Managed to wrap it up over the last week or so and enjoyed most of it, definitley a stronger start to a new franchise than AC was all those years ago, a sequel will be inevitable in a couple of years time, lets hope its an AC2 level jump in quality.
Liked:
- Visuals. Didn't measure up to the E3 2012 demo >:O but it still looked good.
Something about the colour and style they opted for, combined with the lighting & crisp IQ on PC gave it a pleasing look.
You could see the last gen constraints in some places, but in others the game really shone.
- Gameplay. Approached most of the game with stealth in mind, it felt very similar to Blacklist last year (an underrated game).
Silenced 1911 and Goblin, baton takedowns and camera chain hacking combined with the fluid movement and animation made it very enjoyable to play sneakily.
Eventually got accustomed to the aracdey driving and had fun with it, favourite vehicle ended up being the Sanchez style dirt bike found in Pawnee.
Throwing up traffic lights, blockers, spike strips, steam pipes and bridges mid-chase was always great. And the blackout, that never seemed to got old.
- Chicago. Making it look good was only half the job, making it feel alive was the other. I think they managed to accomplish both. NPC and traffic density were good
throughout, the profiler added another layer to all NPCs, the illusion of people going about their lives was solid, aside from midday which looked kind of bland, the
day/night cycles looked nice (sunrise and sunset especially), the weather system was kind of limited but the wind, rain and lightning looked great, and were all infrequent
enough to stop them becoming worn. There was enough variety with the rural area of Pawnee, the towering skyscrapers, suburban neighbourhoods, and the backend alleys
to never feel as though you were retreading ground constantly.
- Multiplayer. The Dark Souls esque invasion modes were easily my favourites, pulling off a sucessful tail without the other player knowing you were even there
was really satisfying. The rest of the multiplayer was pretty standard but those couple of invasion modes were just super tense and fun to replay.
- Interesting Side Missions. None of the side content came across as really poor which was a a nice surprise, the Serial Killer investigation,
gang hideouts, and digital trips were the highlight for me. The privacy invasions weren't bad either, although got too repetitive for me in the end.
The ones i did find ranged from humurous to downright dark - there was one with a cancer patient in remission lying dead in his apartment with his son's
voicemail message playing in the background, telling his father he was never a bother to care for, and that he would be around soon to check up on him...
Disliked:
- uPlay shitting the bed. The first few days were a mess for the online functionality, I was disappointed but cracked on with the story. It seemed like everything
was fianlly running smoothly near that first weekend, I managed to get in a few games of tailing and hacking which were super tense and fun, but then a game breaking bug
surfaced where it got stuck loading due to some cloud synchronization issue with uPlay. The whole thing pissed me off - if you're going to force people to use your
service, make damned sure you can handle the demand (industry record preorders should have given them a clue..). The press covered it pretty well actually, it
definitley hurt Ubi PR (uPlay has never been popular to begin with), so hopefully they've learned their lesson from this fiasco for the other major releases this
year in Far Cry 4 and AC Unity.
- Aiden. He was kind of flat, his dead eyes didnt help things either. I think it would have bothered me a whole lot more were he not surrounded by
some interesting companions in Jordi and Clara. I think they need a fresh set of surrounding characters for the next one or to replace Aiden himself.
- Ending. I thought the story was decent aside from a few hiccups along the way, but towards the end it started to get frustrating due to the last few missions where they just threw everything but the kitchen sink at you.
It just made finally finishing the game a bit of a chore which is the exact opposite reaction you want from players in my opinion.
Still an open world crime game at its core, but I feel it managed to differentiate itself enough from GTA, so not bad at all.
If the series does follow in Assassin's Creed footsteps and globetrots, I would like to see London next.