The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Origins DLCs

Assassin's Creed Origins is such a large game compared to its predecessors that I decided to separate my review of the DLCs to the main game. You can read the main game review here: The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Origins.

Discovery  Tour

The Discovery Tour is not really a game, it is more like a virtual museum and it looks like it is designed to be consumed as a completely standalone experience to the main game. Why do I say that? Well to being with, the controls are exactly the same as the main game, but it acts like you have no idea how to move around.

You also have the option to wander around Egypt without combat and without missions, but if you've played the game, I'm not sure what appeal that has, because you would have seen everything already, so this is another reason why I think this DLC is designed for people who likely have not played the main game, and maybe are not even familiar with Assassin's Creed in general.

The best feature of the Discovery Tour are the virtual museum tours. There are hundres of "exhibits" clustered together in topics. For example, learning about Ancient Egyptian temples and their place at the centre of Egyptian life is around 20 exhibits, but a quick tour on Beer and Bread is 3 or 4 exhibits. You can opt to embark on one of these tours and the game will plot a sequential path for you to walk you through the tour. For each exhibit, you get an "in game" view of what the narrator is describing, which can be anything from people baking bread, preparing the dead, fields of crops or essentially anything to do with Ancient Egyptian life. Once the camera has moved to the subject, you'll get a museum-style narration of the scene depicted and often you can also view a photograph or diagram of the the subject from real life as well. When viewing a mummified corpse in a tomb, for example, you have the option of seeing a photograph of a real museum piece of a mummy whilst listening to the narration.

The virtual museum tours provide you a narrated journey along a set path of sights.

Going through the tour is probably somewhat of a challenge for people who have completed the main game, because although fascinating, it is a slow affair to go through all the exhibits one by one and pay attention. I do like the fact that there are some trophy/achievements tied to viewing one of the complete tour sets, because this is what pulled me in to even looking at the tour in the first place, and I'm sure it will be the same for many players.

My recommendation would be to not just try and push through the tour in its entirety, but instead break it down into sections. It is genuinely fascinating and it also does a lot of credit to Ubisoft's accurate portrayal of Ancient Egypt, but there's no getting past the fact that for a gamer, it feels like you are restricted to going through it at quite a slow pace.

Overall, I think the Discovery Tour is a great idea, but any player should consider the experience as being the same as visiting a real musuem. Unless you are being dragged along by your parents, you wouldn't go to a museum if you weren't specifically interested in going. In the same vein, don't go on the Discovery Tour if you are not interested, because you won't get anything out of it. However, if the game has whet your appetite for finding out more about Ancient Egypt, the Discovery Tour is a great way of learning more.

 

The Hidden Ones

This DLC is basically an extension of the main story. With a Hidden Ones bureau established in the Sinai region of Egypt, the local Assassins and Assassin leader run into series problems with the local Order. Two Hidden Ones killed in a recent battle triggers a request for help to Bayek, to which he responds by travelling to the region, heading to thelocal bureau, and then going from there.

In terms of size and content, The Hidden Ones is similar to other DLCs such as Jack the Ripper for Syndicate, with three additional land regions to unlock and one additional sea region, and a typical density of locations to work through. The main missions don't beat around the bush, and before you know it you are saying "oh boy, here I go killin' again" as you start hunting down the local Order leaders. There's a bunch of additional side missions as well, some of which are somewhat related to the main mission and some compeltely separate. One of the more intriguing side missions begins with you just assisting an elderly gentleman who is trying to put his recently dead wife to rest in a tomb, but is afraid of the haunting noises coming out of the crypt. The resolution to this side mission leaves you questioning what you just saw and treads the well balanced fine line in Origins of mysticism versus the basic reality of real life.

This DLC also serves as a convenient crutch for those who ended up missing out on a lot of rare resources needed for gear upgrades. If you make even half an effort to grab the chests that Senu can mark out for you, you'll find an abundance of these materaisl that will like let you upgrade you gear several times just within this DLC.

The Philakes mechanic is present in this DLC, although now they are called Shadows of the Scarab and hunting them down culminates in a side mission that caps off a story and NPC character arc started in the main game. The mission itself is reasonably interesting in terms of closing off that story, but otherwise it's a simple continuation of the Philakes mechanic with superficial changes.

Even the red Shadow of the Scarab icon on the map looks like a Philakes icon

Perhaps my review so far seems underwhelming, please don't let that put you off if you are considering buying and playing this DLC. Whilst The Hidden Ones doesn't really contain anything new in terms of gameplay mechanics, it is still a very effective continuation of the Origins plot. The main missions are of similar ilk to the main game and there are more forts for you to clear out, including two very large complexes. Basically, although not amazing in itself, if you love the main Origins game as I do, you'll love playing through this DLC just as much. It's not spectacular new content, but it is a continuation of the main game that is just as good.

 

The Curse of the Pharaohs

Definitely in terms of land area, but also arguably in terms of content, The Curse of the Pharaohs DLC is the largest of any Assassin's Creed DLC released to date. There are nine additional regions to explore and the main missions will explicitly take you through seven to eight of the nine. This DLC also expands your ability to upgrade your fixed gear, such as the hidden blade and body armor, by way of a new resource that is unique to the DLC. There are additional side missions of course, but also some other brand new mechanics and concepts that we will cover in due course.

Like the Hidden Ones DLC, the story of this DLC takes place some years after the main game. Bayek learns of another ancient artifact in Thebes and sets off to find it so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Upon arriving in Thebes he very quickly finds out that there is a curse ravaging the land. No sooner than Bayek steps on shore, a Cursed Pharaoh manifests next to the dockside and starts attacking bystanders. Bayek being who he is, immediately steps in to battle the apparition, so that hey may save the innocent people being attacked.

After the dust settles, Bayek learns that this is not an isolated incident and that the people say a curse grips the land. Suspicious that the supposed curse and his search for the artifact is linked, Bayek expects that finding the source of the curse will help his own search as well as free the local people, and so off he sets.

The Hidden Ones DLC, whilst being perfectly decent fun, is really just a continuation of the main game mechanics with only a few tweaks here and there. The Pharaohs DLC, however, brings with it some new innovations.

The Philakes mechanic is completely gone now, and basically replaced with the Cursed Pharaohs. As you move through Thebes and associated areas, Cursed Pharaohs will randomly spawn conveniently somewhat close to Bayek, and our hero can choose to break off his current activity to attack and defeat the Cursed One if he so chooses. The Cursed Pharaohs are a whole new type of enemy in Origins and bring with them the need to develop new tactics to take them on. One of the few criticisms I have of the main Origins game is that with the right setup, which includes the Instant Charging heavy attack, you can reduce combat for all but the most power enemies to a few heavy attacks and some dodges. Some of the Pharaohs, however, will completely overpower this approach and make mincemeat out of you if you don't adapt. Whilst these battles are mainly optional, there are a few that are obligatory to the main story, so you are better off taking on the challenge head on and developing new tactics with these enemies. If you do start taking out some of the Cursed Pharaohs, you'll be rewarded with the new rare resource you need to upgrade your gear further.

You'll need to develop new tactics to defeat the Cursed Pharaohs

As well as the Cursed Pharaohs, there are also a couple of other new non-human enemy types you come across. However, whilst the design of these characters is nice to behold, you can battle and defeat the vast majority of these enemies the same as regular human enemies. One specific enemy type, which I guess you class as an animal-type, are easy to defeat in their regular version, but there are some oversized and overpowered variants that will also present you a challenge.

There's also some major innovation with some of the location types. It would be a spoiler to go into the specific details of how this manifests itself, but suffice to say you will be exploring new locations that are not only nothing like anywhere you've explored before in Origins, but also unique to each other within the DLC.

No spoilers other than this picture, there are new locations unlike anything before in Origins

I always tend to enjoy AC stories that revolve around the Apples of Eden and other similar artifacts and the Curse of the Pharaohs is no exception. The AC series tends to stay rooted in reality, with the only fantasy elements being associated with the precursors and precursor artifacts. It has to be said that The Curse of the Pharaohs DLC does extend that right up to the limit. Bayek remains philosophical about all he sees and experiences, it doesn't seem that all of it can be associated with the artifact, but to be honest, the epilogue to the DLC essentially makes the case that these fantasy elements are "real" rather than imagined. This departure from being grounded in reality will not be to everyone's liking, but as a sneak peek ahead, it only gets worse in Odyssey anyway, so like it or not, you better get used to it.

Overall, The Curse of the Pharaohs DLC is one of the best yet. In the battle for overall best DLC of any Assassin's Creed game, I probably agree that Pharaohs doesn't quite have the appeal of the grim style and Lovecraft-esque undertones that the Jack the Ripper DLC has. However, this DLC is much larger and less formulaic in terms of the new content that it brings, so in the end I probably like the Pharaoh's DLC more.

But whichever one you like more, The Pharaohs DLC is definitely up there as one of the best, and totally worth a modest investment to play after completing the main game.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Origins

 

Context

I divested myself out of buying any further Assassin's Creed games after Unity. Eventually I was pulled back in by the further games all being released to positive reviews and intriguing gameplay footage of the revamped Origins and Odyssey. I re-entered the series where I left off and played Syndicate, wondering what I was letting myself in for.

Well, as you will know if you have read my review of Syndicate (thank you) it was a very rewarding experience. Syndicate is probably the closest the gameplay has felt to being as enjoyable as the heights of the series, the Ezio trilogy. Syndicate had classic Assassin's Creed gameplay in the stealth, parkour and mission structure. I had epic fun stealthing my way through enemy strongholds and taking out guards one by one, until the target is left on his on her own then "surprise, you're dead!"

However, I knew even before I played Syndicate that the series saw a massive revamp with Origins and Odyssey, and really this is why I re-entered the series. Syndicate could have been a turd like Unity and I still would have played Origins. Luckily Syndicate was great, but I knew it would bear little relation on how much I like Origins.

And so I'd been looking to this moment since buying back into the series. With Odyssey being released, the vast majority of online reviews and discussions was about that, so I felt like I was entering the world of Origins only knowing as much about the game as if it was just released.

The Setting

Origins is set in Ancient Egypt at the end of the Ptolomaic period, "the longest and final dynasty in ancient Egyptian history" according to Wikipedia. I must admit, out of all Assassin's Creed backdrops, this one for Origins is probably the one I had the least interest in so far. I'll hold my hands up and say that some of this is probably down to it not being a "western world" location. I hold a more natural intrigue with locations like Rome, Paris, London and colonial America because it just has more familiarity. Even the location of Constantinople in Revelations stood out for me as being less appealing than Rome, and I loved Revelations.

Origins has an incredibly detailed and accurate portayal of Ancient Egypt

An additional part of it is likely due to the time in history the game is set. 45-40 BC is over a thousands years earlier then the next oldest setting, which was actually in the very first Assassin's Creed game, set in the late 12th century.

But also, anything following London was going to be a hard act to follow, considering I live a train ride away and for me, London in Syndicate felt very familiar and close to my heart.

I am very pleased to say that the setting in Origins is portrayed excellently. In terms of land area, Origins is by far the largest map of any Assassin's Creed game so far. I suppose it is not dissimilar to Black Flag and Rogue in how major towns and settlements are spread far apart, but it's quite different sailing from one location to another over blank sea that all looks the same, than travelling between towns in Ancient Egypt, across sand dunes, through small settlements and alongside the Nile, with the pyramids an ever-present backdrop.

A huge addition to the basic Ancient Egypt setting is that the location discovery system in Origins works differently. Syncing with a viewpoint will show you up some locations nearby, but it's not going to flag up the cave in the desert mountains. You'll only find the remote locations by either travelling close by, or being led there by some missions.

Part of the charm of Ancient Egypt in Origins is that you are truly rewarded for exploration.

But aside from the gameplay, Ubisoft have to be applauded for the amount of effort that has gone into portraying Ancient Egypt as realistically as possible. There is a "Discovery Tour" mode that lets you explore Egypt without combat and missions. You can choose to go on "museum tours" of some locations, where the game will lead you on a path and you get a tour-style narrative of the interesting highlights of what you are looking at. Did you know that temples in Ancient Egypt were more than just religious centres, but also operated as financial centres and food banks, as well as places of politics? I didn't, until I went on the tour last time I played Origins.

Ubisoft's depiction of Ancient Egypt has been described as one of the most authentic recreations of Ancient Egypt ever made. It is, of course, not 100% accurate, this is an Assassin's Creed game after all, which is all about using history as a backdrop from making a game. However, there is such attention to detail in so many things that are accurate, there can be no denying that you'll come away from playing this game knowing more than when you started.

This image is from a Guardian article about the accuracy of Ubisoft's portayal of Ancient Egypt

If you want to read more about the work done on recreating Ancient Egypt, I highly recommend this Guardian article: Assassin's Creed Origins: how Ubisoft painstakingly recreated ancient Egypt.

The Protagonist

You are deliberately introduced to Bayek without any previous knowledge about who he is, being launched straight into a fight and then having to work your way through a set of ruins. As you play the early missions, you'll find out more about his past and what drives him, understanding that he has spent some time away from the world and has only recently returned. Bayek starts off as feeling like quite a dry and soulless character, but as you play through the main missions, you start to understand that he has an impressive righteousness about him. It's impressive because he isn't a goody two-shoes (like the naïve Connor) but instead essentially tries to reconcile being true and just, whilst recognising that he is out murdering people himself, even if he thinks it is for a good reason. There is recognition that he is on a dark path that he has to be careful he doesn't get lost on. Also, he seems to truly relish his job and his title as protector of the people.

Bayek of Siwa, Medjay and protector of the people

In Origins, a Medjay (pronounced med-ji) is depicted as a servant of a pharoah, tasked with keeping law and order. A Medjay is somewhat like a policeman, but keeping people to the general law of order and justice as well as specific laws like don't steal, don't kill, etc..

Bayek is a Medjay, but one of the last, and somewhat of a relic of a past era. However, he remains as true to his calling as he always has, and this serves as a great backdrop mechanic for the game. Assassin's Creed has always seen you helping out random people with their problems. For Bayek, it's actually part of his job, and he loves doing it.

The Gameplay

In my previous reviews, I tend to be brief about how the current game is similar to previous installments of the series, and focus at length on the differences. Because Origins is so different to its precursors, this is my lengthiest review yet. As a result, I'll further break down my usual section of "Gameplay" into sub sections.

Gameplay Basics

The very first gameplay action in Origins is a fight. Having played through all the previous games in sequence, and literally finishing Syndicate the day before I started Origins, the opening minutes of Origins are a very abrupt message from Ubisoft, "Playing this game is completely different from all previous games." In fact, I remember from the first time I played Origins, I was so confused by the new controls that I died twice in the very opening fight, despite how the game handholds you. Luckily, second time around, I didn't have so much trouble.

However, before we go into depth about the combat, be aware that even the basic controls are all very different.

• In the default control scheme, there's no parkour button, your character always runs. Ascending and descending works the same as in previous games though.
• Combat buttons are now all mapped to the top controller buttons: Defend, light attack, heavy attack, aim and shoot are all up there.
• There is an alternate control scheme, which looks like it is designed to help players of the previous games feel more at home, but even this scheme is not exactly the same as the previous games, and my recommendation would be to adjust to the new controls.
• Another useful hint about the controls for those, like me, who use a Dualshock when playing on the PC. The game has an option to show Dualshock control buttons on screen rather than the usual X-Box buttons. I only realised this when going through the control options on the different control scheme.
  
• Eagle vision is now mapping to a long press up on the directional pad and sends out a pulse that highlights interactable static objects. It no longer does anything with enemies.
  
• There are now long press buttons, where you have to hold the button down to perform an action. Actually this works brilliantly and is probably long overdue. Example: to pick up a body you have to long press Y or Triangle. To assassinate you quick press the same button. Now, if you are hiding in brush next to a body and try to assassinate, your character won't pick up the body instead.
• The menu system is now all cursor driven. You move a cursor around the various menus with your controller rather than directly move between menu items.

As well as the above, the other most significant gameplay change is that you now have a pet eagle, Senu, you can directly control. A quick press up on the directional pad puts you in control of Senu and you use her for a multitide of purposes.

• Senu is how you tag enemies, which you can do in a range up to 100 metres.
• Senu will indicate major points of interest for you to triangulate and mark, such as location captains, key collectibles, underground entrances and signal beacons. You can then directly tag these like you can locations on your map, to mark them when running around in the game world.
  
• Senu will also highlight key resources. Guard convoys or animals that are high in resources can be seen and tagged, to be hunted down by Bayek.

The iconic eagle of the AC series is now a controllable companion.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of Senu is that you can use him in combination with putting Bayek's horse/camel on autopilot. When Bayek is on his steed, you can command it to follow the main road in front of it, but also command it to go to the location you have tagged. If your next target is more than a few hundred metres away, you can set Bayek off and then control Senu. Bayek and steed will make their way on land whilst you scout ahead with Senu. It's a great way of seeing the scenery go by as you move between locations, but also tremendously useful to be opportunistic about gathering resources. If you see an animal pack or convoy just off where you are going to travel anyway, it's a very short detour to take the enemies out, grab the resources, and then be on your way.

Fast travel via sync points and major locations exists in Origins, but I use it very little because it's so much fun (and useful) to travel on horseback everywhere, even if you have to travel km. It's a great way of seeing the sights and I love it!

Combat

Okay, back to the combat. As I said, it is very apparent from the opening minutes of gameplay that combat is very different to all previous AC games. To be honest, even in the best of the prior games, open combat was largely a process of waiting to be attacked and then countering. In the earlier games a counter would be an insta-kill, in the later games it might "only" serve to let you strip off half of your enemy's health, but still it was a safe way of chewing through your opponents. In Origins, that tactic is not going to work for you. Countering is there as a combat mechanic, but many opponents can attack you with non-blockable moves.

So you're going to be forced to work with new tactics, which is a good thing. However, I have found that I have discovered a new tactic which is quite effective as still rendering most combat to a basic process: Dodge and strong attack. You can hold down the strong attack button to build up a charge, with a fully charged strong attack able to stagger opponents with shields, and knock down opponents without one or staggered. Most combat can be managed by dodging away, building up a charged strong attack, then closing back in to unleash it, piling in quick attacks whilst they are incapacitated. Combine this with a Gold weapon ability of having instantly charged strong attack, and you can punch your way through even the big bruising guards with shields and massive battle axes fairly easily. This tactic even generally works with the bosses you have to take on in open combat (which isn't that many).

XP and Levelling

In relation to combat, the levelling system in Origins is the most extensive and RPG-like of any AC game. Syndicate had a levelling system of one to ten (eleven with the Ripper DLC) but as long as you didn't start the game and instantly go into the hardest London districts, the levelling system was more about how well your allies would fight then having much of an impact upon your character. In Origins, if you try and take on an enemy more than 2 levels above you then you can basically prepare to have your arse handed to you. Again, this is generally manageable by not venturing into the harder areas too soon, but the game will throw the occasional curveball at you with one garrison in an area being much higher then the rest, or if a Philakes (pronounced fill-ah-keez) finds you and you don't check their level before taking them on.

A red skull icon. The enemy will one or two hit kill you and you'll likely tickle him back.

 

The Philakes are a band of very tough mercenaries that start hunting you down once you kill one of their buddies fairly early on in the game. If one gets within 100m of you then the game alerts you with the sound of a blaring horn, telling you to watch out. However, the nearest Philakes does also tend to show up on your map, even in an unexplored area. In the end, the Philakes are made out to be this massive threat but easily manageable with even the most basic common sense approach. If you get one on their own, you can even cheese killing one a few levels above you by stealth attacking them, running away so they become docile again, and then repeating. I easily managed one Philakes near a bridge that you could run over and under by stabbing the guy, running under the bridge and then climbing on top. The dumb guy just wondered around the underneath of the bridge until he came off high alert, then I air assassinated him again. It took me 7 stealth attacks, and he hit me once which nearly wiped me out, but other than that it was easy.

Stealth

Stealth is a wonderfully full-strength affair in Origins. With Egypt being such a vast open space, there is plenty of farmland crops, reeds and brush for you to creep around in. Double assassinations are absent, but there is a skill that enables you to make a second ranged stealth kill after an initial regular kill, which is tremendously useful. The forgiveness of enemies spotting you has been reduced as well. Although you do have a chance to evade if spotted by an unexpected enemy, it is quite a small window. However, enemies generally tend to be quite spaced out in Origins with only small clusters grouped together. As long as you don't really mess up your stealth, triggering one guard usually only ends up in a small isolated fight and then you can clean up the bodies and go back to being stealthy again. However, if you do alert multiple enemies at once and you are in an enemy stronghold, there is a high risk that one of them will try to run off and light the warning beacon, which will bring reinforcements to the area.

Another additional feature with stealth is that although you can disable the enemy beacons (which act the same as alarm bells in previous games), in Origins you actually set a trap, which will blow up the first enemy that tries to send a signal. It's quite delicious to alarm your mark so that they run off to light the beacon, only to blow themselves up in the process.

Instead of disabling enemy alarms, now you booby trap them.

 

One last minor change with stealth is that it is not a 100% automatic insta-kill any more. If you pay any attention to upgrading your hidden blade then it's still an insta-kill 99% of the time, but uber-healthed enemies such as the Philakes and the very strongest fort bosses will only lose a portion of their health, a Philakes may not even lose half!

So, although the combat system is full revamped, stealth is as strong as the best of the previous games. Origins brings us high alert areas that are much larger than previous games, with some forts and compounds over 200m long and wide. It's a joy to stealth and assassinate your way through these areas.

Parkour

With the parkour, there is not a lot to say. Basically this is a good thing, because the more I have talked about the parkour in previous games, the more it's been about the bad points. In Origins, parkour just works. However, because Egypt is such a vast open space, you won't be climbing up buildings all that much. As well as the usual buildings with handholds, there is terrain that you'll need to climb over as well. It seems that Bayek can climb up any rough natural surface like rocks and cliff faces at will, no specific handholds are needed. For some this will be a dilution of the parkour system, but you'll spend minimal time actually doing this in Origins so it doesn't really make any difference.

Equipment and Loot

Having covered the usual suspect of the parkour, combat and stealth, the other major aspect of Origins' gameplay is the loot and equipment system. Origins expands the object system so much it is unrecognisable from previous games. There are 4 different types of bow, around 7 different types of melee weapon and shields. All of these have levels which provide different damage ratings and they also all have additional tributes.

• Blue weapons are the lowest level, and have one additional attribute over basic damage, like reducing your melee or range damage. This basic attribute is the same across all weapons in the same class.
  
• Purple "rare" weapons will be a bit stronger then the same level blue weapon and have two attributes. The first attribute is fixed to the weapon class the same as blue weapons, but the second attribute can be from a pool of possible abilities.
  
• Gold "legendary" weapons will be stronger again and have three attributes, but the third attribute will be from a unique set that doesn't apply to first and second tributes. Examples of the third attributes are "on fire" e.g. flaming arrows, gain health on kill, instantaneous charge for strong attacks, and there are more.

Generally you find weapons around your character level, which of course means that as you level up, your old weapons become obsolete. This would limit the usefulness of the gold weapons, which obviously are the rarest kind, but you can pay a blacksmith to upgrade your favourite weapons to your current level. It's fairly pricey to upgrade, but as long as you restrict yourself to upgrading your absolute favourite weapons, it's easily affordable.

The class RPG system of coloured rarity loot makes it way into Assassin's Creed

To be honest, the loot system does feel somewhat superficial. Most of the time when you come across new weapons you'll just be looking at how much damage it does. If you find a gold weapon you really like and that tailors your combat, you'll just upgrade this every 3 or 4 levels, which limits the impact of finding new loot.

You can also upgrade your fixed "equipment" which consists of things like your hidden blade, quiver, consumables bag and the like. To upgrade these you need resources like different types of leather and metal. You can find these resources in various places, such as regular lootable objects (in small amounts), convoys and hunting wildlife. It strikes me as being similar as the resource and upgrade system in Far Cry 3, except in Far Cry 3 it was just stuff you could get from hunting. The last upgrades for each piece of fixed equipment predictably requires you to find rare resources, which does add a sense of satisfaction to finding these. You don't need to get all of them, just a lot of them, which means you don't need to specifically hunt them down but when you find one (or a few), it will quite often be the missing ingredient that lets you upgrade a piece of gear to the next level. Finding the rare resources is probably the most satisfying part of the loot system in Origins.

Overall

Origins is a drastically new direction for the Assassin's Creed series and its not difficult to see why a lot of fans of the series from day one struggle to like the revamped system of Origins quite as much. For me, however, having got utterly fed up with how Ubisoft dragged the series down churning out release upon release, I agree that much staleness had set in. Although I tremendously enjoyed Syndicate as a huge improvement in the series over many of the previous installments, I think the new direction is a huge improvement to the series. It was the reviews and videos of the revamped gameplay that pulled me back into the series after the absolute rot of Unity, and having finally played Origins through, I absolutely loved it

The DLCs

As with previous installments, I will review the DLCs of Origins. However, as Origins is so much larger than previous games in the series. I decided to review them separately, as I did with the larger Black Flag DLC, Freedom Cry.

Summary

Origins is brilliant. The revamped gameplay is a huge success with a new sense of fun to the gameplay, and very very few new problems introduced as by-products. The story of Bayek is excellent, as is Bayek himself as a character we come to love. Ancient Egypt as a setting is very accurate and great to run around in, even travelling between major towns and settlements is fun using Senu as a scout.

The only criticism I can suggest feels quite unfair, which is that perhaps the game is almost too big. All regions in the game have their own interesting facets to them whether it is a bunch of new side missions, or new terrain, or an arena you can enter. There are a huge amount of side missions and very few of them feel like background noise.

It's ironic, but having accused Ubisoft of fleshing out previous AC games with contentless filler, and having absolutely not done that with Origins, it feels like there is too much good stuff to do in Origins, to the extent that you can get serious bogged down between main missions when you have to travel to a new part of the map, there's just so much to do, you either feel like it's a long time to play the next main mission, or you are missing out on all this stuff if you let them pass by and it will be a lot to catch up on later.

Origins is a tremendous success. It's definitely 5 out of 5 score-wise and completely up for debate as to whether this tops AC2 and Brotherhood for the title of Best Game of the Series. I actually think Origins is better, if only for its more modern gameplay style, and that I believe that if you go back to play AC2 after Origins, you'll struggle with the limitations of the much older game.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Syndicate + DLC

Context

When I first played and completed Unity about a year after it was released, I was absolutely disgusted by it. I was already getting frustrated with the long standing issues in the series that remained unaddressed whilst Ubisoft churned out the annual releases and took the approach of "good enough to get people's cash." So Unity was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and I wasn't giving Ubisoft any more of my money for anything that had "Assassin's Creed" written on it.

Then Syndicate was released and got favourable reviews. I ignored them, Unity got reviews which, in my opinion, horrifically glossed over the game's shortcomings, so I wasn't taking reviewers' words for it. Maybe it was me that was the problem and I just didn't like what the series had become, because reviewers like it and there were positive reviews from players, but even if that was the case, I didn't think I was going to like the next in the series of the same basic type of game. It wasn't easy, because the setting of Syndicate was a huge draw for me, living around 20 miles away from London myself, but I stood fast because I was fed up investing in the series.

I've been there, as lots of people have I'm sure, but this is a train ride away for me.

Syndicate's release came and went, then Origins came out.

And the word was that Origins was a major revamp of the series, that Ubisoft recognised the level of staleness that had crept in and had opted to revisit every aspect of the game and reconsider the basic gameplay from the ground up. Origins wasn't just the next release on the same game engine as Unity and Syndicate and was an all new experience.

And I didn't buy Origins either, because I had opted out of continuing to invest in the series.

And then Odyssey was released, and the reviews of Odyssey were hugely positive. Not only that, but watching the gameplay in reviews and other online videos, I could see how different the series had become, and I quite liked what I saw. I actually felt like I wanted to play Assassin's Creed again.

But I thought that if I was going to opt back into the series, I should re-enter where I left. Maybe it would be painful because I knew Syndicate used the same game engine and gameplay structure as Unity, but at least I had the completely revamped Origins and Odyssey to look forward to.

So that's the story of how I got sucked back into the series. Was it a wise decision?

The Setting

Even though I didn't buy Syndicate when it was first released, I have admitted that there was some temptation to give Assassin's Creed one more go despite my disgust with Unity, and that was due to the setting. Syndicate is set in London at the end of the Industrial Revolution. With 100 years of sea superiority leading to the world's largest ever empire being allowed to operate largely unchallenged, the industrial revolution cemented Britain's position as the leading commercial nation globally. The centre of all this is London and in the introduction of the game we hear the words "Whosoever controls London, controls the world."

So what a narrative for someone who is not only a Brit, but lives close to London himself.

The main characters we control are the twins Evie Frye and Jacob Frye. Right away during our initial introduction to them, they exude more warmth than Arno ever did. Evie is the more serious and scholarly twin whilst Jacob is more cavalier, humerous/sarcastic and in your face. Obviously they don't always see eye to eye, so they manage these differences of opinions with the kind of digs and sly little jokes one might expect from brother and sister. Their relationship with each other is very much a driver for how they both operate.

Evie and Jacob Frye, our twin protagonists. Can anyone say sibling rivalry?

The depiction of London in Syndicate is very different from Paris in the previous game. Even though I think you can probably find a lot of parallels between the two cities in real life, Unity seemed to focus more heavily on the residential areas of Paris, with half the city dedicated to slums and working class homes, and the other half for the rich and aristocrats. The depiction of London in Syndicate is more focussed on London as the centre of global politics, commerce and industry. Whilst there are parts of the map that are residential, and we get treated to the sight of rows of terraced housing where each dwelling would be shared by 3 to 7 families, most of the time you'll be around train stations, industrial areas, docks on the Thames, or buildings associated with politics or the aristocracy.

As a Brit that lives close to our capital, I can joyfully report that London feels "right" in the game, and it's wonderful to feel such a familiarity with the game world that you are running around in, even if it's 150ish years before my time.

The Gameplay

From the very first minutes of playing Syndicate, there is the relief that even though the game is clearly using the same engine and same basic structure as Unity, it is clearly not the same game. Everything feels better right from the start. Movement of your character is sharp and responsive, the sluggishness of controls is gone, if you want your player to do some action, they'll just do it, no longer do you feel like you are fighting with the controls.

Stealth is back to 100%. The ridiculous omissions of Unity are resolved. Whistling to attract guards is back, the cover mechanic now works properly, bodies can be moved and hidden, slow refined movements possible again. It is an absolute joy, because not only have Unity's problems been resolved, but stealth in general is back exactly where it should be along with the best games in the series. Once again you can infiltrate a location by watching the guards and then systematically taking them out one by one, which is exactly what I want to do in an Assassin's Creed game.

Stealth in Syndicate is a huge return to form after the dialobical mechanics in Unity.

And choirs and angels are singing, because the parkour is also finally fixed. Having hit the low point in Rogue and then having some things fixed whilst other things nerfed in Unity, the parkour in Syndicate is as predictable and responsive as it was when playing Ezio. They even fixed the problem with your character jumping up on things when running down on the ground. Neither Jacob or Evie will go to jump over any obstacle unless you tell them to, but they will automatically move over low fences. In other words, they'll jump over things in order to continue running forward, but they won't jump on top of anything unless you tell them to.

However, the problem with the depiction of London is that, for the most part, the buildings are quite far apart. In Paris most areas were very densely populated and so you could run from rooftop to rooftop without much issue, but here in London, you'll be lucky that there is any string of buildings you can run across that will be going in the direction you want them to. The game has resolved this issue by giving you a new movement mechanic, which is the grappling hook. The grappling hook lets you move from the edge or peak of one building to another edge or peak up to about 60m away. When you are close to a place you can use the hook, a marker will appear that shows where you will hook over to if you press the command at that time. Moving via grappling hook can be much quicker than traversing by foot once you get the hang of it, so whilst the purity of running from rooftop to rooftop is gone in Syndicate, you can move around London whilst high up quite fast! Apparently the grappling hook is not to everyone's tastes, but I really like it.

Unique feature to Syndicate: the grappling hook. You'll be using this a lot.

Combat has some changes over Unity, some are definite improvement but some are just different, so it will be down to the player whether they like it or not.

One definite improvement is that you can dodge incoming gunfire again. One of the biggest annoyances in Unity was that if you got surrounded by enemies, you could die in seconds from gunshot because there was no way you could avoid it, which is realistic perhaps, but not good gameplay for my tastes. In Syndicate, not only can you dodge incoming gunfire but if you buy the right skill, you can even counter with a gunshot back to the person trying to shoot you.

Other changes to the combat in Unity make it faster and more responsive, but at the expense of fluidity of movement. Other than the gunfire and sluggishness of controls, the combat in Unity was quite good and rewarded good timing when countering. Syndicate is a lot more forgiving on timing, but the fluidity of movement from Unity is gone and when levelled up, you'll see your character moving unnaturally fast to get a string of blows on an enemy.

Finally, there is a "guard" system in Syndicate where enemies can block attacks and, if you keep trying to hit them normally, will counterattack you. There is a "break guard" mechanism you can use, but this feels hit and miss to use. It's much easier to wait for the enemy to attack you and counter, which is a bit of a well-worn trope in Assassin's Creed games. The return to "counter then attack" will cause many players to think Syndicate's combat is a step back from Unity. As I tend to favour stealth over combat where possible, it's not really an issue for me.

Another major new feature of the gameplay are the twins themselves. The character upgrade system is now a skill tree for you to unlock with three branches, one for stealth, one for combat, and one for other things. The game rewards you for sticking faithfully to the depiction of the twins' strengths. Evie is characterised as favouring stealth and silent kills, and Jacob as favouring open combat. Whilst you are still going through unlocking various skills, you could turn this on its head, but the best skills of stealth and combat are reserved for each twin. Evie has a stealth ability that only she can unlock, where she can effectively hide in plain sight and is massively useful when infiltrating locations. Evie also has a skill that doubles the amount of throwing knives she can carry, which isn't needed as such but does give the player more free reign to start taking out enemies left, right and centre completely silently without having to be restricted to slowly creeping around the place.

It's clear which direction the AC series is going with skill trees: More and more depth.

Jacob's best reserved skills are around the amount of damage he can give and receive during open combat and his ability driving horse-drawn carriages. Therefore, if you stay true to the depiction of the characters, you'll be using Jacob when you are expecting a fight or are going to start racing around the streets, and you'll favour Evie when you want to sneak around undetected.

And we just mentioned horse-drawn carriages! Syndicate has cars! Well, okay, they are not actually cars, they are horse drawn carriages, but essentially how these things drive, they've been made to behave like cars for the most part. You can accelerate and brake, turn left and right, sideswipe other vehicles to take them out, hijack carriages being driven by other folks, they're basically cars. Probably the main way they are not like cars is that cars don't get scared and run off on their own if fighting breaks out next to them, so watch out or you might get run over by your own carriage. It can't be said that the physics of these carriages is terrifically accurate, because you'll be bashing into things, other carriages, side-swiping enemies... There's a lot of collisions that should kill your poor horse in an instant but luckily, they are as hardy as the carriages themselves unless you aim to shoot them specifically, then they become a way to quickly take out a pursuing carriage.

So what about the side missions? Unity had a lot of side missions, but they felt very fragmented and isolated from each other as well as the main story. Syndicate solves this by focussing the side missions onto a handful of side characters in the game. For the main historical characters:

• You'll join Charles Dickens' ghost hunting club where, as an educated writer and man of science, he looks to debunk the fiction apart from the genuine supernatural.
• You'll partner with Charles Darwin on fighting some of the immoral practices going on in the city and help him further his research.
  
• And you'll work with Karl Marx as he attempts to give the exploited working classes a voice by banding them together into unions to fight for better rights.

On top of these story-driven side missions, there are also the usual sub-game side missions, which are also affiliated to characters you'll partner with: Freeing child labour for the leader of the street urchins, bare-knuckle fighting and carriage racing for your bookie friend, bringing in the police's most wanted for your undercover cop friend. They all tie in to the main story by way of friendship with the main character, as opposed to the random strangers Arno would help out and then never see again.

Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens both have a fascinating set of side missions.

I mentioned earlier that the very first minutes of playing Syndicate gave a lot of joy, because it is just so much nicer to play then Unity was. However, I had similar feelings with the setting in the opening couple of hours of Black Flag, only to have all this drowned out in the end by the ridiculous amount of tedious repetition in the game. Syndicate doesn't do that, it remains a fun game to play throughout, whether you are focussing on the main missions, side missions or collectibles.

Summary

Despite my huge cynicism brought on by Unity, I must report that Syndicate is a hugely successful return to what I liked in the Assassin's Creed series in Ezio's days. Things are have been broken have been fixed, most importantly including the parkour, which is now as good as it was when playing Ezio. Shortcuts seen in previous games where generic locations or soulless collectibles were used to flesh out the hours are dispensed with, now everything you do in the game has some meaning. Perhaps the chest collectibles could still be considered soulless, but then chests have been a mainstay of the entire series and even here, collecting the chests is way more fun then it was in Unity, with Unity's turgid "hunt for the open door or window" approach eliminated in Syndicate.

In retrospect, it's really a shame that Unity caused me to chuck the towel in. If I'd given the series one last benefit of the doubt then it would have rewarded me earlier with a game that is a huge return to form and a great amount of fun.

DLC: The Darwin and Dickens Conspiracy

 

This DLC consists of two mini-stories, of which the second one is split into two missions, so three missions in total. The first story/mission, Darwin's Orchid, sees you tracing down the source of mysterious flowers giving off hallucinegenic fumes. This one is quite fun as it presents some new gameplay not seen in the game before, but it's only a 10 minute-ish mission so it's over fast. The second story is about a friend of Dickens coming to London to check out his fiancée from his pre-arranged marriage. The missions are okay I guess, but story aside, the first is pretty much a repeat of a main game mission and the second, whilst bringing something new I guess, is pretty humdrum.

I got this DLC as part of a season pass, and I can't see that you can buy it separately. I wouldn't pay money to buy these missions specifically but they are okay as part of a larger pack.

DLC: The Last Maharaja

This DLC is a sequence of 10 missions that see you working with the titular last Maharaja, Duleep Singh. These missions have quite a variety to them, and bring back some gameplay mechanics to Syndicate. Early on the DLC you'll start using the murder mystery mechanic from Unity, where you go to locations, talk to people and discover clues. It's quite fun for the short time you are doing it, although there are no actual puzzles to solve, you just go through the motions. Mission 4 "The Golden Path", is one of the lengthier missions, and combines a rewarding systematic approach to infiltrating a location with some action sequences in the second half.

A later mission see you doing what most male Londoners will have done at some point in their lives, stagger around London pubs half drunk with your best mate who you only just met ("I love you mate, it's not the drink talking, it's me!").

Then towards the end of the DLC, you'll tackle a couple of missions that see you playing both twins to achieve the objective, with a kind of tag team approach to getting the job done. Honestly, this works out very well and it brings up the question as to why there are no missions in the main game that both twins embark upon, aside from one close to the every end of the game.

So the DLC is actually quite good. Clearly some thought has gone into bringing some originality to the new set of missions and it means this DLC is definitely worth the value given the price it is up for sale today, which is around 2-3 pounds/euros/dollars. That's apparently a 60% discount but I'm not clear if this is a "perpetual discount" or a genuine one. I'm not sure I'd pay "full price" for it, presumably around ten pounds/euros/dollars, and feel satisfied.

Reasonably good fun, some wacky bugs. Worth a discounted purchase.

This review of the DLC does have to come with a warning, The Last Maharaja does come with some pretty interesting bugs. Most of them are fairly benign, like seeing the Maharaja moonwalk into the side of your train hideout carriage, but there are some more serious ones.

After completing one mission, I had to force quit the game and restart because Jacob was just standing there and wouldn't move. If you brought up the pause menu, it only brought up the basic pause screen for a cutscene, but with no option to skip, so all I could do was force quit the game. Luckily no progress was lost.

The far more serious bug, however, threatened my entire savegame for the entire game, not just the DLC. In the mission "The Good Send-Off", when you are the first part of the mission on the boat, it's possible to dive off the front of the boat only to end up in the water "in the boat" or rather, inside the bounds of the boat rather than next to it. This happened to me, and I naturally went to restart checkpoint, and this started an endless reload loop. When looking this up on the Internet, I found that this seriously game breaking bug has been around since the DLC was first released in 2016, and is still not patched.

If this happens to you, the solution that work for me was posted by DahsWaLLker on the Ubisoft Forum thread: Assassin's Creed Syndicate Darwin mission endless loop, which is as follows:

It took a few tries though, here's exactly what I did in case it can help someone:
1. Load into the game. Wait out the white loading screen.
2. Once it gets to the black screen and the loading icon starts rotating press windows key.
3. After exactly 40* seconds I popped back into the game and pressed ESC as soon as possible and it opened the pause menu.
4. Quit the memory.
* YMMV - too soon looped, too late looped but said your ally died

So this is a pretty serious bug to remain unpatched since 2016, but then in all seriousness, it's not unlike Ubisoft to just give up on fixing serious game issues and just pretend they don't exist any more.

The bugs are a shame, because the only other even slightly negative thing to say about the DLC is that it's available to play right before the main game mission where you get introduced to the Maharaja, so you can end up going on a full blown adventure with him and then be introduced to him during the next main game mission.

Despite the avoidable negatives, the DLC is  great fun, even the most serious bugs can be worked-around (thankfully, it's not nice fearing for your entire savegame), and its currently good value!

DLC: Jack the Ripper

This DLC is the largest of Syndicate, and also the most famous not just for Syndicate but for the whole series, with some players saying it is the best DLC of all the AC games. I very much looked forwards to playing this one.

Story-wise, there's not a lot that needs to be said without resorting to spoilers. 20 years after the events of the main game, Jack the Ripper is at large and you work in parallel to the police in trying to bring him down.

The scope of the DLC is equivalent to the previously largest DLC to date, the Freedom Cry DLC in Black Flag. There's a "new" mini-version of the main game map to pursue, which is actually two boroughs of London we saw in the main game, but 20 years later there are obviously a lot of changes. There's also 3 mission-specific side areas which have a few additional collectibles as well. The skill upgrades are also a also mini-version of the main game, with seven additional skills to unlock.

A major new mechanic in the DLC is the fear system, where you can terrify enemies so that they do all sort of rash things, most simply running away, but terrify them enough and they may shoot their allies in panic.

The yellow smoke depicts the fear effect. Every baddy gets a fear indicator over their heads.

The other biggest new and creepy feature of the DLC is that on occasion, you actually play as the Ripper himself. You are obliged to carry out the Ripper's goals whilst at the same time feeling that you are in fear for his quarry, but obviously knowing that the game won't proceed unless you do it, you carry out his macabre plans and wonder what will happen to his victims. This element of the DLC is probably the most powerful in terms of developing the main story.

The investigation system that featured heavily in Unity and was only lightly used in Syndicate and the other DLCs returns here as well. With the Ripper being extremely elusive, you revisit crime scenes in an effort to find any clue as to the motives and location of the Ripper. There's no real decision making to be done here, it's just a case of stitching the clues together, but it still works very well as part of the overall set of main missions.

Side missions are completely revamped and new. Anything similar to the borough-specific side missions in the main game has new twists to it, and there are some all new side missions. The kidnapping side mission is now related to dealing with and shaming customers of the brothels who treat the women like dirt. You have to lead the culprits squirming through crowds of people in the back alleys so that everyone can see who he is and he can feel shame for his actions. The mission seeing you bringing suspects back for police questioning is also different. The suspects are now coming voluntarily, but that is because with all the hysteria about the Ripper, being seen as a suspect is tantamount to a death sentence by public lynching, so you have to bundle these people into your carriage and then drive them back to the police station raising as little attention as possible.

There's around 6 or so additional side mission types that become available as you progress through the main story, so it's a significant source of additional content and gameplay in the DLC.

As far as the main story and missions go, I'd say the writing is quite good. It starts off especially strong in the opening sequences, but for me it did feel like it boiled down into some routine as the story went on. There's one main development that I guess is meant to feel like a twist, but really the game telegraphs this the whole time. Also, despite the Rippers apparently amazing abilities to remain elusive, in the end tracking him down feels rather routine.

The Ripper DLC is definitely one of the most memorable in the series

Overall, the Jack the Ripper is pretty good. It's obvious a lot of thought has gone into it throughout, with a lot of original ideas and mechanics and very little in the way of empty filler. It's definitely one of the best DLCs but then it's also one of the largest alongside Freedom Cry, so you'd expect more from it. But if you are a person who is generally thoughtful about spending additional money on DLCs or Season Passes, then Jack the Ripper is definitely worth it for Syndicate.

Review Score

I admit that I may well be biased due to my real-life proximity to the setting of the game, but for me, playing Syndicate is a return to the great fun I had when playing the Assassin's Creed 2 trilogy. I wouldn't say the game reaches the absolute heights that series did, but I consider Syndicate to definitely be the best Assassin's Creed game since Revelations, so it gets a score of 4 accordingly.

The Assassin's Creed Series: Assassin's Creed Unity + DLC

Context

Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Rogue were both released on the same day for the previous gen (PS3 and equivalent) and next gen (PS4 and equivalent) consoles. Having played the series in order so far, I was happy enough to play Rogue initially and then wait a little while for Unity. A decision that soon evidently became a wise one as widespread reports of serious graphical and game breaking bugs came out shortly after Unity's release.

I completed Rogue, and I thought it was okay, but with Rogue being a copy and paste of the Black Flag engine, and Black Flag not exactly setting me alight, despite its initially great seafaring gameplay, I was starting to get a bit lukewarm about the series. It seemed to me at this stage that Ubisoft was really starting to treat the Assassin's Creed franchise as a cash cow to keep churning out the games and rake the money in from mugs like me.

But Unity couldn't be like that, because it was reported that Ubisoft had developed a brand new engine for the next gen consoles and in fact they'd been working on it from around the time Assassin's Creed III was in development. So with a brand new engine, it couldn't possibly just be more of the same.

I had high hopes for Unity, I stayed positive about the numerous bug reports as teething problems with the brand new engine. Ubisoft were churning out the patches so the hope was that with Unity having been out for 6 or so months, that the main issues would be fixed and the game could be enjoyed as intended.

This one is a very lengthy review, and unfortunately not for good reasons.

Thankfully most of the bugs in the game at launch have now been patched.

The Setting

Unity is set mainly in Paris during the time of the French Revolution (end of the 18th century). With the return of the series to a capital city, it is a return back to the kind of scenery and adventures we last saw when romping around as Ezio, with a very high density of buildings often pressing together, and canopies, balconies, tethered ropes and historical churches and architecture. It really is a return back to the start of the series, and a very welcome one. Running around the streets and across the rooftops feels very similar to the kind of adventures Ezio used to have.

A "real gameplay" shot of Paris. It's a lot more detail than previous AC games!

With the time being of the revolution, this is, of course, a major point of French history and therefore there is a wealth of interesting events and historical figures to be seen and met. Content wise, our cup should runneth over.

The final interesting point about the time and setting is that Unity literally begins at the ending of Rogue. I won't give away spoilers by explaining what happens, but at the start of Unity you see the same events that happened at the end of Rogue from the point of view of Arno Dorian, who is the main character in Unity.

The events just described have a huge impact on Arno, and likely his slack cavalier attitude he has as a young man is him compensating, or rather, failing to come to terms with what happened in his childhood. Of course, this is an Assassin's Creed game, so the cliché of series events happening to Arno when young, ends up changing his course in life and cementing him into the Brotherhood.

The Gameplay

The very first thing that strikes you with Unity is the graphics. I thought Rogue was a pretty decent looking game, but Unity renders Rogue a sad relic of previous generation consoles. The amount of detail in Unity is amazing compared to its predecessors, everything looks better, just everything! People's faces are much more lifelike and expressive, people's movements more fluid, environments much more detailed, lighting much more dynamic, and there are way, way more pedestrians and bystanders. The citizens of Paris form literal crowds of 100s of people, with all the noise, chatting and shouting, Paris feels alive!

A real example of the level of crowds you'll see in Unity!

Maybe it is getting used to playing through all the previous games again as I have, but I felt that even though Unity is 6 years old, the graphics blew me when from the very first moment I started playing.

Purely from a visual perspective, very little lets down this new level of graphics. Texture or model pop-in is a minimum, it happens infrequently enough that it is very noticeable on the fairly rare occasion it does happen. The detail of the environment never lets up. Same goes for the lighting, now when you step out from the catacombs under Paris into daylight, the screen goes bright as if your eyes are adjusting to the new light levels.

The sound effects live up to the graphical environment, although the audio doesn't stand out itself. The music in the game is fairly generic as well with typical but forgettable battle music and other background jingles. As with Black Flag and Rogue, there are songs of the era as sung by the commoners, but whereas Black Flag's shanties were particularly catchy, again, most of Paris's songs are forgettable (although to be fair, it's not a fair comparison with Paris's songs being, of course, in French, and me not speaking a word of it).

So having gotten over the graphics, the next most important thing in an Assassin's Creed game - what's the parkour like and, in particular, have they finally fixed it?

Well, it's not a yes or no answer I'm afraid.

Some of the parkour mechanics are definitely better. The biggest improvements are essentially in relation to free flow running and parkour once you are off the ground. If you are climbing up buildings, running across rooftops, or jumping across buildings at speed, then in general, the gameplay has returned to being pretty good fun and, as with the setting and all those densely packed buildings, it feels like it did with Ezio.

The other improvement is that the ascend and descend buttons have returned. These features were last seen in Assassin's Creed: Revelations when we were playing as Ezio, and let you generally indicate if you want to generally be moving up or down when bounding across balconies and rooftops. It is a welcome and long overdue return, when it works. But what it definitely has solved is that Arno doesn't make completely daft decisions about where to jump next like Edward and Shay did. With those two, you'd be running along a rooftop expecting to bound to the next, but instead they would drop to a low beam that you didn't even know was there. Arno does not do that, and that is a huge improvement.

However, running along the ground still suffers a lot of the same problems previous games did. Arno will randomly hop up on barrels, building corners and other obstacles rather than run around them. If you go to run under a low rope, like a washing line, Arno will jump on top of it rather than run under it, which is just daft, and he'll do that every single time.

The other mild frustration is that Arno unfortunately feels very sluggish to move around. This sluggishness also applies to combat, but in the case of parkour, you often feel like you are jamming down the button commanding Arno to move, waiting for him to do what he is bloody told. Sometimes you'll even feel like mashing the button in the attempt to get your point across. Arno frequently pauses and stops when you are trying to move him around, and there are occasions when he outright won't follow the command you are issuing to him. I've had several cases of Arno refusing to jump back off a wall on to the wall behind even though it should be a perfectly valid move.

But that is not the worst thing. The worst thing about the parkour in Unity is that whilst Arno generally does well when in full flow, moving him around when you want to make finer adjustments is terrible. It's so bad it actually seriously impacts the stealth elements of the game. You can be hanging on a wall, trying to work your way up to the top of a ledge so you can ledge kill the enemy above you, and instead of edging up, Arno will flip up 2 metres and completely expose himself to the enemy, alerting the enemy and all surrounding enemies to his presence. I hope you didn't want that mission challenge of not raising any alarms!

Which brings us to stealth, it's bad in Unity, to the point where it is about 25% as usable as previous installments. Stealth in AC games used to be something you could actually rely on, but they broke it badly in Unity.

• Whistling to attract guards is gone. This renders the immobile cover in the game, namely the haystacks and the cupboards you can hide in, mostly useless, as you'll be lucky if even one guard walks close enough to these things for you to stealthily kill them.
• There is no cover you can move around in. No tall grass or crops you can creep around in.
• You can't pick up bodies at all. The enemies stay where you killed them, until they just disappear after a while.
• Enemies that see dead guards do not behave like before. In previous games they would come to investigate, in Unity, they often just stand there and stare at the body.. until the body randomly disappears after a time, then they'll return to their previous routine.
• There is a new cover mechanic in the game, where you can press a button to hug a building corner or wall next to an open door. Most of the time this works, but if you are trying to cover next to, say, a square crate, Arno may decide to take cover round the side of the crate rather than behind it, and in full view of the guard you are trying to hide from. Other times you'll press the cover key, and Arno will do nothing (that sluggishness of controls again).

Parkour has its improvements and new failings in Unity, Stealth is just generally nerfed all round. So what about open combat?

Stealth has been rendered almost useless in Unity.

Generally, open combat is actually better. The block/parry mechanic is now much better and reliance on timing is now much more important. You can block a move such that you avoid damage if you get the button press in, but if you block at just the right time, you'll actually parry and counter and leave your opponent open for further attacks.

Another improvement is the realism of being ganged up on. Previous AC games would have the enemies almost queuing up to attack you, you might have 4 around you but they'd politely take it in turns. In Unity, if you get a few guards around you, you stand a high chance of being overwhelmed. Also, enemies with guns are much more likely to shoot you several at a time if they surround you, and you can die very quickly as a result, because there's no ability to dodge or counter gunshots as seen in previous games.

In fact, the combat could be considered excellent, if Arno's awful sluggishness didn't come into play again. Sometimes you'll press the block button in plenty of time, but Arno does nothing and gets hit. Sometimes enemies will string two or three attacks together, and if you miss the first one you should be able to block the second, but you'll get instances of Arno just deciding not to block at all whilst your health gets stripped off you.

In frantic combat, you can rely on medicine to restore your health back to full, and its instantaneous, which gives a nice flexibility to those who either rush in (not me), get exposed by Arno's dodgy stealth (that would be me) or foolishly decide not to run away and instead stand and fight a small army (also me). You can carry up to 5 medicines, and this can make very difficult fights possible or really hammer in the message that you should run away.... As long as it actually works, and you avoid getting stripped down to your last bit of health, press the heal button, nothing happens, then you get shot or stabbed and die.

Dieing because Arno's doesn't respond to using medicine happens all too often. You will die in Unity, more so than previous games, and probably at least 50% of that will be Arno just not doing what he's told.

So well done Ubisoft, you've improved the parkour so that it's not a constant thorn in the player's side that persists through the entire game, turning a fun game into a sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating game. In Unity, the player gets that experience with the combat instead.

And there's a lot of combat, because the stealth is so crap.

A Total Mess

We've covered the usual suspects of parkour, stealth and combat, which is generally what my reviews are about, but there's more crap to cover in Unity. We need to talk about the content and collectibles.

On the plus side, there is a lot of variation in the basic mission types in Unity. You've got the main missions, of course, and the collectibles. But there are also murder mystery investigations, Nostradamus Enigmas to solve (similar to glyphs in Ezio's time), clubs to renovate and club missions to complete to start building up steady income, a hugely expanded weapons and armour system (a lot more of each, and armour is now broken down into components like hood, chest, gloves, etc).

But there is the absolute horror of the multiplayer aspect that Ubisoft has shoe-horned into this game. There are now side missions dotted about that are intended to be played co-op with other random online players (or it can be your online friends, but for me it is random players). When I played Unity first time around I gave up on these, because frankly 80% of online players play like idiots and screw up the mission, dying several times on the way.

Now I give these a try today, not only do you still have that problem with the other players, but you'll be lucky to find other players in the first place. I am guessing Unity is not a widely played game today. Also, you'll go to start a particular co-op mission, you'll find other players and think "Great, at least I can play it this time." Then when the mission loads, you discover you aren't in the co-op mission you tried to start, the game has dumped you into a different co-op mission that the other player was in.

Why do I want to try and start a particular co-op mission, just to be shoved, without warning, into a completely different mission?

So, guess what, I'm not bothering with co-op missions this time around either.

Collectibles are also a huge pain in the arse in Unity. There's Tricolore Cockades dotted around the city. It's not clear what relevance they are, but I think collecting them adds to your ongoing revenue stream. They only appear on the map once you get close to them, which is a bit of a pain actually, but you can buy a map of cockades and maps in the online store using Helix credits. Helix credits are Ubisoft's micro-transactions for Unity (lucky us, we are invited to spend even more money on this game for some mild conveniences) but luckily you do earn some Helix credits in game as well, meaning you can buy the map without spending any real world money.

So, talking about the chests, they are dumb. They are partly dumb because you have white chests which are unlocked, and red chests which are not only locked, but locked to 1 of 3 different levels of difficulty. It's theoretically possible to pick the lock which is one level above your lockpicking skill, but a monumental pain in the arse to do so. The kicker is, you can only unlock lockpick level 3 when you have completed sequence 9, so you have completed around three quarters of the main missions.

A large portion of collectibles and even some main missions boil down to "find the open window"

So in previous games I like to scour the collectibles of every location as I visited them for the first time. Ubisoft force me out of that habit in Unity, you might as well just pick up stuff near you until you get to sequence 10 and you can get that lockpick skill, because a lot of red chest have enemies next to them you have to fight before you can open the chest, imagine the frustration of killing 4 enemies and then finding you don't have the lockpick skill for this one.

And occasionally, just occasionally, you'll go to a white chest location, only to find it behind a locked door! What the frick is the point of having an unlocked chest, marked white on the map, stuck behind a locked door.

So systematically going for the chests until you have lockpick 3 is a frustrating business.

And that is not even the worst of the collectibles, oh no!

When Unity first came out, it used to have a companion app. You could download an app to your android or iOS device and play subgames in it, which used to unlock additional rewards in the main game. But the companion app was long since discontinued by Ubisoft, so they patched the rewards in the main game to be always available.

So now you have gold chests and blue chests that were rewards from the companion app, but you can treat these like white chests, no big deal.

But you also have Nomad points, which sometimes you can collect and sometimes you can't (no one explains why) and it doesn't matter anyway because they were only of use in the companion app. But Ubisoft didn't patch them out to avoud confusing new players.

And the missing companion app is still not the worst of the collectibles.

Unity has another mini game type called Helix Rifts. You get forced through each of the three basic scenarios once as part of the main story, but you can return to them to collect points, save assassins and unlock rewards. These Rifts have collectibles called artifacts, which are similar to the coats of arms you can "collect" in the main game. But the helix rifts are timed events where generally there is a bunch of crap going on around you whilst you do what you need to do to beat the level, or perhaps, try and find the artifacts.

But if the timed aspect of the rifts and the general chaos doesn't get to you, well Ubisoft has you covered, because the artifacts are in fixed positions, but may randomly appear or not appear based on no particular reason. So if you are trying to systematically hunt these down, perhaps using an online guide, not only do you have the difficulty of trying to find the exact position of the artifact amongst all the chaos, but you might even be in the right place but the artifact has decided not to show up. The online guides will tell you to just restart checkpoint and try again, but after restarting checkpoint and going to the spot that you think is the right spot 10 times in a row, it all starts to wear very thin.

This review is long enough by now. There are still failings in the game we haven't covered, but rather than continue to discuss them at length, I'll just summarise them as follows:

• The level design is appalling. Let's hunt for the open window or door for the 25th time, or find which of the 4 underground entrances goes to that last underground chest (clue, it's the 5th entrance not marked on the map). The developers seemed to think this kind of bollocks is a valid "puzzle" mechanic. It's not, it's tedious and boring.
• Arno and his story are never developed beyond shallow characters. We never really find out anything that motivates him apart from covering his guilt for the death of Elise's father, and Elise herself.
• All the content in the original release that has since been removed, such as the Companion App and the Initiates subgame, are still referenced in the game documentation.
• The later and most difficult side missions basically make themselves difficult by having you go point X and enter an area surrounded by 20 soldiers and snipers. With the broken stealth mechanics,you have zero chance to successfully take them all out one by one, so you *will* get spotted and there is a high chance you'll have 15 soldiers and snipers all descend on you, attacking and shooting you all at once. A stealth game with no realistic option for stealth... great!
• The cover system just randomly doesn't work at all. You can slip through a doorway getting noticed by a guard, and as the guard slowly approach and are pressing the button to cover, Arno will just stand there.
• Early in the game, the only collectible that might have guards would be the locked chests, and this is fair enough as being predictable and used in balance. In the most difficult areas of the game, the majority of collectibles are surrounded by guards and/or in restricted areas, meaning to get them now, you go from collectible to collectible having to chew through guards, get shot at, just to pick something up.

Broken stealth and areas swarming with guards doesn't leave a lot of options.

Summary

Even in Black Flag, which was the only game I didn't bother getting 100% sync in on the main missions, I did absolutely everything else. With it's shitty co-ops missions and shitty rift collectibles, it's just all too much. I played the the main missions without replaying any for the challenges, completely skipped the co-op missions and the rift collectibles, and did everything else. To be honest, even with doing everything else, like getting all the main game collectibles, I did this out of a sense of completionist duty (having done it in all previous games) rather than actually having any fun. I contemplated just finishing the main missions and then jacking it all in several times, but in the end persisted. I don't know why I did it to myself.

Unity, without any doubt at all, remains the absolute worst game in the entire series. It seems as if Ubisoft tried to be very ambitious with what they did in Unity, and they failed very very badly. Unity is a steaming pile of sluggish controls, broken multiplayer, cheap tricks to add difficulty and length to the game, an absolute mess of side missions and collectibles with no soul at all.

When I played this game first time around, it was Unity that caused me to chuck in the towel and decide that I'm not buying any more Assassin's Creed games any more. Ubisoft were cash cowing the franchise on the previous gen. With the next gen release Ubisoft could have done so much with it, but what they actually did was release a broken mess, which they then spent some time trying to fix whilst encouraging you to spend money on the micro-transactions, but ultimately it seems they just cut their losses, patched the game to unlock the collectibles you previously needed to work for, and just left it

So, back when I originally finished Unity first time around, I decided I'm not buying any more Assassin's Creed games.

DLC  - Dead Kings

Heaven help us, because there is a DLC that continues the story of Arno.

With the first mission, we're not off to the best start as far as glossing over the fundamental issues of Unity goes. You have to enter an area surrounded by guards, and the optional challenge is not to enter open combat. In any previous entry in the series this would have been a routine challenge, but in Unity with broken cover mechanics, sluggish controls and the inability to safely lure guards over to you, most of the challenge comes from wrestling with the minimal set of options available to you. The very problem with stealth in Unity is that more often than not, you end up in open combat because of its failings.

Apparently Arno is well known in Franciade, judging by passers by who mention his name in greeting the same as they do in Paris. However, I don't believe the lore in the game ever has Arno visiting Franciade before, so this is a nice little immersion breaking feature of the DLC that could easily have been removed with a bit of attention to detail, but I suppose hoping for attention to detail in this game is like hoping for a bit of peace and quiet in an aircraft carrier.

Newpaper clipping icons appear all over the map, and I assumed this was some kind of new collectible. However, after collecting about 15 or so and realising they all say the same thing, I confirmed one icon on the map that I already collected, so now we have the joy of there being 1 newspaper article scattered throughout the map in the DLC, which the game invites you to collect over and over again. I assume this is yet another stupid little bug wrought from lack of attention to detail.

The Dead Kings DLC is the best part of Unity.

Despite the issues, I was starting to enjoy the DLC. The side missions seem a bit more interesting and some even a little bit "tombraider-y" and the main mission stories weave some intrugue. However, upon completing sequence 2, a new side mission is revealed, the "outpost". There's no explanation for how these come about or what relevance they have to the plot, but basically they are just areas in the map with 3 officers you have to target and a whole bunch of guards. Because the stealth mechanics are so broken in the game, and the way they pack the baddies into relatively small areas, these missions are basically fighting missions, where the best approach is to try and take the guards on a few at a time, and if loads come at you, find a small space you can bottleneck them into. I don't know how these outpost missions are considered a good idea, and in my opinion, it is yet another soulless time consuming addon intended to just stretch the length of the game out.

So are there any positives with the Dead King DLC? Well, there are a few. For one, the side missions that have any actual plot (i.e. not the outpost missions) feel more stitched together alongside the main plot. Franciade is obviously a mysterious and spiritual places with its huge cathedral, tombs and catacombs, and the side missions all exploit this setting.

Also, the main story itself actually ties into the overarching theme of Assassin's Creed with the precursor race. Whilst that is good for the DLC, it highlights that the plot of the main game is completely separate from any relevance to the overall plot of the series. If it wasn't for the DLC, Arno has no impact on the grand scheme of things except the rise and fall of the local Assassins and Templars. It quite annoys me that Ubisoft reserve the story that is more impactful of the series to what was previously a paid add-on, but then that is how Ubisoft seemed to treat the series at this point in time, churn out the games, entice them back in with some paid-ons, move to the next one.

The DLC had a tough act to follow to lower the bar even further from the main game, it doesn't do this, and actually it's a bit better, albeit obviously shorter.

Review Score

Although the DLC is probably the best part of Unity, it doesn't "save" it. If you were ever going to skip playing any of the games in the series, this would be the best candidate. Unlike pretty much every other Assassin's Creed game up this point, not knowing what happens in Unity doesn't really leave you losing out on any of the lore or impact of the other games.

To summarise, I think Unity is a steaming turd of a game and symbolic for how Ubisoft has been using the series as a vehicle for extracting cash from idiots like me, who had been keeping the faith so far. A minimum score of 1 out of 5. Where does the series go from here? It literally can't get any worse.