Assassin's Creed 3 Hands On - Eurogamer Expo
If it wasn't for Dishonoured this would have been my Game of Show.
Remember playing AC2 after AC1, how new and awesome it felt. How the annoying parts of AC1 had been watered down or discarded completely? Remember how that feeling slowly died as you played Brotherhood & Revelation? Well the 15 - 20 minutes of AC3 I got to play reminded me of playing 2 for the first time.
Considering Connor had alot of his assassin toys I gather that the Demo, infiltrating Fort Willcot, was at least a few hours in. After free climbing a rock face and scaling one of the Fort battlements I got to do my first ledge assassination and it felt exactly as I would expect. After a quick zipline (using the tomahawk not hookblade insight) I was inside one of the buildings. Here I got to take out a few more guards as stealth-fully as possible since detection = desync. This showed off Connor's new assassination animations, all of which are varied and visceral. One had Conner hooking his tomahawk around a guards neck and slicing the redcoat's throat while throwing the guy over his in shoulder. I then got to freerun through the rafters which also felt alot more fluid than in AC2. (Something I only found out after my demo was that you no longer need to hold down the right trigger & the a button, only the a button is required.) Climbing, jumping and general platforming felt familiar but at the same time refined, a lot of work has been put into animating Connor and he climbs and moves differently than Ezio or even Altair. I was also happy to see you can now assassinate a guard from around a corner, pulling him out of sight of other patrolling enemies.
Combat was the biggest adjustment, those expecting the same old spamming of the counter button while your enemies patiently take turns getting killed will be in for a surprise. I with my many, many, hours of AC1 through Revelation Experience, could only pull of a, very impressive, counter kill once. Enemies now circle and attack in pairs and having not gone through a combat tutorial I found myself just stabbing the giant dude in a kilt swinging a lumber axe at Connor's face and trying my best to avoid his attacks. Hopefully this means the combat has received some much needed depth.
After retrieving what I came for a friend of Connor started bombarding the fort which I then had to escape, the now burning & exploding fort showed off more of Connor's new free running, with beams and collapsed walkways guiding me ever outward which is also where I experience my first gripe, to leave the fort I needed to swan dive out of a window yet it too me 3 tried to get Connor to run out of it. Hopefully this was just a Beta build bug as there is little that ruins the experience in Assassin's Creed as fast as your free running being rudely interrupted by a bug or poorly constructed path.
Visually AC3 is also a massive upgrade from the original, character models had more detail and the world felt richer & more vibrant.
The 31st of October can not come fast enough.
For those looking for a bit more information check out Gametrailer's Preview Video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/g...w?xrs=share_fb
Originally Posted by Crzwaco
