The holidays are upon us, which means it’s time to explore the past and revise the world of the Assassins versus Templars with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Ubisoft’s 2015 offering into their flagship historic-fiction franchise.
Syndicate sees the franchise brought to London during the Industrial Revolution, and happily it manages to hit all the notes that last year’s Unity fell flat on.
Let’s take a look.
Story
As with almost all Assassin’s Creed games, there is a modern-day element to this story. They don’t do much in the way of explaining the what or the why of things at the start of Syndicate, and the game picks up pretty much right after Unity/Rogue in terms of the involvement of evil master corporation Abstergo.
Syndicate leans very heavily on the ‘expanded’ Assassin’s Creed universe (ACU), which is kind of like Star Wars in the sense that you have the movies, but then there are all the comics, books and other media that go into building the whole universe.
This is really cool for long-time fans of the series, as it rewards their extracurricular knowledge, but it tends to leave newcomers or casual fans feeling a little confused at best and entirely disconnected at worst.
So if you are new, the background story starts at the end of Black Flag and is carried through the Assassin’s Creed: Brahman comic book, with Abstergo (bad guys) starting to put a tonne of genetic memories (the way we visit the past) into the cloud so that they can access them at any stage – starting with the genetic memories of Desmond Miles (modern-day protagonist from Assassin’s Creed through to Assassin’s Creed III).
The setup is that you are part of a hacker group called ‘The Initiates’ who work with the Assassins to infiltrate and undermine Abstergo. So you are playing through the genetic memories of Jacob and Evie Frye. You don’t have a modern-day character, you are simply you.
The period story of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate revolves around twins Jacob and Evie as they journey to London in 1868 to hunt Templars and build a gang.
Jacob takes on the role of gang leader and uses his assassin skills to rise to the top, while Evie follows the path of the Assassins much more diligently and tries to save the world.
The story is solid and is delivered much more effectively than last year’s instalment into the franchise, Unity. Syndicate’s story, while predictable at times, provides an enjoyable experience.
Gameplay
The folks over at Ubisoft Quebec did a tremendous job making this game feel different depending on whether you play as Jacob or Evie.
Throughout the story, Jacob’s focus tends to be aimed at building their gang, The Rooks, rather than anything really Assassins Brotherhood-y. Meanwhile, Evie lives the Creed of the Brotherhood enough for the two of them, and spends much of the story hunting a Piece of Eden – as all good Assassin’s Creed assassins do.
The developers were very clever in building the gameplay mechanics of each character to emphasise this dichotomy between the two through their specific personality traits and abilities.
For example, Evie gains the ability about halfway through the game (depending on how fast you level up) to become invisible while crouched and sitting still, and will remain invisible even if she should, realistically, be obviously within someone’s line of sight – unless they get too close.
Jacob’s upgrades, on the other hand, boost his physical prowess, making him hit harder and take more damage before going down. He’s built for fisticuffs, and he is exceedingly good at it.
These two very different ability upgrade stems mean you use each character differently.
Infiltrating a headquarters? I’ll take Evie so I can sneak around. Starting a gang brawl? Sounds like a job for Jacob.
Now, that’s where it gets really clever. The character of Evie is stealthy because we’re told that the character of Evie is stealthy, so we play the character of Evie as stealthy, which in turn reinforces the fact that the character of Evie is stealthy. There is absolutely nothing to stop me from running in with Evie, all guns blazing and a flurry of fists, just as I might take a stealthy approach with Jacob – except that’s not what I expect to happen.
Early on in the game we play through two sections alternately as Jacob and Evie, which acts to train us in how each character works and thus begins the whole cycle of self-fulfilled character personality prophecy. The game is playing you as much as you are playing it.
For the most part the game allows you to switch between characters from the pause screen to play as whomever you prefer, but certain missions remain character locked. Jacob has his own specific story missions, just as Evie does, but most side quests and all free-roaming can be done as either twin.
The introduction of the rope launcher is heaven sent.
Once you acquire the upgrade and start grappling your way to the tops of buildings, it’s hard to remember a time before you had it. Launching you way from ground to roof and then from roof to roof becomes second nature almost immediately and – given that this was the time when civilisations really started to build up rather than out – saves an extraordinary amount of time.
While all of these illustrate the ways that Syndicate has improved on Unity, it still suffers from the same Achilles heel of having far too much stuff to find. The map is polluted with treasure chests, bottles, pressed flowers, music boxes, Helix glitches, and side missions, with no real clues as to why you need to find special beer bottles.
The side missions are fun and worthwhile, for the most part, but do tend to wander into repetition territory. Most of the side missions revolve around repeating the same tasks over and over again in various locales across London – you liberate a dozen near-identical child labour sites, overtake a dozen near-identical headquarters and assassinate a dozen near-identical Templar agents.
Everything else on top of this is just synthetic game-length extender. I spent almost as long meticulously tracking down all the treasure chests as I did playing the story – treasure chests containing money which by this point I didn’t even need because I’d already bought everything. They seem to exist for no other reason than to frustrate completionists who simply need to find 100 per cent of what the game has to offer.
Technical stuff
The game looks and sounds incredible, though being released the same year as The Order and set within the same era (albeit very different ‘versions’ of that same era) did not help.
Comparing Syndicate to The Order – a game which, while it had many of its own flaws, was practically visually flawless – is like comparing Poot Lovato to Demi Lovato; it’s almost the same, but just not quite.
I’m not saying Syndicate looks bad – far from it, it looks fantastic. It just doesn’t look much better than Black Flag, which was released two years ago, and wasn’t even specifically designed for the current generation of consoles.
This is, of course, the trade off which must be made when making an open-world game of such magnitude. The Order looked so pretty because it was basically a hallway from start to finish – Assassin’s Creed Syndicate features the entire city of London and small details get overlooked when seen against the sheer size of the backdrop.
The audio is impeccable, with an industrial soundtrack that suits it perfectly; the sounds of the streets and the rumble of steam engines combine to capture and bring the city of London to life.
Maybe take a break?
My one real issue with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is not really with the game at all, but with Ubisoft themselves and the annual schedule that Assassin’s Creed seems to have found itself on.
There has been (at least) one new Assassin’s Creed game each and every year since Assassin’s Creed II came out in 2009.
For the past six years, the run into Christmas has meant a new Assassin’s Creed game is guaranteed to hit the shelves. This in itself is not a bad thing, except when there are no real changes or improvements made between instalments, and they just seem to be coming out for the sake of coming out (looking at you, Call of Duty).
There were two years between Assassin’s Creed and Assassins Creed II, so 2008 represents the only time since the start of the series that a year has passed without a new game coming out. But the annual schedule made sense in the beginning.
The first five games (AC1, AC2, Brotherhood, Revelations, and AC3) are all set in the year 2012, and specifically focus on the supposed December 21, 2012, doomsday. So there was a lot of story to cover, and not a lot of time to do so if they were going to get their concluding chapter out in time to match up with the real-world calendar.
Since then, however, the need for a new chapter every year has been non-existent.
I had hoped that 2013 would be the year without an Assassin’s Creed, and that would have made sense – especially with the cliffhanger ending of Assassin’s Creed III. But it was not to be, and Black Flag was announced pretty early into the cycle.
So maybe next year would be the perfect year for the series to take its much-needed gap year? Michael Fassbender’s Assassin’s Creed: The Movie will be coming to cinemas, and we still have the two Assassin’s Creed Chronicles mini games to look forward to.
Surely a feature film and two tie-in mini games would be enough Assassins versus Templars for one calendar year, wouldn’t it?
A year off could be just what Ubisoft needs to reinvigorate their franchise and reevaluate how they can make the next instalment something really new and exciting.
Overall
Overall, Syndicate is a worthy entry into the franchise – a marked improvement over last year’s Unity, though still not quite reaching the same level of innovation and excitement that earlier titles like Assassin’s Creed II brought.
The split story is a new take on the series’ regular story-telling tropes, and the contrast in gameplay mechanics for each character keeps things interesting, rather than leaving players feeling like they are simply playing a male and female version of the exact same character.
The game has been out for about a month now, and in that time we’ve got a few important bug fixes and updates, so if you were looking at getting a new game as a Christmas gift (for someone else, or for yourself – hey, we don’t judge), now is the perfect time to do it.
Pros
Graphically impressive
Soundtrack is amazing
Rope launcher makes climbing so much easier
Clever use of gaming mechanics to define character
Core story is solid, and being told from two sides is a refreshing take
Cons
Over-arching series story is not even remotely new-player friendly
The series is at risk of annually repetitive stagnating and really needs to take a break
Too many collectibles. Just, way too many collectibles
Techly rating
: ★★★★
The post Assassin’s Creed Syndicate: PlayStation 4 review appeared first on Techly.