Syndicate

Hello my Eccentric Spheres, today we'll be taking a look at Assassins Creed Syndicate.

Long time readers no doubt know that I love the Victorian era and this, the latest installment in the Assassins Creed franchise is set in 1868, so that is gold right there.

Now to be fair, I haven't played most of the games in the franchise, only 1, 2 and 2.1 so I'm not burned out on them. Most say that Assassins Creed 3 was kind of lousy but that the fourth game, Black Flag, was good. There are a couple of “mini-games” or in between games that aren't nearly full size, but I haven't played them either. It's not that I don't want to, it's rather that I harbored a silly thought that I'd play them all in order, and then I kind of didn't.

Anyway, this is why I'm not burned out on the Assassins Creed games and why I'm able to really enjoy Syndicate.

A couple of months ago, I got Syndicate on Steam at 50% so done deal right there! But due to some other things getting in the way, I didn't get to fire up this game until a few days ago.

Is it good? Yes it is. Is it perfect? No, it really isn't.

The first thing that sets Syndicate apart from it's predecessors is the fact that you get to choose between two assassins this time. The siblings Jacob and Evie Frye are essentially the same early on, but the game has an rpg element and you choose which abilities to unlock as the game progresses. In this way you can design them to do different things, should you choose to.

The second thing Syndicate does is add a stealth system. I'm not 100% sure, but I do believe it's the first game in the series that actually has a proper mechanic for this. It used to drive me insane in the previous games when you have to shadow a target, by walking upright in a flamboyant outfit. Luckily all your targets seem to have bad eyesight and can't spot you beyond a certain distance. Still, here it's a very welcome addition and it works well.

Finally, you get a grappling-hook-cable-shooter-magic-devise. I know, it's not magic, but considering you can use it to traverse miles and miles and never run out of cable, it seems pretty magical to me. Anyway, it's a great tool, and saves you a ton of bother. Instead of being forced to climb tall buildings you get to just zip on up there, should you choose to. You still can climb if you want. Some critics have called the cable gun game breaking, but considering it only helps you move around easier and escape pursuit faster, it's more of a convenience thing than anything else. It really is fun though.

So what are the bad things? Well, let's start with the money. Syndicate's money system is horrendously out of sync. A color change for your outfit costs £1000. That's $188.000 in today's money. Since all your equipment is considerably more expensive, like a single action navy colt that comes with a price tag of £2500 or a quarter of a million dollars, the silliness adds up fast. A thug in Whitechapel, one of the most poverty ridden hell-holes of the time, drops £3 when you kill him. That's more than $300 by today's standard. Why is he out making trouble, when he's obviously well off? And this is not taking into account how much stronger the buying power of money was back in the day. I really wish Ubisoft would have toned down the money, since it's pretty jarring.

My other big complaint is the proliferation of guns. Sure there were lots of guns around in those days, but people didn't carry them around all that much. Even criminals frowned on guns, since a simple burglary would become a hanging offense if even one member of your crew had a gun in his pocket. Clubs and knives were the order of the day, but in Syndicate, lot's of street thugs have guns. The worst offenders here are the police. In the late 1800's, parliament considered whether the police should have any access to firearms at all! Let alone give them to the ordinary bobby. Even today, most police officers in Britain do not carry guns. So this is very jarring to me. Add to this the fact that the police are willing to shoot you dead for stealing a carriage, and blissfully ignore when NPC's attempt murder right in front of them, makes them the worst part of the game, in my opinion.

I have encountered a couple of bugs, most of them minor glitches, like a carriage spazzing out uncontrollably and a book floating in the air, but the only bothersome bug is when your map marker goes off to the side. That makes it hard to navigate, but a simple restart fixes this handily.

Apart from these issues, Syndicate is a wonderful game. It's technically great, sound, visuals, voice work and so on, are all good. I haven't finished the story yet, but it seems fine.

Bottom line: if you want to leap from carriage to carriage, run across trains, climb Big Ben, zip-line across the Thames and rub shoulders with luminaries like Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale, and murder lots and lots of bad guys, this is definitely a game for you!

That's what I have for you this week, now I'm off to 1868. Until next time, have a great week!