Assassin's Creed Unity: 8 Things It Does Better Than The Rest

4. Animus Sections Finally Feel Worthwhile

One of the more unusual elements of the gameplay of Assassin's Creed in the early releases was the way players found themselves playing a game within a game; with players uncovering secrets about their heroes' past lives through the Animus. On its own this sounds like a fairly inoffensive story element, but the game's insistence upon pulling players out of the life of uber-cool assassins and forcing them to control hapless and helpless Desmond Miles became a major source of frustration. Having to stop the awesome free-running and beautifully ruthless assassinations in favour of running from unknown enemies in VR-themed worlds was just not a good compromise to make. Many would have hoped that Ubisoft would have just done away with this unnecessary blend of two jarring elements, but sadly they only moved partly away. While this is frustrating, the developers do deserve some kudos for making that blend far more organic as the series has worn on, and nowhere is that more evident than in AC: Unity. Players have minimal content outside the body of their assassin, and the sequences that take place out of the timescale of the main story still see players carry on with much of the enjoyable gameplay as they travel through 'Helix Portals'. Unity basically sees players spend the most time actually playing as the titular assassin, and that's certainly a step in the right direction.