Shot down

Assassin’s Creed Unity probably should have been taken to the gallows rather than store shelves. There’s a reasonable game at the centre of the Parisian escapade, but performance hiccups have thus far prevented it from breaking free. However, following the addition of a gigantic 6.5GB patch, has Ubisoft managed to salvage anything from the historical package – or is it still somewhat grotesque?

The great news is that after “refurbishing” the adventure’s open world, the studio has finally managed to unlock some improvements. Digital Foundry reports that, while drops to 20 frames-per-second still occur, the title holds much closer to its intended 30FPS now, and sees significant boosts in performance even in crowded areas. “As such the controls feel more responsive, with less judder in the overall experience,” it wrote.

The publication’s still keen to point out that the patch doesn’t provide “anything like the near-solid 30FPS update that one would expect” from a PlayStation 4 title, but it’s a definite improvement over previous versions. Moreover, it adds that visual detail hasn’t been sacrificed to attain this. In even better news, it sounds like the studio has squashed a number of key bugs, including getting stuck in geometry.

To be honest it’s hard to commend the developer for getting the bare essentials right, but it sounds like this is a slightly more playable product these days. We scored the French publisher’s latest a 5/10 in our review, praising elements of its plot and world building – but damning its overall performance problems. The firm was eventually forced to apologise for the title’s issues, offering Season Pass owners a free game to compensate.

[source eurogamer.net]