So I got this for a Xmas gift and I really liked the way it opens. It does feel closer to the first couple Assassin’s Creed games (which are still my favorites), which I really appreciated.
Sadly, I’m forced to play it in 1280x720 and (mostly) Low settings because my video card only has 2GB VRAM. Not a major problem, but still a bit disappointing, since upgrading my video card is not an option at the moment.
It’s quite a nice tech demo apart from anything else :) And you get to free urchins. Steam refunds seem tailor made for your case.
The Last Maharaja pack launches today.
It’s part of the season pass, if you have it.
It’s interesting to me that this latest add-on includes no achievements. After loading up the game and staring at the menu for a bit I realized I had no desire to explore this game any further. Really glad they’re taking a break this year, hope the next time around really shakes up the formula.
I agree that a break is warranted… I couldn’t stop myself yesterday from picking up AC Rogue - the only one I haven’t played. I am the problem!
I just picked this up on Amazon yesterday for $35 (gold edition). I probably should have asked before I bought it. Questions:
Has there been a simplification of any of the in game systems? Right now I am playing Rogue, about 2 missions into sequence 4, and what I am noticing more and more is the just billions of things to do. Just systems on top of systems. Sail the boat, upgrade the boat, upgrade your character , upgrade your guns, your swords, liberate locations climb stuff, get new gadgets from people , capture songs, discover maps, kill animals for pelts, whale hunt, fort capture, steal warehouse stuff, water battles , land battles, just so much stuff! Its like there are 4 games in one.
I really enjoy the story bits of Rogue and the assassinations, but so much filler content is wearing me out. It seems like there is even more filler in Rogue, but with less story than there was in Black Flag. I recall what little I played of Unity, that there was less filler content to do , and more focus on story missions. Did that trend continue with Syndicate, less filler and more story?
Hmm. I’m not sure how to answer you because of your opinion on Unity. I think Unity had, by far, the most “Ubistuff” (as Tom calls it) filler in AC ever. Since you think it had less, it’s hard for me to know what you’d think of Syndicate.
I think Syndicate had less Ubistuff than Unity.
In Unity I didn’t get far (just made it past the first time shift into the future) before giving up and just not liking the setting / story / game performance. To me it seemed like there was less stuff to do though.
I like the Ubistuff term. :)
There’s less ‘Ubistuff’ in Syndicate than there has been in any AC since 2.
Having played a bunch of them this year, I completely agree. Unity was overpacked with the stuff. Viewpoints (duh). Chests. Paris stories. Heists. Cockades. Locpick chests (3 levels). Murder mysteries. Theater cafe upgrades. Unlockable social club/QT points. Multiplayer missions. Nostradamus riddles. Rifts. Social Club missions. Crowd events. Weapon and gear upgrades. The worst were the collectibles in the multiplayer maps that required you to not be a good team player and go off on your own, or come back and solo them later. Ugh.
IIRC, they backed down a bit from the app-linked chests and “nomad points” because it was ticking off the base to keep running across unretrievable chests.
So. The back (to back)^9 journey through the Assassin’s Creed series is finally over. Boy, that took awhile. Part of that was my own fault - while out of town, I started playing Mass Effect for the first time in over 3 years, and that hooked me and I had to play through that entire series (turns out, FemShep is pretty cool). But eventually, I came back to finish off this game.
For me, this is one of my favorites in the series. Maybe second behind Brotherhood, or in sort of a bundled bunch of games just below Brotherhood that includes Black Flag, Rogue, and 2 as well. Regardless, it was a very enjoyable game. And I think a large part of why I enjoyed this game (and Brotherhood, BF, and Rogue) was the part about taking over territories. Simply put - it was fun. The various activities to draw the gang leader out were overall pretty fun (not wild about the bounty hunt, but those were more a mixed bag depending on the setup). And having that much of the gameplay be that much fun makes up for the occasional moment where it wasn’t so fun (tailing missions still suck. They even sucked in AC2, but they were stupidly easy). Even the WWI section of the game was fun, and showed that AC could work in that setting (IMO).
I know this was a ‘twins’ game, but as far as I was concerned, it might as well have centered around Evie. I used Jacob when I had to due to a mission, the fight clubs, the races, and for fighting the gang bosses, But that’s about it. So like 90% of the game was all about Evie. Stealth is just (most of the time) a more fun way to take down the Templars, and she can hold her own when stealth fails. Overall, this was just a game that worked for me.
The only real rage-inducing this game caused were the races. Not so much driving a carriage itself. I thought the Triathlon and Exotic races - where you weren’t racing against others, just time - were done well. But those other races - the rubber banding done by losing carts was just stupid. Somehow, I got all the other contestants stuck in a courtyard when you had to race through two archways connecting the courtyard to the streets on either side. They got far enough back they weren’t on the screen anymore. Come to about 3 gates left, they come roaring from behind using rocket fuel, apparently, and managed to just edge me out to second place. I mean, at least the GTA races didn’t seem to do that. They got stuck somewhere, it was an easy ride home. And weirdly, I did have one race where the other carts got stuck - and they didn’t show up again, and it was an easy ride home. So - I don’t know. Just occasionally stupidly broken. You’ve already given them carts that are slightly faster to begin with - let’s keep it fair after that, OK?
Other than that, the only other thing I wasn’t a fan of was the ‘present day’ section. Nothing more that ‘sit and watch a short movie’ section. I know I was in the minority in that I enjoyed the present day stuff with Desmond, and also Black Flag and Rogue, but there’s just no connection to that part of the story anymore. If you picked up Syndicate and started playing that w/o knowing that backstory of the games before it, why would you give a damn about Shawn and Rebecca? Just not a fan of the new non-playable direction.
Also played through all of the DLC, which included the Dreadful Crimes back (this is on PC - don’t known if that also got released on the 360). Basically an updated ‘solve the murder’ set of missions from Unity, which I liked a lot. They were, once again, pretty well done, and at the end, sort of tied together. The Last Maharaja back was OK. Just don’t expect the levels to match up with what the mission says it is. I took these on after being level 10, and all the enemies were level 10 as well. Unfortunately, if I was given allies for the mission, they were leveled to what the mission said, which made them a bit tougher to keep alive when you needed to (just the one mission). Also found that those missions crashed more than any other in the game. So overall - not bad, but buggy.
And then there’s Jack the Ripper, which transports you to a very much not changed London 20 years later. Overall, I thought it was decent. I get why the Jack missions gave you the ‘fear’ stuff to use, but not sure why Evie would have that. Not so much the fear bombs - I get the non-lethal stuff. But while I can see Jack doing the ‘brutal executions’ moves, it just seemd out of place for Evie.
Overall, enjoyed the game quite a bit (even with the interrupition for the Mass Effect series),and it was a big improvement over Unity. It will be interesting to see where they go for the next one in the series. If they go backwards in time - and at some point they have to - how do they balance that w/ the number of tools that won’t be able to be used anymore? Also, I’m kind of Juno. Just bring her out of the ‘grey’ so we can kill her already.
I recently took advantage of an Amazon special on the “Gold Edition” for the on-disc version (looks like the same one that lordkosc got in on), and I stuck the first disc in my drive, entered the activation code, and it appears to actually be downloading this thing instead of reading it off the discs, sigh. Unless my DVD drive has developed super-stealth powers of silence that is.
Now my download speed is around 170 Mbps wired directly to my router, and I’m nowhere near my bandwidth cap, but still. Is it possible that what with decompression, this is actually installing faster by downloading the game than by reading it off the DVDs–there are 5 BTW? I suppose that installers these days might be able to figure that out, but I’m dubious.
EDIT: And as of the second disc (which it finally asked for), it actually appears to be reading it off the disc itself.
EDIT the Second: Ugh, with a couple of the discs, including the 4th and 5th, it requested them, but judging by the lack of a spinning noise coming from the drive, it doesn’t seem to be reading the discs (and the install progress seems a bit slower).
5 DVDs? Wow. Games are huge these days.
Yeah, it was about 37.5 GB. Crazy.
Thanks for the heads up on the install process @Papageno , I haven’t finished Rogue yet, but I am getting tired of the time period after AC3/4/Rogue and what little time I spent with Liberty… I’ll be glad when I never have to reload another single fire gun again. :p
@lordkosc, my advice is to set it running and maybe have a TV show or movie ready to stream on the computer, because it will definitely take a while. I’m really enjoying the game so far, although I’ve basically just done the first couple of tutorial missions, one for Jacob and one for Evie, and they’ve made it to London.
What’s the story with Rogue? Is it a prequel to IV (which BTW I got pretty far in but have yet to finish)?
Rogue takes place after AC4 (Pirates!) but before AC3. And I have to say I really enjoy playing a Templar. :3
Here is a timeline, because there are like 50 games out now, and its hard to keep track of what took place where:
Ugh, I don’t know what’s going on but today I fired up Syndicate to take it for a spin, and UPlay does its auto-update thing, then seems to be unable to continue my game where it left off, says my save game is invalid or something, and proceeds to force me to download 21 GB of whatever?? What the actual f**k?
And I have finally started playing this! In sequence 3 already, loving the twins. SUPER important thing regarding AC for me is liking the character(s) I am playing as. So big WIN.
Huge improvement over Unity and Rogue, which were the last 2 games I played last year.
I hope to finish this before Origins releases at the end of the month.