Assassin's Creed Unity

An excellent and huge game. The positives are emphasized by detailed world that seems more alive now than ever before.

Everything one could possibly want in a video game is here. But sadly, the lack of execution bogs things down, sometimes to the point of absurdity and irritation. It’s really sad. What it could’ve been will haunt me for a long time.

Assassin's Creed: Unity, despite recycling some old gameplay mechanisms, is enchanting. The player feels like being thrown into the middle of Paris in XVIII century, and after a few missions shifts into this new, more realistic, style of gameplay. Assassin's Creed is more demanding (fights are much harder), more like a real stealth game and more visually exciting than anything with the Assassin's Creed logo. Unity is the best incarnation of the series.

Assassin's Creed Unity is a clear step forward for the IP with an impressive level design. The Paris of the French Revolution is an ideal setting, and Ubisoft's teams have put up an amazing work with harder assassinations, tougher fights and, of course, the co-op mode. A new breath in the series.

A huge Assassin's Creed episode, with gorgeous visuals and very funny and engaging co-op missions and activities.

Assassin’s Creed Unity delivers a stellar narrative and a beautiful backdrop for one of the most palpable historical times in history. With complementary combat tweaks and the addition of co-op, Ubisoft has more than outdone itself in bringing 18th-century Paris to life.

Assassin's Creed Unity steps into the new generation with new mechanics, an outstanding scenario and many missions to entertain the player for many hours. Co-op mode is one of its biggest assets, which we hope to see in future installments. However, some technical issues, along with the waste of such an important moment as the French Revolution weigh down a game that could have gone even further.

Fortunately, all of the visual problems I personally experienced, which included severe texture popping and drops in frame rate, disappeared after Ubisoft’s large patch. It’s upsetting that the game was released in such an incomplete and unpolished state, but at the very least, it is fixed at this point.

Assassin's Creed Unity boasts an amazing new gaming engine that unfortunately suffers from some graphical issues. Nonetheless, it's still a fun experience.

An excellent and entertaining game that innovates the series but it is ruined by poor optimization. Splendors of revolutionary Paris are flawed by annoying blunders that have been removed only now by Ubisoft. [Issue#248]

It's hard not to get angry in front of the waste of potential we've found in Assassin's Creed Unity. We are faced with a title that, with a minimum of extra efforts and some more months of development, would almost certainly revealed to be a masterpiece.

The framerate isn't great and apparently the camera wants to kill you, but otherwise this is a great send-off for the Assassin's Creed franchise on the last-gen consoles. The environments are varied and your role as a templar is interesting. Definitely recommended.

Assassin's Creed Unity brings lots of improvements to the Assassin's Creed franchise. However, this doesn't mean Unity is perfect. Some minor issues stand against a lot of positive, innovative improvements.

It's a good time to be an Assassin's Creed fan. I just wish my console could run it properly.

Apart from some minor hiccups in large crowds and certain Synchronization points, there weren’t any annoying performance issues.

It just simply isn’t the breath of fresh air that Black Flag was last November. While that took something that was loved from AC3 and ran with it, Unity takes a few giant steps backwards and finds itself in what feels like a bigger, better looking AC2.

It's probably one of the largest, most beautiful and richest games ever created. But at the same time most of what Unity tries to do feels incomplete and rushed.

Unity is a good step in the series, managing to successfully overhaul most of the core mechanics. However, a lot of polishing is needed in terms of freerunning or stealth to make it all work as intended. The co-op is pretty fun, but be careful of the pretty common frame drops, errors, and annoying missions, as they can really pull you out of the experience.

Unity is not a bad game, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it advances the series very much, especially for the first title in the series to be a fully next-gen game.

You’ll praise this for its picture perfect Parisian playground, killer co-op and infectious customisation. But you’ll also want to baguette out for its aging mechanics and slippy framerate. [January 2015, p56]

Unity is an impressive technical achievement despite its issues, and it is certainly a significant step forward for the series as a whole. The difficulty of combat encourages use of the overhauled stealth system, perhaps signalling a shift towards a real focus on stealthy gameplay in the series, which is certainly exciting.

Assuming Ubisoft can fix the numerous bugs, Assassin’s Creed Unity might become a much better, more entertaining game. Unfortunately, some issues are part of the core experience, including a lackluster storyline and an ending that feels like a let down. When it works, Unity shows glimmers of pure brilliance.

Almost everything Unity does better than its predecessors comes with a caveat we wouldn't have to talk about today if Ubisoft had shown more will to renovate the basics. Still, you get what it says on the box, thanks to a solid multiplayer even a bit more. This year, that's good enough for me. But I'd be lying if I said I was still excited about what this new generation holds for Assassin's Creed.

Thanks to the amount of tasks, collectibles and a pretty good story, AC Unity is enjoyable. The newly introduced multiplayer co-op experience is thrilling too. What a pity that bugs, odd looking visuals and other flaws keep this game from being an enticing experience.

Assassin’s Creed Unity improves on the gameplay, the mechanics, the amount of people in the game and the music compared to earlier AC releases - and it even includes a fun co-op mode. Where it falls flat is on the delivery of the open world. It constantly feels like the PS4 is about to break under the pressure of working too hard. Framerate dips, pop up and ins and odd textures will definitely make this a pass for many gamers. We were still able to enjoy the game despite these short comings, but we can’t help but feel disappointed.

Mild improvements in traversal and combat are quickly overwhelmed by the creaking systems onto which they have been grafted. Revolutionary Paris is one of the most beautifully realised environments in a series that has had its fair share of them, but the game you play doesn't really do it justice.

There's a catch to more or less every improvement Unity makes. [Issue#251, p.58]

Unity’s metanarrative turns something specific into something simple, general, a clean way to experience a false history devoid of any attempt to explore what made the era so significant.

Bugs really throw Unity under the guillotine. [Jan 2015, p.78]

Assassin's Creed Unity takes part in revolutionary Paris, but there is no sign of gameplay revolution. Game suffers with technical issues, one can smell the free-to-play principles and there isn't anything fresh. But the game looks beautiful anyway.

Unity plays well, but it's not really good enough for a AAA-game to play well, and this especially applies to Assassin's Creed, which has always been a franchise with stronger narrative and thematic value than its counterparts.

Unity simply isn't ready for release. The majority of its new systems aren't refined enough, and its existing ones are showing their age. It's still intermittently enjoyable, but a serious step down from last year's Black Flag.

At release, it offers a staggeringly beautiful world filled with unfinished systems, ugly cash grabs, and a string of missed opportunities. [Jan 2014, p.108]

Despite the title, Unity is all over the place, a jack-of-all-trades that seems almost determined not to master any of its fundamental components.

While it manages to both refine and add to the franchise's formula with enjoyable co-op, missions that encourage experimentation, and a few accessible RPG mechanics, we simply can't guarantee that your experience won't be plagued by problems both big and small.

If Black Flag was a self-contained explosion of quick-witted brilliance, Assassin's Creed: Unity is nowt but wreckage. Stand aside. [Issue@155, p.99]

While its myriad of technical issues are certainly detrimental to anyone’s enjoyment, it’s the lack of ambition in reinventing its aging mechanics and tired mission design that leave Unity treading water.

Assassin’s Creed Unity may be an incredible piece of architecture, but that’s sadly all it is.