Assasin's Creed: Syndicate (PC):
Assassin's Creed series evolves in steps. Every other iteration tries some new crazy stuff, gameplay-wise or some new tech. In the fray some gameplay features get lost (unarmed combat, ability to pet animals or pick up enemy weapons), removed after bad reception (tower defense missions, co-op missions) or even spun off into completely separate game (ship battles), and new tech more often than not will be glitchy (ACIII) even if very impressive with what it does.
But the game right after that big experiment is usually good because teams at Ubisoft will have more time to self-reflect, collect feedback, cull and mix features into something better, even if it will be just a derivative compilation at it's core.
Rogue was just a cocktail of III and II instead of crazy tech piece of
Unity released same year. Unity boasted insane thousand strong crowds, eye popping grafx and silky smooth 10 fps with constant hitching. Rogue did more of the same and was better for it.
Syndicate does the same for Unity -- it reigns in it's ambitions in terms of scope -- WAY less people on way narrower streets, removes stupid bullshit noone liked (co-op missions) and retains what good parts Unity had (detective missions).
Being largely a remix, Syndicate doesn't address Unity's biggest mistake which undermines the entire premise of a series -- red areas on the map which prohibit you from going there in the beginning: you can not go into 90% of the the map because enemies there will kill you in one hit if you as much as look at them. Same with locked areas and picklocks that prevent you from opening chests and collect all collectibles along the way in one go forcing to return to these areas after you leveled up. Syndicate at least reduces the harshness of red areas and caps picklock levels at 2 (instead of 4 i think in Unity) but the concept is still there and it's annoying. Through this leveling-up mechanics they want to string up your playthrough on a linear and controllable path and that point what is even the point of branding the game as "open world".
There are still new things compared to Unity. You can ride an assortment of vehicles namely: boats, trains and
auto- carriages:
Jumping off a roof onto carriage's roof and hijacking it is really cool. Trains and boats are useful when you to cover ground without actually controlling the vehicle-- i turned eagle vision scanning mode on and got on trains and boats and then left the game running for 10 minutes at a time to find the last helix shards.
Speaking of 100% completion this game does does a dirty trick -- in-game maps only show you 99% of collectibles, location of last few shards and chests is only available on online UPlay store.
Detective missions are back from Unity and the while most of them aren't super engaging the ending to detective storyline is amazing. They very clearly "borrowed" a lot of stuff from BBC's Sherlock show with presentation and the style of villain:
Syndicate also has a rope. It is a better version of a hook from Revelations semi-automating the climbing process and with it you can go from roof to roof almost like Spider-man:
London in this game is architecturally the same as Paris, aside from main landmarks the buildings are the same. Level of detalisation in environment and animations is also very high but this time it doesn't reduce the game into a hitching mess:
Game has a lot flavour behaviours like people just playing games in the park, orchestra giving a performance. You can catch a glimpse of daily life in rougher parts of the city like bandits catching a thief and roughing him up or a woman who recruits a boy to be her pretend son for begging.
Story is structured in chapters, punctuated by assasinations. Each kill is like a Hitman level -- they even use the same term "opportunity" (again this is exactly the same as in Unity):
Of two characters available i mostly used Evie simply because she is prettier and has really neat costumes. However Jacob's deerstalker is good because of it's wider eagle vision scanning radius and i used it for later parts where i scoured all over the city looking for the last remaining collectibles.
Overall, Syndicate is a really solid game that removes most of the annoyances of Unity. It is a ACII-type game where you are in one big city (no islands, no jungles, no naval stuff). You climb buildings, open chests and jump into haystacks -- all too familiar, almost nostalgic routine improved with addition of a rope. If you like this stuff -- you will enjoy it.
Also for crazy people who want 100% completion Syndicate like most modern AC games has rather lenient full sync requirements. Thank god for that. No more missions of ACII Brotherhood that were impossible to full sync.
Assasin's Creed: Syndicate. Jack the Ripper DLC (PC):
This DLC features Jacob and Evie vs titular serial killer. Not quite sure why but this DLC looks a bit better for me: maybe it's colder palette of Fall or they actually improved textures and lightning:
I enjoyed new locations they added for this DLC:
Story was okay and actual historical texts about Jack The Ripper case were cool.
Topic: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions? (Read 637866 times)
