The only two new PS 3 games I’ve gotten in a while are AC III and WWE ’13, so I’ll share a few thoughts on them. (If you really want full reviews, by all means, post it in the comments, but since only Kevin reads the blog for this stuff, and he’s unlikely to buy either game in the near future, I’m disinclined to write anything formal.)
AC III: It’s a tale of two games, really. If you’ve played the previous games (and if you haven’t, you’re kind of wasting your time), you know the basics of how the game works. AC III changes most of them. They’ve mapped most controls to a single button instead of two (free running is much, much smoother than previous installments) and, in general, shifted from pure timing in combat to timing + rhythm, ala Arkham Asylum/City. The results are very positive, and when the game works, it’s fantastic.
Problem: it doesn’t always work. There are still glitches, the worst of them being the infamous dual holster bug. If you have two two barreled pistols (or two duckfoots, which fire three rounds simultaneously), only the first pistol works properly most of the time. This is a serious problem when it can take 5 or 10 seconds real time to reload. Having four shots instead of three can make huge differences. There are individual sections of the game that are borderline unfair with weird scripting triggers (the section on Oak Island is the most egregious example). Certain things simply don’t appear on the map (although this is allegedly fixed with new patches).
In terms of the story, there’s an ending controversy, but it’s a good one. It’s no Mass Effect 3, for example, although it will beg a number of questions in the next game. I’m pretty sure they’ll be answered to our satisfaction, but we’ll have to wait and see. It makes me want AC 4 (or AC 3.5) more, which is all to the good.
Definite buy, with the qualifier that you have to have played the first four installments first (AC, AC II, AC: Brotherhood, AC: Revelations) or the story won’t make any sense.
WWE ’13: The Attitude Era is fun, but with no real replay value. Universe mode is better, but still not perfect. Online mode is still rife with problems.
How’s that for simple? Buy, but only if you get a good deal and like wrestling.
