"Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR" hands-on experience: a AAA game that lacks polish

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3A works lacking polish

(XR Navigation Network November 17, 2023) Ubisoft’s highly anticipated VR masterpiece “Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR” has officially been releasedMeta Quest Store, priced at $39.99. Ben Lang of RoadtoVR recently shared his hands-on experience: Although the classic parkour, stealth and combat mechanisms are reproduced in VR, this is just a 3A work that lacks polish.

As one of the most recognized IPs in the VR gaming community this year, "Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR" is highly anticipated. But as we know, converting existing flat games into VR is no easy task. So did Ubisoft succeed? Please read on.

Assassin's Creed Nexus VR manages to stay true to Assassin's Creed's core gameplay. If you've played this game before, you won't be unfamiliar with the parkour, stealth, and combat elements in the work.

The VR and planar systems play very similarly: Enemies will keep an eye on you, and their alertness levels will change if they hear something or have seen you; and the smoothness of parkour feels just like you'd expect. The exception is combat (explained later).

The basic story structure of the game is also pretty close: You are a person from the future who jumps into a simulated past through a virtual reality system called the Animus. The game presents the concept of VR in a concise way, by showing the protagonists meeting each other in VR while using the headset's see-through camera before you're fully connected to the system.

However, the game requires you to jump between three different characters, storylines, and locations (four if you count the Animus' metastory), which inevitably results in a fragmented narrative and only reinforces " The concept of “go here, do this” leads to a lack of intrinsic motivation and sometimes you don’t even know what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Just like in Assassin's Creed games over the years, you'll constantly be seeing and being guided by markers. The game will keep telling you "go here, do this". There are usually 2D pop-ups that appear in front of you and tell you the next goal or which goal was just completed (sometimes even overlapping each other).

This creates a very "tablet" feel to the player, which can be distracting and annoying, especially early in the game, and the game also keeps popping up tutorial prompts attached to your controller, along with a heavy tactile feel. Buzz to grab your attention.

As we all know, aside from the main objective, what players have to do is find collectibles scattered randomly. Most are collectibles, but sometimes involve parkour challenges, shooting challenges or historical markers. After trying it a few times, I decided none of them were interesting enough.

Even an hour and a half into the game, I still felt like I was in heavy tutorial mode. The game provides a series of systematic tutorials (which exist beyond the explicit tutorial phase). I thought it was going to be like this forever, and it wasn't until two hours later that I started to feel like the game was actually starting to be fun. Things will get better as the game starts opening up more space to you.

Parkour

Parkour is often very effective. Considering it seems to be heavily adapted from the series' existing third-person parkour system, I'm pretty surprised at how well it works. While running, you hold down the A button to initiate parkour and allow you to jump from one obstacle to the next relatively smoothly.

The various places you can jump in the game feel great, and the system is very good at inferring where you want to jump. You'll develop a solid intuition about what constitutes effective terrain and feel like your rooftop is your own playground.

The only place where this system goes wrong is with mantle jumps: if your next jump is high enough, you can't land on your feet, so you need to grab the next grip with your hands and pull yourself up. When this approach works, it effectively integrates players into parkour.

(As an explanation, a popular jumping method appeared in the "Apex Legends" community previously: Mantle-Jump. Specifically, by canceling the wall climbing, the task will appear on the ground for a moment, and then immediately use Super-Jump to super jump, so that The character leaves in the air at the height of a Super-Jump.)

But it's very difficult to grab the grip with your hands, and may only work for as long as you'd expect from an 80% during a mantle jump.

This means that when you're running away from a guard in a high-speed chase, you have a 20% chance of failing, causing you to slide down with your face against the wall. As you can imagine, this really breaks the immersion of the game.

sneak

It took me a while to master this feature, but once I figured out enemy behavior, stealth started to be fun. Sneaking around to avoid their gaze is a fun game of cat and mouse, especially if you spot an opportunity to sneak up behind a guard and quickly take them out with your sword when no one else is looking.

You can drag away the bodies and hide them. This is fun in theory, but doing so makes you frustratingly slow, so it often feels like a greater risk than potential reward. You can only grab objects at specific points at a time, which feels cumbersome.

Whether sneaking around on the ground or hiding on a rooftop, the game gives you a variety of ways to get closer to your target.

At any time, you can use the Animus Scout view to view the entire area from a bird's-eye view, tag guards, observe their patrol paths, and find infiltration routes. I really like this little detail: when you exit the Animus Scout view, you're still looking in the same direction. This way, you can seamlessly decide your desired course from heaven and then translate that into something you can execute on earth.

difficulty

Not only does the game include different difficulty levels, but it also allows you to adjust stealth and combat difficulty independently. The default stealth difficulty is the perfect mix of fair and fun. Unfortunately, combat is a weak point of the game even on the highest combat difficulty.

fighting

Among the three core gameplay systems of parkour, stealth and combat, I think the latter is the worst. It lacks that sense of gameplay you want from a triple-A game. Even on the hardest difficulty option, it's not challenging. You just keep poking and slashing, and the enemy will die in front of you.

Functionally, the game tries to be close to the likes of Until You Fall, and it's a great choice. Assassin's Creed Nexus VR allows for blocking and dodging, which is fun, but it doesn't offer the same optimizations as Until You Fall, nor does it allow for the instinctive, physics-based movements we saw in Blade and Sorcery. .

Combat rarely has coherent moves, especially when fighting multiple enemies.

Because combat isn't particularly interesting, being spotted and surrounded by guards often creates a feeling of boredom rather than something to look forward to.

Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR uses a health regeneration system that weakens the tension between stealth and combat. Because your health regenerates, you can limp out of combat, hide, wait for your health to regenerate, and then fight again when the time comes.

If the game uses a non-regeneration system, being spotted by guards and forced into combat could mean losing a critical health point or two, which would obviously add to the tension of the game. Because at this point you can choose to leave and hide. You'll be more than willing to actually stay stealthy since you only have one health left. The reason you stop fighting isn't because fighting isn't that much fun, but because there's a real risk of death.

In my opinion, this small tweak to the game's health system would make stealth games more tense and fun. I know this isn't possible, but I'd like to see it introduced in the next update, perhaps as another difficulty setting.

Likewise, Ubisoft can't get away from the 2D flat feel of objective markers and pop-ups. Not only that, but the game's menus are sluggish and use an odd combination of laser pointers and buttons that make navigation very strange. Many common actions require you to hold down the A button for up to three seconds, even if the result doesn't require "super confirmation," such as switching from one target to another.

Then there's the game's launch sequence. From game launch to loading toQuest 3 takes 1 minute and 30 seconds, of which probably 75%'s time is painfully slow disclaimer popup, logo popup, and that awful "Connect your Ubisoft account" popup that appears every time the game is newly opened window.

This isn't a problem if you can put the headset down and put it to sleep without leaving the game, but if you do anything with the headset between game rounds, you'll get the same prompt every time.

Yes, 1 minute and 30 seconds doesn't sound like a long time, but when you're watching slow cutscenes with the headset on, reading the same disclaimer over and over again, and the system once again ignores that you've told it you don't want to be logged into your Ubisoft account This is really annoying, especially since it's unnecessary waiting time.

From a content perspective, the game takes approximately 15 hours to complete the main story. This will take longer for those who want to find all collectibles in each level. At any time, you can jump back to a previous level to play it all over again and find more collectibles.

Immersion

Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR feels like it's based on a system built specifically for third-person Assassin's Creed games, rather than being developed for a first-person perspective. NPCs in particular always have uncanny valley expressions, terrible lip syncs, and creepy expressions.

You'll see two identical NPCs talking to each other at the same time, while a third copy of the same NPC will be walking down a nearby street.

Regarding the graphics, I think the game does look visually impressive considering the size of the game and the number of NPCs and objects, but it's not the "best graphics we've seen in a VR standalone game" ".

In VR, you rarely see such a large space ahead of you to traverse. This sense of scale is emphasized in the Animus Scout view, where you can see the entire space from a bird's-eye view, including NPCs wandering a few streets away from you.

Games usually have the interaction systems you want, they just lack polish for VR.

Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR uses the traditional "magical invisible backpack", where players can "pick up" something (like an arrow or a smoke grenade) and then let it go, at which point it will magically teleport to them. in the backpack system.

The same goes for target props and keys. When you need them, they're there when you hold your hand. For example, if you need to hand a target item to another character who's reaching out, you simply reach near their hand and grab the air. At this point, the relevant item will appear in your hand and you can give it to them.

I don't like this kind of "click" interaction in VR, even if you allow the player to put props on the shoulders, it will be more immersive.

Speaking of interactions, Hidden Sword feels good overall. You pull it out by pulling the trigger and flicking your wrist, which is very reliable and definitely gives you the feel of wielding this unique weapon. But the fun of jump-assassination (jumping down from above to kill) is really undermined by the fact that the arms stick out almost every time. This points to a lack of polish in most of the game's interactions that are essential to fulfilling the assassin's fantasy.

The game also features extreme auto-aiming for projectiles (arrows and knives). You barely need to aim. This really takes away from the satisfaction of sneaking and getting stealth kills. At the same time, it is difficult to aim accurately when throwing by hand. For example you want to throw something out of the window to distract the guard, but you end up throwing it against the wall and attracting the guard's attention. But at least, I like that the game allows you to retrieve bows, arrows, and throwing knives from fallen bodies.

Speaking of bows, they have weird interaction optimization issues, like I reach back over my shoulder to pick up the bow, but I actually pull out an arrow first, which means now I need to hand the arrow to the other hand, and then Reach over to grab the bow. Moments like this ruin the fantasy of being a master assassin: when you're ready to shoot your enemy quickly and deftly before they sound the alarm, but you get caught fiddling with this crap, killing the moment.

The key to defining a AAA game is often a sense of scale and polish. Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR has the features and systems you want to see in a VR game, but it lacks polish. It doesn't have the feeling that being in VR is more important than a flat game. It's hard to explain why, but many of the game's mechanics do reduce player satisfaction. That's not to say it's not done well, but in almost every case you can think of a VR game that's done better.

However, one immersive detail is the ability to whistle. Pull the trigger button, hold down the A button, form a whistling posture with your fingers, and then raise your hand to your mouth to whistle. As a tool, always having a way to draw guards closer to you is very useful. As an immersive interaction, it feels natural.

Another aspect worthy of praise is lock picking. It's a simple but brilliantly implemented and immersive mechanic. Push forward and pull back with one hand to select the locking section, while the other hand rotates to find the correct position. This is obviously an adaptation of a similar mechanic from the flat game, but it works.

I'd like to see this become more challenging in the future, perhaps introducing a penalty for failed lockpicking, which would lead to a poor choice if you were to turn in the wrong direction. What I like is that the game sometimes gives you the option of stealing keys from guards, which can be quite challenging.

Comfort

I was surprised at how comfortable parkour felt in the game. I could play on the lowest comfort setting for over an hour without feeling any discomfort.

If you're more sensitive to this kind of movement, the game offers plenty of options, including game-specific ones. For example, you can enable the "Virtual Nose" option (which helps relieve discomfort during exercise by providing a frame of reference for your eyes to get used to seeing), or the "Acrophobia" option, which allows the system to automatically detect when you are standing at a high place. Place a grid around it to help alleviate height sensitivity.

The game also offers parkour-specific accessibility options to make running easier or more predictable.

Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR supports teleportation, but it's very slow and unreliable. I mean, I'm glad they at least tried to add this feature, but I found that it slowed the game down to an unacceptable level. I can't imagine playing an entire game using teleportation all the time. If that's you, beating the level seems to take one and a half to two times longer than without teleportation.