Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Assassin's Creed Unity... Wow. What is there to say that hasn't already been said? Probably not a lot from reading the other reviews where it would seem, for once, people who aren't raving fan boys have come out to show their disapproval at being ripped off. Seven years of these games, that's really seven years of Ubisoft slowly turning the only franchise keeping the company afloat into the new Call of Duty. Every year they release (at least) one AC game, while most of the time it's really just the same game as it was the previous release, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised (AC2, Brotherhood, and Black Flag), other times you're really irritated at how shoddy the product is (all the other ones aside from the first), "Unity" takes the cake here. There are no real "pro's" to this game, so let's just go over "things". 1. The character customization feature... For one it's not really "character customization" at all, it's more a Diablo style "dress up". There are less than fifty pieces of gear per slot, and at each milestone jump (hand crafted to blah blah blah, master to legendary, etc) you have about 5 pieces to pick from, each with differing stats that impact your "play style". Most of them are locked pending an upcoming pvp feature, so it's really even less impressive than it already was. Multiplayer is absolutely hilarious, everyone running around is a light in the loafers frenchman and all... Good job Ubisoft, you found a way to screw up what has to be the simplest thing you've ever had to make. 2. "Play style"... You would think after so many years of making the same game over and over that Ubisoft would have been able to at least get this right, instead, they really messed it up. For starters, you have a handful of the abilities in your arsenal compared to previous AC games. The most irritating omission is that you can no longer lure guards, so forget about the always entertaining haystack kills, you'll be in a stack for eternity waiting for some guard to path close enough. On top of that, guards not only rarely patrol now but one sighting makes them stop completely most of the time, meaning they'll just stand there facing the last place they saw you. While this can certainly be exploited in co op to great effect, most of the time it's just a source of irritation as it leaves you no choice but to engage in direct combat, a lot. The introduction of "ability points" in some lame attempt to make the game feel like an MMO is ludicrous as well... as there are all of five skills... 3 of which do nothing. Oh god, the choices and diversity. 3. Combat... I get it, people complained about the "press counter to win" design of the previous AC games... Really, I get it. The problem is, that mechanic was the only thing that glossed over how terrible the combat in the franchise has always been. Now, with a harsher detection system and a more "active parry mechanic", coupled with painfully finite life bars... Expect to die, a lot. A counter system mind you, the AI doesn't have a problem, enemies don't just counter the s*** out you, they dodge and dive roll around your strikes and bullets, they zerg you every sighting, and they have punishing auto-tracking attacks that will literally slide them a third of the way down the street to crack you in the back of the head when you're running away. Heavy attacks topple you even if you parry (forget dodging if there's 2 or more enemies around you) and everyone in the game has a futuristic sniper type fire arm, but you... it's just not fun. An example, I have the best rifle in the game, and you still have to be so close to an enemy for the reticle to turn red, that you can smell their breath. They on the other hand, can shoot you with 90% frequency and accuracy from a football field away, through a wall, while you're climbing a building or running in a zig-zag through a cloud from a smoke bomb. It's the most frustrating thing I've encountered in a game since, well, it's been a long time. 4. Gear ratings, I know I touched on this earlier, but I want to address it so you understand why I compared it to Diablo. This game is extremely gear dependent. At first you might think the entire experience is far more "broken" than it really is, the truth is just that your gear is the difference between you being able to sneak past a guard a hundred feet away, or alerting everyone in the zone to your location by getting up that morning. It's really stupid. I mean I can't stress that enough. The heists missions, which are the only fun thing to do in the game will net you the largest income you can find, so you'll be playing them a lot. One in particular offers a 25k base pay out and a potential 46k bonus if you can keep from being spotted. I'm sure Ubisoft will remove or change this, so if you're reading this after a patch, sorry it's not there for you and you shouldn't have bought the game when you did, actually, you shouldn't buy it/have bought it at all, I only got it due to a lack of titles at this time. I digress. Using the particular heist mentioned above (ancient mysteries or something like that) to garner money is how you will go about classing up your character. I say this because the story missions are boring, confusing, and often feel like minimum wage work. As you increase from a one star gear rating to a 3-5 star rating... You'll see the gameplay difficulty really take a dive. The thing is, it still never gets fun. Ever. I already paid full price the game, so I forced myself to do this just so I could say "I got my stinky frenchman to max gear level, and I still hated it." My ankle is thrashed right now, so I can't do any of the things I'd normally do otherwise and I'm competitive, so when I feel like something is hard, or not fun, I often fault myself and invest a lot of effort into overcoming that short sight or deficit in skill and breaking the wall into a new view on the subject or object in question. I didn't like Shadow's of Mordor that much when I started playing it, I gave it up for 2-3 days at one point because wow do you die a lot in the beginning, and every one of those deaths feels really "cheap". Eventually though, I hobbled my crippled ass across the room and slapped the disc back in the X1, sick of watching TV I forced myself through the unpleasantness until I understood the system and the game changed for me completely. I'm not reviewing Shadows here (though you should definitely buy it) or I'd tell you what you expect and how glorious that gem is after you've really sunk some time into it. The point in bringing that up, is that AC Unity is not SoM. It does not get more fun the more you play it, there is no strange pay off to your masochistic willingness to submit yourself to it's vices. It may get "easier", which would be more accurately described as "functional" when you garner higher tier gear, but it's never "fun". I want to take a second to point out that there are a lot of other things that make this game a terrible experience, the bugs, the frame rate drops, their obscene and unapologetic micro transaction and cross platform content pushing (you have to play their java based initiates game to get access to a bunch of stuff in this one, a java game which is... full of microtransactions), the fact that wall climbing towards a corner will crash your xbox one, but I didn't because those are things I've put up with from other games that were enjoyable. This one is not, so I am not going to try to sell you past the flaws, with this particular product, every cruddy aspect makes the next one that much worse, to the point the whole game feels like punishment. My verdict is simple, do not buy AC:U.