The_Shed

As a solo player? 9/10. Tremendous game, beautifully polished and fun to play. Plus relaxing during a huge outbreak. As a collaborative/co-op player? With multiple people/friends/family sharing a Nintendo Switch and collaborating on an island? Terribly flawed. Completely hobbled by the awful decision to only allow ONE main character (the first person to begin the island). All other people/characters on the Nintendo Switch console who join the island are blocked from core story content, from progressing the island, and from unlocking recipes. They are essentially "guest" characters, for temporary and throwaway use. This is not communicated anywhere in the game, so it's possible to go weeks or months building your island before realising that when your flatmate or sibling leaves/moves out, you will be completely blocked from progressing because they were the "main" villager. Absurd, terrible design decision.

Yes, the framerate is choppy quite frequently, and the poor decision to bump the NPC count to 5,000 leads to a lot of grim pop-in and other issues- but Assassins Creed Unity is the best game in the series from a gameplay standpoint. Open world - massively improved Graphics - notwithstanding frequent (but not constant) issues, massively improved Combat - massively improved, has fixed the series' combat essentially. Actually difficult now, when against more than 3 enemies or high level enemies. Quick reflexes required - better than Batman or Mordor's combat. Side missions - hugely, hugely improved. Several of the murder mysteries are better than Wolf Among Us or Batman's detective work. There are so many of them and they are so brilliantly varied. Customisation - hugely improved. So many colours and clothing options, like a full-blown RPG. Free-running and gameplay systems - amazing. Free running still occasionally misses the mark, but such an improvement. Also new resources like Creed Points actually incentivise playing well. Story - excellent. Best writing in the series, Arno is great, way better than Ezio. Matches AAA fiction like Game of Thrones quite often. Really good stuff. A problem will crop up every 10 minutes or so - sudden framerate drop or bad clipping or stupid NPC AI or pop-in - but the other 9 minutes will be brilliant entertainment. What the Assassin's Creed series should have been since the first one. PS microtransactions are entirely ignorable and the Companion app stuff seems decent. Don't like it, don't use it.

Device 6 all about the puzzles. Pencil in hand, paper on table, thought-wrenching puzzles. Don't expect mindblowing graphics. Don't expect "casual," "easy," "one-more-go" gameplay. Don't expect arcade gameplay and skill-based replayability. Device 6 doesn't have any of that: it has a very clever, very simply written story, over an intricate and sublimely designed interface. Everything is effortless and smooth- except the puzzles which the game simply doesn't warn you are coming. Sometimes you might not even notice there's a puzzle. Pay attention. Read carefully. Think outside the box.

You have to know what you're in for with this game to enjoy it. If you do, it's a masterpiece, one of the best examples of a small-but-oh-so-fun arcadey experience which is infinitely replayable and deep. Other reviewers obviously don't know what they're in for. A couple of hints: i) after the tutorial, every level is randomly generated EVERY TIME you play it. You can't learn the levels like other games: you have to be actually good at PLAYING it, it requires skill and practice to get better and learn how to deal with issues. ii) It's goddamn unforgiving. Hand in hand with point i), this game will take you apart repeatedly until you learn to do things like: avoid running under spiders, drop things in front of arrow traps, save ropes and bombs more than money, GET THE CLIMBING GLOVES AS FAST AS YOU CAN, stay the damn hell out of a yeti's armreach... And so on. It's wonderfully deep and infinitely new and fresh. GET IT AND ENJOY IT, FOLKS. (The only issues I've noted are very, very rare bugs and... That's it. It's great stuff, and I haven't even tried 4-player splitscreen co-op, which sounds incredible).