Michael simply does not understand Ubisoft’s multiplayer strategy. For him, all current games either miss the trend by years, feel forced, or are just not fun. It’s a shame, he thinks, as one of Ubisoft’s best multiplayer experiences is slipping further into obscurity. Yet it holds so much potential and could be even more successful today.
I have a love-hate relationship with Ubisoft games. Actually interesting ideas and concepts too often fall victim to their mainstream formula. It’s even worse in their multiplayer games. Let’s stick to a few examples:
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint alienated players with boredom and loot boxes.
- Hyper Scape was the interchangeable “battle royale” clone that, it feels, went under even before its announcement.
- And the recently released Riders Republic is nice but lacks any unique selling point or special gameplay in which I want to immerse myself for hours.
Somehow, I doubt that Ubisoft will ever achieve a huge success on this path. The fascinating thing is that my absolute favorite multiplayer comes from them: the one from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
I have been playing it for almost twelve years and keep it alive as part of a small community, hoping that Ubisoft will firstly never shut it down and secondly might even remaster it someday. It would be a promising opportunity, as the concept remains brilliant and especially unmatched to this day.
So good that you will never want to play singleplayer again
In 2010, it was the best idea ever to put the entire hide-and-seek and murder game into multiplayer. Historical settings, parkour, various assassin tactics. In the multiplayer mode of AC: Brotherhood, up to 8 players face off and are each assigned the task of eliminating one of them.
The exciting part: the victims do not know who is hunting them. The problem: the locations are populated with dozens of NPC copies of the game characters, making it difficult to find the right person. And after completion or failure, new contracts are immediately assigned. So lingering and enjoying Venice is not an option!
Unlike other multiplayer games, success here does not solely depend on your speed. Kills are rated based on stealth, and those who charge in recklessly receive just as few points for this clumsy performance. The tutorial teaches you barely one percent; the rest of the know-how is based on years of observation and experience.
To master the game, you need to adopt a specific “assassin-esque” mindset, in which you must constantly ask yourself the following questions in a matter of seconds: Where are my victim and my pursuer hiding? Who behaves suspiciously and is thus not an NPC? How do I make the best kill now, without getting killed myself? And how do I escape best afterward?
But the mind games and tactical depth go much further. All players have a set of two abilities that they can individually equip with items like smoke bombs, pistols, and throwing knives. Since I don’t know what my opponent has, I have to reassess him or her in every situation.
Is my opponent playing defensively or offensively? How should I react? And do I have the right counter ability with me? Hundreds of situations, hundreds of combinations, hundreds of outcomes, where multiple people can also get involved: Despite all the features that have been added over the years, the singleplayer has never been able to reach this stealth complexity even remotely.
New installments appeared, Ubisoft gifted us three more multiplayer games with the same basic principle but different directions, until Assassin’s Creed: Unity came and introduced the co-op missions. To this day, I ask myself: Why? Why this regression? The typical semi-stealthy slaughtering from the singleplayer logically turned into a brutal butcher party. This was not well received, and the entire game and its technology even less – and that was the end of the multiplayer games.
More installments came, new consoles came, but for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and for the best assassin experience, I stayed on my dusty PlayStation 3 – until I switched to PC last year for my streams, as here the best chances still exist to get enough players for a match.
Even after thousands of matches, I am still captivated. The never-ending rush between stealth and pursuit is unique, especially due to the short match duration of ten minutes. Timer and point ranking stress you as much as they motivate you.
Additionally, there is the dynamic between the players themselves. It’s great to still encounter an arch-nemesis from old matches and treat him just as respectfully as mercilessly. There are simply too many great moments in this game:
- When I fail due to a new trick from my opponent, only to receive it as a lesson instead.
- When I catch one of the old masters and he congratulates me after the match.
- When I hide from three pursuers in a crowd and they all eliminate the wrong people, allowing me to take a triple bonus.
- When I jump from fourth place to first place with a poison kill in the last seconds, leaving open mouths behind.
- Just talking about it makes me want to play again.
· Assassin’s Creed is supposedly getting a live service, but how is that supposed to work?
· Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is really good when played like an MMO.
· Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: No multiplayer, but with cool online features.
To this day a gem – Those who copied it have failed
No, not everything is perfect in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. The matchmaking is clunky, there are still annoying bugs, and the small community sometimes tends to show a certain toxic side. But to this day, Ubisoft can claim this stealth masterpiece for itself.
There are many games, like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid, where I have to outsmart an NPC AI. But it is a completely different thing to set up a cat-and-mouse game between real players without gameplay gaps or balance issues.
Every studio that has tried something similar has failed miserably.
- The multiplayer mode of Hitman 2, called Ghost Mode, turned it into a weird match between two parallel universes with little influence on each other – the servers were shut down two years later.
- Hood: Outlaws & Legends, in which two Robin Hood gangs are supposed to pull off a stealth heist, turned into a camping battle at the exit – also virtually dead by now.
- And the multiplayer of Deathloop unfortunately only degenerates into a small optional feature that fails at general balancing between the hunters, matchmaking, and the general concept – which is not the main reason for the game’s failure.
When it comes to Assassin’s Creed, I always hear how many players wish for the classic assassin action back. When it comes to Ubisoft multiplayer games, I always hear how many players criticize the missing ideas and lack of fun.
Then hit two birds with one stone and remaster the multiplayer mode of AC: Brotherhood! In my eyes, it is still the best assassin and multiplayer experience that Ubisoft has ever produced.
Maybe I will not be able to conjure up huge waves of protest that result in hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition, but maybe I was able to convince you why this game still has so many fans and actually needs many more fans.
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