Assassin's Creed Unity Review

Finished Progress: Completed All Main Missions

                               45%

                               27 hours played

                               Completed story modes of all previous games except Rogue and Liberation. 

Assassin's Creed Unity probably contains the most mechanical and gameplay changes to the AC franchise other than AC2. However, not all of these changes are improvements and it creates quite a disappointing game.

It seems that with every improvement there is also a negative. The city is huge and, in my eyes, beautiful, but loading screens are extremely long and frequent.  The character customisation is great with so much choice, but I wish you could still skin animals for larger inventories. The amount of NPCs in a crowd is impressive, but models repeat and the frame rate can be choppy. Stealth is improved as it now has its own button, but the whistle mechanic is gone and the cover system was said to be like the brilliant one in Watchdogs, but it isn't. Those are a few examples, but I could easily list more. 

The games tagline is unity which relates to the new co-op missions available. The team sizes are either 2 or 4 dictated by the mission. Even though they are side missions and don't relate to the main story they do come with proper cut scenes. The missions themselves are good fun from what I've played, but the lag is horrible. Often in the main story you will have a companion controlled by AI and when you are both fighting the same guy you are both able to land hits. With online multiplayer often one assassin will get the attack animation whilst the other just freezes in place until the move is over. Although there are a lot of missions I wish multiplayer was also available in the main story especially if it's supposed to be the main feature of this game.

The other side missions are a mixed bag. The murder mysteries are a lot of fun and force you to think to make sure you capture the right culprit. However, I found the Paris stories that I played to feel mostly like they were just prolonging my game time. Helix missions I found to be way too repetitive. Paris is large and there are a lot of missions and items to unlock but a lot of it isn't engaging. The amount of icons on the map I also found to be overwhelming and messy.  They are 4 different types of chests which is so confusing and you don't know how difficult they will be to be to unlock before traveling to them. Here is the map with all viewpoints unlocked and it's definitely confusing:

I am definitely impressed with the character customisation. The clothing of your assassin can be changed and so can his weapon. Here is how my assassin changed throughout the course of my play. 

He started off looking like robin hood and ended with looking more like an assassin. You can customise the head, chest, waist, forearms, legs and the overall colour of the outfit. Each item has different statistics which can aid you in stealth or combat. Weapon choices are also vast. I started off with an axe and then moved on to a spiked club and ended with a sword. All of these can be brought with micro-transactions or in-game money, but I never needed to use my own money or grind. There are skill points which can now be used to drop different abilities, but they don't drop frequently enough. Also, necessary skills like double assassinations have to be unlocked. 

The main campaign is enjoyable, but I stopped caring about the characters about half way through. The revolution and its events are used effectively, but I wish they were used more. There are a lot more assassinate missions than there were in previous games and this is definitely an improvement. The ending though is just terrible, but I won't spoil it here. 

Although I experienced many occasions of choppy frame rates my game never broke or crashed. There were numerous glitches I also encountered by they weren't a big issue. 

So in conclusion Assassin's Creed Unity does have some improvements but it fails in more areas than it succeeds. Towards the end, I was getting really frustrated with the game. It's definitely not the best game in the series with glaring issues, but it also isn't the worst.

Final Score: 7.5 (20 point scale system)

Assassins Creed Unity PS4 Impressions

Current Progress: Up to Sequence 7 Memory 2
                             23%
                             16 hours played

There is a lot of negative press about this game and five hours in I agreed with most of it. However, now with 16 hours played and about half way through the plot, I am becoming more positive. Don't get me wrong, this is still not a great AC game. I have played every AC game except the Vita Liberation port and Rogue.

I'll start off with what most of the press is focusing on. The game doesn't run well at all. I can't generally tell the difference between 30 fps or 60 or anything in between. However, in this game there are choppy frame rates, which I do notice happen often. Though the recent update does reduce the frequency of the frame rate drops. Also the loading screens are stupidly long. It's sometimes quicker to run across the city than fast travel to a viewpoint. There haven't been too many glitches since I've been playing. The no face bug seems to be only present on PC. Some console owners never connect their console to the Internet so there is no excuse to release a broken game which can then be fixed afterwards with updates.

Now some positives. Paris is huge and looks fantastic. The sense of scale is amazing and it definitely feels like the biggest AC city. A big change from Black Flag where you never spend much time in one city. Also the game looks graphically beautiful. Whether you are watching in game cut-scenes or running around the city the game graphics are amazing. One of the features this game showed off in all of its press previews was the amount of NPCs on screen. While it is impressive when you see a large crowd, the individual people seem lifeless. Different areas of the city feel different. You know when you're in rich areas with unrest and in rough areas.The city is great and the best thing about Unity.

Mechanically the game has changed drastically since Black Flag. Some are improvements, a lot aren't. One improvement is the combat. You can no longer just counter one move and then chain kill every enemy. You have to parry and dodge. An enemy's health bar flashes yellow when you can parry. Taking on a lot of enemies on is a challenge as it really should be. Because of this stealth is encouraged so to avoid the more difficult combat.

Another improvement to some extent is the huge character customisation. In the past the options for how your assassin looked was purely cosmetic. Now you can customise the head, chest, waist, forearms, legs and the overall colour of your assassin. Each item looks different and has different levels of health and stealth bonuses. It's awesome. This is your Arno and he keeps all of the items of clothing you choose in the cut-scenes. A disadvantage is the skin crafting is no more and instead these items of clothing comes with different item capacities. I found I was looking more at these numbers than how the pieces of clothing looked. Weapon choice has also increased. I'm currently using a spiked club but could use a pickaxe or swords among other choices. Every item can be brought using the in-game currency or annoyingly  micro-transactions. The game becomes even more like an RPG with skill points which is a good addition. However necessary skills like double assassinations need to be unlocked and the amount of skill points you get from the missions isn't many.

My biggest issue with the game so far is the French revolution seems to be barely used, it's more than of a backdrop. There are few references to the guillotine and none to the royal family. There are crowds burning flags but they don't attack the officers and storm the buildings like the trailer shows. The storyline doesn't focus on the revolution at all. I wasn't too impressed with AC 3 but at least that taught me things about the American revolution. I think one reason for this is there will probably be 3 games set in France around this time period so by the end you'll know more about the revolution. 3 Italy games and then 3 America games. Next step 3 France games. But I can't be bothered to play through all of that.

To conclude I am so far enjoying this game. There are a lot a changes and some are for the better. This game is in line with the other poorly received AC games like Revelation (my personal worst AC game) and AC3. Not great but still somewhat enjoyable.

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