And in the meantime we’ve deducted an extra half-star from the score, because a game-breaking quest bug is pretty damn huge.įor all that I’m down on Assassin’s Creed as a whole, Syndicate is at least one of the better entries in the series. So yeah, it’s better than Unity, but you’re still probably better off waiting a month or two for the bugs to get worked out. The game looked like this until I exited to Windows. That last one is a known issue, and the only solution at the moment is to race to your destination before the conversation ends to force the next stage of the quest to load. I had a few crashes to desktop, the load screens seemed to get exponentially lengthier the further I got into the game, AI companions would occasionally get locked in place and force me to restart from a checkpoint, the world turned completely white at one point, and a main story msision froze and then crashed every time a conversation ended. Last week we took a look at the game and I concluded it’s “Better than Unity.” That’s a low bar, but I stand by it. It’s worth officially codifying the game’s bugs, too. But it would be more impressive if there were anything to fill up that space besides half-hearted stabs at side content and a bunch of collectibles. Congratulations to the people who do research on the period. It’s the one consistent “improvement” every year, and Ubisoft boasts that Syndicate‘s London is the largest of any of the Assassin’s Creed cities. Contrast that with Unity‘s depiction of Paris burning.
At one point in the story, characters in Syndicate tell you “all of London is rioting.” If so, it was a very quiet sort of riot-the type where nothing gets broken and people say “Good day” to each other in the streets. Syndicate‘s London feels stagnant and empty by comparison, with not a single crowd that can match what we saw in Unity last year. Syndicate takes this to an extreme, forcing all of its present-day exposition into tedious cutscenes.Īnd the crowds, which Ubisoft pushed hard in Unity, are apparently a victim of that game’s bug-ridden delivery. The stories are predictable, and the modern-day aspect now resides in a hellish limbo-still present enough to annoy those who don’t care, but minimized to the point it feels inconsequential. But the longer Assassin’s Creed goes without a major overhaul of its core design principles, the more it feels like a weird holdover from another era-say, 2010 when Brotherhood came out.Įven after Unity‘s tweaks the parkour feels stilted, and in Syndicate the introduction of a grappling hook that lets you bound to the top of a building with the press of a button renders your character’s climbing skills almost comically useless. Despite the lackluster and repetitive mission structure, there was much to be admired-the (impressive at the time) parkour, the grim story, the reactive crowds, the size of the world and the way it blended historic fact and legend. I still remember the excitement around the first game in the series, way back in ye ol’ 2007. What’s, I guess, sad to me is that at one point Assassin’s Creed truly was novel.
Even Evie, the more “practical” of the two, is full of witty one-liners, always equipped with a sigh and a snide jab when Jacob inevitably screws up. Their sibling rivalry leads to Syndicate‘s best moments, the pair leveling barbs at each other and adding some much-needed levity to the proceedings-something the self-serious Assassin’s Creed Unity was sorely missing. Jacob plays the now familiar role of “Ezio-In-A-Different-Time-Period,” wisecracking his way through situations and generally not giving half a damn about the Creed part of Assassin’s Creed, while Evie is more levelheaded and focused on the brotherhood’s teachings. If Syndicate is saved from mediocrity it’s because of the quality of its lead characters, the brother/sister Assassin duo of Jacob and Evie Frye. It’s been eight years and we’ve played this game nine times now.
But it’s…well, it’s still Assassin’s Creed.