Had never played this one before now.
Feels like the first of what would be the now definitive AC Formulae™️ for the foreseeable future; map littered with semi mandatory objectives, stealth that feels like it sort of works for the first time ever, oversized map and some of the worst writing in the series to date.
After Unity it definitely has the same feel of a step down in quality similar to that of AC2 following the first game. It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Unity did with its much moodier and film grain laden Paris. While the visual fidelity here doesn’t take nearly as much of a hit as the aforementioned AC2 did, it feels as though they took similar things away from the criticism of both of their respective predecessors. AC 1’s climbing is too slow? Well let’s just speed it up without really considering how that might impact an already hair-trigger movement system. AC Unity’s combat feels sluggish and unresponsive? Well let’s just make the next one have nigh incomprehensible button mashing with animations that look like they’re playing back in 3x speed, while somehow maintaining the same feeling of input delay for parrying/guard breaking.
Also it’s not that’s any surprise at this point but these games are insane trend chasers. 2017s Origins having a more Witcher 3-sequel approach (according to Ubisoft but hardly in practice) following that games blowout success, and then having practically every surface be climbable 6 months after BOTW came out. It hit me almost immediately that the grappling hook you’re given in the early hours of the game here feels like a direct response to the much better one featured in Arkham Knight of the same year.
Feels like the first of what would be the now definitive AC Formulae™️ for the foreseeable future; map littered with semi mandatory objectives, stealth that feels like it sort of works for the first time ever, oversized map and some of the worst writing in the series to date.
After Unity it definitely has the same feel of a step down in quality similar to that of AC2 following the first game. It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Unity did with its much moodier and film grain laden Paris. While the visual fidelity here doesn’t take nearly as much of a hit as the aforementioned AC2 did, it feels as though they took similar things away from the criticism of both of their respective predecessors. AC 1’s climbing is too slow? Well let’s just speed it up without really considering how that might impact an already hair-trigger movement system. AC Unity’s combat feels sluggish and unresponsive? Well let’s just make the next one have nigh incomprehensible button mashing with animations that look like they’re playing back in 3x speed, while somehow maintaining the same feeling of input delay for parrying/guard breaking.
Also it’s not that’s any surprise at this point but these games are insane trend chasers. 2017s Origins having a more Witcher 3-sequel approach (according to Ubisoft but hardly in practice) following that games blowout success, and then having practically every surface be climbable 6 months after BOTW came out. It hit me almost immediately that the grappling hook you’re given in the early hours of the game here feels like a direct response to the much better one featured in Arkham Knight of the same year.