Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)

Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 / Multi | Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

AC: Unity was the first of the Ass series to be released on the new (at the time) eighth generation of home consoles; the PS4, etc.

Not being a timely sort of person, I first played it eight years later, in 2022. I should say 'first' and 'last' time because it's bloody awful and I won't be trudging through its story ever again.

To add insult to injury, it came out on the very same day as Ass Creed Rogue came out on the previous generation of consoles. Rogue wasn't perfect, but it was infinitely more playable in comparison to the 'next generation' Unity.

I'm reminded of the proverb 'with great power comes great responsibility', except in Ubisoft's case it's more like 'with greater processing power comes greater catastrophe'. I usually leave my glitch report until after I've mentioned gameplay, etc, but Unity has nothing of value to relay, so the glitch report is all there is!

• NPCs and the main playable character, Arno Dorian, getting embedded in scenery; e.g., I got stuck in a ramp during a chase level - required a full game reset;
• NPCs stuck behind other NPCs making mission progress impossible - required a full game reset;
• Random, inexplicable game crashes - required a full game reset;
• NPCs floating above ground level  - required a sense of humour;
• NPCs (and a chicken or two) popping in and out of existence;
• NPCs sliding backwards down the street while tilted at a 45 degree angle;
• Arno diving into a puddle that's just a few millimetres deep;
• Cut scenes happening a full half a minute after they're required (during missions!);
• Important mission icons on the map disappearing (or never appearing at all);
• Enemy targets clipping through walls, into 'inaccessible' rooms;
• Falling through scenery when climbing or descending;
• Hitting invisible walls during parkour;
• At one point I felt that I'd entered a Prince of Persia style wall-run in a game with no wall-run mechanic, and no actual wall nearby at the time;
• Fighting next to a locked door will often attempt to open the lock when you mean to block an incoming attack, because of doubled up buttons. That one's not a glitch, technically, but it's a damned idiotic developer oversight.

That is by no means all of the jank, but it's all I can remember at time of writing. The only part that didn't shit itself regularly was the mass crowds, although the frame rate sure did suffer when Arno was required to make his way through them.

The game is so poorly optimised for the PS4 that the console's fan would go full-tit crazy anytime the game's menu system was opened. Yes, the menu - the part of the game that didn't require any 3D world rendering and ought to use the least amount of processing power. One wonders if Ubisoft's main developers had casually slipped out for beers and snacks when optimisation was scheduled, leaving a wet-behind-the-ears intern to fluff it up.

I was indifferent to Arno, neither liking or disliking him at any stage of the game. But I did hate his tiny, white 'aim' reticule, which was impossible for me to see on a white background.

Here endeth the Unity.