Release Date: Out Now
Genre: Action / Adventure
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Quebec
Every year, the Assassin’s Creed series struggles with the idea of inheritance. Like its Templars and Assassins, who are locked in a never-ending struggle for relics, each game picks a side in the question of how strongly should it lean into its now-convoluted ancient lore and incorporate the still-underdeveloped present-day elements. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate chooses wisely, leaves out multiplayer entirely, and pushes a lot of that baggage into the background, largely freeing itself up to make the most of Victorian London and have fun with sneaking, climbing, and stabbing.
Game Overview
INTRODUCING
ASSASSIN’S CREED® SYNDICATE
London. 1868. The Industrial Revolution. It was an age of invention and prosperity, built on the backs of working class slaves. As gangster assassin Jacob Frye, you will recruit your gang to fight for justice on behalf of the oppressed working class. Lead the underworld to take back London in a visceral adventure filled with action, intrigue and brutal combat.
10 missions task Jacob and Evie with solving murders, kidnappings, and other crimes throughout London for special rewards like gear and exclusive artwork.
Now Available
Jack the Ripper DLC
‘JACK THE RIPPER’ has embarked on a brutal reign of terror and murder that has shocked London to its core and threatened the very existence of the Brotherhood of Assassins. With Scotland Yard unable to catch this unstoppable killer, a Master Assassin is drawn from the shadows into a dangerous game of cat and mouse that will threaten everything the Brotherhood holds dear.
Streets of London DLC
With over 45 minutes of gameplay, this pack contains missions, weapons and gear to expand your Assassin's Creed Syndicate experience. Starting with The Darwin and Dickens Conspiracy Missions: Embark on two pulse-pounding missions that will take you into the inner sanctums of London’s most influential men. Defend Charles Darwin’s discoveries from those who would kill to silence him. And help the friend of legendary writer Charles Dickens, keep a secret that could get him killed. This pack also includes the Runaway Train Mission: as a runaway train thunders through London at top speed, you must find and fix the train’s critical flaws before you run out of time. This mission offers 15 minutes of gameplay. Finally, this pack comes with a variety of equipment & weapons for both Jacob & Evie: 13 weapons, 6 pieces of gear and 3 outfits. If you have obtained exclusive content through pre-order offers or collector’s editions, you might already own part of the content of this pack.
Game Details
The First Assassin
At the Birth of the Modern Age
As the brash, rebellious Jacob Frye, put up your dukes and take enemies on with lightning-fast multikills and countermoves. Use improved stealth tactics to elude your enemies and unleash your arsenal of weapons, including the kukri knife, brass knuckles, and sword cane. Utilize new technology like the rope launcher to scale buildings in seconds and take your enemies by surprise.
Traverse the Fast-Paced World
Of Victorian London
From Buckingham Palace to Big Ben, fight and triumph across the massive open world of Victorian London. Parkour across moving vehicles to track down enemies or escape after a daring raid, hijack carriages to engage in a no-holds-barred street race, or blaze a trail of destruction aboard steamboats along the River Thames.
Take Over
The London Underworld
With Jacob as the leader, gamers can establish Great Britain’s fiercest gang, the only force that can challenge the elite and defeat rival gangs to bring freedom to the oppressed masses. Enemy strongholds can be infiltrated by using an arsenal of weapons to dominate London’s underworld. From robbing trains to rescuing child laborers, players will stop at nothing to bring justice to London’s dangerous streets.
Master the Art of Stealth
As Evie Frye
Play as Jacob’s twin sister Evie, a relentless Assassin who has perfected the silent, swift, invisible strike. Parkour across London’s immense open world using your status in London’s leading crime syndicate to change the city for the better.
Sibling Rivalry
Syndicate smartly negotiates this internal conflict by dramatising it in the form of its twin playable characters, Evie and Jacob Frye. The former is a devout Assassin, intent on stopping the Templars by tracking down the remaining pieces of Eden. Her brother Jacob, however, is a pragmatist – a social reformer who rails against the Assassin’s burdensome legacy and wishes to help his city in more immediate ways, seemingly embodying my desire to move on from the tangled mysticism. They’re both extremely likeable, well-drawn protagonists, and the interaction between the two is laced with a lively sibling rivalry that brings levity to otherwise-earnest cutscenes. But their contrasting worldviews have the greatest positive impact on Syndicate’s structure, which is both engaging and meaningful.
You can freely switch between Jacob and Evie at most points, with side missions and open-world activities open equally to both. Campaign missions, however, are different, with Jacob taking the lead in the majority of the core assassinations. This is frustrating, especially since Evie is pitched as the more stealthy of the pair. But I soon realised that Syndicate is just not that interested in exploring forgotten tombs in search of dusty relics; it wants to liberate the great city of London from its terrible oppressors. And to be blunt, Syndicate’s a much better experience for identifying more closely with the goals of Jacob.
Despite being sidelined so often, Evie comes across as the more nuanced character, struggling with her sense of duty, where Jacob is a more straightforward bloke with clear goals. By the end of the 20-hour campaign, I felt like I’d probably spent more time with Evie due to prefering her in side missions, and I certainly knew her better. She sees the bigger picture, with her missions tackling problems Jacob can’t even comprehend. Evie also stars in my favourite assassination mission – a nighttime infiltration of the Tower of London.
Given their differences, I was disappointed with how similar Jacob and Evie are to play. They each possess three high-level abilities designed around their supposed strengths of stealth and combat, respectively – Evie can effectively become invisible when stationary, for example, while Jacob has more deadly combos. But the rest of the abilities are identical. At first, I exaggerated the differences by investing all of Evie’s points into the stealth skill tree and Jacob’s into combat, thinking I could switch between the two depending on the situation. But since you can’t switch between characters within campaign missions, that’s not a viable approach. In one mission, I was playing as Jacob and it would’ve been really useful to unlock a specific door to make a quick escape, but because I’d only unlocked advanced lockpicking for Evie – who was unavailable – I had to take a longer, more hazardous route out of the building.
Assassin’s Bones
Inside the mostly entertaining and lively packaging, however, what you’re being asked to do feels very familiar. Missions almost always involve the traditional Assassin’s Creed staples of following, escorting, or killing people and/or stealing items, but Syndicate’s characters and situations do more than enough to stave off boredom. The most prominent new mechanic is the grapple-gun, and on the whole, it’s well implemented and fun to use. Its ratcheting mechanism prevents you from turning into Batman; it’s not possible to zip around London at high speed or glide, but it allows you get negotiate wider roads without coming down to street level, and reach London’s higher rooftops with ease. When you’re on the ground, carriages can be stolen at any time, and provide a helpful way to cover more ground since London’s a big place, around a third bigger than Unity’s take on Paris. They don’t feel particularly fast or exciting to drive, but they handle much better than I was expecting.
The latest iteration of Assassin’s Creed combat, on the other hand, looks fast-paced and attractive – the sword cane became a favourite, thanks to its delightfully brutal finishers – but got a touch repetitive by the time I was through. It would also be nice to have more non-lethal ways to subdue others, especially in a setting that introduces the police as a hostile but ultimately well-meaning obstacle that I didn’t feel good about having to kill. Technology dominates the era, but Alexander Graham-Bell – the era’s Da Vinci – doesn’t have much to offer your arsenal outside of an electrical grenade which is effective at incapacitating large groups of enemies but draws far too much attention. And if you’re wondering if this is the year when Assassin’s Creed finally fixes its long-standing problems with your character accidentally grabbing the wrong ledge or climbing the wrong wall, it sadly has not. But free-running as good here as it’s ever been.
The Verdict
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the most fun I’ve had with an Assassin’s game since Black Flag. In fact, I liked it more. Apart from its ill-fitting conclusion, it never takes itself too seriously and delights in the rich possibilities of its Victorian setting and great new grapple gun. As you explore its contrasting boroughs, you glean some sense of what powered this great city in the 19th century. The story missions capitalise on this by exploring different spheres of influence, which when combined with elements like mass transit, heavy industry, and law enforcement, make this feel like a different type of city than has been featured in the series to date. Best of all, Syndicate asks you to take London back in a way puts the last few games to shame.
Origin : PlayStation.com And IGN
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