If you're a fan of the Assassin's Creed franchise and you own a Meta Quest VR headset, let's have a little chat. I am a newly formed VR gamer. I've dabbled in a few titles like NFL Pro Era 2 and PGA Golf.
Ubisoft hooked us up with a copy of Assassin's Creed Nexus VR and I am incredibly impressed with the package they put together. I know it is very meme-y to say "I felt like Ezio" but you are literally Ezio in Venice.
Story
Note: I am not going to spoil the game for you. I will talk about the first hour or so to give premise and my thoughts on the VR experience, but there are some things that you will need to experience for yourself.
Let's start from the top. You're some unnamed hackerman (or hackerwoman) who has been hired to infiltrate Abstergo and mess with a project called Nexus Eye. You're instructed by the team that hired you to dive into the memories of three legendary assassins: Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed II, Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Connor from Assassin's Creed III. Right off the bat, I was incredibly excited to play as Ezio from Assassin's Creed 2, my favorite in the Assassin's Creed series. You start out by finding his sword as a tutorial. Immediately, you're Ezio Auditore. The VR engulfs your vision and you're in Italy, sneaking your way through the compound looking for your sword.
Once you retrieve the sword, you're pulled out of the Animus. Throughout you're play, you'll jump in and out of each experience so it can get a little confusing about where these plot points are going, but they do wrap up nicely.
Settings
The game has an incredible amount of settings customization that allows you to set your preferred play style. What will dictate most of your experience is the intensity that you're comfortable with. I went with a {double check setting} which allowed me to move with the left thumbstick instead of doing the "VR Teleport", that is present at lower settings if you choose.
There is a bit of "sea legs" when using the left thumbstick at first, but I was able to quickly get past that. For me, and I can obviously only speak for myself, the sea legs feeling wasn't as bad as I experienced with I first used the PSVR. Even doing the large leaps of faith into haystacks or falling from a floor above didn't turn my stomach like Resident Evil 7 did on the PSVR. As someone who is prone to a wee bit of motion sickness (thank you Everest in Disney for kicking that off), I had no issues in my play through where I needed to take the headset off because I felt ill. Again, I'm not sure if that was Ubisoft's design, a Meta design or a combination of the two but it was wonderful.
Graphics
The game looks great. I'm playing on my Meta Quest 2 and I think Ubisoft did a solid job when optimizing this game. VR headsets will never give you the graphical fidelity of playing on a 4k monitor, but that's okay given VR expectations. The game doesn't look bad. There is a moment when you retrieve Ezio's sword and climb onto a balcony overlooking a town square as fireworks begin to shoot off and the famous eagles are flying overhead, calling out to one another. The shot is burned in my image as I looked around, mouth agape, at the the world before me. It was incredibly immersive and for mere moments forgot that I was in my living room.
Climbing/Parkour
A staple of the Assassin's Creed franchise is scaling building and doing everything you can to get a better vantage point to scope out the area. This is present in Assassin's Creed Nexus and the game doesn't hold you hand in this aspect. Each wand represents your respective hand and you need to motion like you're climbing. Want to scale that wall?
Place your left wand on the brick or wood. Click the left grip button. Place your right on above your head on the next climbable spot. Click the right grip button. Pull yourself up and repeat the process. You will feel like you're climbing something without ever moving around your room.
It really is a wild feeling as you're standing in place, motioning movements while your character is scaling this building or clock tower.
Parkour is definitely one of the weak points of the movement. Another staple of the Assassin's Creed franchise is easily hopping from one spot to the next, but as I mentioned earlier, this can be done by moving forward and holding down A on your wand.
Combat
Lastly, let's touch on combat. Sneaking around and eliminating your targets the best part of this game. To sneak, you press the left thumbstick down and sneak around, waiting for guards to turn their backs on you before shoving a knife in their neck. It feels great and is quite thrilling, truly. There's also a great feeling of being up high and sniping your enemies down with a bow or throwing daggers at them from afar.
Where the game stumbles is hand to hand combat once you're spotted. Hand to hand combat is basically just waiting for your opponent to try and attack you, parry it a few times and wait for an opening to strike. You'll never be ganged up on as enemies will fight you one at a time and every enemy seems to have the same strike pattern.
If the goal is to never get caught, the boring hand to hand combat does a good job at making sure you never want to get caught. It is probably the most frustrating part of the game, but it doesn't take away from the complete package because about 85-90% of your targets can be taken down with stealth.
Ultimately, I had a great time with Assassin's Creed Nexus and it was an experience I looked forward to going back to time and time again. If you're new the VR world and looking to beef up your library or you're an Assassin's Creed fan looking to get the true feeling of being an assassin, I would recommend this one.
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