Assassin's Creed: Unity

Graphics / Presentation

Let's start with the big obvious element first. Unity is the first Assassin's Creed game made exclusively for the PS4 and Xbox One, and, as such, has a lot to prove, at least technically speaking. Does the tech of the new generation actually make a difference? On the surface, yes, absolutely. Unity is gorgeous. While the crowds of literally hundreds of people rendered in real time don't actually look that impressive, more front-and-center details shine. Arno's parkour animation is incredibly smooth and realistic, rivaling even the Uncharted series. The detailed swaying and flapping of Arno's coat as he runs and climbs looks so good that it's distracting. Characters during cutscenes are probably the best-looking video game characters ever. Seriously, somehow Ubisoft actually managed to make even kissing look realistic in Unity.

Where Unity visually fails is in its overall style. Color-wise, Unity is the blandest Assassin's Creed game by far. The sky of Paris is nearly always overcast, and the buildings are various shades of gray and tan. There are plenty of gorgeous opulent mansion interiors to explore, but most of them look identical on the inside, as though they're all cut-and-pasted versions of one another with different layouts (hint: they are).

There's a general sameness to Unity. Unlike the cities in Assassin's Creed II or the various ports in Black Flag, France in Unity pretty much always looks the same. Paris is where you spend 95% of your time in Unity, and it's basically the same almost everywhere. Which wouldn't be a problem if Paris were any more than mildly visually appealing... but it's not.

Paris is simply not an interesting place to visit in Assassin's Creed. After exploring the Crusades-era Holy Land, Renaissance-era Italy, and the glory days of piracy in the Caribbean, Paris—even during the French Revolution—just seems too close to our modern Western world to be interesting. Instead of a fascinatingly different world, Unity gives us a world that's perhaps too "normal." Maybe if the basic gameplay had been changed more from previous AC games, this wouldn't be much of a problem—but Unity relies heavily on its world and story to carry it, which can only go so far.


Gameplay

Unity is very paint-by-the-numbers Assassin's Creed. If you've played Assassin's Creed II, you've basically played Unity. Unity does have most of the advancements from Assassin's Creed III and IV, which aren't unwelcome, but it doesn't do much with them. There is one great addition, however: downward parkour. Instead of jumping off the side of a building or looking for a haystack to fall into every time you want to descend from high up, just hold the right trigger and Circle/B and watch Arno naturally find a path of descent—or hold X/A to have him ascend.

In any other Assassin's Creed game, this level of control over verticality would be a big deal. But Unity's geometry is so complex—with ridged corners, windows, etc.—that it's just not enough. It doesn't break the parkour very often, but it keeps the vertical control functions from being anything more than a small convenience, rather than a true progression.

The biggest new element of Unity is the focus on multiplayer co-op gameplay. The cover of the game, in fact, shows Arno barely more prominent than the three other assassins next to him. The co-op missions are... well, it's nice that they're there, but they're not super-great, mostly because this is Assassin's Creed, where precision doesn't really exist and deadly accidents happen as often as amazing moments. So having multiple players running around only increases the chances of something going wrong.

Lastly, there's the big elephant in the room that every other review of Unity you'll read talks about but I haven't mentioned yet. Unity is rife with technical problems. Bugs, glitches, performance problems, etc. Or at least it was. I played Unity after the fifth major patch to the game, so the vast majority of the game's issues were gone. There were definitely a few glitches, however. Ever so often a weird visual glitch would occur—an object randomly floating in the air, a set of swords lying in the middle of the street with no guards there to hold them (#TheGuardRaptureIsNigh #BlameItOnTheAnimus), an enemy that wouldn't react to Arno, stuff like that. During a co-op game, both my teammate and I found that we were unable to engage enemies in combat whatsoever, leading us to run around enemies instead of fighting them, turning the whole thing into a level of Pac-Man. The game crashed twice—freezing the PS4 in one case.

Those bugs might sound like a big deal, and they certainly weren't nothing, but they were the exception to the overall experience, not the rule. On the whole, Unity worked really well. It wasn't an amazingly fun game, but it was mildly good.


Story

Unity is set during the French Revolution, but doesn't interact with its history in the same way that Assassin's Creed III deals with the American Revolution. The French Revolution only serves as a backdrop for the real story, which largely focuses on the relationship between Arno and Elise.

Without getting spoilery, Arno's story is filled with hints of classic romance and revenge stories: Romeo and Juliet; The Count of Monte Cristo; a tiny bit of The Phantom of the Opera. Arno and Elise have a complex relationship, which is represented very well. Their interactions feel real—more real than just about any other relationship in Assassin's Creed—and their story is legitimately interesting. It might not be interesting enough, however, to support the entirety of Unity. An entire civilization is having a revolt in the background while Arno and Elise try to solve a murder mystery. It's not that their story doesn't deserve to be told, it's just that it seems strange for a story this small and intimate to be given the massive stage that Unity provides. Unfortunately, the ending to the story feels a bit empty, predictable, and meaningless. In fact, the modern-era portion of the story—what little of it exists in Unity—actually ends up directly pointing out that the story of Unity does not matter whatsoever in any large extent. Arno's story matters only to itself, really, which should be enough... but I'm not sure it is, in the end. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad I played the game. I enjoyed it, and the story was probably my favorite part. I only wish that in the end, it had been a great story rather than just a decent one.


"Pretty decent" describes Unity overall. It's a mishmash of epicness and blandness; of good ideas and a lack of ideas. If you go in with low expectations, you should be pleased, maybe even pleasantly surprised. If you go in with high expectations after the epic wonderfulness of Black Flag... go back and play Black Flag again.

At the very least, Unity is better than Assassin's Creed: Rogue. It's better than all of the "bad" games in the AC library, really. It's in an unfortunate middle ground, but it definitely leans far more towards the positive. It's good mild fun.


7/10

Assassin's Creed: Rogue

Rogue is, putting it plainly, a lower-budget "spin-off" Assassin's Creed game meant to capitalize on the last-gen console market while Assassin's Creed: Unity makes its mark on next-gen (current-gen?) consoles. It's by and large a decent game that does nothing at all to expand the gameplay of Assassin's Creed, but does everything the previous games did pretty well—for the most part.


Story

The big "twist" in Rogue is that the protagonist, Shay Cormac, begins his story as an Assassin, but quickly switches sides and joins the Templars. It's an interesting idea, and it's nice that it was tried, but it comes off as slightly manufactured and odd.

In as simple and spoiler-free a way as possible, this is how the story progresses: Shay has a moral issue with the Assassins, leading him to betray them and flee the guild. He later meets the Templars, who he finds to be pretty nice folks all around. He then sets off on a long quest to kill all his old Assassin friends.

The problem with the story is that it hinges upon Shay's motivation, which is stupid. The conflict between Shay and the Assassins is based on confusion more than anything else. The Assassins barely even understand why Shay betrays and attacks them, and he doesn't know for sure that they're actually evil—at worst, they're somewhat ignorant. Both sides essentially just point fingers and declare the other evil without talking anything out.
Also, Shay joins the Templars for "moral reasons," but somehow misses the fact that the Templars he's working with are cruel murderers. A few Templars in Rogue seem to be legitimately good people, but others are characters we've seen be horrible villains in other games—yet somehow Shay just doesn't seem to notice all the evil. Shay doesn't come across as very smart—which may be intended by the story—but still, it becomes very hard to appreciate Shay's moral resolve when we know he's on the wrong side.

That said, there are still moments where the story is entertaining. It does a decent job of connecting Assassin's Creed III, IV, and Unity, creating an overall continuity that works pretty well. Seeing both the beginning of Unity and the ending of Rogue is a really cool experience.

The "modern-day" story in Rogue is completely pointless. I won't even go into it.


Visual Presentation

Graphics-wise, it looks near-identical to Black Flag, though it seems to run at a lower frame rate for much of the time. The same motion capture animation and voice acting is there at the same level of quality.

The art style is where Rogue's visuals suffer the most. Instead of the lush, colorful Caribbean, we're treated to colonial New England in Winter. Lots and lots of wooden houses, snow, and random icebergs. It's not all that pretty.


Music

The music is above average for a video game, but on the lower end of Assassin's Creed scores. After Black Flag's rousing main theme and sea shanties, this one just feels "there." Like Jack in the Box. But without clever commercials.


Gameplay

There is almost literally nothing in Rogue, on a mechanical level, that wasn't already in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. A few things are borrowed from other games in the AC series—like Brotherhood's ability to take over gang hideouts—but on the whole Rogue is basically Black Flag's gameplay set in the New England world of Assassin's Creed III.

In the end, Rogue doesn't even come close to living up to Black Flag's example, but it's not as abysmal as 3, either. One of the core ideas that made Black Flag work so well was the pirate theme. Edward Kenway was a likable roguish captain who didn't much care for being an Assassin unless it suited him at the time, almost encouraging players to have fun and explore rather than be bogged down by the story. On the other hand, Rogue's seafaring gameplay actually seems to contradict the story. Unlike Edward, Shay Cormac isn't a sailor. He only uses a boat to get from Point A to Point B, sometimes with sea battles in-between. Also unlike Edward, Shay is motivated purely by his desire to fight the Assassins, making all the side quests and collecting somewhat contradictory pursuits.


I realize that so far, my review has been almost entirely negative. I don't mean to say that this is a bad game by any means. It's a decent game for sure. The problem is that it's almost literally an inferior version of a better game.

Should you play Assassin's Creed: Rogue? If you're a completionist, yes. Otherwise, go play Black Flag instead. If you've already played Black Flag, play it a second time.

6/10