Comments on: Thoughts: Assassin’s Creed Unity

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 10:36:40 +0000

Interesting review, and reading through it I can only come to the conclusion that you decided you didn’t like the game before actually playing it properly, and as a result there are numerous errors in your review. My first point would be to address the matter of Black Flag and Rogue, both great games ruined only by the fact that they were made a part of the AC saga. This is my mind pushes them out of the category of being good AC games. Unity instead returns to what AC games are primarily about, returning to the roots, but with a refined engine and controls. As for Arno, any opinion of him is subjective, I personally felt indifferent towards his characterization, he was neither impressive nor particularly poorly written. Fully agree with your view on the use of Revolutionary France, it should have been the story as opposed to a backdrop, but after many AC games I believe holding out for well written stories is pretty fruitless. Now we come to the multitude of things people rip on Unity for which are more an artifact of Ubisoft’s poor techniques, namely micro transactions (which you are not forced to interact with), bad mission design (greatly improved in Unity with more open missions), and some occasional difficulty controlling the character (not how people complain about getting stuck on objects, a persistent problem in all AC games, rather than commenting on the excellent improvements in parkour introduced in Unity. The combat is where your review falls apart. “Complete absence of a break defense”, you mean the staggering strike which you unlock early on and does exactly that? Maybe try using it….. “Repeatedly rolling on the ground to doge gunfire”, maybe try rolling when the indicator lights up, you know, using skill and timing rather than button mashing. The final blow guards make when you are low on health can involve some closing of unrealistic distances, however once you know what to look for it makes for highly intense fights, when each guard is desperate to stab you through the heart and only good timing can save you. I agree the guns can become annoying, a shame that Ubisoft don’t acknowledge that bullets smashing into surfaces around you while you escape is far more thrilling than just getting shot. The upshot of the new combat is that it takes some time and skill to master, something that has been absent from AC games, and that when you master it it feels well earned. Sadly the bold moves that Ubisoft made in going back to their roots and making gameplay challenging will be undone by reviewers who didnt play the game properly and fans who complain about the games but wont except change. Unity represents a real missed opportunity, and the fixed and patched game that should be played now is haunted by the memory of bugs and glitches from its launch.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 10:15:28 +0000

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:50:05 +0000

From your description it sounds like Rogue doesn’t have this cringe inducing cameos. Black Flag was also ok in this regard AFAIK.

I’ll follow your example and play AC4 BF and Rogue. It looks like those games are great if you want architecture, exploration and atmosphere without going deep into collectibles and side-quests. I’m saying this as a person who purchased Sid Meier’s Pirates! on several platforms and launches it every year in an act of drunken nostalgia.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:37:59 +0000

Given what they did to London in Syndicate, my guess as to how it differs from actual Paris is: it looks nothing like it.

Honestly you’re better off just watching a Let’s Play or something if that’s all you’re interested in it for. Unity is the worst game I’ve played in quite some time.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:36:31 +0000

Syndicate is a much nicer game. It feels like something that makes tangible progress in terms of evolving the city-based gameplay into something more modern and less tedious. Still, I can’t help but feel that there’s something missing from it (probably boats), which is why it’s on pause right now while I deal with the glut of late-January/February game releases.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:32:55 +0000

Syndicate is a big improvement, but I doubt that’s because of Unity’s reception; given the ridiculous annual schedule for AC games it would have already been approaching the final stages of development by the time the Unity backlash hit. Definitely the microtransaction/co-op horseshit didn’t help, but I think it’s just that fundamentally the particular dev team that made it is somehow stuck in the past where 2008-era gameplay mechanics are A Good Idea.

I think Ubisoft are starting to accept that they don’t have the capacity to make decent-quality AC games every year – and that their customers don’t have the stomach for it – as evidenced by the recent rumours that this year won’t have an AC release. Switching it to biannual and giving the developers time to actually respond to feedback from previous games is the best thing they can do, really.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:26:19 +0000

Yeah that’s probably my own ignorance of the period talking here, but there were three characters I could immediately recognise (Napoleon, Robespierre and de Sade) and two of them were relegated to 5-10 minute cameos. It’s just… it’s not interesting, and I don’t think that’s because of any inherent dislike of the period on my part – I *wanted* to like it.

Rogue is a better take on Black Flag, which definitely had a problem that things went to shit every time you got off the boat. I think that I’m going to fall out of the series again for a few years now, though; I feel like without the naval gameplay it’s just something that’s been done to death to the point where even the developers can’t muster up the enthusiasm for making a decent historical yarn, no matter where they set it.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 09:36:29 +0000

I still want to play this just to wander around the map they made and see how it differs from the modern city, but everything I’ve heard about the game makes me want to stay away until it’s in a dirt cheap bundle or something.

By: Zenicetus

Zenicetus — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 22:58:49 +0000

Thank you for playing and reviewing that so I don’t have to play it. I enjoyed Black Flag, never tried Rogue, and heard enough about Unity that I wasn’t tempted. This confirms it.

If Unity hasn’t thrown you off the series completely, I’ll be interested to see what you think of AC Syndicate next.

I bought it on impulse during a slow gaming month, not expecting to like it. What I’d heard about the premise of being a gang leader turned me off. But I ended up enjoying it. That was a complete surprise, since I’ve always been lukewarm about the series, and only really liked the first two and then Black Flag.

Yes, Syndicate still has some legacy issues with collectibles and dodgy combat, but they tightened up the stealth, and the gadgets are fun. I never felt too pressured to spend for microtransaction upgrades. Most importantly, the whole Abstergo modern day stuff is shoved so far in the background it might as well not be there. Just a few non-interactive cut scenes you watch. It’s almost like they listened to their audience for once.

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 13:20:18 +0000

My boyfriend and I played this on release–he’s a big fan of the series, and I was trying to be interested via the co-op–and the microtransaction, metagame stuff was even more in force at launch. Many pieces of equipment, notably the sets that were pulled from earlier games, were only available via participation in a real-world app. Most decent pieces were otherwise available only as random rewards for completing co-op missions, and the game locked some of the best away as rewards for some kind of guild system that I don’t think ever got implemented.

It was a fucking mess, in other words, and really seemed as if a multitude of different teams were vying to prove to their corporate masters that they could create the best Skinner box, MMO-esque game this side of Destiny. Thank God this focus seemed to have come at the expense of performance testing, because only the outrage of the gaming public seemed to pull the series back; Syndicate doesn’t seem great, but it tossed all that intrusive, manipulative shit in the garbage where it belongs.