It’s the late 1700’s and the French Revolution is underway, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. While the rich will do just about anything to stay on top of their lives of luxury, the common folk of Paris will do just about anything in an act of vengeance. This time period and theme certainly makes this the darkest game in the series the Assassin’s Creed series.
Our protagonist is Arno Victor Dorian, following a family tragedy at a young age; Arno is taken in by a father figure that has strong ties with the Templar Order. As Arno grows into an arrogant cocky young man, he is struck by further devastation and as a consequence, he joins the Assassin Brotherhood to seek vengeance. But just when he thought life could not throw anymore obstacles in his way, he discovers that the love of his life Élise de la Serre is a member of the Templar Order. Will Arno get the justice he seeks and how will this test Arno and Élise’s love for one another?
There is little questioning that Assassin’s Creed: Unity is the prettiest game in the series yet, Paris is quite literally brimming with life and it can be a delight to explore. The environment textures are hold up incredibly well, even at close inspection. The huge city is full of iconic land marks such as Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris and more. You can really tell that immense attention to detail has gone into recreating these monuments, ever since AC: Unity began development in 2010. The Paris of AC: Unity wouldn’t be much without life within the game, so it may impress you to know that Assassin’s Creed: Unity can reach up to 5000 NPC’s on screen at any one time, now that really is impressive number crunching. However the pretty city and high number of NPC’s are not without their drawbacks, as AC: Unity does suffer from some framerate issues when there’s a lot going on.
There have been various website outlets reporting issues with the framerate since release; despite Ubisoft claiming that the game runs at 30fps. Now it would be fair to say that for most cases, it does appear that AC: Unity does run at 30fps in the most part, but there are plenty of occasions when the framerate does suffer and it seems to be at the expense of having a high NPC headcount. Now I can understand why the developers at Ubisoft Montreal would want to sing and shout about their game having 5000 NPC’s on the screen all at once, but do we really need that much activity, especially as many of them are just clones? And is it really worth having that kind of headcount at the expense of the framerate? Personally I would have been much happier having the 5000, cut down to half in order to have a smoother running game. Though since that time, AC: Unity has been patched on several occasions and with the third major patch being released. Since that time it does appear that the framerate is now running a lot more smoothly, though not perfect by any means, but then what is?
The parkour element has always been key in this series and is also something that the developers at Ubisoft have been aiming to perfect for a number of years now. One annoyance that has plagued me in the series is when you’re holding down the sprint button and you are then running up and jumping back unintentionally from a tree/wall, which will often have me screaming at the TV “stop running up that f@*”ing wall!” This still happens in AC: Unity unfortunately, but from my experience, thankfully not quite as much as previous games. It’s fair to say that Ubisoft are getting very close in getting parkour in Assassin’s Creed truly free-flowing. Arno will run and jump very similar to the likes of Edward Kenway, but now he has more animations that has him rolling, twisting and reaching better than ever before, the parkour is certainly looking far more natural than previous instalments.
At the beginning of playing this game, it took me a while to get use to how Arno climbs and descends his way around Paris. For hours upon end I was yelling abuse at Arno, but then by accident I realised that most of this problem was in fact my own fault. Usually with an AC game you would hang from a ledge, you would press circle to drop, which is still the case, sort of. You can just press circle in the desired direction to descend, but to get Arno more free-flowing, you must actually hold circle, rather than just pressing it singularly. So whether you are in full sprint or stationary, holding down circle will have Arno parkouring his way down to the bottom and looking mighty impressive in the process. Another added bonus of holding the circle button while in decent, is that Arno will grab on to most ledges or branches which avoids you falling to an instant death (mostly), it will at times trigger an awesome animation that see’s Arno almost swan-diving towards and branch and performing a swing that would even impress Lara Croft. So while Ubisoft are yet to perfect the free-flowing parkour element, they are in fact getting mighty close in doing so.
Another big improvement that has been introduced into AC: Unity is the freedom in which you have to approach some of the campaign missions. In previous games in the series, other than perhaps choosing your route, how you acted in some missions was somewhat linear. However in AC: Unity you have much more freedom as to how you approach and execute a mission. For example upon starting a mission certain factors will be brought to your attention, giving you various opportunities to approach the mission. It is then up to you what you choose and effect how well that mission is executed and ultimately, how successful you are.
During one of the first main missions (which you may have seen during a developer walkthrough video prior to the games release), you can either walkthrough the front door of the Notre Dame Cathedral to assassinate your target or you can steal a set of keys giving you more than one option of entering that cathedral, hopefully unnoticed. Or a little later on in the game, you can choose to block some chimneys that will fill the sewers with smoke and aid your escape a little later in that mission. This kind of freedom in a mission has been a long time coming in the series and its one of Unity’s greatest assets and a feature that I’m sure will continue long into the series. Also a minor inclusion that I welcome in Assassin’s Creed: Unity is the simplicity of being able to now crouch, which has obviously benefits such as treading a little lighter and being a little more difficult for the enemy to spot. This ability to crouch is another overdue feature of the series, along with the ability to swap cover, similar to how you can in Watch Dogs.
One aspect has remained constant and to a high standard with this series is its superb soundtrack and AC: Unity is no exception. With a game as dramatic as Unity, the soundtrack provides a well crafted melody to progress and immerse you into its story. Also the lead character Arno Victor Dorian is portrayed superbly by Dan Jeannotte and deliver’s a blend of cockiness and ruthlessness. The supporting cast also delivery superb portrayals of their characters that help you keep hooked within AC: Unity’s story, despite many of them (including Arno), speaking in posh English accents, were there a lack of French folk in Paris during these times?
As with all Assassins’ Creed games, there are loads to do within its world. AC: Unity’s location of Paris is huge and is actually has a larger land mass than Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Ubisoft have stated that their created Paris is at a 1:1 scale, to the size of the real Paris during the French Revolution and around one in every four buildings are open for you to enter. Paris is not only scattered with campaign missions and hidden items. There are also loads of side-missions in AC: Unity, perhaps too many to mention, but a personal favourite of mine are the murder mystery type missions. Here you will work with the lazy law enforcement of Paris searching for clues and solving their crimes. Once you have gathered what you believe is sufficient evidence, you can then accuse the suspect, leading to their arrest. Just make sure that you accuse the correct suspect, because you could condemn an innocent to some jail time.
One of the many goodies to hunt down are the good old treasure chests, but this time round AC: Unity, you have four different kinds of chests to locate. The first kind of the ones that require no special activity or lock pick, then you have the red chests for which you must have the required lock-pick level to open, you will be able to acquire its goodies. Then you have the gold chests that you can only acquire by reaching certain XP level with AC Initiates that often gift you with special outfit. This is a second experience Hub that links Unity and other AC games such as AC: Rogue and Black Flag via Uplay and grants you with some in-game rewards. If you’re familiar with the Forza Rewards service, then that’s sort of what AC Initiates is all about. Though recently following the recent and third major patch, my Initiates level was rest from level 28 to 0! Which to say is trying to reach my previous level before the data loss is a ballache is an understatement.
The forth chests are blue and they require you to link your game to the AC: Unity companion app. Once you fire up the app and link it to your Uplay account, by completing missions within the app, you will unlock treasure chests in the main game itself. I’ve played worse companion apps and once you grow accustom to its puzzles and when you begin to unlock chests for your main game, it starts to become quite addictive. You will be able to access about 80% of its content for free, though to make the most out of the co-op aspect of the app, you have to pay the £1.43 to access the premium content. The problem that I have with this app is at the time of writing this review, I have now lost my data three times over and it seems to happen when the app updates, so I’m done with it now, which is a shame. It seems to be a regular thing with Unity, first I lose my main game data, then with Initiates and now the companion app. Luckily for Assassin’s Creed: Unity I am not reviewing the companion app or the Initiates rewards scheme. Still, it’s infuriating none the less.
One of the biggest plus’s to Assassin’s Creed: Unity is the customisation options that are available. You can customise anything from choosing a whole outfit based upon Assassin’s of old (which can be acquired via the app) or by mixing and matching hoods, forearms, tops, bottoms, colours and more. You also have an array of weapons to choose from and much like the attire, each is upgradable to suit your playing needs. While many combinations are available from the off-set, many you can only acquire by campaign progression, co-op missions, in-game currency or AC: Unity’s XP system.
In this modern day, we are well into the era of micro-transactions and whether you like them or not, there here to stay. Just about all of the customisation goodies can be bought without spending a single penny of real money, though that will require a lot of patience to save up, which is a deliberate act in tempting you take make the micro-transaction purchase all in aid of taking a short cut. For example, if you wanted to buy a certain hood, it will cost you 1000 Helix points (in-game currency), which will take a while to reach or you can spend an extra £7.99 and take the easy route. Whether that represents good value for money or not, all depends on the satisfaction of the individual gamer at hand. Personally for me, I will avoid making such purchases, especially the Helix pack that costs £79.99. Whether that represents good value for money or not, all depends on the satisfaction of the individual gamer making such a purchase.
But looking at the positives of the customisation options, you can make your Assassin look pretty awesome and become extra lethal in the process by picking out your own skills and abilities, that not only benefit your singleplayer experience, but also in co-op too. When partaking in the many co-op missions in the game, it’s even more important to make your Assassin standout from the crowd. So unless you stick with the generic Arno outfit, just about everyone’s Arno will look unique to the last. Though even if you do stick with the generic Arno attire, then there are loads of colour combinations to choose from. In a nutshell, I love the amount of custom items that are available in AC: Unity, but I just wish that some of the elite items weren’t quite as expensive.
The co-op mode has been introduced at the expensive of Assassin’s Creed’s more competitive modes that has been ever present since Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. I’m not going to say whether this sacrifice is for the good or not, because that is really down to the individual gamer. But from my own personal experience, no matter how much I tried, I could never quite warm to AC’s previous multiplayer modes, as I am much more of a co-op gamer. So for me, this new co-op experience in Unity is fantastic news and as long as you have a team working on the same page, this multiplayer feature is as good as any co-op mode that you’re going to find in the modern day era.
While admittedly my time with AC: Unity’s co-op mode has been very brief, long after the main campaign is done, I cannot wait for more friends to pick up Assassin’s Creed: Unity at Christmas and then joining them for some well organised heists and assassinations with the whole of Paris to explore together. Even more so, by that time Unity should be fully patched and in full working order (which I’ll delve a little deeper into later).
Other new additions are the Cafe Theatre missions (which in fact is similar to the renovation in AC: Brotherhood), in which you can partake on missions to upgrade you business of entertainment as you earn some much needed revenue and renovate locations throughout Paris. The Cafe Theatre also acts as you very own HQ which also allows you to create custom loadouts, view any special attire unlocked, read personal letters from Elise, set off on missions to acquire the Thomas De Carneillon’s outfit aka the black Altair outfit, the cafe even allows you to create your own club and take on special assignments. Speaking of the clubs feature, since owning the game at launch, I was unable to create my own club as I was always greeted with the message “connection fail 0x60000001”.
Now some weeks after release, I can finally create my own club and begin the recruit process, but yet still this feature annoys me in a new way. Obviously you want a club name that stands out or at least has some kind of relevance. I understand that measures have to be taken to ensure club names do not feature any abusive words. So when I tried to create my club with the name PushStartCreed or PushStartAssassins, both names failed the “Profanity” check. It failed because Assassins had the word “Ass” (despite me using the games name), so when I removed the word “Assassins”, I failed yet again with the name “PushStart”.
Seriously where is the abusive language in that one! So in the end I went with “Pu5hStartCreed”. So thinking my annoyances were over with, it then took me an age to successfully select my clubs Tag/Abbreviation. Just about every tag had been chosen, before I had to settle with one I didn’t really want. Now I can understand not being able to have the same club name as another, but such restrictions should not apply with a three letter clan tag/abbreviation. So in the end you have to either settle with the nearest you can get or have an abbreviation that has no relevance to your club name.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity has to be one of the most challenging games that I’ve ever reviewed, because I am truly split on what kind of score it should receive. For example, here you have a game that should be the pinnacle of the series and in many ways it is, especially now that after several patches it appears to be just about fixed as it edges closer to the game it should have been at released. I will take the recent patches into consideration for my final score (which is quite considerate even if I do say so myself), but the problems that persisted before cannot be ignored. To burn this game at the steak would perhaps be a little too harsh, because most games nowadays seem to have a hiccup or two at launch. That’s the state of today’s gaming industry and in truth; it shouldn’t be something that we should just accept, especially when considering the kind of money that we part with.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity in my humble opinion should have been delayed by at least a month, as publishers/developers often say “to receive a little extra polish before release”. The harsh truth about that is that by delaying by a month, Ubisoft would have missed the Christmas rush at its peak and consequently would have missed out on a lot of sales. Now from Ubisoft’s perspective, as a business, I’m sure they believe they are right in releasing AC: Unity when they have, because from their perspective (or at least from a shareholder perspective), they’ve got to look after numero uno.
But what about us? What about the loyal gamer that has pre-ordered this title and parted with the cash from their pocket? It’s pretty obvious that the plan was to release this pre-Christmas regardless and then to patch the game at a later date, which certainly isn’t good enough from a customer’s perspective. The attitude nowadays is to release a game close to the finished product, but then to release patches at a later date to fix it. This quite frankly is the industries (not just Ubisoft) modern day copout. I’m not just singling out Ubisoft here, because games such as Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Driveclub, to name but two have all had major launch problems. I just think it’s time that publisher’s attitudes changed towards their loyal customers, because without us, they wouldn’t be where they are today.
Just recently following that third major patch, Ubisoft made the drastic move to not only apologise to fans for the extremely rocky launch of Unity, but they decided to discontinue its season pass. Following that, they announced that anyone who purchased Unity, will get the Dead Kings DLC for free (this was included in the season pass). And those who purchased the season pass will be given a free Ubisoft title that includes the likes of Far Cry 4 and The Crew. Now while I do prefer to have Far Cry 4 as a replacement for the season pass, rather than being refunded £24, just imagine how much money and stress Ubisoft would have saved if they’d have released Unity in better condition? Hopefully this will be a lesson learned for the industry as a whole. Also for the record, the standalone game Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (which was included in the season pass), will still be available to purchase when it is released.
I love the attention to detail in AC: Unity that’s gone into creating Paris, I love the darker theme and Arno is overflowing with charisma. While it’s not acceptable, I could deal with a few (humorous) bugs here and there, because sometimes no matter how hard someone tries, some problems are unforeseen. But I can’t ignore issues at launch such as corrupt save data, forcing me to start AC: Unity from scratch, which is always an enthusiasm killer no matter the game. This corrupt save data issue is also not one that’s isolated either, a quick search on Twitter or Google and the internet is rife with gamers with similar problems (not to mention the Initiates lost data).
Previously I scored Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag a very respectable 9.3 and I fully expected AC: Unity to surpass that score or at the least match it. ACIV: Black Flag wasn’t a perfect game by any means, but I certainly did not suffer anything game breaking like I have experienced in this game and I can only write about my personal experience. If Assassin’s Creed: Unity would have had the time and dedication that it clearly deserves come launch, it would have easily surpassed the 9.0 mark without question, but it would be ignorant to ignore its problems by giving it a score it should have earned or by scoring it based upon later released patches. Don’t get me wrong, despite its problems, I believe that AC: Unity is a fun game; in fact I really like it. Without its problems that has plagued its launch, AC: Unity could have and should have been not only one of the standout games of the year, but one of the standout games of Ubisoft’s illustrious history, if only it had that extra month or so of development.
I’m sure in the coming weeks, the game will be fully patched and it will be running as it should. Instead Assassin’s Creed: Unity receives a score wide off the mark that it could have received. I have no doubts that several months down the line, I will be enjoying AC: Unity and embracing its co-op right up until Ubisoft’s next annually release. I just hope that for the good of the franchise, the industry and its customers, that not only do Ubisoft learn from their mistakes, but so do the other companies that represent AAA titles, because at the end of the day, it’s what we all deserve.