You’re an assassin, trained for combat, but there’s little finesse, nor timing. It starts out feeling old and ends up feeling like a punishment for murder. Then there’s combat, which is somehow worse than the stealth, encompassing a few combos and strategically placed counters, as ever. Apart from the environmentally-pleasing quests like those set in the Tower of London, or the Hitman-style missions which offer multiple unique kills (such as disguising yourself as a ‘patient’ in an operating theatre) and sneaking paths, it’s difficult to specifically recall where I was and what I did across the many hours I played it. They make the missions indistinguishable from one another, even more so than the take territory/kill sub boss/rescue whoever loop does. They look and feel like the marionettes at Kevin McCallister’s house, boasting the look of real people from afar, but get closer and they’re pulled and pushed by crude, obvious forces. (Every member of each class – sniper, heavy, etc – has near-exactly the same model). They all behave the same, really, all look the same literally. They see you and forget you instantly if you duck around a corner. Guards are easily lured, en masse, to their deaths by whistling from around a corner, and it’s still possible – if more difficult than before – to lure them to their doom one by one in a haystack. Creed’s AI has two states: confused child and angry terrier. It works mechanically, in the purest sense – digital triggers and cogs that generate responses and engagements to suit the player’s status and their surrounding environment. You storm a base w ith a plan – the AI responds in a way that makes it seem like it has a plan. Kojima’s game embraces agency, mixing together alert phases, level-matching, and player skill. In a world where MGS5 exists, Syndicate isn’t just behind the curve but in the bin. I played it on a PS4, but it may as well have been a 360. Syndicate feels ancient, like Black Flag did, like Revelations did. From AI, to mission flow, to combat, the core pillars of these games are weathered at best and rotting at worst. Simply put: whatever decision-making mechanism is in charge of Ubi’s dev ‘method’ is actively harming the quality of its games. That all this good work is pissed up the wall by near enough every other element of the game, which is so mechanically old, so hopelessly decrepit, would be an outrage if it weren’t so drearily predictable. Granted, the included historical characters (Dickens, Marx, Nightingale, among others) reach for historical reverence but land on ‘Night at the Museum’, and the story is rightly jaunty if somewhat lightweight, but Evie is engaging (and actually has conversations with women about something other than men) and Jacob, while a total shit-eater, eventually starts to grate less. The rather basic set-up – Assassin twins Evie and Jacob (resourceful and headstrong, basically) aim to take back London from Templar control by seizing various strongholds – works perfectly, as there’s so much of the city you’ll want to see, climb, run through. Waterloo, Westminster, the Strand: this is digital time-travel. You can play Frogger across boats on the Thames. Scaling Big Ben or St Paul’s, familiar and beautifully rendered in their vast glory, is one of the most arresting feelings I’ve had this generation. It is a magnificent shithole.īeing in this world is a joy, especially at night where moody lighting and pouring rain produce some startling images, a threatening world of poverty and violence. When the sun comes shining through, you feel tangible relief. Quebec has expertly reproduced the world-leading grey drizzle of Britain, the sort whose pantone would read ‘depression’. As you clamber across back alleys and terraced houses, scuttle across cobbled streets and zip-line (a great inclusion, given the open spaces) from building to building, there’s a busy, interesting world down there, the remnants of which you can still make out today. ![]() ![]() ![]() Ubisoft Quebec, developing the ‘main’ yearly instalment for the first time, has done a fine job with London, 1868: a city inching towards modernity in some respects while remaining positively medieval in others (Lambeth). Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’s greatest strength, like with its predecessors, is its city.
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