Ubisoft recently filed its fourth quarter and year end reports for fiscal 2013, reporting total sales of €1.26 billion for the year ($1.66 billion), an 18.4% increase on FY2012, and €175 million for the quarter ($230 million), an 8.7% year-on-year increase.

Far Cry 3 was one of the major movers and shakers behind this bounty, having shipped 6 million units, but The Settlers Online and Just Dance were also major performers, with Ubisoft highlighting the performance of free-to-play and casual games. The publisher noted that Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance had joined the ranks of the 20 best-selling franchies in the industry during the year.

It also revealed that the tepidly-received Assassin’s Creed III managed to ship 12.5 million units, including digital sales. During a post-release call to investors, Ubisoft said that it isn’t banking on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to do the same.

“In our numbers we expect less than last year,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

“We are actually pushing to achieve more than last year because we think the pirate segment is a great segment that can generate a lot more on a worldwide basis than what was achieved last year. But we wanted to be prudent on our expectations so that it can probably be a bonus if it comes.”

Other reveals from the call include word of the shelving of Patrice Desiléts’s 1666.

Source: Ubisoft IR via Blue’s News

The Infamy is the first of three episodes that will eventually make up Ubisoft’s latest DLC for Assassin’s Creed III, The Tyranny of King Washington. As the title implies, this singleplayer-only add-on is an alternate history to the already convoluted alternate history of Assassin’s Creed III.

The Infamy sees Ratonhnhaké:ton awakening from an apparent dream to find his mother alive, and an insane George Washington ravaging the frontier having proclaimed himself King. Connor remembers the events of ACIII, but now seems to exist in a world that does not. Those around him brush off his confused questions, preferring instead to unerringly rattle off background information regarding the current state of the frontier under Mad King Washington.

Washington has somehow procured an Apple, one of the mystical space-artefacts seen throughout the Assassin’s Creed series, and is using it to control the minds of his men, ordering them to raze the frontier in a search for Connor’s mother. Connor is effortlessly defeated in a confrontation with Washington and his Apple, leaving him no recourse but to find a new source of power with which to stand against the Mad King and his blue-coated thrall army.

Despite this bombastic departure from the vanilla ACIII narrative, The Infamy actually proves somewhat captivating. Washington’s frontier is a much darker place than of ACIII proper. Bodies of the fallen protrude from heavy snow drifts, crows eat their fill, and Connor himself treads a far less self-righteous path. Without going into specifics, the new abilities that Connor receives during The Infamy are devastatingly powerful. Common enemies now fall to Connor’s assortment of weaponry with little effort. This could easily be considered overpowered, but often overpowered abilities are exactly what is needed in post-game DLC to keep things fresh; a chance for players to stretch their virtual legs, free of the constraints of main game character progression.

Unfortunately, these new abilities are hamstrung by The Infamy’s heavy reliance on the type of forced-stealth missions that the Assassin’s Creed series is known to continually deliver, despite significant amounts of critical and anecdotal derision for the mechanic.

Insta-fail stealth areas, eavesdropping missions, and a reprised enemy type that effortlessly counters your new abilities in such missions, all add up to many mission failures and retries. Despite these repeated sections of play, The Infamy still only accounted for 1.5 hours of total playtime, which doesn’t leave a pleasant taste in the mouth after spending $11.99 on the episode. This only stung all the more for this reviewer, after spending 45 minutes—half of the total playtime again—wrestling with Uplay to get the DLC into a playable state. I had not played ACIII since release, and thus needed to patch the game up to its current version 1.03 before I could even install The Infamy. This required the download and manual execution of four separate updaters, each requiring a download approaching 1GB.

The download for The Infamy’s installer also forcibly signed me up for Ubisoft’s mailing list, despite explicitly opting-out during checkout. This is not acceptable.

The Tyranny of King Washington Episode 1: The Infamy is a mostly self-contained piece of content, with only tenuous ties to the main narrative. This has positive implications on the scope of the content, vastly reducing the amount of pap required of the player when compared to the main game, but also sheds an uncomfortable light on the anaemic gameplay mechanics present in the main missions. If the darker direction of the narrative piques your interest, it might be worth waiting until all three episodes have been released—and subsequently gone on sale—before committing to a purchase.

Some of the best stories are always those that have a little or large amounts of truth. Apart from playing on the stranger-than-fiction impulse that makes them so watchable, it’s also educational — and humans, deep within, like to learn things.

The same applies for the Assassin’s Creed series, albeit in a different way. By allowing us to explore the intricacies of historical characters, people are able to enjoy monumental events and places in time in a completely different light. It might not have led to a rise in students taking modern history at high school, but it most certainly is fun.

So, Assassin’s Creed III took us to colonial America. Where next?

When considering the merit of various historical events, you have to remember to synchronise them with the Assassin’s Creed structure. The main protagonist must grow up disillusioned, aggrieved at the desecration of his village (Connor), victim to the crimes of injustice (Altair) or politics (Ezio).

(Desmond, being a twat and more boring than a fence-post, does not count.)

Any scene or event of significance needs to last long enough for the new hero – and let’s face it, nobody wants Connor hanging around for three years – to grow up and survive without becoming stale or dull.

The Boxer Rebellion was one of the topics I covered almost a decade ago in Modern History for high school. It provides a rich tapestry of intrigue, political betrayal, an international dogfight, and enough human tragedy to serve Ubisoft’s needs.

More importantly, it also gives the developer a chance to delve into Asian lore, something often ignored by Western developers, from a perspective that the Chinese would not only encourage, but may even assist in.

Even the Boxers themselves — also known as The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists — were a secret society of their own; they believed that through the mastery of many Assassin-like traits, such as martial arts and calisthenics, they would gain extraordinary abilities. That shouldn’t be too long a bow for Ubisoft’s writers to draw, considering one of the opening scenes in the original Assassin’s Creed showed the assassin’s making a leap of faith as a show of their devotion to the order.

Other secret clubs and groups predated the Boxers, which would be enough to cover the initial chapters showing a young urchin living off the streets, spying on the Chinese branch of the Assassin order before learning their skills and being inducted himself.

The plot could be sufficiently dense by taking the player through the discontent and anger felt at the time over the presence of mostly European missionaries, who were protected by various regional and provincial government edicts.

A writer could quite easily shoehorn an excuse to explore the machinations of the Qing empire at the time; Empress Dowager Cixi as a character would provide a powerful, cunning female presence that could become an example for other developers. Her insistence on demanding her subjects show loyalty by becoming eunuchs would even make for a delightfully wicked scene.

Even the larger-scale battles of the American revolution wouldn’t be a daunting task, since the Boxer Rebellion had plenty of large scale firefights between the Chinese and the international troops – although the one-sided nature of fighting machine guns with kung-fu could be somewhat challenging. Still, their guerilla tactics, such as sabotaging railroad lines and telegraph lines to hamper the Western forces supplies and communication, would be perfectly suited for an assassin.

Given that China also came off worse in the exchange, with international troops occupying China and the eastern power’s monarchical system badly weakened as a result, it may even be happy to offer government assistance in helping Ubisoft research and produce the game. China’s typical reluctance towards projects covering historical ground may not even be an issue here, since it would be a rare opportunity to take part in something that casts their history in a proud light, something that gets people to engage and enjoy the history of China in a positive fashion.

Naturally there would be many other hurdles, of course, but it’s a tapestry worth weaving. Assassin’s Creed is at its best exploring that fine line between history and what we can remember, the hazy area full of intrigue and plausibility. Even the red and white colour scheme fits Asia perfectly.

So come on Ubisoft. We’ve done Europe. We’ve done the Middle East. We’ve done North America. Let’s take it to China, and take a leap of faith off the Great Wall.

We all knew it was going to be big, and indications are that it’s selling pretty well indeed. Assassin’s Creed 3 has announced that they’ve passed the seven million sales mark, with little indication of stopping.

Assassin’s Creed III is now officially the fastest-selling game in Ubisoft’s history, rather overshadowing their recently-released Far Cry 3 which is unfortunate as here at games.on.net we happen to think Far Cry 3 is pretty great.

“In solo missions alone, players have accumulated more than 82 centuries of gaming time and committed more than 3 billion assassinations,” reads a celebratory press release. “The deadly action continues in the multiplayer, where more than twice as many players have joined the multiplayer mode compared to Assassin’s Creed® Revelations. To date, more than 250 million assassinations have been performed in more than 5 billion multiplayer sessions.”

For our thoughts on Assassin’s Creed III, check out our PC review.

Although it seems like Assassin’s Creed is headed to Brazil in the next game, right now we’re looking at DLC for the current game and it’s an alternate reality where George Washington, far from being twelve storeys high and made of radiation, is actually a tyrannical dictator-king.

Bizarrely, since Assassin’s Creed itself is set in an alternate reality where you can look at your own DNA and discover how many people your great-great-great-grandmother stabbed, presumably this is some sort of alternate alternate reality. If that makes any sense. Hey, a trailer!

Looking to explore Brazil in the next Assassin’s Creed? Well, your strangely specific wish will be granted, it seems – Ubisoft Brazil managing director Bertrand Chaverot has allegedly told Brazilian site techtudo that the next instalment of Ubisoft’s flagship franchise will take place there.

That’s unfortunately all there is to know. Gamespot, who broke the news, claim to have verified the translation — and they also point out that Assassin’s Creed III did, in fact, have some levels set in Brazil.

Source: Gamespot

Enter Assassin’s Creed III, and Desmond Miles once again sits atop the Animus, his magical, science-fiction way-back-machine, for his fifth sojourn into his family’s bloodied and oddly historically-significant past.

As 1753AD coalesced around me, rebuilding itself polygon by polygon, texture by texture, I felt a confidence that Assassin’s Creed III would be a product of Ubisoft Montreal’s learned successes and mistakes. A confidence that was reflected in the familiar, fluid, self-assured gait of my character as I strode into, wait, the London Opera? What is thi-

I swung the camera around and was surprised to see that the character I was controlling was in fact not the figure from the front of the box, but an older, weathered Englishman, with a disarming look about him and a velvety accent to match. Assassin’s Creed III opens with a refreshingly unique sequence that I am reluctant to detail here, but which pours a delicious grey into the gaping moral expanse between the Assassins and the Templars established by earlier entries in the series.

Unfortunately, once the opening sequence is complete and the player takes control of Connor (Ratonhnhaké:ton, if you’re nasty), too little is done with this confusion of Assassin and Templar motivations and agendas. What follows is a somewhat predictable revenge plot, led by a naive protagonist for whom responsibility is in equal parts—gleefully and dutifully accepted.

Ubisoft’s portrayal of the American Revolution proved to be a pleasant surprise, an alternate history that worked hard to neither deify nor demonise either side of the conflict. Most of the famous characters from the period are well-rounded, each exhibiting failings or weaknesses that history lessons generally don’t cover. However, Connor’s active participation in each of the pivotal moments of the revolution did begin to stretch the suspension of disbelief, especially in his role as chauffeur to Paul Revere during his midnight ride.

It seems that the criticism levelled at the original Assassin’s Creed regarding sparse and repetitive side missions was taken to heart. As the series has progressed, more and more has been added to the periphery, and Assassin’s Creed III features some of the most cluttered area maps I have ever seen. Each of the major areas in the game are absolutely lousy with things to do, up to the point where it actually becomes annoying. It didn’t take long before I realised that delivering letters wasn’t really something that an up-and-coming assassin would, or should, be busying himself with.

In place of the villa from Assassin’s Creed II, Connor establishes a homestead away from the prying eyes of the British and Patriots alike. The homestead can be populated with inhabitants who bring unique skills and abilities to the group. These inhabitants can also be upgraded, which in turn allows you to painstakingly use them to craft items, which can be sold via complicated trade routes for a profit, the money from which can then be spent on, err… more trade items? I guess? The entire trading system is an unnecessary mess, and seems to be little more than a concession to the period of the setting. This is exacerbated by the fact that upgrades for Connor’s gear are also crafted via this system of cluttered and obtuse menus, except for the items available in the stores.

Connor’s gear progression is unnecessarily obfuscated by this decentralisation. Though, as it turns out, Connor is horrifyingly proficient with any of the items that he can acquire throughout the game, so if you chose to completely ignore the upgrade and crafting system, you would be unhindered in your progression. The only real need for money is in upgrading your newly acquired and refurbished ship, the Aquila. Assassin’s Creed III introduces naval combat scenarios to the mix, which are an absolute delight, albeit tenuously connected to the plot.

Players are tasked with piloting the Aquila, ordering sails to be reefed or unfurled, calling for broadside cannon fire, choosing the type of shot to be loaded, warning the crew to brace against rogue waves or incoming ordinance, and targeting exposed powder stores with light swivel cannons. One of the most tense and atmospheric sections of ACIII was a naval engagement against three Man-o-War class ships, at night, during a storm. Seeing one of those monstrosities seemingly rise up out of the night as it crested a nearby wave with the moon behind it, its three rows of cannons hungry for a broadside… it was a chilling and lonely experience, and to my mind, unparalleled by anything delivered by the series to date.

Having played both the Xbox 360 and PC releases, it is frustratingly difficult to definitively recommend one over the other. When the PC port is doing everything it is supposed to, it shines. One of my primary problems with the Anvil engine has always been how it renders shadows on consoles, and it is no better on AnvilNext. However, the odd and obtrusive grainy effect that occurs on both the 360 and PS3 is non-existent on the PC. The framerate on PC was also vastly superior, as I would expect from my Nvidia GTX580, but it varied wildly in environments that allowed for a long draw distance which, let’s face it, was most of them. The dearth of graphical options in the PC release, which you can see below, was also rather disappointing.

This also highlighted the biggest problem with using a mouse and keyboard to control Connor. When the framerate bottoms out, movements of the camera would hang and then jump, often leading to unintentional turns when free-running. The controls are clearly designed around the demarcated button types of a controller, and as such feel somewhat messy and unintuitive on a flat keyboard. This subsequently requires the player to rely more on on-screen prompts, and to think about their controls. A wired 360 controller quickly became my preference.

So, while the PC delivered more frames and prettier pictures, the 360 version was more reliable overall. I should also note that should you choose to buy a PC copy at retail, you will be forced to use Ubisoft’s uPlay launcher for managing your game. Your product ID cannot be redeemed on Steam — if you want it on Steam, you’ll have to buy it there.

Assassin’s Creed III is an easy game to criticise due to its vast array of moving parts. The core experience of playing as Connor, the updated combat and free-running systems, the amazingly fluid tree-traversal, and the changes to his fighting style are all excellent, and are true advances for the series. Unfortunately, the full weight of the negatives atop this solid core are impossible to ignore.

The inclusion of so many unnecessary time-wasters, overly complicated mechanics and tacked-on period concessions imply an insular design direction, which could have greatly benefited from the input of someone outside of the Assassin’s Creed team. Like Connor, Assassin’s Creed III seems to be desperately beholden to its heritage, and ultimately confused about what it wants to be.

Good:

• Free running has been simplified, and is less likely to misinterpret inputs
• Combat has been further refined and bolstered, over AC:B and AC:R
• The tomahawk is BADASS
• The core of the Assassin’s Creed experience is intact, and well implemented
• Naval combat is intensely fun, if somewhat out of place
• The subject matter is interestingly and deftly handled

Bad:

• You will be buried under sundry optional missions
• Questions regarding the validity of the assassin’s motives continue to be brushed aside as mere ramblings of dying evil men
• The teased blurring of the line between Assassin and Templar is left unexplored
• The upgrade system is ultimately useless and poorly implemented
• Sparse graphics options and poor keyboard/mouse controls

Although Assassin’s Creed III doesn’t release on PC until Friday in Australia, it’s out in the US as of tomorrow — but some naughty person has grabbed it a day early and is posting video of it across the internet. Here, then, are fourteen minutes of AC3 PC gameplay, comprising the first mission of the game. Take a look.

Source: PCGamesN

As is the fashion of the time, a Reddit AMA thread has revealed some interesting new information with regards to an upcoming game – specifically, Assassin’s Creed 3‘s delayed PC release.

Creative Director Alex Hutchinson confirmed that the PC version of AC3 will have all the patches to date, including some that are just now going for certification. “Lots of bug fixes incoming,” he wrote. “PC release will include the first two patches on release.”

Meanwhile, Senior Community Developer Gabe Graziani mentioned that the team have “added a lot more detail to the PC version and support for DX11″, and “it will be less buggy than the console versions (as they were at the time of console launch),” but “the console and PC versions will be comparable at PC launch.”

Source: Reddit

You may have heard that Assassin’s Creed III will employ microtransactions in its multiplayer — something called ‘Erudito credits’ have been popping up in console marketplaces, but no mention of what they might be.

Their function has been revealed though, in a statement from Ubisoft. And it is a little worrying. “The Erudito Credits are a new way of unlocking content in ACIII Multiplayer. People who have little time can use Erudito Credits as a shortcut to unlock game items from level 1 to 50 (excluding Prestige levels and relics rewards). This is not mandatory, all items sold in Erudito Credits are also available in Abstergo Credits and can be unlocked through normal progression like previous years.”

While this isn’t the first time a title has created its own currency to help you buy items, Assassin’s Creed III‘s multiplayer is competitive. In a competitive multiplayer setting, having what sounds like a pay-to-win system in place doesn’t seem to engender fairness or fun — as Worthplaying points out, the description for Erudito points explicitly says you can buy items “disregarding your current level”.

Having said that, there is a certain “Prisoner’s Dilemma”-style evil genius to it. “If everyone else is going to do it, I should do it as well, or I’ll be left behind. I should do it first!” Be honest, will you be partaking of Ubisoft’s apparently Machiavellian scheme?

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

With Assassin’s Creed III only a few days away from launching — on consoles, at least — the launch trailer has just been released by Ubisoft and it shows Connor at the forefront of the civil war. It’s pretty stirring stuff, so take a look below, or if you’d like to see it for yourself in HD, why not download it from our file library?

Source: Press Release

Ubisoft have revealed that Desmond Miles’ story will wrap up with Assassin’s Creed III, leaving many punters with an emotion best described as “relief”. One of the major criticisms levelled at the now-iconic series has been the stalling of the underlying plot, and it seems like AC3 will resolve that for us.

“What we’re trying to do is bring some finality to Desmond’s story,” said Ubisoft’s Steve Masters to OXM. “To actually wrap up what you’ve opened and experienced with him. So we’re trying to make it a little bit more direct with the storyline, but at the same time there are still going to be plenty of little mysterious bits for you to dig into, especially in the side stuff.”

Masters also addressed fan frustration with the lack of progress on the game’s metaplot, saying “We wanted there to be a big leap forward in the story. And we wanted you to feel a good sense of progress in what’s going on in the story.”

“A lot of the misdirection and the way we’ve been meandering a little bit has been kind of frustrating as a player and for the audience, so we wanted to make sure there was going to be more substance to get your teeth into.”

For more on Assassin’s Creed III, why not check out our hands-on preview?

Source: OXM

Prepare yourselves: Another Assassin’s Creed III trailer is coming, and today’s trailer fills out some more detail on the the multiplayer aspects. Multiplayer has been touched on briefly in other trailers, but this one really gives you a better idea of what multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed III will be all about. There’s domination mode, as well as some co-op modes, and a whole bunch of characters with their own advantages and disadvantages to choose from. It’s all very exciting. Check it out below.

Despite the many trailers we’ve seen for Assassin’s Creed III since it was revealed, this is the first that doesn’t focus on the history surrounding the game, and focuses on Connor’s story instead. In fact, this might even be the first time I’ve seen his face. The storyline seems darker than previous instalments, requiring Connor to make morally grey choices and to adopt a “for the greater good” mentality. Still no mention of Desmond or the Animus in this trailer, though some screenshots of the man and machine have surfaced. Check out the trailer below.

If you’re in the market for more Assassin’s Creed III, why not read our massive preview?

One of the strangest sensations in Assassin’s Creed III has nothing to do with brutally shanking hapless redcoats, magic apples, or Animus technology. It’s that feeling of stepping into a huge, sprawling environment that feels more akin to Skyrim than it does to the urban cityscapes of old. Rushing waterfalls, dappled foliage, jutting cliffs and peaceful wildlife; the American frontier feels like a place begging to be explored – and not only at ground level. Point at a location and our hooded hero Connor can most probably get there, scaling trees and leaping from rocks across numerous hidden pathways in an environment that feels oh-so-very different from the marble ruins of Venice and Rome.

I mean, sure. Assassin’s Creed III is going to feature some pretty familiar stuff. You’ll be leaping from high places into convenient leaf piles, you’ll be running from rooftops to rooftops, you’ll be shanking dudes left right and centre. But for all that has come before it, ACIII feels both pleasantly familiar and markedly different than its predecessors.

Take a newly announced feature, the Homestead. Initially reminiscent of the Villa Auditore or of shoring up the fledgling Brotherhood in Rome, ACIII sees Connor taking time out of his busy killing schedule to, essentially, start up a small village out in the wilderness.

“If you compare it to walking around in Boston and New York, that’s a ‘stranger’ kind of feeling – you don’t know the people, you’re just blending in the crowd,” says Mission Director Phillipe Bergeron to us. “When you go to the homestead, you take your hood down, and these are people you know, that you’ve personally recruited – we wanted to make that a more tactile, personalised experience.”

As you recruit characters, new buildings and people begin to appear around your rickety old manor, unlocking services and sidequests. It’s a natural evolution of the formula of old – but it’s far from the only improvement in town.

Combat has also taken on some restructuring, taking a lesson from Arkham Asylum‘s school of hard knocks, but it doesn’t quite hit that free-flow style of the Caped Crusader. It still suffers from a lack of signposting, failing to tell you why sometimes Connor will stab eight guys in a row but just bounce harmlessly off the last one. Still, countering is relatively straightforward – hit the button when enemies give their tell and you’ll open up a further ‘counter window’, from which another button can be hit to disarm, throw or use a device on your hapless opponent. And it’s easy enough to control a crowd.

The slightly redesigned freerunning system – smartly, Connor will no longer leap unhesitatingly to his death while parkouring, unless you hit another button – also settles into the gameplay experience easily. Moments after picking up the controller for the first time, I was sending Connor clambering up rocks and swinging from tree to tree as if I’d been doing it all my life. Once you learn to see the wild’s hidden tree-roads, you’ll find movement fluid, responsive, and utterly natural.

More blatantly new content – naval battles, for instance – are interesting and oddly satisfying (especially the sound design, of all things), but it’ll take a more thorough exploration to determine how they fit into the larger scheme of thing. But the overwhelmingly large, beautiful environments, though? Divided into distinct loading zones as they are, they’re still outright massive, and navigating these lands will prove an integral part of the whole.

And it’s not as if they’re just huge empty spaces to walk through. Minor quests at camp-fires, game to hunt and skin for town-related tasks, travelling recruiting parties, trade convoys that tie into the game’s overall economy: all these things and more populate the American frontier. Even beyond of the fledgling colonies of Boston and New York, a few more ramshackle border towns inhabit the forests, their contents a mystery for the present moment.

That moment will be even longer for the PC-focused gamer, with ACIII joining a long line of Ubisoft games in releasing on the platform a while after its initial outing on the consoles – in this case, November 23^rd. Asked about this delay, Phillipe was apologetic.

“Our core development platforms are always the consoles, and getting a game out on PC – I don’t want to say it’s an easy thing, but it’s not quite as complicated as a console build. They’ve got limited specs, Microsoft and Sony have an approval process: overall it’s a lot more strict,” he explains. “So we know that once we get approved to ship on consoles, it’s not as big a deal about shipping on PC.”

“I think there’s also a business decision here, though… we know there’s piracy on PC,” he elaborates further. “I don’t know why exactly those decisions occur, though – we don’t really have anything to do with that. We just make the best games possible.”

But Assassin’s Creed fans never really have that long to wait between the game’s annualised releases, which carry with them a certain risk of franchise oversaturation. “Burnout is a known issue, and something we’ve been working on since the beginning” Phillipe laughs. “Even development gets pretty tired doing these things. For ACIII, it’s something we solved by making things fresh – a new protagonist, and a new era.”

As for the argument that the new features introduced in the mid-season games – multiplayer and a larger open world in Brotherhood, for example – don’t impress as much in the newest numbered releases, because they’ve already been shown off before? “Iterative design means iterative improvement” says Phillipe. “I mean, take multiplayer – the fact that we had a chance to improve on it, with accumulated data and player comments – well, if you compare multiplayer in ACIII with the multiplayer product that was first introduced, well, it just doesn’t compare. So you lose that surprise factor, but you trade it in for a better quality game.”

And a better quality game it certainly looks and feels. I didn’t have enough time to go out and do everything I wanted in this vast new American frontier, but what I did see was hugely impressive. Forget further revelations and fighting revolutions, all that I want to do when ACIII releases is fix my eye on the highest mountain in the land and make my way, branch by branch, handhold by precarious handhold, to the very top of it. And then, hopefully, leap three hundred feet into a convenient pile of leaves.

As you may well have picked up, Assassin’s Creed III takes place in a very volatile time in American history. Specifically, its birth. The people of the American colonies sought to free themselves of their British yoke, and in an act of defiance that would spark the revolution and eventually give birth to the United States, threw some tea in the harbour. As far as acts of defiance go, I particularly enjoy this one, because what better symbolism of getting rid of the Brits than throwing their precious tea away. And what better way to get them riled up, eh?

I digress. Here is a trailer for Assassin’s Creed III that will teach you all about this famous event, and the not-so-famous assassin-related events behind it.

The system requirements for Assassin’s Creed III have been revealed, over at Ubisoft’s Customer Support page. These are the minimum specs required to run the game properl, they claim, adding that laptop versions of these cards may work but are not supported — “These chipsets are the only ones that will run this game.”

And remember, Ubisoft doesn’t use always-on DRM anymore! Click through to check them out.

Supported OS: Windows Vista (SP2) / Windows 7 (SP1) / Windows 8
Processor: 2.66 GHz Intel Core2 Duo E6700 or 3.00 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or better recommended
RAM: 2 GB (4 GB recommended)
Video Card: 512 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant with Shader Model 4.0 or higher (see supported list)*
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compliant (5.1 surround sound recommended)
DVD-ROM: Dual-layer drive
Hard Drive Space: 17 GB
Peripherals Supported: Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, optional controller (Xbox 360 Controller for Windows recommended)
Multiplayer: 256 kbps or faster broadband connection

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
AMD Radeon HD 3870 / 4000 / 5000 / 6000 / 7000 series or better
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT / 9 / 100 / 200 / 300 / 400 / 500 / 600 series or better

Source: Ubisoft Customer Support (via IGN)

The last of the four part series of Inside Assassin’s Creed III is available for viewing online. In this episode, “America, by Land and Sea”, we explore colonial America and all that it entails: Boston and New York, the open seas, the wilderness and, of course, the dangerous Indian wildman. Learn about dynamic weather and crowd and animal AI as well! So educational.

On the same day as the director of the infamously difficult Dark Souls muses on an easy mode, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed III has come out swinging against the whole idea.

“A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes,” said Hutchinson to EDGE.

“If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game. You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game.” Hutchinson pointed out that this is a problem unique to video games, saying: “It’s like if I picked up a book and it said, ‘Do you want the easy version or the complicated version?’ [Game designers] can simplify the language, you know; we can make it two syllables.”

Assassin’s Creed III is aiming for a “challenging” but not “brutally difficult” level of complexity, and is heading to PC at the end of November (late October for consoles).

Source: EDGE

Assassin’s Creed III’s Australian creative director Alex Hutchinson has caused a bit of a furor among our English colleagues by saying games critics are a little bit racist in their approach to review scores. CVG asked Hutchinson why Nintendo can release the same Mario game every year and receive nothing but praise, while Ubisoft Montreal has been heavily criticised for three annual releases.

“I think there’s a subtle racism in the business, especially on the journalists’ side, where Japanese developers are forgiven for doing what they do. I think it’s condescending to do this,” the developer replied.

“Just think about how many Japanese games are released where their stories are literally gibberish. Literally gibberish. There’s no way you could write it with a straight face, and the journalists say ‘oh it is brilliant’. Then Gears of War comes out and apparently it’s the worst written narrative in a game ever. I’ll take Gears of War over Bayonetta any time.

“It’s patronising to say, ‘oh those Japanese stories, they don’t really mean what they’re doing’. I just think the simple question should be; is the story any good?”

Assassin’s Creed III is due on consoles in late October and on PC in late November; it will be the fourth entry in the series to release in as many years.

Source: CVG

The latest trailer for Assassin’s Creed III gives us a closer look at one of the new features of this latest installement – naval battles. The Assassin’s Creed protagonist is traditionally deathly allergic to water so putting him in an ocean setting may not be best for his health. The Editor-In-Chimp tells me they might have fixed that now, ruining the crux of my joke, so I’ll just leave you with the trailer. It all looks very exciting and swashbuckle-y, anyway. Check it out.

Ubisoft has finally come clean with a solid release date for Assassin’s Creed III on PC – November 20 in the US, and November 23 elsewhere. Although the console versions have been confirmed for late October for some time now, until recently the publisher gave a vague “before the end of the year” release window for the PC version; Ubisoft has developed a bit of a reputation for pushing back PC releases so in that context just under a month’s delay from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 release could be considered quite a good result. The latest entry in the series takes closes the current story arc led by meta-protagonist Desmond, and takes players to the American Revolution. It’s got a whole grab bag of new features like forest traversal and naval battles along with new and interesting ways to stab people.

Well, there’s another Assassin’s Creed III trailer. There are a lot of them, but we still love them, right? They’re just so fun to watch! This one delves a little deeper into more of the technical side of things, talking about the new game engine and some of the graphical upgrades. But my favourite part is when he sticks a bayonet into a dude, then shoots his friend through his own chest. Brutal! Ah, I’m a class act. Watch it, down there.

Seems there’s been some sort of Assassin’s Creed III trailer leaked – that or an advertisement for some terrifying new technology that looks strangely like Assassin’s Creed III. It mostly revolves around the new multiplayer modes, which looks interesting to say the least. We’ll embed the video here, but keep in mind, it might not be long before it gets pulled by Ubisoft.

Source: Ausgamers

According to a note that American games retailer GameStop received, seems there’s going to be some DLC for Assassin’s Creed III – and there could be a lot of it. Ubisoft sent Game Stop a little note to thank them for their help “assassinating” their preorder goals, that went on to mention that they are now working on “post-launch episodic content” that will “set the bar for quality DLC in our industry”.

The Assassins’ Creed franchise is no stranger to DLC, though this will be the first time there is enough content to require a ‘season pass’. The letter continues on to say that they will be taking preorders for the ‘season pass’ to their DLC, which would seem to suggest there will be more than just a few multiplayer maps and skins this time around.

Source: Kotaku