Sometimes it s good to go back to where you came from in open world games. When the content is the world, travelling through it can often feel like you re gobbling it up, every virtual kilometre a chunk of media you ve greedily consumed rather than occupied.

But they rarely give you much reason for retracing your steps. Levelled rewards are rarely worth the journey; storylines and quests are often all used up. Towns, jungles, villages are left frozen in time, a snapshot of less sophisticated times. Now their challenges are less keen, their demands on your expanded skillset simplistic. Their NPCs repeat the same declamations as they ever did, ignorant of your world-spanning achievements.

While these worlds are physically non-linear, they often feel the opposite, locations standing as staging posts on a winding trail rather than interconnected places. Then I played Assassin s Creed Origins, which goes out of its way to seed the places you ve barrelled through with reasons to return. (more…)

Yesterday, the very fabric of society was threatened when some people disputed, with terminally dangerous inaccuracy, my 100% objectively and factually correct assertion that the currently-free Assassin’s Creed 4 is the bestest best Assassin’s Creed game of all time. Some of these anarchistic perverts argued that this year’s Egypt-set Origins was the better man-stabber, despite its complete absence of ghost pirate ships and Welsh accents, and rest assured they will suffer for this blasphemy.

But I am a merciful dictator of gaming opinion, so before they are all rounded up and fired into the sun, I shall first allow them to enjoy the bountiful contents of Asscreed Origins Update 6. Also known as patch 1.1.0, this 1.2GB bundle o’fixes includes significant graphical improvements and the aforementioned new difficulty mode. Enjoy it while you still draw breath, heretics. (more…)

I like the boat-centric Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag so much that I just went and added it to Uplay even though I already own it Steam. That’s right: an Asscreed I dig enough to voluntarily load up Uplay. Last week, Ubisoft were giving away the tragically de-Steamed RTS World in Conflict, and, as we promised then, here’s your nudge about this week’s Festivus freebie.

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Have you been finding Assassin s Creed Origins, a game where you can control the trajectory of your arrows, a bit on the easy side? Don t fret — the December update will add a new “nightmare” difficulty mode, level scaling and two new quests, one of which introduces horde mode.

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The tail-end of Steam’s Autumnal sale sees a few old favourites lingering with the usual suspects in the charts this week. The discounts that got them here are all gone now, but it’s only a couple of weeks now before everything goes completely bonkers for the Winter Sale, and you can expect to see all the same names deeply discounted once more. (more…)

Assassin s Creed clothes are some of the best clothes in all games. Those layers, all those flowing, flapping, swinging layers: cloth and leather and swords and knives and pouches and harnesses. I often idly wonder, as I watch an Assassin s Creed loading screen, how many people – how many studios! – produce Assassin s Creed s clothes? They re a wonder of code and art coming together, of layers of beautiful fabric flapping just right. And Ubisoft knocked Assassin s Creed Origins clothes out of the goddamn park.

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Hey ho, chart fans, let’s go. Statman John is indisposed today, and was last seen meandering along the seafront muttering “Plunkbat! They give me Plunkbat! I’ve a grand idea for a grand theft five five fi-diddly-fi fi whoopsadaisy down we go,” so I’m taking over for this week’s Steam charts. Seeing as he’s always griping about the charts being identical, I’m sure John will be infuriated to miss seeing how much Steam’s autumn sale changed things. Won’t you join for me a stroll down the hit parade? (more…)

Imagine what would happen if Plunkbat weren’t to be at number 1? Could anyone even cope any more? Has all of gaming started operating on this as a foundation, forgetting that it could, one day, not sell more copies than everything else? What if I’m writing this as a bluff because it’s not at number 1 this week? What if I just wrote that to imply the bluff even though there isn’t a bluff?! OH MY GOODNESS EVERYONE QUICKLY READ THIS NOW!

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If my second favourite thing to do in Assassin s Creed Origins is tomb raiding, my first favourite thing is travelling by eagle. Your character, Bayek, has a pet eagle called Senu which constantly follows in the sky above him, and you can possess it at pretty any time, sweeping your view up into its own. As Senu you can fly freely, ascending to extraordinary heights and roaming as far as the map allows, while Bayek waits far below.

Here s the thing. If Bayek is standing, he ll remain motionless, but if he s riding a mount and you ve set it to automatically follow the roads to a waypoint, he ll keep riding as you fly. And thus you get to experience Egypt from the best seat in the house. There are limits: you can t stray too far from Bayek, else he ll just stop. But it s remarkably free. (more…)

Weirdly, none of my favourite Assassin s Creed Origins moments so far relate to assassinating. Then again, they never really did in the previous games. Instead they re about buildings, specifically climbing them and going into them. So it s appropriate that my absolute second favourite thing to do in Assassin s Creed: Origins is tombs. (more…)