‘Assassin’s Creed Unity’, ‘Rogue’: Is Ubisoft’s Own ‘Revolution’ Enough To Save Them?

Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Rogue have been released to the public, and reception has not been good for either of Ubisoft’s latest entries. It appears that they have run out of ideas.

It seemed like a golden opportunity for Ubisoft to try something innovative and different. They had a year of experience with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and pushed Unity to what they claimed to be the consoles’ limits. By the end, we saw the graphics pushed slightly, but the frame rate suffered as the consoles appeared to struggle with the resolution. That should not be happening this early in the next-generation cycle.

Even though their products seemed ambitious from a distance, both ended up disappointing in some way.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity ended up receiving a user score of 3.4 (Xbox One) and 4.6 (PlayStation 4) on Metacritic, almost directly opposing the professional critics’ more generous views. The initial problem appears to be Ubisoft’s refusal to listen to the consumers. We asked for feudal Japan, but they insisted on the French Revolution.

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue has been called a copy and paste of everything from AC 3 and Black Flag, with only minor differences aside from the storyline. The gameplay mechanics have been lifted almost directly from Black Flag, with the tree and stone climbing from its predecessor thrown in alongside cameos tying the two previous games together. While it is an interesting idea to see Adewale and Achilles meeting, helping Ben Franklin, and so on, it all feels like an extra layer of makeup to hide the fact that it’s the same game all over again.

It is only fair to point out that Ubisoft did add a few new ideas to Rogue, but it felt like little more than a cheap difficulty spike. Adding icebergs to whale hunting and navigation, as well as punishing the player for actually swimming in the freezing waters only pushed veteran gamers away, rolling their eyes.

Ubisoft’s efforts in Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Rogue seem to have been a rush job as well, since it was said yesterday that with the sharing of responsibilities between the Montreal and newly formed Quebec offices, they claim they will have more time to work on new ideas. It might even give them time to remove glitches they blamed on the AMD hardware configurations of the PC version.

Some of those bugs were amusing, as previously reported by the Inquisitr, but that didn’t make them welcome.

The question on some gamers’ minds is not how much time Ubisoft has to put into the game, but whether they should stop trying to make the franchise a yearly release now that they appear to be struggling with the capabilities of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

According to Game Rant, Ubisoft was up against a set release date to ship a finished product, meaning that Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Rogue were very likely both rushed and will probably be subjected to patches for months, like Saints Row 4.

AC: Rogue ended up being the better of the two, but only by default because it was more stable. Can Ubisoft’s new development revolution save them from continuing the cycle of only releasing good games every other year, or will we get the same disappointment in 2015 that we got from Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Rogue?

[Image via Giant Bomb, Games Blog]