Well it’s another year with another Assassin’s Creed Game and this time were taking a break from the open seas to go back onto dry land with “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” for the next gen consoles. This time your taking place in Paris during the 18th Century French Revolution. And as always your caught up in between the Assassins and the Templars fighting for control.
You start off in the present as another random Abstergo user diving in the Animus, but now Abstergo is changing the name of the Animus machine to something like Helix without explaining why. And of course you have the guys that worked with Desmond in the past Assassin’s Creed to reel you in a different Assassin such as Arno Dorian, a French cocky nobleman, that undergoes some tragic events throughout the way. I could go on more details about the main plot about Arno’s situation, but apparently this is the first problem I had with the game. And that would be the main story. It’s just not intriguing enough to care about what’s happening anymore. There is too much sassy drama going on about Arno himself and his childhood girlfriend to deal with more than remembering about why we came to the 18th Century in the first place. It’s been all about getting revenge on his Father’s death more than about the Assassins and Templars really. Heck, the side missions are more intriguing than the main story-line. I had more fun doing side quests with Napoleon, Marquis de Sade, and other French leaders than dealing with Arno’s soap opera life.
As for the game-play mechanics, ubisoft seem to step back a bit on the combat system. Comparing the previous Creed game where you go around doing crazy sword techniques with certain button configuration you have to memorize, they simply made it back basic with just attack, jump, and parry buttons in a more streamline approach. As for the free running, Ubi refined the parkour a bit smoother now. Arno can almost grab and climb anything now with a crack on wall in view. But it can be a bit to grabby and start to get frustrated in clinging on to things easily if you’re ever in a serious run and chase scenario.
Onwards to the weapons’ category! As always, you will be carrying a sword or an large heavy blunt weapon such as a mace or spear. Also from pistols and to your traditional hidden blade that you will eventually upgrade it to a mini crossbow that shoots blades that allows you to silently kill your enemies from a distance. I find it nice that you can aim with a target crosshair if you’re looking into some headshots, since you don’t really have any control over the auto lock system that can slow you down.
Later on I come to find out something very troubling with acquiring weapons and equipment from the shop. You can normally unlock and buy certain equipment as you gradually play thru the game. Or if somehow you are stuck on a mission that you can’t get thru, and really these missions are not hard at all, and you want to acquire the top tier weapons from the start. Well ubisoft implemented micro-transactions for you to buy in-game weapons with actual money! Why the heck would you pay actual money on buying some of these weapons when you could just steal money from NPC’s around the map or even just buy all the revenue shops to earn in game income to buy the equipment for FREE!! It’s freaking easy getting in-game money it makes no sense.
And finally we come to the online portion of the game. Now we have online co-op feature in the brotherhood. You can have up to 4 online players together to take part in certain side missions. Headsets are really a must if you want to have the perfect assassin team to run full stealth missions. And you can share each other’s eagle vision and loot cache as well. With a good team, you can earn some nice XP and other rewards. Of course you and your teammates need to have a good stable connection to play together. I would suggest having Ethernet connection than Wi-Fi connection if possible. I did a test by having a friend joining in my teammate with him using a low signal Wi-Fi and ended up watching him lag warping around the area or seeing his character just standing around doing nothing from my point of view when he’s really doing something else from his view. Either way it’s still a lot of fun playing online.
Overall, the game is fairly good with lots of missions and co-op features to play around with in a massive open world. Ubisoft know there history about the Paris lifestyle during the French Revolution very much. And of course they have more content connected with a companion app with your tablet just like the previous Creed games to synch together to earn more rewards and outfits with your Uplay account. However, the lack of story and the annoying micro-transactions kind of numbs down the game experience. Hopefully some of the download patches and future DLC will help the franchise going…..Hopefully! So far I give Assassin’s Creed Unity 3.5 out of 5. Thanks for taking the time to checking the review till the end. Now if you’ll excuse me guys, I got some more gaming to do. This is SephDean signing out!
