ASSASSIN’S CREED: VALHALLA review

(PS5 version reviewed)

The poster boy for what a next-gen title is capable of looking like, Assassins Creed: Valhalla is a breathtakingly gorgeous game to experience. Set in the dark age of Vikings, your aim is to pillage and conquer all and sundry, commanding a raiding party to steal treasure and establish new settlements. Being an Assassin’s Creed game, or course, you can expect a fair bit of crazy-assed base-jumping intermingled in all the action. That’s a given. After all, those death-defying leaps are the reason we signed up for this whole shebang to begin with…

Gaming Heaven

• Thanks to the added graphical muscle of the PS5, this is a visual tour de force. The environments themselves are of particular note, making you wish they had invented cameras in the dark ages for all those Kodak moments.
• The game plays at a brisk pace too, with menus instantly appearing upon command, and a nano-second of a load time as you access new areas of the game.
• The 60FPS frame rate is a joy to behold, with combat in particular much more playable than previous games thanks to the smoothness of the on-screen action.
• At the core, this is an Assassin’s Creed game, and delivers the experience you would expect from such a title.

Gaming Hell

• The whole alternative history storyline seems a little forced at times, and makes you wish they just removed the annoying modern-day simulator tie-in all-together.

Final Verdict

The first thing you will notice is the jaw-dropping visuals, then you begin to discover the intricacies of the game play, which again continues the rich legacy of the Assassin’s Creed series. A fantastic reimagining of the franchise for the next-gen platforms.