Monday, 30 January 2017

Assassin's Creed Unity Review - A rocky start but a decent entry in the series now.


By Sam Coles:

Assassin’s Creed Unity was renowned for being a hot pile of mess at release back in 2014 and yes it was with bugs, horrendous frame rate and a constant online connection even if you wanted to play on your own. I recently finished Unity and I must say after all the updates it has had it is a decent Assassin’s Creed game as it goes back to the routes of the series.

Assassin’s Creed Unity take place during the French revolution and you play as Arno Dorian a French noble man who is looking to avenge his father’s death who was killed in front of him when he was a small child. He is adopted and falls in love with his adopted sister Elise but then her father was killed as well and she blames Arno as his father was an Assassin and Elise’s father was a Templar. The story is a classic revenge tale but we also see the struggles within both the Assassin and Templar order which almost makes you question the Assassin order and almost sympathise with the Templars as all they want is peace and order.

The gameplay is smoothest to date the free running is fantastic as all you have to do if you want to free run up is hold A and if you want to free run down you hold B and Arno will climb up and down seamlessly. The free running has always been a problem for me in the AC games as they’ve always been a bit clunky, but Unity sorts all the problems out with fluid controls.

Combat has been tweaked as well so you can no longer cheese it by standing there waiting for a counter and press one button. You actually have to play defensively and aggressively so you have to parry enemy’s attacks and then go in for the attack and this can get very challenging especially latter half of the game. The combat is animated beautifully and is extreme brutal with some of the finishers. It is vital that you upgrade Arno’s skills and weapons because otherwise you’re going to have some trouble in the later chapters, new pieces of clothing and armour will increase your maximum health and new weapons obviously will deal more damage so invest the money you collect from missions and side missions.

The Assassination missions go back to the AC 1 route where it will give you a target and you have to find information and kill him or her however you want. Unlike the original the information gathering missions are not boring and repetitive and the Assassination missions are set in big environments with multiple routes, entrances and opportunities to kill your target similar to Hitman.

The presentation in this game is a sight to behold they have nailed the recreation of Paris during the period coupled with the amount of NPC’s on screen makes the city feel alive. The animation from the character models are very convincing and this game has one of the most realistic kissing scenes I’ve seen in a video game it doesn’t look awkward at all. Facial animation looks fantastic although during cutscenes the frame rate has a habit of dipping below 30 fps but it stays at 30 (these days) which is good.


Assassin’s Creed Unity had a rocky start with its awful launch but know functions well I would recommend picking this game up on your Xbox One or PS4 as it is super cheap these days, it does come with a 6 GB patch but it irons out all of the issues it had. 

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