Assassin's Creed Unity

Assassin’s Creed Unity is the first of the series to make its sole debut on current generation consoles. It should have been a triumph, heralding a new start for the series; ultimately that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Our journey in Unity begins in late 18th century France. The country is just one step away from all-out revolution and as you’d expect, the Assassins and Templars are pulling the strings in the background. This period of history is utterly ripe for a tale full of passion and intrigue but instead you end up investigating a mediocre murder mystery as Arno Dorian, jumping from shadowy character to shadowy character as you build up a picture of who’s involved.

Unity’s attempts at setting a historical foundation for the game are woeful, as whilst you’ll meet people like Napoleon and the Marquis de Sade, they’re never given the time of day, being there one minute and gone the next, like a curt historical nod or flimsy piece of window dressing. Pivotal events are frequently given no credence; at one point in the game Arno is imprisoned within the medieval fortress known as the Bastille. It was a place that represented royal authority in the centre of Paris and its fall was the flashpoint for the whole French Revolution – in Unity it’s simply a sideshow stepping-stone on the murder mystery tour.

If you’ve ever played an Assassin's Creed game before, you’ll feel right at home with the general mission structure of using your parkour abilities to traverse the city, getting information and tracking down your targets then assassinating them. A slight twist in Unity is that Arno is pretty weak to start with, so taking a stealthy approach definitely pays dividends, as enemies are ruthless and lethal. There’s no more standing around waiting to counter attack as you’ll frequently have multiple attacks coming in at once.

As a series, Assassin's Creed has been criticised before for its control issues and whilst scaling buildings has never been easier due to the newly added climb and descent buttons, you frequently get snagged on small pieces of scenery and there’s far too many times when you’ve got a handhold less than an inch away but the game won’t let you move upward. Traversing windows often seem to be an insurmountable task – for some reason you spend more time climbing across rather than going through them.

The new cover system also doesn’t gel particularly well. As soon as you’ve snapped to an object you need to then unsnap yourself before you can move, which then increases your chances of being spotted in stealth situations. Control issues seem to be far more prevalent in Unity, practically making the gamer want to run along the street rather than the rooftop, which is a serious faux-pas for any Assassin's Creed game. 

Ubisoft have also recently had the tendency to stuff their games with superfluous activities, and once again there’s an insane amount of fluff missions to complete and nearly all of them are not worth the time of day. For example, ‘Paris Stories’ introduces you to famous figures such as Madame Tussaud, which could have been very cool if just a little effort had been put into the narrative. In reality, such asides often turn out to be boring collect or kill missions, with very little exposition or reason to go through their motions beyond a few francs.

Co-op missions fare a little bit better, allowing two-to-four players to take on scenarios that require careful planning, tactics, and execution. It’s utterly bemusing that these missions are more fun than the rest of the main story missions and their opening cinematics do a far better job of explaining the rationale for the mission and what it means in the general context of the revolution.

Now we get to the bugs, oh so many bugs. At the time of writing we’re up to patch three and whilst hundreds of bugs have been fixed to date, such as the one where a character’s face doesn’t load, Unity’s frame rate often grinds to a halt when there’s a lot going on at once – which, with the amount of detail going in this world, is quite often .

You can’t get away from the fact that Assassin's Creed Unity is an absolutely beautiful game, but underneath that stunningly gorgeous exterior is a bloated, nonsensical experience lacking in fun. This is a game that needed streamlining in every area, better quality control to catch the bugs before it was released, and instead of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, adopting the mantra of quality over quantity. Ubisoft have without a doubt succeeded in creating a beautiful looking tech-demo for their new graphics engine, the trouble is they didn’t create a game to go with it.