Assassin's Creed Unity Limited Edition - PlayStation 4

I am so disappointed in Assassin's Creed Unity. Yesterday the game was released and the internet was in a huge kerfuffle about how amazingly buggy the game is, glitching to the point of hilarity. So when I got home with my copy I couldn't wait to start playing so I could join in the fun. I popped the disc into my PS4, waited for it to install, and then started playing.I played it for about six hours straight. To my horror, I found that bugs and glitches are exceedingly rare. In all the time I played, I saw all of TWO glitches. One was a nice French gentleman who was stuck on the edge of a doorway, stuck and twitching like one of the ghouls from Jacob's Ladder. The other was when I was inside a chapel and noticed the huge stained glass window I had seen in a video yesterday afternoon, in which someone is climbing on the window and the frame rate goes down the toilet. I climbed up the window, and sure enough the frame rate went to hell. The good news is, there is absolutely no reason to climb on the window. If I hadn't seen that video yesterday, it never would have occurred to me to climb on it, and I never would have experienced the bad frame rate drop.But that's it. Other than that, so far it seems like nothing more than a great new AC game in which you run around a fantastically designed version of 18th century Paris, playing as a likable rogue of a character through what is shaping up to be an intriguing story. The visual design in this game is a feast for the eyes, I can't overstate how amazing it is to wander around the incredibly detailed (usually filthy)streets of the city and then enter a beautiful mansion owned by some noble, the drop dead gorgeosity of their pristine and decadent abode is delicious eye candy. The lighting effects when going from bright sunlight to a dim interior and vice versa, it's truly a sight to behold. And yes the PS4 GPU incurs a heavy toll. I don't appreciate the intrusion of outside-the-game elements, i.e. messages telling you can't open the yellow or blue chests unless you install the AC Companion App on your smartphone and create an account at the AC Initiates website. But I won't be losing any sleep over it. EDIT: A patch was released which unlocked all of those chests for all users, so it's a moot point anyway.My favorite thing about Unity is that, finally, there is a new AC game that pushes a lot of the same buttons AC2 did. I've been waiting for five years for them to reach that high water mark again, and so far it looks like Unity might be the game that finally does it.This has a been a bad year for Ubisoft as far as how the gaming community feels about them. Between Watch Dogs being blatantly downgraded and the announcement that Unity was being kept at 900p on PS4 simply to maintain parity with the XBone version, a lot of people are pissed and to some degree I agree with them. But I'm not going to let that bias me to the point where I will outright LIE about the quality of this game just to spite Ubisoft. AC Unity is nowhere near as bad as many people are claiming... most of whom have likely not even played it and never will. Based on my personal experience with the game so far, most of the bad Amazon reviews are sounding to me like flat out lies. The game has more flaws than it should, and Ubisoft does suck for releasing it with this many bugs, but believe it or not it's still actually a very good game. If you read the professional reviews, many of them make small mention of any technical aspects and tend to criticize the game for more subjective reasons, which is fine.I'm still somewhat early in the game. If my experience changes I'll update this review.EDIT Nov 14, 2014: 20+ hours in, witnessed a few more NPCs doing bizarre things like trying to walk through solid objects or floating along the ground instead of walking. Another apocalyptic frame rate drop when I was climbing on the outside of a huge cathedral. 99% of the time, no issues.EDIT Nov 19, 2014: Completed the game, never did see an unusual spike in glitches. Ubisoft have done some crappy things over the past few years and they do deserve a good pranging for it. Shame this game has become a casualty of that. I predict in the future there will be many people saying "I just picked up AC Unity for $15, I waited because I heard how bad it was... but it's great. I guess they must have fixed most of the bugs?" Even if they never patch it again, people will say that. After my own experience with Unity I'd be lying if I said it wasn't well worth playing in its current state.

Assassin’s Creed Unity “Post Patch” ReviewI’ve read a lot of negative reviews of Assassin’s Creed Unity especially from the initial launch back in November of last year and trust me, those negative reviews were warranted. With all the technical issues (framerate, graphical glitches, etc.), you just don’t expect to pay $60 (or over $100 if you purchased the special limited edition like me and/or the DLC) for a game that is not finished out the box. I played the game the day of release and post patch, so I have a good sense of comparing both sides of the AC:U (pre and post patches).All that being said, I did want to be fair to the developers and give Assassin’s Creed Unity another chance post all the updated patches and state in my opinion if it’s worth your hard-earned dollars.GraphicsI have to say that Assassin’s Creed Unity is a good looking game and the City of Paris truly comes to life and was a joy to explore. A vast majority of the graphical glitches have been fixed; however, you’ll need to load a patch of about 8GB before being able to play. It corrects most of the framerate issues (there are still some, but not nearly as bad) along with some of the clipping issues that was so pervasive pre-patch, but honestly, with a world this large, I kind of expect some graphical issues. Again, this is a good looking game!PlayabilityAs far as the playability, I felt Unity was a fun game overall. There are times when Arno would have a mind of his own and take paths that would make me frustrated, but I’ve found that to be the case in most Assassin’s Creed games. I did enjoy the new “parkour” system of being able to quickly scale a building and the same with descending from a rooftop. You can do it at the touch of a button and I felt it was a really neat addition for the franchise. Combat was also overhauled and is much different than any previous AC games. Gone are the days when you can take on thirty enemies by yourself. You really need to think about each and every encounter and where some were frustrated by this, I found the challenge and different approach strategic and fun!StoryOn the story, this is such a subjective subject that I won’t really comment all that much here other than to say that I enjoyed the story. I think the romance part of it between Arno and Elise was great and was the star of the game. I wished at times that I could play as Elise, so I’m glad that with the upcoming AC: Syndicate, you can play as Evie. It’s not the best AC story ever, but I thought Arno got a “bad rap” from some who wanted something different. Again, I was satisfied with the story but do look forward to getting back to more of the AC Lore with upcoming iterations of AC.MultiplayerThere is also the cooperative multiplayer component that I found to be quite fun. However, I found that if I was paired with players who didn’t share my playstyle (stealth vs. fast, heavy-duty combat), it made it somewhat difficult to accomplish the quest. This is really true of any experience dealing with multiplayer, but I found it even more so in AC:U.Companion App (Update)When the game was first released, Ubisoft had a companion app that linked with AC:U and players were only able to access certain chests throughout the game by completing activities in the app. Notice that everything I’m saying here is in the past tense in that the companion app is no more and that’s a GREAT thing! All these chest and content associated with the companion app is now available without ever accessing the app and again, in my humble opinion, this is a great thing. I think you can download and use the app, but you’re not missing anything!Bottom LineIn my opinion, I would give AC:U a thumbs up and I think is worthy of a purchase, especially being it’s significantly cheaper.