Assassin's Creed Unity Dead Kings Review

Title: Assassin's Creed Unity Dead Kings

Platform(s): PS4, XB1, PC

Release Date: January 13, 2015

ESRB:M

In an effort to remedy a rocky release, Ubisoft offered to give Assassin's Creed Unity's first story DLC, Dead Kings, to anyone who wanted it, for free. It seemed a nice gesture on their part and one hoped that after a large backlash from fans on how buggy and at times broken Unity was, Ubisoft would make sure to make Dead Kings run exceptionally well and be the grape leaf fans needed to forgive the let down of a highly anticipated game gone wrong. Dead Kings does retain all of the core mechanics that made Unity fun. Combat is solid, parkour is more fluid than in past iterations, and giant set pieces, though very few, still offer opportunities for exploration. But, instead of building upon what Unity did right and fixing many of the technical issues where it went wrong, Dead Kings offers up a slew of new issues that given what was expected out of Ubisoft, isn't as forgivable as last time.

Dead Kings picks up soon after the events of Unity. Arno has traveled to the city of Saint-Denis to get an artifact deep within the catacombs for the Marquis De Sade with hopes that in return he will help him leave France. Not long after Arno departs on his missions things foreseeably go awry, as retrieving ancient artifacts tied to “Dead Kings” proves to be surprisingly difficult when betrayal is afoot and a small child who jumps around and badgers you from cutscene to cutscene makes you empathize for the pre-ritalin world. The story of Dead Kings just never jumped out and grabbed me. Throughout its campaign, which took me around three or four hours to complete, I never cared about Arno's post-Unity struggle, side characters seemed trivial to the overall experience, and I just wanted it all to be over. I wasn't a huge fan of the story of Unity either, finding it to be dull overall. But Dead Kings from start to end, couldn't grab my attention whatsoever. It doesn't help that visuals in the cutscenes have received a considerable downgrade in quality from Unity. Visuals have lost a lot of detail and character models, even of main characters, look muddy and unfinished, as if the finishing details were just skipped over.

Taking place in the Paris suburbs of Saint-Denis, Dead Kings establishes a much different mood for its city. Saint-Denis is a dilapidated town that looks like it has a layer of dirt that surrounds the entire area. Gone are the garnished villas of Paris and in their place is the color gray. Everything in Saint-Denis maintains a very boring and dark color pallet that ranges from gray, darker gray, and occasionally brown. It is a sizable area, especially for a DLC pack, that offers a nice variety of locations existing in three districts, all centering around the decaying Basilica of Saint-Denis, which serves as the major set piece for the game. What is unfortunate though about the city of Dead Kings is that while it is unique enough to be memorable in comparison to Paris from Unity, it is ruined by presentation issues set forth from the first cutscene of the game. During the title sequence, which is the first things you see when you begin, there were texture pop-ins and these plagued the whole game. I could be halfway up the side of a building before its facade would come into full resolution. At a certain distance, buildings began to look like mush as the quality of their textures deteriorated to the point that they were barely distinguishable. Also, possibly in an effort to set a darker tone for the game, a fog covers the entire city for nearly the entire campaign and does nothing but minimize the field of vision for the player. It makes it hard to tell where to go next during parkour sections, hard to pick out where a group of enemies may be, and when the sun and fog mix it becomes nearly impossible to see more than a few yards in front of Arno. It's unfortunate because I think Saint-Denis could have been an interesting location for the Assassin's Creed universe had this DLC not ruined the experience by constantly breaking the immersion with these flaws in presentation.

Dead Kings consists of six main campaign missions, which while lengthy, aren't always anything new, despite a few exceptions. You'll still have to “tail this guy to this place without him seeing you in between,” which leads to tedium, but isn't bad enough to be a major complaint. Also back are the large set-pieces, such as the aforementioned Basilica of Saint-Denis, that were arguably the best part of Unity and are the same for this game. Though they are not as large or numerous as those in Unity, each set piece, above ground and under, offer multiple paths for exploration and infiltration as well as supporting both stealth-heavy and more action oriented playstyles. Dead Kings also includes several puzzles and mysteries to the main campaign that will feel familiar to anyone who explored the side quests of Unity. Puzzles are a highlight of the game, and actually do take a bit of thinking to crack the clues provided, rather than just practices in trial-and-error like many other games. The only drawback for me is that these puzzles are reserved for the tail-end of the game rather than being sprinkled throughout the entire campaign. It would have been nice to see them incorporated more, as they were one of the only missions items that set the game apart from Unity.

One thing Dead Kings does manage to do right is bring over many of the core mechanics that made Unity enjoyable, when they work. Combat is still a satisfying challenge that feels responsive and fluid. Surviving through an altercation relies on your ability to parry and evade effectively in between attacks rather than button-mashing your way through and finishing moves are a satisfyingly gory reward for your survival. Parkour feels better than it did in past iterations of the AC series, and the inclusion of “free run down” still makes traversal feel more accessible and fluid than other entries of the series. Though, with all that said, the game can feel inconsistent at times. More often than I could ignore, controls wouldn't respond, leaving me hanging from a ledge furiously pressing X until I finally leapt, often times in the opposite direction than I had intended. I also noticed inconsistencies with enemy AI, who sometimes would be completely oblivious to you killing their allies in front of their face and yet the next moment they could hear a pin drop as you try to sneak away from them. It is frustrating that even when this game does something right, it can't remain consistent and belittles its own strengths with its setbacks.

Personally, I feel people, myself included, were too rough on Ubisoft about how bug-ridden Unity was. Of course, it is frustrating and one would hope that a company would do testing that would've caught the majority of these issues before the release of a major AAA game. But with enough time between its release and now, I can look back and remember that it was actually a fairly good game. But, people were outraged, so when Ubisoft announced that they would offer Dead Kings for free to everyone who wanted it, it seemed a safe assumption that it would be a much smoother experience that would represent Ubisoft's apology for releasing a less than stellar product. Unfortunately, these assumptions are unmerited, as Dead Kings is arguably more flawed than Unity was, and this time, I don't mind saying that it is unacceptable. Within my four hours with the game, NPCs walked through walls, Arno got stuck in a constant loop between animations that I couldn't get him out of, characters walked through NPCs that had become frozen during cutscenes, I saw a goat floating in the air, weapons wouldn't work, and these are just a few of all the issues I noticed. I'm not even going to waste my time ranting about this, because the subject has been exhausted with Unity. I am going to leave it at the fact that this is a betrayal of player's trust and it is unacceptable on Ubisoft's part. Free or not, Ubisoft should have used this as an opportunity to show its acknowledgment of their mistakes as well as their appreciation for the fans who have been patient through Unity's issues and downloaded Dead Kings regardless. To release a product that is more flawed than the original item in question, trumps the generosity of releasing a free DLC for fans, and is unacceptable on their part.

When Dead Kings wants to work, it is a fun game and it is a good game. The sad fact of the matter though is that it doesn't work all that much. I can't recommend it to anyone who hasn't played Unity as it simply isn't worth your time, at least in the state it is now. If you have played Unity and would like to know where Arno's story goes after the credits roll or you're just chomping at the bit for more Assassin's Creed Unity, than this game may offer you some enjoyment. Some. It is really sad that a major game company has allowed itself to release two games in a row, one being an apology for the other, that have been ridden with flaws that were presumably avoidable, given the money and manpower behind a company the size of Ubisoft. Whether or not this becomes a trend in the AC series is yet to be seen. But I hope that fans will voice their disapproval of content such as this and Ubisoft will take more time in honing their future releases.

6 Out Of 10

Good. “This game may be worth a simple rent to check out. This game may have a few things that really stand out as fun, but the whole may be brought down by boring or flawed features.”