Assassin's Creed Unity - Review - [XBOX ONE] - Spoilers

Reviews and stuff are having to be put on the shelf at the moment due to heavy university load so things will come out when I feel up to doing something other than stare at a blank word document...

Assassin's Creed Unity was probably one of the biggest draws for users to upgrade to the next generation systems in the last couple of months only to be disappointed by the outpouring of hate on its initial release. Sold by the 4 player co-op, upgraded visual mechanics and streamlining functions among the French Revolution is very appealing, even if you've never touched an Assassins Creed game. However, Ubisoft have failed once again. Their huge undertaking with new IPs and the double release of the Assassins series left them at loggerheads with their dedicated audience. The time and budget for all of the recent games has really taken a beating and is suffering from CoD syndrome - The same thing every year, repackaged.

This instalment we follow a young man named Arno. As a child you watch his life falls apart with the assassination of his father and being taken into the care of an elderly man and the parent of the red head (Elise) who you chased about in the prologue. Any self respecting fan knows this story of a young man whose rebellion is typically the better of himself. We are looking at a complete Reskin of Ezio. Due to Ezio's huge success, trying to create a character like him was always going to end badly. We saw this with Connor and now with Arno. Both with the likeability of an ice cream in Antarctica. A few years soon pass by for Arno to a time where his adopted father is assassinated right in front of him. His mission now is to avenge the death and find the culprit, only to find something far bigger. Its not a story we haven't seen before but as we have seen in the trailers, the pairing of Elise and Arno from rival factions was something that drew huge attention and criticism. Some wondering why the Assassins have allied with a Templar and others welcoming the change. Although here is the problem, Elise and her Templar upbringing through her father (Arno's adopted parent) were never really implemented in the game for too long. Often enough it was just Arno on his own while this so called deadly Templar ran around uselessly in the background. Her relationship with Arno was heavily played and did add a few layers to him but its full blown impact did very little. (PS - if you can't implement women central characters into the series because it takes too much work, why do we have Elise?)... Then you have the Creed. In all honesty, Arno doesn't need to be there. He plays the central role and everything else does nothing but shout and moan.

The main problems for AC:U don't lie with the story. The majority of it was Ubisoft's incompetence. Its unnecessarily bad glitches that would throw you out of the game, the incredible AI's who would switch between male and female if you walked past them, the AI's that also stood on each others heads and initiated combat for no reason, because they are a general bunch of ass-hats with the competence of a 2 year old. Perhaps the degradation of controls and mechanics that drove many fans insane on their first experience of AC1! Or finally, probably the biggest problem that Ubisoft have; Uplay. The god awful servers and service that it creates has caused many issues for those wanting to play online with friends, but also the blackmail within the game. You cannot progress, unless you have uplay to access extras and you cannot unlock in-game chests if you don't have the AC:Unity companion app on your phone or tablet. Although some achievements are dedicated to getting all the chests, such a task may prove impossible for those with a temper shorter than Warren Davies.

The visual quality expected from a next-gen game is typically quite high and rightfully so. For Ubisoft, this should be plain sailing as long as they avoid the awful shading and waxy features of Black Flag, but noooo. Here we are, with another next generation console game, looking as if its been ported for the previous originally. Characters look awful unless they are in a cutscene and anything from the next upwards looks like every character has elephantiasis. More attention was paid to the AI characters cleavage rather than de-swelling her face from the recent bee attack.

Overall, the game was fucked harder than my bank account. Its terrible gameplay functionality leads the game into the record books for one of the biggest fuck ups this year. Its story was half-baked and its relevance to the Order and the overall arch cannot be seen at this moment. Perhaps the DLC will enlighten many as to where Arno will be soon considering the whole WTF ending. Before I close, I would like to point out a enormous issue I had with a particular "bridging" scene. With its release so close to that of the American's veterans day and the UKs remembrance weekend, climbing the Eifle Tower in occupied France and shooting down Axis forces is far from relateable to the story but also slightly disrespectful at this time of year.