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Assassin’s Creed III Strategy Guide Initial Impressions

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Piggyback Interactive has really stepped up their game since I was first introduced to their strategy guides, and upon first glance, their strategy guide for Assassin’s Creed IIIlooks to be on par with their Assassin’s Creed BrotherhoodandFinal Fantasy XIII-2strategy guides.

Assassin's Creed III strategy guide table of contentsThe strategy guide is organized much like itsAssassin’s Creedpredecessors, and that includes one of my favorite traditions of Piggyback Interactive: their table of contents in the sidebar. It is so easy to quickly look up anything with the ToC laid out neatly on the outside of the right page. Since Piggyback usually separates the side quests from the main campaign–and in anAssassin’s Creedgame, this is most wise–the table of contents in this manner makes it incredibly easy to flip back and forth between the main storyline and the side missions without losing your place.

The next thing I searched for were the maps for the collectibles.Assassin’s Creedgames have always had a ridiculous number of collectibles, and I’ve never been able to find half of them without the help of the maps. Oh sure, I could spent countless hours running around the dungeons and overworld hunting each collectible down, but I have zero patience and I’m lazy, remember? Thankfully, the strategy guide includes detailed maps of each region Connor explores, complete with screenshots depicting each location for the wayward collectible. I can already feel the Trophies unlocking.

Assassin's Creed III strategy guide map

Assassin's Creed III strategy guide walkthroughEach mission in the main walkthrough is set up similarly to how it’s been done in the past. Each DNA sequence (or present day sequence) begins with an overview, includes a map of the mission (if necessary), and is broken up into paragraphs of walkthrough text accompanied by screenshots to help the player know where to go, hide, or what to look for. The side quests are set up similarly as well. The screenshots appear to be very clear and just large enough to fully depict what the player should be doing.

I can only hope that the content is as helpful as it appears, and the screenshots are both clear and useful. Obviously, I won’t know until I play, but at the outset, the prognosis is cheery.

All this guide is doing is making me want to play, both just to do so and to see how great this strategy guide really is. The UPS man needs to hurry up and get here, and then I need to find a way to blow off work for the rest of the day.

Monday Gaming Diary: My friends are liars

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The Walking Dead Episode 4

My friends obviously want me to get through a certain game so badly that they’re willing to lie about what I should expect. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t have lied to me about Episode 4 of The Walking Dead. I kind of want to punch them, but fortunately for them, they’re all in Iowa, several states away from me. Jerks, the lot of them. Hopefully I’ll be over it before we record the next podcast.

If you want to avoid spoilers forThe Walking Dead, then I’d just skip this week’s edition of my gaming diary. Fair warning.

So Episode 3 hit me right in the gut. Hard.I believe I went over it in some length last week, so I won’t go over it again. I did tell everyone via Twitter that night and the next time we recorded a podcast that if I had to (spoiler incoming) kill a kid again, I would quit playing the game immediately, even if I was 20 minutes from the end of Episode 5. Everyone assured me that I was safe in Episode 4, especially my podcasting cohorts.

You’re all LIARS.

Within about ten minutes of Episode 4, I had to kill another kid. This time, it wasn’t as drawn out, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to know this kid. Poor little guy hid from the zombies in the attic and starved to death, so he was a tiny, scarily thin zombie kid when my party found him. He was already a zombie, so technically it shouldn’t count, but it was hard all the same. He was so weak and sad and tiny. Poor Kenny was having horrific flashbacks after what happened to his own son, so of course, who has to put this kid of his misery once again? Me/Lee.

It was so hard to continue playing. I had already sworn I would be done if I had to kill another kid, and here I was again, killing another kid. The only reason why I kept going was because it wasn’t a child I knew, and it wasn’t like he was a kid I found who was bitten so I had to make that terrible choice all over again. But my God…it was still a child. And then Lee buried the poor kid with his dead dog in the backyard…could this get any sadder?

Why do I play this game again?

I guess I’m just as much of a liar as my friends, because I did not quit playing. I completed Episode 4, and no other children were killed. May this trend continue in Episode 5, as that’s going to be a gut-wrencher anyway, without killing any children.

Or maybe Episode 5 will end with “Rocks fall, everyone dies.” That would be so bad, it would be funny.

Dishonored Mini-Review

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Dishonored

Dishonored was completely a mixed-bag for me. I was unbelievably excited for this game after seeing it at E3 and then playing it at Quake Con this year. Gameplay-wise, it didn’t disappoint at all. The game touted itself as being extremely open for the player, both in terms of exploration and methods of completing missions. In many ways, it was like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, except that unlike DXHR, you could really control how you played and stick with whatever method you want, whether it’s stealth, lots of stabbing, or a combination of the two. If you want to go through the game without killing anyone, you can honestly do that. If you want to murder everyone you see, you can do that too. If one path or one weapon doesn’t work for you in completing your particular goal, you have plenty of options to choose from to try again.

That is really the beauty of Dishonored, and I praised it in great extent in my review at Gaming Angels:

This notion of exacting revenge in whatever manner the player wants is where the beauty of Dishonored really shines through. Players have complete control over however they want to play, whether it’s stealthy or murdery (to borrow a phrase from Bulletstorm). In addition, every target Corvo is sent after has a lethal and a nonlethal option. For example, with Corvo’s first target, High Overseer Campbell, Corvo can either kill him or brand him as a heretic, thereby expelling him from power and ruining him in public eye. The choices you make in how you play and how you opt to take care of your targets affects the ending, the vitality of Dunwall, and how your allies treat you.

In other words, many parts of Dishonored are completely up to you, the player, and this includes Corvo’s weaponry and the paths he takes to complete a mission as well.

However, I’ve made it no secret that I am a story gamer through and through, and story has always meant more to me than gameplay. Unfortunately, Dishonored greatly let me down with its overly predictable story. The big “twist” happens at about three-fourths of the way through, and I saw it coming from about the second or third mission. I hoped I was wrong, that I was oversimplifying the game, but alas, I was not. I wasn’t even half wrong or even slightly wrong.

I hung my head in near shame. If I hadn’t committed to reviewing the game or the strategy guide, I would have quit the game right then. How could something with so much promise be so predictable? I couldn’t get over the disappointment at all. As I finished my playthrough, I hoped with the final missions that something unpredictable would happen and redeem itself for me. This was never the case, and I finished the game feeling rather empty about the whole experience.

I gave the game a “Buy” recommendation on GA, and that was solely because I know more people care about the actual gameplay than they do about the story. But if you asked me in person what I thought, I would say pretty much what I’ve said here and on the EvilCast: the gameplay was fantastic, but the story was predictable and disappointing. For me, as a story gamer, I cannot recommend Dishonored to anyone, as much as that pains me.

Monday Gaming Diary: PSN Catch-Up

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DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue

This past week I had a “week off” from the review schedule beforeMedal of Honor: Warfighterreleases (this Tuesday!). Since I only had a week, I really didn’t want to start a new game from my stack of shame, as I know I’ll never get some decent time to work on it. So I turned to a different stack of shame, the one that resides in my PlayStation Network. What’s been sitting there?

  • The Walking Dead (episodes 2 and 3),
  • DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, and
  • Journey

I started with The Walking Dead so I could somewhat catch up to the rest of the world. I prepared myself to get as freaked out as I did after playing the first episode, but Episode 2 was really more about how insane the surviving humans have become more than the zombies. In other words, I got freaked out on a different level, but at least that level didn’t give me nightmares. I played Episode 3 the next day and bawled like a big baby from about 10-15 minutes into the game until it was over. I was still crying when I went to bed, and I think I cried myself to sleep. If you’ve played that episode, then you know how incredibly sad it is. When you’re a parent, it fucking rips your heart out. I nearly risked waking up my son to give him a hug when I finished playing. I thought Heavy Rain about did me in emotionally, but The Walking Dead makes that story look like a walk in the park (it’s raining while you’re walking in the park, but it’s still a walk in the park). I hadn’t purchased Episode 4 yet, and both finances and stack of shame guilt prevented me from adding it to my list just yet. I’m not sure I could have played it anyway after crying so much post-Episode 3.

Thank God I had DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue to cheer me up. I hadn’t touched the second DeathSpank game in well over a year, so I was both rusty and confused as to what to do next. I was afraid I would have to start over, but after consuming a few Fortune Cookie hints for side quests, I was back in business. I remembered DeathSpank being funny, but I forgot how ridiculously funny it is. It was the perfect antidote to The Walking Dead. This is obviously what I need to do in between episodes of The Walking Dead–play plenty of DeathSpank. Maybe I should even play a side quest or two immediately after finishing an episode of The Walking Dead. Sure, I’ll be up far later than I need to be, but I won’t go to bed feeling as disturbed, right?

Sadly, I didn’t finish DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, so I haven’t gotten around to Journey, something I’m really remiss for not playing thus far. My podcasting cohort, Mr. Grundman, has also been strongly encouraging me to pick up Unfinished Swan, so it looks like my PSN stack of shame will grow a little bit more this year. At least none of these games take a long time to play, so there’s always the possibility I finish them before 2013. Don’t laugh too hard at that last statement.

Dishonored Strategy Guide Review

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Dishonored strategy guide reviewI’ve compared Dishonored to Deus Ex: Human Revolution ever since I saw previews for it at E3 earlier this year, and while the story and setting are obviously quite different from that of DXHR, the basic ideas behind both games were relatively the same. The main character is a body guard who has some powers to be either extremely lethal or extremely sneaky, and the game itself is very open in how it can be played, depending upon whether the player wants to be lethal or sneaky. As such, I completely counted on the Dishonored strategy guide to be a little similar to the DXHR strategy guide to offer both options of lethal and sneaky gameplay (I’ll start using different words in a bit, I promise). As I said in my initial impressions, the Dishonored strategy guide did do this much, which pleased me greatly. Unfortunately, the written content itself made using the guide’s walkthroughs a very frustrating ordeal, forcing me to rely mostly on the maps and appendices for any sort of proper guidance.

The layout and organization of the strategy guide is nearly flawless. Each mission begins with an overview of the goals, sidequests or special actions, lists of collectibles, chaos requirements, and maps with legends. From the get-go, I always knew what I needed to look for and I could plan my playthrough according to my goals for chaos (high or low chaos affects your ending) as well as prepare for the kinds of enemies I would face. For someone who gets edgy and tense playing stealth as much as I do, I needed this kind of planning. I could instantly look at the maps and take note of how spread out the runes, bone charms, and Outsider Shrines were and determine if I thought any of them were worth the risk of getting caught, potentially setting off alarms, or forcing me to kill lots of people–as I really hated reloading.

Dishonored strategy guide maps

The maps with their legends were so in depth, I found myself using these to plan my treks through Dunwall more than I was relying on the walkthroughs themselves. The fact that the walkthroughs were really hard to follow made my dependence upon the maps even stronger. In particular, these sentences had me running around in circles in absolute confusion for a better part of 10-15 minutes:

A series of metal posts leads to a stone wall. Stay on top until you can see an area littered with broken and defunct equipment on the right. Head into this area and look for a small opening on the left. Use it to climb into the guard quarters, but be careful of the lone patroller. Knock him out and put him out of sight, and then grab the Rune under the bunks.

When this is done, turn your attention to the nearby moat full of fish. Possess one and use it to slip through the bars and into the tower proper.

For starters, there are two different sets of metal posts in this area. Both lead to stone walls, and both lead to areas of broken equipment on the right. I of course, took the wrong path that brings you to an area that stops severely short of the guards quarters. The path the guide wanted me to take is the outside perimeter of this region, all along the top of the main stone wall.

Dishonored strategy guideSecondly, it took some running around the bunkhouse to find this moat. It wasn’t along the entire back of the bunkhouse, and access from the building was severely limited from where I was. If I had been told to take the stairs on the left and head toward the center of Dunwall, I would have found the moat a lot sooner. However, this isn’t the main problem I had. The biggest problem was finding this grate to take as the fish. The moat water is extremely dark, and the only way I could find it was by possessing numerous fish (had to possess others when the fish I was in died) and swim along the walls. I kind of hoped there was a screenshot of the grate and where it was in the moat–because to be honest, I was convinced I was not even in the right moat after awhile–but instead, all I had was the screenshot to the right, that only showed me the door I would walk through after I finished my swim through the grate. Words cannot express how not useful this was.

Dishonored strategy guideThe page layout for the walkthroughs was, for the most part, great. The call-out boxes for the sidequests and special actions really helped me make sure I didn’t miss anything that I wanted to complete, and even the call-out boxes alerting me to prime places for Achievements/Trophies were greatly appreciated. However, what I really wanted was call-out boxes for the collectibles. Collectibles were mentioned in the written walkthroughs for the specific paths they laid out, but if you really wanted to “catch-em-all,” you had to rely on either the maps or the detailed appendix that is complete with screenshots.

As a whole, I found the Dishonored strategy guide to be more frustrating than anything else. I felt constantly lost and confused as to where I was supposed to go, and most of the time, I abandoned the guide’s walkthroughs for my own just because I couldn’t make sense of them. The maps and appendices are this strategy guide’s absolute saving grace.

SGR Rating: 3/5

Authors: Michael Lummis, Rick Barba, and Chris Burton
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions Available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

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