Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015)

Not gonna give this one a proper long review because a) it's been too long since I played it so it's not fresh enough in my mind and b) I technically never finished it, but I did enjoy this one. The oppressive and mechanical atmosphere of London was amazing, I enjoyed the characters (very fond of Jacob's rogueish humour and I was genuinely interested in his little sub-plot with Maxwell Roth), and the gameplay was as fun as Assassin's Creed usually is; I could happily spend an hour just parkouring around the city as always. Also loved the concept of your base being in a moving train.

Said gameplay was more engaging than the main plot for me, which is probably why I never completed it - I'm more of a story-driven gamer than a gameplay-oriented one. Maybe I'll get back to it someday, but I'm not planning on it.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate is 8th entry in Ubisoft's Assassins Creed franchise. Players in this entry will find themselves controlling two assassins for the first time Jacob and Evie Frye (also the first female protagonist in the series) as they seize control of a Victorian era London from Templar Crawford Sterrick. While the game continues to improve upon gameplay elements introduced by the excellent AC: Unity, other aspects take a step back: this game's atmosphere, narrative, villain, and supporting characters are among the series worst, and ongoing stagnation in the series parkour movement system aren't fixed by the addition of a grappling hook. While this entry is certainly more polished than it's predecessor in terms of bugginess, it's clear the developers lacked the adequate time to make a memorable and impactful game rather than yet another cookie cutter Assassins Creed experience with new drapery.

That being said, Assassins Creed is Assassins Creed. The game still scratches that dopamine itch in your lizard brain of travelling over a city wide map, killing things, and checking off each item in your list, all while unlocking new gear and skills. It may be formulaic, but at least its a fun formula. Additionally, much to my delight, the developers decided to include a modern story line, even if it is in the form of cutscenes only. This storyline was skipped entirely in AC Unity, making Syndicate, despite it's flaws, less skippable than it's previous gen 7 entry at least when measured by its ability to fit in with the rest of the series.

Gameplay

AC Syndicate plays much like every other entry in The Assassins Creed Series, which somehow after literally hundreds of hours of play over now 8 entries (I have not played any title in the series beyond this one), still manages to scratch the itch my ADHD lizard brain craves. The formula is simple: climb the tower, sync your environment, do the activities in the area navigating between each one with parkour, repeat until the map has no more activities, break this up by doing story missions. You accomplish these tasks by using various approaches (stealthy or open combat) and by using a variety of gadgets (some old, some new, none of them revolutionary)

You're rewarded with cash, crafting materials, blueprint unlocks (each series mainstays since AC II), and also now RPG-lite skills points which you use to unlock skills (introduced in AC Unity). Some of these skills are unique to Assassin Jacob, who plays more combat-focussed, and others are unique to Evie, who is more stealthy. While I found this split compelling in theory, I think Ubisoft should have gone much further with this idea than they ultimately did, because in practice, the unique skills are not unlocked until the skill trees are almost entirely completed, and they are simultaneously not enough of them and they aren't interesting or powerful enough to make Jacob and Evie play fundamentally differently.

This problem extends also to the developers approach to level design. Story missions are always either available for Jacob or Evie, never both, but in designing these missions there's no difference in approach. Both characters have the same methods available to them to complete the mission. Any distinguishment in methodology is up to the player alone. On a further note with regards to mission design, the optional/supplemental goals you can accomplish in each mission, though usually fine, are sometimes extremely poorly thought out to the point that accomplishing then might take 10 attempts and cause you to act in a way that feels completely out of place to the level. While I usually tried to accomplish the optional goals for added fun and challenge they frequently became encumbering to the experience of the mission. Much of the difficulty comes from the series dated parkour movementsystem which somehow feels less responsive than it did in the series older entries and only does exactly what I want to do about 80% of the time. While it feels really cool to pull off an assassination exactly in the manner you want to, it's very frustrating to have your attempts foiled not by the game's enemies, but because of an unresponsive movement system.

Narrative The narrative in this game is, in a word, paper-thin. AC: Syndicate features the series most formulaic story, which is disappointing considering the opportunities the setting should offer. We know next to nothing about our heroes besides the fact that they had a famous assassin dad and that they have different approaches to assassin work. We are given no reason to care about these two twins and none presents itself as the story progresses. We know even less about our antagonists, who are mawkish simulacra of real people with real goals. I think what makes the antagonists feel so distinctly bland in this game is the fact that they are fictional, whereas in the past the series has used real people from history as their antagonists. To me, the biggest narrative draw of the series was always this secret war between the freedom radical assassins and the control obsessed Templars, and which figures from history were on which side. In this narrative, none of the heroes or villains are recognizable from history. While Florence Nightingale, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, and Alexander Graham Bell do each make side-quest appearances, I believe they should have been more integrated into the story, as their presence feels mostly ancillary. It's not a good sign when the end credits roll and you feel basically nothing besides a creeping feeling that you've done this all before, only better.

The game also does not grapple well with it's setting. England at this time was at the height of its imperial power, and London was the center of the world. This fact is told to us repeatedly, but it necer really feels true. Our villain never feels like a real threat with access to this never-before-seen access to power, and the game's conflict mostly revolves around street-thug level interactions instead of the centuries-spanning secret conflict between Assassins and Templars like it should. Additionally the game chooses to basically ignore the Victorian era's pretty egregious handling of women, religion, imperialism, and colonization, all of which I think hand ample opportunity to feature in a series whose main theme is the conflict between freedom and order.

Aesthetics If not narratively at least aesthetically, victorian London is well-realized. Each section of the city feels unique in terms of architecture, and all of the recognizable monuments are present and well-represented. This is of course the series standard and one of its biggest draws: the chance to explore a setting as it once existed, and AC Syndicate continues this pattern of excellence. Textures and lighting are both up to series standards. I especially liked times when the London fog would roll in, as it made running around rooftops with my hood up feel especially atmospheric.

The game features a competent but forgettable sound track, though I did really like the battle music which is orchestral and especially string heavy.

Score: 3/5

A 3/5 game is a game you can enjoy but whose potential is not realized and whose flaws noticeably detract from the expeirence. It is in a word "average" or "forgettable". It may succeed in many areas but it likely offers no real innovations or fails to successfully execute new ideas. It is a game you can recommend to fans of the genre or series but are unlikely to recommend to a broad audience because competitors simply do it better.

4.5*

I am CONFLICTED about this game, overall I think I loved it but there are a lot of issues holding it back from perfection.

Pros:

• London! It's massive, it's gorgeous, and its full of character (Revolutionary Paris was better but this is probably my second favourite AC setting). Traditional parkour is given over by more emphasis on carriages (which are super satisfying to drive) and the new zipline tool. Initially the zipline felt very stop-and-start but there are ways to integrate it more seamlessly through positioning and dropping before reaching the end.

• Humour! The writing is fairly light and comical, lending the game a particularly British touch I think (I'm petitioning for Mrs Disraeli to receive her own video game)

• Assassinations! >:) following on from Unity, the assassination missions here feel like proper mini Hitman-missions with more choices and unique kills available for them all

• Side Activities that are worth it and FUN! Okay so I know a lot of people dislike the Ubisoft formula of conquering a map by completing activities but Syndicate has such satisfying stealth and combat that I constantly found myself getting distracted, forgetting about the main plot and just enjoying liberating London

• Gameplay! Best in the franchise bar-none. Yes the combat is basically just Arkham, yes the stealth can be OP (the knives!) but I loved feeling like a badass assassin so idc!

Cons:

• Jacob is another carbon copy roguish bad boy type and is unfairly prioritised over his MUCH more interesting sister, Evie. I also disliked how their respective strengths are so obviously gendered. Wow Jacob likes beer, acts without thinking and is better at fighting while Evie collects pressed flowers, is sneakier and fixes Jacob's messes. Revolutionary as always Ubisoft! Evie clearly should have been the sole protagonist of the game and I look forward to the Ripper dlc for this very reason.

• The side MISSIONS (read: NOT the Gang Liberation activities) are a step-down from Unity. The Dickens, Darwin and Marx subplots are thin and the game never delves as deeply into the lore of London as Unity did with its enormous amount of Paris Stories.

• Secrets of London. WHY ! WHY ! WHY ! I LOVED the riddles in Unity, all you had to do was read a little about the monuments, the history and recall some high school French and you could solve them and it was soooo satisfyingggg but Syndicate replaced the riddles with pictures of the locations you need to go to (while still offering riddles, but this time they make no sense and have nothing to do with the location of the secret).

• The ending/modern day. The last boss was busted, with way too many unnecessary cutscenes. The modern day was FINE (not good) but meh interesting enough until the ending which resolved nothing and, simply can be described as a flop.

I still have to play through the Queen Victoria missions, The Maharajah DLC and the Ripper DLC but as it stands I would rank this alongside Unity as being one of the best games in the franchise.

EDIT: Just wrapped up the Victoria and Maharajah missions as well as maxing all associates (YES I PLACED FIRST IN EVERY CARRIAGE RACE I HAVE A MONKEY BRAIN). The Victoria arc was cute enough as a sort of post-game epilogue and leading on from Jacob and Evie addressing colonialism in its ending the Maharajah dlc deals with the topic more directly. It's not a stand out dlc and the mission rewards are pointless this late into the game but I enjoyed the story. It nicely links to the events of Chronicles: India and I was glad they examined an aspect of Victorian Britain so glaringly omitted in the base game.

After playing Unity, I had little hopes that AC will be any good in the new generation, but I was wrong. Syndicate overhauled the combat system. If you've ever played the Batman Arkham series, it's exactly like that. Fast paced, and reaction based. Compared to the slow clunky combat system in Unity, you actually feel like a skilled assassin that can kick ass. You weren't overpowered like in Black Flag, where you could take on like 10 people at a time.

The hook shot is also another tool that was featured in the Arkham series. This tool makes it so much easier to traverse the city of London. You can zip across vast areas, horizontally or vertically. This does take away the need to climb a lot of things, but for such a large map, it's absolutely needed. I loved the characters in Syndicate. They were funny, interesting, and varied. Can't help but to chuckle at some of the back and forth dialogue between the Frye twins. The game also incorporates some very notable historical figures, like Darwin and Bell, in awesome ways.

The infiltration missions allowed multiple routes and options, which was the only good thing they took from Unity. And the rest of the missions still felt unique enough that they didn't seem repetitive. PC version is best version of AC Syndicate. Graphics are nice, enemy variety could have been better, but overall it's nice. This now is one of my favorite AC game.

It seems like most games in this series have been developed in concert with at least one other entry. This is probably a reflection of Ubisoft choosing to have a mainline game in the series release annually since 2009--and two in 2014 (I'm looking at you Rogue). You play them back to back or close together and they share a startlingly amount of DNA. Sometimes you prefer one over the other because you like time period they explore or a minor mechanic that makes it in one but not the other. You have Brotherhood and Revelations. You have Black Flag and Rogue. You have Origins and Odyssey.

I say this all to the point that if I had to pick one, I would pick Syndicate's 'sister' game Unity, over this one. Maybe I'll just go write a review for Unity, instead!

One of my main gripes for this game was the traversal. This game isn't quite as big and open as Origins, but you can see them getting there. The grapple hook deflated one of the chief joys of this series: scaling a building. The zip line always felt like it took a little took long and you were going way to far. I think having to squish in the buggies made this spaces a bit too large.

However, a couple highlights that were welcome in Syndicate: firstly, the train hideout was fun, but I don't think it ever really had a purpose or proved it needed to be on a train..? BUT it did play into the period and it was fun to know the world was passing by as you were hanging out in it. Maybe some people really leveraged it as a form of transportation? I wonder how they could have made that actually matter.

Secondly, I liked how the brought back and expanded upon the 'gang' mechanic first established in Brotherhood. Having a group of recruits to help you take on a a hideout what a welcome change when you didn't really want to go the stealthy way.

Pretend it says 2,5 stars. ^

Intro

It's Assassin's Creed. A stealth-focused third-person action game that takes place on a big, boring map filled with stuff. The world, story and characters are 100% forgettable. Sometimes it's really fun, often it's really frustrating.

Good Stuff

• Base assault missions are sometimes 5 star experiences.
• You actually get backup from your faction.
• Grappling hook allows for neat air-assassinations.
• The skill tree is nice.
• Gang upgrades are okay.

Things They Finally Fixed

• There's a grappling hook (rope gun) to help you climb.
• Auto-loot skill.
• No Creed points like in Unity.
• Fewer vantage points.
• Killing people gives XP.
• Maps bought with in-game money instead of Helix points.
• Luring is a button instead of an item.

The Bad

• QTEs. And you constantly have to mash Space to boost your carriage. I quit 30 seconds into my first race because of this.
• Everything about the story and most of the dialogue is awful.
• Rope gun use is very limited and you can almost never use it to descend.
• Only half a dozen enemy types.
• Really long loading times.
• Still quite a number of bugs, especially with the train safe.
• Combat still sucks. They want you to set up chained kills but don't give you the tools to properly do so (prompts, targetting).

The Ugly

• The world is so bland, fake and forgettable. Even Unity had more character.
• They use the same buttons for far too many functions. E.g. throwing a grenade and dodging a shot are both done with F.
• About half of all missions are incredibly short, lazy and pointless. Especially the ones for side-characters.
• Items are poorly implemented again. They all give generic boosts and you won't use 80% of them because you will quickly find better items. Especially the cloaks should just have been skins.
• Items locked behind reputation gained from side-missions. Just have one goddamn unlock system instead of forcing me to do missions i dislike.
• The WW1 area is pointless. A handful of short, dull missions - that's it. What a waste.

The Worst

• Hostage missions are fucking awful. If you thought trailing missions were bad just wait till you have to do these things.
• So many hostage, trailing and tackling missions. Sooooo maaaannnnyyyy.
• The final boss fight is painfully bad.

Conclusion

Unisoft once again proves it is the staffed by the world's most overpaid game designers. They improve some things, then introduce new garbage. I honestly have no idea how they can be so bad at this. If they fixed the controls, removed all bullshit non-assassin gameplay and focused on making fewer but more engaging missions they could easily make a four-star game. Now the content is spread so thin little of it sticks.

I'm gradually making my way through the AC series, so mind you that "the best" does not include games after Syndicate since I haven't played those yet. With that out of the way, let me say that yes, this entry has everything you love about Assassin's Creed.

Unity was a good step back towards the classic Assassin's Creed experience vs. the good-pirates-games bad-AC-games that were Black Flag and Rogue. But it had issues with plot, characterization, and general gameplay clunkiness. While I wouldn't say Syndicate is perfect, it corrects a lot of these issues.

After several games of twisting morality around between the Assassin's and Templars, Syndicate takes us back to the classic "Assassin's stopping evil Templars" plotline. Not groundbreaking, but sometimes a plot doesn't need to be.

Syndicate uses dual protagonists, the twins Jacob and Evie Frye. The fact that they're a pair made both their characters work. They have that type of friendly love/hate relationship that only siblings can really pull off. Although I do wish the game had focused on their relationship a bit more. They banter a lot at the beginning and end, but the middle of the game is mostly each of them off doing their own thing instead of interacting with each other.

And now for the important bit, the gameplay. For starters, the clunkiness is mostly gone. I had a few stuttering issues, but I'm fairly certain that's more due to my PC being overdue for a hardware upgrade than anything else. Some aspects of previous games have been removed. There's no boat in this one, obviously. Other little things, like hiding on benches, are also out. The most noticeable thing is less secondary gadgets, which I thought was good. The last two games had like 9 or 10 gadgets, but only 2 or 3 were actually useful on a regular basis. Syndicate has 5 and I used 4 of them constantly.

The skill tree was built well in this one, divided into three different sections. And each character got some unique skills to boot, with Jacob focused on combat while Evie was stealth-focused. And it was all based on the leveling system, which actually did something in this game instead of just awarding little titles with no mechanical effect like in the last one. But there was an EXP boost that was nice at first but quickly overleveled my characters. It made the endgame a bit too easygoing, granted I could've nerfed myself by unequipping higher-level items if I'd really wanted to.

But the main thing is that the game is in a city. Which is where Assassin's Creed really needs to be in order to shine. The fact that it took place in Victorian London, much closer to the present day, also helped. And it's probably as close to the present day as we're going to get in this franchise. Plus the historical figures that pop up were almost all ones I knew some history on. Or at least recognized the names.

Anyway, great game. The plot was basic but the gameplay was solid and characters were fun. Since these games are all in the past, there is really only so much they can do with the plot. The characters are really where the series shines. And the Frye twins were some of the best since Ezio.

On my journey to play all assassin creed games I have seen all sorts of varying quality. Games that have good gameplay, but bad story and buggy. Games that have good stories but are dated or games that are no fun all around. Assassin Creed Syndicate falls into good gameplay, breathtaking graphics, but a genetic, boring storyline. I could not muster enough energy to even care about the storyline, like at all. However, the characters were really good, the twin assassin combo really worked for me. I found it fun to use them in different situations and missions. The best thing about the game is hands down the graphics and environment, the recreation of Victoria London is extremely impressive and accurate. I found the open world to be fully realized and very well made. Sadly, I was not that motivated by what was happening in it. Also, another huge problem, game freezing bugs! For an AC game that is a sadly common occurrence, but what can you do.

It'd you're going in semi chronological order of assassin's creed games this one is probably the best in terms of it's mechanics. Unfortunately it falls on the theme front if you're not into Victorian age of England. And while the story is nice and main characters interesting it didn't get the spot of my favorite AC game.

The game is set in XIX century London. While I feel the setting is well modeled it's just not that fun. Detailed but brown and depressing. The different parts if the city have a different feel to them and distinguishable features.

The two main characters are a really nice treat. The Frye siblings are interesting and playing one over another lets you focus on different game style either stealth or more brutal approach. Over the course of the game for that reason I've spent a lot off time with eve and it was a time well spent. Really happy to see a strong female character.

Mechanics in the game are tightest so far especially when it comes to stealth. This is the first AC game where stealth feels like it had some thought put into with a number of toys to your disposal to either distract, kill silently or other way help you move around.

As with all big AC games this comes with a lot to do. And while I skipped most of the optional quests in a couple of previous ones - this one did me a number and got me doing all those repetitive missions and I’ll admit - had fun doing them for quite a while.

Bad sides of this game - definitely horse carriage driving - there’s very little that could have been done for it to feel worse. And as mentioned the setting. Although while it’s mostly brown and gray the tightly packed neighborhoods provide a decent ways to go around the city.

Overall a very good game in not so great setting. But definitely worth playing.

I waited to write this review until I got about 10hrs of Assassin's Creed: Origins in, and I think I may actually like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate more than Origins (and I assume more than Odyssey, since I've heard that Odyssey is basically just more Origins).

In AC: Syndicate, The story is actually fairly bland & generic, but the main characters, Jacob & Evie, make up for it with their extreme likability.

Combat looks & feels a lot more "actiony" this time around, though in reality, it's mostly the same mechanics as all the previous games. Unlike with Unity, I was actually driven to take the time to use more than just the default weapon type. Also, the zipline is an extremely welcome addition to traversing London.

The glut of collectable map-barf seems toned down from Unity, but in reality, that might just be an illusion due to the map icons being smaller. In addition to collectibles, this game also introduces optional side story missions focusing around historical characters like Charles Dickens & Karl Marx.

Having played a bit of Origins, I actually think that Syndicate has the better graphics of the two. Syndicate's story characters all look unique & feature detailed mo-cap. Origins' characters, however, seem mostly like procedurally-generated NPCs with generic automated face & body movements.

As much as I want to gush over this game, the developers threw some of their blandest storytelling & worst design decisions into the final couple hours & somewhat soured the experience. To start Sequence 8 of 9, you're forced to do side-questy stuff & secure three full boroughs before you can proceed. Then there's an extremely poorly-designed burning-building mission, where after 20 minutes of banging my head against a wall, I had to Google the solution. Starting Sequence 9, fast travel points are disabled for some reason, and you're forced to travel almost 2000m to a waypoint. And shortly after that, there's another poorly-designed mission where you need to get to the second floor of a building, and the solution is not at all intuitive, even with the voice queue just before you die (Google to the rescue again).

5.5/10

• (+) Graphics are good, specially lightning and shadows. Some pop-in and low detail textures here and there though.
• (+) Good historic recreation of the city of London and it's dwellers, and as usual in the series the strongest point of the game.
• (+) Good OST & ambient sound, ok voice acting. Some lines from enemies and such get really repetitive after 30 hours though and some NPC voice lines have a really short cycle so if you stop to listen you'll hear the same thing constantly on repeat.
• (+) The assassination missions are pretty good. Fun to play, different approaches and gameplay styles possible to resolve them, different locations for each one and for the most part interesting antagonists.
• (+-) Side quests (activities) get old pretty fast, probably because the game is trivially easy and thus it's pretty boring to repeat the same activities again.
• (+-) The whole gang wars setting and borough conquering is a missed opportunity to do something interesting and fun with it. It devolves into repeating the same 4 or 5 kind of missions (kidnap, kill all, kill target, liberate children, etc.) for each district until you conquer it. Uninteresting. Once again because the game is so easy, although in theory using your gang to help out in taking down enemies and completing quests sounds good I just stopped using them altogether, specially after upgrading them because it would've turned the combat from super easy to just braindead easy. By the way, that's how most of my 'Gang wars' were... enemy gang wiped out in seconds.
• (+-) Story is just ok. Not amazing, not terrible but I never really got engrossed by it or particularly cared for most of the characters at all. Meh.

• (-) Combat. Dumbed down to the absolute maximum. It does just enough to merit calling it a combat system. Extremely boring & easy. Basically QTE in disguise. You just mash buttons or mash the counter button and see stuff die. At least multikills are somewhat fun to watch... Also, only 3 melee weapons. Too simple.
• (-) Movement. Also extremely dumbed down. Once you get the grappling hook with the ludicrous range it has and the fact that your character automatically does all the parkour for you (in other titles you had to make the jumps at specific points, etc., the game asked something from you other than just 'press forward') moving through the city is just pretty dull. The hook is still good to have though, because the climbing is just clunky and automatic anyway.
• (-) Enemy design (and thus "your gang" design as well) is ridiculously repetitive and asinine. The same models over and over again, which is odd because the general population NPCs had a lot more variation to them. Not only there's barely no variation among the enemy models, they also behave basically identically despite the different look. Just basic melee runt & snipers...
• (-) Skills and progress system are pretty broken. You get a really OP character almost immediately and you basically won't care about skills anymore after some point. Economy is pretty broken too because of the train's safe and the amounts you earn from side quests. The attribute system for the gear and weapons is pretty shallow and easy to max out. Again, too easy to get OP early on.
• (-) The dual main character system isn't really well executed. There's nothing distinct or unique to it. Missed opportunity I guess.
• (-) Intrusive and obstrusive UI, even if you can disable parts of it. I don't want to have to disable systems that relay important information just so the game doesn't look all clogged up by rings, markers and other crap. Anyway, as expected by Ubisoft.
• (-) Modern day cut-scenes. I just... what? Cringy stuff.

Despite how negative this review seems, the game is enjoyable and I don't regret playing it. But it felt very generic and bland to me.

Syndicate es una mezcla de lo mejor y lo peor que ofrece esta franquicia. Por un lado tenemos personajes muy carismáticos (AMO a los gemelos Frye, LOS AMO! pero también amo a Henry, Ned y Max), un mapa lleno de detalles muy agradable de recorrer y un diseño de edificaciones, vestuario e interiores realmente increíble... pero también tiene un sistema de combate muy simple y repetitivo, misiones "collect-a-thon" aburridas (en medio de muy pocas que si valen la pena) y una historia que, aunque tiene detalles interesantes (como la forma en la que muestra el vacio de poder que se crea cuando cae cada uno de los templarios), resulta aburrida y se sostiene solo por la gracia de los personajes (y ni que decir de los momentos en el presente, que no son mas que relleno).

Amo también el esfuerzo de Ubisoft en presentar un Londres victoriano variado, lleno de personas de diferentes razas, géneros y orientaciones sexuales. Da mucho mas gusto jugar un videojuego cuando pone atención a elementos como este.

En fin, lo recomiendo mucho porque de verdad es un gusto visual y en cuanto a personajes. Ojalá se hubiera pulido un poco mas a nivel mecánico y de historia. También tuve mi buena ración de bugs, incluyendo el infame "rostro desaparecido".

Assassin's Creed returns with a new setting, unfortunately it reverts on most points compared to it's predecessors. Combat and climbing is the worst they've ever been, the story is for the most part uninspired and bland. The setting whilst interesting on paper is uninteresting in practice resulting in a drab colourless world despite the good level of detail and graphical fidelity. There are a couple of saving graces that kept me from quitting the game entirely, mostly the music though also some of the dialogue and main assassination missions. I'm glad Ubisoft has decided to take a break with Assassin's Creed and rethink the series, because I could not stand playing another game like this.

Story

Syndicate is set in Victoria Era London. The story features two playable protagonists, twins Jacob and Evie Frye which is something new for the series. Unfortunately the relationships between the characters is quite weak, particularly in the first three quarters of the game. There is some great humour in the game, though it is often more miss than hit with Jacob providing most comedic relief (and he does have some very funny lines). Evie plays the stern consistent character whilst Jacob is unpredictable.

The story involves the twins trying to relieve the control of London from the Templar leader Starrick. There are couple of semi-interesting plot twists in the story though it's business as usual for Assassin's Creed, which is to say pretty bland. The main villain is disappointingly one dimensional, his motives are unclear and his means are absurd. How one can proclaim to be working for the greater good but commit atrocities on a daily basis is completely unacknowledged in the story.

There are several side characters. Some are quite interesting, I liked the police Sergeant who is also very funny and his scenes with Jacob were the most amusing of the entire game probably. In addition there features several of the greatest British minds of the time including Bell, Darwin, Dickens and... Marx. Whilst these characters are pretty great especially Darwin and Dickens there is not a lot of substance to be found here and their relationship to any plot points is almost non-existent and their motives are also not explored at all. This was a great disappointment and a missed opportunity, as most of my enjoyment of Assassin's Creed games comes from the interesting alternate history.

As per usual there also features somewhat of a story set in the modern times (or near future?). The story here is told entirely through cutscenes and surprisingly these are actually quite interesting and probably the best cutscenes in the game which is both sad and impressive.

Gameplay

Oh boy this is where it gets really bad. I'll start with the climbing which is worse here than in any other Assassin's Creed game to date. There were countless moments where I seemed to encounter invisible walls while climbing and my character would just not go through them. Climbing is clunkier than Unity and seems slower in general. Luckily the game seems to realise how awful it did the climbing here and replaced most of it with an Arkham style grappling hook. The hook actually works pretty well and is much faster than climbing manually. It's a shame that they went for this method rather than making climbing interesting and worthwhile as I thought they were actually on to something with the way Unity does the climbing controls.

Well now I'll talk about the combat, which is for the most part infuriating. I'm no stranger to Assassin's Creed combat and I consider myself to be generally pretty adept, but the combat in Syndicate is just awful. The worst mechanic being when enemies guard, what this means is that if you attack them they will auto counter you which is fine on paper. The problems happen when you are fighting multiple enemies at same time (i.e all the time), because there is no lock-on system you will frequently accidentally attack someone who is guarding when you intended to attack someone else. I could talk more about the combat and all its annoyances but I feel it's best to just move on.

You will find yourself repeating the same types of missions over and over again, they seem to have taken inspiration from the original game which recycles the same 4 or so mission types, all of which are dreadful. Kidnapping people is finicky and infuriating, regular assassinations are boring and uninspired, escorts and tailing missions are the worst because of the dreadful climbing controls and almost equally bad horse and carriages. The only redeeming missions are the ones in which you rescue kids from labouring in factories. After doing a bunch of painful lead-up missions you will finally be rewarded with a story assassination mission. These are actually really good and the best in the series, you scout out the area and determine a plan of attack, it feels a lot like baby's first Hitman.

Can't finish this part before I talk about the ridiculous amount of bugs in the game. It started out alright, just your regular fun bugs such as falling through the map or the carriages flipping out and flying around. However it got progressively worse and worse and started to impact my ability to finish missions requiring restarts of the game/mission and many many many crashes, including a crash right before the final cutscene. I played Unity earlier this year and encountered very few bugs so they seemed to have taken a real step backwards here (for me anyway).

Presentation

Graphical quality here is technically quite good, with a high level of detail, nice texture work and clear reflections. Unfortunately it feels let down by its setting, industrial London is a drab and dreary place with only two colours, brown and red. I frequently hear that Syndicate was a downgrade of Unity in the graphics department but I'm not sure, obviously the number of NPCs and lighting (particularly internal) is worse though I think the main difference is that Paris was just a much better looking setting with more colours. The models of the characters are really well detailed and the animations are done well both in terms of facial animations and combat/movement. There is, as always, a great deal of care given to making the environment feel realistic this is evident in the historical buildings and monuments.

Now I can talk about something that is actually very very good and that is the music. I've been listening to the soundtrack long before I started playing the game. Austin Wintory solidifies his position as one of, if not the best, composer in the modern era and within the video game industry. He shows his versatility here by composing traditional sounding romantic era music with lots of high tension strings. I love this soundtrack and consider it as one of his best. Unfortunately a lot of the vocal tracks on the soundtrack are not present in the game (or at least I didn't hear them), I only noticed one and that was right at the end. This is disappointing as these are some of the more interesting on the album. Wintory shows he was a worthy successor to Jesper Kyd, which surprised even me.

If you're like me and you've been a fan of Assassin's Creed since Altair was slaying Templar fools in the Middle East, you were most likely underwhelmed by the "revamped" AC Unity. I was so underwhelmed by it, that it took me this long to get around to playing the latest installment in the series. I'm here to tell you to get off the Unity hate wagon and go pick up a copy of this game if you haven't already. This game is every bit as good, if not better, than Black Flag.

You are again playing as an Initiate inside of an Animus (or whatever they're calling it these days) as you help your usual friends Rebecca and Shaun find another Piece of Eden. Thankfully, this entire game takes place inside the Animus simulation, and there is no running around the real world like you've done in the past. This game follows the brother/sister assassin duo of Jacob and Evie Frye as they traverse London to defeat the Templars in the mid-1800s, and you will be restricted to playing as one or the other during some missions (the mission icon on the world map will indicate which character you'll play as) but for the most part, you are free to switch back and forth between both characters depending on how you want to play. Jacob is not quite as stealthy as Evie, and does better in straight-up fights with large groups, while Evie is pretty much an English ninja, and if you level her up high enough, will eventually be able to turn invisible when stationary.

The game-play also surpasses anything that Unity had to offer, from the combat being improved to not getting bogged down by an enormous crowd of NPCs. Additionally, your characters are sporting some fun new equipment like a zip-line that will not only help you scale to the top of buildings with just the push of a button, but will also allow you to zip-line from building to building, which is great for making your way across the rooftops The missions still have that repetitive Assassin's Creed feel to them, but there did seem to be a little more variety in them, and honestly the story was good enough to keep me playing through them without getting bored.

The game features a leveling system, complete with crafting and upgrading equipment, so you'll want to make sure to do the side-missions and find the game's collectables to unlock the schematics for the best gear in the game. Finding 100% of the collectables can be a task however -- maps for treasure chests and a few other items can be bought, but the other collectables you'll have to find on your own. Don't worry, there's plenty of beautiful scenery to take in while you're running through London. What's wrong, don't really feel like running through London? Feel free to hijack a horse-drawn carriage, GTA style, or better yet, just take the train from station to station.

This game brought back my faith the Assassin's Creed series --- great graphics, great gameplay, and a great story to go along with it. I can't wait to see where our search of the Pieces of Eden will take us next.