Assassins Creed: Origins – Unqualified Review

It’s here! The one and only time I order a game with a product (The Blue Yeti streamer bundle from Black Friday) and I realize how reliant I am on the instant satisfaction of Steam and installing immediately. OK so lets jump into this review.

I have played about 10 minutes into the game, learned a few controls and did some parkour.

The first thing we need to talk about isn’t even about the game itself it’s about peripherals. I really like the Steam Controller and Steam Link, and that’s bad here. Don’t get me wrong, it has nothing to do with Ubisoft or with the AC team or anything like that, its literally just Uplay and the fact that is how I got the code for the game. When using the Steam Link the controller mapping isn’t always the greatest but at least it lets me jump in and out of the configuration and I can make due, but Uplay is the middle man here and its really raining on my parade. I’m going to spend some time with it tonight trying to get it mapped correctly but it’ll take more than one beer to get me there.

Next on our list is the movement, I cant say that I like it but that’s because I’m comparing it to the previous games and this doesn’t really feel like one. During the combat there is a dodge / roll action that takes place of the regular jump button, and you can use this even when not in combat. I find myself dodging out of the way of pillars thinking its the jump button, but there is a new vault mechanic which could be neat if I can get the hang of the new button layouts.

The combat is totally reworked, I get a bit of a For Honor vibe from it and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I always took the stealth options in AC games just because I thought it was fun, and the Arkham style punch ’em till they go down wasn’t really my thing. This feels fun and I think i’ll play a bit more tactical combat brawler if I can. No idea how the weapons or leveling and whatnot work, but lets say they are about a 6/10 so far because I have had 1 thing drop and it looks cool! Not really sure how it’ll fare once you get into larger fights but the lock on feels nice and responsive when you dodge attacks.

Photo mode is cool. I had to google how to use it to get the image for this post, but I really liked it in Shadow of Mordor and I think you can get some nice pictures in this game if that’s your thing. To be fair though, i’ve only seen the inside of a tomb so far so there isn’t really a benchmark to what I really can do with it yet.

I think that is enough for this totally legitimate (un)qualified review of Assassins Creed: Origins.

I give it a 6/10 because of Uplay and my Steam Controller struggles.

Thanks for reading! I will post the follow up after some time playing the game and let you all know how I really feel.