Assassin’s Creed Unity Review

It’s starting to become a tradition, another November, another Assassin’s Creed.

Ubisoft let loose two new stories from the Assassin’s Creed series on November 11th, 2014.  Assassin’s Creed Unity and Assassin’s Creed Rogue both hit gaming consoles and PCs everywhere.  While it had many glitches and bugs at launch, Ubisoft has stepped up and made amends for the shaky launch.  It did not receive a lot of love out of the gate.  The reviews; however, were not fair.

Let’s look at what Assassin’s Creed Unity does and doesn’t do for the gamers.

The Good

1) Graphics

The first thing that anyone will see on the next gen is the visuals.  They are amazing to watch.  When you jump into revolutionary Paris, it feels more like a movie than playing a video game.  If there’s one thing that immerses you into the setting, it’s just walking down a street.  That’s the running theme here, immersion.  Where previous AC games had static settings, Paris feels alive.  It’s a thousand small things put together that make the difference.  Being able to jump into random houses, or watching two NPC’s have a conversation, or start a fight, or go for a drink, it doesn’t feel like anything is forced.  If Animus technology were around today, this would be the perfect launch for it.

The graphics also help develop Paris as a character.  You begin to learn her districts, and her short cuts.  You get to see Paris grow and evolve right in front you.  You get to see her good sides, and you get to see her horrible sides.  It is a great commercial for Paris, and it makes you want to book a flight.

2)The Story

Assassin’s Creed Unity isn’t a story about Assassins vs. Templars.  It’s a love story, plain and simple.  It’s as if Romeo & Juliet were more proactive about swinging a sword.  Like its predecessors, it’s a great story.  It sucks you in, and you want to see the two succeed together.  There’s also the side stories, and background stories added in.  Those are not as strong as the main arc, but they do their job in supporting the narrative where it needs support.  The chemistry when Arno & Elise are on screen together works well.  There are some audio clips where the actress playing Elise drops or changes her accent sometimes (see The Ugly,) but her interactions with Arno make those scenes easy to forget.  How onto your butts with this, like Black Flag, it’ll take you through the emotional wringer, and feel your feels.

3) The Gameplay

It’s an Assassin’s Creed game.  You run, you jump, you synchronize, and then you jump into big piles of hay.  How is there any room to change this?  There is a way, and it works well.  The new addition to the parkour system is the ability to leap downwards.  It seems unusual to play at first, because it breaks the rhythm that we all know, but it starts to creep in.  Being able to scale down walls, leap off buildings, or jump through windows across from each other is smooth.  It gives you a more fluid environment to move through.  It takes some getting used to, but once you get it, you’ll wonder how you played the other games without it.  Streamlining the parkour wasn’t their only change.

They cut a lot of extra steps out in buying gear.  You could meet up with a vendor on the street, or you can just go through the menu in the pause screen.  It saves so much time, and it allows more customization that ever.  You get to find your path with Arno.  Are those swords not fitting your style?  A quick switch and you can be swinging a pike, or a battle axe, or sniping from a roof top with a rifle.  If you want Arno to be stealthy, to a straight up brawler, or anything else you can think of, there’s gear to promote your style of play.

4) The Co-op

The on surprising addition to Unity was the co-op play.  This is what makes Unity fantastic, and covers a lot of the problems it does have.  The co-op play is fun.  The visuals of seeing four assassin’s scramble over the tops of buildings, or seeing three air assassinations happen at the same time is beautiful.  The missions are challenging, and you need some thought put into what you’re doing, but you get a sense of accomplishment when you beat them.  It’s amazing to see how much customization can be put into Arno.  Everyone has a different take on gear, colours, weapons, it’s what the Brotherhood should feel like.  You feel like you’re part of that menagerie of characters, you feel like you’re making a difference.  It was a brilliant addition.  It doesn’t interfere with the story, but adds to it.  It is a wonderful new innovation, one that hopefully makes it into the next title.

The Bad

1) The Background Story

Assassin’s Creed games are layered, Unity is no different.  The story with Abstergo has been one of technology development.  In Blackflag they were working on Animus video games; in Unity you are playing it.  There’s always something hidden in the background.  Unity has a lot hidden, but the incentive to go looking for it isn’t there.  It’s passive, it doesn’t make you want to look.  Black Flag at least had a physical space to explore in the Absertgo offices, there were things you could discover by accident.  In Unity, unless you take time to go through the encyclopedia and read all the articles, profiles, data pieces, you’re going to miss a lot of what runs behind the scenes.  This is usually one of the best parts of the AC series, but it’s buried too deep this time.  Unless you’re already looking, it’s going to be harder to find.

2) The Glitches

Oh the glitches, and there were many.  Yes, a patch can fix them all, but to have a triple A title release with so many is a bad thing.  It was so bad, that they wrote a public apology, and they gave Uplay season pass holders a free title and free DLC for everyone else.  Yes, Far Cry 4 is on that list.  If immersion is what makes the game great, the glitches are one of the things that pulls you right out of the moment.  The glitches can be jolting, from a random citizen walking off a bridge into the river, to the American Horror Show-esque skinless cut scenes.  How did stuff like this make it past review?  It’s jarring when you compare it to Ubisoft’s past products.  There was some head shaking going on when the full scope of what happened to Unity had come out.

3) It’s Not Black Flag

It suffers a lot from this.  We still have a collective hang over from the great game that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was.  Black Flag was more of a hack and slash your way to victory.  That was Edward Kenway, a brash young guy trying to find his way, and not caring who he had to headbutt along the way.  Arno is smooth and subtle, he thinks his way in.  Whereas Edward was the cutlass, Arno is the rapier.  You had the opens seas, now you have compact streets.  It’s pirates ships vs. infiltrating a castle.

It’s hard to get out of the shadow of a Game of the Year winner, and Unity has trouble distancing itself from Black Flag.  It could be the schedule Ubisoft has thrown down, with an AC game launched every year, it doesn’t give enough distance between the titles.  If you loved Black Flag, it’s going to be hard making a break from the Kenways.

The Ugly

Ubisoft has promoted, before every Assassin’s Creed game, that they are a team of multiple different cultures, religions, and backgrounds.  If that’s so, then why couldn’t they find people who were French to play the roles of their main protagonists?  Everyone in Paris has an English accent.  It’s not just the accents, it’s the colloquialisms that are everywhere like litter.  One of the main characters keeps referring to Arno as a “pisspot.”  When you run down a crowded street, you get a symphony of “Oy, what’s all this now?” or “Blimey.”

If the main strength of the game is immersion, then why is nobody in Paris french?  Elise has some moments where it appears the actor struggles with which English accent she’s trying to do.  It’s shocking to hear.  With the amount of budget Unity had, why was nobody hired to at least sound french?  If you switch the language to french and turn the subtitles on, they’re in french as well.  It’s great if you’re fluent, but there are times where you could close your eyes, stand in one of the streets of Paris, and swear you were in London.  It doesn’t seem like it is a big deal, but there are times when you’re locked in, and the odd english saying pulls you out of the moment.

Assassin’s Creed Unity is a game with a lot of good, and some bad.  A lot of the problems can be fixed with a patch.  The game still succeeds on it’s own.  The engine that was created is an amazing base to build on.  The characters of Arno and Elise are compelling, and they make you care about what happens to them.  Is it a game of the year contender?  No, but it deserves to be in the top 5.

The big question still looms, is it worth your dollars?  Yes, it is.

If you’re a fan of the series, you probably already own it.  It is worth putting down the currency to play this game.  The graphics are only going to improve.  Ubisoft is taking the next gen consoles and getting them to find their legs.  it is a solid first few steps, with some trips along the way, but Assassin’s Creed Unity is a quality pickup.