Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD Review
The year 2012 saw the release of two Assassin’s Creed titles: Assassin’s Creed III for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC and Assassin’s Creed Liberation for the Playstation Vita. Whilst ACIII (despite getting fairly high review scores) was met with middling reception by fans, Liberation was considered to be the better one of the two despite being a portable game. Now that Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD is available on consoles and PC with improved graphics, is the game still able to stand out?
Assassin’s Creed Liberation takes place in the late 1700 and follows the story of Aveline de Granpré, a mixed-race female assassin who is trying to uncover the truth behind her mother’s disappearance as well as trying to free the slaves in New Orleans. Despite a somewhat slow start, the story picks up the pace a few hours in and becomes very compelling; plot twists are aplenty and, obviously, the heart of the matter lies deep in a sea of conspiracies and templar schemes.
Story-wise, veterans of the series won’t be blown away; Assassin’s Creed Liberation still relies on the same plot points as previous titles to move along its story, and may even cause a few cases of dejà-vu in certain parts of the game’s respectable 8 hour campaign.
Even with the story being a little predictable, Liberation‘s plot is actually pretty good and brings our protagonist from New Orleans, to the nearby marshes and even all the way to Mexico and New York (featuring an appearance from a certain assassin…). The only issue with the narrative is that Aveline’s backstory is pretty bare-bones, and doesn’t fully explain the current situation and her motivations to do what she does.
From a gameplay standpoint, Assassin’s Creed Liberation doesn’t break new ground; on the other hand, it plays a lot like the older Assassin’s Creed titles, except with the combat system introduced with the third installment. You will be scaling buildings, tailing suspects, fighting guards and, of course, assassinating historical and fictional figures. Be prepared to encounter a lot more missions with an emphasis on stealth and don’t expect to be fighting off hordes of guards at once; there are never more than five or so enemies on screen at once, presumably because of the Playstation Vita’s limitations.
In fact, what really holds Assassin’s Creed Liberation from being as good as its counter parts is the limit imposed by the original hardware. Whilst the combat system works well and usually flows nicely, it is noticeably less accurate and fluid than a proper AC game and the same can be said about the parkour system. The game feels less accurate and more unwieldy than before, making for some frustrating moments when your mission objectives require more precision.
Another major issue which has been unfortunately ported over is that of noticeable and large frame rate drops. Whilst playing Liberation on my gaming laptop, a computer which can handle the majority of modern games at a medium setting, the frame rate would often drop from 30FPS to 20FPS, sometimes even dipping a bit lower. This issue isn’t exclusive to PC, with many other people on the Internet boards saying that it’s happening on console as well.
Usually, these frame rate issues occur whilst the player is running through a populated area and, if you played an Assassin’s Creed game before, you know you tend to do that quite a lot. For a game originally conceived for a portable console, you would expect to be able to run it without getting technical issues, but the numerous frame rate drops as well as quite a few glitches and crashes are ultimately hard to swallow.
Nonetheless, Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD still feels like a complete Assassin’s Creed experience, even if it isn’t on par with the latest games of the series. It’s definitely light years behind the fourth instalment, and definitely behind the third entry as well from a technical stand point; however, Liberation does offer a good deal of content to go through, especially at the budget price of $20/£15. The player has a whole city to scale and explore, collectibles to hunt down and side missions to break the pace of the main story. The story missions are diverse enough to keep the player engaged throughout it’s duration, and there are plenty of other small things here and there which can keep you busy for much longer than the length of the campaign.
The main issue Assassin’s Creed Liberation struggles with is that it’s a re-release of a portable game which doesn’t have any improvements from its original, portable version to the more powerful hardware with the exception of HD graphics. Nice as they are, the HD textures can’t quite hide the stiff animations during cut-scenes and the emptiness of the city when one compares it to the bustling cities of ACIII and ACIV. What’s more is that Assassin’s Creed IV was such an improvement over the previous titles that playing Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD is essentially like going back in time and being faced with annoyances which are no longer present in ACIV.
Despite all the technical issues, I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD, and I am sure avid fans of the series would enjoy it too. You get everything you’d expect out of an Assassin’s Creed game with a few clever twists which manage to give Liberation its own identity in the series. On the other hand, the HD port doesn’t bring anything new to the table compared to its PS Vita version; if anything the Vita’s small screen essentially hides a lot of the visual discrepancies which stand out like a sore thumb in this version.