Assassin’s Creed: Unity
Like Batman Arkham Knight, this game of the Assassin’s Creed franchise was launched in a very rough state. There are thousands of videos in the YouTube showing crazy situations, mostly because the AI, but also due to the poor collision detection and graphical glitches.
And as Batman, I played the game long after the launch, after the developers patch the patch of the patch of the patch of the game.
And as Batman, I played a buggy game.
At the time I played the second game in the series, Assassin’s Creed 2, I did not comment in the blog. I don’t even recall if I had a blog at the time (in fact, I did have, because I played it in 2010, and it was mentioned in the 2010 in review). Anyway, it was one of my favorite games of all time at that point. I really enjoyed every bit of it. And I appreciate it even more when I finally when to Italy and could see in real life the places that I have been before in the virtual life.
Back to Unity, it felt flat to me.
The visuals are great, I cannot deny it. Seeing the Eiffel Tower at the horizon (even for a brief moment because the main game is before its construction) was full of emotions. The crowd ragging against the monarchy is super cool (the crowd on the streets are not, because the pop and change visuals in front of you), the buildings are also very detailed. The character models are good, but the uncanny valley occurred to me: all seemed creepy.
The gameplay is the typical Assassin’s Creed fashion. The main difference here is that it does not work right. I believe that the developers wanted to put so many climbing and parkour points across your path that very often the character does something different that the player intended. It starts to climb in a weird point or get over an ordinary table. I had several moments that I died because I was not in full control of the character. The combat is ok but the armors and weapons all feel the same. There is no special strategy here.
The story is laughably bad. The MAIN character is boring. The main one. That Arno starts begin an anti-hero that is converted to a blindly good hero in a snap and is moved mostly by boring motives. I could not care less. The girl follows the same path. The secondary characters, in most part, are not good and when you think they are going to grow in the story, you have to kill them. That is, in fact, a kinda problem in the AC universe, because they are built to assassinate people, their opponents, so most story lines end on killing them before some good conflict emerges
[story plot here]
The recurring structure of the story is:
- There is an enemy
- You are sent to kill him,
- By doing so, you discover that there is, in fact, a bigger boss
And the cycle repeats. It is not an accident that I cannot remember a single villain.
The side quests and collectibles, all boring. When finding a chest containing… nothing… is fun? The only collectibles that I compelled to do is open the map climbing strategic towers and evolving my own bar to a certain level that it generates loads of money. Getting flags or chests or entering the catacombs were too dull to for me.
The present storyline, against Abstergo, was only briefly mentioned. There is none in this game that reveals anything.
The overall feeling is that I had to finish the game for the sake of my compulsive behavior. No reason to recommend to anyone, except if you are French (I suppose it would be awesome to have your own city mapped like this).
