EGX Hands-On: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

The Assassins come to London.

Another year, another Assassin’s Creed game.  Last year saw a double shot for the series, and both were solid, but Unity was plagued by all sorts of problems.  We got some playtime in old timey London, and it was fairly interesting.

The EGX demo took the form of an Assassination mission, like the ones in Unity, where you have a target to kill and it’s left up to you how to approach it.  There’s the simple, ‘sneak around and kill people’ approach, although there are bonuses for killing less than a set number of guards.  The approach I used was to kill some Templars who were disguised as guards so that an ally Assassin guard could pretend to capture me so I could get in close and take the target unaware.

There were some new mechanics on show for this installment.  The grappling hook allows you to cross streets unnoticed by guards by going above them, which is handy for areas of London that are wide and littered with them.  There is also the ‘chameleon’ ability where, when your hood is up, staying completely still allows you to blend into the scenery and guards won’t notice you, although you can’t hide if a guard has already seen you.

The one issue with the demo was that the combat felt a bit clunky and didn’t flow well.  There’s a much smaller window to counter than in Unity and the enemy is much less likely to just stand there and take it.  The challenge is welcome, but the rough flow makes it a bit of a chore.

All in all, from this small slice, Syndicate feels like it will be another solid, if unspectacular, addition to the series.  But we will wait and see if the full game delivers.

Assassin’s Creed Unity is coming to PS4 and Xbox One on October 23rd and PC on November 19th.