ASSASINS CREED III

If there’s one image that encapsulates the Assassin’s Creed series, it’s that of a hooded figure balancing atop some skyscraping parapet, looking down into the city below. It’s a snapshot that shows off a lot of what makes these games special – their incredible attention to detail, breath-taking verticality, fascinating architecture, unique historical settings - but it also represents their limitations. Assassin’s Creed games are easy to admire, but you often feel a bit distanced from them, too, held back from inhabiting these worlds as fully as you’d like to. You’ve always been on the outside looking in.



Not so with Assassin’s Creed III, which hauls the series across the ocean into a new setting that’s absolutely bursting with things to do. It turns a fascinating section of history into a vast open-world playground, letting you conquer the rooftops, stalk the forests and sail the seas of revolutionary America and authoring a main storyline that puts you in the middle of some of the most important events of the period, like a fly on the wall of history. It’s all about enjoying the freedom of movement the game affords you and immersing yourself in its world, as well as setting up the set-piece assassinations that form the climax of each chapter.



Where the storyline missions usually follow a pattern of gathering information, stalking and eventually killing a high-profile target (with the odd naval mission or large-scale battle thrown in for variety), outside of that you're free to do whatever you want: hunt for trinkets, clamber over the rooftops of New York in search of almanac pages, or pick fights with the Redcoats on behalf of the populace. There is a vast amount of content in this game, from liberating Boston and New York to building up a homestead on the frontier to sailing the high seas to just enjoying the outdoors and hunting wildlife. But perhaps because Assassin's Creed III is so huge, it can be pretty inconsistent. It attempts an astonishing amount, and doesn’t always succeed.