Good news: a new Assassin’s Creed Origins patch yesterday expanded and improved the open-world murder simulator’s Photo Mode, which is one of John’s favourite parts of the game. It also fixes a number of bugs and crashes, and supposedly improves performance a bit too – things I suppose you might be interested in. Me, I’m poring over the update with concern, trying to figure out if Ubi have fixed those wonderful glitched-out humanoid animals. Please no. (more…)

I’m having an odd time with Assassin’s Creed Origins. It is, perhaps, the most “fine” game I’ve ever played. It’s fine. It’s fine>. It’s not bad. There are bugs, but they’re not that bad. There’s… plenty to do? It is, I’ve found, one of the most bland games I’ve ever experienced. But goodness me, it lets you take a good screenshot.

I’ve found, as I’ve played the first ten or so hours, that I’ve had much more fun using the game’s photo mode than I have completing any of the quests. So I figured I’d share some of my snapshots with you. (more…)

A soft reboot four years in the making, Ubisoft Montreal’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins is one giant step back in time plus a smaller step forward in terms of world design, a stumble in terms of its levelling system, a sideways hop as regards combat and an exercise in jogging on the spot in terms of missions. This is exactly the kind of complex footwork that leads to messy accidents during parkour sequences, but somehow, the game keeps its balance throughout, though it’s not quite the revival I was hoping for.

(more…)

Several Ancient Egyptian gods had the heads of animals but a bug in Assassin’s Creed Origins turns beasts humanoid in a wonderful and terrifying other way. While we’ve already reported players bumping into bugs and crashes in Origins, none were nearly as exciting as the creatures photographed and tweeted by Tom Phillips of our corporate sibling Eurogamer. A bug can make animals appear standing on their hind legs, twisted in the human ‘T pose’ (a sort of ‘blank slate’ animation) with their necks mangled. Reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption’s human/animal glitches like the donkey lady and flapping bird woman, they replace Unity’s missing faces as my favourite Ass Creed bug. Sure, bugs can be nuisances, but we can also enjoy their absurdity; I myself was delighted by a light show in XCOM 2’s final mission.

In a week in which Assassin’s Creed Origins has managed to break the charts to such a degree that it somehow not only appears three> times, but also stopped Feedly from being able to display the rest of the games in the correct order, we also see a few other new entries. But absolutely no new names. (more…)

Alice is on holiday and she’s taken all the games with her. Luckily some developers released new> games after she’d left, so the rest of us still have something to play. Our choices are below, but we want to know from you: what are you playing in this weekend of plenty?

(more…)

Assassin s Creed Origins is out today, and for some of you that will mean you ve got a weekend full of murder and climbing pyramids ahead of you, but others have been less fortunate. We re not talking Unity-levels of performance issues, but players have been reporting issues ranging from bugs to crashes.

(more…)

Our full review of Assassin’s Creed: Origins is yet to come, but Edwin has been exploring its world on our behalf and sends back this report.>

I’ve only had time for a quick poke through the world of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, thanks to a combination of Ancient Egypt-grade download speeds, short notice and a tortuous wrangle with graphics card drivers, but I’m already enjoying myself. This is something of a surprise, as I’ve become profoundly weary of the Ubiworld in recent years and Origins is very much an Ubiworld – a Pharoah’s haul of bite-sized distractions and trinkets that may or may not add up into something genuinely compelling.

(more…)

Free bits coming to Assassin’s Creed Origins [official site] in the weeks and months after launch will include battles against gods, a wave survival arena mode, and the promised tourism of Discovery Mode. Ubi today detailed their post-launch plans, which include some nice bits and pieces, then went on to announce all the paid DLC because apparently this is something people find exciting. I’m still baffled by DLC announcements coming when I haven’t even bought the game yet and certainly don’t fancy paying extra up front, but here we go. (more…)

Seeing as Assassin’s Creed took a year out between Syndicate and Assassin’s Creed Origins [official site], will your PC need to hurdle an extra year’s tech to play this new one? Nope! Ubisoft have confirmed the system requirements, and they’re the same as Syndicate demanded. Ubi also gab about PC technobits including making a proper go of keyboard and mouse controls, a built-in benchmarking tool, and options for dynamic resolution scaling to keep framerates stable (or not, if you don’t want it). (more…)