Assassins Creed Unity [PS4, XO]

Having played the game for a few hours and being amazed by how wonderful a game world I am able to walk around in, how beautiful and detailed, wow. It's, for a lack of a better word, much like an open world Uncharted at times, but more realistic looking. Framerate isn't nearly as much of an issue as people make it out to be. Sure it would be nice if the framerate would be rock solid and I hope they manage to improve it, but people shouldn't let it get in the way of how amazing the game looks regardless.

 

It all comes down to personal preference.
Mine is, that a game at 20 fps, is unplayable. At a steady locked 30 fps, it's just tolerable.
Anything that gets close to counting frames is intolerable. At 1080p it'd look better yet, and be a slide show at the same time...
I have no doubt that the game looks absolutely stunning at certain points (those being the parts it doesn't skip frames and stutters to the point it's not that stunning anymore).
But it won't play the way it looks.
And that is a big "no no" for me.

So I'm skipping this one.
Besides, Inquisition will take most of my time this holiday season

 

Point is, most of the time you're playing it's a pretty solid 30 fps.

I recorded 15 minutes to Youtube from my session tonight to give an impression.

[yt]bZ9LDJAaXis[/yt]

(Ah, so here it's just automatically done if you paste a proper link. Nice.)

 

Havent followed unity, but I saw a trailer where there was multiple assassins, is there co-op for the complete game ala Destiny?

 

I understand yes - the Abstergo woman specifically told me at the beginning of Paris, basically, and it is generally mentioned as a plus for this game (the only saving grace, according to GIant Bomb).

From PS4 screen capture directly to facebook, so lots of compression, but I really love some (or most) of the interiors. And it is really nice you can go in and out of buildings with no load-times.

 

Hmm I dunno man maybe it's because I'm too used to 60fps now, but that video looks kinda jarring to play. Is it maybe because of the encoding? Something seems off. By my eyeball it looks to bounce between 20 and 30fps, and on occasion maybe dip even lower. Plus it doesn't seem consistent, it seems to stutter a bunch although maybe that is from the encoding. Personally I would not be able to play the game the way it looks in that video, because of all the jumping and climbing to me this series really needs a solid stable frame rate to feel right.

 

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/assassins-creed-unity-review/1900-686/

Giant bomb gives 40/100

 

That does look great, but all blurry.

 

Let's just put it this way. If you can't handle this, them you're never been able to play an AC game on console before (except the PS4 version of Black Flag)

 

Wonder how people managed to enjoy gaming "shit heaps" such as Shadow of the Colossus, Heavenly Sword, Dead Rising or - gasp - any Bethesda rpg in the past. Don't get me wrong, If you consider that type of performance unacceptable then that's perfectly fine (just don't buy a console then). I just don't get this sudden obsession with framerates as somehow people seemed to get along with it relatively fine on previous console generations. Heck, we're now at a point where people call out games like Alien Isolation for lackluster framerates despite the fact that it pretty much updates at a perfect 30Hz. It's like people expected a little 400€ box to suddently eliminate every performance woe known to gaming because it had little trouble with handling a bunch of up-resed last gen games so far. There'll always be games trying to punch above their weight class., and the AC series in particular is notorious for doing just that. (compared to the first PS3 AC, Unity actually runs like a dream)
It's also puzzling how it's always the multi platform games attrackting the collective ire of gamers. Where were the "performance in Ryse and Dead Rising 3 is unacceptable" topics?

Yesterday I played a bunch of hours with the gf sitting next to me. Usually she'd get bored or antsy pretty fast, but she pretty much just sat there slack-jawed for the whole time. As for me, I'm really digging the game too.

 

It is indeed by no means stable, but it doesn't look anywhere near as jerky when you actually play it.

 

Don't forget: Facebook compression is horrible. If I have time I'll see if I can grab the capture using USB.

 

Yeah, thats true. Even without FB compression, the JPEGS saved by ps4 look much blander than actual in-game. Just that this seems the most "soft" IQ uptill now. Playing on a monitor, this does get noticeable. It was noticeable i WD and BF4 too an this seems much softer than that.

But as far as Virtual Tourism goes, I think the game does the rock the sock ! It does have that Architectural Walkthrough vibe, epecially indoors.I will chk it out once the glitches are gone and maybe when there's nothing more interesting out there. As of now, ever other game releasing in November seems more fun than this, for my taste. I don't think I am going to "enjoy" this, but yeah, like we said before, roaming around in a beautiful place is one of the key aspects of gaming, for me. But by then The Witcher will be out, Uncharted would be nearing completion, etc etc. I think Ubisoft lost me here.

 

Ha! Funny youshould say that I had to quit Assassin's Creed on PS3 because the framerate and tearing were so bad. I tolerated the framerate for two thirds of the story of Assassin's Creed 2 because Ezio and the story were so good but even then it was tough. I then left AC until Black Flag on PS4 which felt great to play - despite the excess of crappy campaign missions aside!

I could easily get sucked into playing Unity, from the reviews I've read the controls are still iffy with Arno getting stuck on things both in exteriors and interiors, I know Arno is a bit one deminsional and I know the story isn't rollercoaster awesome but I would love to cause havoc in Paris. If they fix the framerate issues and it's closer to 30fps most of the time, I'll probably pick this up.

But coming from Shadow or Mordor to Unity (via COD:Advanced Warfare) I think it'd be terribly disappointed in it technically. Interestingly enough, Shadow of Mordor's development team is comprised of many of the original Assassin's Creed development team.

 

Getting stuck on things I currently feel is a user error - the new control method is quite good. AC1 and AC2 weren't playable for me on PS3 either. They were both worse than Unity.

Paris makes everything in those other games look last-gen, imho.

Maybe you should just try it over share play ...

 

I don't think that anyone expects that.
My expectations from a developer that makes a game for a platform the user cannot upgrade, or tune to his liking is that the game be playable.
The fact is, that even if the box, was not a 400$ one, but a 4000 dollar console, someone can always make a game that the machine simply cannot handle.

As I said, it's subjective.
I'd rather have toned down graphics for better framerates, but that's just me.

 

^And that's perfectly understandable. I just don't get why the whole performance thing has only just now started to cause an epic shitstorm like that when it's arguably never been different. Heck, save for the sole exception of Black Flag, which was a slighty prettied-up last gen game, it was actually worse in the past.

 

Sounds like a rental or something to pick up when it's hit the bargain bin, unless you're really invested in the AC series.

 

I just read in Eurogamer that there are micro transactions in Unity which puts this on the ABSOLUTE NO BUY list for me. I don't care if they're skippable, I'm voting with the wallet. Micro transactions in a full priced game are unacceptable.

 

Anyone who wants to pay real money over and above the full price game to pay-to-win in a single-player game can go right ahead.