Assassin's Creed: Unity, Street Fighter V, and Batman: The Telltale Series

Good evening! I have a pretty big game library and it's useful to review popular releases periodically. This post is going to cover Assassin's Creed: Unity, Street Fighter V, and Batman: The Telltale Series. All three of these games have very different gameplay styles, strengths, weaknesses, stories, and more. We live in a world where games are becoming more like movies and vice versa. Keep reading to see what I thought about these particular games. 

Assassin's Creed: Unity is an action-adventure game that takes place during the French Revolution in 18th-century France. It features a young assassin named Arno Dorian who's trying to find out who murdered his father. During his journey, Arno reconnects with his childhood sweetheart, Elise de la Serre. Unfortunately, she's a member of the Templar Knights, the Assassin order's arch nemesis organization. The story includes espionage, political intrigue, romance, and background elements for the French Revolution. Only one side can win and that means either Arno or Elise will fail to have a happy ending. 

Sadly, this game doesn't have many positive elements. However, it has a gorgeous open world environment. The player can explore 18th-century France for hours, weeks, or even months. It's a beautiful and authentic landscape with amazing detail. You can explore palaces, cities, pastoral regions, and more. This game's strongest elements are probably the graphics and map's depth. 

I have a lot of criticism for this game. Unity is shockingly boring for this series. I spent half of the game hiding, following people, climbing buildings, walking through crowds, and running away. Where's the action? Assassin's Creed is supposed to have a lot of fighting and killing! I'm sorry if that sounds barbaric, but it's an essential part of the franchise. Who wants to spend several hours wandering through crowds to hide from military soldiers? I certainly don't! 

More importantly, the controls and gameplay elements in general are super clunky. There's very little fluidity in the combat system and it's really easy to make mistakes. I ran into many issues, such as shooting or stabbing people by accident, climbing up walls for no reason, running in the wrong direction, and jumping off buildings to my death. It's difficult to fight quickly and efficiently. Overall, the gameplay is a mess. 

I'm not impressed with the plot either. It's primarily a soap opera. Furthermore, the characters are dull and speak with English accents. I couldn't tell you why the characters have English accents in 18th-century France. There might be a strange backstory to this phenomenon, but it's moot. The characters had Italian accents in Assassin's Creed II because it took place in 16th-century Italy. If the game takes place in 18th-century France, the characters should have French accents.

Unity also has tons of glitches. I think the developers needed to spend more time on this game. The screen freezes frequently, Arno gets stuck in the scenery all the time, dead characters come back to life, and saved progress randomly disappears sometimes. It's really frustrating to repeat a chapter that was already completed. Most games have some glitches, but this is unacceptable. 

I truly believe this game was a missed opportunity. This should have a been a great addition to the Assassin's Creed series. Don't bother spending money on Unity because it's such a mess. Play better games, like Black Flag, Syndicate, Odyssey​, etc. There are plenty of terrific games in this franchise. 

Let's move on to Street Fighter V. It's worth mentioning that Street Fighter V is only available on the PC and PlayStation 4. For some reason, it wasn't released on the Xbox One. The story vaguely follows the life of Charlie Nash, an old friend and colleague of Guile. However, it's mostly a collision between popular characters in the series. It's a battle of skill, grit, and perseverance. Bascially, it's an arcade game. 

This is a wonderful game for hardcore Street Fighter fans. It has many classic characters with their skill sets from earlier games. This is like an old school arcade game with modern graphics. It's very nostalgic, fun, and appropriate for the fighting game genre. Plus, the original Street Fighter games are included on the disc. It's a great bonus. 

Fortunately, everyone should be able to find a character who matches their fighting style. This game has a variety of characters and all of them are different. I tend to play well with Ryu, Ken, and other characters who use projectiles. On the other hand, I'm much weaker with larger characters who rely on grapples, like Zangief and Birdie. If you struggle with a specific character, try someone else. 

It's a fun way to kill an hour or two. Street Fighter V is a nice break from role-playing games, first person shooters, open world environments, and long campaigns. It's just an old fashioned fighting game without complications. I realize complexity is becoming standardized in modern games, but simplicity can be amazing sometimes. 

This game has some catches. You'll have to purchase a lot of content to unlock everything. Some of the best characters have to be purchased from the PlayStation store, including Guile and Sagat. The complete story mode is also a purchase. This will seriously bother many gamers because they want all of the content without spending extra money. 

​It's not a particularly impressive game either. Don't expect a complex story, a lengthy campaign, or an awe inspiring open world environment. Street Fighter V isn't the type of game you'll play every day. It's a game that some people will play periodically because it doesn't have significant variety. 

Also, the dialogue is comically bad. It sounds robotic and cheesy. Honestly, it sounds like the voice actors don't care. It's probably just a paycheck for them. This game seems to have a lot of lazy writing. Even the individual story modes are limited, short, and underdeveloped. 

Overall, Street Fighter V is a great game for certain individuals. It's terrific for people who love fighting games, especially the Street Fighter series. This game won't be a good choice for players who prefer first person shooters, role-playing games, or a lot of complexity. If you enjoy arcade games, give it a shot. You'll probably like it. 

Batman: The Telltale Series is the final game on this post. It's a storytelling game that's told through the eyes of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. He's a millionaire business tycoon during the day and a vigilante superhero at night. During Harvey Dent's campaign for the mayor of Gotham City, Batman has a strange encounter with a thief named Cat Woman. A long chain of disastrous events follows, including a vendetta with the Penguin, the emergence of Harvey's dual personality called Two-Face, and a terrorist uprising from the Children of Arkham. Batman has to conquer all of these enemies to keep Gotham safe. 

This game has a few decent elements. It's a solid mystery with unpredictable and intriguing plot points. Even though this game struggles in some ways, the story is good enough to keep the player interested. It has quite a bit of substance for a video game. 

Batman has really solid action scenes for a Telltale game. I was impressed. It's not like a first person shooter, but still cool. The player needs to press the right buttons in a particular sequence. It's fun and a little bit challenging. This game is almost like a live action comic book. 

I saw a lot of Batman characters in this game, including allies and villains. It includes Alfred, Lucius Fox, Vickie Vale, Cat Woman, Harvey Dent, the Penguin, Falcone, Gordon, and other popular characters. This game should appeal to Batman fans and their love for the source material. 

Unfortunately, this game suffers from a lot of pacing issues. Certain parts of the story are very slow and dull. Luckily, more exciting segments usually follow the boring ones. Telltale games can have a hard time retaining a player's attention even without pacing issues. This particular game might be a real struggle to complete for some people. 

I noticed several bugs and glitches. White blotches appear on the screen, the character's hesitate, and the dialogue can be out of sync. It didn't ruin the experience for me, but I definitely noticed a lot of glitches. The situation is unusual because I don't typically see many glitches in Telltale games.  

The animation seems a little bit weird as well. It's kind of like the animation from the Borderlands games. That style of animation looks fine for Borderlands, but it's an odd choice for Batman. It looks somewhat cartoonish. Although, it might be the standard animation style for the Telltale games anyway. 

The characters and their backstories underwent drastic changes. Major characters die early in the game and important figures have completely different identities. Some of the changes are jarring. I appreciate the effort to make the game less predictable, but it should have been more faithful to the source material. 

Here's my verdict for this Batman game. It's not a bad choice for people who love the Telltale games in general and people who want a different Batman story. Don't play this game if you have a short attention span. It's more about storytelling than bloody violence. I also wouldn't recommend it for people who primarily play first person shooters and similar genres. This game might seem pretty dull for certain individuals. 

You made it to the end of this week's post! I hope these reviews will be helpful for your gaming experience. Have you played any of these games yet? Leave your thoughts in the comment section. Keep watching for more posts in the near future. You can always come back here for pop culture news and discussions. Thanks for visiting and have a good night.