Disclosure: This is an article written and released by Ubisoft, and sent to GameCritics via Ubisoft PR. While we don’t usually run PR releases, given its focus on accessibility and our lifelong dedication to same, we’re happy to share this information. The article can be seen in its original format here.

Rainbow Six Siege X is launching on June 10, kicking off a new evolution of the tactical first-person shooter with new content and major updates. To help players prepare, we’ve published details on the Siege X PC & console specs, and in this article, we’re diving deep into accessibility.

The Siege team has long had accessibility in their sights as a priority, as you’ll see in our interview with User Experience Director Sébastien François. He describes the team’s embrace of accessibility throughout the years, shares details on how they’ve been preparing for Siege X, and offers insights into their future. Read on to learn more.

What is the Siege team’s goal or guiding philosophy when it comes to accessibility?

Sébastien François: Siege is a tactical competitive shooter with a strong esports scene, which presents its own set of challenges compared to a single-player game, but we do not want to compromise on accessibility. We want as many players as possible to be able to engage with our unique gameplay elements with comfort, so they can enjoy the full extent of what the Siege experience has to offer. This is an integral part of our design process, and an important focus for our ongoing efforts to improve the game season after season.

What production processes has the team implemented to help facilitate these goals?

SF: We have a dedicated Siege Accessibility team that has led many different initiatives throughout the years, and continues to do so. We rely on them and our partners within Ubisoft to inform our decisions from the very beginning during the conception phase, aswewant to make sure that we’re not creating unnecessary barriers.

One of the best things I’ve observed over time is that every member of the Siege team is an advocate for accessibility. During production meetings, various team members naturally bring up the importance of considering different aspects related to accessibility. This creates a positive environment that fosters the development of better and more inclusive designs.

Rainbow Six Siege has been going for almost ten years. Have there been any major accessibility milestones or evolutions throughout its history?

SF: The first major milestone was the creation of the dedicated team I mentioned earlier. With proper resources and growing expertise, the team has delivered incredible improvements.

One such example is the option to customize the color of both teams, a feature that highlights the challenges a 10-year-old game can face. Implementing this required extensive restructuring and thoughtful design, as it impacts many aspects of the game, from the user interface to in-game lighting and textures. This system has been a key milestone in promoting accessibility and shaping our processes, from design conception to technical implementation.

Our newest permanent game mode, Dual Front, which allows Attackers and Defenders to be on the same team, greatly benefited from this foundation. And the system will continue to receive updates in Year 10.

Distinguishing visual information quickly is a necessity in Siege. Are there visual adaptations that players can implement to help them parse what they are seeing?

SF: We have worked to provide options that allow players to focus on the core elements of gameplay comfortably, such as reducing the intensity of bright flashes, and removing blur effects or camera shake.

It is crucial for players to distinguish their team’s gadgets from their opponents’, which is supported through team color customization. In addition to the color itself, the way it is displayed gives players cues about how the gadget can be interacted with; colored LEDs indicate electronic interactions, while colored textures signify a gadget’s mechanical nature.

With Siege X, we revisited the Outline System to ensure enemies can be spotted in our revamped maps, which are generally darker. This new implementation enhances both immersion and fairness during gunfights.

Speaking of Siege X, what were the accessibility priorities as the team approached this evolution of the game? What are some of the features players can expect to see added?

SF: A major focus for us has been supporting visual accessibility in Dual Front and the modernized maps, using team colors on gadgets and outlines; these have been expanded to work with the new Siege X features from day one. New audio options have been introduced, such as customizable tinnitus sound options and controls for dynamic range. Another great addition is the Communication Wheel, which players can use to share information non-verbally. The team also worked on several quality-of-life improvements.

While Siege X is an important milestone, this is an ongoing effort. Some features, such as input remapping, were delivered earlier to lay the foundation for Siege X, and more features will continue to roll out season after season!

Looking ahead to the coming years of Siege X, what are your plans for expanding or refining accessibility in the game?

SF: We monitor best practices and are always on the lookout for improvements. In Year 10, we will further refine color customization with a significant update that will conclude a long series of incremental improvements made over the past years.

Another major initiative is to continue expanding player control over how they interact with the game through their inputs, whether using a mouse and keyboard or a controller.

Providing visual support for sound will be one of our next major areas of investigation, and we’re very excited to take on this challenge.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURE LIST

Visual

• Colorblind accessible by design wherever possible
• Customizable team colors
• Customizable optic color when aiming down sight
• Visual intensity configurable through various settings, including screen shake, motion blur and a dark mode for bright flashes
• Configurable amount of information to display in HUD
• Configurable text chat size
• Conversion of voice chat to text

Audio

• Separate volume sliders for master, in-game music, in-game sounds, menu music, menu sounds, and voiceovers
• Voiceover presets to control amount of information communicated through voiceovers
• Configurable dynamic range to help avoid auditory fatigue by lowering the loudest sounds
• Configurable tinnitus sound effect of explosions and stun grenades
• Conversion of text chat to voice

Controls

• Keyboard & mouse and controller remapping for gameplay controls
• Controller presets
• Advanced sensitivity settings for controller, including configurable dead zones, acceleration and more. Separate settings for aiming down sights.
• Hold or Toggle option for main gameplay interactions

— Chris Watters

The post Rainbow Six Siege X Accessibility Spotlight appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An exceptional narrative and combat system that builds upon years of experience.

LOW Some slowdown and visual quirks.

WTF I urge all readers to watch Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai before playing this game

For almost two decades, gamers have been well-acquainted with Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series. 

The first nine mainline releases saw players inhabit virtual recreations of historical settings in small-scale, open-ended environments that focused on stealth-based gameplay and stories that involve Dan Brown-esque shadow societies and conspiracies.

In 2017, Ubisoft changed directions and the series has since shifted into an open-world, action role-playing style, rivaling modern juggernauts such as The Witcher III and Red Dead Redemption II. As a longtime fan of the series, the current iteration is one I’ve grown fond of, with my own review of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla praising its deeper focus on exploration and strong combat suite. However, even after putting over 100 hours into Valhalla, I still felt that it (and the series as a whole) needed a little more to push itself into greatness and Shadows is that attempt.

Played from a third-person perspective, Shadows is an action-RPG set in feudal Japan. During this time (the end of the Sengoku period), conflicts have broken out while major advancements in wartime technology (like the introduction of guns) have turned the tide of battle. Players are introduced to the two protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke. The former is a ninja who’s been training her whole life among her people in the Iga Province. The latter, based on the real historical figure of the same name, is an African who was granted the title of Samurai. Without revealing too many narrative details, both characters meet in dire circumstances and form an allyship to liberate Japan from a wave of oppressors. 

The storytelling in Shadows is one of its strongest suits, providing a much darker and deeper narrative the series has seen in years. This era in Japan was known for death and destruction, and the story covers that with a gravity I wasn’t expecting. Themes center around the aftermath of war, the tolls that vengeance takes on people and how race and class affect worldview are all prevalent and handled well. It also helps that the two main characters are charming and fleshed out — Naoe’s brash attitude clashes with Yasuke’s more thoughtful personality, making their dynamic work.  

The grand scope and wonderful character of this piece recalls the likes of Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre of samurai films (Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, etc.) while the over-the-top violence reminded me of Kenji Misumi’s classic Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance or Takashi Miike’s excellent remake of 13 Assassins. Those cinematic allusions also play a huge part in the story’s presentation, as every cutscene is well-directed and featuring solid cinematography and the inclusion of black bars above and below the screen to add some flair, giving that “widescreen” look.

With the story being the best the series has seen in ages, I’m also happy to report that the gameplay is exceptional, with innovations and changes made to combat and stealth.

Players control both Naoe and Yasuke in their journey through Japan and are able to switch between them freely after an extended period with Naoe at the beginning. Rather than each character being a simple aesthetic choice, each provides a different style, different skill trees and different approaches to combat, allowing players to build Naoe and Yasuke how they want. 

For example, I decided that Naoe should be an excellent assassin and focused on those skills in her tree. She was able to perform a double assassination with a hidden blade, had an arsenal of tools like kunai (a small blade) that could be thrown to dispose of enemies quickly and quietly, and a smoke bomb to get out of dangerous situations. At one point, I even found armor that allowed me to inflict more damage at night, adding to my plan of sticking to the shadows. Naoe can also go prone and crawl on the floor, sneaking through bushes and under structures to catch enemies off guard.

If I did have to get loud using Naoe, I made sure she was an adept fighter and upgraded her katana skills. Combat as a shinobi is a fast dance of careful dodges, parries and quick sword attacks. The stamina meter from Valhalla is gone, allowing players to attack without the cumbersome feeling of managing a meter. 

Yasuke isn’t so graceful, but he brings a more brutal style of play. A trained samurai, Yasuke mostly uses weapons like katanas or kanabō (spiked clubs) in fights to delivers slower, yet more powerful attacks. His abilities include a kick that can send opponents flying or knocking them down after running into them. Despite not being able to sneak as easily as Naoe, I enjoyed walking into an enemy outpost and taking on a large group of enemies. This boldness pairs excellently with gnarly finisher moves, with plenty of heads and limbs being chopped off. 

Other major upgrades to combat include the importance of lights and sounds, as players are able to extinguish candles to conceal themselves in the dark and being careful when sneaking around to avoid creaky floorboards. After the last few entries in the AC series deemphasizing stealth in exchange for action, being able to play Shadows as a full-blown stealth title is a treat. Supporting this is that quests are dynamic, with many ways to complete them. For example, Naoe had to assassinate someone in a house. I managed to successfully sneak past the guards, find a suitable vantage point and threw a knife from a safe distance before anyone had seen me. I completed the quest and faced no alarms or opposition. 

As mentioned, Shadows does an excellent job in storytelling and presentation to make the experience feel cinematic, and it also helps that the visuals are gorgeous, with character models and facial animations looking good. However, the real star of the show is Japan itself.

Riding through winding hills on horseback is a treat, as mountains on the horizon paint a gorgeous picture. The same goes for standing in a dense forest full of bamboo. Shadows’ Japan is smaller than Valhalla’s England, which in turn makes it more dense with detail. The overall presentation is amazing and during my time, I only encountered minor moments of slowdown and a few weird clipping instances.  

Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels like the culmination of years of reworking the series into a full-fledged RPG. With smart changes to the overall flow of combat and a narrative that rivals some of the best triple-AAA experiences available today, Shadows is not only the best AC in well over a decade, but arguably one of the finest action-RPGs of the decade so far.

Fans and doubters alike owe it to themselves to take this trip to Japan.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 

Buy Assassin’s Creed Shadows: PS5 – Xbox – PC

Disclosures: This game is published and developed by Ubisoft. It is available on PC, PS5, and XBX/S. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 30 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed (still playing). There is no multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language. The site reads: This is an action-adventure game in which players follow the stories of a shinobi assassin (Naoe) and a samurai (Yasuke) as they navigate turbulent clan wars during Sengoku-era Japan. Players explore open-world environments while performing missions (e.g., searching for items, infiltrating enemy compounds) and using stealth to kill human targets. Players use swords, throwing/concealed blades, and occasional guns to kill various enemies (e.g., ninja, guards, soldiers, samurai) in melee-style combat. Battles are highlighted by screams of pain and frequent blood-splatter effects. Some finishing moves allow players to decapitate or dismember enemies, with brief slow-motion effects. Cutscenes depict further instances of violence: captives beheaded; characters shot at close range. The words “sh*t” and “a*shole” appear in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles and visual options available in the game, all of which can be adjusted. This game is fully accessible. More on the accessibility can be read here.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Disclosure: This is an article written and released by Ubisoft, and sent to GameCritics via Ubisoft PR. While we don’t usually run PR releases, given its focus on accessibility and our lifelong dedication to same, we’re happy to share this information. The article can be seen in its original format here.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. Set during the late Sengoku era in Japan, players will play as both the stealthy shinobi Naoe and the formidable samurai Yasuke. No matter who you’re playing as, the development team wanted to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy everything that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has to offer. To learn more about the team’s approach to accessible design, we spoke with UX Director Jonathan Bedard.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an evolution for the franchise, with many elements being rebuilt from the ground up. In what ways did that allow you to change your approach to accessibility?

Jonathan Bedard: Having changed the way we built the game, we had to redo many things, and it allowed us to revisit some elements that weren’t working as well as we’d hoped. Certain features benefited from this by being retooled or by simply changing the interface itself – or in some cases, the functionalities – to elevate our offer and our experience to higher standards. One example of that is our input remapping. Not only can you adjust the inputs of any of the buttons, but you can adjust the action of that input, whether you want it to be a hold or a press.

What was the collaboration like with the development team at Ubisoft Quebec?

JB: With every project, we have more and more people interested and invested in the different topics related to accessibility. This was especially true for Shadows; for instance, the audio team was really invested and proposed ways to innovate and push the boundaries of what we do in accessibility.

The unflinching involvement of our dedicated accessibility teams in Ukraine, mixed with the enthusiasm in our different studios, made it so we were able to propose new innovative features like audio descriptions for in-game cinematics, which is something not often seen in games.

Are there any new features you’re particularly proud of? Or that the community has been requesting for a while?

JB: Audio descriptions for cinematics is something that really made me happy to see come to the game.

Fun fact, while in a director meeting, reviewing the game, we ended up encountering that feature, in a scene that was used as a benchmark for this. It was not supposed to be enabled for that meeting, but we ended up really impressed by how many emotions and actions were transposed through it. It helped me project how this could change the perception of many motivational levers for many of our players needing this because of how well it came out, and how good of a job it did to express the events in the game in a way that really conveys the emotions and subtleties of our scenes.

It also made me happy to see an initiative coming from the team’s passion and making its way into the game. This shows how far we’ve come along in the last few years, in terms of people being aware of and caring about accessibility at Ubisoft. I am proud to see this evolution, awareness, and care spreading and making our games more accessible every time.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

Visual

• Colorblind options – Ability to change colors for certain gameplay elements from a list of presets
• Screen Narration – Not only most menu items, but also many HUD modules and time-sensitive elements can be narrated
• HUD Customization – Ability to turn all HUD elements on or off either all at once, or individually, either with shortcut or using presets – increase opacity, resize text, resize Icons or add background to increase readability
• Screen shake on/off toggle

Audio

• Subtitles – Better color modifications, speaker directions and speaker emotions
• Gameplay Captions – Surfacing stimuli and points to their origins
• Audio Description for Cinematics – Cinematic will be audio descripted
• Audio Cues/Audio Glossary – New signs and feedback allowing navigation and path finding with non-visual cues
• Separate, isolated audio sliders

Navigation and Guidance

• FTUE – First time user experience flow is back, offering first-access critical options
• Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
• Tutorials Section – Tutorials can be found in the Codex section at any time
• Menu Tutorials – Always alerts when there are new menu functions
• Conversation Log – Every line can be perused from the start to the end of a dialogue

Controls

• Control Remapping – Remap gameplay inputs, and their action (hold, press, double-press)
• Many inputs devices – Mouse and keyboard, controllers, combinations
• Lock-On Camera – Lock the camera on an enemy
• X and Y axis inversion – Ability to invert the axis for aiming actions
• Stick inversion – Invert the analog-stick behavior

Gameplay

• Stealth and combat each have four separate difficulty settings
• Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
• Canon Mode – Enable automatic selection of narrative decisions for the “canon” story to unfold
• Melee Attack Mode – Simplifies the combat by using a single input instead of multiple buttons or complex combinations
• Quick Timed Events – Type of input required to complete Quick Time Events can be simplified, or skipped entirely
• Aim Assistance – Four levels of aim assistance are offered (off, light, moderate, full)

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available for preorder now and launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. The game will also come to iPad at a later date.

— Youssef Garcia-Maguid

The post Assassin’s Creed Shadows Accessibility Spotlight appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Solid open-world gameplay set in the Star Wars universe. 

LOW An overly-familiar gameplay loop.

WTF I was recognizing different alien languages, like a nerd. 

As we keep hearing about more Star Wars TV show and film cancelations, it makes me appreciate how many more stories the series is telling through videogames. Last year, I looked at one of the best and through it examined my own relationship to Star Wars as a whole. Now, a year later, I’m excited again for another triple-A adventure set in a galaxy, far, far, away.

Star Wars Outlaws is developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. Taking place between the first two Star Wars films (A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back), the latest installment set in our favorite space opera series is an open-world actioner played from a third-person perspective.

Players control a young scoundrel named Kay Vess. After a heist gone wrong, she’s marked for death by one of the most dangerous crime syndicates in the galaxy. In order to clear her name and pay off the massive debts she owes, she and her companion, a small creature named Nix, must make a score on a major heist. 

Pulling thematically from old western war and heist films like The Magnificent Seven, Kelly’s Heroes and even Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trilogy, most of the narrative involves recruiting outlaws with various skills to help with Kay with this job. One early recruit is a safe-cracking Chadra-Fan (these bat-like creatures) named Ank who loves explosives. She’s held captive and forced to work, and the process of recruiting her by sneaking in and fighting their way out reminded me of an old prison escape sequence one might see in a classic Westerns.

Without spoiling much, many characters fit other movie archetypes too, just with a Star Wars twist. One such is ND-5. He’s a repurposed commando droid who fought in the Clone Wars, now working with Kay to make sure the heist goes as planned. His demeanor is serious, hardened by battle experience and he fits the ‘grizzled veteran’ role. Kay herself is bright-eyed and brings levity to most situations, feeling most like another famous scoundrel from the Star Wars universe, Han Solo. She’s always trying to talk herself out of a sticky situation, but is quick with a blaster as well.

All of the characters in Outlaws serve a world that is brimming with as much personality as they are. Every planet is gorgeous, with beautiful vistas and large, explorable terrain. They are also dense with detail, featuring signage, architecture, and landmarks that seem ripped straight from Star Wars movies.

Early on, I was walking through a small plaza full of bars and card tables that felt lived in. I absolutely loved the grimy aesthetic and the amount of NPCs populating it. I also appreciated how they each spoke their appropriate fictional languages. Initially, I recognized someone speaking Huttese even without subtitles on (like a dork) and it was such a cool touch. It should be noted that Massive Entertainment also developed last year’s Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora which I considered a wonderful visual translation of another well-known science-fiction world. That said, the team outdid itself with Outlaws, adapting both established and new content in one of the most gorgeous games I’ve played all year. 

Gameplay, while familiar to open-world fans, is still excellent. Primarily consisting of third-person shooting and stealth, missions frequently involve Kay retrieving some sort of item, running an errand for another character, or simply trying to fight her way through a swarm of enemies. in addition, players can often use stealth to sneak away undetected, which I was surprised by.

Rather than feeling tacked-on, most of the levels felt built to support stealth-rich gameplay, with dozens of hidden pathways and intricate architectural challenges to force players to think about how they want to approach (or avoid) encounters. At one point I was sneaking into an Imperial base and found a computer. Slicing through the security allowed me to shut off cameras, and that blind spot gave me an opening to sneak past undetected. Kay’s companion Nix can also be used to distract enemies, hit switches or open doors from a distance, allowing Kay to move without fear of getting caught. 

Of course, things can occasionally get loud and that’s where combat comes in. Kay is equipped with a highly customizable blaster that lets players attach mods like rapid-fire or electricity. These offer different advantages, like being specifically effective against droids and shields, or rapid-firing to overwhelm most enemies. 

My only major gripe with combat however is how floaty and light the melee feels — just mashing the attack button in succession never feels satisfying. I also wish there were more options in stealth, like being able to drag incapacitated bodies out of the way to avoid other enemies noticing them.

When not sneaking, there’s the open-world exploration. The planets of Star Wars Outlaws are huge, with distances so far that traversal on a hover speeder vehicle is necessary, and each one is full of various side activities like fetch quests, gambling minigames and even hunting for intel. I love how big and dense these worlds feel, each one offering so much to see and do. Even after 20 hours, I have a huge backlog, like tracking down treasures or completing challenges that unlock new abilities and upgrades. While those who are tired of the Ubisoft open-world model of following waypoints and checking off lists of collectables might not be on board, I found this loop satisfying.

Something else worth mentioning is the implementation of factions and syndicate reputation. Throughout the story, Kay is introduced to different gangs, cartels and factions, each offering new missions and various rewards. Performing positive (giving them vital intel) or negative actions (trespassing on the wrong territory) will either earn Kay favor or make her name mud. This, in turn, will affect things like shop prices, or how violent gangs will be if she’s caught in their presence. 

Obviously, with an experience this big, there are bound to be some bugs and glitches. I experienced a few odd ones, like my speeder getting stuck in some rocks, a character’s arms stretching out across the screen for a few seconds, and even a bizarre one where my camera would keep bobbing left to right during a stealth mission. Most of these would either stop after a few seconds or after a reset, and didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. I had one crash but the generous autosave system started me exactly where I left off.

Outlaws is sure to satisfy anyone with a hunger for Star Wars thanks to its open worlds and abundance of things to do. Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment have crafted one of the greatest intergalactic theme parks I’ve been to in some time, while also capturing the essence of the universe it’s adapting. Star Wars Outlaws is easily one of the finest adaptations of the series yet.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment. It is available on PC, PS5, and XBS/X. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 20 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed. There is no multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Mild Language, Simulated Gambling, and Violence. According to the site: “This is a third-person action-adventure game in which players assume the role of an outlaw navigating the underworld of the Star Wars universe. As players explore open-world environments, they can accept missions/jobs for various criminal factions. Most missions involve using stealth to sneak through heavily guarded compounds or shooting through waves of hostile enemies. Players use a variety of gadgets and blaster-type weapons during missions. Players can perform dramatic punching takedowns when using stealth or close-quarter combat. Fighting is highlighted by futuristic gunfire, explosions, and cries of pain. During the course of the game, players can wager in-game currency on Sabacc, a blackjack-like card game with detailed rules; one area allows players to wager on fantasy races in order to further a plot point. The word “bastard” appears in the game.“

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: Subtitles can be resized, adjusted, and customized in different colors, as could various visual elements that can guide players. For example, subtitles for characters during gameplay have arrows next to them to indicate where they are standing, allowing for easy navigation. Other major visual cues include indicators to know where enemies are standing, highlights around them to gauge how far they are, as well subtitle options to determine how much information players want at once (such as miscellaneous sounds and random dialogue via NPCs in the world). This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped on PC. Console controls have some preset configurations but they cannot be fully remapped.

The post Star Wars Outlaws Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A great improvement over the previous (!) remaster.

LOW Has a somewhat overinflated reputation that may disappoint first time players.

WTF This game is twenty and I feel exceptionally old.

Beyond Good & Evil is a very good videogame. It’s also only that.

Somehow that reads as harsh, but upon playing Beyond Good & Evil again, it’s weird to me that it’s morphed into a pseudo-legendary ‘classic’ when so few players played it upon release in 2004. How few? I bought the GameCube version for $10 back in 2004 a month after launch at a Circuit City of all places, so demand was not particularly high.

GameCritics is older than this game, so it’s already been covered here twice. I’ll skip the basics, so for those who haven’t played it and want a more comprehensive view of the core structure, you can read our other pieces here and here.

From my vantage point, Beyond Good & Evil is a well-done Zelda-like from a time where, surprisingly, there weren’t as many as the market probably could’ve supported. It’s got fantastic music, great character design, an intriguing story with a cool conspiratorial slant, really good voicework from the main cast, and a neat gameplay gimmick in the form of protagonist Jade’s camera supporting her role as an investigative reporter. While it isn’t my favorite Ubisoft game ever, it’s probably the game my brain most associates the company with. (Probably because it feels super-duper French, whatever that means.)

There’s very little wrong with it, but there were better and more important titles from that era that can’t be easily accessed today which I would’ve rather seen come back, and I believe one of the driving factors leading to this extreme reverence for it is the cataclysmic boondoggle that is the continued development saga of Beyond Good & Evil 2.

For those unfamiliar, BG&E2 was originally announced in 2008, and then we heard not a peep for a decade until a very weird and not-particularly-Beyond-Good-And-Evil looking CG trailer was released during E3 2017. It was then shown to select individuals at E3 2018, and went incognito again until the launch of this new 20th Anniversary Edition when Ubisoft essentially said “Yup! Still workin’ on it! Text later, bye!”

As something to consider, the apparent world record for development cycles has been Duke Nukem Forever, which clocked in at around fourteen years lasting from 1997 until 2011. BG&E2, on the other hand, is currently at sixteen. If this sequel is really coming, the people at Ubisoft were wise to make the original release widely available on modern platforms in order to refresh our collective memory.

Most of the legwork for this version was done a decade ago with Beyond Good & Evil HD, an XBox Live Arcade/PlayStation Network release that got the title up and running on then-modern consoles in 1080p with native 16:9 support. While one can still purchase and play that Live Arcade version through Series S/X backwards compatibility, those enhancements never made it to an already-primitive PC version, and the title has never appeared on a Nintendo console outside of the original Gamecube release.

It would have been easy to take that already existing HD version, slap in in 4K, then release it again, but thankfully Ubisoft has done a lot to make this a true anniversary edition.

On top of now running at a locked 4K/60fps on the tested Series X version, some of the character models and lighting have been enhanced, and there are more expressive faces on some characters in cutscenes. Sometimes the lighting can get a little weird, leading to Jade looking like she has different skin tones depending on the locale, but hopefully that can be patched. Granted, this is still very much a PS2 game for those judging it by a strict polygon count, but it was an impressive release at the time with outstanding art design from Michel Ansel and his former team at Ubisoft Montpellier. It’s still wonderful to look at, and this is the best it’s ever looked.

It’s also the best it’s ever sounded, as the original soundtrack was tastefully redone under the supervision of original composer Christophe Héral, and these new versions sound great with a touch more depth compared to the original. Furthermore, this version features new bonus content, including a well-done behind-the-scenes art gallery presented in a chronological order through development with matching written narration. This is an awesome addition with a surprisingly insightful and frank view of the obvious passion behind the game.

However, without question, the most intriguing aspect of this specific release are the new connections to Beyond Good & Evil 2.

Without spoiling anything, BG&E2 is supposedly a prequel. Keeping that in mind, the 20th Anniversary release has added content regarding characters from Jade’s past that will feature in the sequel. This is a ballsy move, and I certainly hope that whatever version of BG&E2 Ubisoft had in mind when they decided to do this is what actually comes out. If we get that sequel, this will end up being a neat thing to add to a re-release, and it has me more excited for BG&E2 than I’ve been since I was an undergrad.

While all of the tweaks and polish and the new connections are great, the only real issue is that BG&E 20th Anniversary Edition doesn’t fix the problems inherent to the original release. The lightweight combat is probably its biggest issue, as it feels like an afterthought. At the very least, it’s functional and not detrimental to enjoying the overall experience.

However, out of the various things that might be seen as negatives, a brief running time is not one of them. There is no original review of the first game (including ours) that didn’t cite length as a problem in their writings. During that era of punditry, length generally equated value, so a short game automatically equaled ‘rental’ or ‘wait for a steep discount’. BG&E was branded with a scarlet ‘S’ at retail it could not quite overcome, and was ground zero for “Yeah it’s good, but it’s only eight hours long“.

Interestingly, I think it’s possible to see a line between the commercial performance of this game and Ubisoft’s hard pivot into many of their subsequent titles being huge efforts overstuffed with content of scattershot quality. Yes, Beyond Good & Evil is probably a 10-12 hour game for first-time players, and someone like me who’s played it a few times can probably bust through it in half of that. But length does not actually equal quality, and the entirety of this experience is of a high standard that features very little fat. I appreciate that as someone who no longer has a fortnight’s worth of free time to finish a game.

When I look at a remaster, my baseline criteria for success is that it should make the original version obsolete, and Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary does that. It is an inherently good thing that this game is now available again in multiple formats, and the new additions are fantastic. It’s the very best way to play a very good game, and I’m happy this new version exists regardless of whether we get that sequel.

I don’t think Beyond Good & Evil is truly an all-time classic, but this is an exemplary remaster of a great game worthy of the classy treatment its received in this new 20th Anniversary Edition. New and old players alike will find it well worth their time.

RATING: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was originally developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, remastered by Virtuos, and published by Ubisoft. The game is currently available on Switch, PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X, and was reviewed on an XBox Series X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ for Everyone 10 & Up and contains Animated Blood and Fantasy Violence. This is good for the young ones. The blood reference (I guess?) is from some ooze that comes out of aliens, and the language is very mild. It’s an easy game for a pre-teen to wrap their head around and has positive themes.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes. Considering that Ubisoft goes hard on accessibility options in their recent releases and have made a verbal commitment to that community, the accessibility features in this release are rather disappointing.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be resized. The subtitles are readable but cannot be further enhanced. There are no necessary audio cues, and all important information is visually represented on screen. I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable, but have two options: Original and Remastered. The only difference being switching the item use button between a face button and up on the D-Pad. Players control the main character with the left analog stick, control the camera with the right, confirm/attack with the A-button, and various items can be selected by using left & right buttons on the D-pad.

The post Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniv. Ed. Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Killing a dinosaur with a perfectly-aimed salvo as it leapt from the water.

LOW Respawning directly between two defense towers that were already shooting at me.

WTF That cat has a peg leg? This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.

I’m sailing across the Indian Ocean on a mission to sink the ship of a pirate who’s betrayed my organization to the French spice trading corporation that rules the these islands with an iron fist.

As I approach his last known position, I’m startled to discover that another captain has already taken up arms against my target. He’s in a bad state, as the traitor is supported by four French warships led by the flagship of the corporation’s fleet.

I quickly join the battle, scuttling the enemy ship equipped with a “repair cannon”, the mechanics of which elude me. It’s a tough battle, but working in concert we manage to overcome the enemy — I even manage to fire the killing shot to both the traitor and the French flagship.

As I circle the battlefield, picking up bits of floating wreckage to resell later, my ally sails away, and I’m left to marvel at the design of Skull and Bones. I went out to complete a singleplayer mission, and it dynamically became a multiplayer encounter when I happened across another person coincidentally attempting it at the same time. The interconnected world transformed two strangers into partners for a single mission, allowing them to take down a dangerous foe together.

…At least, that’s what I thought had happened.

I was considerably less impressed thirty seconds later when, as I attempted to sail back to base for repairs, my instance of the mission I had just finished started again, and I was faced with a suddenly-resurrected traitor and his four partners. At that moment, as dozens of cannonballs arced towards my ship, it occurred to me that whatever Ubisoft was attempting with Skull and Bones, they hadn’t accomplished it.

A long-in-coming third-person multiplayer-focused pirate simulator based loosely on the mechanics of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag (but with 90% of the gameplay stripped out) Skull and Bones takes the player on a journey from shipwrecked survivor to pirate Kingpin without ever offering a reason for them to care about anything that’s going on around them.

I can say this without hesitation — the ship-to-ship combat is delightful, which is good, because it’s the only real gameplay that Skull and Bones has to offer. It’s incredibly arcadey, of course, with the player using health packs to keep going as they’re damaged by enemies, and using a ‘brace’ button to put up a virtual shield that makes their ship immune to damage until it breaks. This is even more streamlined and player-friendly than the combat in Black Flag, and the result is largely satisfying. As long as the player’s ship is close enough in level to a foe, battles are a thrilling affair full of exciting maneuvers like weaving between torpedoes and mortars while carefully aiming at weak points that will cripple opponents.

Besieging forts and settlements is another high point. Should the player decide that they don’t want to pay for a specific resource — or if they want a faction-exclusive crafting item that can’t be found anywhere else — they can plunder to their heart’s content.

In these encounters, the player waits for their crew to disembark and steal everything that isn’t nailed down while fighting off any reinforcements that get within a certain radius of the base they’re raiding. In a nice touch, players can call for help as they start a plunder, putting out a call for assistance to any other live captains in the area. Show up and help fight, and there’s a full share of the rewards on offer. Of course, Skull and Bones manages to botch this a little as well, as there’s no way to ‘accept’ the call for help and let the player know that help is coming. More than once I saw a plunder in progress and raced over to lend a hand, only to discover that in the 90 seconds it took me to arrive, the other captain had given up and fled.

Given how long it was in production — more than a decade! — it’s remarkable how many little details like that that Skull and Bones botches.

In another instance, I saw a French warship attacking a merchant base and I figured I’d help fend off the ship. The game decided that anyone firing near the base was hostile, so immediately the towers turned their cannons on me.

Pirate Hunters — deadly ships that take forever to kill — respawn the moment they die, making the important locations they’re placed near weirdly inaccessible.

There’s also no friendly fire, either between players or game-controlled foes. I tried luring ships that were chasing me into the predicted impact zone of a mortar tower, but as fire rained from the sky, the enemy ships weren’t even scratched.

The most baffling thing of all, though, has to be the mission select screen of quest-givers. When the player hovers over it, they can see the name of the mission, the rewards offered, and a one-sentence description of it — but no details. The actual things that need to be accomplished, such as what kind and how many items to recover, what ships to destroy, and which location to reach, are all kept secret until the mission has been accepted. It’s an inexplicable oversight.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of Skull and Bones, however, is the failure to engage the player in its world.

Other than the four main quest-givers, there are no characters to speak of. Every location has a random person who’ll ask the player to do something, but there’s never any impact to accomplishing these tasks. Players earn some resources and a few experience points, and then ten minutes later they can start the same mission again if they feel like it. The world can’t meaningfully change, because that might impact the experience of other players, which equates to a world that feels empty and hollow.

There’s not even a faction system. I can spend half an hour absolutely wrecking every French settlement I come across and sink dozens of their ships, but once I’ve spent 30 seconds out of their sight, my wanted level resets and I’m free to resume trading at the very ports I’d burned to the ground earlier that day.

Once I’d maxed out my level and completed the storyline quests, I turned to the ‘forever’ mode which has the player taking over settlements to generate a currency that they can use to buy the best ships and weapons. However, I’d already completed every mission Skull and Bones had to offer, so I didn’t see what could be gained by further improving the ship that had already conquered the Indian Ocean. Some may find carting rum and opium around the map entertaining in and of itself, but by that point I was ready to be done.

After completing Skull and Bones, I loaded up Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag just to see if I’d allowed time and distance from it to improve it in my memory. Floating around the Carribbean and getting into a few fights proved two things to me.

First, it’s kind of surprising just how good it still looks — Skull and Bones‘ visual improvements are marginal at best. More importantly, though, Black Flag understands what Skull and Bones doesn’t — that this is all supposed to be awe-inspiring.

When I finish off an enemy ship in Black Flag, time slows and the camera zooms in, allowing me to witness the magnificent brutality of powder stores exploding as masts snap like matchsticks. Skull and Bones can’t offer spectacle, because playing with time and camerawork might risk affecting another player’s experience. The result is something that’s dulled down to the point that everyone sharesthe same mediocrity, and I have to wonder what happened to this poor little project during the many years it was stuck on the seas of development hell.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Ubisoft. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBS/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 40 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB, and contains Blood, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Violence. I feel like ‘use of drugs’ isn’t a strong enough descriptor here? The post-game content is entirely about refining and dealing opium and rum. This is a drug-running simulator, which feels like it needs its own mention. Also, while the combat isn’t particularly bloody, severed heads are a quest item in numerous missions, and one port had a corpse that was being burned at the stake, so it’s actually a little more gruesome than the warning suggests.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled, as are all incidental sounds, such as cannons firing nearby — there’s even an onscreen indicator letting players know which direction the sound is coming from. Subtitles can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.

The post Skull And Bones Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A gorgeous recreation of one of sci-fi’s best worlds.

LOW The story doesn’t reach the highs of its source material.

WTF Having to wait until 2025 for the next Avatar film. 

Last December, I woke up early on a Friday morning to watch Avatar: The Way of Water in IMAX 3D. It was one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had, as I had been waiting to properly return to the world of James Cameron’s Pandora for years. One thing that struck me while I was transfixed on the onscreen adventures of the Sully family — my partner said “this looks like a videogame. It would be a cool game.” 

Seeing certain scenes move at a much higher refresh rate while live actors interacted with a fully-digital world did feel videogame-esque, and that point was an interesting one. Pandora, like Middle Earth and the vast galaxies in Star Wars, was ripe for a proper game adaptation. Thankfully, Massive Entertainment (The Division 2) have given Avatar-heads a chance to explore the fictional Earth-like moon in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. 

Taking place concurrently during the events of the first film, players control a custom-created Na’vi who has been raised by the Resources Development Administration (RDA) with other young Na’vi children. Trained as soldiers to infiltrate Na’vi tribes, the program is shut down just as Jake Sully joins forces with the alien species, thus forcing the young Na’vi children to flee. After a slow start full of basic chase sequences and tutorials confined to hallways, things finally open up. 

Played from a first-person perspective, stepping out into a fully-realized version of Pandora is something truly special. The luscious flora and fauna that filled a dark IMAX theater in late 2022 are now finally things I can interact with. 

To say that it’s gorgeous is a massive understatement. I commend the team for sticking close to the look and feel of the films. As a technical showpiece, this is arguably one of the best-looking games of the generation. Supporting this, the horizons are distant and cranking up the field-of-view slider in the menu gives players a sense of just how vast this world is.

Frontiers of Pandora is an open-world action-adventure in which players are tasked with exploring Pandora and liberating the Na’vi people from the clutches of the RDA while learning more about their own Na’vi roots. Gameplay consists of combat (both stealth and guns blazing), hunting, crafting, destroying enemy outposts as a means to clear the map, traversal across a large open world and taking on quests from NPCs. If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because the gameplay loop follows the general blueprint of other modern open-worlders. Hewing close to the likes of Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, those who’ve had their fill and checked out of this style might not be excited to jump into the Na’Vi-ified version of it, but there are some welcome changes that mix things up a bit.

One of the best things about Pandora is the sense of scale, not only in the size of the world, but the size of the character. Players control a nine-foot tall alien that can jump high, climb any surface and has unimaginable strength, which is shown as much as possible. For example, certain areas require the player to crouch to fit through the doors in human encampments. The first-person perspective helps add to this immersion, and nothing beats punching a (comparatively) tiny human soldier to send them flying. 

Another great change comes in the form of traversal and survival elements. Being able to run and climb on large tree branches and rock formations makes navigation enjoyable, and there are certain plants that can boost traversal, like ‘grappling flowers’ on cliffsides or some that allow players to bounce on them for extra air time. As the campaign progresses, players learn new moves like a mid-air boost, a stronger jump, and their own Ikran — banshee-like creatures that offer flight.

The survival elements come in various forms, such as finding ingredients to cook meals that boost different attributes. Hunting and gathering for these ingredients requires different tactics, such as finding perfect weather conditions to pick certain fruit from trees, or making sure an animal is killed as cleanly as possible to preserve the meat and skin. As someone who loves hunting in games like Red Dead Redemption, this added an enjoyable depth. 

Combat is equally enjoyable, if a bit unremarkable. Players have guns and bows, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Guns are louder and effective against mechs and soldiers, but will damage the hide of animals. Bows are great for stealth and long distance shots, but are held back in firefights by their slow rate of fire.

While these boxes have been checked off satisfactorily, my real gripe with Frontiers of Pandora has to be the writing. Rather than a smart or sincere approach to families and imperialism, players are instead given annoying quips from side characters and a meandering plot that feels like a retread of the first film. The narrative of a Na’vi protagonist finding their way within human culture feels authentic to Cameron’s vision, but nothing ever reaches the highs of the movies. Come for the visuals and interactive experience, but don’t expect much in the way of plot.

Overall, Frontiers of Pandora might be the greatest virtual tour I’ve ever been on. A large-scale, densely populated world offered wonder with every step and I loved being immersed in a fictional I’ve been in love with for almost 15 years. While the gameplay is only fair and the story leaves much be desired, I can’t deny that this cured the “Pandora withdrawals” I’ve had since seeing The Way of Water in theaters.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment. It is available on PS5, XBS/X and PC. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 20 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed (still playing). 3 hours were spent playing multiplayer. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Language, Mild Blood, Violence. According to the site: This is a first-person shooter/action-adventure game in which players assume the role of a kidnapped Na’vi alien engaged in resistance against a colonizing force. Players use arrows, explosives, and machine guns to attack enemies (e.g., soldiers, drones, mechs) in frenetic combat. A handful of areas allow players to use stealth tactics to infiltrate bases and attack soldiers. Firefights are highlighted by realistic gunfire, cries of pain, and explosions. One scene depicts blood smeared/splattered on a cliff near the corpses of soldiers. The words “sh*t” and “a*shole” appear in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles and visual cues throughout the game, such as icons on screen alerting players of different things around the area. Certain visual icons can fill the screen showing the location of enemies. Subtitles also have indicators pointing to the speakers. These can all be adjusted and finely-tuned, making the game full accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be fully remapped and there are also preset configurations.

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HIGH Baghdad was both an excellent and inspired pick for a new Assassin’s Creed setting.

LOW They went from too long to too short.

WTF Every reviewer who writes “Back to the series’ roots” should be tarred & feathered.

Before getting into the review itself, let me take a moment to discuss how I detest the narrative around Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. I can’t stand the phrase “taking the series back to its roots”, and I want to emphatically say that is not something Mirage does. The team at Ubisoft certainly attempted this, but the superficial way in which they did makes its issues as a standalone game all the more apparent.

Mirage serves as an origin (pun fully intended) story for Basim Ibn Ishaq, who played a large part in the overall narrative of Assassins Creed: Valhalla. In fact, it’s possible to make the argument he’s one of the most important characters in the entire franchise given all the bonkers stuff that happens in that game, so I was excited to step into his shoes and learn more about one of Valhalla‘s most fascinating aspects. Unfortunately, Mirage boils down to a Basim training montage as he learns his new trade of hunting Order members in Baghdad, featuring a plot that never feels particularly important to the overarching AC narrative.

The RPG elements so prevalent in recent AC installments have also been significantly toned back. Enemies no longer have levels, so there’s no worry of running into a over-leveled commander that takes six minutes to kill. Each enemy is a similar level of damage sponge, and Basim’s trusty hidden blade can one-hit nearly every enemy, just like in the good old days. There is a system where players get points to invest in a skill tree, but this is now a more simple endeavor. It works well enough, and the ‘grinding’ aspect of the previous trilogy has been practically eliminated, which will make some readers happy.

Basim is not the same type of superhero that Bayek, Kassandra, or Eivor are. For example, he can’t hack ‘n slash his way through encounters as easily as the previous three AC protagonists could — fighting three enemies at once is dangerous. He can’t unleash flurries of risk-free death, and parrying and dodging are key to his success. He doesn’t have superhuman jumping and climbing abilities. Basim has to actually find crevices and protruding architecture to climb structures, which is a big departure from the automatic climbing of the last few entries. In other words, Basim plays more like a mortal man, and must use stealth and wits to survive.

Stealth was an option in the last three titles, but it took a backseat to combat. This was due more to level design than actual mechanics, but Mirage is designed as a stealth game. Players are encouraged to plan their route, use their environment, blend in, pay merchants and debutantes for assistance, and stick to the shadows. The problem is that these mechanics are nowhere as developed as they felt in previous entries, and when the opportunities to use these skills come up, it feels less like a mechanic and more like Ubisoft attempting to force feed me memberberries.

The best stealth games feel natural and organic in movement, and those aspects of Mirage underwhelm because it has the controls of an Action-RPG. There’s a real lack of finesse in Basim’s movements, and the way the game attempts to compensate for this is by making the enemy AI even more profoundly stupid than they were in the past three entries. Overall, there are more enhancements to combat than to stealth, and at the end of the day it feels like I’m playing Valhalla, except that death comes easier. This is a stealth game made with tools not designed for it, and it shows.

With the changes in its overall design, Mirage tries its damndest to make one feel nostalgic for the older Assassin’s Creed titles, but instead it feels like a modern Assassin’s Creed game with scaled-back options and limited level design.

Issues with the game’s ANVIL engine also plague the world of Mirage, which is mostly a lovingly-rendered depiction of 9th century Baghdad. There’s more detail and a better overall design compared to other cities featured in the last three AC-RPG titles, but one of the things I loved about the original games was the large size of crowds and the feeling of maneuvering around a real, functional community. Mirage is simply not equipped to do that — it’s hard to feel like the player is in a vibrant city when there are about eight people walking around at any given time. The engine is also starting to show its age graphically, and Mirage doesn’t look much better than Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which Mirage shares many assets with.

While I was expecting Mirage to be on a smaller scale compared to the absolutely massive previous three titles, it’s still over rather quickly. I don’t imagine the main story will last most players above fourteen hours, and while one could string it out to around 30 hours, the side content is rather uninteresting. There’s a wanted board at the main base that has side missions players can do to earn materials and gain favor with various factions — which is great — but these side missions almost always boil down to collect-a-thons or smaller-scale, less interesting versions of what one might do in the main campaign.

This brings us to the question of value. Originally I thought Mirage‘s asking price of $50 was reasonable given that the publisher stated it wasn’t the next “full” Assassin’s Creed game, but apparently Assassins Creed: Mirage started life as an expansion pack for Valhalla, and its origins as DLC are pretty apparent. The value proposition becomes worse when one actually compares it to the DLC for Valhalla, as its Dawn of the Ragnarok add-on features about the same amount of content as Mirage, while being more interesting, more narratively daring, offering more variety in locations and enemies, and it was $10 cheaper than Mirage to boot.

If it feels like I’m spending a lot of time comparing Mirage to other AC titles, it’s because the game does so little to differentiate itself from the franchise it spawned from, and it also happens to be worse at what it strives to do when compared to decade-old titles that came before it.

Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is just kinda there. It makes some nice nods to earlier installments, but the stealth isn’t as slick as it needs to be. It features a lovingly-rendered Baghdad, but doesn’t have enough interesting things going on in it. The narrative it offers is largely unnecessary, and considering who Basim is in the overall mythology of the series, that is tremendously disappointing. The only thing Mirage excels at is reminding long-time Assassin’s Creed fans of days gone by.

RATING: 5.5 Out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux and published by Ubisoft. It is currently available on XBox One, XBox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, iOS, and Amazon Luna. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBox Series X. Approximately 19 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M For Mature and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language. While the majority of Mirage is a rather tame affair with minimal blood effects and a reserved script, there are some moments of extreme depravity in certain cutscenes, including one scene early on involving dead children being strung up on posts. The violence in general is ramped up significantly in cutscenes compared to the main game.

Colorblind Modes: There are three colorblind modes present: Tritanopia, Deuteranopia, and Protanopia.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/or resized. Gameplay-based subtitles are detailed, and there are no necessary audio cues. There’s also an option to boost dialogue audio. I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are completely remappable on consoles. A full controller layout is available in the options menu as well. Further, Mirage actually has a truly impressive assortment of accessibility options. Check out this article for more information.

The post Assassin’s Creed Mirage Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Drastically improved driving system. A ridiculous amount of new content.

LOW Driver customization is limited.

WTF My toxic trait is thinking I can be a good Formula 1 driver. 

The Crew is an odd player in the arcade racing genre. Ubisoft introduced the IP in 2014, with its main selling point being a continuous open world. Set in a scaled-down recreation of the continental United States, cars would be able to drive from coast to coast in about 45 minutes. 2018’s The Crew 2 introduced planes and boats, but in both iterations the series struggled with the massive map — the areas felt empty, and many events lacked variety.

Fast forward to five years later and a new console generation, The Crew 2 has received plenty of expected updates but the team at Ubisoft’s Ivory Tower clearly wants to shake things up. Thankfully, The Crew Motorfest is an excellent improvement in every regard. 

Taking place in a scaled-down version of the Hawaiian island of OÊ»ahu, Motorfest is an open-world racer centering around the titular festival. Players create a driver and are automatically introduced to the new Playlist feature. These playlists act as a main campaign of sorts, offering a series of events that fall into specific themes (such as off-road racing or drifting), using specific cars, and being hosted by experts in different disciplines. The goal is to complete each set of races in a playlist, with the reward at the end of them being an exclusive vehicle. 

The switch to a smaller open-world is a good one, resulting in environments that are more dense with content and more detailed, visually. The approximation of Hawaii is breathtaking, with plenty of variety in terrain ranging from sunny beaches to trails around volcanoes. All of this is wrapped in gorgeous vistas and top-tier presentation — everything from the way the interior camera mode looks, to the way each car sounds distinct is impressive.  

Early on, players have a choice between three playlists — Made in Japan, Hawaii Scenic Tour and American Muscle. I started with American Muscle, which took me on a series of races involving different types of Ford Mustangs. The events were hosted by a fictional musician who loved American muscle cars, and his voiceover throughout the races sold that passion. I drove different kinds of Mustangs, ranging from modern models equipped with off-road tires to a 1969 Mustang Boss that made me feel like Steve McQueen in Bullitt. My prize at the end of the playlist was a 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby, an absolute behemoth of a ride. 

I love this playlist feature, thanks to the sheer variety introduced throughout my playtime. A little over thirty hours in, and I still have so many playlists to complete, but the ones I’ve already done have been exceptional, from the Off-Roading Addict (rally cars, ATVs and other off-road vehicles) to the Motorsports playlist offering closed-circuit races in a professional setting, such as a fictionalized version of Formula One. Here, players must contend with things like tire damage and rain affecting the way cars move on the track. 

Each playlist not only made me comfortable with driving different types of cars, but they also included interesting facts about specific manufacturers. There’s a real reverence to cars and car culture here, something I appreciate deeply as a fan of all kinds of cars, not just racing games. 

Aside from playlists, there’s also a variety of challenges to complete, like speed traps that challenge players to run through a gate as fast as possible or photo ops that encourage exploration. 

Completing any race or activity nets XP, money and upgrade parts. Reaching certain XP thresholds net rewards like customization upgrades for their drivers (which are fairly limited) and new cars. Returning Crew 2 players can also import their garage, a feature every racing sequel should include from here on out.

As if these options weren’t enough, there are plenty of online modes that I enjoyed. Every half hour in real time, a new online event with new conditions became available. These include things like a 28-player cross-country dash that has players switching between three different vehicle types and a demolition derby-type event that acts as a battle royale. Here, players control destructible cars and are thrown into a combat zone, trying to be the last team standing. 

I’m actually astounded at how feature-complete and jam-packed Motorfest is at launch, and I’m curious to see what it’ll look like a few months from now. Maybe we’ll see stock car racing a la Nascar in the future? Or perhaps more rally-dedicated modes to really take advantage of the wide-open terrain? Maybe an endurance race modeled after the 24 Hours of Le Mans? As it is now, however, I am not starved for anything to do, as I still have plenty to keep me busy.

This variety is complimented by pitch-perfect gameplay, especially in how cars handle. I played a bit of The Crew 2 a few months ago but dropped it quick after I was dissatisfied with the way cars felt. There was a serious lack of weight and impact, and the nitrous boost felt weak. Motorfest revamps all of this completely, with every car handling like a dream. 

Vehicles have notable weight to them, while each one feels distinct — the Ford Bronco feels like the massive SUV that it is, while the Honda Civic glides through the streets. That feeling also extends to how every car interacts with the open world, as different vehicle types obviously work better in different conditions. For example, the Bronco was in the rally raid classification and was useful for maneuvering across mountains while the Honda NSX would wildly spin out of control if I ended up off-road.

This is also reflected in the adaptive triggers of the PS5’s DualSense control scheme including haptic feedback. Each terrain type feels different, and the triggers lock up and add pressure to braking and accelerating. It’s still easy to drift on a dime like any arcade racer, but there’s a balance here thanks to the realistic feel of the cars. 

The Crew Motorfest is exceptional. To simply say that it improves upon its predecessor is a gross understatement, as it took a flawed foundation and turned it into the smoothest of rides. The presentation, the improved handling and the excellent playlist feature all come together to make it a top-tier racer. With this new entry, Ubisoft not only sets a new standard for their own open-worlders, but they’ve crafted an experience that can stand toe-to-toe with the finest racers on the market. Like a souped up 2021 Toyota GR Supra blasting through the finish line on a crowded street, this is truly a sight to behold. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is published and developed by Ubisoft. It is available on PS4/5, XBO/X/S and PC. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 30 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed (still playing). 5 hours were spent playing multiplayer. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Lyrics and Mild Violence. A lot of the game is racing, with most of the objectionable content being relegated to song lyrics, though most of the worst words are censored already. Parents should know that most of the violence involves cars being crashed but nothing excessive. This game is perfectly fine for most children. 

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles and visual cues throughout the game, like icons on screen alerting players of different things around the area. These can all be adjusted. There are no audio cues that are needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped and there are diagrams and different presets.

The post The Crew Motorfest Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Disclosure: This is an article written and released by Ubisoft, and sent to GameCritics via Ubisoft PR. While we don’t usually run PR releases, given its focus on accessibility and our lifelong dedication to same, we’re happy to share this information. The article can be seen in its original format here.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage launches on October 5, when players will be able to dive into the adventure of Basim Ibn Is’haq, a young street thief who grows into a Master Assassin, and explore the vibrant city of Baghdad circa the ninth century. Assassin’s Creed Mirage is intended to evoke the feel of early games in the series, with an emphasis on stealth and the return of many familiar gameplay and thematic elements — but it’s firmly modern in its approach to accessibility, with a number of features to ensure that as many people can play as possible.

“Our philosophy was to create a game that goes back to its roots while retaining the modern accessibility options and feedback elements found in later Assassin’s Creed titles, like Valhalla,” says Antony Marques, UX designer at Ubisoft Bordeaux. “To achieve this, we collaborated with teams in Montreal, Kyiv, Odesa, and Bordeaux. For the new core gameplay, the focus was to design with accessibility in mind, seamlessly incorporating it into the gameplay itself rather than relying solely on options.”

BUILDING ON VALHALLA’S HIGH BAR

While Assassin’s Creed Valhalla set high standards in terms of accessibility, the teams behind Assassin’s Creed Mirage were able to find ways to build on what it had achieved. One big addition, says Marques, is the ability to navigate menus with the d-pad, which was a major priority for the developers at Ubisoft Kyiv. Where recent games in the series relied on analog sticks or a mouse to navigate their menus , d-pad navigation makes it easier to highlight different options directly — providing a broad benefit to as many players as possible, as well as to players with motor and visual disabilities (especially those using the screen-reader feature).

Another consideration was to build in more ways for players to detect changes in their environment or abilities — when drawing attention from guards, for example. Because Assassin’s Creed Mirage is more focused on stealth gameplay than recent entries in the series, Marques and other developers wanted to give players plenty of notice when they’re provoking an enemy’s awareness.

“We wanted to make sure that all signs and feedback are well communicated and not reliant on color alone,” says Marques. “The detection meter appears in different formats along with other types of feedback — for example, animations to show the transition between the suspicious, detection, and searching phases. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, for example, it would just be a change in color and sound, so it was more subtle. In Mirage, we aimed to help as many players as possible understand the context, especially in stealth situations.”

In addition to the directional awareness meter when players are drawing attention, enemies in Assassin’s Creed Mirage will display question marks above their heads when searching for Basim, and an icon below the compass will keep players informed of their current state of awareness, even if the guards aren’t visible on screen.

“We got a lot of player feedback that helped us create this feature, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud we were able to bring to the game!” says Marques.

TARGETING BY SHAPE

Another point of pride for Marques is the crosshairs when Basim is aiming, which will change color and shape to quickly convey information to players. If Basim aims at a civilian, for example, the crosshairs will become a gray “X” to indicate a non-target and incentivize players not to attack them. Also, some enemies can only be damaged from certain directions or with certain tools; if Basim’s targeting them with something that won’t do damage, players will see large gray crosshairs as a signal to be cautious and weigh whether they want to enter conflict.

The crosshairs also play a huge role when scouting with Basim’s eagle, Enkidu. When enemies are nearby, for example, the crosshairs will be surrounded by a white ring, which will disappear when all hostiles in view have been spotted and tagged. And while searching for a target or location, players will see a yellow ring that not only points them in the right direction, but also — in a new addition to Assassin’s Creed Mirage — now shows distance. When they’re looking in the target’s direction, the ring becomes a dynamic yellow crosshair, changing size and emitting a different sound as it gets closer to the target

Additionally, players can now quick-select certain tools without having to pull up Basim’s tool wheel, which introduces another analog-stick menu and briefly pauses the game. Instead, when players hold the left trigger to aim, tool icons will appear in a corner of the HUD next to corresponding face-button icons, and players can just hit one of these buttons to, say, throw a smoke bomb or lay a trap.

“This impacts game flow in a way that is nice for everyone, because they can use shortcuts to access Basim’s tools and provide more fast-paced gameplay,” says Marques.

Finally, given the game’s emphasis on stealth, players have a lot of options for reading their environment and keeping one step ahead of enemies. In addition to scouting ahead with Enkidu and tagging enemies, Assassin’s Creed Mirage brings back classic Eagle Vision, letting players see enemies and other points of interest with brightly colored auras, even through walls.

“We’ve done a lot of testing, and some players just turn on Eagle Vision and use it to kill enemies,” says Marques. “Some players used the eagle to scout and tag enemies to put dots on top of their heads, and then they go kill them. And some players didn’t use anything, and they trusted their guts. So, I think that’s a pro, that players have everything they need to do stealth in their own way.”

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

VISUAL

• Text-to-Speech (Menu and HUD) – Allows presentation of UI text and icons for low-vision players by narrating the most important information in menu and HUD elements.
• Colorblind Filters (UI/HUD); Aiming Reticle Color – Allows color modification, via color presets, of the UI and HUD elements, so they are well-perceived by players with various forms of colorblindness.
• Interface Modifications (Text Size, HUD Background, Icon Size) – Allows players to modify various UI-related options, such as adding a background to HUD widgets and tweaking their opacity, or increasing text and Icon size display.
• Stealth and Detection Meter – Provides clear signs and feedback for each phase of detection, with distinct transitions to ensure players receive more than just color-coded information.
• Crosshairs Improvements – Crosshairs now provide precise feedback about what players can and cannot do, for example changing shape to an “X” over civilians, or changing size depending on the damage players can do.

AUDIO

• Closed Captions – Turns on visual notifications for various in-game sound elements.
• Speaker Name – Displays the names of the characters speaking before their lines, with improved legibility.
• Turn Subtitles Off – Turns subtitles off completely to reduce how much is on the screen at once.
• Master Volume – Enables players to adjust the game’s master volume.
• Audio Dynamic Range – Multiple presets that will enable a reduction in the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds.
• Music Frequency – Reduces the frequency with which music plays throughout the game, or turns it off entirely.
• Dialogue Boost – Boosts the audio levels of dialogue.
• Subtitle Background – Enables a background for subtitles to enhance contrast and legibility, with adjustable opacity percentage.
• Subtitle Size – There are three settings to increase subtitle size.

MOTOR ACCESSIBILITY

• Control Remapping – Allows customization of actions by changing their key/button bindings and behaviors.
• Control Options (Sensitivity, Menu Hold Factor, Left-Handed Mouse, etc.) – Allows configuration of various control options, such as adjusting your cursor sensitivity; changing the timing for hold actions in menus or replacing them with alternative methods of input; and enabling left-handed mouse navigation or swapping controller sticks in different scenarios.
• Guaranteed Pickpocket Option – Allows players to disable the pickpocket quick time event.
• Aim Assist – Allows players to choose different levels of aiming assistance for controller input.
• D-Pad Navigation – Players can use d-pad navigation and shortcuts for menus and other tasks that typically use analog sticks or mouse.
• Quick Use of Tools – Enables players to quickly access certain tools by pressing two buttons, instead of navigating the tool wheel with an analog stick.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will launch on October 5 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC via Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store, and Amazon Luna, and will also be available on day one with a Ubisoft+ subscription. For more on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, check out the History of Baghdad feature, and find out how it revisits and revitalizes ideas from the first Assassin’s Creed games.

— Mikel Reparaz

The post Assassin’s Creed: Mirage Accessibility Spotlight appeared first on Gamecritics.com.