Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate [Game Review]

2014. Assassin’s Creed Unity released. Perhaps the most failed game in the series. Its biggest disadvantage is considered to be optimization. But is this really the main reason for its failure?? Most will say yes, it is. But the truth is that the main “bug” of the game is its plot. In a game where everything is built around two secret orders and the lost knowledge of an ancient civilization, they put the love line at the forefront, and made revenge the main goal. Again.

The original concept of the game was completely buried. Unity can safely be called an unnecessary spin-off, because it did not bring anything new to the main idea of ​​the game, the confrontation between assassins and Templars.

Why all these words, you ask?. Besides, as it turns out, people learn from their mistakes. And Ubisoft is a living example of this.

Chapter two. Correction path

In 2015, a new part https://gamesnotongamstop.co.uk/review/prive-casino/ of the series was released with the subtitle Syndicate. As in Unity, the subtitle fully reflects the main idea of ​​​​this game. But unlike the one mentioned above, this part has more in common with the ancestor of the entire series. The plot is certainly not the best, but here the main characters (and yes, there are two of them in this game) set themselves more lofty goals than the selfish desires of Arno Dorian. Evie and Jacob Fry want to free London and make life easier for citizens living under tyranny. While Arno just wanted to fuck and take revenge. The Frye twins already have the spirit of assassins in them. And this is the first step on a long and thorny path to correction and a return to the canons of the series.

A handkerchief covered in the victim’s blood as evidence of a killed target. During Altair’s time, eagle feathers were used.

Well, this is what confrontation in past eras is about. What about the current era?? There are still big problems here. The fact is that initially, the story in modern times was told to us from the perspective of the hereditary assassin Desmond Miles. But at the end of the third part he died and we began to receive information about the confrontation in our time from Gordon Freeman a newly minted employee of Abstergo Industries who was later recruited by the assassins. Playing as this “character” we could wander around the Abstergo office and read all sorts of secret and not so secret documents and correspondence. This information was enough to get a picture of the current situation in the balance of power between the order and the brotherhood. But in Unity everything is different. They took away our access to the databases and put us on the sofa in front of the TV, and they began to give out information via video call on Skype in very small quantities. In “Syndicate” the situation has not changed at all. Okay, not a big change after all.

Do you still remember Rebecca Crane and Sean Hastings?? Well, these are those two from Assasin’s Creed 2 who were always arguing with each other. Well, Ubisoft also remembered about them. Now their military adventures are shown in small inserts between races around London.

Chapter Three. Well, something has changed here?

Using the same engine does not mean that the gameplay should be the same. Or does it still mean? No, of course it doesn’t actually mean. But it’s not realistic to redo all the mechanics in one year, and there’s no reason to. Despite the poor optimization of Unity, playing it in terms of gameplay was… not bad. Yes, the mechanics of the game have undergone significant changes compared to the previous parts, it has lost a lot, but gained many times less than it lost. But nevertheless, the new parkour mechanics turned out to be very interesting and more realistic, and the added ability to crouch and sneak added a sense of stealth to the game (and this, please note, in a game about secretive assassins). Of course, they left all this in “Syndicate”. Still there are changes. The most noticeable thing is that pumping has become less idiotic. For example, the ability to sit on a bench no longer needs to be purchased. There are, of course, more significant changes, such as the absence of a cooldown for eagle vision. Well, to generalize, it plays the same way as before.

This is what skill trees look like now. There are fewer useless skills, and the base level of skills is better and more extensive.

Chapter Four. Are we on the right track??

There is no point in describing everything that is in the game, it is quite large and all aspects simply cannot be described in one text, and reading all this will not be interesting.
To sum it up, I would like to say one thing. Commendable. "Syndicate" is certainly not the best part of the series, but it is in the style of the first games. Yes, there are still points that need to be corrected, but still there is progress for the better, the main thing is not to go down the wrong path of experimentation and stick to the main idea of ​​the game. Confrontation between Assassins and Templars. I would also like to note that technically this time Ubisoft did not disappoint. On PS4 the game looks great, the picture is juicy and FPS does not drop to 20 frames, as it did in Unity. On PC everything is the same, on Radeon R9 280x the game produces stable 50-60 frames. This time I want to praise Ubisoft, they tried. Of course, not everything is smooth, and there is something to complain about. But nowadays only Rockstar can make a game of this scale, but nevertheless this is a right step towards correction. So perhaps, from this step, we can expect a higher level of quality in the games produced by the French.