(electronic beeping) - [Jake] And we're back
with another episode of "Before You Buy." That show we give you
some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of
the latest games releasing. As usual, it's me, Jake,
and believe it or not Ubisoft is back with
another "Assassin's Creed." Can you believe it? I got some things to say about this one. Just so you know, we've
been playing a review copy sent to us by Ubisoft and
the footage captured here is running on PlayStation 5
and I've kept it spoiler free. So, "Mirage" is significant because it's a break from the trend of the last three main
"Assassin's Creed" games, "Origins," "Odyssey," and
"Valhalla" shed the weight of their predecessors to
become these big, sprawling, 100 hour, open world action RPGs. Now, "Mirage" brings
it back down to basics. You're in the Middle East, you're simply an assassin
wearing a white hood with a few tools, the map isn't massive, and you can beat the game in
a reasonable amount of time. For me, I've been a fan of
these games since day one. I loved all the original style games, even with their sometimes
significant flaws because there wasn't really
anything else like them out there at the time. The newer games, "Odyssey,"
"Origins," "Valhalla," I acknowledge that they
are technically good, but just not what I was looking for from an "Assassin's Creed" game. So "Mirage" sounded like
just what I was looking for. Now, to be frank, this game
feels like the middle ground between the two "Assassin's Creed" styles. I don't love it, I don't hate it, but it's a step in the right direction. It feels way more in line with a classic "Assassin's Creed" game in terms of focus and gameplay scenarios. But with the parkour, the
combat, and certain elements, it still kinda feels like the newer games. Not as precise as I'd like,
just kind of watered down a bit, you know, it's hard to put my finger on. Maybe it's just the gameplay feel of the games it's trying to emulate. Maybe it's a bit of
nostalgia, but that's just me. That's my bias upfront. If you go in expecting
"Assassin's Creed 2," or a 4 or something like that, not quite. But if you play the newer games and are looking for a
change of pace from them and you've only played those,
then this is a decent one. But what's the deal here? So in this you play as Basim,
a character significant to "Assassin's Creed, Valhalla," but at least at the
start of the game here, he's just a fresh face. A young guy yearning to
be an assassin, you know, your typical "Assassin's
Creed" protagonist, you get to experience him as a character in a standalone story, at
least sort of for a minute. And you watch him progress
from young street thief guy to apprentice assassin,
to full-on master assassin and the story and his
clothing will reflect that. And now, like I said, he
is a former street thief, but he is like quick-witted,
and he's a bit funny and lighthearted, but also intensely, almost naively idealistic. Things get pretty rough
for him after an intro and he is conscripted into The
Hidden Ones, the assassins, and you join him to link up with them, learn and rid Baghdad of bad guys. Of course it gets more
complicated than that, it's "Assassin's Creed," but it does work because of Basim and a
few distinct characters surrounding him, they seem
to actually give a damn. And then there's Baghdad
itself, the setting, it's a cool backdrop, one
that's got a familiar feeling to "Assassin's Creed," like classic. And even like the wide
open deserts and rivers and farms from Egypt in "Origins." But it still manages to
feel distinct on its own especially in certain districts as you get deeper into the
city and see detailed palaces and markets and there's like
where they make clothing, where mercantile happens,
where commerce happens, it's cool to see and the
map isn't super massive. It's essentially centered
around a big city with a little couple
of surrounding outposts and some desert and some fields. It's explorable enough, it
is just open world enough. This is where I think it feels a lot more like the open worlds of old
"Assassin's Creed" games which weren't really
always technically open. But yeah, the story is
told through cut scenes that aren't always very thrilling, and some characters emote a
little awkwardly here and there in cut scenes and stuff. But generally I like the voice acting, and the language options are pretty cool. Now, the story isn't
super epic or memorable, but a little bit of intrigue helps, especially if you finished "Valhalla." There's a little extra depth to kind of getting to the
bottom of Basim as a character. It's the characters that help it along and really the pacing, you're always off doing the next thing. And that is typically sneaking
around and taking out dudes. "Mirage" is centered around stealth. The stealth is simple and the guards are still hopelessly dumb, but it still manages to
be somewhat satisfying. If you're familiar with
these, then you get the gist, you know, you're hiding in
bushes, you're crouching and climbing around, you're
whistling to trick dudes to come over to you and
stab them in the face. And then you're running away, you're parkouring through the streets trying to break line of sight and hide. The game embraces some traditional "Assassin's
Creed" elements too, like sitting on a bench to blend in or standing in a crowd to disappear a bit. You can also use certain groups
of people to your advantage like in the older games. In those games you'd spend money to get people to do your bidding, like have a couple of tough
guys start a fight for you or pay some dancing ladies
to distract the guards. And in this game it's changed up a bit. You have to hand these people
a special kind of token, like kind of unspoken little thing that says in the community,
"Hey, this guy is good, he's is trying to do the
right thing, help him out." So how you get these is by
exploring the environment, finishing small tasks,
finding hidden stuff, and pickpocketing people. This special token can also be spent on like a merchant to get
access to goods at a discount, which is nice. Now, the main thing you are
gonna be spending money on is to refill your tools of the trade. Basim has a small tool set
that you can slowly unlock by progressing through the game. It's just a handful of stuff,
you know, throwing knives, a noise maker, a powdered
smoke bomb thing, blow darts. These are straightforward,
good assassin tools, but they can actually be
upgraded at your Assassin Bureaus in a fun little way. You can spend collected
resources to unlock three tiers through the course of the game. And each tier has three choices within of which you can only
choose one attribute. Say like make your
throwing knives stronger, or maybe make them more
poisonous, the choice is yours. And those choices are
kind of good and fun. And as you unlock more of those tiers, you can kind of tailor
the tools a little bit in your own special way. You also have a Focus
Meter that allows you to, not too far into the game,
access that kind of mark and executability where you
can target multiple enemies and then hit a button and
Basim zips between them, killing them all pretty instantly. It's a bit weird, but
it's something different. There's also a Skill Tree which is straightforward and simple. You can spend points in
one of three branches to unlock stuff like chain assassinations, or a stun kick, or breaking
your fall, carrying capacity, all stuff that feels kind of meaningful. Nothing too just fluff or
padded-out filler stuff. I like a Skill Tree where
everything that you unlock feels worthwhile and they got it here. It's a decent Skill Tree. You're finding weapons
and costumes out there but it's not a loot fest. Most of the time is spent
actually finding resources and unlocking blueprints
to just upgrade your sword, or your dagger, or your clothing, with a couple of perks and stat upgrades. You know, you're not
swapping to a new sword, because you're picking up a
new one every five minutes, and I like that. The way these systems
work, it's not massive, it's not overly complicated
but it works well enough and you're using your tools and the skills you unlock for missions. Missions that more often than
not are nicely open-ended. It typically goes like this. You roll up on a place and then from there it's up to you to choose how to attack. Use your bird in the sky
to like scout out enemies and find possible secret
entrances or exits and then jump into either
steal something and get in or kill a key figure and escape. There are usually
multiple ways to do things like draw out a key enemy
by doing a side objective, if you can even find that side objective. Or setting up a trap or
maybe just, you know, perfect stealthing the whole thing. It's another thing like
it's not overly complex, and like I said, a lot of
the enemies feel like dummies when you're taking them
out one by one so easily, so systematically just
by standing in a bush. You know, it's kind of
like how "Assassin's Creed" has been for a while. A lot of it does work
on a notoriety system. So as you do bad things in public or in front of enemies,
your notoriety builds and that's when you're more
easily recognized and pursued. You always bribe a town speaker
or tear down wanted posters to reduce your notoriety. Does that sound familiar? They knew what they were doing here. This is like totally trying
to capture that old feel. Now, there are some
rough control problems. It actually kind of reminds me of the old "Assassin's Creed" games where you'd run up the wrong
thing or fall to your death by jumping the wrong way. The parkour isn't perfect,
it isn't super precise. It's also not super fast either,
which I don't usually mind. Some of the assassins in these games start out a bit chunkier and slower, but here it just feels
slow and also not exciting. Some of the other games when
you were a slower assassin, it was still cool, here
it's just a bit boring. I don't know if it's like Basim's sprint, the sense of momentum, I don't know, maybe it's the design of the
landscapes you're running on. Just something about the
feel of it is a bit off. The same goes for the actual
hidden blade stabbings. They just don't feel right, like not super precise
or satisfying to nail. And the animations sometimes feel kind of all over the place. The momentum just isn't right when you're stabbing a guy while walking. They used to have those nailed perfectly. And now the assassination things, it just doesn't feel great
to stab a room full of dudes, it used to feel like such a badass. And I think this is ultimately indicative of what "Assassin's Creed Mirage" is. It is something that
was essentially intended to be a "Valhalla" spinoff DLC, that they decided to branch off and make it its own
fully fleshed-out game. But it is still the framework of the new "Assassin's Creed" game. So it's still not going to
feel as back to its roots as some people were
hoping, myself included. Granted, that comes down
to expectations and stuff, but I can only judge it as one person. I am a consumer just like you. So that's kinda where I'm
really at with it though. But at the very least, I do
like that there is an emphasis on the stealth and sieging
of these big bases or castles or strongholds is pretty good. I had a good time with
it and I had a good time with like the subcontract
stuff where a lot of the times it's just to go steal
something and return it. I like the way those flowed. It's not like a dayasex or a thief or anything like that complex, but at the very least it succeeds in that. And where it does kind of
maintain that old-school feel, specifically to my memory,
"Assassin's Creed 1," is that the combat is not great. The combat, I really don't
like, it's very simple. It's like a watered-down
version of the newer games but you have an attack, a heavy attack, and a parry and a dodge and it
just does not feel very good. It feels very exchangey,
but like the very old games, you're kind of just waiting
for somebody to swing at you and then you parry it at the right time and then that opens them
up for a cool, one shot, stabby finishing animation. I like that. That's not gonna
work for everybody, man. Like I liked the combat in
the first "Assassin's Creed," even though it was technically bad, the killing people in one shot was cool. So here in 2023, some
people are gonna need stuff a little more complex. I don't know about you, it's really gonna come
down to how you feel. So watch some more
gameplay videos of combat to kinda get an idea of it. You can tell I'm wishy-washy
on everything with this game. It just all right. Where the game does really succeed, again, is the fact that it
does kind of commit to stealth and also the culture. Showing Baghdad, showing
historic Muslim culture, like all this stuff going on here is stuff that you don't
see in a lot of games, so it's nice to have perspective. 'Cause at the end of the day,
even with a lot of the flaws this game has, it still has what I want from a classic "Assassin's Creed" game. Like a historical setting that
you can totally get lost in and you're walking around in a white hood and you're stabbing people. Granted, it gets a lot
more complicated than that, but if you're looking for a
simple "Assassin's Creed," you have it here. I am not head over heels in love with it but I would love the series
to go back in this direction. I know not everybody agrees with me, and some people really take issue with how I talk about the
modern "Assassin's Creed" games, but hey, I'm just one person, we all have different thoughts on games. And really this is a "Before You Buy," you know how this goes by now. I give you some pros, some
cons and some personal opinion. And now I wanna hear yours
down in the comments. How do you feel about the franchise? Are you one of the people who just got into the
newer, big action RPG games? Do you only like the old games?
Are you a weirdo like me? And what are you expecting from "Mirage"? Let's talk about anything
at all "Assassin's Creed" and "Assassin's Creed
Mirage" down in the comments. We'd love to hear from you but if this video helped
you out, you know, seeing the game play and
just getting some insight, if it helps steer your decision, clicking the like
button's all you gotta do, it really helps us out. But if you're new, consider subscribing, maybe hitting that notification bell because we put out
videos every single day. Either way, thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time. (suspenseful music)
(indistinct game sounds)
