- Drew Beausoleil

Assassin's Creed Unity travels to the most romantic city in the world...is there love in the air this year for Assassin's Creed?

We play the role of Arno Dorian, a young man with a mysteriously troubled past...through the beginning introduction of Arno and how he begins his journey may not be all that original, what came after felt very refreshing and unique to the series. The cast of interesting characters are memorable and unique something Ubisoft has been able to do for years. The way Ubisoft unfolds the story of Arno and Elise is brilliant having them play off each other is purely fantastic with the story of Unity.

Each year Assassin's Creed aims to bring us new and exciting experiences with each iteration of the series, this year Ubisoft starts by bringing AC Unity to next-gen only consoles and not sharing the same experience like last years’ BlackFlag with PS3 and Xbox 360. This years’ experience definitely looks and feels like the right decision was made as Unity would have never been possible with old gen consoles. What we get this year is one of the most graphically stunning realized worlds to be seen on a console to date. Bringing the environment, and our surroundings to life in a manner that Ubisoft does very well. There is life within the game, walking throughout Paris amongst the commoners or running the rooftops in a 1 to 1 scale, Ubisoft has once again done something truly incredible. The scale and verticality of Paris brings the Assassin's Creed series to new heights, from the indoor environments, underground tunnels and scaling walls to the top of Norte Dame and performing the legendary leap of faith, Paris is the biggest and most beautiful city Ubisoft has brought to realization yet.

Some of the biggest changes this year are how Arno traverse's the landscape. Free running is always something that we see being tweaked each year and this year they have added a Free run up and Free run down button. Though this leads to some fancy free running it doesn't always work the best. I am still getting caught up on ledges (something that is supposed to be solved with this addition) and it often feels near impossible to leap into a window. When the new mechanics works it feels great and I hope to see it become polished in the next installment but when it fails...it can become very frustrating and sometimes will lead to your demise. I also witnessed a few graphical glitches with texture popping, crowds will suddenly appear from time to time but with a crowd size of this scale it hardly compromises the experience of the game.

Unity gave me the feeling of returning to AC 2 and playing the role of Ezio, a much needed return in my eye's for the series. Charming, witty and overly confident are now some of Arno's traits. But they have also brought back a very large missing element as well and that's stealth! One of the very reason's of playing Assassin's Creed when it first launched was because of the stealth based gameplay and with recent additions it has gone more to the action side of gaming. For the first time in AC history we are now able to crouch down giving us a better approach for stealth scenarios. This leads to the return in stealth mechanics for the series and feels great. Arno is now able to sneak past others without eliminating guards if you feel the need to leave them standing. Gameplay and even the mission structure's don’t feel repetitive with "Tail this person missions" though it is still a part of the game the fail state has changed. Tailing the person may lead you to being spotted and in the past would have lead to failure, now, if you've become spotted it’s now up to you how to get to your target when they begin to run and try to evade you.

Are you the stealth-like player or would you rather go hands on and wear more armor in your adventure. Play style is now a bigger element in the game as well. Picking a play style is a nice addition allowing you to craft your own Arno with head gear, chest wear and more or combine the few to have an overall balanced Arno. Skill sets will have you deciding the outcome of your approach in missions. If you've become a master stealth player you will be able to unlock tougher doors that will allow you easily access them to complete your mission, however, if you've decided to take the more forward approach with guns and two handed heavier weapons then that locked door probably isn't going to be your way in. The mission structure has changed as well, allowing you to now choose from several different paths in how you would like to complete the mission at hand. Assassin's Creed looks to be getting stronger with these smarter approaches in game design.

With a world as big as Unity there needs to be something to do people to see and places to go. As you perform the leap of faith and begin to open the ginormous map it quickly become cluttered with hours of gameplay to keep you going well after the main campaign. Chests, side quests and so much more Assassin's Creed has really embraced the open sandbox feel that doesn't leave you feeling empty inside, there will always be something to do, alone or with the help of friends.

Revealed to us in AC Brotherhood was the fantastic multiplayer, a cat and mouse like game of hide-and-seek as you would hunt down your target all while being hunted yourself, this mp experience is now gone and has been replaced with a Co-op multiplayer game mode. We are now able to play Assassin’s Creed story elements with the help of friends or if you’re looking to loot some chests you can play Heist mode. While playing with friends in the world of AC can be great, but if you play with random players it becomes a race to be the first to kill the target. You can rectify this by joining or creating a club to play with like-minded players. I had one experience in which we were to kill all of the soldiers before we were able to move on. Unfortunately we were faced with a NPC that appeared to be stuck in transition, therefore we were unable to kill him and move on to our next objective.

There isn't one series I haven't followed and played more than the Assassin's Creed series and after finishing Blackflag I honestly felt the need of a rest with the series. I was shocked at how much I was drawn back into the world of Assassins' Creed and felt the wanted desire to keep playing the story and wanting more. Unity is not perfect, with graphical and NPC bugs that take you out of the experience can be very frustrating at times. However, after playing hours of the single player campaign and the new co-op addition I had hours of fun and have high hopes for the next step with Assassin’s Creed...if Ubisoft are able to bring back the competitive multiplayer along with the campaign and co-op, AC fans just may have a complete experience.