I must admit, I don't give a shit about this game, but I'm waiting for its release just to witness the (inevitable, since it's impossible for Ubi to not fuck things up) shitstorm
Some impressions from a guy who got the game early on PS4
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I was really surprised by how bad and ''old'' it looked when compared with last year's AC: Unity. Unity sucked, I'll admit that much, but you absolutely can't deny how beautiful it looked. It felt like a painting in motion. Facial animation was amazing and I especially liked the way they animated the hair (-that red head I forgot the name of-'s hair).
As for mechanics, scaling buildings was pretty fluent and you rarely reached a point where Arno just stopped and couldn't climb or move forward. He was also capable of leaping from a very high building to a shorter, much further one, making the game flow much better than ever. I expected only greatness from Syndicate, even though I haven't followed its news as sincerely as I had hoped (busy college life).
So it came as a shock to me when I started it up 2 days ago and realized how bad it was. First of all, a sort of disclaimer: I don't care for graphics as much as I do gameplay. But I simply can't ignore how ugly the game looks, especially after being treated to the beauty that was Unity last year. So without further delay, let's begin the criticism. The ''painting in motion'' graphical style of Unity is swapped for a very dull looking world that will instantly remind you of Watch Dogs.
Graphics are a serious let down. Granted this is still one of the better looking PS4 games, but when compared to Unity, it feels like such a copout. Lip synching is almost non existent, instead characters will just flap their mouths when talking. Light reflects off of faces in a very muddy, pixelated way that makes characters look like plastic. The amazing hair details that were present in Unity are swapped for what looks like plain paper.
Where is the graphical fidelity delivered by Unity, a game 1 year older? I know I've probably said the word ''graphics'' a dozen times already, but I can't help but point it out. When you play ANY game, you expect its sequel to improve on its aspects, not scrap them all in favor of cheaper, more productive methods.
So going into Syndicate expecting something better, or at least rivaling Unity, I was surprised and disappointed to find that the opposite happened.
Aside from the graphical downgrade, I also noticed some severe gameplay downgrades too. But before that, a major WARNING to all of you disappointed by Unity's technical problems: Syndicate is a broken mess! Throughout the 10 hours I've put into the game so far, I've experienced these technical issues:
-In the first hour of gameplay, right after I was put into the open world, I was greeted with a group of a dozen civilians floating in the middle of the air. They disappeared a few seconds later. I didn't think much of it; it's a glitch, it happens.
-One of the earliest cut scenes broke on me. Without spoiling anything, both Jacob and Evie enter a train, with Jacob carrying a grappling gun. Suddenly both him and Evie disappear, with only the gun remaining, flailing around as dialog continued to play. I had to exit and re-open the game for the cut scene to play right. This happened with 2 cut scenes so far.
Note that I'm only 10 hours into the game and I barely scratched the surface. If it's as bad now, imaging how it will be 20 or 30 hours down the road.
-The game's frame rate is atrocious. Not as bad as Unity's, at least not so far, but it doesn't make it any better.
-The game froze on me twice. Once when I was in the open world, and another time during a cut scene.
--I realize that 2 patches are supposed to come out on day one, 3 days from now, probably to iron out the mess that is Syndicate right now. But even still, both patches amount to a total of 1 GB, so what the hell is that even supposed to fix? It took a multitude of patches, the biggest of which was over 6 GB in size to make Unity playable. So I imagine we'll be stuck with this broken game for quite some time.
Aside from technical issues, let's delve into the mechanics. The game doesn't flow nearly as good as Unity. For some reason you can't jump from building to building unless they were a few meters close to one another. Running around on roofs you will be annoyed with a run-and-stop-and-run rhythm, because your so called ''assassins'' were probably not taught to jump across long distances.
This is really frustrating.
Putting it in simpler words: -In AC Unity: You're on a roof and there's a building in the distance you wish to reach. You run and jump across roofs, no matter how far or impossible it may seem, in one fast paced series of fluid movements.
-In AC Syndicate: You're on a roof and there's a building in the distance you wish to reach. You run and reach the end of the roof, expecting your character to fluently jump to the adjacent but far one, but instead he/she stutters and stops. You press the damn R2 button and keep pressing X, but you soon realize that you just can't do far jumps in this depressing game. Instead, you're forced to climb down to the street, move towards your desired building and climb. You see where I'm going with this? It breaks the flow of a game that's supposed to be fast paced.
Yeah, they introduced the grappling hook as a means to make traveling faster, probably as a last resort because they knew how sloppy and broken the rhythm of the game was. But even that doesn't work properly. You can't aim the hook. You want to grapple it to a building in the distance? Well you better pray to God it doesn't grapple onto irrelevant crap, like the various poles or fences around it. I've put in around 10 hours into the game, and I know it isn't enough to warrant a full review, but it was enough for me to know what I had gotten myself into. Sadly the one feeling I have towards it is pure disappointment.
Extra notes:
-I initially liked the concept of having 2, completely switchable characters. It immediately reminded me of GTA5. I expected each character to give me a different feel of gameplay. For example Jacob would be more of a brawler, with slower movements but deadlier attacks. He'll have a different set of weapons and upgrades accessible ONLY by him. On the other hand, Evie would be the stealthier one, with very fast reflexes and high speed parkour, albeit a more fragile body and a smaller health bar. That's what I expected at least.
I know, silly me. This is Ubisoft after all. Instead, we got literally the same character under 2 different skins: A male one and a female one. They both play EXACTLY the same. Sure, Evie is labeled as the stealthier one in the story, but in gameplay she plays exactly like Jacob. They even have the exact same set of upgrades and both can wield the exact same weapons. So what is the point of giving us 2 characters if they're not going to utilize the possibilities? It feels like they included Evie as a playable one just to appeal to a larger, female oriented audience. Who knows.
-The driving aspect is something that I actually like, for some weird reason. I didn't expect it to be this fun.
-I have to give it to the game: Despite its major shortcomings, so far I'm really digging Jacob and Evie. They have this cool quality to them, which is something I haven't seen in AC since Ezio.
----I wasn't planning on posting this so early, but I was too frustrated at the game that I eventually rage quit and rushed over here to post a review/warning.
If you're a major and loyal fan of the series, like me, then I doubt what I wrote will change your mind about buying it. However, if you're a passer by who enjoys some AC every now and then, this is seriously not the game for you. Go buy AC4, or hell buy Unity. It's fixed by now, it's far, FAR better looking, and the gameplay exceeds the mess we have in Syndicate.
Something I forgot to mention is how massive the world is. This is the biggest AC has ever been, and the attention to architectural detail is astounding. 10 hours in and I can't even begin to fathom how I'll be able to explore the entirety of the map.
Another guy:
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Just to make it playable, they went backward from Unity. For all Unity's downsides, I still love playing it for how visually astounding it is. With Syndicate, building models are reused, enemy models are hilariously reused (very often), and the face and hair modelling is notably inferior.
This is an ugly game.
EDIT: Oh and the fog. London is always foggy. Not for historical accuracy but because it worked for Superman 64 so...
well its still month till release , so pre-release PS4
What i played on that event was very positive and it was on PS4 aswell (was told its full pre-release build and haven notice any of problems like this guy sais in it)
- so i will still remain cautiously optimistic. = especially when the general AC hate is at the record high after clusterfuck Unity launch
As for the graphics i dont care - Unity looked stunning but way too i dont know .. shiny..?? (possibly cause the lightning was way too overbaked - here is day/night cycle which is probably the cause of "worse" lightning)
but its still PS4 and stil without 0 day patches => irrelevant for me when PC build comes on Nov 19 and what I played of it was very positive, even though everyone and their mother online is hating it to high heavens
I must admit, I don't give a shit about this game, but I'm waiting for its release just to witness the (inevitable, since it's impossible for Ubi to not fuck things up) shitstorm
This
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
Because you can't download the 0-day patches yet, he even mentioned it in the post I quoted
Quote:
--I realize that 2 patches are supposed to come out on day one, 3 days from now, probably to iron out the mess that is Syndicate right now. But even still, both patches amount to a total of 1 GB, so what the hell is that even supposed to fix? It took a multitude of patches, the biggest of which was over 6 GB in size to make Unity playable. So I imagine we'll be stuck with this broken game for quite some time.
Because you can't download the 0-day patches yet, he even mentioned it in the post I quoted
oh that might be for general people , reviewers can download them easily Thats why i said his words are irelevant atm
At the crap he said about the size of patches ismhilarious , but on other hand i have no idea how patches works on ps4
great, no bedtime now, have to get the bud and terence blurays out of the shelf and decide which flick i watch now (and its hard to decide)... but have in mind these movies werent taken serious in germany, they all have a kind of comedy synchro (which is fucking great always! tried to watch one movie with the ddr synchro, hell no)
btt: some ubishit guy said it will be more like ac2 (which honestly was the pinnacle of the series. 3,4 and the templar spinoff were meeeeeeh. unity okayish). im not expecting much, but if it turns out as a good game im fine, otherwise shift delete and no regrets
Last edited by Janz on Thu, 22nd Oct 2015 00:06; edited 1 time in total
Haha yeah they really are timeless . I grew up with all these movies, so whenever I see the iconic 'sack of potatoes' effect, I can't help but think about Bud
vaifan1986 wrote:
ixigia wrote:
It's like watching Bud Spencer and Terence Hill's movies!
Those movies were ahead of its time.
Syndicate's got nothing on this
Looks so bad
I've barely even seen any advertising for it compared to other ubisoft titles as well. All signs are pointing to one of the biggest AAA fails in a while, in terms of sales I mean.
from the description
"This has only happened to me once in about 10 hours of gameplay."
Honestly had more funny glitches in first 10 hours o the GTA5 and Witcher 3. Not evn mentioning Skyrim
The Ubi/AC hate is way too overblown and toxic on AC:S. Even though they deserved it for Unity, now its just annoying.
from the description
"This has only happened to me once in about 10 hours of gameplay."
Honestly had more funny glitches in first 10 hours o the GTA5 and Witcher 3. Not evn mentioning Skyrim
The Ubi/AC hate is way too overblown and toxic on AC:S. Even though they deserved it for Unity, now its just annoying.
I feel like I'm reading one of those apologetic neogaf threads.
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. I grew up with all these movies, so whenever I see the iconic 'sack of potatoes' effect, I can't help but think about Bud 
