They did it. After 6 years (has it ONLY been 6??) of obscenely long games, they made a new Assassin's Creed that can be completed by people who aren't suffering from crippling depression. A nice 20-hour full completion. That's the stuff!
The game? It's alright! A throwback to the first one (still one of the best, if you ask me), it retains a few elements of the Origins Era games: You have your scouting eagle, and a few too many unnecessary equipment slots. There are numbers on your swords and daggers, but they don't really matter much, and you're not picking up loot anyway. There are skill trees, but they contain about 20 skills total instead of the absolutely insane, byzantine webs of Odyssey and Valhalla. It also retains Valhalla's strange obsession with barred doors/windows, and throwing objects through gaps to open them.
Most interesting is how it's janky in almost exactly the same ways as the original games. The platforming can be just as clunky as in 1/2/Bro, when Origins had mostly solved that and featured a marked increase in fluidity. This is probably a result of making the climbing more deliberate again, as opposed to "hold up and A" that the accursed Revelations introduced via its Hookblade (remember -- the hookblade consists of two parts: the hook, and the blade). It still works pretty well overall, but there were definitely parts where I was wondering what in the holy fuck Basim was doing.
The throwbacks to AC1 don't end with the traversal, either. Throwing knives are still insanely OP. Guards are still complete idiots who won't notice if you stab someone 2 feet to their left. You can still hide in hay bales or... Whatever those booth things are, whistle at guards, and kill them one by one, stuffing that cart full of so many bodies that you could smell it from a mile away. All of these things are stupid in a way that I enjoy.
Basim's story is fine. You're out to kill the Order of the Ancients, which I guess are a precursor to the Templars, or an allied faction, or something. You are mentored by an Assassin voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who has always had a distinctive, gravelly voice, but in 2023 she sounds like the AI from Godard's Alphaville. You investigate the various members of the Order, and can do so with a surprising degree of freedom, and work your way to the Big Cheese. Progression is gated by certain events, but it's essentially divided into halves, and you can go back and forth between investigation targets at your leisure.
Anyway, at the end, it links into the overall Assassin's Creed Lore, whatever the hell that is at this point. I've completely lost track of it, and I don't even know what happened here. There are no modern day segments, but there are holograms of ancient aliems, and Basim's dreams being haunted by some stupid fuckin mummy that's also related to them, I guess, and then you get a [MOVIE TITLE REDACTED] montage at the end for something that was hilariously obvious.
It don't matter. None of that matters.
Quick note on performance: On XSX, there were mild frame pacing issues throughout most of the game. It wasn't enough to be a major problem, except in a few places: there are some areas where the game outright chugs. It seemed like it happened mostly in more complex indoor areas, oddly, but for whatever reason, Damascus Prison and especially the Postal Bureau were slideshows at points. I heard the Postal Bureau played their whole album at Riot Fest, by the way.
If you've been missing the old AssCreeds, something that I'm sure none of us thought would happen during the dog days of Unity and Syndicate, Mirage is for you! It's hard to believe the series is only 15 years old, because it feels like an eternity since I heard some underpaid voice actor screaming "MAHNEY, MAHNEY, MAHNEYYYY". I hope that guy's doing fine, wherever he is.
7/10
The game? It's alright! A throwback to the first one (still one of the best, if you ask me), it retains a few elements of the Origins Era games: You have your scouting eagle, and a few too many unnecessary equipment slots. There are numbers on your swords and daggers, but they don't really matter much, and you're not picking up loot anyway. There are skill trees, but they contain about 20 skills total instead of the absolutely insane, byzantine webs of Odyssey and Valhalla. It also retains Valhalla's strange obsession with barred doors/windows, and throwing objects through gaps to open them.
Most interesting is how it's janky in almost exactly the same ways as the original games. The platforming can be just as clunky as in 1/2/Bro, when Origins had mostly solved that and featured a marked increase in fluidity. This is probably a result of making the climbing more deliberate again, as opposed to "hold up and A" that the accursed Revelations introduced via its Hookblade (remember -- the hookblade consists of two parts: the hook, and the blade). It still works pretty well overall, but there were definitely parts where I was wondering what in the holy fuck Basim was doing.
The throwbacks to AC1 don't end with the traversal, either. Throwing knives are still insanely OP. Guards are still complete idiots who won't notice if you stab someone 2 feet to their left. You can still hide in hay bales or... Whatever those booth things are, whistle at guards, and kill them one by one, stuffing that cart full of so many bodies that you could smell it from a mile away. All of these things are stupid in a way that I enjoy.
Basim's story is fine. You're out to kill the Order of the Ancients, which I guess are a precursor to the Templars, or an allied faction, or something. You are mentored by an Assassin voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who has always had a distinctive, gravelly voice, but in 2023 she sounds like the AI from Godard's Alphaville. You investigate the various members of the Order, and can do so with a surprising degree of freedom, and work your way to the Big Cheese. Progression is gated by certain events, but it's essentially divided into halves, and you can go back and forth between investigation targets at your leisure.
Anyway, at the end, it links into the overall Assassin's Creed Lore, whatever the hell that is at this point. I've completely lost track of it, and I don't even know what happened here. There are no modern day segments, but there are holograms of ancient aliems, and Basim's dreams being haunted by some stupid fuckin mummy that's also related to them, I guess, and then you get a [MOVIE TITLE REDACTED] montage at the end for something that was hilariously obvious.
It don't matter. None of that matters.
Quick note on performance: On XSX, there were mild frame pacing issues throughout most of the game. It wasn't enough to be a major problem, except in a few places: there are some areas where the game outright chugs. It seemed like it happened mostly in more complex indoor areas, oddly, but for whatever reason, Damascus Prison and especially the Postal Bureau were slideshows at points. I heard the Postal Bureau played their whole album at Riot Fest, by the way.
If you've been missing the old AssCreeds, something that I'm sure none of us thought would happen during the dog days of Unity and Syndicate, Mirage is for you! It's hard to believe the series is only 15 years old, because it feels like an eternity since I heard some underpaid voice actor screaming "MAHNEY, MAHNEY, MAHNEYYYY". I hope that guy's doing fine, wherever he is.
7/10