Assassin's Creed: Unity Review

Finally, Assassin Points are essentially skill points used to unlock new gameplay abilities, such as double assassinations, or a new ability to temporarily disguise yourself as an enemy and pass by undetected. These points are earned only via mission progression to help with pacing. On the whole, Unity is the most customizable Assassin's Creed game ever, from gameplay to gear, it often feels like a full-fledged RPG experience.

The biggest reason for this new progression structure is having all your abilities and gear carry over into the new cooperative multiplayer. For the first time, rather than playing online-specific competitive modes in the past games (which are notably absent), Unity offers various missions and heists for up to four players to undertake together. The missions are well designed, with a multitude of pathways for each player and coordination a key requirement for success. You can also utilize unique co-op boosts that will help the whole team survive, evade or fight more effectively. Playing with random partners carries the usual risk of someone going rogue. Get a few friendly faces together, however, and the experience can be incredibly rewarding. With some strategy, such as speccing each player to a certain style (be it ranged, stealth, or brute force), and in-game coordination, the missions can be as great, or even more so than the campaign. Cooperative missions also feature short narratives, and they are surprisingly engaging, giving real urgency to your actions. The thrill of coordinated attacks, taking different paths through a level, and playing with a tight knit team is extremely pleasing.

In the vast open game world of Paris, there's the usual assortment of bite-sized activities. One new type of loot chest is annoyingly inaccessible unless you play the game's companion app. A new side mission type is murder investigations, as Arno observes clues and speaks with various witnesses before making accusations. You've also got puzzles to solve, random events to complete such as stopping street harassment or chasing down thieves. Time Anomalies are located across the city, transporting Arno into a later century Paris where you perform various parkour challenges in order to rescue other agents of the Order. It's a unique concept, but the resulting gameplay is disappointing and has little bearing on the overall experience. These time anomaly missions also crop up during the campaign, but there you are tasked with completing a linear (but often thrilling) platforming sequences.

This is also the only real connection the game makes to the dreaded modern-day storyline. Your whole purpose of following Arno is because he was supposed to come across a Sage during his lifetime, who Abstergo (Templar) agents are hunting across different time eras. With the DNA of a Sage, it is said that the corporation will be able to alter history. You'll get a few cutscenes from within the Helix, and the hacking crew of previous games will tell you about what terrible deeds Abstergo is planning, but that's about it. Considering how unnecessary the modern-day concept has become over the years, it's good to see we are moving slowly but surely towards its complete absence.

Assasin's Creed: Unity marks the debut of the AnvilNext engine, and there's certainly potential in its prowess. The streets of Paris pack more NPCs than ever before; some of the facial textures and animations during cutscenes are impressively lifelike. The amount of indoor environments in this open world title (still without loading screens while traversing the city) is truly an impressive technical feat. The lighting quality can be striking, especially in many of the wildly detailed and numerous indoor environments. Roaming the streets, players will be in awe of the level of detail, number of citizens, and large amount of enterable buildings.

And while the above aspects are impressive, the new engine also struggles noticeably in many areas. The new parkour mechanics and enterable buildings allow players to run right through windows and emerge on the other side. Sadly, Arno often refuses to enter windows and needs careful maneuvering just to get inside. Walking the streets isn't very efficient, because the crowd severely restricts your movement, and there is the new enemy group that will be hostile to Arno on sight, regardless of your actions. Plus, enemies usually won't climb to follow you onto rooftops, so escape is easy.

The visuals, too, can be quite rough. As mentioned, the environments can be impressive combined with great lighting, however there are framerate problems throughout the game. From cutscenes to combat, the game slows down notably at times. Texture streaming problems create ghastly scenes on the streets, as NPCs appear out of thin air and their textures only load when you approach. If you sprint, the game is often unable to keep up rendering all the citizens properly, and the effect is quite jarring and ugly. Unity is easily the most visually inconsistent title to date on Xbox One. Other issues include an overabundance of information popups that often appear out of context or with poor timing. Other occasional floating characters, physics and clothing glitches are also present.

Assassin's Creed: Unity is a solid experience, but one that feels underwhelming as a supposed true next-generation title. The improved gameplay mechanics are accompanied by an okay story and thrilling cooperative play. However, the new engine seems to struggle, and the excellent level of environment detail is lost in the muddy and slow loading textures and unstable framerate. If you're interested in the multiplayer aspects of Unity or its historical setting, the game is easy to recommend. Solo players not usually interested in the franchise, however, probably won't find much here that will change their mind.