Assassin's Creed Syndicate (PS4, XB1, PC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kGHHMc5dqE

The Assassin’s Creed Syndicate story throws you into the dawn of the modern era during the Industrial Revolution. You play Jacob Frye, a gangster assassin fighting for justice on behalf of London’s enslaved working class. Watch as Jacob rallies his gang to break the corrupt stranglehold on London and bring the working class a brighter future.

- GameSpot with early details on improvements and changes coming to the game. The game will feature vehicles that can be hi-jacked GTA-style as well as an Arkham-esque rope launcher. Development is being led by Ubisoft Quebec.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate launches October 23. Amazon already has the standard and Gold Editions available for pre-order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKS8554XAmM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKR42Ci000k

More class warfare story lines:fp: this may be the first one I pass on.

I'll still give it a whirl. While there have been a couple games that were definitely not up to the top quality expected of Assassin's Creed, I'll keep rolling with the series until they produce a real bomb. This is one of the only couple series that I still buy every single release that comes out, so I'll still give them the benefit of the doubt.

#TheScriptIsDead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa8kaLnB5bc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUYxz6GoIYw

Man... I still haven't finished Unity. I need to get a move on. I really wish this series would go back to the Black Flag approach with movement via the ocean. That was so much fun. I still play from time to time.

Yeah, I was rolling through Unity last January, then I got the flu around Super Bowl weekend, followed by taking it up the ass from mother nature in the form of snow storms and subzero temperatures that kept me busy digging out cars and shoveling the sidewalk while trying to get to work in between, and I never picked it back up.

I think I was probably 70% through the story when I stopped. I know I had gotten pretty far into the story and was approaching the later stages of the game. Need to find time to go back and finish it.

I've beaten:
Assassins Creed
Assassins Creed II
Assassins Creed Brotherhood
Assassins Creed Revelations
Assassins Creed III
Assassins Creed Liberation (which I love because it's set in my hometown of New Orleans and Aveline is just as bad ass as the dudes)
Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag (I also beat the Freedom Cry DLC)
Assassins Creed Rouge

Assassins Creed Unity is the only game I haven't played and beaten because I still rock last-gen hardware

Sounds like nothing ground breaking here. Disappointed to hear combat was simplified. I would have liked to see more advanced combat.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/games/20...loody-average/

I just cannot get into this series. Its on my rental list but if I never get around to it no loss for me. - Reviews have been mostly positive sitting around an 80 overall so sounds like if you are a fan of this series it's definitely worth the pick up.

Yeah, I really enjoy the Assassin's Creed series, but this one I'm hanging back on. With Halo 5, Fallout 4, WWE 2K16, Star Wars Battlefront, Black Ops 3 and Just Cause 3 coming coming out over the next month and a half, AC Syndicate has to get pushed to the side until probably at least January 1st. It just doesn't seem like it's worth a day one purchase this year. That, and I STILL have to finish Unity.

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Originally Posted by SmoothPancakes

Yeah, I really enjoy the Assassin's Creed series, but this one I'm hanging back on. With Halo 5, Fallout 4, WWE 2K16, Star Wars Battlefront, Black Ops 3 and Just Cause 3 coming coming out over the next month and a half, AC Syndicate has to get pushed to the side until probably at least January 1st. It just doesn't seem like it's worth a day one purchase this year. That, and I STILL have to finish Unity.

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My wife asked me if I wanted this game for xmas... and I said "I don't know." It looks, feels, sounds and plays like Unity. The graphics are not great based on the streams I have watched. They are rushing these games out. Slow down; take 3-4 years and blow us out of the water (aka lots of different locales, modes of tranport and unique combat (feudal Japan, Egypt's Nile Delta, etc.).

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

My wife asked me if I wanted this game for xmas... and I said "I don't know." It looks, feels, sounds and plays like Unity. The graphics are not great based on the streams I have watched. They are rushing these games out. Slow down; take 3-4 years and blow us out of the water (aka lots of different locales, modes of tranport and unique combat (feudal Japan, Egypt's Nile Delta, etc.).

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They won't stop cranking them out every year unless/until they don't sell millions of copies.

I still haven't played any of them :D

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Originally Posted by JBHuskers

I still haven't played any of them :D

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LOL!

Assassin's Creed was my 2nd favorite new IP of the last generation behind Mass Effect.

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Originally Posted by JBHuskers

I still haven't played any of them :D

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:+1:

I played a few of them but the combat is not my cup of tea. The parkour is a bit too simple, especially compared to Dying Light. Plus it is made by Ubisoft. Fuck Ubisoft.

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

My wife asked me if I wanted this game for xmas... and I said "I don't know." It looks, feels, sounds and plays like Unity. The graphics are not great based on the streams I have watched. They are rushing these games out. Slow down; take 3-4 years and blow us out of the water (aka lots of different locales, modes of tranport and unique combat (feudal Japan, Egypt's Nile Delta, etc.).

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Yeah, they had a good thing going early on, but now they're just trying to pump out a new game every year, and recently, it's become multiple new games a year with AC 3 and AC 3: Liberation in 2012, Unity and Rogue in 2014, Syndicate and Chronicles: China this year.

They apparently already have announced or are working on AC Chronicles: India for sometime in 2016, plus whatever main AC game they release next fall.

They are getting to the point of trying to do too much each year to cash in on the popularity of the franchise, and in the process they are damaging that popularity by putting out subpar products.

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Originally Posted by CLW

They won't stop cranking them out every year unless/until they don't sell millions of copies.

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Well, with the quality of the series gradually weakening primarily due to them constantly trying to crank out 1-2 new games every year, it won't be long before that happens.

Black Flag was a lot of fun but the combat was overly simple for a game that has a lot of it. After playing Mordor which had all kinds of things you could do a simple hit and counter combination just doesn't cut it imo.

So, after getting $25 from Xbox Live Rewards celebrating their 5th anniversary, and getting another $25 for Xbox Live from my sister for Christmas, I had $50 sitting around waiting to be spent on my account. Taking advantage of the two week mega sale that Xbox Live had at the end of December/beginning of January, I could have either gotten Fallout 4 (plus buy the season pass separately at full price) for $80, or I could get AC Syndicate Gold (the season pass and all released DLC to that point) for $60. Pretty damn easy call for me, $60 for everything related to AC Syndicate without having to spend another dime on DLC for it. So I bought the game a couple days after Christmas.

I'm only on sequence 4, pretty early on in the story, but that's because I've been so busy doing side quests. Syndicate is really fun. You have territory takeovers to try and "reclaim" London from the Templars. Each region of the city is further split into small sections. So to take over Whitechapel, the starting area, you have to liberate child workers, you have to take over a Blighter (enemy gang) stronghold, you have to kill a Templar agent and you have to capture a bounty hunt (dead or alive). And then once you've "captured" all the subsections of the region, you unlock a gang war against the controlling Gang Leader of the region. Win the gang war, and that section/region of the city is yours.

The number of activities changes depending on the region. Some have more bounty hunts, others have more gang strongholds or child liberations. There are 7 regions in the game. Whitechapel (starting area), City of London, The Strand, Westminster, The River Thames, Southwark and Lambeth. Each have their own gang leaders, each have their own activities. There are also the usual collectibles, chests, pressed flowers, helix glitches, illustrations, locked (gold) chests, vintage beer bottles, Secrets of London and Royal Correspondence.

Having two characters also is a nice change. Being able to change between Jacob and Evie Frye and build their skills up helps to change the pace of the game. Jacob is your hands-on, physical basher type character (with brass knuckles being his preferred weapon). Evie meanwhile is your true silent assassin, with stealth being her primary focus and being able to disappear right under the noses of the enemy. For her, cane-swords and kukris work well. You can also upgrade a lot. Thanks to being able to craft weapons and outfits, you can upgrade your weapons, assassin gauntlets, firearms, capes, belts, outfits, colors and gear and tool upgrades, improving your weapons and abilities and making you a stronger killing machine as the game goes on.

They also changed it to where you, your allies and your enemies now have shown levels. You start level 1 and can work up to level 10. The various regions have suggested levels before you try to conquer them, as you will face tougher, higher level enemies. Westminster has a suggested level of 9, City of London has a suggested level of 6, Lambeth has a suggested level of 3, etc. It sort of gives you a warning if you're about to get in over your head early on while your characters are still low level and weak.

There are also plenty of ways to get around. Unlike Unity, where you had to literally run every single place, you now have multiple options. You can drive a horse and cart (or you can hitch a ride and let your allies drive it), you can jump on any one of numerous trains that chug along throughout the map, or you can go down to The River Thames and sit there hopping from steamboat to steamboat. The River Thames is a mass of activity with steamboats chugging all over the place. You almost feel like you're playing a human version of frogger trying to get from one side of the river to the other by doing nothing but jumping from boat to boat.

Edit - Doh! I almost forgot! The Rooks! Jacob starts his own gang, The Rooks, to take on the Blighters. You can buy gang upgrades (increase the level of your gang members to levels 5, 7 and 9, when you order them to fight, they'll open conflict with a volley fire, you can make their volley fire more accurate and effective, at one point in the upgrades you can unlock the ability to have a full carriage of 5 Rooks come to your aid. You can also weaken the Blighters, bribe police, unlock shop discounts and increase your income in your train safe to help you gain more money.

You can also recruit random Rooks on the street to join and fight by your side. If I'm in a tough area, I'll run up to a couple Rooks on the street, recruit them to join me and then with 5 Rooks joining me, go charging in and just mow down enemies. When I got my Rooks to level 9 and got their gun volleys leveled up, holy shit is it hilarious to order my Rooks to attack a Blighter, and watch them all draw like a firing squad and just unload on that poor bastard. At this point, rarely does a Blighter survive the firing squad at the beginning of conflicts.

So even thought I've only made it to Sequence 4 and have sort of stalled on the storyline because I've been running around like a headless chicken doing side quests, Syndicate so far is a blast! This may finish in my top 3 Assassin's Creed games by the time I get done with it.

Glad you're back, Smooth. :up:

Very nice impressions Smooth. I have to start playing this more.

Sounds like an AC game. No problem with me.

After 57 hours of gameplay, I have officially bitchslapped this game!

http://i766.photobucket.com/albums/x...psmr5rj5jg.png

http://i766.photobucket.com/albums/x...psoipzlwqk.png

All I have left to do at this point is fire up, play, and beat the Jack the Ripper DLC and I'll have Syndicate completely dominated up through every piece of released game/DLC thus far.

Wow! You must have had a lot of fun. The last game I was really into like that was Mordor.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

Wow! You must have had a lot of fun. The last game I was really into like that was Mordor.

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It really is a fun game! They finally got rid of the constant back and forth playing in the past and modern times stuff. Now all the current day stuff is just basically cutscenes that you just watch, so it lets you stay completely focused on the story in London.

The city is massive and there are tons of things to do, yet it's easy to get around thanks to trains and horses/carriages. I actually found the story legitimately good and a nice change from the stories of some recent AC games, and being able to switch between Evie and Jacob essentially on a whim made it stay fresh as you could change up your tactics at any point in the game, going stealth with Evie or going physical with Jacob.

There were a lot of fun side missions, the Associate Activities (Bounty Hunts, Templar Hunts, Child Liberations and Gang Strongholds), while there were something like 6-10 of each Activity, they were set up sufficiently enough that each time you did it felt a little different and required some different strategies based on the layout of the buildings and enemies.

Even the collectibles weren't bad. When you first get to London, there may seem like a lot, and even based on that second picture, that may look like a TON of chests, but really, it's not that overwhelming to collect them all. Some games in the past have had a shit ton of collectibles and made it a pain in the ass to collect them all. In AC Syndicate, a lot of things were actually pretty easy to collect as you go around the map getting from one location to another.

About the only negative that I've experienced, was Carriage Races. Damn those suck. There's something like 15 of them, and to unlock two weapons, as well as a crafting schematic for a cloak (or whatever the item actually was), you have to come in 1st place in all 15 (or however many) races. Now, I managed to claim 1st place and win every single race on my very first attempt at each race, however, that was some of the most stressful shit I have done. A couple races I literally won by inches. One race, where I was racing a train to a destination, essentially racing a clock that's counting down, I swear to god, I had to have won that race with .000001 seconds left, because I was still 20-30 meters away from the finish line with one second left.

There are a lot of fun missions and fun side activities in the game that I absolutely can see myself going back sometime down the road and firing up for the hell of it. Honestly, I might actually go back and play the entire story again from the beginning later in the spring or summer, after a couple months away from it so it'll feel fresh again. That's how much I enjoyed the game. However I will absolutely be skipping the carriage races in any future play-throughs. :D

If I had to rank this game, I honestly think it is easily top two in the AC series for me (and I have played every main series game except Rogue), and it could even potentially be #1 for me in the AC series. It's basically a three-way tie for the top two games with Syndicate, Black Flag and ACII. But Syndicate just did things so well and it was legitimately so much fun, it very well could be my #1 AC series game.

If they can keep this up with Egypt next year and keep focusing 100% on the single player side of the game (either just abandon multiplayer altogether or don't screw the SP story over to shoehorn in a MP experience), then this series is very quickly getting back on the right track and could easily keep going for years if they keep up this new direction they took with Syndicate.

Nice impressions!

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Originally Posted by SmoothPancakes

It really is a fun game! They finally got rid of the constant back and forth playing in the past and modern times stuff. Now all the current day stuff is just basically cutscenes that you just watch, so it lets you stay completely focused on the story in London.

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I really wish this were the case from the original AC. In fact, I wish there was no modern day stuff at all. It always broke the flow of the game and was always the least interesting part. All the games are excellent at capturing their respective time periods and all the modern day junk is unnecessary. They can just make a modern day game if they want something current.

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Originally Posted by souljahbill

I really wish this were the case from the original AC. In fact, I wish there was no modern day stuff at all. It always broke the flow of the game and was always the least interesting part. All the games are excellent at capturing their respective time periods and all the modern day junk is unnecessary. They can just make a modern day game if they want something current.

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I can understand why the modern day stuff is there. The whole storyline of the Assassin's Creed series necessitates it. The whole point of going into the animus and running all over the place in locations in the past is to help locate where pieces of Eden are buried and hidden in the modern day timeline and race the Templars to it.

The whole thing I hate about the modern day stuff was when we were forced to actually perform "missions" in the modern day. Being pulled out of the middle of a good storyline in the past to sit there climbing skyscrapers and other stupid shit as Desmond, sit there dealing with this stupid Helix Rifts in Unity that forced us to run around in 1800s, World War II and whichever other timeline Paris, I HATED that shit. Just let me play the damn game instead of having to do this modern day running around shit.

That's why I like how Syndicate did it. They handled it well. You played solely in the past. All modern day stuff was just solely cinematic cutscenes that you watched play out, usually for no more than a couple minutes, and then it was right back into the past. If they continue to follow this pattern in future games, doing away entirely with modern day missions and just leave them at cinematic cutscenes, I'll be perfectly happy!

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Originally Posted by souljahbill

I really wish this were the case from the original AC. In fact, I wish there was no modern day stuff at all. It always broke the flow of the game and was always the least interesting part. All the games are excellent at capturing their respective time periods and all the modern day junk is unnecessary. They can just make a modern day game if they want something current.

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Agree 100%.

Last second purchase... $48 for syndicate and ALL the DLC. Now I just need to find time to play this game.

I haven't played it much either. Possibly burned out after so much black flag which I had a lot of fun with. The girl twin is fun in this game. Graphics are really God except they get hurt when ibisoft throws all the outlines around enemies.

This was a really fun game! Ubisoft really redeemed themselves after Unity. Just look back at the two or three in depth review posts I made after buying this after Christmas, I really go down the list of what I loved and hated.

It also speaks volumes that I completely beat this game, a full 100% in every measurable statistic in just 57 hours of gameplay. Syndicate really redeemed this series for me after Unity and I have new faith in Ubisoft when it comes to Assassin's Creed going forward.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Did the first few missions and now we are in London. Looks better than unity; feels better than unity; plays better than unity. I like the sister... she's badass. The brother... Okay I get it... you want to create a gang called the rooks... enough about it already!

I'm going to try and get back into this game. I had started it a while ago and these types of games are more up my alley than RPGs like Fallout.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

I'm going to try and get back into this game. I had started it a while ago and these types of games are more up my alley than RPGs like Fallout.

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I'm surprised you aren't taken by Fallout4. It's the complete opposite of what I play and like but for whatever reason I just love the Fallout experience. AC is fun but in my opinion Fallout and Witcher are significantly better offerings than AC (at present).

I like Syndicate (though it feels very dumbed down from previous versions). The grappling hook is an awesome addition and given a choice of 2 protagonists is a nice addition too. However, I am looking forward to Egypt as IMO the Europe age of revolutions is getting stale (Britain / France).

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

I'm surprised you aren't taken by Fallout4. It's the complete opposite of what I play and like but for whatever reason I just love the Fallout experience. AC is fun but in my opinion Fallout and Witcher are significantly better offerings than AC (at present).

I like Syndicate (though it feels very dumbed down from previous versions). The grappling hook is an awesome addition and given a choice of 2 protagonists is a nice addition too. However, I am looking forward to Egypt as IMO the Europe age of revolutions is getting stale (Britain / France).

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I haven't given Fallout a fair chance. I have a lot to learn and I find the flying bugs annoying. The Witcher 3 combat was too repetitive to enjoy for me. I'm in a gaming funk right now. Nothing is really compelling to me. I am busy with baseball and don't have as much time. Maybe I'm just getting old. Hopefully something interesting comes out. I enjoyed uc4.