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Stormblade's 5 most anticipated games - No. 1
No. 1 - Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
TaDa! I know, I know, you’re all surprised. Me choosing an Assassin’s Creed game as my number 1 most anticipated game. Although it is rather obvious, it wasn’t necessarily a slam dunk. Assassin’s Creed: Unity was a major disappointment. Oh, I played it all the way through and enjoyed it for the most part. Unfortunately, I had HIGHLY anticipated it, especially after loving Black Flag. AC Unity was so broken at launch it was unplayable. Also, the idea of cooperative assassins missions just never resounded with me (and I was not alone). My son got it for me for Christmas 2013 and I didn’t actually play it until this past Spring.
This is my favourite game franchise. As with any franchise, some of the games are better than others. AC II and AC IV were brilliant games. AC III and Unity, not so much. The others fell somewhere in between. I decided this time I would follow closely the press releases, game clips, online discussions and gameplay videos to help me form an opinion before release. My pals over at Outside Xbox have several gameplay videos (one included below) and I have seen others as well.
It appears Ubisoft has paid attention to the fans of the series. Gone are the cooperative missions (at least as part of the main story). Added are fresh modes of transportation (carriages, boats, trains) and assassin abilities (grappling hook a la Batman, invisibility). There are also two protagonist assassins (brother and sister) with very different styles and abilities.
Just like Johnny Depp.
Assassin’s Creed has never been a clan game. I know that Q-Bert and Revek play, but the only time I ever remember playing AC in a clan environment was at my stag party, playing AC Brotherhood. That was fun, but it wasn’t something we ever would have done on a regular basis. Even with AC Unity, I never once played a cooperative mission.
While there is still plenty of time for Ubisoft to mess this one up like they did with Unity, I am cautiously optimistic they have learned their lesson. I am anticipating spending several days (weeks) playing this while my marriage falls apart and I lose my job. If it’s as good as it looks at first glance, it will be worth it.
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I was so disappointed with the last game that it completely killed it for me for this franchise, which is a shame as I have played them all as well. Black flag was the best one of the series, but some of the concepts they introduced in BF took a much more prominent roll in Unity that it just killed it for me. And I'm not even talking about the bugs, which I did not experience much. Just the whole concept that you cannot complete part of the game without using the companion tablet app. In BF, it was a companion that assisted you in traveling and marking points of interest to travel to so you did not have to go into you map constantly. In Unity, you had special chests that only became unlockable after you completed team assassin missions controlled by the tablet app. While these existed in the BF versiojn as well, they did not intrude as much in the console game as they did in Unity. Also,every item is available through micro payments. Every time I went into my inventory it felt like I had a sales rep in my ear going "Buy this sword! Buy this glove!".