Grade: A
Sometimes you want to admire the pluck and inventiveness of an indie developer. At other times, you just want to sink into some thumping AAA franchise that’s thrown all the time, design talent and VC megabucks in the world at the screen. The new Assassin’s Creed has you covered there. Irresistibly, it’s set in a richly detailed and (kinda) historically accurate 16th-century Japan – which means, as all teenage boys will know, ninjas and samurais.
Be warned, though: I downloaded the PC version, but the screen appeared to announce that I don’t have an STD so my new game wouldn’t run. Talk about a mixed blessing. Turns out it meant an SSD, or solid-state drive – me neither – and they’re harder to catch than the
other thing.
The PS5 version worked just fine. And you can see why it needs all that power. The gameworld is vast, every bit of cherry blossom or brazier flame is lovingly animated, and most importantly there’s a ton of stuff to kill. You take turns playing one of two characters: a tanky samurai called Yasuke, who dances merrily from baddie to baddie lopping off heads. Or you’re ninja Naoe, who doesn’t respond with equanimity to taking a sword to the bonce but who dodges and rolls, sneaks about, parkours and stealth-assassinates like a champ.
There’s the traditional silly frame story about a computer simulation extracting memories from ancestral DNA (it’s bigger on historical than scientific plausibility). When you die it solemnly tells you you’re ‘Desynchronized’. But it’s ridiculously fun. There’s every chance you won’t notice how long you’ve been playing till you see the sun come up.
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