Today is Friday, October 27, 2017, and that means Assassin’s
Creed Origins has been released worldwide! I hope you enjoy your new game while
people in the storm ravaged areas of Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, and beyond
search for missing pets/grandmas, struggle with crippling depression, and fight
to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together. I wonder how many
bottles of clean drinking water $65 could buy?
Also, if you preordered Origins, you get the bonus mission “Secrets of the First Pyramids.” Fun!
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
Release Date: 10/2015. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Syndicate is basically Unity in England with the game set
to “fun” in the options screen. Oh, and also a sweet grappling hook.
The game looks and plays much like its older, buggier
brother, but introduces a pair of main characters that the player can switch between
on the fly. Meet brother and sister duo Jacob and Evie Frye, who bring slightly
different skills to the table. Jacob, who specializes in combat efficiency, is probably
the most charismatic and likable murderous psychopath since Ezio Auditore from
Assassin’s Creed II. Evie, who specializes in stealth, is more of a generic
by-the-book assassin we’ve come to expect at this point. There’s a few Odd
Couple-style interactions between the pair, but their relationship is mostly
played for drama.
While Jacob has the better personality, it soon becomes apparent
that Evie’s skillset is more useful. That’s why it’s so infuriating that most important
missions are exclusive to her asshat brother. I’d suggest that Jacob is favored
by the game developers simply because he’s a man, but the Jack the Ripper DLC
(see below) is almost exclusively Evie’s show. Chalk it up to making a more
challenging game, I guess.
Anyway, the Frye twins spend the game building up their
own gang, the Rooks, and trying to reestablish the waning assassin presence in
London. It’s yet another situation in Assassin’s Creed where the storyline is
neither memorable nor what you’d call “good,” but the Fryes are surrounded by a
gaggle of excellent supporting characters to spice things up. From a pair of Chareses
(Dickens and Darwin) to transgender businessman Ned Wynert and badass Indian
prince Duleep Singh, it’s the endearing characters that keep cut scenes from
dragging, not the lukewarm tale of… whatever’s going on in London. And mercifully,
the present day interruptions are kept to a bare minimum this time around.
Anything that lets me get back murdering random people on the streets because I
don’t like their hat, or their horse is ugly, is much welcome.
Speaking of horses, buggies (no, not like Unity’s levitating
townspeople) are a big part of Syndicate. It’s a fast way to get from point A
to B, but it also leads to some of the dullest missions around. (Doesn’t every
gamer want to drive slowly to protect their passengers?) Other highlights
include recruiting gang members to do your brutalizing for you, the aforementioned
grappling hook that makes climbing easier but only works when it feels like it,
and shooting civilians off their rowboats on the Thames River and into a death’s
icy, wet embrace.
In true AC fashion, here’s literally hundreds of things scattered
around the industrial slums to collect and immediately forget about. It’s not
good game design, but it appeals to the completionist in me, so it gets a pass.
Other returning annoyances include paying real-world cash for in-game currency,
missions where you slowly follow some rando around until the game remembers it’s
an action title again, and load times that afford the player a convent break to
stop and make themselves a grilled cheese.
Overall, Syndicate is the game Unity should have been. Industrial
Revolution London is a lot of fun to explore, and there’s even a brief section
focusing on World War I for variety. Strangely, Syndicate’s biggest problem is
that there’s too much content on offer: the game was still giving me new
missions after I earned the platinum trophy. Had the more tedious aspects had
been lessened and some sleep inducing-missions cut, Syndicate could have been a
classic. But even as it stands, the game stands head-and-shoulders over most of
its AC brethren, stabbing its way nearly to the top of a long line of
bestselling, iconic games and also AC Revelations.
Assassin’s Creed
Syndicate: Jack the Ripper. Release Date: 12/2015. Available on Xbox One,
PlayStation 4, and PC
 |
| Oh, I say, BRRR! |
Set 20 years after the main events of Syndicate, the Jack
the Ripper features a bite-sized chunk of Creedy goodness wrapped in a familiar
package.
Continuing the Assassin’s Creed tradition of
underwhelming DLC, JtR takes place entirely in sections of the game we’ve
already seen in Syndicate… or does it? In fact, there are several episodes in
this ten mission arc that take place in entirely new locations. Of particular interest
is Lady O’s mansion, which is an excellent playground for destruction. With
underpowered enemies, no place for them to escape, and plenty of dark nooks in
which to lurk, this mission starts feeling less like Assassin’s Creed and more
like a movie in the Halloween series.
The creepy atmosphere is enhanced by a wicked (like the
witch, not Boston) soundtrack, the cold, unforgiving landscape of London in
wintertime, and Jack himself, who looks like a cross between Charles Dickens
and Jason from Friday the 13th Part II, what with his burlap sack
mask and penchant for stabbing.
The new fear-based combat system rounds out the spookiness
by letting the player terrorize enemies. Unlike its parent game, the focus in
Jack the Ripper isn’t to kill the bad guys, so much as it is to brutalize them physically
and mentally. Sometimes, you feel more like Batman than Evie Frye. The
difference is, Batman never left criminals to die pinned down to the middle of
a busy road or scared them into shooting each other in face.
Some of the side missions are eye-meltingly boring, but
on the whole, staking around London in Jack the Ripper is great fun. Too bad
this one isn’t a standalone like Freedom Cry, or I’d have recommended it to
people who don’t feel like plunging into Syndicate’s plethora of content but still
want to take a short trip to Jolly Old England.
An Arbitrary
ranking of all main Assassin’s Creed Games
All right, folks. You had to know this was coming. You
can’t do a proper retrospective without a list of the author’s favorite and
least favorite titles.
Only entries into the main 3D series will be considered
for this list, so any handheld or 2D Creed games will not appear. Liberation is
not an exception to this rule since we’ll be reviewing the HD version on
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, not the PS Vita original.
Expansions and spinoffs such as The Tyranny of King
Washington and Freedom Cry are considered part of their originator game and
thus will not be ranked separately.
All games are ranked as they stand today, with all
stability patches installed. Basically, imagine a new copy of each game purchased
and played on October 27, 2017 with all updates applied.
The higher up on the list within the tier, the better the
game.
Now, without further ado:
LEGENDARY TIER – Great games worth playing for all gamers.
-
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
-
Assassin’s Creed II
EXCELLENT TIER – Great games worth playing for fans of
Assassin’s Creed and maybe other gamers too.
-
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
-
Assassin’s Creed III
-
Assassin’s Creed Rogue
GOOD TIER – Fun games, but nothing special. Worth a play
for AC fans, or if you get ‘em cheap.
-
Assassin’s Creed Unity
-
Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD
-
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
MEH TIER – Not bad, but you’re not missing much if you
skip it.
-
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
AWFUL TIER – One of the worst games ever made.
-
Assassin’s Creed I
Brotherhood ranks so “low” because it’s basically just
ACII again, but note that it’s still in a tier of recommended titles.
Assassin’s Creed III is aided by its expansion, The Tyranny of King Washington,
helping it to pull ahead of Rogue. Black Flag is unhindered by the shrug-worthy
Freedom Cry expansion and the Jack the Ripper DLC made the choice between
Syndicate and ACIII much easier.
####
So there you have it, folks. Now you should be all ready
for Origins! Or if you’re so inclined, take a look at the earlier entries in the
Assassin’s Creed series in Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV of the
retrospective. Happy stabbing!
(And seriously, why not donate a few bucks to the Red Cross?)
(And seriously, why not donate a few bucks to the Red Cross?)
No comments:
Post a Comment