The historic battle engine continues to roar this year from the leviathan force of Ubisoft and their latest open world adventure, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. With more content in each game than you might be able to feasibly make it through in a year, there’s probably a fair few gamers out there still trying to complete elements of Black Flag and Unity, but if you’ve ever wanted to duke it out in Victorian London then you’ll need to play catch-up pretty quickly.
Release date
The latest installation of the scrap through time between the Assassins and the Templars will be making its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox ONE with a release date of the 23rd October 2015. It will also be coming out on PC at some point in Autumn 2015, but an official release date hasn’t been confirmed as of yet, so we’ll update you with more information when Ubisoft has announced the details.
As was the case with AC: Unity, Syndicate will not be ported to the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, giving yet another big sign that the death knell has well and truly been struck for the previous generation consoles. Looking at Ubisoft’s upcoming developments, it doesn’t appear that there are any games that will return to these consoles, with Assassin’s Creed Rogue more than likely being the last of the crop.
Story
The game is set in London in 1864, during Queen Victoria’s extensive reign, following on from the economic development of the Industrial Revolution, which brought great wealth and power to the capital city at the heart of the British Empire. The story is anchored around twin brother and sister, Jacob and Evie Frye, as they travel to London to slug it out with the higher order of the Templars and their underworld shady dealings.
When they arrive in the big smoke and smog of the city, they find its dark heart to be riddled with corruption from the gangs that control the streets all the way up to the business leaders and political elite that control it all. The young assassins must rally a uniting cry for the lower classes, creating their own super syndicate to build a power base that is able to put a stop to the Templar supremacy and the mistreatment of the poor.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate builds on a similar third-person, open world adventure concept as the previous entries in the series, transporting the speed and agility of the parkour free-running mobility to the streets and rooftops of London. While a lot of the gameplay will feel very familiar for experienced AC gamers, there are a few new additions and gameplay updates to look forward to, including new modes of transport, an updated combat system and stealth capabilities.
As the game is set in the most recent time period of the series it features more modernised modes of transport, including high speed horse and carts that fly all around London, as well as steamboats on the River Thames and the early trains to span the city. You’ll be able to hijack carriages to chase down your enemies or slip through an area unnoticed, race them to build up your funds and reputation, and leap from one to another to get the jump on a runaway rival gang member, making it a bit like GTA meets Dicken, who will apparently putting in a showing himself.
It’s not just transport that’s a little more high tech, as Jacob will also have the benefit of updated weaponry at his command, which will include a kukri knife – a Nepalese blade that curves inward – brass knuckles to add extra bone crunching attack to his punches and a concealed cane sword. He’ll also have the luxury of the mechanical rope launcher, which will allow him to fly to the top of tall buildings at break-neck speed, helping you to take to the rooftops without the need of slowly climbing up a building. This will add a slightly altered angle to the game as you’ll be able to make your escape upwards within seconds, instead of getting slowly shot down as you climb, as well as giving you the ability to get up high for kills from above at a moments notice, giving you new options for how you go about completing a section of the game.
When it comes to the hard knock life of the fight engine, Syndicate promises to overhaul the system a little to make it more playable than previous games. This will include the introduction of hyper speed multi-skill and counter moves, which should provide a little more interest to what has sometimes felt like a bit of a monotonous slug fest in the past.
As you can imagine, there isn’t that much long grass or foliage to hide in on the streets of London, so there was always going to be a need to update the stealth engine also. Having seen the pre-alpha gameplay demo (check out the video below), this looks like it predominantly involves going a bit incognito with your hood up and taking to the rooftops as quickly as possible to avoid being seen very easily, so we can only hope that there’s a little more to it than that before it’s release in October.
A cool new feature to enter into the gameplay is the ability to use the environment to take out your enemies, giving you yet another clever way of decimating the ranks of the Templars without actually getting your hands all that dirty. This includes using throwing knives to cut ropes to drop heavy objects on enemies from above.
When you take to the streets as a part of a wider gang, you don’t just walk out alone, as has been the case in previous titles. The latest addition means that when you’re in the vicinity of your own gang members you can call them to help you in your fight, which comes in handy when you’re facing off against a particularly meaty mob boss. While you’re going toe-to-toe with fists flying, you could have another of your gang wading in with bullet blasts to help you get the job done that little bit quicker.
One gameplay element that has been stripped out of the game entirely is the multiplayer options, which will not be a feature of Syndicate. It’s not really a huge loss as the previous attempts at online multiplayer and co-op haven’t really taken off all that well, but it does look like an acceptance on the part of Ubisoft that the style of gameplay in Assassin’s Creed games doesn’t lend itself very well to multiplayer action.
Graphics
We’ve always been impressed with the graphics of AC titles, even going back to playing Assassin’s Creed III on the Nintendo Wii U, and that’s still the case for Syndicate, which presents a very cool London of the 19th Century to roam around in. Pre-alpha footage looks pretty good all by itself, with long draw distances, fine details and a lot of environmental elements like glistening puddles and sun glare to make things feel like you’re actually walking the streets of the Victorian city.
The game feels a lot faster than previous games in the series, especially with the updated fight engine ferocity and the rapid pace you can rack up with the rope launcher and the horse and carriage. Despite this added speed, the game still looks fluid and responsive with great animation stringing it all together, but a lot will ride on how well the game has been put together. If it lands on day one with eyeball faces, horses halfway through walls or other bizarre graphics issues then it will undo all of the good work the team appear to have done in terms of finessing the game graphics overall.
First impressions
Ubisoft got stung badly by the glitches that plagued Unity when it was released last year, so the jury will be out on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate until it proves itself for everyday fans of the series. The last game was also criticised for the story, which struggled to grab people’s imagination, so perhaps the biggest dependency for the success of the upcoming title will be the strength of the plot that runs throughout it, especially with the lack of any multiplayer modes to take the heat off. We’re all going to be as excited about the concept of marauding through foggy London town just as much as we were about the idea of revolutionary Paris, but if it doesn’t present it all with a solid story to follow, then it will be a tough sell for the developers, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
