Given that Unity won a full 50% of the vote, it seems that the community really wants to talk about the latest entry in the Assassin’s Creed series. I’m a little behind on the time-bending saga myself, I’m still slowly making my way through Connor’s tale in Assassin’s Creed III, but what I’ve heard of Unity has been split to say the least. It should be interesting to see where the community’s opinion lies.
Before I get to asking for your views of the game though, it’s time to look at what we thought of it in our review. It was Gareth who cast his eye over Unity back in November, and he kicked things off by talking about how impressive the game’s assassinations are. He praised the way they’ve been made more expansive, featuring “huge environments with many options for gaining access” and the variety of approaches you can take to the assassination itself.
He also praised the overhaul of the combat system, saying that the removal of instant counter kills “makes combat genuinely difficult”, although “you will likely die pretty often while you are getting used to it.” However, other changes to the combat, such as the removal of human shields, throwing guards and a lower number of kill animations, were less welcome.
Gareth bemoaned the removal of elements from the stealth system too, notably the fact you can no longer whistle to attract a guard’s attention. Taken as a whole, however, it seems the stealth system is a significant upgrade on the game’s predecessors, with improvements to eagle vision and the addition of an option to lower your profile drawing praise.
The sheer scale of Paris also impressed him, particularly the way the city’s landmarks were recreated in game, saying that “Looking down from the top of Notre Dame at a crowd of a hundred people is breathtaking.” In fact the size of the crowds in the game generally drew praise, although Gareth did note that there are frame rate problems, particularly around larger crowds. Hopefully you’ll let us know whether or not Ubisoft’s post-release patches have done anything to address these frame rate drops.
Even with elements of previous games being stripped out, and the aforementioned frame rate issues, Gareth was suitably impressed to rate the game at 7/10, having this to say in conclusion:
Unity is an impressive technical achievement despite its issues, and it is certainly a significant step forward for the series as a whole. The difficulty of combat encourages use of the overhauled stealth system, perhaps signalling a shift towards a real focus on stealthy gameplay in the series, which is certainly exciting. And on top of that, it’s utterly gorgeous almost all the time.
As is our way with WeView, it’s time to ask you what you thought of the game. If you feel like sharing your thoughts, whether they be positive, negative or anywhere in between, then all you need to do is jot them down in a comment below. Remember to include a rating for the game on the Buy It, Sale It, Plus It, Avoid It scale so we can round up the community’s verdict in Monday’s recap article, where we’ll also highlight a few of your comments.
JR.
I think there will be two groups of people; those who bought the game at launch and those who bought the game after the patch.
I bought the game post-patch and I thought it was a great addition to the series. Sure, the story wasn’t fantastic and the cast of characters could have been better, but was interesting enough overall. Not bad but not great either.
The main star of the show, was the location itself. The amount of detail and time spent recreating the beautiful city of Paris was clear to see at every turn. Notre Dame de Paris in particular was breathtakingly detailed. So much so that I didn’t know if I was admiring the original architecture or the incredible skill of the game designer who had recreated it so faithfully for the game.
It’s a wonder that so much time was allowed to recreate these intricately, detailed landmarks so painstakingly, yet the game was released in the state it was in.
The rest is the usual fair we’ve come to expect from the series. If you’ve played one AC game, it’s safe to say you’ve played them all and Unity does little to change that view imo. I’m a big fan of the gameplay personally, so I’m generally ok with the slight variations in each new entry to the series. But it would have been great to see them really change things up and make it interesting again.
I do agree about loosing the ability to whistle. I missed that ability a lot more than I thought I would. Not being able to lure a guard to a hiding spot so I could could perform a cover assassination was a step backward imo. As was loosing the ability to grab a nearby guard and use him as a shield when being fired at by several rooftop marksmen.
I also found it jarring having next to zero abilities at the start of the game. The number of times I wanted to air-assassinate a guard from a rooftop, but couldn’t because I hadn’t unlocked that skill yet, was really annoying. I understand why they did this from a story perspective but having played all the AC games to date, not having these abilities from the outset felt a bit restrictive.
One thing that did surprise me was how I little I missed the naval aspect introduced in AC4. AC4 is probably my favourite AC after AC2 and I didn’t think I would enjoy Unity without the epic sea battles but I actually didn’t mind at all. It was great to return to the classic city based gameplay from the earlier games in the series.
Overall I’d say BUY IT. It’s actually a very good game now, despite the usual AC issues and an understandable number of disgruntled early buyers.
chall5
Yep great sub-title
I enjoyed this game a lot. I bought it post-patch and the only problem I’ve had is that it completely crashed once. When I restarted it I was in exactly the same place so no drama.
The ability to go inside buildings adds another dimension, added details like blood spatter on the environment when you kill an enemy all raise it above previous AC games.
As has been mentioned Paris is beautiful and the lighting effects are lovely. I liked the new combat system. One little thing that bugged me is that in some cutscenes Arno would be covered in blood having just killed someone then when the camera was back on him there was no blood.
The environment is lovely and while there is noticeable slowdown in Arno’s running speed in highly populated areas you never get the impression you’ve seen all the characters before – it really does feel like a living, breathing city. The sound also gives this impression from crowd noise to monks chanting.
AC:Initiates is back now after a lengthy absence and seems to be syncing Unity progress so the game is all but fully functional. I didn’t use the companion app so can’t comment on that.
Also lockpicking was a welcome addition I never got sick of – even when pursuing the ‘open every chest’ trophy
In fact the only issue I have with the game is Arno’s manoeuvrability which I sometimes felt was hard to control
It’s a Buy It from me at Amazon’s current price of £25