Video Game Review - Assassin's Creed Syndicate

About a year ago, I reviewed the last couple of entries in the series not knowing about the many glitches that Unity had. I was fortunate enough to be one of the lucky ones that didn't get that experience, but I can understand why many people would be so frustrated by something like that. And I've said it once and I'll say it again, Black Flag raised the bar very high making any game to come after that one to have a tough development to top it. So after Ubisoft's series of fails with the quality of Watch Dogs and Unity, let's hope that with this new entry, we can forgive Ubisoft and move on. Its the London Industrial times this time after all and as a fellow Brit myself, this better be good. So let's get some assassinations done:

So the historical playground this time is industrial London and we meet 2 twin assassins. A man called Jacob Frye (voiced by Paul Amos) who prefers going head on into battle and his sister, a woman called Evie Frye (voiced by Victoria Atkin) who tends to go for a more stealthier approach to completing tasks. They receive word about London fallen to the Templars and choose to disobey orders from the Brotherhood to go and take it back, making a number of allies and acquaintances along the way. Meanwhile in the present, Bishop (reprised by Kate Todd of Unity) tasks the initiate (you) to explore the memories of the Frye twins to find the location of a new piece of Eden hidden in London while also keeping track on what Abstergo is up to. So you have all of London to explore and each district is in control of the Templars so its your job to reclaim the districts. You do that by getting rid of the Templar presence in a similar fashion to how you would raid and take control of Templar forts and towers in previous games, just with some uniqueness about it this time. While you do this, you will need to take down the Templar gang leader which can be done in 2 ways which are to lure him/her out early on or fight them to the death in a gang war which is the last stage to get full control of the district. Like in previous games, there are a few factions of enemies to be aware of. Red is Templars which this time will detect you immediately rather than leave you alone unless in a restricted area, making things that little more challenging. Blue is for the police force so they are the good guys as long as you don't break the law (which is highly likely in a game like this). And green is for the Rooks who serve as your allies in taking over London. Jacob and Evie both have their own agendas in the city and you can switch between each one as you play. Jacob mainly focuses on taking down high ranking Templar members while Evie gives her focus on finding the Shroud which is said to be the new piece of Eden. Among the allies you have, you will get the chance to meet and work with real historical figures like before, only this time, I actually know them all (and that's not because I'm British).

Thats the gist of it. In my opinion, after what happened with Unity, this certainly makes up for what that game turned out to be. Its visually stunning, has plenty for you to do and it just at times feels like playing Batman Arkham (grappling) or GTA (using carriages) if it was based in historical London which is good, but lacks innovation on those parts. Aside from that, I am in agreement that the combat can be repetitive at times and the graphics can tone down to 7th gen level at times, but not as much as Watch Dogs can. At the time of this review, I am still playing the game and haven't completed the story yet and I know most people hate the ending and the final boss and seeing it on YouTube, all I can say is I should be seeing small things like this to be better than what the end result is. But overall, it is a great game and a worthy contender for Black Flag. It comes very close to going over that bar, it just needed more things going for it, but I'm sure we will get those things in DLC. We shall see. 9/10