FACTS 2014: Assassin's Creed Unity Hands-On

For the new generation of consoles, publisher Ubisoft wants to prove a point with its most lucrative franchise, so Assassin’s Creed Unity is seeing things big. It wants huge crowds and gets it. It wants shapely buildings and it certainly does its best to achieve it. It wants this gigantic environment for its playground, but it forgets that it needs to playable first and foremost. It is just as engaging to dive into some murderous activities in the latest release, but it certainly not as it should be. If it wants to prove a point, it’s failing.

It starts with this big, vibrant world. Characters do look finely detailed, all the way down to their frocks and capes fluttering in the wind and there are plenty of them to go around. In fact, the church location of the gameplay demo we played is packed with bodies, both inside and out. Outside, the masses protest at the church door. Inside, the French Revolution is still nicely isolated from the higher class pretending nothing is wrong.

To gain access to the assassination target, the usual climbing and jumping is needed. This is where Assassin’s Creed Unity reveals its first blemishes. Buildings are downright encased in those lighted, white visuals that are seen in a lot of new releases, except here they resemble artifacted graphics more than anything. This is the Xbox One version, though it’s doubtful this matters, given resolution parity. It’s prominent in the world to the extent that it feels like those troubled PS2 aliasing days. It’s incredibly distracting from the tableau the game wants to actually produce.

Were it not for that ugly wrapper, detail environmental work would be splendid, mixing softer color tones with additional lighting elements, sort of resembling the soothing effects seen in the romanticist movement of the era. Window panes paint rainbows on the shiny floors of this ornate area, for instance. There is an eye for detail, an extensive one, though it definitely wants to push that glossy effect to its breaking point.

Luckily, there is a game to play to swallow the bitter pill of sullied visuals and the small environment already has multiple activities. While the mission is to eviscerate some nobleman, either through sneaking overhead or in a straight brawl, remote areas around the opulent building hide some trinkets to sniff out. A treasure chest prompt appears and getting to it reveals the level of freedom that comes with this franchise. From side pillars to rooftops and back down on balconies, this giant structure is like the world’s most expensive jungle gym. A simple button press makes all this magic happen with relative ease, though with smoother detail integration also come some camera woes, This should just be an adaptation. It will likely feel familiar to scale better-looking walls in no time.

Freedom extends itself to multiple access points for the mission. Some windows can have actual shards of glass laying around, indicating a rogue entry into the premises. Otherwise, the usual ropes and ledges still extend to every corner of the room, giving plenty of vantage points to mission and side activities alike. If anything, game design is set up for the usual climbing, jumping, discovering glory of Assassin’s Creed titles. That is, it does that, in theory.

There’s a certain irksome delay that keeps occurring during the demo. Whenever a lot of activity is on screen, the view slows down to a framerate unbefitting a console release. It’s impossible to accurately say how the framerate is affected, but it won’t even reach 20 frames per second (fps), that’s certain. This isn’t a PC that is just incapable of running a game; it should work as intended, but it doesn’t. Usually, the huge crowd of people is involved in this slowdown, but it can also be a quick camera turn that involves other active parts of the game. It’s pretty much always there when not secluded and it makes playing a lot harder than it should be. An already artifacted scenery only becomes more washed out because of it as well. Assassin’s Creed Unity is running 900p at 30fps, but doesn’t even manage to hold that perfectly at all times? That is more inexplicable than inexcusable.

The breaking point occurs at the pinnacle of the mission. Arno, the protagonist for this game, can make their way right above the assassination target. Normally, it should be possible to smoothly swoop down and kill someone. Since there’s a crowd present, however, the screen starts chugging, the move fails and Arno awkwardly falls into a pack of men who draw their swords. Combat is still extremely facilitated in Assassin’s Creed Unity, luckily. Sword strikes quickly connect on nearby targets, while it’s also possible to perform a pistol shot on the fly. If the screen would stop getting hacked up, it’d probably go swimmingly. Slowdown doesn’t stop, so more than one controller input fails to register and what should be an easy kill is now a desperate struggle for survival. The target eventually starts going down, but the screen is still getting slammed and enemies are wailing all over Arno, who drops down. Death? Really? Crap, this shouldn’t have happened. I walk away. This was not how it should be.

It took about ten minutes for this rather short mission to come to an unfortunate end, but the desire to try again was completely gone. This was a battle to enjoy the open elements of this game, every step of the way. It looks like Ubisoft wanted to add many more bodies to a game that ultimately can’t handle it and it crashes completely as a result. It’s unlikely that we’ve taken a hard stance here on resolution demands that have popped up this generation, but whatever option Ubisoft chose, it was the wrong one. It doesn’t need to go for 1080p and 60fps if it doesn’t want to, but if it’s opting for a lower scale it had damn well run it perfectly. More people on screen doesn’t mean a thing if the overall experience suffers from it to this degree.

Assassin’s Creed Unity should be another sure thing and it likely will be, but if it does, it gets this success on pedigree alone. All the proper channels for a huge open world full of things to do are there, but the follow through isn’t. It’s well possible that the playing environment has never been this accessible and never held that many activities inside it, but it looks poorer as a result. As it struggles to contain this freedom within, the slowdown that occurs from it creates one battle that isn’t enjoyable, but unfortunately it’s not a fight that can be won. This playthrough was a shattering disappointment.

You can start apologizing for your favorite franchise now.  I know I’ll stick to playing Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, which does pull off this grandiose feat. Feel free to stick around to find out what we thought of our playthrough of Assassin’s Creed Rogue in the coming days, because we played that too.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke)