You will run alongside the revolutionaries of an 18th century Paris, using your swords and axes alongside their pitchforks and kitchen knives. Yet, you will also climb the Eiffel tower and shoot down Nazi planes with a machine gun. Welcome to Assassins Creed: Unity.
Gameplay
Assassins Creed: Unity is a disjointed experience. The game advertises an a game that encourages you to experiment, similar to Far Cry, however the reality is much different. Assassins Creed: Unity is an open world game, although this feature is pointless.
The world is incredibly detailed, but is boring and lacks gameplay value. The open world activities involve doing extremely short, mundane tasks which all devolve into you walking up to someone and pressing a button. The side missions, while interesting involve gameplay which would not want to be repeated, but that is precisely what you have to do. I would have no problems with the missions if the checkpoints were closer together. The game expects you to do most of the mission before tossing you a checkpoint, if you fail before this (which is quite easy I might add) you are going back to the start and doing it all again.
The best part of the game are the main missions. These missions encourage variation, but not in the way you would think. It’s not as if you can tackle any mission in any way, the variation comes from the different sections of the missions. One section might force you to stealth, while another might force you to brawl. The problem with this is if makes you create a well rounded character, rather than specialise.
The part of the game which could have been better than the missions are the co-op missions. These are true open enden experiences. The problems with them start at the fact that they are almost impossible without other players, and connection problems and net code issues make it borderline unplayable.
Assassins Creed Unity has an exetremly in depth, and entertaining character upgrade system. You can customise your helmets, pants, boots, and even gauntlets. You can also change the colours, or you can use a costume which completely revamps the look of your character without changing your stats.
Despite all it’s flaws, there is something inately fun about Assassins Creed: Unity, the core movement mechanics make it fun to just run around, and the combat mechanics are satisfying while you stay in stealth, keeping instant kills.
Presentation
Assassins Creed: Unity is one of the best looking games ever made. The animations are incredibly detailed and smooth. The textures are detailed down to the pixel and the lighting looks like real life. The world is filled with intricate details and looks amazing. However, just like Far Cry, the graphics are help back by terrible render distances, even worse than Far Cry.
Story
Assassins Creed: Unity’s story is mediocre. The game is set in the French revolution, and you are trying to unravel a mystery about who framed you for murder. Which just happens to send you to all the noteworthy events of the revolution.
The plot is recycled from AC2 and the characters are, for the most part, not anything noteworthy. However, the story keeps just interesting enough to tie together the gameplay, and make you want to finish it.
Overview
Assassins Creed: Unity is a game filled with incredible highs, and depressing lows. The gameplay, and story are flawed, but the graphics are great, and the fundamental free running is incredibly fun to do. Unfortunately, a few good things can not save this depressingle mediocre game, and the horrible optimization and glitches bring it down further. It’s not the worst game of all time, but I reccommend giving this one a miss.
4/10 – Below Average
Totem Toast 