Overdue reviews is a section on the blog where I finally get to play and review a game a while after the game has launched. Chances are you already own it by the time I post these up, so these reviews are purely to get some content up on the blog in these early days, with games I never reviewed elsewhere being the ones I focus on.
The same can be said for the game I'm finally getting around to reviewing today, with Assassin's Creed Syndicate releasing around the same time me and the Wife were trying our best to sort out a good Xmas for the two kids, so that game Daddy wanted really badly would have to be looked at lovingly for a while until the price dropped a little. Over Easter, it thankfully dropped to just under £13.00 on the Amazon website, so I did what any sane person would do and snapped it up right away
While the story of Syndicate is the standard go out and kill people and be told a ton of story after you've murdered them, games like this for me have always been about the ton of side quests and things that they offer to you and I, and Syndicate is no different. AC Syndicate has a ton of fun and also pointless things to do once you've finished playing around with the main story, or in my case getting to about sequence five and then just running around like a loon doing everything and anything that was showing up as available on the map. So for the low price of just under £13.00 that I paid for my copy, it came across as a cracking bargain when finally getting to play the game.
Now onto the upgrade portion of the review and both Jacob and Evie have a ton of upgrades to add to their character, which you can buy with skill points that unlock every time you collect 1000XP in the game. There are three options to choose from when spending your skill points, with Combat, Stealth, and finally Ecosystem the ones to choose from.
Combat upgrades offer such upgrades as a bigger counter window to attacks from enemies, to simpler things such as adding a health segment to your overall health bar.
Stealth sees upgrades such as upgrading your locking picking and knife throwing skills.
Finally, the Ecosystem portion seeing upgrades to items like your eagle vision (think x-ray vision if you're new to the AC series), as well as how much damage your character can take from an attack and so much more.
Ringleader allows you to upgrade the level of the gang members that can accompany you in the game, as well as what power of members that can be. The three available are Watchers, Brutes, and enforcers, all of which are powerful in their own unique way.
Insider lets you lower your notoriety with both the police and blighters (standard enemy found all over the game) amongst other things.
Finally, Swindler allows you to buy into businesses that will see money earned going into your safe found on the train that travels around the world, which essentially plays the role of your safehouse in the game and has everything you need all in one place.
Summary: While this quick review might be a bit all over the place, let me make one thing clear to you in this last piece of this review. AC: Syndicate while not being something that will drag the haters of the series back into making a purchase anytime soon, as a fan of the previous games I'm glad I finally got around to picking it up. Having broken the 20+ hour mark in playtime thanks to this review today, I can only see myself adding to that over the next few weeks, in what is a game that offers a lot for a such a small price now when looking around the Internet for it.
Pros
+ Offers great value for money right now
+Tons of things to do away from the story
+No more pointless multiplayer tacked on to it
Cons
-Whoever thought Horse & carts would be a great idea for transport clearly need their head testing, as it's awful