Assassin's Creed Unity (Xbox One)

Assassins creed unity was hyped to high heaven before release, and on release received relentless abuse at the glitches, the companion app, the in game purchases (Which for some reason allow you to buy more in game currency than you could spend, leaving you £80 worse off, and the equivalent of £30 stuck in game forever more).However since patching, this game is arguably a huge leap forward for the series.GAMEPLAY:The game play is modified to be a lot more fluid than previous installments. The combat overhaul, has given weight to your fighting - no longer can you hammer one button, or spend all your time counter killing as some sort of invincible assassin demi-god; you actually have to fight.The parrying button is frustrating as a long time fan of the series, but the satisfaction when you master this combat and take on hordes of french guards is immeasurable.Freerunning's changing to free run up and free run down is arguably a bittersweet change. Yes, you still have the buggy moments of being halfway up a building trying to get down, and being stuck. Yes, you will end up jumping on things you didn't mean to.Yes, occasionally you will jump into free space, and fall to your death. But at least now you can pick which direction to be stuck, irritated by, or dead with. And the animation for freerunning has become beautifully smooth, with twirls, flips, spins....it's an aerial ballet scaling buildings.STORY:It's an assassins creed game. You climb some things and kill some people. When you're not killing people and climbing things, you are stuck with some of the more irritating mission types, tailing etc. The one huge boost to following and tailing missions, is that failing is not as brutal. If you lose sight of your target, you need to go to the last place you saw them and eagle vision onto their trail. This is alot more forgiving than previously. Also, detection is not an autofail as long as you can rehide. (in most cases). The story itself is similar format to previous games. Terrible tragedy, become an assassin, find some templars, kill some templars, find the overall bad guy, kill the overall bad guy.It's nicely presented though.CUSTOMISING AND CO-OP:The co-op is arguably a good and bad thing about the game - the coop missions are fun, but some were designed for coop and only coop, and although doable in singleplayer, they are nightmarish. However they are fun, and the heists are great cash earners. Gear for your assassin is possibly one of the best additions. Having to select the gear so you know what you can carry of your consumables - do I carry more pistol ammo or more medicine? - adds more choice to the way you approach missions. Stealth? No problem, some boots to quell my noise, a slim stealthy belt that allows more smoke bombs and lockpicks. Combat? Lob on a suit of armour and a belt that doubles your gun ammo. This is the first AC game since the original where I felt I wasn't backed into a corner with the mission approach.IRRITATIONS:WHY IN GODS NAME IS EVERYONE IN PARIS BRITISH?Pros:-better gameplay, but still some age old bugs-Map is beautiful and huge-Customising your character is a nice additionCons:-Every french person is from oxford except for a few.-The game opens up early but assaults you with options and little explanation.-If you have disliked previous entries of AC, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

I took a risk with this one, as I'd heard of the terrible frame rate and the innumerable bugs that seemed to plague the game when it released. However, I generally enjoyed past iterations of the Assassin's Creed series, and didn't get a chance to play Black Flag last year - so I went ahead and purchased Unity.Now, as of 15/12/2014 it seems to me that, although there still are issues with the frame rate, the patches released by Ubisoft must have had the desired effect as I haven't come across any other technical problems within the game. More specifically in relation to the frame rate : it is by no means a game breaker, and in my experience only occurred sporadically, particularly when the area I was in was full of NPCs. I'm on Xbox One and I find this version of the game quite playable.On the other hand, my biggest gripe is with the controls - they are simply awful. I find them clumsy, inaccurate, and overall frustrating as Arno, once again, is trying to balance himself on a fence for no apparent reason rather than jumping over the wall as I'd like him to. Considering this game is, in principle, all about furtiveness, and carefully planning your strategy for the next assassination, as well as often getting yourself out of a sticky situation, I just don't understand why the programmers could not calibrate the controls a little better, if not conduct a complete overhaul of the controls system, which in my view is what this series really needs.Anything else?Well, the graphics are good, but certainly not photo-realistic, and in no way close to what the Xbox One could potentially achieve.I found the music pleasant enough, well suited to the historical context. The dialogues and acting are also very good, and the whole atmosphere of the French Revolution is rendered quite well. You do get a sense of chaos and impending violence as you roam the streets and leap across the rooftops of late 18th century Paris.So far I've enjoyed the story. I'm several hours in the game, and I find Arno a much needed improvement from the disaster that was Connor in Assassin's Creed III - that game put me off the series for two years, yuk!Anyway, my experience with the story and characters in Unity has been positive up to here, so no issues with that.Perhaps you were considering AC: Unity as a Christmas present? Would I recommend you buy the game?As far as I can see the game is not 'broken' ; at times it does suffer from some frame rate problems, but it won't ruin your experience. Besides, I think few people could say that Assassin Creed games have ever been examples of smooth graphical performance (I still remember the screen tearing in Assassin's Creed 2 - great game by the way).The controls are terrible. Hopefully, however, you'll get over them once you become engrossed in the story and the myriad of activities the game can offer you.My answer would be to buy AC: Unity, especially if there is nothing else on the market that interests you at the moment.