Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia (2016)

Beat on Normal as free from xbox gold. This game was significantly more difficult than China, so much so that I got mostly bronze ratings and never unlocked a single upgrade. The noise dart was replaced by a shocking grappling hook thing that was mainly used to short out lights and electrified barriers, and occasionally knock out enemies that were in water or next to a wall outlet thing. Overall it was more for solving specific puzzles rather than the more widely applicable noise dart. The rifle was an excellent tool that killed with only 1 shot, and was my favorite way to deal with enemies that spotted me or would not look away. There was 1 type of armored enemy that could not be shot, 1 mission that had fumes that made it very bad to shoot, and gas mask enemies that were immune to the smoke grenade. Since I never got any upgrades I had to beat the entire game with 1 lousy hp. Combat seemed to be simpler than in China as I found it easy enough to light attack mash single enemies then finish them with Y when the skull appeared. I was not able to perform any parries, kicks, rolls or dodges. Any time an enemy got the chance to hit or shoot, I died, though I could mow down 3 guys with my rifle if I was fast enough. There were some other new mechanics that made the game more interesting; telephones that could lure guards, radios that would trigger alarm if no guard was able to answer it, and land mines that required a key from specific guards to safely pass, with lethal consequences for the guard if you steal the key and move on. I even got guards to kill themselves on the electrified barriers a few times but that required fleeing from open combat.

I liked the story here better than in China, and enjoyed the gameplay dynamic between the guy and the girl. In particular the shooting gallery sniping parts to protect her, and then playing as her to lure enemies into position to be sniped. This was a very nice touch. She was weaker than the guy though with no gadgets and no ability to openly fight, though she did get the magical helix glitch powers from China, which were mandatory to get past some puzzles. I overall liked the 1st half or so of the game more than China, and appreciated the black and white art style with interactible environment being shown in red and green. Unfortunately the latter half of the game frustrated me to the point where I had to exercise seft restraint to not smash my controller and even look up online to see if I was missing anything. God damn fucking time limits. It did not feel like Normal difficulty at all because it required perfect execution to meet the unforgiving limits. I did find out watching a video that jumping was faster than just running, which was dumb. It took me dozens of attempts to get past every timed sequence. The worst was during the final level where I was running from a tank. That absolutely required the jumping trick, and pixel perfect jumps over gaps because even a split second mistake meant death. Also frustrating were the auto fail on detection levels, especially when that combined with a time limit. I did like how the story also portrayed the Assassins as bad (somewhat reminding me of AC Rogue), but there was 1 area where I was not allowed to kill any enemies and the game did not teach me how to be non lethal (it was electrical shocks). The final boss fight against the tank was pretty good, using the sniping mechanic.

While this game had some fun improvements over China, it was overall a worse game with frustrating trial and error that did not seem properly calibrated. Just give me a level populated by enemies and other stuff to get through however I see fit, not fucking time limit auto fail nonsense.

5.5/10