Assassin’s Creed Origins, the latest entry in Ubisoft’s
much milked beloved franchise, is set to hit the shelves on Friday, October 27.
It puts players in the excessively lacey sandals of Bayek, one of the first
assassins, as he roams around ancient Egypt, presumably hanging out with pre-embalmed
mummies and building pyramids by stabbing them.
The release marks the 10th anniversary of the first
Assassin’s Creed title, the fourth anniversary of when Ubisoft should probably have
stopped making AC games, and the first anniversary of that time Russia assassinated
a major American election just for the lulz.
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| American Election 2016 |
Last time on Dragon Creed Z, the series’ first female
assassin, Aveline, played deadly dress-up in New Orleans in AC: Liberation; Capt.
Kenway went trollin’ for treasure in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and slave
turned assassin Adéwalé served up an afternoon’s worth of
forgettable fun in Freedom Cry.
Today, we wrap things up in America with Assassin’s Creed
Rogue before heading to France for the biggest and buggiest Assassin’s Creed
game yet!
Assassin’s Creed
Rogue. Release Date: 11/2014. Available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC
Rogue is what college kids eat at the end of the semester
when they’ve got a sack of leftover take out, a lone package of shrimp ramen,
an a half-eaten can of frosting from freshman year.
Using story and game assets shamelessly ripped from
Assassin’s Creed 3 and 4, Rogue acts both as a farewell to the Xbox
360/PlayStation 3 era and a semi-sequel to Capt. Kenway’s questionable
adventures on the high seas. Released the same day as Assassin’s Creed Unity,
which was the series’ first outing on then-next generation consoles PS4 and
Xbone, few expected this stopgap title to be anything more than a cash grab for
starving AC fans stuck with last gen tech.
And in a way, they were right: Rogue offers up a scant
six memory sequences in waters we’ve traveled before. Back are many of the
characters from AC3, as well as Black Flag’s seafaring combat, albeit in a
colder climate than its topical cousin. At first glance, Rogue is AC4 in a
parka, but then a funny thing happened: Compared to Unity’s buggy release (see
below), fans began heralding this side project as the better game.
It would seem that by lifting the burden of creating all
new assets and focusing on a side story entrenched in established AC lore,
programmers were free to come up with a fun game in short amount of time. Shay Cormac
is a good lead, especially by Assassin’s Creed’s low standards, and his
transformation from Assassin to Templar – a first for the series – is dark and
fraught with personal turmoil. It’s almost interesting, until the stupid
present day scenes disrupt the gameplay like always. At least we don’t have to
hear from that twit Desmond Miles anymore. (Spoiler: HE DEAD)
Rogue serves as a nice lead-in to Unity and a satisfying
wrap-up to the “Americas” trilogy, but not much else. It was a cheap attempt to
milk one last payday from the PS3 and Xbox 360 to be sure, but it hits the AC
sweet spot just long enough to keep players from caring about the reused
locations and déjà vu combat.
Assassin’s Creed
Unity. Release Date: 11/2014. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Despite a pretty good (if generic) Assassin’s Creed title
at its core, Unity was never able to recover from its infamously botched launch.
By the time I played it, Unity had been patched like a
pack-a-day smoker looking to quit by sundown – and it was STILL a ramshackle
mess. I got stuck in walls, characters’ body parts would disappear but they’d
keep walking around like everything was hunky-dory, NPCs would casually start hovering
three feet above the ground showing me their invisible crotches – the list goes
on and on. I can only imagine the injustices that early Unity adopters were accosted
with. So bad was the blunder that Ubisoft claimed sales of the subsequent
Assassin’s Creed game, Syndicate, had been throttled by Unity’s horrendous
reception.
So here’s where I should talk about the storyline. But even
though I played it long enough to get the platinum trophy, I can’t remember
what the game’s protagonist, Arno, looks like, sounds like, or even what his
motivations were. I’ve heard him described as a less charismatic version of
Ezio, beloved star of Assassin’s Creed II, but that’s an insult to
understatements. The best part about Arno is that his name sounds like Marno,
which is very nearly Mario, as in Super Mario. Too bad Arno doesn’t eat
mushrooms or jump on Goombas or have a shred of personality whatsoever.
The only thing I remember about Unity’s storyline, aside
from the fact that the game is set in France and Arno wants to bone some chick,
is that Arno’s dad was assassinated by Rogue protagonist Shay Cormic. Oh, and
there was a stupid companion app that took hours to play and awarded the diligent
with in-game garbage every so often. I guess that doesn’t have much to do with
plot, unless Unity was really going for that classic “forgettable game” story
everyone digs so much.
There was also a pay-to-win mechanic where players could
buy in-game currency, “time-saver” maps, and other shit that that drains away
all of the remaining challenge and charm from Unity’s single player experience.
So if you just want to finish Unity quickly and have the least amount of fun
possible, get 100 bucks worth of helix credits, buy a bunch of stab-proof
armor, and waltz though Paris murdering whomever you please until you run out
of story missions.
I’ve been pretty down on it so far, but Unity wasn’t all
bad. What I do like is the multiplayer. While pervious Creeds focused on a
ho-hum player vs. player system, the co-op multiplayer found in Unity lives up
to the game’s title. Up to four players can tackle exclusive missions, share treasure,
and generally wreck the Templars’ Saturday nights. There was also a great
looking sequence featuring hot air balloons zooming over Paris, and a “glitch”
that sent players barreling forward in time to World War II for some variety.
In the end, Unity is a good looking, decently
entertaining, and mostly forgettable title marred by poor quality standards. Let
me put it to you like this: I was introduced to the Assassin’s Creed series
when AC4 and Unity came with my Xbox One. I decided to play AC4 first, and
thank God I did – if I had started with Unity, you probably wouldn’t be reading
this right now.
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Next time, the Assassin’s Creed series will stop for a
pint in jolly old England before taking on the legendary Jack the Ripper.
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