Assassin’s Creed: Nexus (VR)
Ah, the blessed Black Friday! When everyone's hunting for deals, especially parents preparing holiday gifts. It seems Ubisoft is surprising us this period with a new title – Assassin’s Creed: Nexus, which hasn't had much promotion. In the new Assassin’s Creed game, we play from a first-person perspective, as it's a title exclusive to VR platforms. So get your VR headsets ready and...
Animus Initializing … 82%
Animus Initializing … Complete.
Welcome to the Animus… for real!
The narrative in AC: Nexus offers us three historical campaigns from different timelines, with different protagonists in each story.
So, we have the following assassin heroes:
- Ezio Auditore da Firenze in Renaissance Italy, with action taking place 2 years after the events of AC: Brotherhood;
- Kassandra in Ancient Greece, with the action set 20 years after the Battle of Amphipolis;
- Connor Kenway with the action taking place in Boston and Newport.
If you're familiar with the Assassin’s Creed series and enjoyed the early titles, then I bet Ezio Auditore will be the first assassin hero you choose to begin your virtual adventure.
Now that we've chosen our protagonist, we can move directly to avatar recalibration, which is common for VR games and very necessary if you want to fully enjoy the game's parkour mechanics. These are a true delight and make the game super fun. The game made me fondly remember the times when I used to go out and practice parkour for real… oh, the good old times. Another fun and well-implemented aspect in AC: Nexus is archery or knife throwing. At least for me, the combination of parkour and ranged combat makes Nexus a game worth trying.
Nexus aims to be a fairly generous sandbox game, with many types of challenges and collectibles. We have mini-games designed to offer history lessons, challenges where you have to successfully complete parkour routes, and archery target practice. The game tries to capitalise on the most popular VR-specific mechanics and leverage them through the Assassin’s Creed theme.
Unfortunately, exploration isn't particularly impressive in terms of visual impact. I can't say the graphics blew me away in any way, but the fault lies with the technical limitations of my device, the Meta Quest 2, which makes the Nexus universe look like it comes from a transitional era between the famous PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. However, if you are the lucky owner of a Meta Quest 3, then you have no more worries. Everything should run and look as the developers at Ubisoft intended.
In terms of sound, the game is very good. The sound immersion is high quality. What bothered me during my hours of play was the soundtrack, which quickly became boring due to a lack of diversity. Luckily, the music changes when you start a new story from a different historical period. Even if the music didn't impress me, on the stealth mechanics side, the sound of footsteps helps enormously to facilitate good immersion, especially when performing assassin actions with the famous hidden blade. Hats off to the stealth gameplay!
Even though I don't play VR very often, in this case, I chose to start the game on normal difficulty. At first glance, you might say Nexus is quite complex and can be a little intimidating, but the learning curve is very forgiving and you get familiar with the buttons and control scheme quite quickly, which is definitely a plus. The game also excels in accessibility, being very intuitive and easy to handle once you get used to the gameplay style.
Combat in AC: Nexus, I would say, is a hybrid that combines real-time and turn-based fighting. How so!? Simple, when you initiate a fight, you can't attack continuously; after your first move, you have to wait for the enemy to attack you. While they attack, you can synchronise a parry, dodge, or counter action, and if successful, the enemy enters a vulnerable state, allowing you to attack again. During a fight, you can also use abilities like a dash that immobilises the opponent for a short period. What I described above is strictly for a more aggressive playstyle; if you prefer to play the stealthy way of a true assassin, then you don't have to worry about it. If you're not interested in combat, the game also offers interactions with mini-games/puzzles.
Technically, the AC: Nexus experience was flawless, with no bugs or crashes. I know it's normal for games not to cause such problems, but in recent years, you rarely see games that run perfectly without the need for a Day 01 Patch. Good job, Ubisoft! The only inconvenience was the need to recalibrate the controller sometimes because my avatar simply refused to grab the edges of a roof or a specific object when I was caught in parkour sessions.
If you have a VR device (or plan to buy one), are an Assassin’s Creed fan, love the story that made the series famous, want to discover new intrigues or missing information from the universe, are passionate about parkour and nothing else since Mirror’s Edge has satisfied that craving, are keen on archery and stealth games, then Assassin’s Creed: Nexus is definitely a good choice for you!
For me, the experience of an Assassin’s Creed game in virtual reality is new and surprising. It's not a perfect game, but it managed to give me a good few hours (around 15 hours) of quality entertainment. For a VR game, a 15-hour playtime is more than enough. Assassin’s Creed: Nexus might not reach the level of Half-Life: Alyx, but it has certainly made it onto the list of the best games in the VR platform's library. I recommend you get your headsets ready and give it a chance, you won't be disappointed!
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Played on: Meta Quest 2
Release date: 16 November 2023
Developer: Ubisoft Red Storm, Düsseldorf, Reflections,
Mumbai, Pune, Montreal, Belgrade and Berlin
Publisher: Ubisoft
