With all the Assassin’s Creed that has been in the news recently about their upcoming title, it seems as though Steam and Ubisoft are partnering for the newest Weekend Deal to bring the entirety of the series to the limelight as a feature. Don’t get too excited, as you’ll still need the beleaguered uPlay to jump into the majority of these titles, but it’s a decent time to round out your collection of the more sterling titles within the franchise.
Assassin’s Creed has admittedly become a bit of a tough game to slog through in their more recent iterations of the franchise as they seem to copy and paste mechanics in every title, only changing dialogue and character models. Their most recent iteration was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, boasting a spectacularly massive map that unfortunately becomes a hallmark of weariness and repetition after the first ten hours.
Yet if you bypass some of Ubisoft’s more recent titles, you’re sure to find gems that are almost mandatory for many players to experience at least once.
Assassin’s Creed IV brought naval combat to the forefront in an exciting title revolving around pirates and upgrading your ship, the Jackdaw. The ground combat can become frustrating as the game attempts to predict where you want to go, resulting in you jumping into the ocean far too many times, but the naval action more than makes up for it.
Aside from occasionally finicky controls, it’s a fantastic experience. The only problem with the title is arguably that the ship-to-ship combat is such a blast, it becomes tedious to progress the story because that means leaving your ship and having to walk around.
The first and second titles of the franchise are also simply fantastic, although they can appear to be a bit more dated; it’s worth bearing in mind that Assassin’s Creed was mindblowing when it came out, with brutal assassinations being the highlight (instead of banging their forehead with a literal feather). The story was a bit on the shorter side, with both main quest lines giving roughly 20 hours or so each, but the action was an absolute blast, and the cities are rendered in great detail.
The entirety of the franchise on sale could bring some questions in regards to Ubisoft’s typical formula that they’ve repeated ad nauseam for the past decade; zones of control, climb a tower to see the map, upgrade progression as you level, chase random collectibles; it’s reaching the point of tedium (if it hasn’t surpassed it years ago already).
Some might wonder if the upcoming Assassin’s Creed can finally break the cycle of monotony that has plagued Ubisoft’s majority of blockbuster releases.
