I want to highlight were I think this franchise veered off the track for me. Colleagues may have covered some aspects but I just want to share mine to add to the lot. So I will try to be brief as usual and review these two games at once. First we start with AC III which was released in 2012 during the PS3 and 360 era then later on the remaster version coming to PS4,Xbox One and PC in 2019.
Graphics
ACIII looks good but is not an HDR compliant game because to some degree the HDR blows the picture out of proportion but nonetheless its very much playable in todays terms. I believe these old titles were strictly made for SDR hardware and the 1080p panels of the day .I wont dwell on much here as I did not first experience it on PS3 or Xbox one to give a proper judgement on what they have improved on but all I can say its its very much acceptable and presentable.
Since I have already done AC Blackflag I want to quickly switch over to Unity which came out in 2014 on last gen systems and PC. Unity at the time had glitchy issues and was not well received but for me I think of all AC games it stands out in terms of visual fidelity. Not to out-right denigrate the modern recent releases but Unity just looks better for me. What stands out for me is that Unity came out days we had no RT on consoles and PC cards were not facilitating for that either but the way the lighting works is so good. I am pretty sure some patches were done as the game is now largely stable.
Gameplay
This is were I start to mourn and complain and let me attach just a few clips first for you to see why:
Fluid combat takedowns
Good combat pacing
Better Horse riding than modern AC games
You can obviously get the above clips on our YouTube and Twitch but just to save you the trouble. I did a Unity walkthrough on TWITCH unfortunately Wix here does not allow me to embedd the video for you to easily refer however click the twitch icon on our homepage it should take you there if you need to.
I have done this just to say a few words: I am not happy with all assassins creed games since Syndicate. They lost the gameplay flair you see above, its absolutely gone and its a shame. I really wish they go back to their roots because these old games were nice. I wont say much but the videos are just proof for you how good the gameplay used to be as opposed to the recent titles.
Story
Since its a combined brief I just want to say the stories were very much well done with only one exception: the animus. I don't like it even till today its the most irrelevant aspect about the older games. It disturbed the flow of the story. But that aside the stories had more direction and purpose as opposed to todays big worlds and DLCs with huge checklists filled with irrelevant side quests. I am currently doing a second playthrough of both Origins and Odyssey and I still haven't t finished them for years now not because they are just too big but they easily bore me and I lose direction with huge maps and again irrelevant side quests as fillers. This is were I miss the old titles like syndicate (covering this soon) and the rest before Origins. they were tailored correctly
My wish is for Ubisoft to go back to its roots of these wonderful games. Try them out for yourself they are just excellent, cheers!
pros
great stories with direction
fantastic gameplay
cons
the animus
Σχόλια