Few series have enjoyed the level of success that Ubisoft’s flagship Assassin’s Creed has attained. Each new entry in the series is highly anticipated. Which makes it all the more strange that almost three months after the release of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag the company also released Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD. This remake of the PS Vita title has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it has almost as many things working against it.

Liberation will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played an Assassin’s Creed game. The free running, high flying, rooftop leaping assassination’s are all still here and for the most part, are just as satisfying as ever. Of course, in Liberation you palys as the only female assassin in the series,  Aveline de Grandpré.  Daughter of a wealthy family and of mixed French and African heritage, Aveline is a refreshing character. Unfortunately, shortly after you are introduced to the pre-Revolutionary War setting of New Orleans things begin to unravel a bit. The most immediate issues are in the graphics. While this is a port of the Vita game, it is also touted as being an HD remastered version. In actuality, its simply a Vita game with some HD textures slapped on it. And in places, these textures look a bit bland. While free running, everything looks fine. But slow down for a leisurely stroll as Aveline’s Lady Persona and muddy textures and pop-in begin to rear their ugly heads. Some animations appear stiff and stilted, and the voice acting is hit or miss.  Still, as with all Assassin’s Creed titles, Liberation does manage to create a believable city filled with life. Which makes the swamp sections all the more disappointing. The game is split between the city and the swamp, and it is the swamp sections that really drag the game down. The swamp is filled with vegetation and wildlife, but it feels lifeless and flat. Nothing ever really seems to happen there outside of scripted events and side missions, and the animals feel as if they are only there for your hunting achievements. Even wrestling an alligator is reduced to a quicktime event – one that responds quite poorly to the timed inputs it demands of you.

Herein lies the main problem with Assassin’s Creed Liberation. It uses the same tree-centric free running system as Assassin’s Creed 3. But, in the case of Liberation, the controls feel stiff and imprecise. More than once, I would find Aveline endlessly running up the side of a tree trunk and plunging to her doom on the swamp floor below rather than sliding gracefully around the trunk to the next branch and continuing on her way. While combat is fast and fluid, I encountered multiple instances where the “Mark And Execute” feature of combat – which lets you select opponents to dispatch in quick succession mid fight – simply refused to function as the onscreen prompts said it should. I expect long dialogue and heavy story when playing an Assassin’s Creed game. What I do not expect are clunky controls, yet Liberation delivers both in equal measure. Things get a bit more bearable if you play with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard, but not much.

Aveline has three main guises, a new gameplay mechanism for the series. her lady guise sees her dressed like the wealthy scion of New Orleans she is, and reduces her to either walking or a modest jog. No free-running is allowed, and the most combat you will engage in will be some bare knuckle fisticuffs or using the dart gun hidden in your parasol. To balance this out, the Lady guise gains notoriety much more slowly than the other two. The Assassin guise, on the other hand, is your typical Assassin’s Creed outfit. Equipped with darts, hidden blades, pistols, and your melee weapon of choice you can run, jump, climb and air assassinate to your bloody little heart’s content. Of course, you pick up notoriety very easily as the Assassin. In between the two is the Slave guise. This guise gains notoriety more slowly than the assassin and is able to sprint and engage in some combat. Switching between the three is as easy as ducking into a convenient shop and selecting them from a radial menu. While the guises do add a refreshing element to the gameplay, to often I found myself stuck in the Lady guise and unable to change so that I could explore the city around me.

Rounding out the game are the usual Assassin’s Creed side activities. Taking random assassination contracts, buying and renovating buildings, and engaging in a bare bones trading game that has you sending ships full of goods throughout the Gulf of Mexico will keep you occupied if you so choose. The most glaring omission from the game is the complete lack of multiplayer. Recent Assassin’s Creed games have incorporated innovative and entertaining multiplayer modes, but the complete lack of them in Liberation is a puzzling decision.

All in all, if you are looking for a good Assassin’s Creed game, you would be better to buy Black Flag or find a copy of Assassin’s Creed 3 on sale. While Liberation isn’t a terrible game, it falls far short of other entries in the series. Muddy textures, pop in, stiff controls. the lack of multiplayer and some laughably bad voice acting all drag down what could have been an excellent port of one of the best Vita out there.

Final Verdict: 7/10

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