#MASTER POST: "Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012)" Reviews - Part 2

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sidequesting.com: Steve’s Game of the Week: "Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

I’ve been playing an awful lot of Assassin’s Creed this week. No, I don’t mean that Assassin’s Creed game, I mean Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation (although I’ve been playing that other one, too).

Regardless of what you think of the Vita, Liberation is without a doubt the truest Assassin’s Creed game on any portable gaming device. Perhaps it’s too close to its console counterpart, in fact, as most of the issues I’ve been having with the game seem to be apparently in AC3 Standard as well.

That is to say, they both have a sub-optimal framerate and neither one seems particularly good about not having things clip into other things. However, Liberation comes with its own set of bonuses, as well. The protagonist, Aveline, is an incredibly interesting and likable character. Her story is, in my estimation, just as riveting (if not more so) than Connor’s saga. The game’s handling of race, gender and politics is just about the best and most forward that I’ve ever seen in a game.

In terms of gameplay, the ‘persona’ system (which allows Aveline to don one of three different guises, each with its own advantages and disadvantages) actually solves some of the problems I’ve had with the franchise since the second game. Namely, it adds tension, variety and actually acknowledges that people should be more concerned about the hooded figure jumping through town stabbing people than they ever have been.

It also ties the game’s setting and story into its gameplay, which is something that I’m always very much a sucker for. If you’re at all a fan of Assassin’s Creed, and own a Vita, you should absolutely buy this game. If you don’t have a Vita, this is another game to consider buying one for. [SOURCE]

Kotaku.com: Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation: The Kotaku Review

There had to be some sort of heroes back then. Unnoticed in the ways that mattered and exploited in the ways that left permanent fractures, the African people that came over during the Atlantic Slave Trade had to have found ways to survive and thrive in a land where they were looked on as property.

Yet, accounts of such perseverance remain charged subject matter. Who can really get history right, when multiple factions want it told a certain way? You’d think a video game would be the last place anyone would look for a treatise on what’s been called America’s birth-defect. And yet here we are, playing firsthand through the tale of a family torn asunder by slavery in Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation.
Aveline de Grandpre belongs to two worlds. No, scratch that. The heroine of this new portable Assassin’s Creed shifts her realities through multiple facets: she’s part-white and part-black, of the Old and New World, born into slavery yet free. And, of course, she’s a stealthy warrior in a secret Brotherhood that fights against an evil conspiracy to exploit mankind.

Liberation makes great use of Aveline to diversify not only the world of video game heroines, but the design ideas that have been associated with Ubisoft’s hit franchise so far.

The Creole protagonist has three different personas she can adopt throughout Liberation. The upper-class Lady can’t do any of the free-running locomotion that’s become a hallmark of the Assassin’s Creed games. But she can charm guards—which makes them follow and protect her—or bribe them to get into secured locations. The Slave persona can blend in with other servants and also incite riots but becomes notorious for her actions at a faster rate than the Lady. Aveline’s Assassin guise will be the most familiar to fans of the series. While wearing the Assassin’s tricorner hat and togs, she can wield multiple ranged and melee weapons.

You’ll be playing through a virtual version of New Orleans in Liberation, starting in 1768 when it was a French colony, moving through its period of Spanish rule and ending one year after the American Revolution. The game very much comes across an AC title in miniature, with a well-populated open-world playground for players to stalk and hide in. The combat is smooth and stylish and the new free-running animations that show up in Assassin’s Creed III are here, too. Liberation’s story has Aveline—haunted by the uncertain fate of her long-lost mother—trying to get to the bottom of disappearances of local slaves.

The way Aveline is able to weave through multiple levels of society makes clever use of race and gender as subversive elements, taking head on subject matter that most other games run away from. The personas interlock mechanically, too. When the Assassin’s Notoriety meter is in the red, it takes the Lady using a bribe—which only she can do—to lower the heat. The Slave can infiltrate plantations as a laborer and access information that you’ll act on later in another guise. And while the Assassin is the most deadly, her base level of Notoriety is the highest of the three personas. It’s a lot like a superhero secret identity but, instead of a phone booth or supply closet, Aveline can buy dressing chambers where she can change into another one of her alter egos.

Weapons and abilities in Liberation feel like they’re specifically geared to Aveline, too. She can use the blowgun’s poison darts to kill from far away and wield those same projectiles with the option of a parasol gun for the Lady persona. Poisons that make enemy NPCs attack each other let her maintain a low profile.

Race and gender feel like intentional parts of the design here, too. I’ve probably done hundreds of escort missions in video games over the years. But I’ve never been more tense than during the ones in where I was helping runaway slaves escape to freedom. Or more pained than when I was reading the diary entries left behind by Aveline’s mother. Moreover, most of the prime movers in this game’s plot are women: Aveline herself, her aide-de-camp in the bayou, the lost mother whose memory she chases and the step-mother who offers secret help with freeing slaves. Men are enemies, aloof mentors, kindly patriarchs or enamored sidekicks in Liberation. This isn’t a showcase for them.

You spend part of the game cut off from your Assassin and Lady guises, left only with the slave persona. Huge chunks of the map are hot zones where anything you do draws the guards’ hostile attention. And when your notoriety climbs up, the easy mechanical solution of ripping down wanted posters is denied you. You still have to sneak and kill to ferret out your mother’s fate, though. But you’re doing it in your weakest, most vulnerable state with no fancy weapons and with each action branding you as a troublemaker. This sequence channels the tropes of servitude and revolt to build to a unique moment.

There is some moralizing—which feels especially facile given the hindsight of centuries—with regard to how wrong the practice of chattel slavery in America was. And the way Liberation handles gender politics isn’t without fault. Aveline isn’t sexualized in the vein of a Lara Croft or a Bloodrayne. But she is the constant subject of male gaze and, even if that dynamic becomes a superpower of sorts, it still feels unhealthy.

But, for as much as Liberation delivers on its ambitions, its execution is hampered by a distinct lack of polish. There are parts where the game seems to be missing slices of narrative. (Liberation gets presented as a game published by Abstergo—the bad guys in Assassin’s Creed lore—and there’s a meta-plot in the game that has a hacker cutting into the simulation to show you part of the game that have been cut out.) So, yes, there are moments when you’re supposed to be that way but others stuck out as just unintentionally poor sequencing. Missions start and you’re left to puzzle together their narrative purpose. Collision detection breaks down in spots and bugs where things aren’t where they appear to be annoyed me but didn’t ruin the experience for me. ACL did crash twice while I was playing it but failures like this weren’t a constant occurrence.

Despite its occasional roughness, Liberation pushes buttons that very few games do. It’s not always graceful or subtle, but the experience packs an intense emotional punch. Aveline may be a nearly superhuman assassin, but she’s still cut off from her history in a very raw way. You feel that void in this title. By putting you in a game where you play through the sometimes painful push-and-pull of gender and racial identity in American history, Liberation takes a potentially polarizing risk. It pays off, though, and this Assassin’s Creed is better off for casting a broader net.

—Evan Narcisse [SOURCE]

DESTRUCTIOD.COM: Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Finally, Assassin's Creed on the go

Liberation is a bit of conundrum. On one hand, it offers a pretty incredible portable Assassin's Creed experience for the first time, since the plethora of iOS spinoffs and Bloodlines didn't really do the series any true justice.

On the other, it suffers the occasional disjointed gameplay experience, and a handful of technical limitations that obviously are due to Ubisoft cramming a console quality game into a portable.

Let's see how it turns out.

You'll probably notice that Liberation is a bit different than other series iterations fairly quickly. As soon as you jump in, you won't have any lengthy present day meta-narrative sequences to deal with -- it's straight to the action. After a short tutorial, Liberation hits the ground running and is a no-nonsense affair

The game's heroine, Aveline de Grandpré, a half-French, half-African-American, is essentially Batman. Like Bruce Wayne, she's a privileged young woman who has access to a number of luxuries many would not -- on top of having the support of her clan of assassins.

As such, she's able to do pretty much everything you're accustomed to in past games, alongside the ability to adopt three separate personas to accomplish her goals (hence, the Batman comparison) -- the slave, the assassin, and the lady.

The slave can blend in with crowds better than the assassin, and still run around as freely as Altair, Ezio, and Connor can. The assassin persona has access to all of the lovely tools you're used to at this point, but is more conspicuous. The lady is the more limited (and hence, less fun) of the trio, as this persona is limited to light combat capabilities and the ability to charm guards, but she cannot traverse rooftops or engage in free running.

With these three personas, you'll traverse through the entire game, unraveling Aveline's own separate, self-contained story that has nothing to do with Desmond or the Assassin's Creed meta. It mainly concerns itself with the elimination of slavery, while dealing with Aveline's own personal demons and past. While it's not bulletproof, to be blunt, I love this setup.

It shows that Ubisoft is confident that they can present a narrative without all of the kooky Abstergo/Desmond/present day overarching story, and leaves limitless options open for future IPs in the franchise. If you ever thought it was lame that Altair, Ezio and Connor were able to run around with a giant white ominous cloak and never be noticed, you may be able to buy into Aveline.

The only big holdup in everything mentioned so far is the lady persona itself, strictly from a gameplay standpoint. To reiterate, she cannot climb buildings and is very limited in combat: in essence, she lacks a lot of the core values that make Assassin's Creed games fun. While you do have a choice in what persona you choose for many missions (through various costume storefronts), there are some where you don't have a choice.

If this disinterests you, you may want to steer clear of Liberation, as a decent chunk of required missions are carried out with this persona. While I was able to get on board with the different feel and pacing of the game, many people who are more bent on "stabby stabby" gameplay may feel a bit out of place from time to time, so you have been warned.

Because of the inclusion of this persona however, it helps add to Aveline's character, which makes her one of the more interesting and likeable protagonists in the franchise. Aveline is a confident woman, and it shows -- she's extremely likeable yet flawed, and her Bruce Wayne-esque backstory only adds to her allure.

The missions themselves are your typical run-of-the-mill AC investigatory, kill, and fetch quests. It isn't nearly as repetitive as the first game, structured more like the sequels, in that you aren't doing the same three types over and over. Missions have a natural flow to them, and even if you're doing something menial in the short term, it all contributes to Aveline's personal story and narrative.

Like the main game, there are optional objectives to accomplish for each mission, such as "don't take [x] amount of damage" and the like. They're not wholly necessary for anything, yet they're there as a bit of fun in case you're the competitive or completionist type.

Combat is the exact same as Assassin's Creed III's system, as the game is running on basically the same engine. Aveline utilizes a hatchet and hidden blade just like Connor, but she also has a new multi-kill ability (think Splinter Cell's "mark" system), a blowgun, and a whip to help mix things up a bit.

Ok, so it plays like a mainstead Assassin's Creed game should, but does it compromise anything by virtue of being portable? The cold, hard truth is, yes. You're going to notice the framerate dip, dive, and duck from time to time, and some draw distance issues rear their ugly head at about the same rate.

Personally, I didn't find them to be large enough issues to directly effect gameplay on a consistent basis, but the problems are there, and I did notice them from time to time.

It's odd though, because in the same mental breath, I'm in awe at how well the core console experience has translated to the Vita. When you're not noticing technical limitations, you're considering how amazing the game looks, especially when you factor in the very short load times, and lack of loading when in the open world. It's a conflicting feeling for sure, but it helps that the game has a great control scheme.

There's no two ways about it: the controls are as smooth as butter. Outside of some framerate compensation, I didn't have any issues with them at all, and the game functions at roughly a 1:1 rate when compared to Assassin's Creed III.

ou also don't need to worry about any major Vita touch gimmicks here -- pretty much everything outside of a few menial tasks can be performed through button inputs, and any touch controls are mostly for ancillary functions or mini-games that are over and done with quickly.

In terms of longevity, you'll get bang for your buck here, as is the usual case with the Assassin's Creed franchise. The story is ten chapters long and fairly lengthy (about ten to fifteen hours), and long after the credits roll, there are plenty of extra things to do.

If you're looking to buy it for the Connor/Assassin's Creed III tie-in though, don't bother. The crossover only really happens towards the end of the game, and its impact isn't wholly representative of the theme. I don't care either way, just know that it isn't a big deal -- nor are the tie-in items you get for linking the game to your PSN account.

A multiplayer mode is present, but it's not what you're accustomed to seeing in the franchise -- it's essentially a Risk-like board game. It's asynchronous and anonymous, which makes it a decidedly love/hate affair. I found it fairly inconsequential, but it would have been nice to at least get a true local multiplayer mode, even if it only had a few gametypes.

At the end of the day, Liberation is the first true portable entry into the Assassin's Creed franchise, and thus, is naturally going to be a little rough along the edges. So long as you can deal with some technical limitations, you should enjoy yourself while you wait for Abstergo to craft more simulations for you. 8/10 [SOURCE]

Gaming Age: Assassin’s Creed III Liberation Review for PS Vita

Assassin’s Creed III Liberation has the distinction of being the first Assassin’s Creed game for the PS Vita, the first Assassin’s Creed starring a woman, and the first featuring a character of African (and French) descent. There’s a lot of firsts going on in Assassin’s Creed III Liberation, and the developer, Ubisoft Sofia, has deftly woven most of them into a solid, historical new Assassin’s Creed adventure. Liberation, which is a parallel side-story of sorts to Assassin’s Creed III proper, also comes at a great time for PS Vita owners looking for a portable yet console-quality adventure.

Aveline de Grandpré is the assassin protagonist of Assassin’s Creed III Liberation, which is set roughly around the time during the end of the French and Indian War (1765 – 1780) in New Orleans. As with most Assassin’s Creed titles, in Liberation, Ubisoft has focused on a main character with an interesting and unique background. Aveline is the daughter of a wealthy French merchant and an African woman, who has lived with her step-mother since her real mother’s mysterious disappearance some years back. Growing up wealthy and privileged compared to many other individuals with similar backgrounds of her time, she was ordained into the Order of the Assassin for the purpose of fighting back against slavery. Her mission starts out straightforward enough, and then twists and turns out of control when the Spanish Empire and Templars gets involved.

For a portable game deemed a side-story or spin off, AC3 Liberation is definitely a polished, well put-together experience relative to the previous console versions of Assassin’s Creed as well as Assassin’s Creed III. As with LittleBigPlanet Vita and a good chunk of recent PS Vita releases, you’re getting nearly the full console experience in Liberation with features and controls tailored to the Vita’s unique abilities. Yes, there are some gimmicks here and there, such as hold your Vita up to a light source to decode a message, or tilt to solve a puzzle, but the primary controls are definitely on the traditional side or at least offer them as an alternative. Anything that requires the use of the rear touch surface it fairly hit or miss, but those are few and far between.

Personally, I felt that the controls in the recently released AC titles were becoming too convoluted, which had a negative impact on the free-flowing, parkour climbing and gameplay. With Assassin’s Creed III Liberation, Ubisoft has gone back to the basics somewhat and the result is generally smoother-feeling, more intuitive gameplay and combat. Navigating the environments, cities and even trees and more organic structures is a breeze, and Aveline had hardly any issues doing what I expected her to do. The excellent Vita buttons and dual analog sticks certainly didn’t hurt.

Combat is also streamlined to an extent with the ability to attack with a weapon, kick and counter, along with long distance attacks utilizing a blowgun, musket and smoke bombs, for example. At one point Aveline also gains the ability to unleash a multi-attack sequence which requires you to tag several enemies with the touch screen. Speaking of touch screen, Ubisoft Sofia definitely put some thought into the touch-enabled UI, and popping open the weapon wheel or enlarging and interacting with the map works extremely well and is a nice upgrade over the console interface. It looks gorgeous also.

Visually, Assassin’s Creed III Liberation is among the very best looking PlayStation Vita titles yet. It appears to run at native resolution, has texture work that rivals the console versions, and a framerate that holds up extremely well. The environments, both in cities and more rural areas such as the New Orleans bayou, are rendered beautifully. They may not be as dense as those found in the console games, but they are still breathtaking at times, especially when climbing to a viewpoint way above. The animation is fantastic and even some of the new movements from AC III (which shares the same engine) are present, such as Aveline stumbling up inclines and whatnot. There are plenty of dramatic lighting and weather effects as well, and as mentioned earlier, the user interface is sleek, intuitive and nicely designed.

AC3 Liberation plays down the whole virtual reality Animus angle somewhat which is perfectly fine by me. I prefer to stay in character throughout the game and avoid the pace killing “real world” sequences found in earlier titles. Users new to the series don’t need any knowledge of prior games to enjoy this Vita installment, so there’s no need to worry about that in any way. There’s also only a bit of crossover (in terms of story) for those who are also playing the PS3 version of ACIII, though there is a decent amount of cross-game unlockables. Even more interaction between the PS3 and Vita versions would have been nice however.

Ubisoft has promised the “full Assassin’s Creed experience” with Liberation, and that is mostly true. The Memory Sequence, syncing and mission structure in the game should definitely be familiar to those who have played any previous Assassin’s Creed titles. There are far less side-missions and distractions in this game though, especially compared to Brotherhood and Revelations. I personally had no problem with the more streamlined, story-driven sequences in the game, especially as a portable title. The missions themselves aren’t as long and there are generous checkpoints throughout, so you never feel like you are bogged down at any given time. Assassinations of key figures are usually satisfying, although generally not particularly difficult or as dramatic as in other games in the franchise. Load times are also surprisingly swift and unobtrusive, and seem improved over any of the console versions.

One of the most unique features in Assassin’s Creed III Liberation is the ability for Aveline to utilize “personas” at nearly any time. Basically, other than appearing in her assassin garb, she can change her clothes and disguise herself as an aristocrat lady or a slave, which impacts her abilities and how she is viewed in the game world. Some missions require her to assume the identity of one particular persona, but usually it’s the player choice to decide. As an assassin, Aveline has access to most of her abilities and weapons, but is looked upon in a generally neutral way in terms of reputation and stands out somewhat. As an aristocrat, Aveline wears a frilly dress and hat, and has very limited climbing and combat abilities. She is well loved though and is infrequently looked at as suspicious and can charm her way through difficult to access areas. On the other end of the scale is the slave girl persona which gives Aveline the ability to easily blend into crowds and to more efficiently climb and run, with the side-effect of being looked at as more suspicious with a worse reputation. Some missions can be tackled in different ways by utilizing the skills of each persona, and it’s possible to use all 3 in the span of a single mission depending on how it’s structured. Certain side-missions can only be accessed while in a particular persona as well. It’s an interesting twist to the standard AC formula and one that I expect may show up more in future games.

One thing that is missing from Assassin’s Creed III Liberation is a real multiplayer mode. The game features what feels like a tacked-on, asynchronous multiplayer mode, which ends up being more like a turn by turn game of checkers utilizing the system’s GPS functionality. Essentially, you take over “nodes” in your area and earn game bonuses. On one hand, it’s nice that they tried to put together something a bit different and more tailored to a portable experience, on the other hand, the Vita can easily handle actual online multiplayer. Either way, I never felt that the Assassin’s Creed series needed multiplayer, though now that it’s missing, it’s worth pointing out.

Ubisoft also squeezed in a ship trade mini-game that is barely touched upon in the game. You can buy and sell goods at ports to earn a profit, all while upgrading ships and hoping they survive undamaged while traveling from port to port. It’s a bit of a throwaway mode that might keep you occupied for a few minutes, if you even remember to access it from your Assassin HQ to check your progress.

All in all, Assassin’s Creed III Liberation is another excellent console-style release for the PlayStation Vita, and fans of the series who own a PS Vita shouldn’t overlook it. It’s not as full-featured as the console version, but it makes up for it with a more streamlined experience, an interesting main character and story, and plenty of unique gameplay ideas. [SOURCE]

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation Review

Aveline de Grandpre is a fascinating character. Not only is the heroine of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation the series' first female protagonist, but her backstory deals with one of the darkest periods in American history. This is a woman born from the romance between a wealthy father and a slave mother, someone who has overcome her uncertain upbringing to find a new life in the Assassin Brotherhood. She's the sort of figure capable of anchoring a truly special game--making it all the more disappointing that Liberation, taken as a whole, is a bit dull.

It's not that Liberation lacks for new ideas. In fact, this Vita spin-off introduces a number of intriguing concepts. Rather than one of Desmond Miles' trips through the Animus, the narrative in Liberation is framed as a piece of historical entertainment delivered by Abstergo Industries, the illusive corporation that serves as the series' overarching antagonist. It is, in other words, a story about Assassins as told by Templars.

There's great potential here for the type of storytelling unique to an unreliable narrator, yet Liberation takes little advantage of its own narrative format. Though the story deals with such heavy themes as slavery and the cultural identity of a city transitioning from French to Spanish rule, it's a largely aimless and hastily delivered plot that sees Aveline bounce around like a pinball from one enemy to the next for the bulk of the game. There are occasional flashes of excitement when a mysterious hacker infiltrates Abstergo's narrative to offer you the "truth" about these events, but they amount to little more than a handful of extended cutscenes back-loaded toward the end of the game.

The greatest casualty of Liberation's muddled storytelling is Aveline herself. She's introduced as an intriguing and strong-willed character, but Aveline's personality is hardly explored beyond that initial introduction. Her recruitment into the Assassin Brotherhood is quickly glossed over, while her gender and mixed ethnicity only occasionally factor into the story. These are interesting traits that you wish the game would explore in more detail, but it's more concerned with a dizzying roster of villains and side characters than spending much time on the heroine at its center.

Where Liberation shines brightest is its re-creation of the city Aveline calls home. This is a brilliant version of 18th-century New Orleans, one that beautifully reflects the diverse cultural ambience formed over years of operating as a French trading port. You often venture outside the city too, spending time with smugglers in the bayou as well as journeying to a couple more locations well beyond Louisiana (though to name them would be spoiling things). These locales look terrific, easily rivaling the rich vistas of Liberation's console counterparts. It's enough to make you stop and soak up the atmosphere during those moments you're scaling a church tower to synchronize the world map.

Unfortunately, you really do have to stop to appreciate the world around you because when things get moving, the Vita hardware tends to struggle under the weight of Ubisoft's graphical ambitions. The frame rate drops precipitously when you hit a dead sprint, and large-scale fights against more than four or five enemies will make things chug as well. It's too bad, because these frame rate issues severely impact the fluid and freewheeling style of urban parkour that has long been the greatest strength of this franchise. Likewise, these visual hiccups don't do any favors to an otherwise refined combat system, which disposes of manual lock-on in favor of a more flexible and intuitive approach to swordfights.

It's a good thing, then, that Liberation offers you plenty of opportunities to slow things down and take out enemies one by one. There are occasional bombastic set pieces, but much of the mission design harks back to older Assassin's Creed games, where stalking your targets from the rooftops or silently following them to their hideouts took precedence over vehicular chases and scripted chaos.

Indeed, Aveline is every bit the capable assassin Ezio and Altair were. And in many ways, she's got even more tricks up her sleeve. Liberation introduces a multiple-identity system that allows Aveline to dress in slave garb, ladies' formal wear, or stylish assassin gear. Each guise carries its own strengths and weaknesses, while notoriety levels are split across three separate pools. It's an interesting system in the game's early goings, allowing you to do things like charm your way past guards as a well-dressed lady or infiltrate plantations as a slave. But any strategic depth this identity system offers is eclipsed by its limitations: the slave persona is useful only in extremely specific story moments, while the formal wear prohibits her from sprinting and platforming; she's forced to navigate the sprawling city at a light jog. By the end of the game, you find yourself defaulting to the tried-and-true assassin's attire at nearly every opportunity.

It's especially odd that Liberation would take away your ability to freely dart about the world, because, frame rate issues aside, the platforming is more exciting than it has ever been. As in Assassin's Creed III, you're no longer limited to climbing buildings and man-made structures; you can now dash up trees, scale cliffs, and leap effortlessly from branch to branch. These traversal enhancements are especially highlighted in Liberation's swampy, imposing version of the Louisiana bayou, where fallen trees and endless swamps dominate the scenery.

If only there were more going on out there. Aside from the occasional alligator encounter, there's almost nothing to do in the wilderness. There's no hunting, no cabin in the woods to build up--it's almost entirely navigating from one story mission to the next. That's less of an issue in the city portion of the gameworld, where there is a decent collection of side quests and optional distractions; still, Liberation's New Orleans isn't nearly as rich with content as the cities Ezio explored.

Which is not to say that Liberation is free of secondary content. As the story unfolds, Aveline becomes involved in her father's business empire. This allows you to invest your money in the purchase of ships and various goods (coffee, fruit, leather, and so on) and send those vessels along trade routes all over the Atlantic in an effort to gain the maximum return on your investments. Like managing assassins in previous games, it's an oddly compelling strategy minigame that serves as a nice change of pace from the action surrounding it.

Even more interesting (though perhaps not as well executed) is the online multiplayer, which pits Assassins against Templars in a map-based battle for worldwide domination. It's essentially a card game where you collect assassins of various statistical abilities and then send them into fights across the world in an effort to capture those cities for your chosen side. There's a strange allure in the way it feels like a science-fiction-tinged cross between Pokemon and Risk, but it's hard to imagine this feature has the staying power of the console multiplayer experience.

And yet, such fun diversions are more the exception than the rule. Though Assassin's Creed III: Liberation toys around with intriguing concepts and centers its story around a character you desperately want to know more about, none of it comes together especially well. Liberation often excels, but it stumbles just as much. The result is a game that fails to bear the standard of quality that has defined this series for years. [SOURCE]

GametrailersTV: Assassin's Creed III: Liberation - Review

The Assassin's Creed formula is expansive, made up of technical ambition and open-world freedom sandwiched between a contemporary story and well-researched historical fiction. Previous attempts to replicate it on handhelds have met with little success. Now the PlayStation Vita is trying to bottle that magic with Assassin's Creed III: Liberation.

At a glance, it packs in all the kills and thrills of its older siblings, but does this 18th Century New Orleans romp deliver?

Liberation has you slipping into the knee-high boots of New Orleans' resident Aveline, master assassin, abandoned daughter of a freed slave, and thorn on the side of the diabolical Templars. All these dots sound like they’d be interesting to connect, but good luck arriving at a coherent picture as you play through the game. Even with all the onscreen action, all the plotting and scheming and cold blooded murder, Aveline's tale fails to connect all the vital motivations, characters, and concepts.

Very little lip service is given to the Animus, the in-game virtual reality system that's behind these vivid reconstructions of the Order’s past. It's still in there, with boundary walls decorated with glitchy glyphs and talk of DNA memory synchronization, which will surely leave newcomers intrigued and confused.

Veterans, on the other hand, will be left scouring for connections through--get this--specific, collectible citizens you have to murder, which consequently also serve as the only way to see the true ending. Equally baffling is Aveline's murky assimilation into assassinhood, and same with the Templar threat--it’s at best a chalky outline dressed in arcane archaeology and European accents. Inference can be a powerful storytelling tool, but in Liberation’s case, reading between the lines, tripping the setups, and trying to draw correlations just results in exposed plot holes and stifled yawns. Aveline's journey holds enough of a carrot to keep you going, but its revelations are spread thin and arrive with little impact.

While New Orleans' open world might not yet be the Big Easy, there's still plenty to keep a girl busy and a ton of ways to go about it. Aveline's missions will have her canoeing down the bayou, racing through forgotten temples, climbing anything with a sheer surface, and tickling the ribs of bad men with her secreted steel. Though not as often as you'd think. There's no shortage of corpses, but the premeditated, deliberate assassinations you associate with the series are few. Thanks to a new persona system, there is more range for expressing the fine art of murder, with each personality having its own drawbacks and perks.

Aveline can go out in her assassin duds, which results in her having to contend with permanently aggressive guards. Her more vulnerable slave persona blends in with street traffic. Finally, the lady persona is prim and proper, and while she can still slit a throat, a lady refuses to ruffle her dress, so no taking to the rooftops for a quick escape. Some missions force you to play as certain archetype, though others will let you go your own way, or chide you with specific synchronization challenges to use multiple personas via quick-change shops.

It's a clever idea, and both the lady and slave bring a different take on stealth and hiding in plain sight. As the game gains momentum, the lady loses most of her savior faire, however: it turns out that climbing is just too crucial a part of the assassin's creed.

Side quests and collectibles abound, though it can be difficult to discern their reward. There are so many different collectibles, from Mayan idols to alligator eggs, and no way to tell how many more you need to get to finish the set. Side quests will likely net you some currency, allowing you to buy more weapons and collectibles, or spin it into even more money in a shipping minigame. There's always some busy work to do, hours upon hours of it, but the best adventures take place in the story missions, which will last you well over ten hours. The city, the bayou, and later Mexico, all offer scenarios as different their geography. Of course, there's also a lot to be said for just running around recklessly and treating the world as your jungle gym, filling out the map by scaling vistas and zeroing in on some collectible simply because it’s there.

There are two schools of gameplay at work in Liberation. The tried and true combat and climbing remain intact and accessible as ever, still managing to offer up an illusion of skill and guile even though much of the associated play is automatic. If a situation gets too hairy, retreating to the trees feels like its own kind of victory. However, it's hard to really feel outnumbered when you can parry and dodge with ease, equipped with ample life and a wide array of weapons. What's lacking in challenge is made up in pure escapism and a little Shakespearean drama, the stabby kind with instant kills and chain combos that offer visual rewards even as you fumble with the touchscreen.

The other school consists of the remedial remedies afforded by the Vita. Touchscreen targeting works well enough for a quick pistol pop. That's where the pleasantries end. Paddling the canoe with the rear touch while attempting to steer isn't in any way fun, pick-pocketing pedestrians with the rear touch is wildly inconsistent, and the Risk-inspired multiplayer game, which incorporates your Vita's location, has all the boring bits of a Facebook game--it requires excessive levels of cooperation, and everything you do is governed by long cool downs. All this minus the compulsive social elements we associate with these games. We can be thankful for the lack of micro-transactions. There are interface alternatives for some of the more annoying touchscreen offenders, though the absolute worst, like a specific accelerometer-controlled maze, will have you groaning.

From the bustling Bourbon Street to the fetid swamps and beyond, Liberation looks and sounds great, with distinct environments that expound on both the urban and wild. There are occasional technical hiccups, and characters’ faces are much more wooden than their voice acting. Animation is also pretty top notch, with Aveline's various personas all having distinct little flourishes, all the while blending kills and climbing skills into swift studies of movement. Swinging on the whip looks pretty dorky, though.

There is no shortage of clichéd metaphors to explain what Liberation is: it stopped short of the finish line, or if you prefer, it used all the ingredients but got the recipe wrong. Simply put, Liberation is a squandered game, starring an interesting character that goes nowhere. The premise is just interesting enough to keep you playing, but it's easy to finish up Liberation with a sense that you were tricked. This tedium of this disjointed journey is occasionally ameliorated by the joys of the quick kill, but it’s not quite enough to ultimately redeem it. [SOURCE]

Eurogamer.net: Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation review
Vita la revolution?

PlayStation Vita developers, like PlayStation Portable developers before them, always sound very happy when they're put to work on the handheld version of a famous console game. They love the heritage and the rich potential afforded by a blank slate, they say. It's a fantastic opportunity anyone would relish. Thanks to the fans, etc.

In private, however, I imagine they all cry themselves to sleep. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they try to recreate the full experience of whatever is being made for the home console then they won't manage it, because even the mighty PlayStation Vita can't do what the PlayStation 3 can do in the right hands. And trying to do something different is no better, because any spin-off they produce inevitably won't live up to its more handsome and expansive relative. Plus, it will probably be released on exactly the same date, meaning that it sells a fraction of the copies it might do in clear air.

Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation has the whiff of spin-off about it, for sure. It's set in the same era, but uses different locations, characters and ideas on a necessarily smaller scale than the unbelievably vast Assassin's Creed 3. Playing it unlocks some stuff in the PS3 version and vice versa, but nothing amazing. So what are we left with? More tears before bedtime?

Whereas Assassin's Creed 3 continues the home series' shift away from stealth towards action, Liberation is a covert assassination game first and foremost, which is a good start. Set in New Orleans, the Louisiana Bayou and occasionally beyond, it's about master assassin Aveline de Grampré's journey through trees and rooftops to disrupt the slave trade and unmask the sinister individuals pulling the strings that drive it. While in many respects it's the now-standard mishmash of open-world missions to gather intelligence followed by a hit, you spend a lot more time out of sight than elsewhere in the series' recent history.

For example, you may have to sow fear and discontent among Spanish troops patrolling the Bayou, which you do by shadowing them from the treetops, waiting for them to happen upon scary voodoo totems, and then quietly poisoning one of them with a blowpipe so their comrades think they've been cursed. Or maybe you need to take out a slave trader in a nearby barracks, which you do by sneaking between haystacks whispering words of incitement in local slaves' ears until they riot, freeing you up to pick off your target.

The main mechanics of the series translate effortlessly to the Vita screen and controls. If anything, Aveline moves more freely than Connor or Ezio, flying up the sides of buildings and over ledges and mantles with a welcome fluency, and a couple of touch-control additions - for accessing the mini-map and weapon-swapping - fold neatly into your patterns of play rather than impeding them. The difficulty of fulfilling side objectives seems a little lower than AC3, too, meaning that the pleasure of artful stealth and the elusive "full synchronisation" comes a little more easily. A lot of the time, whether you're stalking a target or climbing to a viewpoint, Liberation's a satisfying game to play.

It does have issues though, many of which are inherited. Assassin's Creed once felt like a series that would one day give you an envelope full of names and then expect you to figure out the rest, but nowadays it won't even hand you an envelope without giving you a tutorial on how to open it. That's as true on Vita as it is on any other system - and if anything the envelope tutorial, which is a real thing, is an awful nadir. And while Aveline is a little more engaging than AC3's Connor Kenway, she's still no Ezio Auditore, and the surrounding cast struggle to offer anything to latch onto either.

Vita isn't quite up to the ambition of the world design, either, struggling with frame-rate drops from the first scene onwards, while the incursion of Vita-specific controls I mentioned earlier is more frequently annoying than welcome. Having to hold the Vita camera up to a light source and then jiggle it about to the identify secret message in a letter isn't fun when you're told exactly how to do it, and based on this ropey implementation it probably wouldn't be fun even if you did discover the solution yourself. As for the vaunted touch-screen combat additions, they are fine, but what's the point when you can still win virtually every fight in the game with good old block-and-counter?

New Orleans and the Bayou aren't as rich with distractions as their contemporaries either, although what is provided is generally entertaining and they are genuine open-world environments. In the city, Aveline can build up a fleet of trade ships and send them off to various destinations to buy and sell cargo to accumulate funds, which she can then spend buying up tailors, dressing booths and weapon makers, and she can also assassinate unscrupulous business rivals. And while the Bayou feels like a slightly missed opportunity - hopping through the treetops is great fun and isn't exploited a huge amount - there are at least a good number of main story missions that take advantage of it, which isn't as true in the otherwise-awesome Frontier in AC3.

One genuinely limp addition to Liberation is the way Aveline can swap outfits - or 'personas' in the game's parlance - in the aforementioned dressing stations. Dressed as a slave, she can blend into crowds of the same, pretending to sweep floors or saw wood, while both slave and assassin personas give her access to the rooftops. The 'lady' persona, meanwhile, cuts her movement speed down and keeps her feet on the ground, but allows her to move through more dangerous areas and kill even more quietly.

It sounds quite good in theory, allowing you to swap outfits to evade detection and use one persona to reduce the notoriety of the others, but the dressing stations are seldom around when you need them and the game is a bit awkward about when you can change clothes and what you can do. Being told you can't switch to slave or assassin one minute and then heading to the objective marker only to be told "The Bayou is no place for a Lady" is annoying enough that the whole idea falls down on the spot. I'd rather just be an assassin.

Fortunately, the game is on your side of that argument most of the time too, and that's what makes Liberation mostly worthwhile. It isn't as good at the core Assassin's Creed loop of picking an icon on the map and then getting diverted by entertaining side content on the way there, but where it does make a play for your attention it generally does so by asking you to, you know, be an assassin, creeping up on people and taking them down without them or anyone else noticing. That's fun. When it does that, Liberation lives up to its name and feels like a worthy spin-off, although - as with so many of these portable endeavours - one still can't help conclude that it's going to be forgotten within weeks. [SOURCE]