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| Assassin's Creed Unity looks great! |
The game is the first franchis of the serie that makes full use of the advanced features of the next-generation consoles PS4 and XBox One. Especially noticeable is the advanced A.I, with the big crew you see in the game. It was said that the crew is around over 5.000 (!) in Unity!
The game is set in the end of the 18th century Paris during the french revolution. You play as Arno Victor Dorian. A young man unaware that his real father was an Assassin, killed by the former Assassin being a rogue Templar by the name Shay Patrick Cormac (the prostagonic of Assassin's Creed Rogue for XBox 360 and Playstation 3), and raised by an adoptic family being a Templar. Arno seeks out the truth behind the revolution and also falls in love in a Templar female. Together they battle their way for the truth.
One thing that is new in the game is the new parkour, being able to free-run up or down walls in ways not seen in any of the other Assassin's Creed games that dominated the last generation consoles like XBox 360 and Playstation 3.
Unity is based on a much more advanced Anvil engine allowing 3 new features. The new more advanced parkour, a brand new Stealth technic and much more advanced combat system. Allow me to explain how these work in the game. Here we go.
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| An Assassin and Templar in love |
The new parkour style
The new parkour style allows you to have full freedom in how to climb up and down walls, now even sideways, and smoothly diving down to a rope and edge of a low ceiling, only to grab it on reflect, which is so cool and realistic!
Also imagine how it is to climb all the way up the structure of Notre Dame, which is the highest building in Paris during the french revolution. Long before Eiffel Tower was built, of course. A little more on that later on.
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| Investigating a murder in Unity |
The new stealth technic
Another new feature of the new Anvil engine of Unity, is the new Stealth mode, which is a great welcome!
In many missions where you have to infiltrate a heavy-guarded area of a building, tower, church or a palace, you will simply need to use stealth, instead of running out for a kill, gaining far too much attraction and getting stuck in a nasty, difficult trap fighting for your life out of it.
Stealth is much more advanced. You can crop and run smoothly without being detected, either to sneak up into a person to reveal a silent kill, or to avoid them. You can even throw smoke bombs if you get unluckily noticed and have to avoid being alarmed, and even throw cherry bombs to lure the enemies' attraction to somewhere else, allowing you to avoid them easier to your target. Even cover assasinations are pretty cool, as you can hide in a corner or hidden spots, like in a closet or other hiding spots, waiting for the right moment to strike, and still nobody will notice. True stealth assassination!
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| A love trip in a ballon? How romantic! |
The new combat system
The third and last new feature of the new Anvil engine of Unity is of course the new combat system. Combat is much more realistic and advanced.
As you meat different enemies with their own fighthing skills, you also learn new technics as well, based on patience and feel. Instead the way the assassin used to fight in all previous Assassin's Creed games, where the assassin just rushed out, in Unity you read the movements of your enemy and base your fight on the movements of the enemy. Much of the fight is based on parries in the right moment, and then to strike on the right moment. The combination of patience and right technic to defeat the enemy.
Some will be deadly easy to defeat, mostly "lazy" thugs or guards, while other guards or thugs might be more aggressive and have better fighthing skill, being tougher to defeat. Here is why you will need to rely yourself on patience and right moment to strike a blow, by reading your enemy and base your fight on that in order to win.
It becomes more challening and exciting when you have to fight several enemies at once. In such a situation, the parries will be very important. You can also quickly throw a smoke bomb and make quick defeat of several enemies before easily taking out the rest. That is what is so brilliant with Unity. You can find your own way! Full freedom!
Conclusion of Assassin's Creed Unity for XBox One
It should be noted that Unity has had a terrible, troubled release in November 2014, as it seemed the game was rushed out in a bit of a hurry. The game was released with a lot of bugs and unstability. One terrible bug was the loss of faces of both Arno and Elise during the game Unity. Almost skeleton-alike images of them. How awful, isn't it?
Ubisoft, the creators of the Assassin's Creed games received so much critics that they caused the company to re-think the way they reached out to the community and working in games. The critics also caused them to work on several updates to improve the game's gameplay and several problems, erasing as many bugs as possible.
Speaking of updates, while you read this, Patch 4 should be released on Monday 15th of December 2015, and this is the patch that will improve framerate (both PS4 and XB1 version are running 900p at 30fps. 30fps was said to be more "cinematic", while most of us expect full 1080p at full 60fps. XB1 can do 1080p at 60fps, so don't worry).
The patch should also finally bring Unity to a level where everything runs smoothly. Ubisoft has also even promised a free game for the one of us who actually bought the Season Pass or Gold Edition of Unity, and will also receive the Dead Kings DLC (due out soon) and the 2.5D game Assassin's Creed Chronicles China, where you play as the female assassin Shao Jun, during the end of the 14th century in China, whom was trained by the legendary assassin Ezio Auditore Da Firenze! Yes, that's right!
Despite the trouble release of Unity, it has now catched up nicely. The graphic of the game is outstanding, even in 900p 30fps. The architecture is truly that of the 18th century Paris. Both outside and inside the impressive buildings, like Notre Dame.
Paris is really HUGE, and i mean REALLY HUGE! There is plenty of things to do in Paris! Aside the main story about Arno and Elise, you get to seek out secret underground entrances like catacombs and sewers in Paris, several Co-ops missions where you can team up with up to 3 players, solving riddles and grypths, and murders. How exciting!
Solving murders is not always easy, but it has a very logical way to solve them. Investigate the situation, seek out all the informed places, look for all clues, talk with all witness, then read through all clues again in the database for the cases and try to figure out yourself which person would have the best motive to kill in different cases. There is a different murder for all different murder cases, so investigate carefully, and you gain an extra bonus score if you solve the murder by picking the right murder at the first place. It doesn't affect the game, but the small bonus is nice if done right.
It will be even more exciting to receive the DLC Dead Kings, where you take out catacomb raiders in Saint-Deins, outside Paris after the main event of the revolution era, along with more missions in Paris, which should be released soon, while the 2.5D game Assassin's Creed Chronicles China will be released early 2015, to understand.
You will also discover a time anomaly, which during the game will cause a distortion in Animus, suddenly taking Arno to a Nazi-occupied Paris during the Second World War! It's a very nice feature of the game and very interesting revelation of what could happen in Animus, and how this will affect the prostagonic of the game. Most impressive!
In addition to amazing graphic and animations, the game also has realistic sound effects and nice musical score that change with any situation tha happen in the game. The time changing from day to night, sun to rain, is also very realistic and visual stunning! Weather could of course have been more dramatic in the game, like seeing snow, more windblow, thunder and lighting, but then again it's based on the game itself.
Forgot to mention that you can also use poison gas, if you gain it as one of many skills during the game, which you can buy, and you can customize your Arno just like you want to, and use different outfits you open up in the game. It's also very nice to see the possibility of Arno climbing up in rank, to ultimately become a Legend among assassins in the game! That is so cool and something we haven't seen in other AC games.
Phantom blade is another neat feature Arno can equip himself with. A silent, fast variant of the ordinary hidden blade. You can fire out a small, deadly sharp arrow, or even a beserk blade, making an enemy going crazy attacking his friends! Also throwing money to poor people is a very nice possibility in Unity. We want to be good, right?
There was one mission in the game that was so exciting to play. I think it was during the main story of the game, not far away from the end of the game. Arno was to assassinate a politican in a palace. Much of the mission was related on stealth, sneaking pass many of the guards without being detected, and secretly pick-locking some doors to get closer to the main target. Using the Eagle Vision, Arno separated the ordinary red targets with the main target being yellow. Discovered him to be in a room next to the one Arno currently was in after a lot of sneaking around, and also discovered around 4-6 guards protecting the main target outside the target's room. Getting excited, eh?
Playing the mission, i realized i couldn't rush out just like that, even that Arno fully decides himself what method he will use to take out the target, no longer causing a desyncronization of the game, which was the cause with previous AC games in past.
Not the case anymore. You only gain extra small bonus if you do what the mission suggest you to do, but it's you as the player who decides the result, which is cool!
Where was i? Oh yes, that mission in a palace. Well, seeing the guards protecting the main target, i stopped up a little in a corner and took a quick notice of the situation, then i thought "why not shoot first a beserk blade on one of the guards, then a poison gas?" Doing that, i noticed the main target was trying to run away, but he ran straight toward me up in front of Arno, so all i needed to do was to stab him in the chest!
The game is really good and has got better with the updated patches, so if you are like me loving Assassin's Creed games, then this game is a good buy for the money.
Now let take a look on another game for XBox One - Assassin's Creed Black Flag.
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| Blackbeard and Edward - 2 pirates in AC4 |
Assassin's Creed Black Flag
Assassin's Creed Black Flag is the 2013-successor to Assassin's Creed, where you play as the pirate Edward Kenway, grandfather of the prostagonic Connor Kenway in Assassin's Creed 3.
The game is set in early 18th century in Caribbian. The golden era of the pirates. XBox One version of the game is visually more impressive than on XBox 360. Lights, flames, water, trees and weather both look and react much more natural than it does in the last generation version for XBox 360 and Playstation 3. The XBox One version looks and feels really beautiful and enjoyable.
The game runs in 900p at XBox One, but the latest updates on XBox One make the game seem to run now in 60fps, which is what most players expect. However, the game runs really smooth on XBox One, and i love sailing on the sea in Caribbian.
While this game is far from advanced as Unity, the game gives a very nice nostalgic feeling and a lot more open-world, sailing from place to place and engage in sea battles, which is very cool and enjoyable. Also diving under water to avoid sharks, finding hidden treasures and caves can be much more fun than seeking out catacombs and sewers in Unity. I like this kind of open world a lot better than the one in Unity.
Who wouldn't love being in a Caribbian jungle, especially after sunset where the lanterns light beautifully and the heaven baths in glorious shiny colours, with the sun nearly hidden behind the sea in distance? And the nice Caribbian music! Music to ear!
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| The beautiful tropical Caribbian |
We can only hope that the last Assassin's Creed (not the last game itself) for XBox 360 and Playstation 3 - Assassin's Creed Rogue, will be released for XBox One and Playstation 4.
In that game you play as former assassin Shay Patrick Cormac, going into a drastical change in himself after a tragic mission, and ends up betraying the Brotherhood of the Assassins, becoming an Assassin Hunter for the Templar Order, siding with the Grand Master Of The Templars - Haytham Kenway, father of Connor Kenway and son of Edward Kenway. Even more exciting, isn't it?
Assassin's Creed Victory - The Victorian Era Of London?
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| A british Assassin in Victorian London? |
Quite unexpected, a leak occoured at Ubisoft revealing a new Assassin's Creed in the horizon. A game dubbed "Assassin's Creed Victory", which is believed to have a new, english prostagonic playing in the late 19th century London. The Victorian Era.
Ubisoft confirmed the rumour to be true, but also stated it was most unexpected that it should be revealed so soon, with Unity just being nearly 2 months on the market since release. It would however seem that the revelation of Victory as the 2015 Assassin's Creed game, could help a lot after the troubled, buggy release of Unity.
Knowing the game Victory to be a reality, that game will be the second Assassin's Creed game released only for XBox One and PS4, moving completely away from the last generation XBox 360 and PS3. I guess the time has come for that, don't we? Absolutely.
Learning of the troubled release of Unity and with that, changing the way Ubisoft deal with their customers, we are sure to be convinced that Victory will be what Unity should have been already. So there is really something amazing to look forward to!
Victory is believed to be even more impressive, with more extended parkour, stealth and combat. Battles on top of running trains and a brand new, grabbing hook, that will allow the assassin to climb just about everything easily, even grab a rope with the hook and leap right in front of a target to assassinate it! How cool isn't that?
2015 is set to be an amazing year, and a lot of improvement to XBox One and PS4! Assassin's Creed Victory will be the only Assassin's Creed game to be released in 2015, and only for XBox one and PS4, so it will be time to accept a move away from last generation XBox 360 and PS3. That is life, as time only moves forward. Not backward.
Well, that will be all i guess. If you truly love such games and want them beautiful and smooth as possible on the new generation consoles, then buy them! I did for sure!
Who knows? Perhaps you will find something really exciting under your Christmas tree?
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!
Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway