Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: Unity

December 18, 2014 Games 53

So this month, I’m doing a challenge on Goodreads celebrating Christmas called “Naughty or Nice” where I read romance novels for the whole month. Which is why you won’t be seeing me post all that often (maybe I can squeeze in a paranormal romance in here??). I’ll try really hard to make it up with discussion posts. Which come on, we all love those anyway so why the hell not, right?

Tabitha has always been sweet to me about writing what I want on the blog and I seem to be the only friend interested in writing something more than just books. Particularly gaming.

Yes, I am a huge gamer and I play all kinds on all gaming systems (recently switched back to PS4 since my husband finally bought me it as an early Christmas present). In fact, I convinced him to get it right after Assassins Creed: Unity came out…which is basically what I’m going to review here!

 

Alrighty, so I finished the main storyline and a majority of the sidequest, but I’m a completionist so not nearly done with all of them yet. Another game sort of grabbed me in it’s clutches and I had to take a break after I won this one. Eventually, I’ll go back and see what the co-op is about, but usually they aren’t to my liking anyway…SO NO COMMENTS ABOUT THE CO-OP in this review, but as for the rest…

The graphics (on PS4) were utterly amazing. I was astounded by the attention to detail. The fact that I could SEE what kind of fabric Arno was wearing!! The riots in the streets and all the little extra mini-quests made it seem like you were really there in the French Revolution. They had hangings and ballads and people starting fights EVERYWHERE. So kudos for that shit!!

The storyline for Arno was done well, but very cliched. I mean his father dies in the first 2 minutes and the whole story is based on his quest for revenge by killing off the people involved. I really thought that they would tie it in a little more with the historical aspect of the french revolution, but that was basically just the backdrop to his revenge. It’s nothing that does wonders for the series franchise. The Abstergo storyline is terrible. I have no words. There is no new information or additions and it seems pointless that the creators even kept it in there. I will stay that the loss of Desmond just made that entire story jump the shark with the last two games–and in this game was the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s safe to say I was pretty pissed off about it.

The characters! I loved the romance and Arno really is funny, charming, and dangerous. He reminded me so much of my dear Ezio! And Elise was a beautiful female addition to the crew, being a strong and capable woman who can hold her own with Arno. There are no recurring characters in this one even in the background information and even with the Abstergo plotline which is now shot to hell.

THERE’S ONLY ONE MAP. Do I need to even say more about that?

I love the idea of customization though. They did an amazing job with giving us lots of armor and weapons to use (the new spear is actually pretty badass). The fact that you can change up your look however you want is awesome and something they haven’t really focused on in the previous games.

Overall? Unmemorable compared to the rest IMO. The only thing I was really uber keen on was the graphics and the historical accuracy (one of my friends compared it to old maps and it is VERY accurate as far as buildings and structures go for that time period). Best I’ve ever seen and I did love Arno. It was a great time playing it and I’ll admit the last boss fight was very challenging compared to the others! But out of all the series, it would probably be ranked somewhere on the bottom.

Annnnnnd…sorry that was a bit on the long side, you could have totally just skimmed and got the gist. I’m currently playing:

Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4–RPG)

Virtue’s Last Reward (3DS–Puzzle)

Arcane Legends (Chromebook–MMO)

There’s probably going to be a future rant on how upset I am about Bravely Default (3DS) and why I loved it up until the last portion which was tedious and annoying.

What kind of games do you guys like to play?

Here are some of mine.

Kat Stark

Kat Stark

Guest reviewer
Kat Stark

Latest posts by Kat Stark (see all)

Related Posts

53 Responses to “Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: Unity”

  1. Nathan (@reviewbarn)

    I remember playing video games. Seem to recall liking them. But my PS2 stopped playing most games and I out cheep myself when it comes to the PS3 or PS4. So I just sigh because you are playing a game that looks pretty damn cool to me.
    Nathan (@reviewbarn) recently posted…Tough Travels- Traveling FolkMy Profile

    • Kat

      There’s so many good ones out there and it’s an expensive habit, but I’m very picky about what I buy so I like to think that helps out a bit lol

  2. Faye M.

    Dude, that’s so amazing. I’m so envious of you right now! I could totally kill for a PS4 and to play any of these babies (especially that Dragon Age. Girl, you have to review that one, too!) I’ve always wanted to play the Assassins Creed games but I tried the very first one on the MAC and I had trouble finishing the VERY FIRST QUEST where I had to race my brother dear to the top of the Cathedral. I think I had to do that one twenty times because I just couldn’t get it right. I gave up… but I watched them be played on YT and they really are awesome. It would be nice to get this one and play it for real! But alas, need a Ps4 first… >_<
    Faye M. recently posted…ARC Review: Last Will and Testament by Dahlia AdlerMy Profile

    • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

      I shall! So far it’s exceeded my expectations! Oh my goodness, don’t get me started with the first AC. I was not a fan. I always tell people to skip the first one and just go straight to the second (it will not effect the storyline at all). Plus, the games with Ezio are just so much more fun. He’s a very funny and sarcastic character…who slowly grows into a master and you see him transform throughout several of the games. Definitely give 2 a chance. I played all on Xbox…I lucked out this year with ps4…after begging constantly!! LOL
      Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

  4. Litha Nelle

    So, my first Assassin’s Creed was Black Flag, mostly because all the others I watched my brothers play instead of played myself. I don’t get the need for an Abstergo storyline in any of these AC games. I mean, really- I bought Black Flag for ships and pirates, not mod tech and to pretend I was a game designer/employee embroiled in a conspiracy theory. I truly can’t see the need for the extra world (that is only slightly relevant to the historical game): why not just make the best of one world?
    Anyway, great review and I’m jealous of your PS4/early Christmas gift.
    ~Litha Nelle

    • Kat

      Wow, I can’t tell you how that pains me to hear because Black Flag is when the storyline started going to hell. not mod tech and to pretend I was a game designer/employee embroiled in a conspiracy theory. <–because the abstergo storyline had nothing to do with that at all.

      In fact, it jumped so far away from the original intention. Which is where you played Desmond and you were going through his ancestry (reasoning behind going back in the past in the first place) and you were also fighting templars in the present time (with him being the protag).

      Here's spoilers behind that storylines ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbhsn6n7NNY

      Incase you're interested, but starting from Black Flag and not understanding the Abstergo's purpose from the beginning. Well that's missing out on a lot of wonderful background and story details that make this game so great.

  5. Felicia

    I’ve never played Assasin’s Creed. Always wanted to try it.
    I don’t play many video games, really, just Stacraft on my PC. My ex-boyfriend got me totally hooked on it, and then when we broke up four years ago, it was his game, and I had to get my own xD

    – Love, Felicia
    Felicia recently posted…Chapter 33: How my world fell apartMy Profile

    • Kat

      I love Starcraft 🙂 That was one of my first PC games I’ve played. AC is definitely a hard series to take on since there’s so many of them, but if you do like one a year and start with AC2…it’s a fun way to consume time. Plus, they’re all super cheap now aside from the brand new ones.

    • Tabitha (Not Yet Read)

      I was a huge Starcraft lover as well! My friends and I used to play all the time. We’d even cart all of our computers to one house and have LAN parties back in the day when all there was was dial up modems and we didn’t want the slow connection. Lol then I moved onto every other Blizzard made game. I was the biggest World of Warcraft junkie for years! I’m a recovered addict now though.
      Tabitha (Not Yet Read) recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

      • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

        Wow Tabitha! I’ve learned something new about you. Who knew you were a WOW junkie. My ex was crazy about that game. He was an addict for a whole year, I felt like I barely saw him along with many of my other guy friends. I’ll admit that I didn’t play it. I stopped at 2. I played the old school first and second one and did enjoy it (the dynamics were very much like Starcraft though–and that one took the cake for me, along with Diablo).
        Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

        • Tabitha (Not Yet Read)

          Oh yeah I was a big time junkie right when the game came out. I was seriously addicted for afew years. I even took a whole month off of work once and stayed home and played the entire time. I’ve tried playing again a free toned the past few years and colds never get into it again. I thought of trying the new mmo Wildstar but don’t think I will. I think my mmo days are over. Which is good because it was totally addictive for me.
          Tabitha (Not Yet Read) recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

  6. Jeann @ Happy Indulgence

    Oh Kat you should totally join the Read Play Blog meme for gaming book bloggers! I’d love to see what you are playing and recommending each month! I’ve heard so much about the Assassin’s Creed series, I really want to get into it but then I’d have to start from the beginning and it’s a big mission lol. Too bad there were things that made this one unmemorable and the story subpar to the rest. At least the graphics were good right?
    Jeann @ Happy Indulgence recently posted…Contemporary YA Reviews #4 – Flirty Dancing by Jenny McLachlan & Red at Night by Katie McGarryMy Profile

  7. Lege

    I am playing DAI currently.
    I think I will play it ’till I am old and wrinkled. -__-

    • Kat

      There is so much in that game. I have been playing it ever since the day it came out and I’m still not done. (Same for Skyrim). Hopefully I’ll finish next month, but I like to complete EVERYTHING, so that’s taking a while. For Skyrim, it’s damn near impossible.

      • Shawna

        79 missions just for the Thieves Guild.

        I cannot wait for Bethesda to bring a new Elder Scrolls game to the Xbox One. I loved Skyrim. The music, the graphics, the shouts, I loved when the draugr got really advanced and would laugh and mock me, which made me want to take them out even more!

        There are nights when I cannot sleep unless I have killed something first. On those nights, I love to go turn on the games when the house is dark and quiet, and load up my bow and arrows, sneak around, and take out Falmer, or whatever.

        I had two characters going with over 350 hours in EACH. The save files on the 360 became corrupted so I had to delete and start over. It was devastating. I love the game, though, but to have all but 6 achievements, and then to have to begin anew… It does something to the overall experience, you know?

        • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

          Holy crap. I would be so pissed if that happened to me. During the move last year, someone stole our xbox and we had to buy a brand new one, so all my saved games…gone. Terrible experiences man. But I barely scratched the surface of Skyrim. I haven’t even finished the main storyline. I just completed the thief one and I’m a master and all that shit now. I’m working on the Champions questline last time I was playing until Unity and then Inquisition took over lol.
          Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

    • Kat

      Dragon Age: Inquisition has sooo much more exploration and I love the characters and storyline. I love fighting all the different dragons and the Inquisition board…I’ll probably write a gushing review fangirling over it.

      As for AC, I love stealth…I love doing poison darts or shooting beserk darts at the guards and watching them kill themselves. Anything that involves being a stealthy assassin is awesome to me. HOWEVER, my husband also plays this game and he goes in guns blazing. It’s doable in the first few assassins creed. Button-mashing is acceptable and you definitely can get away with not dying and killing everyone (he does it all the damn time and it drives me nuts).

      BUT in this game they changed it so that you have to be more strategic and you can’t just force your way in or you’ll die. I think that’s why he hasn’t played this one all that much.

        • Kat

          Wow. You sound exactly like my husband. LOL. He has no patience either.

          I know that DA2 wasn’t favorable, but I didn’t hate it. In fact, I recently played all of them in a row upon buying Inquisition to refresh my memory. And DA2 is good, but the problem was that Origins surpassed it in so many ways that people thought it was lacking in everything.

          However, I think Inquisition, is a great mix of both worlds. Keeping characters from both the first and the second and tying them together in a great way 🙂

  9. Molly Mortensen

    I do love discussion posts, but I like randomness like this too. I used to be really into games, but when I started writing I stopped. I’ve actually never played an Assassin’s Creed though. I love the Co-Op thing, that way I can play with my sister.

    I so want a PS4 now! The graphics are amazing! I won’t use it, because I hardly touched my PS3 so it’s silly, but so pretty.

    I like hack and slash, give me a large weapon and point me at the bad guys. 🙂
    Molly Mortensen recently posted…Demons at Deadnight by A&E KirkMy Profile

    • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

      Hmmm…not sure how that would work. I think in this particular game you would need two consoles for co-op. It’s an online thing. I haven’t fully experimented with it so I can’t say for sure.

      I actually don’t have a PS3. We got a PS2 (so that it was backwards compatible with my PS1 games), then we got xbox360 (since it had more games we wanted at the time), then wii (which we barely use–collecting dust as you said– but we bought it cheap from someone and they gave us the hard drive with 400+ games on it…so there are hundreds of games we haven’t even played yet)…finally I knew I wanted PS4 for this game and DA:I alone and…I talked about it ever since I knew they were coming out with DA:I. There was a lot of waiting on my part but hubs finally caved.

      Hack and slash are very fun! I’ve played Dynasty Warriors and Devil Kings just for that alone. Killing hundreds and sometimes thousands of people is always a fun thing.
      Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

  10. Sesana

    Great review, Kat. I came at the game from a slightly different angle, as somebody who loves the time period first. You know, I’d really been looking forward to seeing them do a French Revolution game and now… Now, I wish they wouldn’t have. The thing is, Ubisoft always has to make Assassins the historical good guys, but that isn’t really an option during the Revolution. There are too many factions. Which leads to Arno apparently changing his political viewpoint radically from one mission to the next, going from supporting royalists to moderate republicans to radicals and back again.

    • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

      Actually…I didn’t really think of that, he really does switch sides often. I really think that the whole thing was just a backdrop and they could have done so much more to make him a part of that history (like they’ve done with the other games and he made a bigger impact on the situation). I did mention you in there 🙂 I mean as far as looks go, it’s still the best I’ve seen graphic wise and it’s still not a bad game to play. I enjoyed it but there was disappointment on my mind as well.
      Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

  12. Shawna

    Hello. Another gamer, here.

    I actually loved Black Flag. I know, and I do agree—it removed the franchise from the original point, however, I LOVED going out to sea and having ship wars, and all that. Plus, Edward Kenway is hot and I wrote lots of inappropriate haiku about him… Shhh. It’s our secret.

    Anyway, I am with you—the Abstergo stuff was jarring and unnecessary, and feels even MORE out of place in Unity! That said, I loved the Abstergo offices and if I HAD to work in an office, I would want it to look just like Abstergo! Nice place!

    I like the co-op in Unity. It makes some of the more intolerable and difficult missions easier. Some of them cannot be completed without help because they are SO hard. While the co-op is cool, it should not be a requirement, you know? It isn’t REQUIRED that these missions are completed while playing with others, but de-synching occurs so frequently in some of them, you really do NEED to have partners.

    That is what I liked about Black Flag. The co-op was not part of the main game. The co-op was not as fun because it was just ‘go in and kill these people, then get out’ but I liked that I could skip it all and not miss out on rewards tied to the main game.

    I am always looking for new people to play with, but you are on the PS4. We have the Xbox One. It would be cool to trade friend codes.

    Anyway, nice to see another woman gamer!

    Other things I play: Skyrim (it never gets old), the Katamari games, any of the Lego games, Sims (console, not PC), and my all-time favorite on the 3ds—Animal Crossing New Leaf. I have loved the AC franchise since Wild World. Nintendo really knocked this version out of the park! I still miss a few things, like sending messages in bottles, but overall, I have no complaints. Unlike with the Wii version, which caused me to hack my Wii so I could regrow the grass and do a few other things, too.

    Lovely post! Wish we could game together!

    • Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read

      Kenway is awesome. And I liked Arno in this one too. Both great characters and I usually love the characters. I think that I was just too attached to Desmond (I cried a lot with that ending) but thanks for all the info about the co-op! I didn’t think it would be too glamorous and it’s definitely a nice add-on to have.

      I’m happy that it’s not mandatory also. I don’t do well with others when it comes to action-adventure co-op games. It’s just hard for me to play with other people is all. Other than just dying a hundred times playing call of duty with other people…it’s meh for me. The wii is the best console for that and I only play when I have a lot of people over that like the mario games 🙂

      I heard great things about Animal Crossing but it just never appealed to me. I’ve played one of them before and it didn’t hold my interest enough for me to buy the others. I have been also playing Fantasy Life! I’m on my 3rd job so far (because obviously I have to master them all) and it’s a very similar gameplay, but with a lot more rpging involved as far as fighting, creating, and storyline goes…I’m enjoying it anyway. You should try that one out as well!
      Kat Stark @ Not Yet Read recently posted…Video Game Review: Assassins Creed: UnityMy Profile

  13. Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum

    I pooped out on the Assassin’s Creed games at number 3. The best AC game imo was Brotherhood. But since we got an Xbox One, my husband seemed to have really enjoyed Black Flag and it looks really pretty. Actually snagged Unity for him for this Christmas, and maybe I’ll check it out once he’s done 😛
    Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum recently posted…Tough Traveling: Traveling FolkMy Profile

  14. Valerie

    NOOOOOOOOO
    NOOOOOOOOOOOO

    Ah gah. Sorry I skimmed through your review because I love Assassin’s Creed and I don’t have a PS4 and it’s really saddening because I play and own all the games. BUT ALL I SAW WAS THE REAL LIFE STORY SUCKED 🙁 or that nothing happens. Kind of like in Black Flag 🙁

    I kind of feel that the series went down after Ezio in ACII 🙁 Oh well. Nice review Kat! I’m glad to meet another video game lover!
    Valerie recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday #35My Profile

  15. Alienortothemoon

    OH! An Assassin’s Creed review!! How awesome is this!! <3 <3 <3 I agree with what you said and unfortunately I feel that since AC3 they failed to renew the series… Even if I just love climbing and I won't be able to prevent me from buying every each of them 😀 Everybody has his weakness right??

    Also – ONE SINGLE MAP. I feel you here. I was so damn disappointed about it. I mean, okay, Paris is great and that was so cool to finally get to see another big city but I wanted mooore!!

  17. Lupdilup

    I didn’t get the PS4, I didn’t think my kiddo need it, but now I feel like I must get it for her soon! (it’s really for me too)..LOL
    This game sounds great! I used to play a lot more, but since I got hooked on TV series on Netflix and Amazon prime I ahven’t play much, but I think I need to get back to it. This was the only thing I enjoyed besides audiobooks.
    Lupdilup recently posted…12 Days of Book Blogmas Challenge – Best GiftMy Profile

    • Kat

      Well I hope you do. I get sucked into Netflix all the time, so I feel you on that front 😀

  18. Mary @ BookSwarm

    While I enjoyed AC: Unity for the reasons you listed, I played it on my new XBox One (merry Christmas to me) and it was so buggy!! I had to restart it a couple of times…gah. Frustrating. But I liked Arno and the attention to detail with Paris and the clothes was absolutely amazing.

    I’m nearing completion with Dragon Age: Inquision right now and loving it! I had some dark and brooding smexytimes with Blackwall (hard to quit that bearded bastard!) but broke up with him to get it on with Cullen. He’s a lot of fun. The graphics are nothing compared to AC but the storyline is so much fun and interesting and I love the interactions. Up next is Middle Earth: The Shadow of Mordor!
    Mary @ BookSwarm recently posted…Pre-Squee: The Start of Me and You by Emery LordMy Profile