Kane & Lynch 2 is a game about violence. Well, maybe.

Violence has been portrayed in many different ways in videogames. There's been over-the-top violence, mild violence, cartoonish violence, gorey violence, and even missing it entirely as a form of protest.
But this game portrays is it a very unique and, I find, realistic way: it's dry. It's very, very dry.
With gunfights happening in the middle of urban china, killing civilians is hard to avoid. When the stakes start getting higher, dogs become an obstacle that you must kill to prevent a game over. Hell, the events of the game are kickstarted by the violent death of an innocent.
All of these are met with silence. There is no mulling over death, no celebrating victories, nothing.

I find this reaction to violence the most interesting part of the game. I found it very raw and realistic. I remembered Hotline Miami, a game that also deals with the theme of violence, but a stark difference is that in that game the protagonist vomits after the first level. In K&L2, there's never something like that. Violence is not met with indifference but a feeling of emptiness (or at least that's my take-away), maybe even conformity?

But something about this game irks me. Despite my previous "praise", I still find myself a little in the middle of the road with it.
Most of this portrayal of violence isn't really explored by the game itself, which makes me feel that I'm just being pretentious writing this. It also stops doing much interesting stuff after a character dies, and from that point on is very "eh" and then it quite literally just ends. Also this might be consequence of not playing the first game but Kane is kind of a dumbass? He does nothing but follow Lynch along without much conflict aside from saying "this sucks!", which annoyed me because he was really just there for the ride. Lynch was much more interesting, but I was hoping for their dynamic to have more meat to it other than indifference.

So that leaves me a little confused. Is the game really about violence? Is it just a violent game? Was it going for something more than that? I don't know! And frankly, I think the game is a little confused too considering the last stretch of the game.
And for that reason, I feel a little lost. I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it as a whole package. And honestly? That's fine! It did enough by presenting a different approach to violence, and that is enough to earn praise.
If Kane & Lynch 3: Escape from Brazil ever comes out (which it won't because the devs lost the rights to it when separating from SE), I'll be keeping an eye out for it. But for now, the only thing I'm sure of about this game is that it made me go 🤔

This is probably one of the easiest 10/10’s I’ve ever given.
Disco Elysium is a special little oddity, it’s concepts don’t seem outwardly foreign, you are a detective tasked with solving a murder, with a variety of skills on hand, you can talk, fight, or think your way through most problems, even the amnesiatic spin isn’t anything new. The real brilliance comes in the execution and complete breadth of the games world. Martinaise, Revachol, and the entire in-game world have politics, flora, fauna, and interpersonal connections that seem to be moving and developing every second that the player does. The dialogue is the greatest indicator of this, conversations with one person can go on for minutes on end, with truly individual personality and takes on the war-weary land they have to sit in. This, alongside the brilliant and detailed watercolor backgrounds transport you to this fictional country.
My favorite part about this game was diving into the mind of your main character. He’s unmistakably fractured, and this is heavily represented by twenty-four independent chemical personalities floating around and verbalizing themselves in his head. The leveling and skill checking RPG elements of the game go directly towards the power and influence of these voices, crafting a protagonist who may be a walking encyclopedia, or perhaps a screaming electrochemistry driven meathead. It’s one of the first games in a while where I feel a distinct level of say in who I’m controlling.
I’ve circled around it a bit, but the writing is truly this game's main attraction. A brilliantly tight script that lends itself to any number of playstyles, full of legitimately fun characters was all I could think about between play sessions this past week. The impact of every action you take sending ripples across the world, that was continuously and directly expressed through nearly every interactable character was just astounding.
All in all, I can truly say that I loved every second playing this game, and I felt a drive that I so rarely feel when it comes to media with narratives this heavy. Please seek out a copy of this masterpiece for yourself, and enjoy.

There's really nothing to say here, it's just another Far Cry game, FC5 takes one step forward, and then falls 7 flights of stairs

While the gameplay is an improvement from previous entries and great addition of side activities like fishing, Ubi absolutely shot themselves by making the protag silent, this made all the interactions with Seed family feel hollow despite their strong performance, it feels like they're talking to a brick wall. Another thing to note is that I absolutely hated the new unlock system, it felt incredibly watered down compared to previous entry even defeating the purpose for hunting really, one of the key mechanics in previous games imo, and the endings were all dogshit

Hey you, did you like Far Cry 5? Imagine that but grindy, also with a god awful story. Also with way worse gameplay cuz it's all level based so y'know...get ready to use 500 bullets to kill one dude that's a higher level. WOOO.

New Dawn is def the worst FC game, the game is only fun when you're doing outposts and you got the best guns, which will prb happen about 7 hours into the game. And even then there's only like 10 outposts that you gotta do 3 times each because ofc.

I played it coop and it was pretty boring, HOW DO YOU MAKE FAR CRY COOP BORING? HOW?!

Well by making the game feel really soulless and rushed.

The game is really buggy, which would be a negative in a better game but here the bugs were the funniest parts of the game so oh well. One time my character started the swimming animation mid air for some reason and I was stuck in the air and it looked like I was swimming, it was weird but me and my friend couldn't stop laughing about it. Another time a wolf just started running in a circle around me which was hilarious.

FC New Dawn feels really pointless as a game, after the ending of FC5, making another game where it's revealed that practically most if not all of the characters somehow survived and are ok feels...unnecessary and makes the ending less effective.

There's plenty of times where you could have killed the main villains (which for far cry standards are abysmal btw) and yet you didn't cuz...reasons?

Fr there's a part where they ask you to put your guns in a stash and come in and handcuff yourself or they'll kill some dude (spoiler alert, they still shoot the guy so whatever) and...ok what possible consequence would it have if the character went mhm...nah fuck that and went in and started shooting both of them. It's so fucking stupid.

The way you just kinda stand and stare at characters as they die at the end is really fucking awkward too...

Idk what else to say, if you liked 5 or 4 or 3 or primal or 2 or 1...you prb won't like this one lol. And if you didn't like those either than you still won't like this one lol.

First and foremost, this is a game for Dragon Ball fans. I don’t think it’s enough to make someone care about Dragon Ball who didn’t before and I don’t think it’s enough to change the mind of someone who doesn’t like Dragon Ball. Fanservice is the aim here and it can hit that very well in places but some express disappointment at certain moments not given the treatment.

This is from CyberConnect2 so I definitely got ahead of myself hoping for a fun video game to play. I don’t like saying it but I think the gameplay here is actually worse than Xenoverse. You’re not going to find a whole lot of depth here given the bottom left corner of your screen is saying “press circle to fight” for the combat portions of the game. The best you’ll see when it comes to any depth or variety is choosing your super attacks, which are split fairly simply into ranged and melee attacks and they behave very similarly to the others in its category, alongside some simple dodging and blocking. Enemies are often very annoying to deal with, most just being unflinching brick walls where the only test of your skill is if you were smart enough to buy or earn enough healing items and if you found the right gaps to charge your Ki, if there’s any challenge at all. And my heart goes out to you if you ever have to fight more than one enemy at a time without any other characters in your party to help you, it’s mind-numbingly frustrating. Shout out to Krillin and Tien though, Solar Flare is by far the best assist in the whole game, teaming up with them made what could have been really infuriating fights bearable. The side missions, one thing I was looking forward to so we could see more of the relationships between characters that aren’t highlighted in the series proper mostly boil down to monotonous fetch quests that felt more like work than a game. I also had this ridiculous bug where Goku’s “Unbridled Power Aquire” training mission at Capsule Corp was completely bugged. There were no sound effects, I couldn’t charge ki, and if I got stunned the stun was permanent. That training mission could be avoided though, what couldn’t be avoided was constant frame drops and hitches that could leave the game frozen for a full 3-4 seconds. I’m baffled the game never fully crashed in my time with it.

What I was not disappointed with was the real reason to play a CyberConnect2 game in great display throughout my playtime. I’ve said it since they were making Naruto games that CyberConnect2 really needs to realize their true calling is making animation because in Ninja Storm and Dragon Ball Z Kakarot the cutscenes are gorgeous. Enough to keep me playing a game I wasn’t really enjoying is how pretty these games are, even if the character models in this particular game can look pretty awkward if they’re standing still.

If you’re a big Dragon Ball fan like myself and you’re willing to slog through a mediocre game and a couple of bad takes of voice acting used by accident to see some really beautiful renditions of not just the key moments but surprisingly some unnecessarily faithful subtleties, I actually recognized some of Goku’s landings after a flight in some cutscenes as directly out of the manga, you just might get some value out of this.

Please play this game. It is one of the best RPGs ever made for sure. Yes AD&D as a ruleset for a crpg is weird, and yeah it's not as refined as later games, but outside of the first game in the series, rpgs have never gotten back to the level Baldur's gate 2 has. The characters are all great(yes, even the new ones Beamdog made.) The enemies are unique and interesting to fight and the world feels so alive, especially the starting city.
Please buy this game it's like $10 if you have even a slight inclination to play an RPG consider this game.

In Outer Wilds you are stuck in a time loop and have to restart every 22 minutes, and you're tasked with exploring a solar system. It's really hard to talk about this one without spoiling it, but I'll try to keep it vague. This game is a masterpiece at creating emergent narrative for the player. Each of the planets you explore works in its own way, and it's up to you to figure out how to explore the solar system. It's like one giant puzzle to solve, figuring out how everything interacts and how things change over time. The whole system is so perfectly designed, you could start anywhere, and you'll discover clues to other things somewhere else, and everything just fits together really well. You start the game with everything you need to finish it, and could conceivably finish it in 22 minutes. But for most people it will take around 20 hours, because you need to venture out into the system to gain the knowledge you need to get to the ending. It's just really cool that the only thing you gain through all your journeying in this game isn't some special tool you need to advance, it's just knowledge, learning how everything works, that lets you get closer and closer to your goal. And that ending is definitely worth getting to.

You know, I can almost envision a reality where this game received the notoriety it so clearly deserved, and it wouldn't take much strain to imagine. Given the time period in which the game launched, it had everything it needed to click with anyone who laid eyes on it: a bright and colorful cast of characters that felt ripped right out of the system they were made for, a story of super heroes fighting off an alien invasion during an era where The Avengers were exploding in popularity, quirky gameplay mechanics you'd come to expect from a company like Platinum Games, an all star team of action game designers who had the experience and passion needed to bring this crazy concept to life and flourish, the works. With Hideki Kamiya at the helm, there was no chance this game could possibly fail, regardless of the system it was launching on.

So what went wrong?

Clearly something didn’t click with people despite Platinum’s best efforts. There are many reasons this could be the case (unorthodox control scheme, confused marketing, niche appeal of the action genre, etc.) but it would be difficult to pin down one specific thing that turned people away.

In my eyes however, what matters most is not that the game lacked something to wrangle in the highest number of potential customers, but that the game did not restrain itself in what it sought out to do.

Let me set the scene for you: June 2020, one of the worst years in recent history and it refuses to let up. Due to the recent shutdown of my job given the status of the world at that time, I had devoted a lot of my free time to playing games, as many others in my position likely do as well. Everything in my life is starting to drag, and I can tell nothing will get better any time soon. However, there is a momentary glimmer of joy coming my way. The Wonderful 101 recently had an incredibly successful kickstarter, and having heard many positive things about the game, I decided to give it a blind shot. Many of my favorite games were action games, so while Platinum didn’t have a perfect track record in my experience, I was interested in trying something I knew so little about. Even if it was disappointing, it probably had some interesting elements to dig into.

I didn’t expect my expectations to be shattered like they were after finishing the game.

I’ve never played a game before that appealed to all my sensibilities like The Wonderful 101 does, and even after nearly 200 hours of play, I’m still picking up on new things to love that I never noticed before. I won’t bore you with the semantics, but every element of the game is emblematic of everything I love about the medium. The story felt cartoonish and stupid in all the best ways, the gameplay presented incredibly distinct systems to set it apart from other action games while tackling problems about the genre in interesting ways I had never considered before, and the whole experience was uncompromising in it’s vision in a truly inspiring way.

In many ways, The Wonderful 101 made me feel like a kid again and ignited a passion for life in my heart at a point where everything felt so aimless and dark. As this global pandemic slows down and eventually fades into nothingness, I’ll be sure to leave a lot of things from this era in the past, but this game is sure to stick with me for years to come.

Regardless of how you may feel about the final product, what can’t be denied is that The Wonderful 101 is everything it wanted to be and didn’t settle for less. And for the time period when it came into my life, that’s all I needed it to be.

So essentially this game is a generic 3rd person liniar shooter with god awful cover mechanics, predictable AI, boring uninteresting “gritty” story that wants a pass because it calls itself "ugly" so suddenly it's ok that the whole game is just you killing Chinese people over and over and over again and totally different from every other game in which you do stuff like that.

Almost no variation in where the missions take place and also 80% of the missions look and feel identical to each other. Unlikeable characters that aren't even interesting to watch and a really brief run time of about 4 hours in which all you do is just shoot people, NOTHING ELSE.

It also feels like a very unambitious and pointless game that doesn't strive to do anything different with it's gameplay and the whole gameplay loop is just go to cover, peak out to shoot enemy...go to the next cover and repeat and it's gunplay feels very mediocre, half the time it sounds like you're using toy guns and there isn't much impact or much variation in the guns and even then all but 2 guns are worthless most of the time (shotgun and pistol).

Also for some reason shotguns are better than assault rifles at long range so there isn't really a reason to use any other weapons, it boils down to using your shotgun then using the other weapons when you run out till you find another shotgun or ammo for your shotgun.

It’s a shallow game with nothing to offer in terms of an interesting narrative, or interesting/fun gameplay loop (cover shooting shouldn’t be the ONLY thing you do in a game, even the cliche and boring helicopter sequence is essentially just popping out of cover and shooting enemies before going back in cover and repeating that), or anything. This game offers NOTHING, it’s just a soulless and bland game made because the first game sold enough to warrant a sequel and there’s NO innovation or anything to make it stand out…

Oh right my bad they made the camera shake really hard and put in some filters that made me think I needed to clean my glasses at first, it’s headache inducing for the first 2 hours before it loses its effect then you just become numb, you zone out during the shootouts and try not to fall asleep during the cutscenes.

Kane And Lynch 2: Dog Days is lazy, its a 3rd person liniar shooter because that’s what was trendy with a visual gimmick that is supposed to sell you on the game alone because otherwise this game is not worth fucking shit.

Take that shit away and it’s a worthless unlikeable shitfest of meaningless violence with no ambition or point to make, the characters never grow, they are the same at the start and end with nothing learned which makes them completely uninteresting to watch since you know they won’t really grow or become better/worse people, they’re pretty much fucking evil with how many people they kill in this game and it’s all supposed to be okay because the devs said it’s an “ugly” game. I mean christ the last mission only seems to exist to pad out the pathetic game length (me getting the game for less than 1$ doesn’t excuse it being a 4 hour long game that costed 60$ at launch)

This game is no different from Medal Of Honor 2010/Warfighter or any other meaningless shooter in which you just shoot foreigners, if this shit can get revived and seen as some unique misunderstood piece of art then get ready for when we will all start praising Fallout 76 because not putting in human NPC’s is actually a novel concept that worked out a lot better than people say it did and wasn’t just them going guys look at all this work we didn’t put in

I don’t get this game, I’m with the critics that hated it back when it came out and nothing will prb make me switch sides. If you like it, good for you, but personally I feel like a lot of the praise the game gets doesn’t reflect the actual game when you sit down and play it yourself. It’s not fun, it’s numbing, I didn’t enjoy a second of this game no matter how much I tried, fucking hell at least Medal Of Honor 2010 had one ok mission that was sorta memorable, this couldn’t even achieve that, the infamous mission in which you’re naked in the streets isn’t that much different from the other missions if you really think about it, yeah you’re still just going from cover to cover and shooting people so there isn’t much to make it memorable outside of it sounding really funny on paper.

In other words, 1/10, fucking abomination of a game and the worst game I’ve ever played, Ride To Hell at least was funny in how bad it was.

Nobody has to really say anything about this game’s launch anymore I feel, it’s been 7 years and we all know the tale. Ubisoft really were never the same after what happened with Unity and Watch Dogs…2 games that came out after so much hype only to disappoint everyone, what was supposed to be one of Ubisoft's greatest years ended up being its weakest.

But what if I told you, that beneath all of that, once you dig into it, AC Unity is actually one of the best if not the best Assassins Creed game?

I know I know it’s one of those hot takes that’s getting colder and colder everyday but for good reason. The parkour system in this game is like no other really, I don’t think I’ve yet to find another game where you can climb the same building on the same side at least 13 times and each time do it ever so slightly different, nothing mindblowing in that regard but it's the small details that make it not get stale, now there’s interiors in the world, and there must be thousands of them, sure some repeat but it's not enough to where you can say MAN HOW MANY TIMES AM I GONNA SEE THIS EXACT INTERIOR AGAIN?, it's barely noticeable, jumping out of them feels like a risk as you never truly know what you’ll end up landing or where your character will go but god damn does it feel satisfying when you jump onto the building right in front of you and see Arno barely reach it and being a few moments away from falling only to catch the damn thing.

Simply put, the parkour is really fluid, smooth and fast if you get good at it, it's more momentum based than other games, it feels cinematic in the way the other games wanted but with more control given to you so you yourself can make it cinematic, and the addition of being able to free run up and down (with up also being a jump button and down also being a vault button) adds more depth than one could imagine, now you have double if not more the options and ways of getting around using parkour, with animations that I can only describe as mindblowing-ly good. Animations just flow into each other seamlessly as you jump around trying to look as cool as possible. Chaining together the coolest animations becomes a challenge in itself and it’s the type of challenge you’ll do simply because it’s fun not because of any reward.

You could say it’s easy to pick up yet hard to master. You could practice for dozens of hours and still find new tricks to do. The game doesn’t hold your own when it comes to what you can do, it gives you the basics and the rest is up to you to find on your own.

But what good is an amazing parkour system if there isn’t a world where you can use it effectively? Well you see Unity also has the best open world ubisoft ever created, it’s sheer amount of detail is still astonishing to me, the amount of npcs on screen is insane, every minute you’ll see hundreds if not thousands of NPC’s on streets either doing their thing or rioting. Scaling buildings is fast and satisfying, the game makes you think more and make more decisions on the fly to make your journey to the next mission quicker. Though it's good enough you might just continue running along doing cool tricks and having fun till you find yourself on the other side of the map because it’s just THAT damn fun.

The level design is the best in the series. One of the things that help it stand out is the opportunity system. One mission took place in a sewer, so I was able to start a riot above to draw out some of the guards making my entry safe, and I sabotaged the chimneys above, making it way less visible inside the sewers so my escape from there was also safe. It's things like this that really make Unity's level design stand above the rest of the series for me, though not every opportunity was great or that useful, enough of them were to say the system works. In another mission I was presented with the place where my target would arrive and the game told me to hide in a bush though it’s implied that you don’t have to do that right away. So I did the opportunities, I saved a bunch of prisoners and they stood to camp the basement to guard it then distract the guards at the end to make my escape easier and another, though a bit silly, was a map that showed me exactly where my target was heading and how, a bit stupid, but so useful, using eagle vision now I could see where he’d go, so I hid in a haystack right where he was so when he’d arrive I’d just have to wait. It feels amazing to do these things and no other game in this series quite accomplishes this feel.

Though I must say that the opportunity system doesn’t mean that now there’s only 3 ways a mission can go. Missions can go in any way you want them, they are the most open and least liniar they’ve ever been.

The combat is for the first time in the series, great, it’s slower and weightier, it’s harder but more satisfying. The animations are brutal and so are the finishers yet it also feels natural and at least a bit realtistic. It doesn’t simply do the job like in the other games but is actually enjoyable on it’s own. There’s multiple types of weapons and each type has its own move set, your average weapon types like the one handed, the heavy and the long but there’s also rifles that once you equip you can’t equip either a pistol or weapon and you just smack enemies with it, kinda funny. Useless but funny. The guillotine guns are also pretty cool though you need to do the Dead Kings DLC to get it, I’m pretty sure that the dlc is free so you really should play it because it's definitely worth it.

The progression in this game is great IF, you upgrade the Cafe and buy the other properties and do the missions for all of them (2-3 and their all really simple and to the point, one shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes, 5 at max). After you do that you’ll get 40+k per hour, besides that you still get enough from missions to get around though the Cafe stuff is required if you want the best gear with the least amount of grinding. You can also pause the game, alt tab and do something else for an hour then come back and collect your reward if you want. I alt tab a lot so I found that out fast.

In this game you can really make your assassin look the way you want with the gear pieces that you can buy, each have their own stats that DO matter a lot actually and you should buy the ones that help your own play style. Though sometimes it does feel like a sacrifice to go for the gear that helps you the most rather than the one you think looks the coolest, it’s not like there’s a lot of gear that looks bad. Most of it looks amazing actually. And hey if you don’t care about all that bullshit you have outfits you can unlock, they include ones for every previous protagonist, most of which you can find in these yellow chests on the map, there’s only a few of them so collecting them isn’t too bad. There’s also some other lesser outfits ig.

The story is flawed however I enjoyed it. The way the game starts is great, the first few hours on a story level are amazing, Arno has all the charm and personality of Ezio dare I say, the plot is compelling, Arno and Elise have chemistry, the part you play in prison serves as a good tutorial for combat. They put in the game a small city simply for the first hours before you get to Paris and then in a single level again later on, a bit much I’d say, and sure it doesn’t look too different from Paris, but still. I didn’t even know this but you can actually go back there by fast traveling. Don’t think there’s anything to do there but it's cool.

When you join the assassins is when things go to shit I guess, y’know it’s almost funny how much the assassins treat Arno like shit, and also Arno loses half of his personality as soon as he joins and turns really serious fast. It’s weird and comes out of nowhere when he’s suddenly without the charm and wit we see at the start though he doesn’t lose it completely.

When the game becomes a hit list it’s kinda lame story wise but in concept it makes sense, Assassin’s Creed games have always had hit lists at their core story wise, though here it becomes exclusively a hit list so it is a lot less compelling. It reminds me of AC1 but not in a good way.

Story picks up again once Elise shows up again, sure their relationship is toxic and Elise basically turns into Connor at his most WHERE IS CHARLES LEE at parts but they still have chemistry and are entertaining to watch most of the time.

It’s kinda interesting seeing how far Elise is willing to go to avenge her father, especially at the end of the game. The ending is cool, I won’t spoil it but it does redeem the middle section and the occasional great moment makes it so it never gets properly bad or even mediocre but it's never consistently great sadly. One of those occasional great moments has the be “the escape”, writing wise Arno’s and Elise’s relationship is at its most likeable as you chase her on roofs as she’s in a hot air balloon of all things, it's one of the most memorable moments in the story and the last cutscene is one of the most romantic moments in the series, had the cutscene not glitched and resulted in it looking weird af maybe it would have been better but oh well.

Also I noticed this thing where like...the first few times you meet with Elise its like half of their dialogue is them talking about past events when they were kids and it’s all essentially hey remember when we did this, though we’re never really shown these events nor are told about them prior so it feels like being with 2 friends and they’re making inside jokes and you don’t really understand them but they assume you know about them somehow.

There’s some interesting moments and themes, an Assassin being in love with a Templar is a pretty obvious plot for a game in this series at this point but for a reason. Having Arno bring Elise to the brotherhood to seek help in her revenge was a great moment, it plays out as you’d expect though. I loved the ending, felt earned and the silence as Arno...does a thing I won’t spoil, felt very impactful to me. His monologue afterwards was even better. Not a perfect story and it has its low points but it works for what it does and executes its ideas well enough. Could have been better but as it is. It’s good.

There’s these random helix missions or whatever that pop up sometimes throughout the story and they’re pretty cool, useless, but still really cool. Climbing the statue of liberty and the eiffel tower was pretty awesome tbh.

The side content is solid-great. Well more like “I don’t really mind this”-great. There’s the companion missions that serve as little fetch quests but I like that you just press E and then instantly you get a marker on your map, no loading screen or repetitive small cutscene. They’re all really fast, some took less than a minute to complete. There’s the Paris stories which serve as okay-good side missions, most are standalone stories but there’s some like the ones for that old lady that can predict the future and that one cult that serve as some of the more interesting ones.

The other helix missions that are there amount to just you picking up data then going to an assassin and ‘rescuing them’ and they’re...whatever, I don’t really mind them since you get Altair’s suit for completing them so there’s a nice reward to them but they are mostly boring as it’s just the same place but with a different gimmick like wow now there's a tornado here. They aren’t very memorable to say the least.

Also there’s events that happen in the world at random that you complete if you want, they’ll usually take like a second to complete, do enough of them and you’ll get a prize, simple enough though it makes things a bit more immersive. You can catch thieves, kill templars that are about to kill people/have just killed someone, defend a person from a templar, scare off bullies and give money to poor people. They aren’t really anything to write home about on their own but they make the game better by simply being there, going to a location and while on your journey jumping from a roof onto a murderer and saving someone feels great.

But I’ve said the best for last, the riddles...and even better, the murder mysteries.

Essentially hidden beneath the Assassins Creed gameplay, there’s an entire Sherlock Holmes game, a somewhat short one but still. Essentially you’ll be presented with the scene of a crime, from then the game will highlight certain items that you should inspect for more info and clues, though not every clue is highlighted and there are some that you can find on your own, find enough clues, piece things together and you can accuse someone of the crime, accuse correctly and you win, accuse wrongly and your prize gets smaller. Simple enough yet they’re a lot more interesting and hard to put together than you might assume given that Ubisoft aren’t exactly known for making challenging games. The riddles are also really great, the concept is simple: you get a riddle, figure out where it leads, another riddle appears, do that till you get to the final destination, 18 of those and you’ll unlock a special suit.

These are way more fun than they should, opening up wikipedia pages and looking for info about certain places to know where to go next and spending hours on end on these missions really makes finishing them all the more satisfying even if...the reward for doing them all is just an Altair reskin. Oh well they’re still fun to do.

The biggest issue is the one talked about the most and the one that earned its initial reception. The fucking bugs, don’t get me wrong, game’s playable and in much better state than when it came out...but there’s still a lot of bugs. I can’t defend this too much, they’re either funny or kinda inconvenient when you get stuck on fucking air and have to just fast travel somewhere. Not a deal breaker but they do impact the game a bit.

Also I have to say, this is one of the best looking games...ever, climbing a building and looking down to see hundreds if not thousands of NPCs rioting on the streets is a site to behold. Somehow this 7 year old game still looks next gen, they pushed this engine so much that it’s still arguably the best looking game in the series, even Syndicate...ESPECIALLY Syndicate, looks a lot worse than this game somehow.

The co-op is fun if you play with friends, awful if you play with randoms and almost impossible if you wanna do them solo so be warned, even if they let you play solo it doesn’t mean the missions were made for that and you’ll most likely find them impossible to do.

Before I end the review, let me make something clear, I don’t consider Unity a great game because of it’s awful launch and reputation making it easy to root for it. I consider Unity to be great because of its outstanding gameplay and world that also features a good story and some of the best side content Ubisoft ever made.

No Assassin’s Creed game has ever beaten this game in any regard outside of story for me. It might not be perfect but for me, it’s an all time favorite.