What?!

GTA 4 was the definition of bloat. People called it boring because while I was doing 140 on Broadway with the cops on my tail, some irish guc called me FOR FREAKING BOWLING!

All of that was completely optional, just press the no button.

Not to mention you can all do it again after you get booted.
And I get a drop in relationship which means I no longer get the bonuses from those guys.

Most stuff in AC 3 is optional. I played until sequence 10 until I started doing some of the extra stuff. Heck, most of it comes natural. The whole "building the homestead" is kinda boring, as I really don't like most of the chars. And the underground, which I at first hated, was actually quite fun in the second city as I finally understood the mechanics.

All in all I'm quite surprised how much they opened up the game. There is actually a point to exploration now and many (sadly not all) quests don't hand-hold you from the beginning to the end.

And I considered the introduction the weakest of any AC game.

Dude all I did were main missions and I've had all that extra side stuff constantly thrown in my face and forced on me. Hunting, boating, crafting, etc... it never left me alone. All I want to do is stab dudes and climb buildings! Arg!

Not many tall buildings in colonial America, but it gets better in the second city. The boating and hunting tutorial might take a bit, but crafting literally takes less than a minute. And you don't even need it later on. Naval is one mandatory mission. I spend more time riding from one city to the next in AC 1 than I spend on the ship in AC 3 (and I already did all privateer missions, as naval is awesome!)

The biggest "bloater" in this game is the "full synchronisation" requirements. Which is also completely optional unless you want one achievement.

Luckily it has no Steam achivements, so I am safe.

Anyway if that crap is finally over now then I will like the game a lot more. If I can just do main missions and assassination stuff from now on I can still salvage this bastard. 9 hours of tutorial bullshit at the front end of a game is unforgivable though. See my Dishonored comparison.

Not true. We bitched about AC1 being repetitive because it was only one type of mission over and over. Compare it with AC2 where you have several types of missions to finish the game and you'll see what I mean.

Altair wasn't just an assassin, during the first game he was also forced to do his own recon work as well as assassin. And not just that, but the assassination missions were lacking in variety as well.

For me the bigger issue was the first three sequence with the first player char. I found those atrocious as you only had the "old AC" movement options (no tree freerunning).

And you yourself said that you are stabbing within minutes of AC 3. Heck, I guess they made the introduction this way because of your complaints.

The actual tutorial sections can't take 9 hours. They might still be too long, but I found them more fun than the first PC.

AC 3 is surprisingly "bad". A lot of bugs that shouldn't be there. The biggest issue is the writing however. You can have a native American character or you can support the Colonial Insurgence, but you can't really have both. I'm currently at the point were this conflict erupts and it will be interesting to see how it fares.

Still, complaining on a high level. But Far Cry 3 is the better Assassins Creed game.

The same mission over and over was chasing dudes through cool cities and stabbing them. That is the core gameplay. I loved AC1 because it stuck to that gameplay and that gameplay was fun.

Since then they have added "variety" as a bunch of stuff that is not running through a city stabbing dudes, which I hate. AC2 was good, most of the stuff they added was alright or on-topic, but AC3 is like a fucking mini-game collection so far.
I liked the beginning, some good stabby and stealth stuff in there. Everything after you become Connor is terrible however, until you get your suit anyway. Where it goes from here I shall see.

Of course now the game is randomly freezing on me so... yeah.

Which takes maybe one or two hours. The biggest blunder AC 3 has made in terms of game design is that they actually want you to use stealth. But AC does really have stealth mechanics.

The first time you have to infiltrate a fort is such a disaster.

That's really not right. What's the point of being an assassin if you're completely ignoring the stealth and recon angles? You might as well be Terminator 1000 B.C.E at that point.

They completely broke the plot and failed to give the gamers anything different, and yes, we bitch about that, misrepresenting the objection really doesn't add any strength to your argument. AC could have been so much more, and yet you get the same mission over and over again until it becomes so dull that you don't even bother.

Seriously, I tried to finish it, but I couldn't because it was so damned repetitive.

Took me a looooooot longer than that. And I loved the fort part, the stealth was excellent. Different strokes...

That's what games are though, right? In FEAR you shoot dudes through a level, then move to another level and do the same thing. And FEAR is one of the best shooters ever made.

I grant that the structure was designed in a way that made that obvious, but still.

You could describe any game that way.
In Mario you fireball your way through a level, then you move on to another level and do the same thing.
In Zelda you hack your way through a dungeon, and then you move on to another dungeon and do the same thing.
In Ghost Recon you plan how to advance and then deploy your units to put your plan into motion, then you move on to another level and do the same thing.
In Monkey Island, you click on things to make stuff happen in order to get to new places so you can click on new things.

You write as though I dislike games that focus on gameplay mechanics, (previously referred to as "core gameplay",) which I don't. Each of the games I listed are games that basically have you do the same thing over and over everywhere you go, and they also happen to be some of the most entertaining games I've played.

However, if I had to play the same level in Mario again and again to get to the end, I would grow tired. If I had to get through the same dungeon again and again in Zelda, I wouldn't bother. If I had to play the same map again and again in Ghost Recon, I would have quit. If I had to work my way through the same room over and over again in the Monkey Island games, I wouldn't bother.

I don't want a different type of gameplay mechanics for every room I visit in a game, but I do want different rooms in which to play around with the one set of gameplay mechanics that the game comes with. This is why I can play Grim Fandango and Full Throttle and Flight of the Amazon Queen and the Blackwell series after playing Monkey Island and still enjoy each and every one of them. Their gameplay mechanics are identical, but the worlds are different.
And that's where AC1 was an enormous disappointment.