Game Discussion of The Week: Assassin's Creed

This was one of those game series I never got into. It feels too much like a cash cow for me.

Added this to the Community Review list.

You pretty much described the exact same thing as my friends would who plays these games. It's overdone and it comes out each year (well this year Ubisoft made an exception). The Market is over-saturated.

I really liked your positive look on the game scipioafricanus. There have been rumors about that one of these games will be set in the viking era. It would be cool to see that.

Assassin's Creed is an interesting one.

The first one was definitely a showcase for then-Next-Gen systems, and was quite visually stunning at the time, though it was pretty linear, there wasn't much to do in the world, and I find it doesn't stand up to replays very well.

I, along with many others, loved Ezio as a protagonist for Assassin's Creed II, as he achieved that perfect balance of charismatic jerk, and genuinely grew as a character. Certainly the game-world seemed to open up a lot at that point, but I don't think we'd have gotten 3 Ezio games if he weren't so charismatic. My understanding is that key personnel left Ubisoft after 2, which is why Desmond's story was stretched over 3 games with Ezio and then one with Connon. Being grand master of the order in Brotherhood and Revelations was great fun, though many of the sub games (like tower defense in Revelations) fell flat.

Unfortunately, ACIII killed the series for me for quite a long time. It managed to make the revolutionary war settings...strangely boring. Connor had a potentially interesting backstory, but just seemed to drift from one major event to another without bringing any flare.

It was a few years before I picked up the series again, but I was craving some assassination action, and played a few last year. Liberation HD was surprisingly good, and the characters seemed much more memorable despite it being designed as a Vita game originally. Aveline was a joy to follow, but unsurprisingly the section guest starring Conner was a downer.

Next up for me was Assassin's Rogue, since I wanted to finish with the last-gen console entries, even though Black Flag was released beforehand. I found Shae Cormack another interesting character, and although I think his defection to the templars was telegraphed a little too heavily, it was definitely nice to see the other side of the coin. That said, some things, such as Uplay unlocked items never worked for me, and searching various message boards, some issues were never patched as the teams were working on Unity, which was released at the same time and was the more high profile game.

Black Flag was next on the PS4 for me, and I found Edward to be the most enjoyable protagonist since Ezio, once again hitting that charismatic-jerk sweet spot, and genuinely having a lot of character growth. Ship combat grabbed me a lot more than it had in Rogue or ACIII, and I was happy to spend hours adventuring on the high sea. Admittedly, there are a lot of points in Black Flag that break suspension of disbelief with the series, with Edward having so many assassin-like skills and interacting in such a friendly manner with so many assassins in side-quests, despite not being formally introduced to the order until very near the end of the game. In a lesser game, that would have put me off a lot. In many ways, this might be the high point of the series for me thus far.

I enjoyed Unity a lot more than most people, I think. I played it more than a year after it was released, so many of the bugs had been successfully patched. I liked that it crossed over with Rogue's ending. Arno was not the most likable AC protagonist, but I'd place him above Connor and maybe just behind Shae. Thankfully there was a pretty interesting supporting cast, and Paris was interesting to visit. I didn't like the new interface at first, but it grew on me, and in some ways I liked the smaller scale of Paris, Versailles and Saint-Denis after the huge Caribbean area to explore. I also quite liked getting the full Dead Kings expansion included.

I've not played Syndicate yet, as I tend to wait for AC games to go down in price a fair bit. I did grab Assassin's Creed: Chronicles a while back for $1, but it didn't hold my attention. It seemed like it was trying to do a lot of the same things as something like Mark of the Ninja, but noticeably worse.

Regarding the meta-plot in the present/future with Abstergo, I didn't mind it, but I definitely think it ran its course with Desmond's story. Seeing Abstergo Entertainment's headquarters through the eyes of an employee wasn't particularly interesting, though it was nice to see Shaun and Rebecca again. Similarly, the nameless gamer 'playing' Assassin's Creed Unity didn't strike me as enjoyable. I think I'd prefer they just stick to the historical settings now and leave the Animus out of it, though I doubt that will happen.

Black Flag is probably the most "fun" one.

Roaming around the Caribbean Sea attack random ships and places never gets old. You get a tease of it in 3, and Ubisoft gave people what they wanted and made a pirate game.