Assassin's Creed Unity: Thoughts

Studying a post graduate course has made it difficult to indulge in a game with any substantial length, but during a nice break I have managed to spend time with Assassin's Creed: Unity and experienced it from start to finish on the PlayStation 4.

I have to admit, I am quite a big fan of the Assassin's Creed series, I have played all the main console games and while they can definitely vary in quality (II was fantastic, but not sure if  Revelations really needed to exist at all) on a personal level they have all been enjoyable.  While the gaming media seems to be fatiguing on the franchise I still love to explore the different historical settings with the franchise.  The Ezio Auditore da Firenze years were definitely my most memorable, with Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood holding the pedestal as my favourties in the series.  I have a love of ancient European architecture and Italian culture, which helped gain interest into the Ezio universe.  Having already visited the Roman Coliseum in the real world, it was great fun traversing towards the very top of the structure during the renaissance period in Brotherhood and I just enjoyed viewing the breathtaking historical skyline of Rome.

Scaling the coliseum in AC Brotherhood

The hype in the media for Unity was absolutely massive before it was released, it was promised to be the next big thing in the series, the first truly next generation Assassin's Creed.  When the reviews finally did come out for the game, shockingly, there was a lot of negativity in the air.  Most reviews were scored in the 6s, some major reviewers even awarded the game with 40%, while more forgiving reviews landed in the 7 range.

The main reason for the low scores for such a well-established franchise, seemed to be for a plethora of bugs and glitches.  Some people reported huge bugs such as the character falling through the environment mid mission, people randomly floating through the air or major frame rate slow down.  During cutscenes there was the infamous missing faces glitch:

Pretty difficult to be emotionally involved in the story when this happens in the cutscenes

Ubisoft spent a lot of time apologising and promised to release patches to resolve the issues users were experiencing.  According to the official Ubisoft website as of February 2015, 5 patches were released in total.

After the reviews, I decided to wait a while for fixes to be released, then finally I took a "leap of faith" (sorry) into the eCommerce haystack, hoping to land safely and bought the game.  When finally receiving the game through the post, I excitedly tore open the ridged cardboard packaging and was greeted with a beautifully shiny new copy of Assassin's Creed Unity.  I vividly remember that day: I carefully opened, the rather flimsy bluray case, but felt a sense of dread enter my mind. A number of alarming questions entered my mind.  Had I wasted my money?  Would it be full of game breaking bugs? Would it break my PlayStation 4?  With trepidation I slowly placed the disc into the console.

Well, after about 2 hours of downloading and installing a sizable 6GB patch I was eventually able to begin the game.

I can say I was very glad to have waited a while before experiencing the game.  Despite, initially waiting a number of hours to download the patches. my time with Assassin's Creed: Unity was an enjoyable one.  I did not experience any of the major glitches that the Internet was screaming at the top of their lungs about pre-patch.  I did experience one annoying glitch during the final mission.

The glitch involved the character becoming frozen still and resulted in having to reload a checkpoint.  This did not prove to be a huge problem for me as the checkpoint reload was very close to where the glitch occurred and only lost a few seconds of progress.  The actual glitch can be viewed in the video below.  Do not worry about any spoilers in the video, unless you consider running on rooftops a spoiler in the Assassin's Creed series.

Now this is a gameplay breaking glitch

Graphically, the game is absolutely stunning and the size of the environments are huge.  For the first time you can now sprint around outdoor locations, climb on the outside of buildings and vault into massive indoor locations, such as palaces and churches, seamlessly without having a loading screen interrupt the immersion.

Take in the breathtaking view

An addition to Unity is the fact you can now traverse downwards on buildings, which is a nice touch, but the traditional Assassin's Creed of stick to buildings and climb the direction the game feels like going rather than the intended input of the controls is still present.  I find this to be even more of an issue in Unity than previous games in the series.  It seems like the addition of downwards traversing unfortunately has contributed to the control issue further rather than improving it.

The control issues can be rather bothersome at times, especially in the new splinter cell-like non liner open assassination missions.  There can be situations where the player needs to carefully stealth the environment and if the controls do not work the intended way it can ruin the whole mission.  Despite, the occasional control issues I found the assassination missions to be especially enjoyable and good for replay value as they can be played multiple ways.

When the controls do work, Unity is fantastic joy to play.  Sprinting from rooftop to rooftop, against the game's backdrop of revolutionary Paris, with new animations makes free running the smoothest it has ever been in the franchise.  The Paris setting is a pure playground for traditional Assassin's Creed free running, something that has been lacking in the series since Ubisoft left the sky-touching architectural buildings seen in the Ezio entries.  Beautifully designed and famous buildings, such as the Notre Dame Cathedral and the  Palais de Justice can be scaled in the city of Paris, climb to the top and take in the view.

The combat has been changed.  Hardcore players of the series will either hate or love the change in combat, eventhough it is not totally different from previous entries in the series.  Counter executions have been removed, so the game no longer has the option to hold the counter button to automatically execute an opponent.  For a long time Assassin's Creed player, the removal of the counter execute is strange at first, but I became accustom to it and forced me to actually be more strategic during combat.

The story is not really all that memorable and does little to further the Sci-Fi meta story line of series, though hardcore story fans and conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly pick up on a number of elements that will excite them for the future of the series.  The main character, Arno Dorian, was born into nobility and was raised by a Templar after his father was killed.  Arno falls in love with the Templar's daughter, having known each other growing up.  It is definitely an interesting concept, an Assassin, falling in love with a Templar, two sworn enemy factions who have been fighting each other forever and their conflict is always the centre of each game.  The story adds more of a human element to the Templars and is a reminder that the Templars are fighting for the same thing the Assassins are fighting for - although arguably in a more morally ambiguous way.  It is also rather strange that all the characters talk with English accents even though it takes place in France during the revolution and even more peculiar because Ubisoft themselves are a French company.

Arno describes himself as a cat person

The actual story in the other Assassins Creed title (Rogue) that was released at the same time was funnily enough more emotionally engaging, despite being exclusive to last-gen consoles and considered to be more of a spin-off.  To those that are invested in the story of the franchise, it is recommended to play Rogue first before Unity.

Overall, I recommend Assassin's Creed: Unity to hardcore fans of the franchise and it can be enjoyed by non-followers of the series as well.  It is likely that people with issues regarding the previous games are not going to suddenly enjoy the first current-gen entry into the franchise.  For those that are interested in experiencing the game, downloading the patches are essential as previous versions experience major technical issues and are likely to dissipate any initial enjoyment.