I’ve just polished off and published my review of Assassin’s Creed Unity and although I sadly fell behind the curve of the general gaming media outlets, I did not expect the sheer wall of feces that washed over me as I checked the reasons behind the scores from other critics.
I have seen floods of articles, complaints, comments and accusations today – each attacking Ubisoft’s approach to the AC Unity release, selling an utterly broken product that is both damaged beyond all repair and so broken it’s not even close to playable. I cannot speak for all the platforms but as for the state of the PlayStation 4 version, many of these complaints are utter poppycock. Yes, I went there. Poppycock.
Unplayable? Broken beyond repair? Maybe the other platforms truly are seriously suffering and certain PlayStation 4 reviewers just took it on board, but my experience in AC Unity was not one of utter disappointment and pure frustration. I’ll be totally honest with you. I expected more from Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed is a well established franchise and Ubisoft have proven time and time again that they’ve got what it takes to compete with the big boys, but the technical stability of Assassin’s Creed Unity was not up to par and was not close to the industry standard expected of a AAA, £59.99 release. For this I can understand a certain degree of disappointment and confusion among players but not to the level I’ve seen today.
I’ve completed the entire campaign, the vast majority of the Murder Mystery missions, collected more chests than I care to admit and explored every crook, cranny and crypt of Paris. During that time, the time it took me to complete the entire game, I fell through the floor 5-6 times and suffered from minor FPS drops on a few occasions. I am not – for one second saying we should blindly accept this level of quality without question but some sources are scoring the game as low as a 4/10 for its technical shortfalls.
In the interest of full disclosure. I wrote my review on Assassin’s Creed Unity and posted it today. I wrote the review based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by the PR team working with Ubisoft. I scored the game a 7/10 and praised it for its fantastic graphics, impressive environments, good customization additions and exciting co-operative play. I criticized it for the occasionally frustrating parkour elements, convoluted story, technical instabilities and tedious usage of external applications.
Please don’t misunderstand my inability to understand this situation as an attack on the opinion of another reviewer. The entire intention of such articles is to deliver a verdict true and honest to the one whom holds the pen. However, I can not just sit by and watch those mindlessly destroying a games score purely to stir up controversy without throwing up my counter point.
I’ve seen dozens of articles attacking Assassin’s Creed Unity for its lack of technical polish but I have yet to see a single one where I felt the author had correctly portrayed the actual state of the game I explored during my experience.
To summarize. The PlayStation 4 version, at least in my experience, is more than stable enough to support hours of bug free play without any interruptions. But it is not as technically sound as gamers expect and deserve for the price tag.
