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Autumn is upon us again. The leaves on the trees are slowly turning dry and orange, the ground is shining with rainfall and there’s a hint of a winter chill in the air that reminds us that Christmas cannot and will not be stopped. Also, it’s time to stab people. Our yearly dose of Assassin’s Creed is nearly here to fill some of us with joy and some of us with absolute boredom. There are dog people and there are cat people. There are spider-phobes and people who leave plastic spiders on their co-worker’s desks. And there are Assassin’s Creed fans and those who take offence at the mere suggestion that the game could hold any merit whatsoever. Of course there are also fence-sitters, those who have a cat and a dog, will brush a spider from their sleeve with only a slight frown and couldn’t care less about Ubisoft’s big hitter because they’re busy with the rest of October’s gaming frenzy. But generally just the mention of a new game in the series will spark some sort of reaction. What makes some people love it so much and others hate it with such a passion? What makes Assassin’s Creed the marmite of the gaming world?
Ubisoft are a big deal. Obviously. Comparing them to the average indie developer is like comparing a vole foetus with a giganotosaurus. We all know from our various gaming exploits that bigger doesn’t always mean better, but it does mean they have more than a purse full of coppers to make the perfect game. In theory that should mean every game they produce should be the game of our dreams. Clearly not. Just how did Assassin’s Creed Unity get released so very broken? That game was doomed to die, sink to the fiery pits of hell and be perpetually criticised not only for its actual faults but for any other fault we could come up with. Boring, terrible game, worst AC yet, hated it, bargain bucket, UNPLAYABLE. Okay yes, for many, the framerate did literally make it unplayable, but even long after the game was pretty much fixed and in damn good nick (and yes we played it right through after the last patch) there were still cries of an inaccessible rubbish-heap of a game. Clearly we were playing different games, then. What we played was a smooth and perfectly respectable AC game with massively improved parkour, gorgeous graphics and plenty of content. So why was there still such a problem?
Perhaps the issue many people still had with ACU was similar to the problem with Watch Dogs. Like ACU launched with serious performance issues, Watch Dogs launched with a noticeable and disappointing graphics downgrade. The word tainted springs to mind. Both games left many feeling that Ubisoft had taken advantage of us. The developer had given us expectations and then didn’t deliver. Perhaps that left us with numerous bad tastes in our mouths. I saw a multitude of claims that Watch Dogs was the worst game they ever played. Really? The worst? If you enjoyed Watch Dogs, as we did, put that aside for moment and let’s try to see it from a non-fan’s point of view. The worst game. The worst game ever played. THE WORST. I’m aware that I’m repeating myself here, but have you guys ever played a truly bad game? Think of the most terrible game you’ve ever wished you hadn’t wasted your GAME points on. Now compare that to Watch Dogs. Compare it to ACU. Now tell me, were Ubisoft’s heavyweights really that bad? Or were these games tainted by their most obvious problems and subsequently contaminated by a black cloud of negativity. Is the Assassin’s Creed franchise and anything remotely connected with it doomed to be forever considered a bad egg?
Allow me, if you will, to compare AC to Call of Duty. You could say both franchises are highly
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