But the resulting control mechanism was spectacularly worse than what it replaced. (For the other candidate, jump ahead two years to Unity.)Ĭontrol precision was never the series' strong suit, so III decided to overhaul the inputs. It might have been the worst game in the franchise's history. Advertisementįurther Reading Assassin’s Creed III Review: American History X-treme III was the true beginning of dark days for player satisfaction over the ensuing years, at least for me. While the first version of anything usually falls short and this title was no exception, I warmly remember it for its ambition regardless. It wasn't just imitating other games-at least, not other triple-A ones. But sometimes we forget that the first game actually was truly inventive.
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Today, the series has a reputation for aping the best ideas from other franchises and adapting them for the Assassin's Creed formula, and that's accurate.
How often did a triple-A game come along that tried this many ambitious new things? Even if it didn't always work, you had to respect the game for trying during a time when it felt like almost every big release was a Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, or God of War copycat. I could see what it was going for, and I loved it. The potential was there, and I was enthralled, but Assassin's Creed was not always fun to play. Also included here: a link to every main series Assassin's Creed review ever published on Ars.įurther Reading Everything is permitted: a review of Assassin’s CreedThis was a janky, broken, frustrating mess of ideas. Think of it kind of like a "best and worst" list without firm rankings. That's OK, it makes for a good conversation. You probably won't agree with all my takes. If you're just interested in Odyssey, you can skip ahead-this will be bloated and lengthy, just like a modern Assassin's Creed game. To understand why Odyssey is great, it's important to recognize why not all of its predecessors were.
It makes sense to start with a summary of the journey so far, so we'll go through each main series game one-by-one.
This is just a super-fan putting his geek-out hat on to ponder why Odyssey worked so well where other recent Assassin's Creed games didn't. What you're about to read isn't a review- Ars already did that. Because by tossing out the old ideas about what this beloved franchise was, Ubisoft actually saved it from doom.
And while the deepest heart of the new game was still Assassin's Creed, Odyssey was a wild departure.īut that's OK. Just as I was giving up on one of my favorite franchises, this reinvention gave me the feels I hadn't had since the series' best days (that means the Ezio Trilogy, by the way). My ups and downs with the series reached a new zenith with this year's Assassin's Creed Odyssey. But at the same time, it has something in common with many of my favorite music artists like David Bowie and Radiohead: it's willing to reinvent the wheel on the regular and try new things rather than settle into a Call of Duty or FIFA-like pattern of barely-there refinements. "If you hate their work so much, why don't you just play something else and let everyone else enjoy their games? It's not like there's a shortage of great games to try," I say.īut as I looked back on more than a decade of playing Assassin's Creed games to write this article, I for the first time kind of understood loving something so much that its stumbles make you feel not just disappointed, but a little mad.Īnd Assassin's Creed has made some infuriating missteps over the years. Further Reading Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is big, beautiful, and shallowI often look at fans raging against the companies that make their favorite franchises-Bethesda or Blizzard are the two most common targets I see-and shake my head in bewilderment.