Assassin's Creed Unity Review: A Beautiful Game with Some Flaws

One thing that's particularly frustrating is climbing down, especially when you're just basically bounding from ledge to ledge. Another thing is that there is a Crouch button it can be toggled um by holding down l or you can just or excuse me you can tap L the left trigger to slip into cover or you can just hold down on it and then release when when you're done so I like that as well but still I find the stealth system to be kind of buggy kind of sluggish um it's really hard to I guess move from one object cover object to another I'm kind of surprised that we're at this point you know seven games into the series where we don't have a fluid cover system the mechanics of games like Gears of War and even Vanquish I know that that they're for Shooters but it's a lot more responsive okay now I'll talk about the combat engine Assassin's Creed usually has a simple layout of buttons to use for this this is mostly the face buttons you know X does one thing a does one thing B does one thing and that's still true here whereas in other games you had a counter button there isn't a counter here there's actually a Parry so that yeah it acts like a counter but um it's more I think I think it requires better timing Arno will actually position the weapon correctly and so the animation will play out well according to the weapons that are being used it looks better from from that sense you still use your x button to do the Striking the enemies are they're less generic I mean each one will will attack a little bit differently especially since they're using different weapons items like smoke bombs and cherry bombs and the darts and things like that well not the Rope Dart but anyway these kind of Deployable specialty items are back I didn't see enough of them introduced early on so it kind of takes a while to get into that Black Flag gave us things like the Rope Dart and some other items there that I liked using right away so I wish I would have seen that variety kind of come out earlier one thing though that I didn't like is the new aiming system in other games you would hold a button to uh go into a sort of over the shoulder mode here you don't actually have your firearm out you don't draw it it's still concealed so you have to just kind of aim as if you already had your your weapon and then you press the button and then he pulls and then he pulls out his AR his firearm and shoots so I didn't like that and besides the reticle there really isn't a reticle it's just like a tiny white dot all right.

Social Integration in Assassin's Creed Unity

One thing that stood out to me is the social integration aspect of the game. You have a sort of home base which is called a cafe that has a variety of rooms that basically you upgrade or you spend money on in order to actually gain money in return gain investment because it's a cafe people will come to the cafe and based on your upgrades you acrew money um which is good so then in other words you're making money as you're playing the game while this sounds cool I really don't understand why I have to go back every time time to collect my earnings I actually have to travel back to my coffee shop to gain the money I earned so I can't actually use that once I receive it to buy the next weapon that I want I actually have to go back and get it so I really don't understand that.

Closing Thoughts on Assassin's Creed Unity

Overall, Assassin's Creed Unity is a beautiful looking game but again there isn't that upfront value that I've experienced playing the other games for somebody like me who likes the more action-based uh open-ended games you know Red Dead Redemption I just don't see it with with this game so much. The stealth system moving in and out of cover it's just not doing it for me I like I like the addition of the Crouch button but upgrades and player progression this is a lot more detailed in Assassin's Creed unity and for the most part it's a good thing so instead of just picking out your costumes for Arno you actually have per piece custom customizations are five uh five categories of weapons and the just varieties in each one is pretty captivating so I like that a lot maybe wait until it goes on sale uh if you've played other games in the series otherwise yeah there are a lot of competing H holiday titles so um this is one for consideration but this isn't a musthave in my opinion.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's Nick from Gamers nexus.net and I'm here reviewing Assassin's Creed Unity from Ubisoft Assassin's Creed Unity is the first Assassin's Creed game to debut exclusively on the new consoles and obviously PC I had actually played Assassin's Creed Unity at PAX Prime this past August and found the game to be visually very stunning not only in in its effects but also just how many NPCs it had on the screen and their level of interaction and and kind of like their their body language and whatnot so really that's held up well going over to consoles and in this full version of the game the Parisian streets are just flooded with people who are rioting people are uh having conversations outside uh in outside of restaurants um there's a lot of activity inside buildings as well so you're not just going into the open world and wandering into these empty buildings there's uh interaction there happening among the characters this is a game that is different definitely different from the last probably the last two installments of Assassin's Creed U Assassin's Creed 3 taking place during colonial America and Assassin's Creed Black Flag which was um in the Caribbean in the early I think early 1700s during the days of pirating so those games relied much more on action scenes and I don't just mean creep up on somebody and stab them they had other ways of using action to provide satisfaction that's not a part of Assassin's Creed Unity so I think that that sort of divides the audience based on where the series was headed some people are actually going to find it better that they can focus more on stealth and having several different options to weigh when when going into a stealth situation is good outside of that there are other opportunities for exploration and kind of like puzzle solving by that I mean that there are Clues around the city there are riddles and things like that that need to be solved and most of it is is just supplementary to the game play but that's kind of how you'll occupy your time outside of the stealth combat let's talk a little bit about the storyline and the protagonist here so the storyline begins with a young Arno in France and his father is murdered and he sees a uh I believe it's a watch uh with a certain symbol on it and so then 13 years later he is at a a Suare for his love interest and he sneaks in because he's not on the guest list anyway um and so his love interest Who's aise Who uh actually turns up repeatedly in the storyline her father is murdered as well so Arno is off to um figure out who who murdered these loved ones I guess and really he kind of resembles Etso um but overall I found him to be fairly likable let's talk about some of the mechanical improvements in unity uh first of all there is a two button combination that is used for the free running system so you press in in the case of the Xbox One controller R trigger and the a button to scale up a building and then R trigger and B to scale down the building it doesn't sound like the most intuitive way to control somebody when when he's climbing but it actually helps a lot in in climbing down because it basically ensures that you won't have fall damage so that's really good to to see it's a fairly smooth process uh especially when climbing down you know you're just basically bounding from ledge to ledge another thing is that there is a Crouch button it can be toggled um by holding down l or you can just or excuse me you can tap L the left trigger to slip into cover or you can just hold down on it and then release when when you're done so I like that as well but still I find the stealth system to be kind of buggy kind of sluggish um it's really hard to I guess move from one object cover object to another I'm kind of surprised that we're at this point you know seven games into the series where we don't have a fluid cover system the mechanics of games like Gears of War and even Vanquish I know that that they're for Shooters but it's a lot more responsive okay now I'll talk about the combat engine Assassin's Creed usually has a simple layout of buttons to use for this this is mostly the face buttons you know X does one thing a does one thing B does one thing and that's still true here whereas in other games you had a counter button there isn't a counter here there's actually a Parry so that yeah it acts like a counter but um it's more I think I think it requires better timing Arno will actually position the weapon correctly and so the animation will play out well according to the weapons that are being used it looks better from from that sense you still use your x button to do the Striking the enemies are they're less generic I mean each one will will attack a little bit differently especially since they're using different weapons items like smoke bombs and cherry bombs and the darts and things like that well not the Rope Dart but anyway these kind of Deployable specialty items are back I didn't see enough of them introduced early on so it kind of takes a while to get into that Black Flag gave us things like the Rope Dart and some other items there that I liked using right away so I wish I would have seen that variety kind of come out earlier one thing though that I didn't like is the new aiming system in other games you would hold a button to uh go into a sort of over the shoulder mode here you don't actually have your firearm out you don't draw it it's still concealed so you have to just kind of aim as if you already had your your weapon and then you press the button and then he pulls and then he pulls out his AR his firearm and shoots so I didn't like that and besides the reticle there really isn't a reticle it's just like a tiny white dot all right so now I'll talk about a couple things I couldn't actually cover in the review and that's some of the social integration I'll just give a quick overview so first of all you have a sort of home base which is called a cafe that has a variety of rooms that basically you upgrade or you spend money on in order to actually gain money in return gain investment because it's a cafe people will come to the cafe and based on your upgrades you acrew money um which is good so then in other words you're making money as you're playing the game while this sounds cool I really don't understand why I have to go back every time time to collect my earnings I actually have to travel back to my coffee shop to gain the money I earned so I can't actually use that once I receive it to buy the next weapon that I want I actually have to go back and get it so I really don't understand that here are my closing thoughts on Assassin's Creed Unity again it's a beautiful looking game but again there isn't that upfront value that I've experienced playing the other games for somebody like me who likes the more action-based uh open-ended games you know Red Dead Redemption I just don't see it with with this game so much the stealth system moving in and out of cover it's just not doing it for me I like I like the addition of the Crouch button but upgrades and player progression this is a lot more detailed in Assassin's Creed unity and for the most part it's a good thing so instead of just picking out your costumes for Arno you actually have per piece custom customizations are five uh five categories of weapons and the just varieties in each one is pretty captivating so I like that a lot maybe wait until it goes on sale uh if you've played other games in the series otherwise yeah there are a lot of competing H holiday titles so um this is one for consideration but this isn't a musthave in my opinion and also let us know what you think about Assassin's Creed unity and the rest of the series if you have any questions feel free to type in a comment or a question and we'll uh go ahead and get back to you as soon as we can thankshey everybody it's Nick from Gamers nexus.net and I'm here reviewing Assassin's Creed Unity from Ubisoft Assassin's Creed Unity is the first Assassin's Creed game to debut exclusively on the new consoles and obviously PC I had actually played Assassin's Creed Unity at PAX Prime this past August and found the game to be visually very stunning not only in in its effects but also just how many NPCs it had on the screen and their level of interaction and and kind of like their their body language and whatnot so really that's held up well going over to consoles and in this full version of the game the Parisian streets are just flooded with people who are rioting people are uh having conversations outside uh in outside of restaurants um there's a lot of activity inside buildings as well so you're not just going into the open world and wandering into these empty buildings there's uh interaction there happening among the characters this is a game that is different definitely different from the last probably the last two installments of Assassin's Creed U Assassin's Creed 3 taking place during colonial America and Assassin's Creed Black Flag which was um in the Caribbean in the early I think early 1700s during the days of pirating so those games relied much more on action scenes and I don't just mean creep up on somebody and stab them they had other ways of using action to provide satisfaction that's not a part of Assassin's Creed Unity so I think that that sort of divides the audience based on where the series was headed some people are actually going to find it better that they can focus more on stealth and having several different options to weigh when when going into a stealth situation is good outside of that there are other opportunities for exploration and kind of like puzzle solving by that I mean that there are Clues around the city there are riddles and things like that that need to be solved and most of it is is just supplementary to the game play but that's kind of how you'll occupy your time outside of the stealth combat let's talk a little bit about the storyline and the protagonist here so the storyline begins with a young Arno in France and his father is murdered and he sees a uh I believe it's a watch uh with a certain symbol on it and so then 13 years later he is at a a Suare for his love interest and he sneaks in because he's not on the guest list anyway um and so his love interest Who's aise Who uh actually turns up repeatedly in the storyline her father is murdered as well so Arno is off to um figure out who who murdered these loved ones I guess and really he kind of resembles Etso um but overall I found him to be fairly likable let's talk about some of the mechanical improvements in unity uh first of all there is a two button combination that is used for the free running system so you press in in the case of the Xbox One controller R trigger and the a button to scale up a building and then R trigger and B to scale down the building it doesn't sound like the most intuitive way to control somebody when when he's climbing but it actually helps a lot in in climbing down because it basically ensures that you won't have fall damage so that's really good to to see it's a fairly smooth process uh especially when climbing down you know you're just basically bounding from ledge to ledge another thing is that there is a Crouch button it can be toggled um by holding down l or you can just or excuse me you can tap L the left trigger to slip into cover or you can just hold down on it and then release when when you're done so I like that as well but still I find the stealth system to be kind of buggy kind of sluggish um it's really hard to I guess move from one object cover object to another I'm kind of surprised that we're at this point you know seven games into the series where we don't have a fluid cover system the mechanics of games like Gears of War and even Vanquish I know that that they're for Shooters but it's a lot more responsive okay now I'll talk about the combat engine Assassin's Creed usually has a simple layout of buttons to use for this this is mostly the face buttons you know X does one thing a does one thing B does one thing and that's still true here whereas in other games you had a counter button there isn't a counter here there's actually a Parry so that yeah it acts like a counter but um it's more I think I think it requires better timing Arno will actually position the weapon correctly and so the animation will play out well according to the weapons that are being used it looks better from from that sense you still use your x button to do the Striking the enemies are they're less generic I mean each one will will attack a little bit differently especially since they're using different weapons items like smoke bombs and cherry bombs and the darts and things like that well not the Rope Dart but anyway these kind of Deployable specialty items are back I didn't see enough of them introduced early on so it kind of takes a while to get into that Black Flag gave us things like the Rope Dart and some other items there that I liked using right away so I wish I would have seen that variety kind of come out earlier one thing though that I didn't like is the new aiming system in other games you would hold a button to uh go into a sort of over the shoulder mode here you don't actually have your firearm out you don't draw it it's still concealed so you have to just kind of aim as if you already had your your weapon and then you press the button and then he pulls and then he pulls out his AR his firearm and shoots so I didn't like that and besides the reticle there really isn't a reticle it's just like a tiny white dot all right so now I'll talk about a couple things I couldn't actually cover in the review and that's some of the social integration I'll just give a quick overview so first of all you have a sort of home base which is called a cafe that has a variety of rooms that basically you upgrade or you spend money on in order to actually gain money in return gain investment because it's a cafe people will come to the cafe and based on your upgrades you acrew money um which is good so then in other words you're making money as you're playing the game while this sounds cool I really don't understand why I have to go back every time time to collect my earnings I actually have to travel back to my coffee shop to gain the money I earned so I can't actually use that once I receive it to buy the next weapon that I want I actually have to go back and get it so I really don't understand that here are my closing thoughts on Assassin's Creed Unity again it's a beautiful looking game but again there isn't that upfront value that I've experienced playing the other games for somebody like me who likes the more action-based uh open-ended games you know Red Dead Redemption I just don't see it with with this game so much the stealth system moving in and out of cover it's just not doing it for me I like I like the addition of the Crouch button but upgrades and player progression this is a lot more detailed in Assassin's Creed unity and for the most part it's a good thing so instead of just picking out your costumes for Arno you actually have per piece custom customizations are five uh five categories of weapons and the just varieties in each one is pretty captivating so I like that a lot maybe wait until it goes on sale uh if you've played other games in the series otherwise yeah there are a lot of competing H holiday titles so um this is one for consideration but this isn't a musthave in my opinion and also let us know what you think about Assassin's Creed unity and the rest of the series if you have any questions feel free to type in a comment or a question and we'll uh go ahead and get back to you as soon as we can thanks\n"