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Assassin’s Creed Origins: The Hidden Ones (PS4): COMPLETED!

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After a little time away playing other stuff, I went back to The Most Impressive Game this week to do some of the DLC. I’d previously put maybe an hour or two into The Hidden Ones, but now I’ve finished it off.

It’s more of the same, really. That’s not a complaint, just a fact. And it’s all I wanted, actually. It feels a bit rougher, with less impressive terrain and a lot more places where they seem to have forgotten about the rock formation geometry (translation: some of the cliffs have holes in them), but it was just as fun as the rest of the game.

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Assassin’s Creed Origins (PS4): COMPLETED!

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My understanding of this game was that it wasn’t anything like previous Assassin’s Creed games. It was written from scratch, didn’t reuse any engine or assets, and had completely new gameplay. The title also suggests it’s the start of the Assassins. It turns out nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Maybe Ubisoft did scrap everything from the series and built it all up again, but it doesn’t show. In fact, aside from the new control scheme (attacks are on the shoulder buttons now), and the biggest map so far, this is just more of the same. But that’s actually fine.

Yes, you have an eagle.

Yes, so there’s a literal eagle vision now (with an actual eagle), and yes, it tells the story of the start of the Brotherhood, but it’s still parkour and stabbin’ just like before. This time it’s set in the achingly beautiful setting of Egypt, which is far more varied than the sand and pyramids you’d expect, but the core missions are still scoping out the enemy, picking them off, and assassinating a series of important historical figures. And it’s so much fun.

Your guy this time is Bayek, a medjay (a sort of trouble fixer) from the region of Siwa, who, along with his wife Aya, is out to get revenge for the death of his son. Bayek, despite the “by ‘eck” link that can’t be unheard, is a great protagonist. He’s well voiced, has real empathy and morals, and is hard as nails. He’s probably one of the best the series has ever had, actually. At points in the game you also get to play as Aya, who is also great but her sections are generally boating (straight out of Black Flag, and so the worst thing about the game) or combat-lite. She also doesn’t have an eagle, which makes the final mission a bit tricky.

I’ve since found out that the next game, Odyssey, is actually set hundreds of years before Origins, not immediately afterwards as the story of Origins might suggest. This does make a bit of a mockery of the name of this game, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I hope they do bring Bayek back for another game though, perhaps round Greece?

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Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (PS4): COMPLETED!

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I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s a perfectly good sneaky-stabby 2.5D platformer. On the other hand, it’s a terribly disappointing Assassin’s Creed game with a feeble story that weakly continues on from Ezio’s trilogy.

Initially, it feels a lot like the original 2D Prince of Persia game with obvious technical improvements. The more I played it, however, I realised it was really much closer to the Shinobi game on the Nintendo 3DS, only with a bit more emphasis on staying hidden rather than killing everything.

There’s nothing actually wrong with the game, aside from a couple of “endless runner” sections with their trial and error flaws, but it’s not good enough to make me want to play through the other two games in the series (India and Russia). I’m impressed that not being fully 3D worked a lot better than I was expecting, however.

The final boss was rubbish though. After a couple of proper boss fights with Prince of Persia style swordplay – parrying and stuff – you literally just walk up behind him and press a button. Oh, spoilers, sorry.

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Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (PS4)

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That’s it. I’m done.

I haven’t 100%ed it, but I have most of the achievements, all the collectables except a few secrets and helices, and just shy of 50 hours spent it’s time to move on.

There’s got to be something this game is doing right for me to spend that long on it. It’s the best Assassin’s Creed in a very long time, but I think being set in London elevates it a little too. It certainly isn’t perfect, but I don’t think it needs to be.

I could push for 100%, but I think it’s time to move on now.

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