добрый день товарищ!

Man...that's DONE!  Holy smokes!  What the heck?  Whaaaaaat?

OK... I guess that I need to collect myself better before writing posts and game reviews.  I just finished playing Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia (just now for me, a few days ago chronologically) and all I have to say is "Effff yoouuuuuu!"  This game was one frustrating piece of software but I did it!  I beat it, and it is now done!  This also means that as of this moment I have completed all Assassin's Creed games that on all systems I own, Xbox 360, PSP, and 3DS. I guess technically I can buy Unity and Syndicate on Windows and play them as I did the Chronicles games, but I'd prefer to play those on console.

In any case,  this game picks off where Assassin's Creed Chronicles India leaves off. This time we're following Nikolai Orlov, an Assassin during the Russian Revolution. Orlov is looking to make a new life abroad, but before he leaves the homeland he takes on one last mission for the brotherhood (I can hear him in my head saying "I'm too old for this shit!").  In this final mission before his departure, Nikolai must steal an artifact (the one we've been following in this trilogy) from the Bolsheviks who are holding the Tsar's family. While he goes about his sneaking around business to get the artifcat, Nikolai witnessed the murder of most of Nicholas' children. Nikolai saved princess Anastasia and must protect her, and the artifact, from the Templars. The game takes place between two AC comics (which I don't think I've read), so I'll need to catch up on those at some point.

The game follows the same game mechanics as the other two games in this series.  The visuals of the story are nothing short of stunning. I seriously loved just looking at this game.  The story is also pretty interesting in that powers that Shao Jun and Abaaz Mir have in the previous two games are split between Nikolai and Anastasia. Nikolai has all the gadgets, and the finer assassin skills, such as knocking enemies unconscious instead of killing them, and Anastasia has the Helix Blend, Helix Assassination, and more brute ways of killing folks.  How is this possible?  Well, she must be a descendant of Shao Jun because Shao Jun resurfaces (did the soviets have sort of proto-animus and too much exposure in it made ancestors bleed through?!).  This made the game a bit like a tag-team.

The game rewards you the most points for stealth.  This is the frustrating bit of the game because it forces you to complete the game on stealth if you want some things like...oh I don't know...more health!  I actually made it all the way to the end of the game, final stage, final boss, final sniper's nest, and I kept getting killed because I only had 1 bar of heath.  I suppose that's an awesome achievement (to make it that far on such low health), but it made the game frustratingly difficult.  I ended up going back to the first memory of the game and beating it on stealth so I could get 1 more bar of health.  This, in the end, helped me beat the game.

Overall for this game I'd give it a  7/10.  The visual, for me, get a 10/10, but the game play mechanics made it frustratingly difficult to complete. One of the things that I liked about assassin's creed is that you could beat the game by sneaking, assassinating (ahem!), of knocking enemies unconscious. This particular game (if you want to have it a bit easier in the end) really wants you to be a ghost, which really constrains the game play - A LOT.

Now...when is the next trilogy coming along? ;-)