I am not a hater by design, and have liked Assassin’s Creed games in the past. III was fun and IV is damn close to Pirate Red Dead Redemption (I stayed up till 5am beating it one morning). I have the capacity to love these games for sure, and I want to play the original AC, the IIs and Rogue someday. But Syndicate ain’t it man.
Syndicate is the video game equivalent of eating packing peanuts. The whole game boils down to using L3 to scan the environment, tag everything, gain altitude, pick guys off two at a time, and repeat. I hit a wall where it wanted me to be Level 6 or something and I was Level 4 so I went from enemies going down easily to getting my ass handed to me in two hits. All the new (at least post-Unity) AC games have this thing where instead of having a gradual leveling curve, it just spikes and forces you to either grind out repetitive side content for a number of hours or pay for microtransactions. I got this game for $6, just let me play 7-8 hours of story missions and uninstall it.
I wouldn’t mind the bizarre level spikes (lord knows Yakuza 7, the goat, has one), but the story here is likewise basically nothing. Cutscenes and story are rushed in a matter of seconds such that by the time you’re locked in and focused the scene has already ended. I also, and forgive me for this, hate the present day baggage. I love all three Watch Dogs games to varying degrees because it bails on all the baggage from the AC series and just gives you cool fun stuff to do (even Legion I thought was great).
As for the story I did stick around for, it’s fine? It’s dumb and barely there, and feels like it was written by 1,000 different people. It feels stale in the way Ubisoft games have a tendency to sometimes. I think I would be more interested in the Assassin’s Templar stuff if it didn’t feel so simple and dull. I feel like I remember ACIII/IV doing the history stuff AND conspiring stuff way better.
But all in all, this game feels like eating air. I could go back due to the 45GB commitment on my Steam Deck but I might not.
Syndicate is the video game equivalent of eating packing peanuts. The whole game boils down to using L3 to scan the environment, tag everything, gain altitude, pick guys off two at a time, and repeat. I hit a wall where it wanted me to be Level 6 or something and I was Level 4 so I went from enemies going down easily to getting my ass handed to me in two hits. All the new (at least post-Unity) AC games have this thing where instead of having a gradual leveling curve, it just spikes and forces you to either grind out repetitive side content for a number of hours or pay for microtransactions. I got this game for $6, just let me play 7-8 hours of story missions and uninstall it.
I wouldn’t mind the bizarre level spikes (lord knows Yakuza 7, the goat, has one), but the story here is likewise basically nothing. Cutscenes and story are rushed in a matter of seconds such that by the time you’re locked in and focused the scene has already ended. I also, and forgive me for this, hate the present day baggage. I love all three Watch Dogs games to varying degrees because it bails on all the baggage from the AC series and just gives you cool fun stuff to do (even Legion I thought was great).
As for the story I did stick around for, it’s fine? It’s dumb and barely there, and feels like it was written by 1,000 different people. It feels stale in the way Ubisoft games have a tendency to sometimes. I think I would be more interested in the Assassin’s Templar stuff if it didn’t feel so simple and dull. I feel like I remember ACIII/IV doing the history stuff AND conspiring stuff way better.
But all in all, this game feels like eating air. I could go back due to the 45GB commitment on my Steam Deck but I might not.
Dan_from_Canada
6 months ago