Assassin's Creed Unity

[jztemple2]

Well, this is weird, it seems that no one has started a thread for Assassin's Creed Unity. I got this last night and have played about two hours I guess (how do I find stats in Uplay?). I know there has been a lot of negative criticism today, but maybe I guess that for the console versions. I'm running on my i7 4770K 3.5GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 780 3GB, Win7 64bit rig and while for some reason I can't get FRAPS to appear in-game, everything seems to be looking good. I used the GeForce Experience program to select my graphic options which are set at 1920x1200 Ultra High.

I like the game. It's Assassin's Creed, but in a much prettier place than Boston or Jamaica. Lots and lots of detail. Gameplay seems like the previous in the series, except that the parkour seems more fluid. I'll post more impressions later.

[IceBear]

I can't really play it. I had just made the assumption that my rig could handle it, but turns out I don't meet the minimum requirements (my own fault, I didn't bother to check but guess my machine has reached that point). It's not just the console version, there are lots of people saying they have the recommended (not just the minimum) requirements and it's very laggy for them. I suspect most people were like me and didn't check their machines against the requirements - it's supposedly next gen and all, so that should have been a warning for me

[jztemple2]

Boy this game is really giving my rig a workout. CPU reached 66C (and it's liquid cooled ). My GTX780 reached 81C, which is a degree above it's target set point, so that's ok. And the card fan maxed at 53%, so I have plenty of margin.

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, that's what I figured for this game -- we PC gamers had a good run and were reaping the benefits associated with the ~9 year Xbox360/PS3 hardware cycle. But now that the next console generation has been released, I'm afraid this will be the norm for the next year or so until we can return to our positions on Gamer Mt. Olympus.

I've been reading mixed reviews for Unity -- and I am a big fan of the entire series (though I do like some of them more than others). I'm amazed they still have gas in the tank for the story, but I'm looking forward to some local impressions.

[coopasonic]

I played about 4 hours yesterday (yay bank holiday that nobody else gets off) on the XBOne and I had fun with it. I know I am going to miss the pirate stuff. It's very pretty and beyond that it is Assassin's Creed. I don't know that I will ever do the co-op missions. Does anyone else have an Xbox One? Yeah, I didn't think so. Having chests in the game that require the companion app to open is annoying. It's your typical freebie app grind, but prettier.

I am not deep enough into the story to judge it. Based on the intro stuff and the name of the game I have a feeling for where it is going.

[Chaz]

I'm holding off on this one until I hear more impressions from people who got all the way through. The reviews talked a lot about the missions being pretty similar, so that probably wouldn't become apparent in the first few hours.

The one I really want is Rogue. The reviews for that are pretty solid, and say that while it's not pushing any new mechanics, the mission design is some of the best and most varied that the series has seen in a long time. Too bad it's not getting a Wii U release, and the PC version is some time "later".

[Sepiche]

I don't know that I will ever do the co-op missions.

So is it only certain missions that are coop and not the whole thing? My wife was thinking about getting this to play with a friend, but if it's only a handful of missions that are coop it might not be worth it.

[coopasonic]

I don't know that I will ever do the co-op missions.

So is it only certain missions that are coop and not the whole thing? My wife was thinking about getting this to play with a friend, but if it's only a handful of missions that are coop it might not be worth it.

Definitely not the entire game. I remember seeing missions that are specifically co-op and missions that say 1 player. I don't know how much balance there is either way as I have only seen central Paris and Paris appears to be about 5x the size of that central area and I think there is a second location.

Anyway, I don't know the balance, if it is a handful that is co-op or handful that is solo only or somewhere in between.

There is a skill "tree" specifically for co-op skills, so you'd think (hope?) there is a decent amount of content related to that.

[Scuzz]

I knew the new Dragon Age game would be beyond my PC's capabilities but I hadn't looked into this games requirements. I guess it will be another game I will play in about 5 years when I get a new computer. I knew this day was coming, and like the comments above I think this is about as long as I can remember being able to "stay current" with games.

Well, I still have AC:Revelations and AC3 in my backlog.

[Effidian]

I'm a big fan of this series, but I think this game is a pretty big step back from the Black Flag.

They removed a couple abilities, which has an interesting change on combat. In previous games, I had been able to basically fight any number of enemies and this reduced any real need to be tactical or stealthy. The biggest change is the removal of human shield. By removing human shield, guns are far more deadly and you can't really fight large groups any longer. They also removed is kill streaks, which makes it harder to fight multiple combatants because you can't just kill one after another. Finally, they removed your ability to have a team of assassins at your call.

None of these changes are necessarily a a bad thing, but it pretty significantly changes the way that I had normally handled combat in the previous games. It seems they really want to push you to have to be more stealthy and use all the tools you have at your disposal. Even with all the top level gear, you still can't do what you could before (again, I'm not marking this as a bad thing, just very different).

The online companion portion of the game is pretty bad. I find the companion app completely boring and clunky. The companion app needs to be use both to open some chests in the game and to make some in-game missions available. I'm not sure how quickly you can open all these up, but I'd think it would take a couple pretty dedicated weeks. The in app 'missions' can take several hours to complete, and I just can't be bothered to check the stupid thing every couple hours during the day. I didn't really care for this type of time sink in the previous games either, but it seems much worse now.

The Initiates site isn't even really running at this point, so I haven't been able to see how they've integrated it. I had enough levels previously to unlock all the ingame chests tied to initiates, but it would have been nice if that had been working from day one. I did enjoy doing the initiates tasks in black flag, though I'd really rather that just be handled in game.

Both the companion app and initiates chest show up in game, even if you don't use those interfaces. This will probably annoy some folks.

Co-op isn't really my thing, but I did play a couple co-op missions and think that it could be pretty fun if you are on voice chat with a friend.

I think Black Flag was just a hard act to follow. Being constrained to a single city (regardless of how large it is) just seems a bit boring. Without having a break up of gameplay between ship and city and country, it just feels like everything is the same.

I've gotten to 100% completion on every single one of the prior games. I've finished the story in this one and am at ~60% complete, and I just don't think I have the desire to get to 100%. I think part of the problem is that in previous games, I'd go into an area and pretty much clear it out as far as collectibles go. This made it so I did bite size chunks between other story elements. Unfortunately, they added 3 level of locked chests, which you need to get the corresponding skill to unlock. You can't unlock these skills without progressing through the story and you can't see what level these chests are without being very close to them. This basically made it so that I had to play through most of the the story before I could really start clearing areas (which I didn't do).

I think I could have skipped this one in the series, and I'll likely be a bit skeptical when the next one comes out.

[jztemple2]

From Rock, Paper, Shotgun, article entitled Assassin's Creed Unity goes free in honour of Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame cathedral is closed for renovation for the foreseeable future, but Ubisoft are offering everyone the opportunity to appreciate it (and clamber around it) free in Assassin’s Creed Unity. From now until next Thursday, April 25th, the game is free to grab and keep forever here. Set in Paris, 1789, it offers a more co-op focused spin on the series, but was plagued by bugs at launch. Credit where due, Ubisoft did well patching it up, so if you skipped it then, you get the best version free now and all it took was a famous landmark burning down. The publisher are also chipping in a half-million Euros for repairs to the building.

[Sepiche]

Thanks for posting that.

I imagine it might be difficult to go back to the older style AC games after playing Origin and Odyssey, but fortunately free is the right price to find out.

[Alefroth]

Unity may be able to help restore Notre Dame as well.

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/04/ ... otre-dame/


Paris might be the AC city I was able to best maintain my bearings in, and that was due in large part to Notre Dame.

[Scraper]

Thanks for posting that.

I imagine it might be difficult to go back to the older style AC games after playing Origin and Odyssey, but fortunately free is the right price to find out.

You're probably right. But I will say I played Unity when it first came out and I put it down after about 2 hours while waiting for patches. After the game was patched it was significantly more enjoyable. It would be worth playing around with again just to see and climb on the architecture.

[MonkeyFinger]

Don't recall why but this was one of the few games in this series that I didn't play. But downloaded it for free and cranked it up last night. So... it's less of a novel and more of a collection of short stories? (so to speak)

[coopasonic]

When I told my son this was free and had co-op play he was all over it. It is pretty amazing how terrible the parkour controls are. I didn't realize how good we had it with Odyssey and Origins. We have managed to do one co-op mission so far. My son is not terribly interested in stealth. He is upgrading his weapons and health for the big fights and I generally play more of a ghost/ninja. It's an interesting dichotomy.