Assassin’s Creed Unity has barely been out two days for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, but players have already encountered a large number of strange glitches. These glitches run the gamut of frightening to frustrating to funny, and the community of Assassin’s Creed gamers have responded in kind.
Reviewers have knocked Assassin’s Creed Unity for serious performance issues and lackluster gameplay so that its current Metacritic score sits at only a 76. Not really mentioned are some of the glitches players have encountered. Some of these glitches appear to solely be based on the platform the game is being played on. For example, PC users have been posting horrifying faces to NeoGAF and other forums due to a glitch that removes textures on characters.
Those frightening images have not been seen by PlayStation 4 or Xbox One players as much. However, they have seen plenty of other glitches that fall into the bad clipping, slow loading textures, and floating body realms. It was also quickly noticed that while Ubisoft boasted on the number of NPCs that it packed in scenes, it achieved this feat by duplicating character models with the exact same clothing and stance.
These glitches have led to a large number of YouTube videos highlighting these oddities as well as photoshopped memes poking fun at them. Credit to YouTube user Crashinsid3 Station for compiling together various glitch videos floating around into a single one.
Aside from the glitches, Assassin’s Creed Unity is facing other problems, as Ubisoft is being heavily criticized by both journalists and gamers. The publisher is under fire for its handling of reviews and the inclusion of micro-transactions in the game.
Ubisoft embargoed reviews on the game until 12 hours after it launched and then issues the framerate and dipping into the low 20s along with other issues. It forced sites like Kotaku to alter their review policy to not accept post-release embargoes for review copies again.
It was also discovered some chests in the game are locked until players connect via an Assassin’s Creed Unity app or a login with Uplay. Possibly worse, there are micro-transactions in the game that can go as high as $99.
This all led Forbes Contributor Paul Tassi to declare “Congratulations Ubisoft, you’re the new EA” in an article .
Though Ubisoft isn’t the first company to use microtransactions in full-retail games or try to shoehorn in their own services or apps, they’re doing it in a way with Unity that is simply obnoxious, and between these items and the multiple-AC-games-per-year release schedule, it looks desperate, like they’re trying to squeeze every single drop of blood out of the stone. Say what you will about an also-annual franchise like Call of Duty that many view as derivative and sometimes exploitative, but even they’re not offering $99 “unlock all guns” bundles. Yet.
The sad part in all of this is that Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Unity by two weeks for “minor adjustments.” The consensus appears to be that it could have used more time baking.
What do you think of the Assassin’s Creed Unity glitches and other issues? Sound off in the comments below.
[Images via NeoGAF]