A new Assassin's Creed every year, sometimes two at a time, and stagnation could already be felt from last year due to the negative reception of their new generation console debut, Assassin's Creed Unity. Criticism of poor technical performance and an otherwise mediocre singleplayer campaign did not fall on deaf ears at Ubisoft, but the multi-studio publisher was already working on the next annual follow-up with the series, codenamed Victory. The game, now officially known as Assassin's Creed Syndicate, features another historical time period and another assassin tasked with taking down the Templars and restoring yet another piece of Eden, a more magical McGuffin than Dragonballs at this point. The most unique feature this time around is the ability to play as two assassins, twin sisters Jacob and Evie Frye,
The latter was the second playable female assassin (not counting the quickly forgotten spin-off Assassin's Creed Chronicles), although this decision was made long before the foot-in-mouth comments regarding the cost of animating female characters that only tarnished Unity's reception even further. The time setting is London, 1868,
Where gangs of street scum and orphans are forced to work in the coal mines, and everyone sings and drinks their misery away as the Templars keep their iron fist tightened around the neck of the city in the shadows. Hot-headed and determined to make a difference,
Jacob and Evie ditch their mentors to make a difference in the London opposition, each using their own methods to take down their enemies. As the more level-headed of the two, Evie believes that retrieving the Piece of Eden should be a priority
They, while Jacob prefers a more direct approach utilizing all the gangs and weapons at their disposal. The two siblings have a good dynamic that doesn't result in too much bickering or too much snark, although Evie is certainly the cooler of the two and can do everything Jacob can do, even engaging in sweaty fist fights against the burliest of men. Along the way the two will find many allies taken straight from the history books, including
Charles Darwin and Alexander Graham Bell, although nowadays these cameos make more and more sense. The story on the Animus side of things also continues to be truly underwhelming, as players are cast as yet another faceless, silent protagonist who sits back and lets Rebecca and Shawn do all the work (sick second yet? What a shame).
On a sense of gameplay, AC has been a series that has changed a lot since the debut title and hasn't changed so little; The core gameplay is pretty much the same it always has been, with players attempting to move around in many disguises while secretly taking out their Templar targets using hidden blades or other means.
Should things go south, as they often do, there's always the option of going for a more violent and bloody approach that usually results in dozens of corpses and crowds of panicked onlookers. There are also the usual activities like climbing huge structures to synchronize the environment, diving into haystacks from impossible heights, tackling pickpockets, bribing officials, and collecting every shiny collectible that drives you crazy with sparkling sounds.
Minimum PC Specifications
RAM: 6 GB
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10(64bit versions)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R9 270 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0)
Sound Card: Yes
Free Disk Space: 50 GB
Recommended PC Specifications
RAM: 8 GB
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10(64bit versions)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (4GB) or the newer GTX 970 (4GB) or AMD Radeon R9 280X (3GB) or better
Sound Card: Yes
Free Disk Space: 50 GB
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