(Game provided by Ubisoft)
By Sam Coles:
The Assassin’s Creed series has been around for over 15 years (at the time of writing), and these days is met with a resounding eyeroll. However, despite its ups and downs, I still love the series, even the RPG series of games which tends to be a controversial opinion. Three years after the release of Valhalla, Ubisoft decided to take the series back to its stealthy routes with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a return to form with the first game with both the setting in the Middle East and the stealthy aspects of the series. Is it any good? Let’s find out!
Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes place in 9th Century Baghdad a couple of decades before Valhalla, you play as Basim a street thief who gets by pickpocketing citizens day to day. It is not long before he gets tangled up in a conspiracy with the Hidden Ones (Assassins) and Order of Ancients (Templars), where he ends up murdering the Caliph of Baghdad to save his friend. He ends up fleeing the palace and is wanted for murdering a religious figure and his friends are slaughtered to get to him. He ends up fleeing Baghdad and is taken in by the Hidden Ones, he ends up training with them at their hideout in the castle Alamut where he spends months perfecting the assassin craft.
The plot is interesting and is surrounded by mystery, Basim at this point is in his early 20s so he is not the wise man we meet in Valhalla, so he is very naïve about the scenario. As the story is not straight forward, so there are no clear good or bad guys even with The Hidden Ones, as they have their own agenda. Basim is a good change of pace, as he wants to do what he believes what is good in the world, but it is not clear cut as he thinks, and like any young man he gets frustrated at his mentors because they don’t see eye to eye.
Let’s go over the gameplay, it goes back to the slower paced stealth routes of the series so you can no longer brute force your way through a situation as you have the consistency of day-old porridge. Anyway, the game rewards you for being patient and methodical as you must plan your route in and use opportunities to get to your targets. The main assassinations remind me of mini-Hitman levels, not as complex mind you but you have various ways of getting to your target without raising an alarm.
Like the first game, you must get your assignment from the bureau and then you begin an investigation. Investigations (obviously) require you to gather evidence about your target, you examine murder scenes, offices, houses, eavesdrop on conversations as well as following suspects. Unlike the first game, this setup doesn't feel repetitive as the tasks feel more varied as well as the dialogue adding flavour to the scenario.
When things do go wrong you are not completely defenceless, you can engage in combat, but it is simple, but it can get overwhelming when you are surrounded, especially by armoured enemies. You have a parry and dodge attack; you can parry certain attacks which will give you a free instant kill if their stamina is depleted. However, certain attacks cannot be blocked, so you must dodge them with a swift roll, as well as to get a cheeky back stab with armoured enemies as they can’t be damaged from the front.
Stealth is where the game really shines, you have the classic crouch walk that gets you around silently, however you have a plethora of tools to help you with your sneaky tactics. You can use throwing knives to dispatch enemies from a distance, sound distractions to move obstacles out the way, blowpipes if you want to take the non-lethal option, gas proximity mines as well the old trusty hidden blade to the windpipe. The options are fun to mess around with, as well as the various ways to parkour your way to a target, which I will get into now.
Parkour has been changed from the RPG games, as in those games like Breath of the Wild you could pretty much climb anything with no restrictions which trivialised the climbing as it sucked the challenge out of the game. They have gone back to the classic climbing system in this game, you can no longer climb anything, if you are climbing a building or tower there must be visible ledges or foot or hand holes for you to climb. It adds an element of believability to the climbing, as you can’t just climb a cliff like you are Spider-Man, it adds finesse to the scenario. Not only that, the parkour feels fluid and the level design has been repurposed to accommodate the system. It feels fantastic, to run from rooftop to rooftop as you get into a rhythm, sliding across tables to them do a leap of faith into a bale of hay.
Visually the game looks stunning, I played this on a base PlayStation 4, and it looks beautiful. The city of Baghdad really shines during sunsets and sunrises. The warm glow of the sun as it rises over the desert, to then reflect on the sandstone buildings to greet the day as I perch on a viewpoint is incredible. To compliment the great visuals is the soundtrack, like most Assassin’s Creed games the soundtrack is one of the highlights. The soundtrack is thematically appropriate to the setting, and made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a great game and a return to form to its stealth routes. It makes you really sit back and take in the atmosphere as you stalk your target, it has a sense of voyeurism as you investigate your target as you hide in plain sight. It is a shorter experience too, which is a welcome change, as it took me about 15 hours to finish the campaign, but it was a good 15 hours, nonetheless. I do recommend this game.
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