Assassin’s Creed: Unity is a third-person action adventure game that takes place during the French Revolution in Paris (Saint-Denis, Versailles, and Vendee). The player follows the story of Arno who joins the Assassin’s to investigate the murder of his adoptive father.
Please note that I have not played an Assassin’s Creed game prior to Unity.
When installing the game, there is an option to launch the game when playable. Because this feature seemed awesome, I attempted to launch the game upon said playable point. The game immediately launched to an installation screen with a percentage shown. Personally, I don’t consider staring at an install screen playable.
When initially hearing about some of the glitches, crashes, and technical issues with Unity, I was pretty nervous about playing it. During my gameplay, I encountered graphical glitches such as blood stains moving to other random areas of the shirt as I moved the character, white lines on walls where textures appear as though they are supposed to connect, noticeable frame rate drops when moving through crowds of NPC, guards randomly appearing on rooftops in front of me, and some broken animations.
Glitches aside, Assassin’s Creed Unity is a graphically good looking game. Paris is gorgeous, huge, and pretty awesome to explore. The city and the interiors of buildings are detailed. The atmosphere definitely wows. One of my graphical complaints about this game is the hair. The character’s hair rival hair from games released in the early 2000s. For graphics looking as realistic as they do, it’s strange to see little things such as the hair be skimped on.
While exploring the area is fun to do, at times it is tedious and time consuming. Traveling by foot around some crowds is not an option due to frame rate drops or the amount of NPC consistently in the way. Trying to hide in a crowd also seems to be difficult at times. Players can interact with crowds by chasing and tacking a thief, scaring bullies, and breaking up fist fights. The crowd cannot be pickpocketed though. I was also very confused by some of the accents from the crowd (and other characters). Some accents didn’t sound French…
The mechanics for climbing and scaling buildings are great when they work properly. I have found the controls to be inconsistent or unresponsive at times. Attempting to drop down from an area of a building would sometimes lead to me awkwardly circling around said area of the building instead of dropping down.
The game gives freedom and allows the player to control how to approach missions. The only downfall was how confusing finding the mission spots were at first. Missions also have optional objectives such as performing a certain amount of air assassinations, sabotaging alarm bells, and taking out guards with a particular weapon or method (such as a phantom blade or from a hiding spot). The optional objectives give the missions more depth. Eagle vision is a useful tool to use during missions. Eagle vision allows the player to highlight guard locations, allies, assassination targets, and soldiers. Highlighted characters can be seen through walls and allow the player to plan a route or an attack.
There are five different classes for weapons:
1. One-handed class consists mainly of swords.
2. Long class consists mainly of maces. Long weapons have more distance than one-handed weapons but have a slower attack speed.
3. Heavy class consists of swords and axes. Some heavy weapons require both hands to wield.
4. Pistols class is self-explanatory.
5. Rifles class can be used to shoot at long distances or as a club.
The hidden blade is used for assassinations. Sometimes a mission will require the player to use the hidden blade to assassinate a target. During an assassination mission, the player can use other weapons to incapacitate the assassination target but is required to use the hidden blade to finish the deed. Using other weapons to incapacitate the target is useful for giving more time to clear an area of other enemies and escape after the assassination.
I still have mixed feelings with the combat in this game. Combat with a one handed weapon works decently however I have come into inconstancies with using projectile weapons such as the phantom and berserker blades.
Character customization is a focus in this game. The player has the option to mix and match different equipment in the Character Customization Menu. Hoods and gear for the chest, wrists, forearms, waist and legs can be customized to give boosts in skills such as health or stealth. Outfits can also be unlocked by progressing in the game and completing game challenges. I appreciated the character customization and how easy it was to see what modifiers and boosts each piece gave.
There is an option to split skills between 4 different categories: Melee, Ranged, Stealth, and Health.
For the average Assassin’s Creed player, I would assume the stealth skills would be more helpful for lock picking, gaining access to certain buildings, and blending into the environment however I found myself utilizing the health skill more.
Skills are unlocked with SyncPoints, an in game currency. Other currencies in Assassin’s Creed: Unity include French Livre (used to purchase weapons, gear, and consumables), Creed Points (gear and weapon upgrades), and Hack Points (purchased with mirco-transactions and enables you to purchase higher level gear faster).
Assassin’s Creed Unity also has a time challenge type mode called Rift Sequences. The main character is synced into other time periods to rescue trapped assassin’s and retrieve data from fragments scattered around the Abstergo Server. This game mode is fun and frustrating at the same time. Rift Sequences are one of my favorite parts of the game.
Recently there has been a lot of outrage toward Ubisoft over technical issues, glitches, reviews policy, and just being Ubisoft in regards to the release of Assassin’s Creed: Unity. After discussing delaying game releases on a previous podcast, I can’t help but to wonder – Why did Ubisoft release the game instead of delaying it and fix the issues prior to release? Is it because of the movie being released next year? After playing Assassin’s Creed: Unity, I feel as though this game had so much potential that was squashed due to a possible rushed release. Even with multiple issues, I did have points where I was enjoying the game. Assassin’s Creed: Unity has not given me a reason to start picking up any previous installments of the franchise. My opinion on Assassin’s Creed: Unity is very mixed. My experience with this game can be summed up in one word: Meh.
To hear more about TCG’s thoughts on Assassin’s Creed: Unity, check out Podcast Episode 8 on our Podcast Page
