PLATFORM: PC, PS4, PS5, XBOX ONE (REVIEWED), XBOX SERIES X/S | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
With a dozen main instalments and an almost equal amount of spinoffs since 2007, it’s fairly safe to assume that pretty much anyone with even the slightest passing interest in videogames will be familiar with Assassin’s Creed by now. The series has seen many ups and downs over the last thirteen years, so the main thing fans will be interested to know about when a new entry appears is, quite simply, “is it a good one, or is it one of the not so good ones?” To give a simple answer to a simple question; the latest AC game, Valhalla, is definitely one of the good ones. It’s one of the very good ones. Perhaps even one of the very best.
Sent all the way back to 9th century Norway, we meet Eivor, a young child whose parents are murdered by a viking warlord in the game’s opening scenes which are astonishingly tense thanks to some almost horror movie-like direction and sound design. We re-join Eivor eighteen years later, where a quest for revenge soon turns into something much bigger – the viking invasion of Britain. In a series that has become notorious for its convoluted and impossible to follow storylines, Valhalla deserves the high praise for its writing; characters that you’ll come to genuinely care about, plot points that actually make sense, dialogue choices that have a tangible effect on the story and a script that strikes an excellent balance between silly and serious, Valhalla tells one of the most engaging Assassin’s Creed stories to come along in years.
The overall gameplay has been vastly improved over recent entries, too. Much less bloated than its predecessors, Origins and Odyssey, pretty much everything you’d expect from an AC game makes an appearance here but everything feels a lot more streamlined than before. Combat feels more weighty and satisfying, very similar to the melee combat from Dark Souls (although much less dificult), and the game’s countless side quests (now known as “world events”) no longer send you on time-wasting wild goose chases halfway across the map and back. There’s a lot more humour, some spooky supernatural bits, tons of fortresses to raid, fiendishly well-hidden collectables to find, skills and abilities to upgrade, daft mini-games to play (the current favourite around these parts is Flyt, a delightful spoken-word insult game which is won by successfully matching your opponent’s cadence in the most witty and cutting way possible) and, most importantly, your very own settlement to build, from where Eivor can, with a bit of luck and determination, stake a claim to England’s kingdoms.
It’s amazing how Assassin’s Creed manages to reinvent itself so often. The change of setting really feels like a breath of fresh air, especially after the eye-searingly bright blues and yellows of the last couple of games, and by keeping all of the best bits and removing a lot of the fluff that had built up over recent years, Valhalla ends up being one of the most enjoyable AC games ever made. It’s as close to a perfect entry in the series as it’s possible to get (just, you know, a few silly bugs and glitches here and there, but nothing remotely serious to complain about performance-wise, even on a creaky old OG Xbox One), so it’d sort of be unfair to give it anything other than five stars. If Valhalla is any indication of what’s in store for the new generation of consoles, the next few years should be incredibly fun indeed!
