Assassin’s Creed III Multiplayer Impressions

June 12th, 2012 by

[cp_youtube id=”xaqTil80Yr8″ points=”20″ width=660]

The first thing we did as the first people in line for the South Hall at E3 this year was make a b-line to the Ubisoft booth to get our hands on Assassin’s Creed III.  I was a tad disappointed when all we could find was a playable demo of the multiplayer mode for the game, but was pleasantly surprised by the gaming experience that ensued.  The AC3 mode that we were able to play was called Domination, and worked basically the same as its namesake in Call of Duty games, only with the same mechanics as found in the multiplayer from Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Manhunt mode from ACB/ACR, there are basically two teams of four players who each look like a specific kind of NPC.  The game area is then populated with NPCs of all kinds (including ones that look exactly like members of either team) and your mission if your team is the “Hunter” team is to pick out and assassinate the members of the “Hunted” team without accidentally killing NPCs.  The “Hunted” not only have to stay alive, but they also cannot kill the Hunters, only stun them and then book it to try and blend in with the NPCs once again.  This game-style is maintained in AC3’s Domination mode, but the Hunter/Hunted assignments are now tied to your location: if you’re capturing a point (or trying to steal one), you become “Hunted” and if you’re defending a point, you’re a “Hunter.” able to kill those trying to steal the point.

There were three points to capture/defend and the longer you held them, the more points your team would accrue, just like in any other Domination mode.  I found the combination of the Domination game type with the unique stealth features of the Manhunt modes from previous AC games to be refreshing and fun.  There are now all kinds of items, like a disguise I accidentally activate in the video above, that I didn’t have enough time to learn how to use, but even with all of the new layers of complexity, the fun-ness at this multiplayer mode’s core is still very evident.  I didn’t play multiplayer too much in past AC games, but with all of the ranks, customizations, and modes available in AC3, I may have to give it a proper chance.  Regardless of how good multiplayer is this time around, the meat of the AC series is always in the single-player campaigns, though, so we look forward to seeing more of that side of AC3 too as the game approaches its Oct. 3o, 2012 release.  What we saw of the single-player campaign being played on the Wii U, as you can see in our Wii U video compilation post, was also promising and AC3 is quickly becoming one of our most anticipated games for the fall.  We’ll keep you posted as more AC3 news arises in the coming months.