Zack Zwiezen: "Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, a huge game made during a pandemic and with its own studio and parent company in crisis, is a game trying to do some difficult things. The first Assassin’s Creed in two years, and the 12th major Assassin’s Creed overall, it is the work of creators who are trying to honor the franchise’s past while charting its future. They’ve tried to change the formula for open-world games overall. And they’ve taken a stab at portraying the dubious morality of Viking conquest. What’s shocking is that Valhalla nearly always succeeds at these things, creating an impressive game that stands above many other contemporary open-world adventures."
Assassin’s Creed has always been a staple for good cutscenes that engage the audience. However, it's grown lacking of the latter now.
The story was at its most interesting early in the series, but has eventually ended up spinning its wheels going nowhere. The games don't feel linked together anymore. This is to make it easier to constantly churn out endless sequels.
The smaller more intimate maps and historic references are lost. The setting used to be a character in AC. Now it’s just a massive empty shell of its former self.
There's never been a better time to get into Assassin's Creed thanks to these deals.
@Cobra
The older ones are kind of a chore. I did enjoy Syndicate and Unity, though.
@Hoologan
I had a good time with Origins for the most part.
Waste of money, after the Desmond story arch, but even worse is that its a waste of time. The franchise is just spinning its wheels going nowhere. The further you progress through the series, the more 'corporate' it begins to feel, until its nothing but an empty husk, begging for you to spend money on its micro-trash-action store. There are loading screens in Origins informing you that if you spend money on "fun costumes" you'll feel better! Despicable.
Save your time for something better. Modern day Ubisoft is garbage.
To each their own I guess? I really enjoyed them up until odyssey and valhalla was decent. I still really enjoy exploring the massive detailed worlds and the characters, stories, gear, and combat.
I have never once been swayed by a loading screen trying to get me to buy DLC as these games have 10x more content than you would ever see anyway. I do agree the series seems to be going the wrong direction at the moment, but would still highly recommend origins, odyssey, and to a lesser extent, valhalla if you enjoy adventure and exploration games.
not every AC game is worth playing tho ha.
i feel like it stopped being good after 3. and 3 was even a stretch.
1 and 2 tho? amazing.
While there’s a lot to love about modern video games, there is one trend — particularly in the AAA space — that tends to grate: their length.
Games are coming out with too much fluff and side activities that are horribly dull. That's my main issue with all these open world games. Open world should be about exploration, discovery and wonder, not have some stupid 10s or 100s of boring activities spread throughout.
100% agree
All these ubisoft titles, Farcry, AC, Ghost recon, boast huge maps, but with the same, 3 missions or the same base to clear 100s of times. Hour 1 of any of those titles is the same as hour 100, there big for the sake of being big, with the illusion of player freedom, where we really want depth and player expression.
Give me a solid 15-20 hour engaging single player driven IP any day. Life's too short you dig.
I stopped buying overfluffed games like a decade ago. Cant stand games with the Ubisoft mindset of just filling maps with uselss collectibles and fodder. Make it mean something. Ill gladly take 1/4 size of the map and 1/10th the "content" if it all meant more, were more unique and greater affect on your progression.
Well people complained like the world was ending when a few games were six to ten hours of gameplay. Developers listened and started making longer games full of repetitive gameplay, time wasting fetch quest and other forms of bloat. In doing so they were able to justify the high cost of a game being sold to the customers at seventy dollars or more.
Filler, it's like a 80 episodes show where only the first and last episodes actually matter
It's been a problem with pretty much every modern AAA game all through last gen and this gen. God forbid you point it out tho because all these big games are masterpieces and people lose their minds if you criticize them. Death Stranding is a fetch quest fest, but people will die defending it cause it's a "masterpiece".
Thanks for always adding the "Kotaku Review" part. This way i know not to read it. Let me guess there is not enough vikings of color? Yea, i'm good on this.
Kotaku? Pfft disregarded immediately.