Personality goes a long way
I am so out of sync with video games criticism it makes my head spin.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is one of the most reviled entries in the Ubisoft juggernaut, recently restarted with the Shadows iteration. And it’s not hard to see why- the stealth is kinda bad- one minute you are spotted from the next block, then you can knife someone within whispering distance without a dull guard noticing. The combat is pure button-mashing nonsense, and by the end when you are fully upgraded is stupidly easy for my old-ass dyspraxic fingers. The bloat and grind of recent AC games is not too much in evidence, but I was definitely rushing the endless Templar Hunts by the end… So how come I loved it so much?
In a word, personality. Or, perhaps more accurately, character. The two biggest characters in the game are your twin protagonists, Jacob and Evie Frye, bickering twins, incurable flirts and increasingly deadly assassins, bent on liberating London from the Templars (I am aware that this is a highly incomplete and questionable precis- I’m not getting into it). As they go along, they interact with a lovely variety of Victorians, from early appearances by Alexander Graham Bell, to, well, Victoria. Solving mysteries with Charles Dickens? Battling dodgy science with Darwin? Yes, it’s dumb, but it’s joyous, and when Victorian deep cut Duleep Singh showed up towards the end, I was sold. And I’m not even going to mention the Mad Winston Churchill bit…
But honestly, the most compelling character in the game is London. The city is rendered in absurd detail and with genuine love. The areas feel distinct as you travel around- Southwark semi-rural, Whitechapel oppressive in its poverty compared to the grandeur of the Strand. All of life is there- couples leaning together in dorways, boys kicking balls around, street hawkers and a constant low buzz of repressed aggression. Yup- that’s London all right. I finished the game 3 days ago and I already miss swinging between its terraces on a mission for Mrs Disraeli.
Did I mention it’s free on PS Plus?
As a post-Syndicate dessert I thought I would try Blue Prince, the much-garlanded puzzle game. In this, you are a voiceless young man navigating an ever-shifting mansion in order to claim your inheritance. In game turns it’s a tile laying game, with some resource management, and a layer of puzzles. The puzzles are the first block for me. There aren’t too many of them, which surprised me to start with, but those I have found so far are… annoying.
It’s one of those games which presents you with problems without giving you any indication of how to begin solving them. You just need to grind through multiple game ‘days’ to find the room that has the hints that might give you the information you need to solve the puzzle. But everything I have read suggests that you need to note (and I do mean note) everything about every room, because it all could be significant.
I am very prepared for being accused of being a basic bitch here, but that feels like work? And I would do it, I would resist the temptation to just google the damn thing, if…. the game made me care, to give even an iota of a shit about the outcome.
But Blue Prince has zero character, and really zero characters. You are a cypher, playing for money that you may or may not actually need. The repressed Edwardian setting reminds me of the (IMO) empty gothic trappings of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The visuals are kind of cool to start with, but after the 50th muted taupe room, I pined for a little more variety and colour. It reminded me a little of Disco Elysium in its attitude- if you are bored and frustrated, that’s on you, philistine.
To be clear, I can see the craft here- the challenge of arranging the rooms is a satisfying one, and the puzzles are tricksy but clever. And this is not so much a review as a confession- I play video games to have fun, and Blue Prince is, to me, not fun.
Sorry
TV recommendation: Can I be the millionth person to say that Colin from Accounts season 2 is just perfect? They go in such honest, interesting directions, and the writing is perfect. It’s Gavin and Stacey with better jokes.
Music: the new Julien Baker album with Torres is just great, intelligent country music. No, that’s not a contradiction.