By Austin Chiavaroli, Staff Writer
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been a major peak in gaming history. With unique stories, and great characters that gamers play as, it’s no wonder why this franchise gets a lot of praise. Ubisoft’s newest addition to this series, “Assassin’s Creed Unity,” has hit the shelves only for next generation consoles, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with the exception of the PC for online gamers as well.
The story takes place in Paris during the French Revolution, as the player controls the French assassin Arno Dorian (Dan Jeannotte). Born in Versailles, his assassin father is killed by a Templar called Shay Patrick Cormac, having Arno then be adopted by another Templar family. When his adopted Templar father is murdered, he ventures out to find the brotherhood of assassins and redeem himself as one of them, rising slowly in rank. His love interest, Elise De LaSerre (Catherine Bérubé), also plays a role as she is the daughter of his adopted father and is a Templar herself, making the two different sided individuals come together.
The combat in this game was rebuilt for the next generation consoles, as fencing was used as inspiration for the sword fighting. A new weapon, the phantom blade, is introduced as a small crossbow that shoots quiet projectiles. Arno also learns different parkour moves throughout the game with some of them also being able to be purchased in game.
For the first time in all of the Assassins Creed series, players are able to customize Arno’s melee, health, ranged combat and more by a skill tree option. Certain weapons, armor, and equipment can go hand in hand with many combination styles of fighting. With a wide variety of weapons to choose from including swords, pole arms, spears, axes, guns and other devices, the game has a broader list of styles to choose from.
There are many issues with this game as it has gotten a mixture of positive and negative reviews after its release. One of the main issues is that, while the visuals and over world look spectacular, the story and characters fall short of expectations. Many models in the over world also look exactly the same showing how little the creators went into making the world feel more diverse and organic. Another issue is that the game is only for next generation consoles and PC. With many Assassin’s Creed fans having PlayStation 3’s and Xbox 360’s instead of the new expensive consoles, this news was devastating to hear.
Although “Assassin’s Creed Unity” wasn’t made for previous consoles, Ubisoft did make another Assassin’s Creed game to release alongside Unity for the previous consoles called “Assassin’s Creed Rogue.” In this game, the player plays as Shay Patrick Cormac, the killer of Arno’s real assassin father, as they go through the events that led up to the killing of Arno’s father. The game also has characters from the previous games make small cameos as well throughout the story.
With all of this being said, “Assassin’s Creed Unity” is in no way a bad game as it still has everything past Assassin’s Creed games include. The game just should have been worked on a little bit more and should have had better writers look more carefully over the characters and plot. This game gets a 3.5/5.
