't take fire damage while running through a burning building with poor level design and convoluted routing. Air assasinate a specific enemy, forcing you to kill everyone else before climbing the mast just for this singular reason (breaking the natural flow of the overall strategy). Etc. Et-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-cetera. It goes on and on. The game breaks you out of the strategy and says "Do it this way because reasons."

My final frustration was with this game's tendency to provide game elements that seemed to act as solutions looking for a problem. They had potential, but had little to no practicality. I never found it useful at any time to use any of the additional assassins for anything other than helping me kill enemies. The fake escort, the lure, and the like seemed to be gimmicks that had no use. The only missions that begged their use were those that introduced you to them. They served no other purpose than to be introduced and soon forgotten. The homestead was a wonderful idea in concept, but I honestly didn't craft a single item during the entire game. Recipes were collected and quickly forgotten as well. I could pick up all the ammo I needed from my dead enemies. What use did I have to make any? Almanac pages were a pain to grab due to an often clunky free run on slanted rooftops, and their reward was nebulous enough to leave me feeling very comfortable to leave them on the map. Hunting was fun at first, but I felt no need to gather skins or complete lists of animal kills. These entire portions of the game seemed like needless add-ons that I increasingly ignored the more I became frustrated with the game's core elements.

While I am usually one to do all side missions to get all possible story elements and complete most other parts of the AC games (feathers and flags aside), I found myself grinding out the story missions exclusively in even the early game just to get to the end (and that was only because I wanted to see the outcome of the overall story arc set up in previous games, not anything within the merit of the game itself).

My conclusion? Don't play this game unless you are a die-hard fan of the series. I give it a 4/10.

This game is like Star Wars Episode I. With a franchise this good, how could another one be bad, right?

One of the best games I have played in a LONG time. Never cared so much about a bunch of rectangles in my life.

Aweseome stealth game.