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A year after the launch of the new wave of consoles, the Assassin's Creed franchise has finally made its next-gen leap, leaving Xbox 360 and PS3 behind for good (though those consoles get their own game this year, Rogue). Developed using a radically upgraded version of the AnvilNext engine, the technology allows for hundreds of NPCs littered around the streets, while the exquisite building work across the cityscape is filled with incidental details and layered with realistic surface shaders. This is topped off with a global illumination system that mimics the way light bounces across environments in real life, bringing depth to locations throughout the game.The scope is impressive, and the core visuals are stunning, but the journey into delivering a true next-generation Assassin's Creed title isn't completely successful. From a graphical perspective, pop-in is rife amongst near-field NPCs, with some characters appearing out of nowhere while others go through several jarring LOD transitions from just a few feet away. Performance is also flaky, feeling more in line with older Assassin's Creed titles as opposed to last year's Black Flag, which ran at a rock-solid 30fps.
In gameplay terms, effort has clearly been made to address issues that have plagued the series since the beginning: animations are smoother, traversal feels more fluid, and NPCs have a wider range of reactions depending on the player's actions. But at the same time these changes feel more like tweaks and enhancements to the tired existing mechanics, as opposed to the kind of radical overhaul expected from a next-gen début. Traversing the environment still isn't as smooth as it could be (characters still get stuck on scenery), and jarring transitions between animations still occur as players climb and leap their way across the beautifully rendered architecture.
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