Assassin's Creed

6/10 from GameSpot, 8/10 from IGN, 7/10 from Push Square.

Agreed, but I think the main line titles will continue in a grander RPG format. I don’t mind those, they’re just too big.

I think I’m going to order and preload this one this evening. I’ve got £35 from PS Stars so it’d only actually cost me a tenner, which I’m finding hard to argue with.

Was very much looking forward to this when hearing it's a focused, more old school version of Arse Creed and everything I've read in reviews hasn't changed that!

My brother is starting it tonight and will send to me when he's done, we do this a lot where we pay half for the game in the end, fuckin result. £19, bosh!

Completed the prologue this morning. Mrs Hermit came in while I was playing it and without any clues or prompting, instantly said "Oh, you're back on Assassin's Creed". So visually (other than our protagonist) you wouldn't know you weren't playing Valhalla. Not necessarily a bad thing, it looks great.

Anyone else playing, I have clocked 30 odd hours and would think I'm around 70% done. Enjoying it a great deal, not sure where I would put it on a best to worst of AC. Should get campaign done over weekend then I have FF16 to start. My patience has paid of and I got it for £35 from Amazon today, not too shabby when it rrp at £63 earlier this year.

Finally wrapped up the final mission on the Ass Creed Valhalla Ragnarok expansion today. The save game says 120 hours on the clock, but that's over the better part of two years. Concerningly the Xbox stats say SEVEN DAYS played, but I'm going to assume that's Quick Resume messing with it. Right? RIGHT?!

Anyway, I'm only in second place on my friends list of hours put into it so I don't feel so bad.

Can't quite explain why it has become comfort gaming for me. It has been sitting there as an ever-present in Quick Resume since the get go, and through all three expansions. Given I got the whole shebang for about £40 I have no complaint.

"Great! I can delete that now. I'm so over the formula."

And then I installed Odyssey from Game Pass as the only one I missed... and had Mirage in my basket. FFS.

Finished Mirage the other day also, think my total time was 22'ish hours with a couple of contracts left and some icon fodder.

Thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part, story starts and ends well, middle drags a bit, but otherwise no complaints really.

It was nice to see a few things dialled back to their simplest forms. You level up at defined points from the campaign, so there's no level gating from main missions. Skill trees and combat powers are all stripped right back to the bare essentials, even upgrades are extremely minimal.

It's all very digestible without being overwhelming. Telling of how humongous Ubisoft's game template has become when they don't see something of this size as a full price title, it's a perfectly decent length in my opinion. Paid a lot more for much shorter games. Not that I'm complaining about saving money obviously...

It's as old-style as you'll get, but with keeping the modern features (like the eagle, etc).

If you want a stealth focused approach to AC then it's really good for that. Some of the best memories from playing came from simply sneaking into encampments in a no kill approach and its completely viable. They do implicitly encourage stealth because the combat is easily the worst about it. Scaled back dramatically from Valhalla where you can't even use any skills, it's all a bit mindless, lacks any decent feedback. The setting is cool but the story's a bit bland. Environments look great, characters do not. It's a smaller experience too, took 30hrs to 100% it all, definitely can tell it was originally meant to be Valhalla DLC originally.

It's not exactly pre-Origins combat but it's basically that.

I flipping love Unity.

Well I grabbed Mirage as I think I'll like it. I do like the newer games (despite not finishing any of them I like installing one once in a while and messing about - currently faffing around in Ireland in Valhalla killing druids), but for me AC is always farting about in a city in the past randomly stabbing people. If I can do that, it's all good.

A very random AC related aside that I'm sure no-one will find interesting:

Like I say, I was pissing about in Ireland in Valhalla and got to this bit of King Flann's coronation. One of the main DLC characters sings a song during it in gaelic that I actually thought was quite beautiful. So I pop it on Amazon music on my way to work and find out that the musician that sings it, as well as voices the character, is a member of my rowing club. Weirder still, I've never been a massive fan of the gaelic language and there's been some talk at the club with the names for the new boats being written in both English and gaelic. She was one of the ones that wasn't happy with our decision at this point not to run with it (genuine reason being this notion was submitted too late for the naming but it's under consideration for next time). Anyway. This only happened a couple of weeks back and I recall saying to my wife at the time that I wasn't too fussed as I wasn't a massive fan of gaelic. Hear this music last night and think "actually that sounds lovely, I may be being a bit too harsh". And it was her that was singing it.

I know, it's a really pointless anecdote. But it's weird how disparate things in your life have a habit of converging at random moments sometimes.